The Setup

Here's what I was planning on running on our last game:

While escorting the caravan, our heroes met with Lady Adelinde, a widowed noblewoman in search of valiant heroes to help her find the body of her deceased husband.

Lady Adelinde's husband has been missing and she has spent most of her fortune trying to find his whereabouts. In despair, she sought the famed Oracle of Spellgard to answer her questions.

The Oracle informed her of her husband's demise and gave clues on where to find his body.

Misplaced
It all amounts to words
Trolls and swords and trees abound
An oak he found and holes in ground

My players nearly didn't take to the plot line - the leading personality of the group doesn't really care much about being noble or heroic and the plight of the noblewoman was not appealing to him.

Her husband's dead. Suits him. Move on.

I cast "Dungeon Master's Puppy Eyes" and got some mercy from my players, who decided to investigate.

Engage, Number One!

This is our second time playing Friday night and I already detected non-too-subtle signs of week-end weariness in my players.

I originally planned on having them try to understand the Oracle's words... but I let Lady Adelinde tell them of her progress in understanding the riddle.

Her husband died in the forest of TrollBark. His journal must have fallen in there where oaks are found.

Our resident ranger, aware of this forest, new that it was infested with Trolls - creatures that our players would not want to meet, for they spelled sure doom! He was also aware that there is only a small patch of oaks (what do I know about oaks?) in that forest - in a place that no longer sustains troll population.

My players are level 1 and meeting a party of trolls would most likely spell doom.

However, I wanted to danger to be there... so I played this as a loose, informal, "skill challenge".

The ranger was to guide them through the forest, everyone watching for any signs of troll.

This is the first time I made a cooperative check... and it was rather interesting. It didn't have enough role play elements into it to my tastes - in retrospect, I should have had the players describe what they were doing to help the ranger.

Nevertheless, they navigated through the forest, crossing signs of nearby trolls, but no trolls to speak of.

The arrived at the patch of oaks and rapidly noticed a book near one of the trees.

Arkanys-The-Bold ran to the journal and the ground opened under his feet. The ground opened onto tunnels, seemingly dug by giant insects. He instantly teleported to safety (Shadow Jaunt Encounter Power) back with the party.

They rapidly decided to throw a rope down and explore the tunnels... where they met what was meant to be the first encounter of the night.

The Fight

Now, before I move on - let me remind you that these guys kicked my balls in the last two sessions by doing five fights in a row - the last one being one that I felt should have been difficult even fully rested.

So I threw at them a basic level 4 encounter, straight from the PHB:

• 2 Corruption Corpse (level 4 artillery)
• 4 Kruthik Adults (level 4 Brute)

When I last met with ChattyDM, he told me that the Kobold scenario I had been running had rather easy fights... And boy, was the money right under him!

I didn't have time to prepare properly and wasn't too familiar with the monsters. Setting up the fight and playing through the first round, I realized that they players actually stood little chance of survival.

The Kruthik adults have a recharging ranged attack called "Toxic Spikes", which allows it to make two attacks which causes ongoing 5 poison damage and slows the target.

The zombies have an at-will ranged attack that targets reflex and causes the target to be weakened.

After the first round, everyone was either slowed and poisoned or weakened. Fleeing from a collapsed tunnel didn't feel like a viable option.

I didn't want to cheat... but I surely don't want to over challenge the players without at least giving them a flee scenario. And I didn't want to pull my punches as I perhaps did in previous fights.

I considered lowering the HP on the critters, but decided against it. Their poisoning and weakening attacks were causing more trouble than I had planned for and they were to be the target of my adjustment.

I removed the recharge option from the toxic spikes. Instead, they would recharge when the Kruthik got bloodied.

I also change the zombie's "weakened" effect to give it a 50% chances of failing on hit.

It still was a rather hard and perilous fight!

Iris, the cleric (aka Healing Serge) had his work cut out for him! And the paladin had a lot of Kruthiks to tank.

