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#832501 Thu 10/12/15 18:40 UTC
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Neil leans back in the big chair, having regaled the group with his recollections of the geese that used to terrify visitors outside Gypsy's house.

(Since Twas the Season, he wonders if their comeuppance had been to adorn a family's dining table.)

Wearing a cosy Nordic cardigan, Neil has already unpacked and now that everyone else is seated, he picks up where they'd left off.

nem #832502 Thu 10/12/15 18:40 UTC
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Although The Haunted Helm is an old TSR D&D adventure, I've adapted it for 13th Age and am using the structure from the official 13th Age beginners adventure, Blood & Lightning.

Accordingly, you receive another Incremental Advance after the fight with the white dragon.

Scanning ahead, the beginners adventure gives the party a level-up after the next encounter. That's interesting. Since you can reverse your Incremental Advances (frex, new spells) when you level up, the Incremental Advance we're talking about here is only valid for one encounter. So I don't want to linger on it.

Needless to say, I've applied an Incremental Advance to the PCs. More hit points for D, Jex, Seyja, and Weston. Zoltan gets Strong Recovery feat, and Tindarien gets Lightning Fork feat. This boosts everyone's hit points enough to clear the Staggered condition. When Zoltan uses recoveries now, with Strong Recovery he'll roll two Recovery Dice, use the highest. (I've applied this retroactively to the recovery Zoltan used after end of battle with the dragon, gaining him an extra 3 hp.)

So, what's the party's status after the Incremental Advance?

D HP: 28/28; Rec: 4/8; AC 14, PD 15, MD 11; Init +9
J HP: 20/32; Rec: 2/8; AC 14, PD 12, MD 11; Init +4*2
S HP: 25/43; Rec: 1/8; AC 15, PD 15, MD 11; Init +3*2
T HP: 24/24; Rec: 3/8; AC 11, PD 12, MD 14; Init +3
W HP: 23/44; Rec: 5/9; AC 16, PD 14, MD 11; Init +3*2
Z HP: 24/40; Rec: 6/8; AC 21, PD 13, MD 14; Init +2
Al HP: 15/27; AC 17, PD 14, MD 12; Init +3


You'll need to optimise what recoveries you have left, and using them in battle will be more difficult because you've misplaced Nestaron.

Normally, to level up mid-adventure you'd have to accept a campaign setback, so this is a good example of what one of those is. It's an in-continuity dire turn of events that can't be undone, and is intended to create dramatic highs and lows in the story.

In this case, you can't save Nestaron immediately, but you might just be able to rescue him. And how long will it take the dragon to convince Nestaron to heal it? I don't know, but I'm excited to find out, and that's what it's all about! grin

(It also us to focus more on the PCs, since Nestaron was being ghosted.)

Last edited by nemarsde; Sun 03/01/16 10:30 UTC.
nem #832629 Sun 13/12/15 09:47 UTC
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OK, so generally speaking in HHE I make skill checks in the background and try to integrate the results into the GM posts.

Jex's most recent is a good example. I decided that his Bandit +2 background was most apt to forging alliances with strange folk in the wilderness, rolled and succeeded.

As an Adventurer-tier skill check, he needed DC 15 on a d20, so not as easy as you'd think with only +2. I also gave him +2 advantage for Neptune's role-playing.

As the published adventure is written, Bearkiller only guides the party into the dragon's lair, abandoning them before the climactic battle.

I ruled that would be the result of a fail. But I rolled 18, making the bonuses somewhat redundant, but hey, better bonuses than penalties! wink

So Bearkiller is now a follower, like Sergeant Almador.

I haven't previous posted stat blocks for followers as they're just reskinned low-level monsters from the rule book or Bestiary.

  • Heilbutt, reskinned Orc Warrior
  • Sergeant Almador, reskinned Human Thug
  • Bearkiller, reskinned Ettercap Hunter


Fire Bomb

There's no alchemist's fire listed in the rule book, so what do we do? We use the Impromptu Damage rules for such things. They suggest the fire bomb might to DC 15 to make. It would be a ranged attack vs PD, and do 1d10 fire damage on a hit, half damage on a miss.

