Quill (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} quill18) wrote,@ 2009-06-23 10:32:00 |
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The Campaign so far
It has been supremely cool to play a D&D campaign composed entirely of players who live at your house. We play more frequent, but shorter sessions. We don't need to plan anything -- if we are bored, we play.
For a variety of reasons (which I outlined in an earlier post), we have returned to 3rd Edition and to Eberron. Once again, I am running a pre-made adventure. I just find it quite difficult, with a day job, to find the time to put together decent-quality adventures at a decent pace.
The Characters
We started the game at level 5, but after completing the first part (roughly 25%) of the adventure, we are now level 7.
Astreia d'Deneith: Astreia is a high-profile member of House Deneith and bears the Mark of Warding dragonmark. She is one of the preeminent swordswoman in Khorvaire and is an elite member of the Blademark Guild. To the world, she is the obvious leader and face of the party, though in practice all members contribute equally. [Technical details: Human Warblade with Dragonmark and Favored in House feats. At the start of the campaign (level 5), her 50 hitpoints were about equal to the sum total of the rest of the party's hitpoints, making her a juggernaut. The fact that she can do 1d10+4d6+6 damage with a single swing also helps.]
Ophelia Lilis: Ophelia is a tiefling artificer who is a deadly markswoman with her crossbow. She is brash, chaotic, and unpredictable. Due to her demonic ancestry, she is mistrusted by most of the mortal races -- but her efforts to fight her evil instincts have also isolated her from her own people. [Technical details: A good Dex, a large budget for magical weaponry, and the Bane weapon augmentation infusion make Ophelia a consistent source of solo DPS, but when she starts to infuse her allies' weaponry (and craft new items for them), she empowers the entire team to tear through any encounter. Because the campaign has started at a higher level, I waved the +1 ECL for being a tiefling.]
Khaled: Khaled strives to be an enigma, for if his true nature is discovered by the public he would almost certainly be hunted down by an angry mob. For this reason, Khaled always wears a hood and a mask. It is conspicuous, but no more so than his true face. His tendency to try to stay hidden has turned him into a skill rogue. [Technical details: Khaled is an Eleti Rogue. The Eleti are a race from a 3rd-party sourcebook I have. They are basically intelligent, independent skeletons. The race doesn't have any obvious extraordinary powers, but their nature make them immune to a host of effects and also make them take only half damage from piercing or slashing attacks. To balance this, they have a +3 ECL, though I have reduced this to +2 for our campaign because we are starting at a higher level. Nonetheless, I know this player definitely felt like the weakest party member in our first adventure. However, this has almost completely been inverted now that we have a few more levels (and hitpoints) under our belt and that he has acquired a pair of Rogue Blades (thanks to Ophelia), which will more-or-less give him Blinking in every fight for now on. Blinking on a rogue is a death-sentence to just about anything we will face.]
Ember Burningblade, the Dragonslayer of Q'barra: Ember, while relatively bright and knowledgeable, is completely unintuitive and lacks any kind of creativity. Hell, he can't even come up with a good alias! He has basically just latched on to one idea and has focused all of his energy to making it work, no matter what the situation: hit it with fire until it dies. [Technical Details: This is my character. His only real purpose is to increase the overall party damage potential. He is not the sort of person to ever solve a puzzle for the party. Ember is a wizard -- specifically a Focused Specialist Conjuror who dedicated 90% of his casting slots to (Lesser) Orb of Fire. By (ab)using a variety of feats, he basically auto-hits for 41+5d8/2 damage per shot. And no, I didn't really set out to clone Nuclear Dan. (Besides, I have no innate resistance to fire and evocation is a barred school.)]
Sorry for the bullet-point style rundown. Don't have time for prose.
The party is already established as a competent mercenary force, especially since it operates under the auspice of House Deneith. (And not only that, but Astreia is favored in the house.) It has done a lot of work in Treeton of late, a hamlet run by a quirky warforged druid.
They are contacted by Sur'kil, an academic who is a collector of ancient relics. He hires the party to travel to Q'barra and find a temple deep within the jungle there. They are generally paid for their time. Additionally, Sur'kil will pay them generously for any relics they find.
The temple is guarded by some bloodthirsty lizardfolk tribes. There are some difficult fights, especially with the large Blackscale Lizardfolk. The brutes wield humongous clubs and are capable of some frightening bursts of damage. In one particular encounter with the temple's high priest, Astreia is taken down immediately by a critical hit. While she lays on the ground rapidly bleeding to death, the squishier members of the party must deal with a threat that can easily one-shot any of them (no crits needed). Ophelia falls on the next round, leaving only Khaled (the rogue) and Ember (the mage). Apparently Khaled is a World of Warcraft rogue, because he seems to pop Evasion and starts to dodge the insta-kill blows while Ember spends three rounds melting the priest down to his constituent components.
