#they were the first dnd character I ever played. Sadly that campaign only lasted two sessions. :'( | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zippdementia · 7 years ago

Text

Part 28 Alignment May Vary: The Rocks Speak

Welcome to post 28 of our long running adventure! We started back on the Moonsea coast with three prison ship survivors who washed up into adventure. Since then, there have been many twists and turns and only one of the original party is still alive, Karina the Tiefling Spy. Her path has taken her with two others towards the legendary Tomb of Haggemoth, where she hopes to find riches and (more importantly) answers to questions that have plagued her since she was betrayed in the war. Meanwhile, her companions have their own quests: Tyrion the Halfling Bard needs to record a tale to impress his college directors and secure his place in the famed halls of song, and Abenthy seeks the ultimate justice in the name of his father, a Fallen Angel. This post marks the beginning of the last dungeon of the campaign and will walk with the players through each room, detailing what they discover and what adjustments I have made to the dungeon. I hope players of D&D find it entertaining and dungeon masters find it helpful in running their own dungeons!

Haggemoth is a conversion from 3.5 and I’ve talked about some of my methods for conversions to 5th edition in the past. Monster conversion, in particular, is more of an art than a science, with the end goal not being perfection so much as it is to capture the correct feel for a scene or battle. One hard and fast rule to keep in mind, though, is the rule of DC. You can pretty nicely get an appropriate DC from 3.5 to 5 by taking the original DC, subtracting ten, cutting the number in half (rounded up) and then adding ten. For example, if the DC for avoiding a trap from 3.5 is Dex Save DC 19, then the conversion is

19 - 10 = 9

9/2 = 4.5 (round up to 5)

5 + 10 = 15

New Dex Save DC = 15

I use this method for every DC conversion so I want to throw it out there immediately so that it is assumed throughout the remainder of the adventure.

Anyway, the bridge across the chasm is destroyed, Tyrion is unconscious, and Karina and Abenthy are badly hurt from their battles with the Bugbears. Verrick is gone, the three soldiers are dispirited, and everyone is hungry. After eating and then collapsing, exhausted, into a long rest, the party awakens the next morning to find themselves staring at a massive door in the cliff face:

Built into the side of the mountain is an immense portico that features a pair of gigantic stone doors, each one twenty feet high and ten feet across. There is a single massive, steel-reinforced stone bar across the door, but a great deal of stone and wood debris has been piled up against the door as well.

It doesn’t take long to clear the debris, I assume this was placed there by the designer in case the players try to run past the Bugbears without stealth or fighting them: then the Bugbears can charge them, or lob arrows at them from across the bridge while the players try to clear the debris. A nasty end for anyone who thought to rush past the fight!

As it is, the players clear the door and enter the first hall. It is moldly inside, and damp and cold, with a smell like age and decay. Every so often earth tremors rock the place and bits of rock and dust fall from the ceiling:

Beyond the main doors is a large vestibule with a vaulted ceiling. The walls look like they once bore runic carvings, but these have all been defaced. Plants from the hillside have infiltrated the tomb here, and bits of root and moss hang from cracks everywhere. This chamber is filled with refuse of all kinds: plant matter, the carcasses of small animals and insects, and the desiccated corpses of several species of humanoid. As light spills into the chamber, the floor comes alive with movement.

Attacking the players are some giant centipedes. This is the first adjustment I have to make. Insect creatures are treated very differently in fifth edition than they were in third. In third, poison was a really big deal, a threat to even high level parties. It’s still not great in Fifth edition, but saving throws are all around easier and because fifth edition has done away with the touch attack (which ignores armor) creatures like this have a much harder time landing hits. So even though I can (and do) describe gross bugs falling over Karinna from the ceiling, I can’t really simulate them being “on her” as I could in Pathfinder, and as the module intends.

