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Campaign Journal... sort of

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Malek Deneith:
4) Welcome to "Yourself" version 2.0

Ahem... Ding!

GRATZ!
Some might have heard about it, some did not - just encounter ago my party was awarded bonus xp as a Christmas present, and gained a level in the process. They were also given a onetime option of tuning up their characters - i.e. correct the mistakes they might have made during the character creation, due to being less knowledgeable about the system then they are. So let's have a quick glance at how did they evolve:

Amber - the party Rogue took a quite obvious choice of feat, namely Backstabber which increases her sneak attack die. She also did take tumble as her second level utility power, which might come in handy if she ever has to move out of a tight spot. There have been some minor tunings to the character - one at-will got swapped, and after some talk with me she took Blinding Barrage as a replacement for her daily (there were still some better choices, but in the end area attack that blinds targets for a round isn't bad, and it's certainly better than a daily that doesn't work with her primary weapon)

Karras - the most important changes done by Xander were in his at-will power department: since one of them never ever got used anyway, and second one that gave his allies free movement was pretty much ignored all the time new ones got picked - now Karras can either boost his healing capacity and allow allies attack enemies that he hit and try to shift - time will tell if his "allies" will care to use that more than they did free shifts. As for his new picks Karras will e employing some Warforged Tactics (a +1 bonus against an enemy that is adjacent to an ally is essentially light version of combat advantage - and it stacks with proper CA should that ever come up) and his utility - "Rub some dirt in it" not only has a fitting name for the way he acts, but also gives temporary hp to bloodied allies: not as good as proper healing, but not a thing to ignore.

Racimir - the paladin got the most of rebuilding - at cost of his charisma he increased his strength and wisdom considerably. With his newfound strength and weapon expertise feat his attack bonus is up to respectable +9 - will this mean death of sir_whifs_a_lot and birth of sir_whacks_a_lot remains to be seen. Additionally Racimir lost his healing hands (in favor of a feat helping him fight three or more enemies at once) along with his actual lay on hands ability. In return he gained Ardent Vow, which will bring lot more hurt to his chosen enemies. Aside from that changes include few tweaks to at-wills (mostly the removal of ones that based of charisma) and learning the creation of sacred circle that will boost his allies defensive ability.

Ragenthank - pretty straightforward here. Nothing got changed, feat was weapon expertise to increase the accuracy, and utility power was Bless for further accuracy boost - for entire party.

Wilfire - again no major changes here. Lethal Hunter is Ranger's counterpart to Backstabber, rising the damage die on Hunter's Quarry, while Yield Ground allows him to put some distance between him and an enemy that just hit him in melee. I also found one reason to let him live - with his twin strike, he's the closest thing to controller this party has when it comes to minion mop-up.

5) Did you know...
...that one of more "raged" on topics when 4e came out was the fact that WotC "dared" to give Dragonborn, a reptilian race, mammaries (a.k.a. boobs) when depicting female of the species? That and the fact that dwarf chicks also look "nice" now.

Now think about it - an average D&D player gets free fanservice and complains about it? I just want to know who the hell are they and what they did with real geeks.

6) Back to Winterhaven - insert witty title here... oh wait, I just did.

When we last seen our "heroes" were picking up loot and going back on the road to the city. Now interesting triviahere: If I were to go exactly as the script suggests the city guards were supposed to assume that players are merchants and guide them to the inn. "Hey, I see five people covered in kobold blood, carrying various weaponry and *not* carrying any merchandise - they must be merchants"... Uh, how about no? Players got directions to the inn anyway, with information they can stay in the city as long as they want provided they can pay for the inn and don't cause trouble. The group chatted a bit with the guards wanting to see if there is someone with knowledge of surroundings - they got told about Eilian; a farmer and Valthrun the Prescient; local sage - and informed the guards about the kobold ambush (guards were curiously not surprised and one slinked away to pass the information somewhere higher rank). The party went to the inn, and while rest of the team rested Leif quickly departed to the town, looking for someone to identify the pots he took from body of kobold slinger. Not finding any wizard or alchemist in town he goes to the third best option - the sage mentioned before - from whom he learns these pots are actually combustible ammunition for sling. Valthrun also was able to tell him the path to the keep they were looking for, and mentioned remembering reading about it somewhere. Apparently Keep on Shadowfell was erected as some sort of guarding outpost, though from what it was keeping watch the old sage couldn't remember offhand - he'd need some time to check his books.

