Geek Related

Fifth Session (12 page pdf) – Schloss Caromarc is creepily well-kept but seemingly abandoned, except for traps and occasional golems. It is also riddled with non-OSHA compliant bridges, which conspire towards our downfall…

The castle is cool and creepy, full of abandoned rooms and taxidermy that against all our expectations doesn’t animate and attack us.  Good for that.

However, let me just pause a second to ream on the castle/dungeon/adventure design here.  We keep having to cross bridges that require like multiple DC15 Acrobatics checks to not fall off and die.  Of course, the average fighter in his armor has like a -1 Acrobatics skill.  First of all this is a game rule fail from someone who didn’t bother to read the Acrobatics skill entry – you should only be hitting DC15 if you’re trying to cross a 6 inch wide balance beam, not a three foot wide rope bridge or anything with handholds. Second of all, it’s a worldbuilding fail – this is a castle built by people, for people to live in. Anything requiring a DC5 let alone a DC 15 skill check to “not die” on a routine day doesn’t pass muster. “Well the Count could cast fly” doesn’t excuse it – he can’t fly all day every day, and if you risk death every time you have to take a crap (Sredni Vashtar’s Girl kept looking for a privy to wash up and there aren’t any, I’ll note) or want a snack the numbers will catch up with you. Does he carry his own big crates of stuff around? Do his own drywall? Oh, “his golems carry stuff for him?” His golems are clumsy as hell, has he lost 1M gold pieces worth of them to falls?  (I can imagine a town downriver constantly traumatized by wounded flesh golem attacks from the water… “Why God why?!?”).

Anyway, the vast majority of this session was a fight with a summoned erinyes who totally owned us. Our crossbowman was useless against her, my spells were useless against her, and everyone else was either screwing around (Vlad) or generally clinging to things for dear life (Oswald, Icobus). Everyone nearly died several times. Only her clock eventually running out saved us.  And if we didn’t get across before the bridge burned we’d be literally stuck, none of us can fly yet so it would be ‘adventure over.’ I don’t know if they assume ‘well of course they should be fifth level so they would all have fly now’ but screw them. Pett, you make creepy stuff which is good, but it feels like this adventure made certain assumptions that were not necessarily reasonable. If we didn’t have our rope of climbing we’d just have had to quit and leave the whole castle because it’d just be impossible to traverse.

The fight with the weirdo homunculus-led golem was interesting; we figured out just from looking at the thing “don’t even bother hitting it, kill the homunculi” and sure enough. Yay video game design.

This session was a mix of enjoyment and frustration mainly from us banging our head against “you know, going across this next bridge is sure death for half of you…  And no, there’s no way to bypass or improve it.”

We continue with Trial of the Beast, the second chapter of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path. Sorry if the session summary’s a bit briefer than usual; I found out I was doing it late and only had Evernote on the iPad to do it with, impeding my typing speed (swapping attention between gaming and the summary is hard enough when you’re not having to hunt-and-peck).

Third Session (9 page pdf) – We’re making headway on the Beast’s defense, and investigating a ghast-filled ruined lab gives us the clues we need to go confront some serial killers in their super dangerous lair! Now if we just weren’t our own worst enemies…

We scamper out of town quickly to get some investigation done before the mob violence hits. We cleanse a lab of ghasts and are quickly led to an alchemist’s factory in Lepidstadt, Vorkstag & Grimes, which operates with an unknown workforce “Willy Wonka” style.

Just an aside.  This happened with the skinsaw cult lumber mill in Rise of the Runelords too – how the hell do you run a business when everyone is a monstrous freak who attacks everyone else on sight? That’s not a sustainable business model! I mean, they have to sell shit, don’t they? And deliver it? And buy supplies? “Notes with gold attached” only goes so far – there’s literally not a person in this place that can show their face in polite society.  Anyway.

We totally lucked out on this one – the very first room we break into is the mother lode of Buffalo Bill style people skins and Beast costumes!  Vladimir wanted to just ‘go take it all to the cops’ but I pointed out that “here’s some evidence we found somewhere, and removed, trust us” is not usually well regarded in law enforcement circles.

And then we get to fight the alchemists – eek!

So that was pretty messed up. “HI I’M THE SKINLESS MAN!” Well, I had a trick for him – Sredni Vashtar’s Girl just learned Vomit Swarm from her little evil hell-weasel and she used it on them – much to the rest of the group’s chagrin. Vladimir couldn’t resist running into the swarm, of course. The skinless man tried to get away and went to climb down a ladder into a three story room full of acid vats – Girl was like “slumber hex!” and he fell three stories. But not into a vat, which was actually OK with me because I wanted him alive for arresting purposes; live freaks are better than corpses for getting the Beast off the hook.

I had Sredni Vashtar get more hands-on this time – he went down to bite the skinless man and delivered a Cure Moderate touch attack to kill an undead in the last fight. It’s hard to bring their abusive-relationship dynamic to life in game as much as I’d like (without going over the top) so I’m experimenting with it.

Then we wandered the freaky factory – we sent Vladimir to go get help from the authorities since he’s the fastest, and then we start searching rooms and we find him in one of the rooms poking around!  I was kinda pissed. Just say “no, I want to be here for the looting,” don’t lie to us… That’s dangerous. You can “be evil” all you want but when your dicking around endangers me, that’s when you get put on the optional-to-save list.

I reckon the end of the trial’s next time, then I suspect we need to go waste Doctor Frankenstein out in the swamps.