I compensate by bringing back touch AC for this fight, letting the centipedes crawl inside armor and up leather jerkins to get their attacks. It’s not a perfect solution, but it keeps the proper difficulty for the fight, letting the centipedes land some hits while still bring pretty tame. In the future, I’ll probably take insect fights and use swarm statistics for them, as this seems to be the way that Fifth Edition “buffs” its insects at higher levels. That said, the only rule I miss from Pathfinder is the touch AC—it just makes so much sense in certain circumstances and creates a nice difficulty balance for parties that have a mixture of speedy rogues and tankish paladins. I don’t think it necessarily needs to come back as a hard rule applied to every combat, but it would be cool to see some monsters in future DnD 5 supplements gain abilities which ignore armor and rely on pure dodging by targeting AC + Dex directly.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

Tomb of Haggemoth is my favorite kind of dungeon, in that nearly every room in it (and most of the monsters) has a reason to be there. I love dungeons that are more natural settings, rather than just endless turns and twists of caverns. My earliest experiences with Dungeons and Dragons was when my father bought Undermountain for me when I was four. I didn’t play the game, but I read through each description of every room. They were like short stories, and one of the joys for me as a player to this day is when I come to a room in a dungeon and can ultimately puzzle out the history of what this used to be and how it came to be what it is now.

There is a really interesting logic to Haggemoth that results in the first half of the dungeon being harder than the second half, but as my players aren’t there yet, I’ll talk more about that later. For now, they come to the next hallway, after cleaning bug gunk off their boots:

This hallway is similar to the vestibule. All kinds of miscellaneous debris is scattered over the floor. The doors to the south and east have been battered and smashed beyond hope of repair, but the door to the north seems to be somewhat solid. The corridor narrows to the west, proceeding deeper into the mountainside.

There are a few dead ends here. West is the actual path forward. To the north is storage, but a vicious mold has overtaken it, turning everything to poisonous rot. To the south, a Xorn has recently burrowed into the area. Originally from the Elemental plane of Earth, he covets the gold and gems in the mountainside and has stayed, slowly gathering some precious rubies and diamonds. If he ever spots Karinna, he’ll lust immediately after her “Eye of Callax,” as it is an extremely large, extremely rare, and extremely beautiful gemstone. He also knows, intrinsicially, some of the secrets of this place, and can be compelled or bargained into sharing them if treated with proper respect and offered rewards. He knows one of the biggest secrets that my players still don’t know...

My group takes the North route and almost immediately is overcome by the mold, taking massive damage as the spores tear at their lungs. Fire kills the stuff, and one of them uses a torch to light up enough of the mold to render it harmless, but the damage is done. They decide to pull back and take a rest before adventuring further. And during the night, the Xorn attacks, snatching one of the soldiers (Biggs) and pulling him back inside the tomb. The players awaken and give chase and a quick combat ensures.

Xorns are cool. Old school DnD monsters, they represent a nice bit of world building in that they come from the elemental plane of earth, thus suggesting the larger universe that the fantasy game situates itself in. They can be a tough kill in DnD 5 because of their burrow ability, in which they disappear into the earth around them, becoming completely immune to all attacks. In one round, therefore, they can disappear into the earth, appear right below someone, and get an attack off. If they wait a round and successfully make a hide check, they can get the attack off at advantage for surprise. And depending on how you want to play it from there, you can add all sorts of bonuses to their attack and/or defense because they are burrowed (DnD 5 is intentionally loose on how these things work, letting DMs adjust the rules to their own style and game). I like to add some defensive AC bonuses, but I also like to be fair about retreating: if they reburrow while they are right underneath someone, it counts as a movement and gives the players opportunity attacks. Picture all the tentacles disappearing into the ground while the players hack at them...

The players don’t seek to barter with the Xorn, but go at it headlong, getting off some very good strikes very quickly. Before long, they have defeated it, even with it burrowing and opening up right under Abenthy (that crazy high AC is helping him immensely here).

Sadly, Biggs has perished in the attack, leaving them with only two of their NPCs to carry on through the dungeon. Which brings me to another topic.

Character Cards

Our campaign has never been without allies and helpers. some may remember the half-orc barbarian woman that the group hired in Ottoman’s Dock, who lost her life to Rose of Ottoman’s Dock, or the bodyguard of the Butcher of Skagos, who perished in the Icy Wastes during a fight with Worg Riders. These early NPCs were stated out fully, like Player Characters and taken over by one of my players. I didn’t like this system, because it made a lot of extra work for us. I had to create the characters, which made it difficult to throw in improvised NPCs and companions at any given moment, and put an extra burden of roleplaying and stat tracking on my players that I felt left either the NPC or their own PC with a little less investment. At the same time, just having NPCs be “background extras” that fit into description but had no actual effect on gameplay, didn’t feel right either.

My solution was to create Character Cards. I talked about this back around the time the party was going through the Desert of Thud but since then I have refined the process. Character Cards now give a multitude of in-combat and out-of-combat options for players to use. The current cards look like this:

Xaviee, Human Fighter

Once per combat: do 1d6 slashing damage to any opponent.