In the meantime rest of the party was approached by a man that introduced himself as Ernest Padraig... Lord Padraig even, as he was the ruler of the city (meeting such a person in the inn might seem cliche, but it looked better than "lord summons you oh heroes", especially when said lord rules what is more of a glorified village than a city proper) - apparently city of Winterhaven did have a "kobold problem" and since the city guard was a bit on the small side, Lord Padraig was interested in hireing the adventurers to clear out their nest for a price of 100 gold. At this point problems started, as the party seemed to deem the price below their expectations (despite the fact that at this point they're still pretty much "nobodies") and wasn't too subtle in their efforts to squeeze more cash. I could have probably made Padraig get annoyed with them and go out, but since this sidequest held a magic item at the end, and I was quite curious how the team would fare against much infamous Irontooth encounter I coughed up some (25) more coins of reward and managed to have the party agree to help out.

At this point Leif came back to the inn, overhearing some farmer (Eilian mentioned before, that got pretty much forgotten by this point) talking about dragons on the way to his comrades. He passed that information to the party, and when someone remembered that kobolds worship dragons Racimir was delegated to check out what all this is about. From Eilian he heard a story about how there was a site nearby containing remains of a dragon, and how some friend of his went there and never came back. Considering that the farmer wasn't really sober by that point, his story was deemed delusional and the party went to sleep planning to take out the kobolds on the following day.

That's it for now, more to come whenever....

Malek Deneith:
Well hell it was a long time since I posted here last time. To be honest I had this thing at least 1/3 done, but I lacked will to finish it. Now I finally did so here it goes.

Interlude - news from the front

The party just finished their most challenging fight since the one with Irontooth (see much below). This time around they managed to get on top without outside help (both due to much improved teamwork compared to early times and the fact there were several upgrades to the character builds), though at the same time they scored their first death - Ragenthank, the Seeker of Battle got knocked down and died on the field of the battle when others were busy fighting for their lifes. Nothing a good rise dead won't fix, but still somehting to take note of.

7) Role that matters, part 2: Strikers

Oh, they're gonna have to glue you back together ... in Hell!
Strikers... strikers are simple. Pick a target. Find a way to get to him. And kill him, kill him, kill him dead! Not much diversity here, but let's be honest - most of us players are simple creatures, and idea of doing tons of damage appeals to us. Which is a bit of a problem, because it can potentially lead to parties with too many strikers. And since strikers are usually glass cannons, this means any leaders will have much harder time keeping everyone else alive. As for "role feature" go, striker's don't have as unified mechanics as leaders do, but they all have some way of ensuring high damage. We'll cover that on cease-by-cease basis.

Ranger (Power source: Martial, Book: PHB) - Ranger is to other stikers, what Cleric is to leaders - i.e. benchmark. They are widely regarded as top tier strikers, and come in three flavors: Twin-Blade Ranger, wielding paired weapons (heloo Drizzt wannabies); Archer striker, you'r average Legolas rip-off (those that watched LotR movies will recognize Split the Tree daily :P); and Beast masters, running around with a pet. Their damage mechanics is called Hunter's Quarry and works fairly straightforward - the ranger designates enemy closest to him (at the moment of using the power anyway) as their quarry, and until it dies, or he choses another quarry, he can deal extra damage to the target once per turn. It's worth to note that Rangers were responsible for first major errata in 4e. Their power called Blade Cascade could originally go as long as you kept hitting - which meant that with proper setup one could kill Orcus in one turn with that attack. This got quite quickly nerfed, by including a hardcap on number of attacks, but the memory of Orcus-killer remains.

