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.

The Year of the Dragon

It is, in fact, the year of the dragon now and what a year it is shaping up to be!

My epic tier campaign is finishing out our last adventure in the Scales of War Adventure Path, which puts them directly into conflict with the mother of all chromatic dragons herself, Tiamat. Epic Tier play has gotten a lot of attention in the last year from bloggers putting up all kinds of ideas on how to address the issues around the most broken of the tiers of play in 4th Edition D&D and using all the benefits of all that iidea space along with three years of DMing experience, I’m reworking a great deal of the final adventure to give it more panache and a strong finish to a campaign that will hopefully be worth remembering and celebrating.

I’ve talked already about the issues that have come up with railroading the party, which my party actually really likes, as well as with drawing their character stories onto the rails of our game and making it a unique and special experience as we finish up and for the most part it has not taken a great deal of effort to make those changes really click well.

The Last Breath of Tiamat, the final adventure of the Scales of War Adventure Path, is going to need a little more work than my usual fare. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of good starting material to work with here. Small party of heroic adventurers infiltrating an enemy bastion, sneaking behind enemy lines through a great black gate, trying to avoid detection and seeking the means to finally defeat their greatest enemy. It is cliche, but proven. On top of that a nasty draconic ward that is essentially one or two-shot deadly that can only be disabled by defeating the draconic guardians imbuing it with power, sets up a very strong (if simple) dungeon that could be pretty cool for an epic tier party to cut their newly level 30 teeth on before facing the big momma herself.

It could, in theory, do this, but unfortunately the adventure as written just turns into a grinding battle of solo dragons that are essentially the same other than switching out damage keywords and different trappings with some flavorful hazards and traps. That doesn’t sound like the exciting and interesting end to a three year venture to me. Now I don’t want to spend a ton of time picking out what really ticks me off about this since it was obviously written WAY before people were playing at Epic level and a lot of lessons have been learned in that time. What I do want to do is show just what I did to make this adventure at the end of Epic Tier just a bit more epic.

I really wanted to keep the iconic components of the adventure all together. The setting and story is all staying, but I am going to establish a few things that will set the tone a little differently as well as set the time frame that the party has to complete the task. Tiamat is pretty much all, but defeated at this point. Her alliances have failed her, her army is scattered and her home forces are divided with in fighting as the mother of betrayal is betrayed at last. So what does a god do when everything looks down? Blow up the universe of course! I thought it would be more interesting (and this is in my home campaign cosmology so bear with me now) if Tiamat’s realm was situated in the Elemental Chaos. Sure, she is one of the divine, but if any god would be set up in an elemental infused hellhole it would be her. So given this information, I thought, if Tiamat was going to try and pull one last F U to the planes she’d probably try and take out big brother while she is at it. 


So when the party first entered her base they heard her talking in desperation to her former allies through a communication scry in her main lair. After exploring for a bit though, they hear her again echoing through the halls saying, “Fine then prepare to die you, motherless slug.” With a mighty roar, they feel the entire hall reel and buck and an enormous magma geyser infused with the full power of the elements began to not only roar, but pulsate in the center of the main chamber. They got the sense that the living volcano this domain is built upon is ready to blow, but an eruption on this scale would be larger than any ever recorded in history. With a quick Arcana check, the wizard was able to tell that this explosion will be so tremendous that it will destroy Tiamat’s palace, but not only that it would rip through the planes. After an additional Arcana, Religion, or History check they were able to tell that the target of this explosion will be a domain of the Astral Sea, but given the positions of the cosmology the Primary Material Plane lies right between the two so it would be blasted through devestating the world and leaving a giant hole just seeping into the Elemental Chaos. Essentially, and I know I’m going to have to frame this repeatedly to my players because it IS convoluted, if they are unable to stop Tiamat before the eruption of the volcanic fortress, the entire fortress will be destroyed in a titanic blaze of glory that will also devastate the Mortal World and reach all the way to the Astral Domain of Bahamut, levelling it and potentially killing Bahamut, Kord and Moradin. From what they can tell, they only have 10 hours left.

So that sets the framework for the ending of our campaign with world shattering consequences. Can the party brave the danger, defeat their enemies and save the wold one last time!?!  We’ll just have to see how it plays out.

In the coming weeks/months, I’m going to post the changes I made to the draconic guardians that the party needs to overcome in order to gain access to Tiamat and a bit after that I’ll include my final changes to the Dark Queen of Dragons herself. I’ve also got a couple of other projects I have been working on much more long term that will be popping up in the coming weeks/months and conveniently they are all dragon themed!

Thus begin the Days of the Dragons. May they be long and dangerous.