When Hook Horrors attack!

Over the past few weeks, I've been playing through WGR1: Greyhawk Ruins. Yes, playing - a friend has agreed to DM me and some of my other friends through that adventure.

I've been playing a Radiant Servant of Pelor in this game. The adventure is full of massive threats and treasure, so we've been levelling up very, very quickly indeed. Those of us who have survived, at least. One 7 hour session will normally get us about 2 levels! Very Monty Haulish.

So, Alvares Yulos, my priest, is now 10th level. We're having a lot of fun, though! :)

Anyway, last Sunday, we wandered into a room with thirty three Hook Horrors! Hmm.

At that time, the party was as follows:

* Harald, halfling Fighter 4/Rogue 2/Master Thrower 3
* "Mighty Braveman", half-orc Barbarian 5/Occult Slayer 3 (who is ignoring all the role-playing implications of the class...)
* Lady Misal, elf Ninja 7
* "Bob", elf Scout 7
* Alvares, human Cleric 6/Radiant Servant of Pelor 3 (my character)
* Aritheraith, elf Wizard 6 (my cohort) (with elf substitution levels)

So, what do you think happened?

Yes, we won. Eventually. After about an hour. Oh, and "Mighty Braveman" fell during the last stages of the combat, when he got too far away from me to be healed.

It was interesting to see the role of the various members of the party:
* The Master Thrower drunk a potion of spider-climbing and spent the combat hanging from the roof out of reach and throwing daggers.
* The Barbarian kept moving to cleave and power attacking as much as possible. Hook Horrors have a good AC, but not good enough...
* The Ninja was using Spring Attack and Ki Invisibility on the Horrors, and generally protecting my character from harm.
* The Scout was moving around, trying to keep away, and shoot arrows at the Horrors. He also was protecting my character from harm.
* The Wizard cast Haste, and then a fireballs, and then a few magic missiles, and shortly was out of spells. I haven't got his magic items right, yet, and we'd already encountered a couple of monsters.
* The Cleric (me) cast Daylight (Hook Horrors are sensitive to bright light), Prayer, Bless and then healing spells on the various PCs as required. A couple of Spiritual Weapons were set up, but eventually spent half their time not attacking, due to me being distracted.

Alas, when the Barbarian fell, I was too far away to use the Revivify spell I had prepared. :( (I had to use a scroll of Raise Dead instead).

However, here's a point: as the cleric, my main role in the combat was just casting Healing spells to keep the others going. Now, I'm very, very good at that. (Radiant Servant of Pelor with Augment Healing feat... wow!) However, whilst I'm doing that I'm not attacking.

It's something that interests me about priests - do the priests in your campaigns act in a similar fashion, or do they go more the Divine Favour and Power and Righteous Might route?

I think my DM misread the adventure, btw, for he interpreted the entire cavern system to have six of these chambers! (I think it should be 33 hook horrors over 6 chambers...)

Interestingly, we used miniatures for the combat. Very, very useful. Alas, I don't have 33 Hook Horrors. I have one. So, we just used some of my other large D&D Miniatures as proxies. I had enough. (Actually, I think I'm up to about 50 large D&D Miniatures... :))

For reference, here is my character at the moment:

Alvares Yulos, male human Cleric 6/Radiant Servant of Pelor 4
HD 6d8+4d6+10; hp 53; Init +0; Spd 20 ft; AC 23, t12, ff23; BAB +7; Grp +9; Atk +10 melee (1d8+3, +1 heavy mace) or +8 ranged (1d8+1, +1 light crossbow); Full Atk +10/+5 melee (1d8+3, +1 heavy mace) or +8 ranged (1d8+1, +1 light crossbow); SA spells, greater turning; turn undead; SQ aura of warding; empowered healing; immune disease; radiance; AL NG; SV Fort +10; Ref +3; Will +16; Str 14, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 12, Wis 20, Cha 15.

Skills: Concentration +12, Diplomacy +14, Heal +11, Knowledge (nobility) +6, Knowledge (religion) +12, Sense Motive +6, Spellcraft +4
Feats: Augment Healing; Divine Spell Power; Extra Turning; Leadership; Rapid Spell
Domains: Healing, Sun.
* Turn Undead 9/day (Greater Turning 5/day)
* Healing Domain spells are automatically Empowered.