Rogue (Power source: Martial, Book: PHB) - Now for our next striker we have... hey where did he g-
*stab*
-hurk... Ah, there he is - Rogue. While this class isn't the skill-monkey you might remember him from 3.Xe, he still has quite a number of skills, and as all rogue's should he knows how to hide, open locks, disarm traps, pick your pockets, and Sne-
*stab*
-ak Attack... stop it damn it. Their Sneak-Attack packs a bit more punch than other damage mechanisms, but such power comes at a price - they can use it only when they have combat advantage against the target (which usually means either flanking or attacking from hiding). They are also a bit limited with weaponry - most of their powers work only with light bladed weaponry (which includes shuriken, which are more deadly in their hands) and light ranged weaponry like hand crossbows. There are exceptions though - at least one build is more "thugish" and employs such weapons as club and maces (and makes good use from strength), and there are a few feats to help with more exotic setups. Also due to need for flanking they boast quite good mob-
*stab*
-ility damn it.

Warlock (Power source: Arcane, Book: PHB) - Warlock, eh... well Warlock is the bottom feeder of strikers, mostly due to beeing regarded as too controllerish (long story short: strikers do single targets, controllers excell at taking out large mobs of weak targets). There, I said it. That beeing said though, Warlocks are by no means unplayable, and they are quite flavorfull and look potentially fun. Their damage mechanism is Warlock's Curse, which works nearly identical to Hunter's Quarry with exception to the fact that Warlocks can curse multiple enemies at once. They also gain benefits for enemies under their curse dying, ranging from short-ranged teleportations to a small bit of temporary hit points, depending on what powers they made pact with (for the record currently the pact can be made with demons, fey, beeings from far realm, dark powers from underdark or vestiges). They also get an invective to move around in form of small defense boost when moving more than 3 squares a turn.

Note: This update was half-done for a loooong time, since then some stuff changed a bit. I'm not willing to go through all of this, but at least in Warlock's cease it's worth to mention that he had some upgrades, so he might have moved up in striker ranking... a bit.

Avenger (Power source: Divine, Book: PHB2) - Ahhh Avenger, Avenger. I really like this class you know? How to describe it - if Paladins are their god's warriors, then Avenger is god's assassin. Only unlike a regular assassin he doesn't bother stabbing in the back but will come from the front and cut you down with a huge sword or axe. So yeah, that's what Avengers do - they hunt down enemies of their diety of choice. Mechanics wise they have two features that help them be "strikerish". One is Oath of Enemity that allows them pick an enemy and roll every to-hit roll against that enemy twice as long as no other enemy is adjacent to them (needles to say this helps their accuracy much) and a Censure chosen from one of three types - Pursuit ("you run and I'll kill you faster"), Retribution ("your friends try to attack me and I'll kill you faster") and Unity ("My friends are near so I kill you faster") - these are a bit hard to set up but I like the flavor of them.

Barbarian (Power source: Primal, Book: PHB2) - Barbarians are simple and to the point. They. Kill. Stuff. Dead. They got second highest hitpoints number of all classess, all their powers deal more damage (i.e. their striker feature is built-in) and their daily powers ale all "Rages" that deal damage and set them up some sort of bonus for rest of the encounter (and if you need to use more than one daily without losing benefits of the first one there is rage strike class feature that lets you turn a daily power in for a good amount of smackdown). They also come in four variations - Rageblood who are most classic type of barbarian, and gain temporery hit points for killing stuff, Thaneborn that are charismatic type of barbarian that leads the tribe (think late Conan), Thunderborn which are... err I guess a bit nature flavored didn't really read into them, and Whirling that merrily run around with two weapons. Really not much more that can be said about barbarians - they are straightforward, and they can be fun :)

Sorcerer (Power source: Arcane, Book: PHB2) - Um. I admit I have a hard time to come with somethign witty for Sorcerers. Let's settle for a quick summary instead: Sorcerers are magic users that get their powers from within, rather than from long study. Sources of this power vary from Dragon to Wild, from Storm to Cosmic (these are class feature choices - I won't go into detail, but each of these gives you a resistance of some sort, a way of boosting spell damage and some minor stuff). Essentially they represent "blasty" spellcaster archetype, and have a bit more AoE attacks than usual striker.