Because a blizzard dragon is vulnerable to fire, you crit on an 18-20. Getting some special effect out of the fire bomb relies more on the PC throwing it. Demonstrate some key quality of the character, how they're so smart, or brave, or imbecilic and cowardly (who knows?). Entertain the rest of the group, enhance the story. If the manoeuvre is dicey, we can make a skill check for it.

We're getting ahead of ourselves though. Who is going to make the skill check? Who has a background in making fire bombs? grin

Maybe Weston's Street Hawker or Advocate tie in to street riots he participated in as a lad?

Maybe Seyja's Fire Dancer made use of all kinds of flammable liquids? Etc.

Those are just two examples. Again, it depends on you, the players, to explain how your backgrounds are relevant to any skill check.

nem #832633 Sun 13/12/15 14:05 UTC
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Humbled. blush


-Nep
nem #832636 Sun 13/12/15 15:48 UTC
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I have something in mind for the 'fire' that uses hawker but is =not= a 'molotov cocktails' which seem a bit of a reach. I can send you what I have in mind Neil ... if you want to make sure you agree, I can PM you what I have in mind.


MikeD
nem #832637 Sun 13/12/15 15:51 UTC
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Never mind. I hadn't seen your followup post. Sounds like Molotov it is <g>


MikeD
nem #832645 Sun 13/12/15 18:18 UTC
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Neil - A note on your post a few back, Zoltan can heal mid-battle using his Lay on Hands. Still, the limit of Recoveries still applies.

nem #832646 Sun 13/12/15 18:21 UTC
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No problem, Mike. If you had a cool idea for a fire bomb, you should definitely share! That's what it's all about. I'm just giving you one option to get you started and keep us moving if need be. smile

You wouldn't neccesarily need to use a rag in the molotov either. Considering matches have been around since the 4th Century AD, I reckon the alchemists of the Dragon Empire must have come up with storm matches by now. That's what the Finns used in the original molotov cocktail design. Much more reliable than a rag, though perhaps a bit too geeky for your trendy modern day rioter. jk

NPCs

I've just posted 13th Age-style stat blocks for those monsters/followers we've used who aren't in the 13th Age SRD.

They are simple reskins of existing monsters that require very little (if any) work for the GM. In fact, in the official 13th Age demo, they use a group of lizardmen and an ogre and tell the GM to describe the ogre as a 'giant dragonman'. No conversion work required.

But HHE is based on a published D&D adventure from the 1980s, and it was quite a different beast.

Gypsy and I have talked about the original adventure, and as I told her, it's one of the worst adventures I've ever read. Seriously. And that's why I chose it, because most of it would be irrelevant to a 13th Age game. wink

The original adventure is all about the PCs returning a haunted helm to a white dragon's lair, but the encounters are appalling designed.

The lowly 1st level party first encounter two mountain loins. A party of 1st level adventurers would have enough trouble contending with a cat, let alone two mountain lions, but it's OK because as written, a dragon rider swoops in to save the PCs. This awesome duo (GM's character anyone?) are Renn and Caeric.

After the night attack by the dragon, where Renn and Caeric can have an awesome aerial battle that the PCs can watch, they meet another awesome duo, the barbarian Bearkiller and his pet albino dire wolf (um, another GM's character?).

The adventure continues with one more dubious combat encounter, and then Renn, Caeric and Bearkiller and his albino dire wolf all abandon the PCs before the final fight against the white dragon.

They don't make 'em like that anymore!! lol

So HHE is an adaptation for 13th Age and message gaming, but also for the 21st Century role-playing gamer.

An armed party of seven, setting upon a pair of mountain lions sound more like trophy hunters to me than epic heroes. So in HHE, the lions were already dead. We had the Battle of Heilbutt's Hallow instead, which was not only more exciting, but intimately tied to the PCs stories (Seyja's).

Renn and Caeric can eat my shorts. This game is about the PCs, not the NPCs, so they were dead on arrival too, but still awesome in their own way. It was an opportunity to dish out treasure, since it's generally not found with monsters in 13th Age.

Finally, Bearkiller has been shrunk to 3 feet tall. He still thinks he has an albino dire wolf, which is awesome for him but doesn't overshadow the PCs. He's a 2nd level blocker though, compared to Heilbutt and Sergeant Almador who are 1st level troops, so he's a 'party asset' well worth having, in the same way a decent magic item is.