Once per combat: roll 1d6. If the result is a 5 or 6, then +2 to all ally attacks and damage this round.

Reaction: Block an attack completely. Roll 1d6. If the result is 1-4, Xaviee is permanently dead.

BLAZE OF GLORY: Sacrifice Xaviee to add +4 to all ally attacks and Damage this round.

Samuel, Human Guard

Once per combat: do 1d6 slashing damage to any opponent

Once per combat: do 2d6 slashing damage to any opponent. Roll 1d6, if result is 1 or 2, Samuel dies, permanently.

Once per combat: do 3d6 slashing damage to any opponent. Roll 1d6, if result is 1-4, Samuel dies, permanently.

Reaction: Block an attack completely. Roll 1d6, if result is 1-4, Samuel is permanently dead.

You can see how Xaviee is a little more powerful, because his abilities carry less risk of dying when he uses them, representing his higher level. This is a quick and surprisingly clean way for me to represent a usable NPC/retainer with very few stats. We don’t worry about placement of the NPC on our maps, or try to simulate enemies targeting them in combat. If they die because of their roll, it’s assumed they were hit enough times by the enemy to perish. If there are certain situations where it just doesn’t make sense that they can be used, like the heroes are fighting underwater and Xaviee has been left on shore, then we take them out of use for the combat. Simple is best.

It also builds more of a connection I feel between them and the players, as these are decently powerful “items” that they do not want to lose. I am reminded of Final Fantasy Tactics, where most of your party never have a single word to say during the story, but yet you care about them simply because you use them in combat. Because they are a part of your gameplay they actually end up being more a part of your story than the actual story, as for the most part 70% of an RPG is combat and gameplay and only 30% is cutscenes and exposition. Possibly that number is even lower in Dungeons and Dragons, depending on your play style.

The character cards will continue to morph and change as we continue to play and I seek the correct balance between gameplay and function.

Halls of Bone

Progressing forward, after a brief mourning for the lost Biggs, the players come to a gigantic hall filled with bones:

This large, columned hall is replete with various carvings and relief sculptures depicting traditional Dwarven motifs: the forge, the anvil, the pick and axe, the tankard, and so forth. What was once a reflecting pool down the center of the hall now contains a thick layer of slime. At one end of the room is a 10’ tall statue of a clean-shaven dwarf, wearing a studded belt and a rune-encrusted crown with three black gems set in it. To either side, a balcony looks down on the central chamber. Phosphorescent mold on the walls and ceiling provides a dim, greenish light. What strikes you most, however, is that the floor is littered with bones – uncountable skeletons of man and beast lay scattered around the room, some still clutching to the tattered and rusted remains of armor and weapons.

“This is a trap,” Abenthy says, and the others quickly agree.

They aren’t wrong, though it is an unusual trap.

In the original 3.5 module, crossing a line within 30 feet of the statue activates the bones, which become 3d6+1 miscellaneous skeleton creatures and 1 large skeletal creature. This happens every time the line is crossed, up to a maximum of 50 skeletons and 5 large skeletons, all armed differently. These are stated out so that the little skeletons are weak hitters but very hard to kill (with damage reduction and very high AC) and the large skeletons are brutally heavy hitters and also pretty tough to kill. The design of the trap is that the players will be surrounded and overwhelmed by a bunch of regular undead who soften them up for the killing blow done by the big skeleton. When this horde emerges, some players will fall back to ranged position, while others will move up to tank and deal damage. Problem for them is, every time they cross that invisible line, whether retreating or advancing, the trap reactivates. Soon players will be terrifyingly outnumbered. Quick thinking players will realize that the statue is creating the effect and target that, but even then, the summoned skeletons don’t disappear, and players can be left in a whole heap of trouble.

Overal, the intended effect of the trapis to terrify players and set them up to be wary moving forward. They do have the option of running away deeper into the tomb, but the very next hallway is filled with spinning blades. If the players can roll high enough dexterity, they can pass the blades and effectively put a unpassable barrier between themselves and the skeletons, but it will be a tense moment, as failing the roll does grave damage and knocks them backwards, right into the waiting hands of the undead.