Monk (Power source: Psionic, Book: PHB3) - Monks are the newest addition to strikers. They run around very, very lightly armored but for that they get awesome amount of mobilty (more than other classes) anda good deal of utility. Their powers are a bit unique that both at-will and encounter powers are... two powers in reality. Each of these gives you both "standard action" use (some sort of attack) and "move action" use (some sort of mobility) that can be combined to interesting effect. I played one of these very shortly and I must say it was great fun running around and annoying the hell out of GM :D

8) New kids on the block, or what new leader were added since when I talked about them

Ardent (Power source: Psionic, Book: PHB3) - This one I haven't had time or will to throughly read. They're some sort of "psionic warlord", their theme being manipulating emotions of those around them to make them fight better. Can't say much except for that. What's worth noting here though is a slight difference in all Psionic classes except for monk. Namely psionic classes do not have encounter powers! Instead they get more at-will powers and they get a small number of power points that allows them to empower their at-wills instead. Interesting mechanics, but I lack expereince to say how it works in real play.

Runepriest (Power source: Divine, Book: PHB3) - Now that's another class I like. At a glance they look like a rip of strenth cleric. They're a divine leader who goes into melee. The thing that makes them interesting is their fluff that centers around the usage of runes of divine origin (which are mostly forgotten even by gods themselves). So yeah, Rune Magic. Rune Magic is cool. Mechanics wise most of their powers have ability to put them in "rune state" in which they give out various bonuses to allies. In echange their powers are a little bit less offensive than that of strength cleric.

9) ...less classes moar journal naow!

So when we last left our "heroes" they were going out to find the kobold lair and get rid of the little pests. Unfortunately for them "pests" found them first, and as a result they got in a second kobold ambush, this time "proper" one as it used actual am bush rules unlike the first one. It also had a bit more interesting mix of monsters as this time they faced three dragonshields, one skirmisher (a kobold with a spear and sneak attack) and a wyrmpriest - leader monster with nasty ranged attack (getting hit by 1d10+3 damage is NOT a nice thing for level 1 character). The fight itself was pretty standard (i.e. party struggled but somehow came on top. They've heard kobolds referring to someone or something called Irontooth, and in the end they caught the wyrmpriest as hostage and tried to interrogate him. Now I tried to use this as an opportunity to tech players how skill challenges work. These are a bit hard to explain, but in a nutshell party members take turns in initiative order and try using different skills to reach a number of sucesses amongs them. If they do, they achieve the goal, if they don't they fail. Most chellenges have a set of skills that are obviously work in advantage of players (for example when interrogating you could try Diplomacy, try to Intimidate the prisoner or try to Bluff him into talking about somethign he doesn't want to - of course better description of usage can bring bonuses to roll), but players might try other skills at GM's discretion, even if at higher DC (for example I'd alow here Athletics for putting some hurt on the prisoner to make him talko, or perhaps Hela to tend his wounds and make him more cooperative - just some ideas).