All powers, prayers and tactics were used and it wasn't going well - nothing seemed to put down these monsters!

Some of my players must have caught my distress - a few of them told me: "Hey, don't worry - if my PC dies, it dies. I can make another one in a few minutes with the character generator..."

This somehow allowed me to relax and let the combat play out.

I don't remember the details, as it was two weeks ago, but in the end, even though Arkanys nearly died, the players prevailed.

The fight took the better part of three hours to run.

There were a few glitches during the play session... most of them, I believe, due to the players (and the DM!) being tired.

I have still to learn to grab the attention of the players and direct the action a bit more so there is less waste of time, but all in all, I think most of the players had a good time.

I am, however, wondering if the Friday night game idea will work with this group. Its only been two games on a Friday night - too small a sample to judge... but we might have to revert to less frequent games that run on the weekends instead.

We'll see.

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Images:

• The Oracle of Delphi, ©2004 Howard David Johnson
• Troll, © FX Déco Troll Makeup
• Kruthik Adult, © Wizards of the Coast

What's new:

• Fixed a problem that prevented posting anything but the default post when writing a comment.
• Various small fixes
• A complete french translation, contributed by David Saba

Many thanks to David Saba for the bug reports, investigation and translation!

You can find the plugin on its own page.

Okay, so a few months ago, I mounted a samba drive on my Gentoo machine that linked to a Windows file server I had lying there.

Then, I added an rsync task to my backup server - every day, along with other folders, a remote server took backups from the Windows machine through the Gentoo server.

All works fine.

Did you guys find the flaw yet? I didn't find it until this morning.

Yesterday night, the Windows server went down. Its an old Celeron 400mhz - its way past its prime. Problem is, it went down before the nightly backup routine.

So the samba mount "disappeared".

And when the rsync took place, all the backup could see was an empty mount drive...

And so, rsync synchronized - and wiped the whole backup. Now the folders are synchronized.

• sigh *

I need to rethink that particular strategy.

Update 1 Instead of the previous setup, I've mapped my Gentoo server to the windows network via Samba - I'm sharing the driver directly from the Gentoo server now - much less hassle.

Update 2 Yanik Proulx was kind enough to send me a simple script that fixes the problem by make a rotation backup of the mount ("soft link") to a hard link. Thanks, buddy!

Another interesting solution would be to rsync from soft to hard link locally after checking the mount status.

Update 3 Another method would be not to backup the root folder of the mounted drive. This way, the folder to backup would not exist and rsync would simply fail.

The Room

As you enter the room, the horrid smell of decomposing bodies forces you to pause momentarily.

A very wide circle is drawn on the broken stone floor. Complex glyphs and symbols cover the inside of the circle.

Your attention is immediately drawn to the center of the circle. Upon a large circular platform - adorned with sharp spikes - lay the decomposing cadaver of what used to be a white dragon… the source of the smell. Judging be the smell, not only is the creature dead - but its been this way for quite some time.

Near the platform, three Kobolds Ritualists are chanting. The Kobolds are practically nude, their body covered with complex tattoos. They are sitting and chanting, as in a trance. You notice that a long chain binds them to the center platform. Two WyrmPriests are busy working on complex manipulations.

The Ritualists' chanting echoes against the walls of the enormous room and dissipate rapidly as they bounce upwards. You can see no ceiling. Since it is night outside, the room might actually open to the sky.

Between you and the circle, a group of Kobolds are glaring at you menacingly. The two WyrmPriest are readying their orbs while seven other Kobolds are slowly moving towards you…

The Platform

The platform is raised a few inches from the ground. The chains binding the Ritualists to the platform are tied at the center of the platform and can move freely around the platform without getting tangled.

The Corpse

At first glance, the creature you are looking at looks like an adult white dragon... but you rapidly realize that the situation is not that simple.

The beasts' limbs are actually quite similar to those of a white dragon... but they look more like magnified members of a young white dragon. A young white dragon - adult sized!

