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zippdementia · 7 years

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Part 27 Alignment May Vary: Tinkering

By now my players are a pretty formidable three person fighting force. Abenthy is a power-tank, with AC of 24 due to the full plate armor he got from Mordekai, a magic shield he picked up... somewhere, can’t remember... some more magic AC items (which bring him to his maximum attuned) and some of his class abilities. Tyrion is very dextrous, plus he wears half plate and carries a shield, giving him 20 AC when he has the hand free to use it (18 when not). Karinna is fast, too, and with her elven armor she is not easy to hit--she has the lowest AC of the bunch at 17, which is still decent.

Monsters at this point are still rolling +4 to hit in most cases, meaning that they have to roll at least 13 to hit Karinna (doable), 14-16 to hit Tyrion (tough), and they have to critically hit Abenthy to get through his defenses. So how do you still challenge this team, as a GM? It’s a nice puzzle to solve and the next section of the adventure requires me to start solving it! This post talks through the remainder of the island of Rori Rama, covering DM tactics for changing encounters to make them fit your players without taking away the powers they have worked hard to attain and the play style they desire to stand by.

Reaching the Lizardfolk village, led there by “Small Threat,” the players are taken to the Lizardking ruler, a great beast of a creature who at first seems likely to eat them as much as parley with them. But he is impressed when Karinna (aided by Comprehend languages) manages to communicate with him in the lizard tongue, and shortly he tells them of the island, the location of the tomb, and the danger facing his people.

Ages ago, Haggemoth built his tomb here, protected by a great fortress manned by automatons and beasts of his creation or culling. Then, one day, he disappeared inside the tomb and was never heard from again. For many generations, few would dare to even approach, for fear of his guardians. But little by little, the Lizardmen’s courage grew and eventually they discovered the fortress abandoned. They then went to explore the tomb, and the things they found have kept even their children’s grandchildren from ever venturing back. The tale of the tomb’s horrors has been passed down without details through the lizardfolk. But now, circumstances may force them to reconsider, for a group of Bugbears, come here who knows how, have taken over the fortress and have begun launching raids on the lizardfolk. They strike at night, take children and kill warriors, steal food and burn homes. The entire civilization of these lizardfolk is at stake, yet the bugbears have too well fortified a position in the old dwarven fortress. The leader, Ruth’Nek, has hesitated to strike for fear of dashing his people against its battlements. Not only that, but the journey overland to the fortress is long, and riddled with dangers. Whispers speak of the “Heart of the Jungle” coming to take those who venture past the river.

Karinna uses her ability for flair and sympathy to earn the lizardking’s trust, and he agrees to send a handful of his warriors with them to the tomb, in the hopes they can drive out the Bugbears as part of their goal. He also gives them boats to take the river as far as they can, in hopes of avoiding the Heart of the Jungle.

Obviously, this all has a lot of set up and the purpose is to give the players a sense of both foreshadowing and preplanning. They will ultimately end up facing the Heart of the Jungle, and the bugbears, but the way they approach both situations ends up having a huge impact on how well the group fares. It also illustrates what I want to discuss about various options for challenging players.

This post covers about three or four sessions worth of information, so it’s going to be a big one. Might even break it up into two parts. In any case, ready? Let’s do it!

Big Heavy Hitter

Bad smell.

That was what the lizard warriors were saying. Karrina’s spell gave her mastery of the language, but not an understanding of the meaning behind the words. She could see their unease, it had been present ever since they had entered this swampy part of the jungle. But now the lizardmen were practically shoving the group forward in their haste to leave the area. Karinna started towards one of the nearest ones, a scarred lizardman she believed was named “Two Tails,” or “Tooth and Nails” (sometimes the words slurred together, even with her spell). She intended to calm him and get an explanation, but suddenly she found herself unable to keep moving. Something had wrapped itself around her leg. She looked down and saw her leg was caught in a tangle of vines and weeds. Sighing, she knelt down to cut the vines and suddenly was on her back as the forest came alive around her, the vines whipping upwards and throwing her down as they did, then beginning to drag her towards a gap in the trees, where a large mound was rising up, horribly, out of the swamp...

