Tag - Kobold Keep

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Tuesday, March 17 2009

Kobold Keep Remix Finale - Showdown

By Eric Maziade on Tuesday, March 17 2009, 22:47 - Dungeons and Dragons

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

Level 2 Soldier
XP 125
Kobold Ritualist
Small natural humanoid
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +2; darkvision
HP 40; Bloodied 20
AC 13; Fortitude 14, Reflex 13, Will 13; see also trap sense
Resist 5 (damage type of the dragon served)
Speed 5
Claw Attack Standard, At will.
+6 vs AC. 2d6+2 damage. 3d6 + 2 if bloodied.
Breath Weapon Standard, Encounter.
Recharges on 6. Blast 3. STR + 2 vs REF. 1d6 + CON cold damage
Bull Rush Standard, At Will.
Move action if bloodied. STR vs FOR - push adjacent enemy one square. Tries to push opponent into spikes.
Shifty
The kobold shifts 1 square.
Alignment Evil Languages Common, Draconic Skills Acrobatics +5, Stealth +7, Thievery +7 Str 14 (+3) Dex 13 (+2) Wis 12 (+2) Con 12 (+2) Int 9 (+0) Cha 10 (+1)

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.

6 comments

Friday, January 30 2009

Scepter Tower of Spellgard Prequel Report - Area 4

By Eric Maziade on Friday, January 30 2009, 00:00 - Dungeons and Dragons

I hadn't butchered the next map yet - I only had my set of dungeon tiles to build it... which also allowed my to hide unseen details from the players. They were quite happy with this hiding - as they were no longer tempted to plan using what they should not have seen...

This is another one that went very well. Except that we really were too tired to play through it properly. Players had a hard time concentrating and multiple discussions were forming... making it hard for me to concentrate as well.

I learned that saying "zombie breasts" grasps the attention of my whole group.

We managed to play through this pretty sweet room.

Two mistakes I made in this room:

  • The spiretop drake is not the same drake as before and can actually fly. Which I noticed after. (And told my players)
  • The drake does not actually fly, it hovers. (And I told my players)
  • The platform in the middle doesn't shouldn't have had a ceiling - now I have to figure out why there's a room here. (And I've told my players).

Now the ceiling thing, I think I like better than the original scenario. It helped me hide the kobolds on the ceiling and make them pop up and glue people to the floor before the stone rolls on them.

Nevertheless, the group went through this fourth encounter. Much more challenging. A few players got bloodied. Dailies got used. Action points. Second winds. Standard actions were turned into move actions to run away from the rock. Marisol Rockhugger managed to jump over the boulder.

Now the players and the PCs are exhausted. We're all pretty much satisfied with this long gaming session.

I ask for feedback and the main feedback is: stop apologizing. We don't care about your mistakes - we don't want to know about it. Keep it up, you're doing great.

Ok. I think I 'll do that.

Oh, by the way, I said, the "bring back from the dead" ritual takes 8 hours to complete and you've been in the dungeon for roughly 1 hour. Do you guys think you have time for an extended rest?

"Oh", I though, "I wanted to give you guys a special potion at the end that restores as an extended rest!"

And I told my players.

5 comments

Thursday, January 29 2009

Scepter Tower of Spellgard Prequel Report - Area 3

By Eric Maziade on Thursday, January 29 2009, 00:00 - Dungeons and Dragons

By this room, I was starting to get the hang of the kobolds. I was familiar enough with their particularities and the traps in the room. I felt I could give the players a proper challenge here.

This room is the skull-skull room. And I had something extra planned here.

A fiery rogue genasi the players met at an inn back at Albercott was in the goo pit, freeing a tied-up a watersoul genasi (his sister). The kobold were unaware of his presence and were occupied arguing the validity of the game's score.

The rogue spotted the adventurers and motioned them to be quiet... which is exactly when the kobold took notice of them.

This time, all the kobold were on a 10 foot high platform and were equipped to take pot shots at the players below until they figured something out.

As soon as his initiative was up, the genasi rogue and his quarry fled the scene - the players made no attempt to stop them.

The combat went fairly well - the kobolds on the platform took turns swinging the skull-skull stone at the players. Arkanis plucked one down with his annoying jedi powers. Rolen had some awful bad luck with his bow and wasted his daily power, an action point and a few arrows in one single turn.

Dali also flash-froze a few kobolds. It wasn't too long before the kobolds were handled. One of them was left alive and hiding behind the doors where the drakes were waiting.

The doors swung open and the drakes bull-rushed the closes players right in the pool of goo!

Glee! I always wanted to do this!

Of course, I waited too long before releasing the drakes (and told my players (!)) so they were chopped meat in no time. Arkanis used one of his wonderful jedi tricks (Dimensional thunder, dragon magazine 367) to basically teleport himself from the goo, right in the middle of the fray, blazing with electricity.