Upon closer inspection you notice that its back is covered with bony spikes following its spine all the way to the end of its tail - covered in green scales.

Its back legs look more like enormous human legs, covered in black scales.

The Creatures

Quantity	Name	Level	Role	XP
3	Kobold Ritualists	level 2	brute	125 xp
2	KoboldWyrmpriests	level 3	artillery	150 xp
2	Kobold Dragonshields	level 2	soldier	125 xp
5	Kobold Minions	level 1	minion	25 xp

The Circle

The markings in the circle are not decipherable by the players - it is way beyond their ability.

Every time a Ritualist bleeds, its blood is absorbed by the writings in the circle. No other blood is absorbed by the circle. When a Ritualist dies within the circle, the creature gets closer to being raised. A Ritualist needs to be killed by a non-participant in the ritual in order for their death to speed up the process.

The Creatures

• Ritualists try to get killed by the players
• Dragonshields will throw spiked balls at the players. Every Dragonshield has two balls. I almost choked on my snacks when I read that back from my notes. Yes. Dragonshields have two balls.
• Minions wait for the players to advance before rushing - they want the Dragonshields to take advantage of their Mob Attack feature.
• Wyrmpriests stay in the back - they will boost the minions with Incite Faith as soon as possible.
• Everyone fights to the death.

Kobold Ritualists

The Kobold Ritualists are actually a modified version of the Kobold Dragonshields. They are chained to the circle and cannot escape it - nor do they wish to.

Every time a Ritualist bleeds, its blood is absorbed by the writings in the circle. When a Ritualist dies within the circle, the creature gets closer to being raised. A Ritualist needs to be killed by a non-participant in the ritual in order for their death to speed up the process.

The Ritualists try to lure the players in the circle - they want to get killed by the players. If a player rushes a Ritualist, it will let itself be pushed in the spikes.

Ritualists will also try to grab a player and push him in the spikes - both to provoke them... and inspire them to do the same.

Kobold Dragonshields' Spiked Balls

When this contraption is throw, spikes come out of it (think of a blowfish).

The spikes retract when the ball is no longer in movement.

• At the end of every turn, roll 1d6. On 5 or 6, spiked ball explodes. Blast 2. 2d6 frost damage.
• If the ball does not explode, it rolls 1 square in a random direction.
• If ball is picked up, the spikes come up, causing 1d4 damage (you need to know how to pick up the ball).
• Ball can be kicked or otherwise propelled. DEX vs AC. Damage is 1d4 + STR on hit.

One Kobold Dragonshield could throw a ball as soon as possible and possibly have a minion kick it towards the player - more as an explanation of how it works than anything else.

Dragon Creature

I'm not giving details on that beast, as the issue is not resolved in my current game.

The setup

As you enter the room, the horrid smell of decomposing bodies forces you to pause momentarily.

A very wide circle is drawn on the broken stone floor. Glyphs and symbols cover the inside of the circle.

Your attention is immediately drawn to the center of the circle. Upon a large circular platform - adorned with sharp spikes - lay the decomposing cadaver of what used to be a white dragon… the source of the smell.

Near the platform, three Kobolds are chanting. You notice that a long chain binds them to the center platform.

Between you and the circle, a group of Kobolds are glaring at you menacingly. You easily recognize two Wyrmpriests at the back, readying their orbs. Seven other Kobolds are also slowly moving towards you…

The chanting Kobolds were Kobold Ritualists. Out of the pack of seven Kobolds, five of them were minions and two of them were Kobold Shieldbearers.

The "Traps"

The Kobold Ritualists were originally designed to be more a trap than actual creatures - I'll talk some more about them in a later post.

The basic idea was to have them chained so they could not leave the circle. They're goal is to get killed by the players while in the circle. Their blood gets soaked in the circle and contributes to speed the process of bringing the dragon creature back to life. They cannot commit suicide. They want to die for the cause.