Translating this encounter into a 5th edition battle appropriate to six or seventh level characters is a challenge. Skeleton hordes don’t pose quite the same threat in 5th edition. In 3.5, a horde of this size could roll enough dice to grapple or trip even high level characters, setting them up for deadly coup-de-graces by the large skeletons, or weakening their AC enough to allow even the weaker skeletons to get hits off. Trip doesn’t exist in 5th edition, though, and while grapple can set up for a deadly “grapple, force player to prone” combo, it doesn’t give all the bonuses or options that exist in 3.5. I could emulate this by giving the skeletons bonuses to their grapple checks and some special abilties once they have the players grappled, simulating the “Night of the Living Dead” aspects of this encounter, but it feels like it will cause this room to devolve into a series of mindless rolls, the players rolling much less dice than me, but with bigger bonsues. That game quickly can become old, especially if they are facing fifty skeletons.

Instead, I try to figure out what frightens me. I think of the Silent Hill games and those twitchy nurses. Then I think about a room with dozens of them and I have my answer.

I design three skeletons for this encounter. The basics are below:

Twitch Skeletons

These skeletons are small in statue and their arms end in sharp points rather than hands. They gyrate as they move across the floor towards you, their jaws clicking open and closed in a silent protest of the horrors their afterlife has become.

The Twitch skeletons make up about 16 of the skeletons in the room. They have a very high dexterity and a 40 ft movement speed. They also have multi-attack, letting them get off two attempts to deal damage. The damage is not high, nor is their life, but their attack bonus is +8 and their AC in the high teens. The point is that they can close quickly and surround a foe, and after that, they can easily wear them down. As an added bonus, if enough of them are killed, the rest of them do something... interesting...

Normal Hitter

Out of the bone piles emerge skeletal warriors, wearing tattered remains of armor and wielding rusted weaponary and ancient bows. As you watch, one reaches into the bone pile at its feet and pulls free a straight arm bone, which it then nocks to its bow and fires at you from across the balconied room.

Basically regular skeletons, but I improved their attack a little to let them get off the occasional hit. These guys are truly here to hamper and physically get in the way. I also give them a little bit of an interactive option with my third skeleton...

The Minotaur Colossal

Lying broken against the dwarven statue is a large creature, tendons and strands of muscle still connecting its various bones into a humanoid shape with a massive bull’s head. The horns of the skull are stained a dull red with dried blood and across its lap lies a massive axe. As the humming in the room subsides, you see to your horror the creature stirring. When it stands, it is nearly eleven feet tall. It moves its head about and one of its empty sockets fixates on you. With a grunt, the creature begins to move forward, slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed to a charge.

This is my version of the “big hitter” in the room. I only use one of him, and as such I’ve buffed him up a little bit. He is, at core, a Skeletal Guardian as described in the monster manual, but with boosted stats and I added in a bull rush ability that can gore a player and knock him prone. His big weakness is his size, making it hard for him to manuever around the room and easy to hit, and while he hits hard he is not as accurate as his twitchy buddies. He does have the ability to heal however by grabbing a normal hitter and reworking their bones into his own, healing himself for whatever hitpoints they have left (but of course destroying them in the process).

A Clean Sweep

Unaware of exactly what the trap is, the players proceed cautiously. First, they clamber up onto the balcony, thinking that will at least give them the higher ground if it comes to a sudden fight. Then they start using Abenthy and Tyrion’s shields as makeshift brooms to sweep the bones in front of them and off the balcony as they move, trying to avoid having any behind them. This proceeds well for a good long while. There are rooms up here, too, each one leading to a small chamber carved with murals that represent the journey towards power in Haggemoth’s life. There is a depiction of him learning all the schools of magic, there is a room showing his accumulation of massive wealth (it also holds a mimic that gives them some brief trouble), there is a room showing him forging great weapons of power (including, oddly enough, a set of scales that he seems keenly interested in), and there is one showing the banishment of Haggemoth from his people and his sailing on a golden ship towards the remote island of Rori Rama.

Eventually, the players come close enough to trigger the trap. They end up triggering it twice before Karinna finally has the idea of putting an arrow into its gemstones, smashing them until she hits the correct one. This stops the trap, but not the 36 or so skeletons that have arrisen to fight them, including the massive minotaur skeleton, who easily clambers on top of the balcony to give battle.

“Hold your ground!” shouted Abenthy, placing his shield in front of him and staring down the massive bone creature that stalked the upper balcony towards him. Behind the minotaur, the masses of twitching skeletons gathered like the sea held back by a dam.