Cleric Spells Prepared: (6/7/6/5/5/4/4, DC 15+spell level, CL10):
orisons-detect magic x2, guidance, light ,read magic x2
1st-bless, command x2, cure light wounds*, hide from undead, obscuring mist, comprehend languages
2nd-align weapon; consecrate, cure moderate wounds*, lesser restoration, spiritual weapon x2.
3rd-dispel magic x2, cure serious wounds*, prayer, remove curse.
4th-cure critical wounds*, death ward, neutralise poison, restoration, rapid monster summoning III
5th-revivify, mass cure light wounds*, rapid summon monster IV; summon monster V

Important Magic Gear: +1 heavy mace, +1 light crossbow, +3 breastplate, +2 light wooden shield, periapt of wisdom +2, cloak of charisma +2, gauntlets of ogre power, bracers of health +2, +2 ring of protection, Everburning torch, Heward's handy haversack

Shifting campaign gears

A little over two years ago, I restarted my World of Greyhawk campaign in the Great Kingdom - the previous group having been dominated by demons, retired to strongholds, or just otherwise unavailable to adventure any more. With two of the players from the old campaign and two new players coming into the game, we started with the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh series.

How should I put this? The beginning stages of the new campaign did not go well.

One of the PCs died as the group completely failed to save Saltmarsh. The remaining members of the group died at the hands of an ettin they completely failed to run away from. Eventually, the new members made their way down into the heart of the See of Medegia, and the campaign properly began. Intrigue, undead and Hextorian oversight!

Last night, two years on, that stage of the campaign ended.

One of the primary characters of the group has now formally become Lawful Evil, which is rather incompatable with the paladin of Heironeous in the group. The campaign had reached the stage where she could take over the rulership of a major town in the See, which suited all of us, including her player.

With the group now predominantly Good in alignment, it was obvious that the See of Medegia (devoted to Hextor) was no longer a safe place to be. They are preserved from interference from the Hextorians at the moment because of their services to the state and because they're currently hunting down a rogue wizard devoted to Chaotic Evil. (eee!)

The characters are now either 10th or 11th level. (This is after two years of playing once every two weeks). I'm guiding the characters towards the Free City of Greyhawk where I can move into the new form of the campaign - and bring back plot lines from the original 3E Greyhawk campaign I began four and a half years ago.

For some reason, I had seven players at the last session (normally it is five, but there were a couple of guests). Combat took a while, but it was a lot of fun. I was running a module from Dungeon Magazine (The Black Egg, issue #106), which uses a more dangerous level of enemy that I'm accustomed to. It all worked out fine, anyway.

One of the interesting things about this session was the party composition. It was as follows:
* Gnome Druid 10 (a new character to replace the LE Sorceress).
* Human Favoured Soul 10 (a new character for one of the guest players)
* Human Ranger 2/Wizard 5/Eldritch Knight 3/Spellsword 1 (one of the long-running characters of the group, and slowly moving from being a bowman to being a wizard).
* Human Rogue 6/Duelist 4 (an older character who I've just returned to the group after dying a couple of times...)
* Human Rogue 3/Wizard 5/Arcane Trickster 2 (another of the guest players)
* Human Paladin 11* Human Psychic Warrior 5/Pyrokineticist 5

As you can see, the party lacks any really dedicated Arcanists. This occasionally proves a problem as they don't have anyone in the group who can cast the power spells (or utility spells) they occasionally need.

The Favoured Soul was also interesting to see in action. Not as great as a dedicated cleric due to the lack of full spell access and domains, but very versatile within its parameters. (Having Revivify as one of the 5th level spells would have proven very useful, if only the Hydra had eaten someone else... Luckily the reincarnation by the Druid was back as a human...)

So too the Druid. With the Eldritch Knight casting fly on the Druid, we had a flying rhinocerous. (or, as I'd keep remarking for the Munchkin card players out there, a Hippogrif).

This was interesting. 10th level Druids are scary things. The player isn't that used to druids, and was stunned to see a lot of useful spells (like flamestrike) in his spell list. That was fun.

Things should be interesting with the next session, as they try to finish off the adventure and then make their way to Greyhawk.

The cultists of Vecna are waiting for them...

Books

One of the things that distinguishes me from most other people is my reading speed - it's fast. When I'm reading my preferred books (fantasy), I can approach or exceed 200 pages per hour. So, whilst my friends would take a week or more to read a single book, I'd finish two or three in a day. (Another aspect to it is that I can do nothing but read for a day - though I haven't had that much time to do so recently). This is a natural attribute, it isn't something that I've consciously developed.

Today, I was rather happy to discover that the latest in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series had come out: Chainfire. This was actually a surprise: I don't keep track of upcoming fantasy releases in the same way I do for D&D books and miniatures.

So, my brand new copy of Chainfire is sitting on my desk, and I'm impatiently waiting for the time (after tea) when I can really settle down to read it.

So, who are my favourite living authors? In the fantastic side of fiction, I'd say that they were Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Stephen Erikson, Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Brust. On the science fiction side - not that I read a lot of SF at the moment - Dan Simmons and David Brin are the two authors I keep an eye out for.