They are rather formidable close-combat opponents - especially when bloodied. They also have a recharging encounter breath weapon to make them more threatening.

The Kobold Shieldbearers each have three spiked grenade balls. When picked up by an uninitiated person, spikes come out and cause damage. Spikes also come out when the ball is in movement and hide back in when it is not moving. At any time, the ball can explode and hurt the surrounding creatures.

I wanted to have the players play "hot potato" with that thing and kick the ball around.

The Strategy

Basically, I was to try and have the whole group attract the players near enough to the center to force them to kill the Ritualists and bring the beast back to life.

The minions were to swarm melee players and boost the Shieldbearer. The priest was to bolster them (and give extra resistance to the minions) and provide a cover from range.

The Ritualists were to do nothing until someone was close enough. They either belched lightning (I still can't figure what that looks like) to get the player's attention, or try to grab players to push them in the spikes. Of course, they would have loved to be impaled on the spikes themselves.

What I Hoped Would Happen

I decided to try my best and let the players - through their actions - decide the outcome. The dragon might be raised. They might fight it. They might all get killed. They might succeed - most likely through means I was not prepared for.

The combat started in surprise - the players surprised the Kobolds.

This is my first experience in surprise round here. With a group of 6 players. And they get to basically have two rounds in a row. And they had enough action points to spare.

Needless to say, they started off strong - isolating the Shieldbearers, area-effecting the minions (I'm starting to dislike those) and punishing the casters.

I had not started my turn that I already had a few bloodied soldiers. Nevertheless, finding strength in their faith, the Kobolds pushed on. Bolstered by the Wyrmpriestess, the minions shifted and swarmed around the paladin. I finally got a good grade at Kobold Tactics 101! The Shieldbearer was already in the fray and the paladin got enough punishment for the rest of the crew to show a little worry.

The Shadar-Kai tried to use its force tricks to bring a ritualist out of the circle. Of course, the ritualist being chained, that didn't work as well as expected. The ritualist fell prone at the end of its leash and belched out lightning at its attacker, sustaining a gleeful, bloodied smile.

One of the Wyrmprised trusted in her god and spat lightning at a group of players/kobolds, hoping the true believers would be spared and that the players would be rightfully felled.

Of course, the dice decided that her tactic killed three kobolds and barely scratched a player.

The players quickly organized and used efficient strategies to get the kobolds under control.

Noticing that the blood of the ritualists was absorbed in the ritual circle while any other blood was ignored, the players quickly managed to figure out that the ritualists should be taken out of commission, but not killed.

At this point, I wanted the dragon to rise - the combat should have been harder! At least one of the players should have fallen!

Arkanys came up with a neat strategy: the paladin would section a leg of one of the ritualist and we would use his Scorpion-Inspired force power to pull the body out of the circle.

I didn't really want this to succeed, but hey - that deserved some cool points if it worked and was ready to allow it to seriously impact the ritual.

But it failed.

They still managed to knock the remaining two ritualists (one had already bled to death in the circle) unconscious.

Unfortunately for them, they had bled enough to allow the dragon-like creature to slowly rise.

The creature was in a weakened state and was chained to the ritual circle as well. It was scared and cowered as far as possible from the players.

This caused them to pause and discuss about their course of action.

Would they destroy the abomination? Free it? Try to talk with it? Rest?

The discussed at length, during which time, they nearly failed to notice that the dragon had somehow been untied and was starting to slowly fly away from the room - which had no ceiling, as previously established.

Rolen the ranger rapidly let loose an arrow upon the beast who got injured, but still managed to fly away... but not before Rolen got hit from a dagger sent from on high.

Now, I don't know about you, but even though I think spitting lightning is odd, I'm not aware of any dragon that spits out daggers...

So that was 5 fights in a row. Without anyone getting seriously hurt. Am I doing something wrong or are my players just that good?

Coming up next: post mortem of this encounter.