Soon after leaving the Lizardfolk camp, the players are given a choice: continue on the river and end up in a lake that is known to be the home of a territorial monster, or cut through the center of the jungle. They chose the latter, and end up meeting the proverbial Heart of the Jungle, a Tendriculous. The Tendriculous is a third edition plant monster, notable for its weakness to acid instead of fire, its regeneration, and its swallow ability (which can put a real time limit on a battle, as they grab a player character, pull them from an entire battle, and restrain/blind/deafen them while they slowly get digested inside its belly). It is hampered by a very slow movement speed and poor AC. It also wasn’t stated out for fifth edition, giving me the opportunity to create it from scratch. I end up using Demongnomes Guide to Monsters as a base and then tweak things a little, mostly tuning down its swallow ability a bit, from working on anything that is grappled to being an action it has to take against something that’s within five feet.

The Tendriculous is a heavy hitter, a little bit like the Tyrannosaur I described last post. The idea is that it is a big honkin’ monster, probably just beyond the player level, but fairly easy to run from, and actually pretty beatable if they can learn its weakness.

Or, as the case turns out, if it doesn’t roll higher than an 8 more than four times in the entire battle. That is a lesson in itself. See, the Tendriculous is an example of one of those monsters where the answer to the question of how to threaten to players is to just make it hit goddamn hard, with big attack bonuses (+10 in this case) that can bust through even Abenthy’s AC. You want to use such monsters sparingly, or else it makes your players feel like you are just over leveling everything to always be one step beyond them. They are perfect for fights like this, against impressive boss monsters. But you also have to be willing to let such creatures not be impressive, if the dice dictate it. And in this case, even a +10, three times a round, doesn’t help much when I can’t seem to roll more than 8. The big honkin’ monster becomes a big honkin’ dud, but it doesn’t matter. The few hits it does get off are scary and, more importantly, the players feel like badasses for beating the Heart of the Forest into oblivion. They are a little shocked by how much experience it gives (”Really? For that thing?”) but happy to get the exp nonetheless.

Monster Variety (AKA “oh shit that guy has class levels”)

The Bugbears came up to the crying child, chuckling evilly. “What can we do for you, little girl? You lost?”

“No,” Abenthy answered, pulling free the ring that he had gotten long ago at the LaCroix residence, the one that made anyone wearing it look like Charles LaCroix’s little girl. He swung his blade around before the Bugbears could respond. One’s head went flying off into the grass, the look of smug cleverness still plastered on its features. The others were slow to reach for weapons and paid for their delay with arrows in their throats, shot from Karinna and Tyrion, who rose, silent as ghosts, from the grasses.

“That’s one for both of us,” Tyrion admitted. “But mine was the cleaner shot.”

Even as he smirked, an arrow embedded itself in the ground at his feet and he yelped in surprise. In the distance, a hundred feet or more away, the squat dwarvem fortress was suddenly erupting, like a bee’s hive, with Bugbears. They clambored onto the ramparts, firing arrows and lobbing curses. Another arrow soared through the air, expertly aimed towards Tyrion’s face.

TING! The arrow flew off course as Karinna fired a bolt at it from her handbow.

“That’s two for me,” she said. “Or was that not clean enough?”

“Into the woods!” Abenthy called to the group, raising his shield to block another volley of arrows as he retreated. The group fell back towards a copse of trees, their companions charging forward across the plains to meet up with them: Verrick, the former traitor and spy for the Red Hand; Xaviee, Samuels, and Biggs, shipwrecked companions of the late Twyin; and the lizard warriors, crying out in jubilation at the successful ambush of the Bugbears.

Little did they all know that there were eyes in the woods, watching them approach and preparing an ambush of their own...