Lizardfolk are not the only reptiles in the temple -- there are also two dragons present. After Ember one-shots the first with a critical hit and also lands the finishing blow on the second, he appends "The Dragonslayer of Q'barra" to his name, starts to demand an extra share of the treasure, and generally becomes insufferable.
Eventually, the party discovers the super-secret area below the main temple and the real fun begins. We fight demons (devils?) on swinging bridges above a river of lava. We pass through a room lovingly titled "The Grinder", which features no less than a dozen spinning blade devices (we also have to fight off two constructs while dodging blades). Finally, we fight a ridiculous half-dragon-mummy hybrid that has a breath-weapon attack that could have one-shot the entire party. Luckily, Khaled was the one to open the sarcophagus and was the target of the attack. He was positioned in such a way that the breath weapon hit only him, and he made his saving throw and took zero damage thanks to his rogue powers.
After leaving the temple and trekking for five days through jungle to get home, the party was attacked by a squadron of Emerald Claw soldiers lead by an aggressive woman. We had no trouble taking out the group, though the leader was able to teleport away with a sliver of health. All the party knows about these attackers is that they believe that the PCs have something called "The Dragon's Eye", but none of the relics they recovered from the temple seem to match the description.
Moments after combat, Astreia feels her dragonmark start to burn with excruciating pain. Tearing at her clothing, she can see her dragonmark start to shift and change color, but then passes out from the pain. As the partymembers react to this, they too start to feel a terrible burning feeling -- Ophelia on her chest, Ember at the side of his neck, and even Khaled on his skull. The torture is overwhelming and all of them collapse.
Some time later, with the sun considerably lower in the sky, they begin to wake one by one, only to discover that they now all have aberrant dragonmarks -- an abominable mutation that will get them shut out of society (or worse).
But to make matters worse, when they finally return to Sur'kil and show them their dragonmarks, he informs them that he has only heard of this spontaneously happening to a group of adventures once...and all but one of them were dead within a year, consumed from within by the chaotic energy of the aberrant dragonmarks.
So now, with a mission to save themselves (and to find out about the Dragon's Eye), they have shipped out to the Lhazaar Principalities, the last known resting place of the body of the one adventurer who wasn't consumed by his aberrant dragonmark.
It has been supremely cool to play a D&D campaign composed entirely of players who live at your house. We play more frequent, but shorter sessions. We don't need to plan anything -- if we are bored, we play.
For a variety of reasons (which I outlined in an earlier post), we have returned to 3rd Edition and to Eberron. Once again, I am running a pre-made adventure. I just find it quite difficult, with a day job, to find the time to put together decent-quality adventures at a decent pace.
The Characters
We started the game at level 5, but after completing the first part (roughly 25%) of the adventure, we are now level 7.
Astreia d'Deneith: Astreia is a high-profile member of House Deneith and bears the Mark of Warding dragonmark. She is one of the preeminent swordswoman in Khorvaire and is an elite member of the Blademark Guild. To the world, she is the obvious leader and face of the party, though in practice all members contribute equally. [Technical details: Human Warblade with Dragonmark and Favored in House feats. At the start of the campaign (level 5), her 50 hitpoints were about equal to the sum total of the rest of the party's hitpoints, making her a juggernaut. The fact that she can do 1d10+4d6+6 damage with a single swing also helps.]
Ophelia Lilis: Ophelia is a tiefling artificer who is a deadly markswoman with her crossbow. She is brash, chaotic, and unpredictable. Due to her demonic ancestry, she is mistrusted by most of the mortal races -- but her efforts to fight her evil instincts have also isolated her from her own people. [Technical details: A good Dex, a large budget for magical weaponry, and the Bane weapon augmentation infusion make Ophelia a consistent source of solo DPS, but when she starts to infuse her allies' weaponry (and craft new items for them), she empowers the entire team to tear through any encounter. Because the campaign has started at a higher level, I waved the +1 ECL for being a tiefling.]
Khaled: Khaled strives to be an enigma, for if his true nature is discovered by the public he would almost certainly be hunted down by an angry mob. For this reason, Khaled always wears a hood and a mask. It is conspicuous, but no more so than his true face. His tendency to try to stay hidden has turned him into a skill rogue. [Technical details: Khaled is an Eleti Rogue. The Eleti are a race from a 3rd-party sourcebook I have. They are basically intelligent, independent skeletons. The race doesn't have any obvious extraordinary powers, but their nature make them immune to a host of effects and also make them take only half damage from piercing or slashing attacks. To balance this, they have a +3 ECL, though I have reduced this to +2 for our campaign because we are starting at a higher level. Nonetheless, I know this player definitely felt like the weakest party member in our first adventure. However, this has almost completely been inverted now that we have a few more levels (and hitpoints) under our belt and that he has acquired a pair of Rogue Blades (thanks to Ophelia), which will more-or-less give him Blinking in every fight for now on. Blinking on a rogue is a death-sentence to just about anything we will face.]