“Fuck that,” Tyrion shouted in his shrill, nasally voice. He began to play his lute and light exploded suddenly behind the minotaur, so bright that Abenthy squinted and turned away. When he looked back, the skeletons were stumbling into each other, swiping at nothing, and had stopped making any forward progress.

“They are blinded!” Abenthy called out. “Now is our chance.”

“They are distracted,” Tyrion corrected, and then followed as Abenthy moved forward, the two of them raining down blows on the minotaurian skeleton until it leapt off the balcony to escape the onsault. Even as it leapt, though, skeletons gathered below it, climbing up onto it, shifting and becoming part of it. Here, a rib that Abenthy had shattered regrew, and there the arm that Tyrion had knocked sprawling as the creature leapt was reforming out of the bones of another skeletong. Meanwhile, more skeletons were clambering up the steps to the upper levels, and they shook their twitching fellows free of their spell and turned them towards the companions. Xaviee and Samuel were the first to see them coming and the two soldiers shouted warnings before falling back towards Karinna, who was quickly disappearing inside a cloud of darkness.

Karina has used this trick before, to strong effect, in the battle against the Bugbears. The skeletons are a little more “programmed” though; when they can no longer see or hear their targets, they quickly revert to “stand by” behavior, all except the minotaur who is in a rage and goes wandering around inside the cloud of darkness, searching for the players. He finds Abenthy and takes a swing at him with a huge axe. Samuel jumps in front of the blow (using character card here) and miraculously survives, but is tossed backwards by the force of the swing, disappearing deeper in the darkness. With no hope of finding him, the players beat a haphazard retreat, making their way up the stairs towards the tomb entrance. The minotaur follows for a brief moment but after finding himself surrounded and taking some solid hits, he flees back to the bone room to recover.

Now there is a moment to breath. The players have been badly hurt. No one has fallen unconcious, but their spells are depleted (from healing, mostly) and their two companions do not seem to have made the escape with them.

“We cannot leave them in there,” Abenthy states.

Tyrion doesn’t share his dedication to companions. “They’ll be fine,” he says in his heavy accent. “Just let’s get some sleep and I’m sure they’ll find their way back to us.”

But Abenthy is implacable and begins making his way back towards the room. The others hurry to follow, Karina’s cloak of darkness wearing off and trailing wisps of ink-black fog behind her as they descend the stairs towards the bone room.

It breathed. There in the center of the room, crouched with the other skeletons crawling over it like ants on a hill, it breathed. The creature had grown two extra arms, fashioned from the bones of its fellows. And it looked up as they entered.

“Shit,” Karina said, nocking an arrow to her bow. But Abenthy was already striding forward, his arms flung wide, roaring a challenge that was answered in kind by a shriek from the minotaur. It rose, stamped its bony hooves, and then it charged.

Karina was not sure how it happened, but suddenly Samuel was back at Abenthy’s side, and Xaviee was charging out from behind a pillar as well. The blow that would have skewered Abenthy, armor and all, instead shattered Samuel’s spine. The horn that impaled him was wide as a man’s arm and long as a spear. Samuel was lifted into the air as the beast raised its head and shook from side to side until the body of the poor soldier was flung away. Then Xaviee was there, striking at the creature’s back, and Abenthy was moving now, too. His blade shimmering with dark flame, he struck at the creature’s four arms as they reached for him to pull him apart. Behind her a mournful song was being song. Tyrion had pulled free his lute and was singing, each word soudning like sobs, like childhood, like wine spilled in rain, like sadness. She was crying, whether from the song or from everything that had happened to her in her entire life, but she was also fighting, loosing arrow after arrow at the great skeletal beast. And finally, with a mournful sound like the wind escaping a dark cave, the skeletal minotaur collapsed and was still.

Abenthy ran to Samuel, preparing a spell to heal him, but the damage was too far gone. The man was broken beyond basic healing and was taking his last breaths.

“There is another creature,” he said, blood bubbling between his lips. “One formed of the many. It escaped, into a crack in the wall. It is waiting, watching...”

Nothing more did he say. His final warning hung over them and they all felt cold.

Next post takes our players deeper into the tomb, as they encounter deadly traps and deal with the Things Left Undone in the Halls of Bone.

#dnd 5e #tomb of haggemoth #playthrough #epic #Dungeons and Dragons #Journey Log #Wizards of the Coast #fantasy #RPG

3 notes · View notes