Forum: Public Forum

Dear Players,

The game is on tonight and I have had time to read the beginning of the adventure again. This is always a better option to take when I can find the time than relying on the memory of my reading it a couple of years ago.

Moving on with the new adventure.

Assuming you have all worked out your equipment and sorted out your level for those who have recently reached LV10, the party is going to be recalled to Sandpoint. I am thinking of bringing the promised reinforcements from Magnimar a bit earlier, in any case tensions on the Northern reaches of Magnimar's influence, the town of Sandpoint itself, will reach the ears of Sir Marcus who will be assigned the task of gathering-up an "A-Team" to look into the rumoured hostile Stone Giant activities in the area.

Leaving the Hook Mountains.

Turtleback Ferry is technically safe for a while and in a logical way too: The Hook Mountain Ogres and the local Graul Ogrekins were the local predators at the top of the food chain, hence lesser monsters need first to be made aware of the void, then only make their move to fill it. Black Maga, the big tentacled thing that the party gently eased away from the flooded town at the time is an Aboleth type monster, if she decides to take on some world domination exercises, it will take her decades to think of them.

Thus, Sir Marcus should be able to appoint a castellan to administer Fort Rannick. Sharak could advise him to leave Fort Rannick under the protection of his three Hannis Hag friends but this would be a bad idea. Another option would be to make an undead version of Elswyn the Mad and leave him in charge, but that would also not really be a good idea either.

Back to Sandpoint.

You all have enough XP, so there will not be any encounter on the way back. Yeah, I know this kill all the randomness of random encounters happening by chance.

Marcus was recruited in Sandpoint just before the move on Thistletop if my memory does not fail me. So there is a tenuous link here. Marcus may have been from Magnimar originally. In any case Sir Marcus is aware of Sandpoint's layout and of its major NPCs. I will try to remember to bring the copy of the first adventure with me tonight.

Yet another non-standard encounter.

Be prepared to play the coming encounter over the next two sessions. This is going to sound like G.U.R.P.S. but with 25+ rounds of carefully choreographed action on the plate you will need to choose your battles carefully.
As usual, having six of you means 50% HP bonus for the opposition (I do not increase magical effects like False life). For tactical reasons I will also do that for the grunts instead of adding more of them.
Basically the town will be under assault.

The assault may include any of the following:

• Bands of evil Gnomes riding Dire Rats.
• Stone Giants.
• Several clowders of cats.

And yes, collective nouns are great. Remember that for a typical D&D town full of low-level commoners and experts, cats, as monsters, represent the best threat value for money (or for CR, thus XP) for the discerning GM.

There is one thing missing for D&D: fanciful collective nouns for every monster or monster type encountered in the various MMs and Bestiaries.

See you at the game tonight, I should be showing up around quarter to seven.

Laurent,