Something Borrowed, Something Black and Blue

**This post contains spoilers to the Scales of War Adventure Path. You have been warned.**

So I mentioned already that the last adventure of my epic tier campaign needed some work (since I am using the published Scales of War Adventure Path) and I specifically talked about the first challenge the party faced. This week's session started with the party entering the maw of a black dragon statue to confront the black dragon brood mother of Tiamat and hopefully find another gem eye that can shut down the wards blocking their path to the Dragon Queen herself. This week turned out pretty special because it featured a lot of material that I grabbed from other bloggers who had come up with great ideas.

As they entered the dragon's mouth, they saw a whirling dome of shadow in the center of a portal chamber rimmed with stone archways containing empty and inactive portals. As the first members of the party hear a roar coming from the shadows, they lunge into the blackness and see that the whirling darkness is essentially a veil that separates the interior from the exterior of the dome (i.e. no line of sight) and inside is a tremendous undead dragon who laughs at their boldness. So half the party has lunged into melee range with the undead dragon and the other half of the party is outside the dome when the dragon clicks his finger bones together. With a snap of magical energy, portals begin to open displaying a fiendish planescape of madness and horror....THE FAR REALM! So the party is divided and has to face two foes: an undead horror and the insanity inducing effects of exposure to the Far Realm.

Simply put, I got excited about the opportunity to use a monster made by someone else I found recently. The Id DM posted an epic tier threat this past month that really inspired me for this encounter. I lifted his monster (while leveling it up and tweaking its aura to make it work with the portals), but I kept the rest of his design whole. One major change I integrated was my second borrowed thing this week. CSRoss from the DMGp42 blog did a study of monster damage this past week and I decided to try this monster with his damage bonuses. HECK YES. Getting a critical that did over 120 damage felt so nice and when I announced the damage to the party and they all repeated it back to me in that scared and disbelieving voice.....classic. The threat was real and actually scary and to complicate things even more I borrowed another element. I just discovered Beholder Pie's blog and they had a post this week about templates to use with groups of monsters to help simulate the interplay of PC synergy and interrupts that allow for more benefits and bonuses. I used the Dragon's Den template in this encounter and trading in a token to turn my next hit into a critical was delicious. Really effective monster design, with good math and a synergy that brought it all together made for an incredibly effective and memorable session this week.

We started the session with a wrap up from the last time and jumped straight to initiative (since I like to end on a cliffhanger). Half the party was in an aura that blocked line of sight and the other half was outside reeling with horror from the effects of the opening portals to a realm of madness. The ranged section of the party, thought they try and disable one of the portals to the Far Realm. As the rogue got closer, she was immediately attacked by the madness effect, but toughed it out. She then failed her Thievery check to try and mar the runes and deactivate the portal which caused it to explode with the distorting energies of eldritch horror. For this I borrowed something else! The Book of Vile Darkness, while arguably not very vile, had a very cool hazard effect for a Far Realm Anomaly including a random table for flesh warping effects of exposure to the Far Realm. The explosion hit the rogue, who's legs became worthless rendering her slowed. Period. It also hit the party wizard whose legs warped and meshed together into a snake tail destroying her fancy pair of magic boots and reducing her speed by 3. No save, no disease track, these effects were just on there. That really grabbed their attention.

At this point the melee fighters had realized that things were getting bad and started hammering away at a black orb in the eye socket of the dracolich, which they targeted at a -2 to attack (since it's more of a called shot and I thought a penalty was called for). They hit it twice dealing sufficient damage to destroy the orb and dropping the veil of shadows. When your actions have direct impact on the way the encounter works, it is a very rewarding feeling as a player. So now the whole party could see the opening portals to madness and the ranged attackers could engage the dragon more easily. The dragon teleported to the other side of the map to harass the ranged combatants and it was at this point that the dwarven barbarian gave me a look that made me smile because he realized what I had just noticed at the same time. The barbarian moved into position and with a mighty howl, charged the barely injured dracolich, pushing it 7 squares and through the portal into the madness of the Far Realm.