Room 3 was cleared. Some treasure found. I was ready to call it quits - we had already been playing for roughly 5 hours.

But a few players insisted that we moved onwards... and everyone agreed.

Tomorrow: Area 4

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Wednesday, January 28 2009

Scepter Tower of Spellgard Prequel Report - Area 2

By Eric Maziade on Wednesday, January 28 2009, 00:49 - Dungeons and Dragons

This one went well, but was far too easy. I messed up the power level by failing to properly raise the difficulty. Tired of unoriginally boosting a room by adding a critter, I wanted to add a trap instead.

So my 6 players were facing 3 kobolds... and 2 traps, because I didn't figure out where to put a 3rd trap and, quite frankly, 2 such traps was enough for the room.

What I did right, though, I have the kobolds take advantage of the traps. I played them more aggressively - effectively pulling a few players into the trap. But two of them were no match for the party.

And I started to see what kind of min-maxing, combo building group I was facing.

Man.

I have a rogue who's constantly hidden and always throws dagger from total concealment - doing a boatload of damage each time.

Check this out: Using Sly Flourish:

  • + 9 Attack bonus
  • 1d4 +2d8 + 8 damage. That's 1d4 + dex +charisma + sneak attack damage (brutal scoundrel)

This brutal thing deals **minimum** 11 damage when using combat advantage. She actually killed a full-health creature with 1 dagger!

She has a potential of doing 28 damage in one single, sneaky flick of her knife-throwing hand!

So, this assassin is obviously awesome. And I obviously wasn't prepared for it. Obviously.

Arkanis also was this awesomely annoying power where he can "force-pull" an opponent to an adjacent square. Effectively throwing a bone into most of my strategies. Obviously, I'll have to clever-up to give them a challenge.

Right now, I'm a pez-dispenser with a DM's head throwing away XP.

Nevertheless, we had a jolly time in this room - Arkanis and Iris the cleric were finding the rigged tiles. The technique consisted in Arkanis crawling on the floor and, when paralyzed by a dart, Iris would pull him away from the trigger.

Then, they placed a kobold's corpse on the tile - forcing the trap to keep firing until it was emptied of all darts.

When they ran out of kobold corpses, they simply marked the trigger tiles with kobold blood.

All this time, the rogue was... feeding her baby girl.

Searching the room, the players found some papers describing parts of a ritual. The cleric and wizard examined the paper and figured out that it described a ritual used to bring something back from the dead.

The resurrection ritual called from some exotic components and wards. It requires sacrifices both from victims and from devoted practitioners, willing to die for the ritual.

Offended by the affront such a ritual is to his goddess, Arkanis burned the paper to dust.

Tomorrow: the tackles Area 3

5 comments

Tuesday, January 27 2009

Scepter Tower of Spellgard Prequel Report - Area 1

By Eric Maziade on Tuesday, January 27 2009, 00:49 - Dungeons and Dragons

I tackled this room twice before and did the same mistake twice and basically ruined the encounter.

See I redid the maps they gave for the first three room and shrunk them a bit to fit my print paper. Doing this, I deformed the rooms a bit and, not understanding how the encounter worked, I pretty much ruined it.

This and I didn't understand the ambush.

See, the original scenario has a few kobolds hide in a storage room while a second kobold attracts the players towards them.

A third group of kobolds are hiding behind a wall and will try to surprise the players when they pass them.

What I understood is that the first kobold tries to attract the players in the storeroom.... and my messing up the room placed the other critters close enough for the players to see them arrive.

What happens is that the players move forward, attracted by the first kobold who goes to hide in the store room. You know, for the "trap".

The players advance carefully and destroys the first small group.

They then advance towards the storage room, where the remaining few kobolds are trapped.

Kobolds never shift and never gang up on a target. No one tries to push a player in the sticky goo - I simply allow the kobolds to be picked up one by one.

Re-reading the script for the humpteenth time, I realized that the first kobold wants to attract the player in the big room - not the closet space.

Once the players are distracted (or surprised) by the kobolds actually hiding behind the wall, the other kobolds come running to trap the players and flank them.

So, my players basically destroyed the kobolds without breaking a sweat.

They tried interrogating a kobold - which I hadn't planned for. And for all my talk about immersion and improv, I nearly choked on that. And told my players.

I had to come up with some answers and improved that the kobolds were capturing humans because "Drak" told them so. And told my players I just made that up.

(See where I'm going with that? I could've kept my mouth shut - I was doing okay!)

The kobold tried to barter for his life by offering a piece of parchment to the heroes. Arkanis (Steve's SwordMage) ended the interrogation by running his sword through the paper... and the kobold's head.

He took the bloodied paper from his sword and handed it to his in-game wife, Dali - a goth chick Wizard (who happens to be his real-life girl friend).

The paper talked about a magic dagger that can be summoned from a ring and help the wearer hide in shadows.

The group promptly moved to the second room.

Tomorrow: Area 2

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