Also note that the PCs will soon be joining him at 2nd level if they survive the next encounter. This will set them up for the final fight, and I have to say, reading ahead in Blood & Lightning, it could be the toughest yet.

nem #832656 Sun 13/12/15 21:00 UTC
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Actually what I =had= been thinking of was just dousing the dragon and using a fire arrow to set it ablaze, but lets just move on <g>

Actually, I get the 'reasoning' behind two strangers who save a group of unprepared 'adventurers' from certain death not wanting to become their mothers <chuckle>

But yeah the mod was not meant for 1st level characters <g>


MikeD
nem #832658 Sun 13/12/15 22:45 UTC
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Alas, The Haunted Helm as written by James Ward really was meant for characters level 1-4. But I'm not sure a 1st level party could have taken on an adult white dragon in Basic D&D.

Anyway, back in the day, a D&D campaign was the GM's love child, his theme park, and the players were just visitors--- Bloody hell, just like the D&D cartoon actually!!

But these days, the trend is less about the GM's world building and more about the players creating a world collaboratively, with the GM as the coordinator.

Regardless of how powerful 1st level characters are in D&D or 13th Age, I don't think it's ever fun for the players to need saving by a flashy NPC, let alone twice in one adventure. The PCs should be doing the rescuing imo. smile

I think adventures (and RPGs) have improved considerably since then.

nem #832684 Mon 14/12/15 16:29 UTC
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That has often been the case for D&D mods. One of the things that they do to mitigate that ... at least in the later years ... has been to talk about 'APL' as in Average Party Level. You add up the current levels of all the party members and that gives you a number. There are several versions of each encounter (as few as 3 as many as 5) that attempt to address the problem of 4 first level characters in a party verses 6 4th level character. While not a perfect system, it was an improvement over the previous lack of any 'guidelines' of how to adjust encounters beyond the 'If the party is having too much or not enough challenge, feel free to adjust the encounters' text that they had used in the past <g>

As the the 'GM's Love Child' idea, yeah, there were certainly GMs like that. But the best GMs had the players involved with the story to =some= extent. Sometimes it was as simple as "what do you guys want to do next" to some pretty intense 'brain storming' sessions where we all tossed out ideas. Of course, the GM would pick and choose with out telling us ... and would often distort them quite a bit so that we didn't 'recognize' then (until it was too late <chuckle>), but still we all felt really involved. Sadly, that was not as common as one might wish <sigh> But when you found a GM like that, he (or she) was definitely a keeper!!!!


MikeD
nem #832687 Mon 14/12/15 17:24 UTC
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I'm a relative n00b compared to some of you guys; I started GMing Basic D&D Revised when I was 10 years old, back in the Eighties. My age might have been a mitigating factor but I think I was a terrible GM. Back then, I really saw it as GM vs players. (Maybe this is why we ended up playing Advanced Heroquest instead? That literally was GM vs players.)

I had NPCs who were my love children... always wiser and more knowledgeable than the PCs. I used traps out of Grimtooth's Traps, that instagibbed players caught in them. I was completely at the mercy of the rules. I used the level of encounters they recommended, I dished out the treasure they recommended.

It was like I was in an arm's race with the PCs. The Orcs of Thar had already introduced piecemeal armour that allowed for a greater degree of customisation/optimisation of AC, and playable monster races. Then the D&D Master Set introduced weapon masteries, and PC offensive capability increased massively, and the mystic (i.e., D&D monk) character class.

I remember one of the PCs was a troll mystic with optimised armour and magic katars. huh The thing was unstoppable!

And yet for that, I still look on those halcyon days with great fondness, because we still played every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, and despite the mechanics, we created unforgottable stories that have stuck with us to this day. elvis

(Our parents encouraged us resolutely. I understand why now, of course. We were inside, under their noses, keeping ours clean, and for an outlay that worked out to about 10 quid a month for new books!!)