The effects of the flesh warping planescape immediately started to bend and shape the dracolich, taking him over and causing him obviously excruciating pain. They continued to fire magical attacks at the dragon, who was taking a tremendous amount of ongoing damage as his bones creaked and bent and every attack passing through the portal was warped and bent further. I realized that if they could shut the portal down, he'd be stuck on the other side with no way back. They kept trying to immobilize him and slow him down so he couldn't get back through, but eventually he was able to muscle his way back in and as I described him clawing his way back to reality, I remembered the attacks being warped as they passed through the gate and decided to go for broke. As the dracolich's skeletal form passed through the gateway, its undead bones were turned to free-flowing flesh that rippled with obscene gesticulation and oozed with foul pus the color of madness. This creature was no longer a powerful undead villain, but a mound of hideous, cancerous tissue trying to heap vengeance on those who had brought it to this mournful fate. The paladin slid the creature halfway through the portal and shortly thereafter the portal closed with the dragon half in and as the portal snapped shut the fleshy dragon's head, if you could call it that, collapsed to the ground in a pile of bleeding flesh. Holy crap. What an encounter.

The final chamber where the black dragon brood mother, Auth'lothtor, actually resides required more customization as well. Since I fiddled with the green dragon and tried using a hazard to simulate a creature that could not be physically harmed, I did a similar work up on the black dragon as well. This room's theme was LOCKDOWN and DISSOLVE. Auth'lothtor was fussing over her eggs in a mire of acidic muck in a deep pit while feeding off of vines that were visibly growing. Both the dragon and the vines had many means of locking down the party by holding them in position. Given the range of a dragonbreath attack, this could be potentially very deadly. This is complicated by the mud of the pit being a highly concentrated, but slowly effective acid. The first time one of the characters is exposed to the acidic mud, I'm going to ask all of them to make tic marks on their character sheet equal to 1/4 their Constitution score. Creatures that enter or start their turn in the pit erase a tic mark. Characters with no tic marks at the start of their turn begin to dissolve and take ongoing acid damage equal to their healing surge value (save ends). A creature that drops to 0 hp due to this effect melts to a paste.

The foil to the encounter is removing the gem from within the muck and mire. Not only do the party need the gem to lower the ward, but it is also acting as the plug that keeps the acidic mire from draining. Once the gem is located and removed, the muck begins to drain with a great sucking sound (save ends). After the first failed saving throw, the concentrated acid damage effect will no longer hurt creatures in the pit. After the second failed saving throw, the dragon will no longer be able to splash the acidic mud and will lose access to that attack. The dragon is far too large to pull herself out of the pit so the main point of the encounter is more about mobility and smash and grab tactics as opposed to "find all monsters - kill all monsters."

It was honestly some what disappointing for me to see how quickly they swooped through this room and gathered the gem. Using some careful strategy and a creative use of their powers, they were able to handily locate and grab the black gem eye and beat a hasty retreat. Minimal damage was taken and they used just a few uses of their daily teleportation powers. After RAPIDLY claiming the black gem eye, the party zipped back to the center room with its pulsating magma geyser and it was here they realized how dire their problem was since they knew now that the whole volcanic compound Tiamat's fortress is based in was ready to explode in about 10 hours. The timer was started, but they were confused as to what Tiamat could hope to gain by destroying her lair at this point.

They chose the blue dragon maw next and this chamber I ran mostly as written. The beholder in the observation room works (with modified damage and truly scary damage) and the blue dragon I turned into a hazard instead of a creature. The Beholder room as an observatory lent itself well to show the Astral positioning of Tiamat's domain and just how dangerous her final desperate gambit was, but I've already talked about that before. Using their resources well, they were able to knock the beholder prone into the pit multiple times (doing over 150 falling damage to it) and they negotiated the blue dragon brood mother handily. I thought about posting that hazard here too, but after such an epic series of encounters I'd done enough.

This week proved incredibly memorable and truly epic! Using the full benefits of the lessons of the internet and borrowing A LOT of great ideas from some really cool designers and gamers, my session was really fun this past week. And when all the players are giving each other high fives after the session ends (even the DM!), you can't help but feel like a success. So thank you, TheIdDm, CStevenRoss and Beholder Pie for helping to get my synergy going and helping make my session this week a real success.

Now with two more gem eyes to recover the final fight and the end of an age is almost upon us! Only the Red and White Brood Mothers still remain and the Mother of All Dragons shall know her mortality!

Knights of the Tarnished Dagger: Part 1

So a long while back, I read an article by Quinn Murphy over at the At-Will blog and it got my gears churning a bit in terms of game design. The article in question is entitled Horizon: The Darkness Within, which you should read because it is pretty cool. The general premise is that a character in the party is being corrupted by some dark being who is granting them abilities (very warlock like), but unlike the warlock these impressive power come with a very specific cost to the character in question. I remember reading this particular article and really enjoying the mechanical, story-infused ideas that just started brewing as I saw the possibilities for what I could do with such an interesting concept. Then I started reading the Dresden Files series of novels.

