Something that happens in New Orleans that you may not expect: daily thunderstorms. At least, that’s what happens in the summer. It’s advisable to carry an umbrella if you’re going to be out for any length of time in the afternoon, but luckily these storms tend to the short side, and can often just be waited out.

Currently, we’re on our way to the French Quarter, umbrella in tow, to find some dinner and shopping. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Nobody knows where it came from, or how long its vile presence has been felt in the world, but everyone in Bastion feels that presence in some way or another. Everyone in Bastion is affected to a greater or lesser extent by the Tyrant.

The Tyrant, when it came to the world, was an unexceptional beholder, somewhat weaker than many of its counterparts. It found the ruins of Ashurta’s Tomb beneath Bastion, though, and it saw an opportunity to gain power. Within Ashurta’s Tomb was a dimensional seal, a great magic artifact placed there by the Gatekeeper druids in order to prevent a fissure to the Far Realm from leaking into the world. That fissure, though weak, had drawn the Tyrant to this place with its siren call. When the Tyrant arrived, he saw that, if the seal could be weakened, the power that came through from its own home realm could be absorbed, converted into personal power. The Tyrant set to work.

It used ancient processes to grow crystals within the tomb, crystals linked to the Far Realm. These crystals amplified the power of the fissure, degrading the magic that held the dimensional seal together, weakening it, and allowing the fissure to grow. As the Far Realm’s sickening power leaked through, the Tyrant consumed it, growing to prodigious size and terrible power, becoming a thing to be feared.

Re-awakening the fissure had a few side effects, both of which the Tyrant used to its advantage. The first was that creatures already living around the tomb–insects, stirges, and the like–became warped abominations, fearsome monsters capable of killing quickly and brutally. They gained sentience enough to be commanded by the Tyrant, and it used these creatures as lackeys and guard dogs.

The second side effect was that a number of truly disturbed people were drawn to the fissure. Rather than destroy these individuals outright, the Tyrant offered them a bargain: stay, worship the Tyrant and keep it safe, and it would allow them to live in its domain, and give them the secrets needed to open more conduits to the Far Realm. They readily agreed, and became a cult devoted to the worship of the Tyrant, and to spreading the taint of the Far Realm.

The Tyrant, though formidable in its own right, has arranged its lair to make use of its abilities. The crystals, in addition to wearing away at the power of the dimensional seal, amplify the Tyrant’s power when they are targeted by one of its eye rays. In addition, the Tyrant has constructed four floating platforms within its lair. A creature standing on one of these platforms can give it a mental command to move, allowing it to engage the Tyrant in melee; this is a trap, however. The Tyrant often stays out of reach, firing eye rays down at its foes, waiting for its foes to use the platforms to come to it. Once a few of the platforms are full, it unleashes its telekinetic fury, knocking them off of the platforms and hurling the platforms, themselves, using them as weapons against those on the ground.

In my game, the Tyrant was two things. First, it served as the climactic fight of the dungeon, the fight that forced the PCs to use everything they had just to survive. Second, it served as a way to tie all of the Far Realm-related creatures in the dungeon together, and give them someone to serve.

We arrived in New Orleans late last night (or really, early this morning I guess) and immediately crashed at the hotel. During the day today we did a little bit of exploration of the area around us, ranging as far as Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, but not exploring any particular place that thoroughly. In no particular order, here are some impressions thus far.

New Orleans is hot
I’ve felt hot before, but somehow the heat in New Orleans seems more so. Florida is further south, and is likely hotter, but New Orleans has a saturating humidity that makes it feel more so. I’m not used to walking three city blocks and being drenched in sweat afterward, but it happens here, a lot. The sun, too, can beat down on you, and you’d be advised to wear sunscreen if you’re going to be outside for any length of time.

People here are (so far) really friendly
My first impression of the people here was with the hotel staff at the Hampton Inn, so it might be a little skewed. They were extremely friendly and helpful, though, and they’ve helped us figure out some of the things we plan (and don’t plan) to do while we’re here. Unlike other cities that I’ve been in, I haven’t noticed an overabundance of aggressive drivers. Drivers frequently yield to pedestrians, and I don’t think I’ve heard a single horn since arriving here.