Roger Zelazny is my favourite author of all time, but he's no longer with us, alas!

Interestingly, for all the fantasy fiction I read, I don't consciously use many elements of it in my D&D games. My County of Ulek campaign was definitely influenced by Michael Moorcock's second Corum trilogy, and I was weaving elements of Stephen Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series into it at the time when it ended prematurely.

With my current Great Kingdom campaign, I'm not really using much from the books I read at all. At least, not consciously. I'm sure that the plots and adventures I think up for the campaigns are influenced by the books. How could they not be?

One way this influence could be manifesting itself is in my current love of "deep" campaigns, where there are several competing factions and undercurrents influencing the PCs. This is very true of most of the books I'm reading at the moment: they're not simple adventure stories any more. It's a trend of modern fantasy. In the older fantasies, such as the Conan or Lankhmar books, it was all quite simple. This was partly due to their form: short stories or independent novels.

Series of fantasy books that go for 8 or more books is a new phenonomen for fantasy literature. (One of my favourite series is Jennifer Roberson's Chronicles of the Cheysuli, a dynastic fantasy that spans 100 years and 8 books).

However, most of the popular fantasy books of recent times have been such long sagas. From Jordan's Wheel of Time, to Goodkind's Sword of Truth, and Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, the obvious forms of story are giving way to more subtle interactions.

Incidentally, if you were to ask me what current series I'm enjoying the most, it would have to be the Malazan Book of the Fallen, which begins with Gardens of the Moon. It took me several readings to really begin to grasp what is happening - and it is absolutely glorious. Do yourself a favour and find it!

The aspects of the Malazan Book of the Fallen that I was using in my Greyhawk campaign were related to the Warrens - magical pathways and strongholds where some of the "Ascended" live, and that give wizards their powers. The idea of the Ascended is interesting - many are worshipped as gods, and others are close to that. So, I added an Ascended and a warren (though not revealed as that to my players) to the game, and had a look what happened.

It was interesting. One of the PCs actually ended up serving the Man in Gray. At some point, I hope the game will progress back there, and we can work out what actually was happening.

The other aspect from books that I was using was Moorcock's second Corum trilogy: I appropriated the idea of the Fhoi Myore (or Fomorians) - giant deformed giants from another realm. I then tinkered with it radically: the Fhoi Myore were bodiless spirits from a corrupt realm, who had deformed the Firbolg giants into the Fomorian form when they possessed them. The possessed Fomorians then launched a reign of terror against the Flan (Celts) of Ulek. Eventually they were defeated and the Fhoi Myore spirits entrapped. The current era Fomorians are just the discarded and deformed shells that they once used.

But, of course, the Priests of Chaos want to free the Fhoi Myore, and we had a great adventure in the making. Alas that people got jobs and became unavailable before the game finished!

Part of the art of using ideas from books in your campaigns is to not to use them unaltered. You need to adapt them to fit your game, and sometimes quite radically. Yes, this is obvious. It is also amazing at how resistant you can get to it... you like something so much, that you have to use it exactly as it was presented. However, alas, books and RPGs are two different forms, so it won't usually work.

The other problem is to make the pilfered material interesting to your players. This is most relevant when you're trying to give the PCs options/restrictions or similar based on the books. Especially when they're not familiar with the normal source! This happened once in my journeyman days of DMing (back in 1991 or 92, I think). I gave a couple of PCs Wolf companions, and the ability to change into the forms of those companions. (This comes from the aforementioned Chronicles of the Cheysuli books). Of course, they weren't familiar with the source, and it turned out that pretty soon, we'd all forgotten about the ability and the wolves!

DMing is hard enough without remembering the players' abilities for them. I can also have a similar problem with running cohorts for the PCs: I really need to focus on only one side, the bad guys.

When I was growing up, my favourite authors were Arthur C. Clarke (particularly Against the Fall of Night), Isaac Asimov (particularly Foundation) and Piers Anthony (especially the Incarnations of Immortality). These days, I read more fantasy than science fiction, and the long, intricate series we have are glorious.

You might have noticed I've made no mention of a certain J.R.R. Tolkien in my musings above. Well, I love the Lord of the Rings. I've read it over ten times. Interestingly, I haven't read it much in the last three years - for I really, really like Peter Jackson's movies. I think the original is better for the most part, but actually seeing the story is incredible as well. And I have other books to read.

The next book I'm looking forward to? The City of Towers, by Keith Baker. The Eberron campaign setting is looking very interesting indeed and I enjoyed the short story Death at Whitehearth that was included with the first of the Eberron adventures, so reading the first novel set in the new world will be interesting to say the least.

Tonight, however, I'm reading Chainfire.