Forum: Public Forum

Dear Players,

Last session and near TPK.

As you may have noticed, I do not like having to cheat  in my game, but had to give you an extra two rounds  yesterday to avoid a TPK. Now the question remains: "Why were there that many monsters in the first place?" Your choice of the method of entry into Jorgenfist was only one of many, but one that clearly called for hit-and-run tactics unless you believed the party to be strong enough to take on the whole citadel in one go, with one load of spells. The map given to you mentioned "to the small tunnels", I described the place as having 40ft ceilings for rooms and 20ft ceilings for corridors, except the tunnels you came from. Enga Keckvia was called "Ratcatcher" because she was the only one small enough to shake-up the Redcaps should these little fellows decide to stop serving Mokmurian's army.
Why did you not attempt to draw Enga into the tunnels? There would not have been any love loss between the Stone Giants and the Kobold, "She is gone? So what?" Would have thought Galenmir. Stone Giants cannot go in the "small tunnels" unless they squeeze. In fact they do not care. They had beaten the crap out of the Redcaps a couple of months ago, Mokmurian recruited the Kobold mercenary, the Redcaps were paying tribute, the complex ran smoothly.
Now of course they see the small tunnels as a security issue. Technically this is no longer an issue as they are now sealed.

Hitting Enga and staying there until you had finished with her was not the best choice ever. True, the Stone shape charges from the staff were a clever trick. I should have had Galenmir leave a couple of Giants hammering at the first wall you created. The Ogres played as planned, the Giants in the workshop could not really hear the sound of battle, and would not really bother about the smelly Ogres shouting in the first instance.
Now, as for Galenmir and his six Stone Giants:
The six Stone Giants were the patrol or guards on duty, they would have joined any fight on this floor within a couple of rounds. The time of the day being afternoon, they were in the mess hall, i.e. not far from Enga's room. Had the alarm been sounded from the top of the pit, they would have been at the pit entrance with Dire Bears, had it been night, they would have been sleeping in the room beyond the armoury.
Galenmir happened to be in his quarters, with those pretty close to the action, hence him joining the fray.
You pursued Enga to the armoury, thus bumped into its workers, I cannot be blamed for dropping three Stone Giants there.

I hope this tactical explanation alleviates your fears of "The GM threw the kitchen sink at us to kill us!". The other monsters had their reason to stay in their respective areas:

• The Lamias at best obey Mokmurian they basically do not give a damn about the site's security. Well, up to the point when adventurers show-up in their room of course.
• The Red Dragons have a reason to stay where they are, one for the party to discover.
• Lokensir, a gentleman you do not yet know about, is behind a stone door and like the Lamias keeps to his own business.
• Like in any big enough D&D dungeon, meta-gaming should inform you that there must be some help somewhere, a disgruntled employee, a powerful prisoner, that kind of person. Nope, this was not Enga .

True, the party's class distribution is pretty poor when it comes to flexibility, but I stand by my "you play what you want to play" attitude. I am against imposing by implication that one player plays a Cleric or another class usually seen as not as funny to play, such as a Thief or the likes. If some of you want to swap their PC for another one, I can find a way of introducing the new character. What I do not like is the "We live by the sword and die by the sword" attitude once voluntarily, and somewhat stupidly, cornered in a room waiting for the enemy's cavalry to show-up.
This means TPK, and yes this means more work for me to restart "Fortress of the Stone Giants" as an adventure. I just want to run Rise of the Runelords to its conclusion.

Forgotten loot, extra XP and GM mistake.

I should have given you 50% more XP for Enga Keckvia since she had received the "50% HP increase" due to her being a major NPC. I put two more Stone Giants in the patrol and one more working at the armoury. I sprinkled three more Ogres on top of the standard nine, so the XP count is what you should get. Enga chose not to drink her last CLW potion, the party would have had the time to pick-it up. I assume you will be looting the corpses for magic weapons and gold later.
For some reason I believed Enga had to drop out of rage to heal herself. This should not have been the case, then again she gained no advantage for doing so (the AC going back to 23 did not affect anything as Gideon's AoO had been spent on an Ogre). Dropping a Barbarian out of rage in the middle of combat is not a good idea, Enga should indeed have been fatigued for a number of rounds equals to double the number or rounds she had been raging! However, she did not need to drop out of rage to heal herself - drinking a potion is not an activity requiring special movement coordination - thus I shall retcon that she never dropped out of rage.
I forgot to mention that every enemy dead body sports an obvious Sihedron rune as a tattoo. In other words, every dead monster or NPC with a tattooed rune is one more soul for Karzoug's runewell.

Nagri is missing in action.

The party will need to role-play the fact that Nagri is not with them.
As for Nagri, he will hear some interesting conversations and will be given choices to make. Hiding in a little nest manufactured by yet another stone shape spell is a valid course of action.

Another way in.

As mentioned earlier, the other entrance, the one through the pit, is designed for LV10 characters too. While mass-combat involving sixty plus Stone Giants or CR11 equivalent monsters would be ill-advised, Mokmurian receives every now and then emissaries, mercenaries, etc.
Nagri is the only one with a "key" to the small tunnels now, only him in the party can open them again quietly. Hammering at them would of course see again a lot of monsters being crammed in this little room! The problem is of course that Nagri is currently on the wrong side of the stone wall.

By the way, a PRPG staff has only ten charges, but is rechargeable. Disregard the number of charges given in the 3.5 description of the Staff of Heaven and Earth.

Advanced Player's Guide and house rules.

As mentioned at the game, I am currently reviewing the APG and have found nothing wrong with it so far. Contrary to a game with "4" in its name, or the last couple of years of Third Edition for that matter, PRPG accessories are actually play-tested before publication and it shows. So, for your next level, I will allow you to re-build your character using feats and spells from the APG. The "rebuild" part means that you will be able to swap feats and such, but I will trust you to keep those your character tends to use all the time. For instance Nagri would not be Nagri without his trademark fireball or Phantasmal killer, neither would Gideon be Gideon without his silly critical friendly character build.
The only restriction to the APG I will put on pre-emptively is: You may not multi-class with the new core classes. If you want to play an Oracle up to LV20, you collect 20 levels of Oracle or some of a prestige class the Oracle can evolve into. Same rule as before for prestige class, if it is "prestige" you want it so once entered, you are in for the whole ten levels (or less for those with less than ten levels of course).

For those of you with an eeeevil bent:

• You do not benefit from Protection from evil and similar spells with alignment references.
• Good Clerics or merchants who could genuinely have access to Detect evil spells or equivalent abilities will charge you 20% more or even refuse your custom. Evil merchants sell to everyone, so do not charge good people more, unless "stupid evil" and lacking business acumen.
• For real life social reasons you are not allowed to steal from the party or otherwise hinder the party by "in game" self-centred acts. To some extent you may leave some members to die if risking your life for them is too much to consider unless a strong motivation is present.
• Evil sucks, therefore other party members are entitled to act according to their alignment. Evil characters cannot bully the party but can be bullied by the party for their own good (pun intended). Only LE and NE PCs are tolerated, CE being too disruptive.
• Conversely Good characters do not benefit from Protection from good and similar spells or effects, unless extreme circumstances allow for the effect to make sense, as in fighting a creature with the Good subtype, or of good alignment, that is subjected to mind-controlling magic or similar effects. Evil being always evil, even against evil, means that this exclusion clause does not apply for evil.
• In other words, it does not pay to be evil. Anti-Paladins would suck in a standard adventure for instance (most of the class abilities would never see optimal use), however they would make pretty good opponents.

Laurent,