To break down the encounter into simple math, there are about 16 Bugbears hear at the old fort. Most are inside, a handful are outside, waiting to move silently in for stealth strikes against anyone attempting to seige the fort. The campaign module stats out two special bugbears: a shaman and a berserker/barbarian who leads the Buggies. I take it a step further in my conversion—because Bugbear swarms aren’t as much of a challenge in fifth as they were in Pathfinder, due to the lack of trip rules, big flanking bonuses, and some other minor details—and decide to make this fight contain a variety of differently classed monsters. This is one of my favorite techniques for adding challenge in a high level, or high magic item, campaign because it does so by adding a tactical challenge rather than simply outleveling player characters.

In this case, I use the wonderful (and newly available) Revenge of the Hordes to add some variety to the Bugbears, throwing in archers (who have a good chance of hitting even Abenthy as long as they don’t move on their turn) and a Hunter to ambush them in the woods, using his harpoon to pull Abenthy to the ground and delay him while his fellow, regular Bugbears, swarm the other players. I do buff the regular Bugbears a small amount, giving them a few basic fighter class levels in order to gain a +1 to their attack and damage rolls.

There is a wonderful Shaman template in the Hordes guide that I use mostly as is, though I tweak it down a bit to better match the healer/support template that the campaign intends. The leader Bugbear I build using the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for adding class levels to a monster, and make a pretty impressive Barbarian Bugbear Chief, with mighty hitpoints, devastating damage attacks, and resistance to most damage. In a one-on-one against any single player character, this guy has the advantage.

All of these adjustments do not ensure a player loss. Instead, they ensure that the players can’t go head-on rushing into battle and expect to win. Thus, this encounter won’t devolve into a roll-battle. The players have to think tactically. And hopefully by doing so, you encourage your players to play the character they have wanted to, in combat.

For instance, you have an AC 24 Paladin who wants to wade into battle like a tank? Let him! Build your monsters so that they are a minor challenge to him and most likely they will still be a huge challenge to the AC 17 wizard hiding behind him. When those monsters rush past him and charge the wizard, this creates a fun challenge for the Paladin: how does he regain control of this scene? How does he taunt and engage these monsters? How does he position himself to block their access to the rest of the party (and bonus points if he yells “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”)

My players are great in these tactical situations: they respond quickly and briliantly to the challenge, dispatching the ambushers as fast as they can and then choosing the woods as their battleground, forcing the majority of the Bugbears to come to them. Tyrion launches a well timed Hypnotic Pattern at the rushing horde that causes three of them to drop immediately from the fight. The remainder Karinna confounds by using her Cloak of Darkness (gained from Mordekai back in Celaenos) to devastating effect. The way I designed this particular cloak:

Cloak of Darkness (damaged) Requires Attunement Can be used once a day, resets with the rising of the sun Action: Casts Darkness as per the spell in a twenty foot radius out from the Cloak. The spell requires concentration and can be ended as a free action. Otherwise, it lasts for one minute. One difference between this and regular darkness is that, while wearing the cloak, the user can see five feet inside this darkness. Can be dispelled with a lvl three or higher light spell.

This is an assasin’s dream cloak! The regular Darkness spell has two uses: either to quickly create a smoke screen so wizards, rogues, and other ranged or injured fighters can escape combat, or to create a hampering wall to slow the approach of a rushing horde of melee fighters or a very powerful monster. This cloak adds the nasty ability of letting the user wander more or less freely around the darkness, getting advantage attacks off on those they encounter. Combine this with a rogue’s sneak attack ability and it turns them into a walking death reaper, making this cloud of darkness a terrifying place to be for Karrina’s enemies.

This gets back to a gaming philosophy I embrace as DM: encourage your players to play the character they want to be. If you have a ranger in the group who wants to be a Ghost Recon sniper, then build scenarios and magic items that let them achieve that. Karinna has always favored a sneaky backstab style of attack, so this was designed to encourage that in combat. It is balanced by the fact that it can only be used in one combat a day, meaning it usually gets saved for the big encounters, and by the fact that it CAN be dispelled by either striking Karinna (again, encouraging that stealthy play) or by using Light level 3—which gives me a way, as GM, to ensure it doesn’t break the game or become the team’s answer to every big fight. As they level and start encountering more enemies with classes, spellcasters will have a way around this tactic, letting the challenge eventually level with them.