Wouldn't it be amazing to play twice a week, face to face again!

nem #832688 Mon 14/12/15 18:02 UTC
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There are certainly a lot of GMs that play that 'adversarial' game. That doesn't mean it is the =right= way <wink> And just so you don't feel =too= bad, that 'idea' has been around since the very beginning back in the 70s <g>

And yes, I have to admit that the players who wanted to spend their time optimizing their 'stats' rather than their PC's story were certainly a contributing factor. I could always tell the 'tweekers' when I ran them at a convention <chuckle> Those games were usually over in just a couple of hours instead of the normal 4 <g>

And I understand the 'attraction' of character 'stat' optimization. but I have (mostly) been about having a 'character' rather than a stat block <wink>

And yes!!! I desperately miss the regular gaming ... even when it was once a week!! As it is now, I have not played a 'f2f' game in almost 3 years <sigh>


MikeD
nem #832783 Thu 17/12/15 10:00 UTC
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I think it's time for a 'heroes prepare' montage.

Give us a short paragraph, maybe only a couple of sentences, describing what your character is doing to prepare for the confrontation with the dragon tomorrow.

Tindarien is working on the key. Weston and Seyja are working on the fire bomb. But other than that it might be adjusting armour, sharpening swords, tweaking strings, stretching, who knows, I leave it to your imagination.

End each post on an appropriate elipsis... to give it that montage feel. grin

Edit: Excellent! Keep 'em coming, and to assist you, we need some epic music! Like Journey To The Abyss by West One Music.

Last edited by nemarsde; Thu 17/12/15 18:13 UTC.
nem #832868 Fri 18/12/15 22:01 UTC
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If you are excited and want to own the pdf of a bunch of 13th age stuff for a paltry price. Check out Bundle of Holding 13th Age deal

nem #832936 Sun 20/12/15 09:57 UTC
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Thanks Pandemonium! That's an absolute bargain for anyone interested in 13th Age. I'd recommend the Bonus Collection, simply because it has the 13th Age Bestiary (i.e., Monster Manual), which is an invaluable time-saver.

nem #833079 Tue 22/12/15 14:47 UTC
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OK, so a large tranche of posts today, worth taking your time to read through. We also have some more vignettes with more plot teasers to amuse ourselves with, before we set out on the final push.

Here's where you should probably start reading.

I'm now on holiday, chillaxing and enjoying the Festivities, so now's the ideal time to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! smile

Last edited by nemarsde; Tue 22/12/15 16:43 UTC.
nem #833176 Wed 23/12/15 10:28 UTC
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Merry Xmas to you too! smile

Baalzebub.. brings back memories! lol

nem #833191 Wed 23/12/15 16:07 UTC
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I have just two words for all y'all ... 'Bah' and 'Humbug' <chuckle>


MikeD
nem #833221 Wed 23/12/15 19:11 UTC
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Happy Xmas to everyone too. And an extra dose of Hum just to bug Mike. smile

nem #833227 Wed 23/12/15 19:23 UTC
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Why thank you <vbg>


MikeD
nem #833585 Sun 27/12/15 20:04 UTC
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Traveling. May not be able to post until tomorrow.

nem #833633 Mon 28/12/15 13:34 UTC
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It is that time of the year, Zeim. Safe travels! grin

nem #833973 Wed 30/12/15 14:33 UTC
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That was interesting. The skill checks went very badly for the PCs, with only Jex and Tindarien succeeding (and even them by a whisker). This was with a DC 15.

So for a moment it looked like disaster for the party, but then I rolled a paltry 4 for the damage, making the whole thing a bit of a storm in a teacup.

Anyway, to get us over the Christmas slowdown, I've written it up and moved us on at a pace.

Important to note that even 4 damage was enough to prompt automatic recovery rolls from Seyja, Weston and Zoltan (to avoid being staggered). Seyja now has no recovery rolls left! eek So whenever she uses a recovery now, it gives her half healing a cumulative -1 to attack rolls and defences!

This is how 13th Age balances the PCs. Yes, they're pretty damn awesome, even at 1st level, but eventually they tire out. The PCs will be entering the climactic fight with much less resilience.

D also fumbled (natural 1), so that gives him the 'weakened' condition for the first round of the next combat. That's -4 to attack and defences. So Pandemonium, you might want to try something relatively low risk in that round. The condition clears after the first round.

nem #833989 Wed 30/12/15 16:05 UTC
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Hmmmm ... so did we =not= 'rest' in the cave? I thought that would give us at least some recoveries back.


MikeD
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