In this particular example players didn't bother using anything but intimidate only (and supporting other people's checks - something I allowed both this and second skill challenge that came due to rules misread) and bitching that this is boring. The result was one dead goblin (heart attack) and one slightly ticked off GM ^^" They've also found some loot, including a dragon-shaped figurine, sadly engraved with mark of orcus at the bottom. For some reason all players sans one wanted to destroy it right here and there. In the end that one person prevented the destruction and aside from short mention later - in which they checked out it's not magical - it still lies at bottom of loot-bag forgotte. If you wonder what the purpose of the figurine is look into the spoiler. If you're one of the player's - don't dare to.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)What, did you really expect me to post spoilers of any kind when I know no less than three players view this? Hah! Maby the figurine has a purpose. Maby it's just a vendor-trash trinket. Nooo telling.
So the party moved on, finally getting to outskirts of kobold lair (lair iteslf was inside a cave behind waterfall), which were patrolled by a lot of minions, few dragonshields, a slink (another rogue-ly kobold, this one can be only aimed at if he's the nearest target) and a slinger. There was also some circle of glowing stones - as the party learned later it provided +1 to defenses to creatures inside it. Now this is where it gets interesting, because the adventure insists that most of the kobolds clump inside the circle in a defensive position waithing for suckers adventureres to come. In a rare moment of good rolls Leif and Tello used this against me and pretty much wiped all the minions with a paired AoE attack. Sadly this was pretty much the hight of the battle, as after that they had trouble with disposing of what was left, though finally did it earning a "milestone" (milestones happen roughly every other encounter and give players 1 action point and 1 magic item daily power use - they're there to encourage going through multiple fights a day and discourage what was called "5 minute workday" in 3.Xe, or goign nova in one fight and then returning for a rest). After a short rest party crossed the waterfall and entered the kobold cave, and was immidietly faced with more minions and a trio of skirmishers. The battle started somwheat poorly with Leif's encounter power missing, and party getting a bit mobbed, but they held ther somehow... until fourth turn started and Irontooth came.

Now Irontooth was foreshadowed and requires a proper mention. Irontooth is fucking beast. He comes with over a hundred hp with decent defenses (players had around 25-30 at this point) has a +8 to hit 1d8+4 attack, can attack up to two adjacent enemies, and if you bring him below half hp he goes into a rage and starts dealing +1d10 damage and heals 5 hp per turn until he goes back over half hp. And he didn't come alone, oh no. Along with him from the other side of the cave emerged a wyrmpriest and pair of denwarders (pretty much dragonshields with some new tricks). Irontooth was so feared he got nerfed in the release of adventure I'm using. And even then he was more than a challenge for a well-cooperative party. With my teams poor teamwork, and the fact they've still had a some enemies leftover from previous battle things started to go downhill fast.

To be honest, facing death incarnate did help them improve their teamplay a bit which, along with some crappy rolls on my part, allowed them survive longer than I thought, but at some point inevitable thing happened and they came to the point where they couldn't carry on much longer. When Irontooth knocked out Karras, and then Racimir got dropped by denwardens, I did ask the players a honest question - do they want me to pull a deus ex machina and drop them some help, or do they want to make a last stand and die. They've agreed for help and cavalry came in form of Ragenthank (who after the battle replaced Leif, as Leif's player was mysteriously gone by this point) and a guest starr, drow barbarian Dalarion. They, along with Racimir who lucked out on death saving throw and rolled natural 20 (which allows you to use a healing surge) quickly killed Irontooth and helped mop-up the reminders of kobolds. The day was saved.

The aftermatch included finding out another orcus sign tatooed on Irontooth's head, finding a message to the goblin from someone called Kalarel (apparently an Orcus worshipper) and party's first treasure - magical warhammer that ended up in posession of Racimir. Also, after they returned to the city Leif convinently went AWOL without proper explanation, while Rahimat met old acquaintance of hers - Amber, who promptly replaced her in the party, bringing us to current team rooster.

Well that's it for now, more to come whenever...

thelaptop:
Oooooo... lots of text to help move a slow day!

* thelaptop munches on the text

Madtrixr:
See, this is what I'm talking about.

* Madtrixr loves the bumbling antics of the party.
THey are making some errors I would, and some I wouldn't, then again, I'm not playing, so, eh.

Keep it up M. Obviously, We're I am waiting for a 4e game to be started here, but no one wants to step up...Hmm...

* Madtrixr thinks for a bit...

Tavana:
If there's a prebuilt campaign anyone is interested in, I'd DM. On the other hand, I'd also like to play. But the DM part seems to be the more necessary bit.

EDIT: Now that there's a 4e campaign on the Chaosforge forums, don't take that to mean we don't want you to update this thread! =P

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