For now, though, this is a highly effective tactic against the Bugbears. It turns the forest into a shadowy arena of death and effectively cuts off the leader and shaman from the main troops. They are tough challenges on their own, especially with the shaman boosting the big bad’s health as he bears down on Abenthy, but after two sessions of trading blows, the player team comes out victorious and the Bugbears flee, most of them getting shot down as they run, including the Shaman who takes a critical hit arrow in the throat from Karinna.

Bluffs and Twists

The bridge loomed ahead of them. Perhaps once it had had rails or decorations but if so time had erased them. It had lost none of its grandeur, though. The sheer span it covered, over a hundred feet crossing the great river below. Abenthy was first to cross, with Tyrion and the soldiers close behind, and Karinna and Verrick making up the rear.

A blur of motion, hot breath against her neck, sharp claws digging into her shoulder—these were the sensations Karinna experienced as the Bugbear leader wrapped a meaty arm around her neck. His blood, pouring copiously from his many wounds, splashed across her black clothes, and the smell of him was like regurgitated milk and garlic.

He said nothing, only growled as he lifted a circular pouch in one hand and ripped its top off with his teeth. The pouch began to smoke and sputter with sparks. He held tight to Karinna and began to laugh, but the hoarse chuckle turned into a groan of pain as Karina drove her elbow deep into his abdomen and squirmed free of his grasp. Not wasting any time, she and Verrick began to run. Tyrion and Abenthy stared, neither yet quite comprehending what had just happened.

RUN! Karinna screamed, but the words were only forming in her mind before the explosion tore her from her feet. The world spun. Karina saw flame and heard the cracking of stone as the power the Bugbear had unleashed engulfed the creature, the bridge, and Karina and her companions. A ringing in her ears only grew worse as she lifted her head to look around. The bridge spun into focus, though she still felt sickly dizzy, like she was laying against a stone wall, defying gravity, looking down at an opening in the cliff where the tomb entrance was.

The sonic wave that had followed the explosion had knocked her flat, and thus she had avoided the worst of the flames. Tyrion had not been so lucky. His hair and eyebrows burnt away, the halfing looked oddly doll-like. He was lying on his back, his blackened hands curled into claws, his lips charred and pulled back from gums that were rippling with bright pink burnt skin. Abenthy was running to him, lifitng him, shouting something to Karina that she could not hear, and then tearing back (down?) across the bridge towards the tomb, the three soldiers following. She felt the bridge shake underneath her.

Suddenly she was pulled to her feet. Verick had a hold of her arm. She looked past him and saw the bridge collapsing around them. Now she knew why Abenthy had run, and Verick was doing the same, pulling her along. Why wouldn’t her legs work? They felt like dead stumps, each step she took radiating both numbness and a prickly pain that caused her to grind her teeth together. She was stumbling, not running, and she wasn’t going to make it.

Verrick spun her to face him then and his lips moved, but she couldn’t make out the sound of his voice. He shoved her, hard, and she flew backwards, tripping over herself and falling into Abenthy’s waiting arms as the bridge fell, and Verrick fell with it.

When she could hear again, the first sound she heard was her own sobbing scream. There was no answer from below. Verrick was gone.

Two more quick challenge options I want to discuss. The first targets players directly, through your NPCs. It is “bluffing,” meaning to give your players misinformation every once in a while, generally through NPCs that are lying to them. How many of you (DMs) have had player parties get so strong that they begin to intimidate their opponents into giving them information? The enemy castle layout, the password to the guard station, the time for the secret drop off, the name of the secret leader of the Dragon Cult... by strong arming some weakling goblin or kobold, the players get the information they need (and then maybe they cut off the poor bastard’s head for good measure). And this is all fine, it’s a great way to empower the players, to reward them for not slaughtering all their opponents, to hand them out information in interesting ways, and to move the plot forward. It’s also a great way to occasionally mislead them.