If you've never read the Dresden books you should, if only for their depiction of the Faerie Courts alone. The TV show is available for  streaming on Netflix, but is not nearly as good. I digress.

In the novels, there is a particular organization of characters made up of a collection of fallen angels who are bound to thirty ancient coins (the pieces of silver given to Judas to betray Jesus in the Bible). These demons attach themselves to a host when they come in to contact with the coin and eventually convince them to give the demon control through a series of sweet promises. Many mortals were taken over by these particular demons who offer incredible power in exchange for greater influence. They way it played out in the novels was AWESOME and just meshed really well with the idea that I was developing and that is when I decided to create my own set of NPCs and mechanics behind an organization of warped, evil creatures who would offer power (both through flavor and mechanics) to try and gain greater influence over a player character. That was when the Knights of the Tarnished Dagger were born; creatures who were once so beautiful and honorable, but who had fallen from grace and become a real threat to the known worlds.

I wanted to create a document with options for DMs to offer to their players in the hopes of creating dynamic choices for their players and this is essentially where I ended up. I've attached a pdf which explains the background of the organization and the mechanics for how a character makes movements further towards or away from the darkness along with the first of the Knights and a set of powers associated with the Knight that he or she could grant to the character as they fall further under his or her control.  In the coming weeks I am going to release the individual members of the organization a few at a time with a background of the character and the special powers and abilities they have to offer their host as well as a template for applying to an NPC monster or character that a DM could potentially introduce into their game to show how the Knights are at work or to use as a possible adventure seed for a villain in their own campaign.

I look forward to feedback on the idea. Give it a look over and please, feel free to steal ideas from this to use in your campaign. If you have a different take on a particular part of the story, tear my idea apart and run it your way. Part of the fun of planning your own campaign and being the captain of your own story is being able to take creative control and personalize things so they fit the world the way you see it and really owning it for your players. Besides, all good ideas are "borrowed" and tweaked from other great minds. :)

Click here for the compiled pdf that introduces the story of the Knights, explains the mechanic, and also includes the first of the Knights: Anduren, the Black Blade, perfect for tempting a roguish character with foul powers over the darkness. **Caution, meddling with foul powers of darkness may invoke Magic Missiles™**

Can a Green Dragon Be A Hazard?

**This post contains spoilers to the Scales of War Adventure Path. You have been warned.**






Last week, I talked about some of the preliminary modifications I am making to the last adventure of the Scales of War, The Last Breath of Tiamat. One of my major complaints with the adventure is that it essentially comes down to a grind of fighting a guardian room (which is actually kind of interesting) followed by a combat encounter with a solo dragon of each of the chromatic domains of Tiamat. Each of these solo dragons is essentially the same with only terrain effects and damage keywords to differentiate them. That just isn't very interesting to me. So my thought was to change the dragons, who were originally solo monsters, into hazards. So they have no hit point totals and cannot be affected by status effects, but are still a dramatic and dynamic threat to the party. Then the question becomes, how do the party uncover the means to defeat the dragons and disrupt the draconic ward keeping them from confronting Tiamat? I decided that instead of the ward being powered by the chromatic brood mother dragons themselves it would be powered by an enormous gem carved in the shape of an eye that was conspicuously missing from the statues that marked the entry to the five separate side chambers.

There are five different directions that the party could choose from in their attempt to bring the ward down and open the path to Tiamat and the party decided to go after the green dragon first, since they were reflecting back on which dragon exarch they faced over the course of the Adventure Path (they got it wrong too, Chillreaver the White came first). So in the first chamber, they faced a group of dragonborn defenders in a room full of coins and a piston-like hazard in the center of the room. They tore the defenders apart, which was quite satisfying since I decided that one of the defenders should be the former black exarch of Tiamat who they already defeated once. Having been raised by Tiamat, he was really annoying to the party and defeating him was very sweet. The hazard in the center of the room didn't make any difference in the combat (I should have made it cover the entire room so it would have a greater effect on the combat and created a lot more dynamic movement) and the party was really just grinding down some hit points from the creatures.