Ember Burningblade, the Dragonslayer of Q'barra: Ember, while relatively bright and knowledgeable, is completely unintuitive and lacks any kind of creativity. Hell, he can't even come up with a good alias! He has basically just latched on to one idea and has focused all of his energy to making it work, no matter what the situation: hit it with fire until it dies. [Technical Details: This is my character. His only real purpose is to increase the overall party damage potential. He is not the sort of person to ever solve a puzzle for the party. Ember is a wizard -- specifically a Focused Specialist Conjuror who dedicated 90% of his casting slots to (Lesser) Orb of Fire. By (ab)using a variety of feats, he basically auto-hits for 41+5d8/2 damage per shot. And no, I didn't really set out to clone Nuclear Dan. (Besides, I have no innate resistance to fire and evocation is a barred school.)]
Sorry for the bullet-point style rundown. Don't have time for prose.
The party is already established as a competent mercenary force, especially since it operates under the auspice of House Deneith. (And not only that, but Astreia is favored in the house.) It has done a lot of work in Treeton of late, a hamlet run by a quirky warforged druid.
They are contacted by Sur'kil, an academic who is a collector of ancient relics. He hires the party to travel to Q'barra and find a temple deep within the jungle there. They are generally paid for their time. Additionally, Sur'kil will pay them generously for any relics they find.
The temple is guarded by some bloodthirsty lizardfolk tribes. There are some difficult fights, especially with the large Blackscale Lizardfolk. The brutes wield humongous clubs and are capable of some frightening bursts of damage. In one particular encounter with the temple's high priest, Astreia is taken down immediately by a critical hit. While she lays on the ground rapidly bleeding to death, the squishier members of the party must deal with a threat that can easily one-shot any of them (no crits needed). Ophelia falls on the next round, leaving only Khaled (the rogue) and Ember (the mage). Apparently Khaled is a World of Warcraft rogue, because he seems to pop Evasion and starts to dodge the insta-kill blows while Ember spends three rounds melting the priest down to his constituent components.
Lizardfolk are not the only reptiles in the temple -- there are also two dragons present. After Ember one-shots the first with a critical hit and also lands the finishing blow on the second, he appends "The Dragonslayer of Q'barra" to his name, starts to demand an extra share of the treasure, and generally becomes insufferable.
Eventually, the party discovers the super-secret area below the main temple and the real fun begins. We fight demons (devils?) on swinging bridges above a river of lava. We pass through a room lovingly titled "The Grinder", which features no less than a dozen spinning blade devices (we also have to fight off two constructs while dodging blades). Finally, we fight a ridiculous half-dragon-mummy hybrid that has a breath-weapon attack that could have one-shot the entire party. Luckily, Khaled was the one to open the sarcophagus and was the target of the attack. He was positioned in such a way that the breath weapon hit only him, and he made his saving throw and took zero damage thanks to his rogue powers.
After leaving the temple and trekking for five days through jungle to get home, the party was attacked by a squadron of Emerald Claw soldiers lead by an aggressive woman. We had no trouble taking out the group, though the leader was able to teleport away with a sliver of health. All the party knows about these attackers is that they believe that the PCs have something called "The Dragon's Eye", but none of the relics they recovered from the temple seem to match the description.
Moments after combat, Astreia feels her dragonmark start to burn with excruciating pain. Tearing at her clothing, she can see her dragonmark start to shift and change color, but then passes out from the pain. As the partymembers react to this, they too start to feel a terrible burning feeling -- Ophelia on her chest, Ember at the side of his neck, and even Khaled on his skull. The torture is overwhelming and all of them collapse.
Some time later, with the sun considerably lower in the sky, they begin to wake one by one, only to discover that they now all have aberrant dragonmarks -- an abominable mutation that will get them shut out of society (or worse).
But to make matters worse, when they finally return to Sur'kil and show them their dragonmarks, he informs them that he has only heard of this spontaneously happening to a group of adventures once...and all but one of them were dead within a year, consumed from within by the chaotic energy of the aberrant dragonmarks.
So now, with a mission to save themselves (and to find out about the Dragon's Eye), they have shipped out to the Lhazaar Principalities, the last known resting place of the body of the one adventurer who wasn't consumed by his aberrant dragonmark.