Even the weakest goblin is not always going to want to play fair in defeat—whether to spite their enemies or because they figure they are dead anyway—and their answers might not always be accurate. To use the above examples: the map they draw for them leads them directly into a trap; the password they tell is actually a code word to sound the alarm; the time for the secret drop off is a day late; the person they name as the leader of the Cult is innocent, and an enemy of the goblins that the goblins want killed. In our game, the players storm the fortress and take out the remaining bugbears (though the leader is missing). They are then debating resting, but the last bugbear tells them as he dies that the full hoard is returning in a few hours and will avenge him! It is a lie, but the players believe it and put off sleeping, which allows them to walk unprepared into the trap laid by the leader bugbear.

The other option targets the characters more directly. When you want to challenge a character, you can do so in the form of situational twists. A twist is something that characters must react to immediately, usually via a saving throw or series of saving throws. They aren’t exactly traps, but they function similar, only it is the plot or situation that triggers them, not stepping on a pressure plate or opening a treasure chest. The nice thing about saving throws is that, no matter how epic the situation, they can resolve it in a roll or two. And the DM can build them to be as challenging as they desire or need for the moment. For instance, for a high level party, you could feasibly set up a battle on a ruined land where the ground is splitting open and swallowing up the battling armies. To keep their feet, players have to make DC 14 STR checks, falling prone if not. Then the ground opens up and the players have to leap clear (disadvantage for anyone who is prone) Dex Save DC 18. Anyone who fails, falls in a crevice and takes 9d6 damage. The remaining players can try to navigate a path through the forming chasms as they open in front of them, which is a Wis DC 20 save, failure meaning they have to repeat the STR and DEX saves from before. A couple of rounds of this, and then you see which players have fallen in a chasm and which haven’t. Now the players have to figure out how to get free...

That’s an off-the-cuff example, but it illustrates the point. An epic moment created with just a few rolls and also you created an unusual challenge for the players that avoids the standard attack vs. AC that can get old session after session. It keeps players thinking about their characters in more holistic terms, not just as combat machines.

In our game, the twist is that the boss bugbear (who is a berserker, keep in mind) has a potion the shaman made that is basically a hand grenade. He intends to suicide bomb the last person on the bridge, hopefully taking them all out. I make this a deadly situation to raise the tension on the scene and provide a proper climax to such a big fight, so I have Karinna make a grapple save (failure would be instant fail of the bomb’s blast damage), then the bomb goes off, forcing Dex saves to avoid fire damage. Then the bridge starts to collapse, forcing Dex saves to avoid falling into the chasm. And failure of this roll? With my players so close to finally entering the tomb, I don’t feel like death is an appropriate penalty for failing the save. Oh, it is definitely a possibility: had Karinna not tried to break free, the blast might have killed her straight out. Had Abenthy not run forward to grab Tyrion, his unconscious body would have plumeted to the depths below with little for him to do but drown in the river. But these situations called for player decision. This roll is simply a roll: luck. I don’t want to cheaply end their adventure like that. And this is one of the many uses of retainers.

I’ll talk more about this next post but one of the reasons I came up with a system to make retainers act like items the party can use is that I feel it gives them a clearer role in the game and thus the story. Players identify more with active characters and there is few things as active as having an NPC they can use to help them win combats. In addition, our remaining NPCs have been tied to character stories. Xaviee, Samuels, and Biggs are all former allies of the deceased Tywin. And Verrick started as an enemy way back in session 6, then became an ally and eventual love interest for Karinna. That makes these characters amazing sacrifices for scenes like this, and I set them up as the failure options for the bridge breaking roll. Losing them has both a story impact and a game impact, as they lose their help in the upcoming tombs. But it still keeps the main story going and doesn’t end the game on a sour note, but rather a powerfully tragic one.

Next session’s post will cover the first part of the Tomb of Haggemoth and will take us through the converted final dungeon step by step. I will also go over how I like to run retainers. Verrick may be lost, but the three soldiers are still standing with this team, and I came up with a new system for 5E to represent them.

#dnd 5e #Tomb of Haggemoth #playthrough #epic #Dungeons and Dragons #Journey Log #Wizards of the Coast #fantasy #RPG

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