After that came the first of the draconic brood mothers, a great green dragon of poison. As they entered the room, they saw the chamber open up from a well chiseled section of structured tunnels to a more cave-like interior filled with mist. The haze clung to a pool of water that extended out in front of them with all kinds of fetid swamp life floating including a large quantity of torn up trees that all collected towards the central section of the pool. On this haphazardly created nest of torn-up wood was seated an enormous and grotesquely swollen green dragon. The thing I gave the most detail was the oozing pustules that covered the underside of the dragon. There are twenty evenly distributed all about the belly scales of the dragon and some kind of foul greenish fluid oozes out all across the mid section of the dragon. There are also two pale dragonborn warriors (vampire lords) seated on the wings of the dragon conversing with her. So as the party walks in, they can see this monstrous creature resting in the center of the pool and prepare to assault the dragon like we do every time it comes up. What they don't know is that instead of the usual solo fight with a dragon, this dragon is different. This dragon is a hazard.

This dragon (who I named Uxin'lothtor) is protected by the same wards that energize the defenses of Tiamat and that the only way to defeat the dragon is to remove the gem eye which is seated in one of the egg sacs drooping from the dragon's stomach. Since the creature has no hit points, every attack they make against the dragon has no effect against its defeat. What I set up instead, was that every time the party made a successful attack against the dragon, I rolled a d4 and that numbered attack was removed as an option until the end of the dragon's next turn. When multiple attacks were made against Uxin'Lothtor and the number is rolled more than once, then nothing happens the second time. So the dragon could feasibly lose all of it's options for it's turn or potentially just one. There is a little bit of swing there and it worked really well in terms of their being a realistic impact on the way the battle played. This hazard also took advantage of the fetid swamp water that the dragon nests upon. A creature knocked prone in the swampy water had to succeed at a difficult endurance check or accidentally swallowed some of the poisonous swill. This means they take ongoing 30 poison damage (save ends and they cannot make a save against until they are no longer in the water).

So the party can't actually kill the dragon the usual way. I figured something much more difficult and really special than a regular combat encounter was worthwhile at this point in the game. In order to defeat the dragon, they needed to locate the gem carved like an egg midst the actual eggs in the disgusting sacs all over the green dragon. Mechanically, the way I wanted to represent this was that the party could try and attack the eggs. Each one when destroyed caused the dragon pain, thus suggesting that they should pursue this route of attack as the means to weaken and eventually destroy the dragon.

There were 20 egg sacs attached to Uxin'lothtor. If a party members wanted to attack (or search) one of the egg sacs I rolled a d20+x (x=number of times the eggs have been attacked thus far). If the result was 25 or higher, the egg targeted was actually the gem eye. (Attacking an egg uses same defenses as Uxin'lothtor with a +2 bonus). Burst attacks gained a +1 to this roll for each square of the burst that covers the dragon. This was something I didn't think of ahead of time and had to improvise quickly to deal with once the wizard figured out about the eggs. Once the last of the eggs was destroyed, Uxin'lothtor began to thrash about (save ends). Each turn she thrashes about, any creature in the watery bog took 50 damage from the thrashing logs and was knocked prone. I allowed characters who wanted to ready an action to make an acrobatics check to attempt to dodge the logs as they began to jump about. The party rogue brought that one up and it turned out pretty cool.Once Uxin'lothtor saved, she fell dead. Since the green dragon was unable to move it wasn't necessary for the party to actually defeat the dragon, but they chose to do so because they really are quite thorough.

This was my first combat designed using a hazard with a specific countermeasure in order to disrupt it instead of a major monster. It was more than a little weird and was honestly more confusing than I had hoped it would be. I explained the mechanic to the party at the very end (after they had officially finished up the dragon by destroying the eggs. They commented on how the idea was pretty cool, but that it was something that they just never thought about. They were using daily attacks and seeing it have no effect and started to feel stupid because they just didn't understand what they had to do. When they did figure out that there was something else going on and successfully destroyed the last of the eggs as the dragon was dying they, more than a little perplexed, commented, "Wait, it's not even bloodied, how is it dead?"

This method may have broken the paradigm a little bit more than I original anticipated. The idea that a monster can't be defeated in the usual means is so against what they have come to expect and to make a change at the eleventh hour like this was a little jarring I think. One encounter down, I have hope that with the expectation that the brood mothers themselves will be a different challenge and require some lateral thinking.

After defeating the green dragon and catching their breath, the party decided to pass through the mouth in to the black dragon, but the chamber for the black dragon, Auth'lothtor, and the guardians keeping her safe will have to wait for next time.