New Orleans is flamboyant
There are a lot of tacky tourist shops on Canal Street (many of them also liquor stores), and these tourist shops sell wares that I wouldn’t expect to see in a tourist shop. Aprons with bare mock-breasts, hot sauce advertising itself as “The Hottest Fucking Hot Sauce”, and a wide variety of other provocative items line the store shelves. Whilst walking down the street, you might see something like this in the middle of the sidewalk.

Bourbon Street, too, is an exercise in contrasts, as upscale restaurants are situated across from dive bars and sex shops. It takes some getting used to.

The food is fantastic
I ate at Bourbon House on Bourbon Street tonight. We had gumbo, tuna, and oysters, and they were all excellent. I also had my first bourbon there, and was quite pleased with it. We ate lunch at another restaurant, the Palace Cafe, and my upscale version of pork and beans was fantastic.

I do feel that I need to mention the iced coffee that I got after dinner, at PJ’s Coffee. In fairness, the board at the counter did say that there were three types of iced coffee available, all of them flavored; I thought that those were in addition to just plain old iced coffee, though. Surely they wouldn’t neglect the standard fare, right? However, when I ordered iced coffee, I got hazelnut (for those who don’t know, my preferred type of coffee is unsweetened, unflavored, and black, as strong as possible). That much I can forgive; I was warned, after all. Even if it had been a non-flavored variety, though, the coffee was just not particularly good. This is a problem that I run into whenever I go to a local coffee shop. I want to support local businesses, but I find over and over that, if I want a good cup of coffee, I’m going to have to either make it myself or go to Starbucks. Luckily, you can’t throw a rock in New Orleans without hitting a Starbucks.

New Orleans remembers its history
From the historic ghost tours to the tours of plantation houses in the area, it’s clear that New Orleans is aware of its history and wants to capitalize on it. They are also aware of more recent history in a similar way; there are tours that allow you to see the devastation wrought by Katrina in 2005. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this last tour; on the one hand, raising awareness is a good idea. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like the idea of making money off of something so recently horrifying. It’s possible, I suppose, that some of that money goes toward helping victims of Katrina and rebuilding those same devastated areas. I hope so, at least.

Well, that’s it for now. More coming tomorrow, in all likelihood.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be doing some traveling. I’ll be heading down to New Orleans on Friday, staying there for a few days, and taking a road trip back to the homestead over the course of four days. The wife and I are really looking forward to it, but it does have some implications for this blog.

First, I may not be able to post as much game-related material during the trip. I have a few posts planned, and I will have a laptop (and my Android, from which I’m posting this very article), but I’m going to be doing a lot of sight-seeing.

Which brings me to the second thing. I’d like to blog this trip. Over the next two weeks, you’ll see some posts with the “Travel Log” prefix. If you’re only here for the gaming, feel free to ignore these posts. If you’d like to hear about my trip through the South, though, that’s what these posts will be there for.

Onward to adventure!

There’s a new session report up.

This session was, in my opinion, a whole lot of fun. The encounters really clicked, and forced the players to really work together and use all of their resources.

The first encounter was actually meant to be two encounters but, as it turned out, the players split the party and were forced to play through two encounters simultaneously. The trap was great, and the beholder gauth complimented it extremely well. The puzzle in the other room was also good, though I had to allow the players to make some Insight checks to realize that they already had a clue for solving it (the cryptic piece of leather). The fact that the piece of leather and the only person in the party who spoke Goblin was trapped in a different room made things more interesting. I did allow the players to make Insight checks on their turns to get to look at the translation of the runes and the leather clue for five seconds apiece, which helped.

In the end, I decided to end the encounter once the puzzle was solved rather than playing it out to its conclusion. If I had played it out, the puzzle would not have deactivated the trap or gotten rid of any of the monsters, the encounter would have lasted for an hour or two more (it had already been about an hour and a half), and I don’t think it would have been as satisfying for the players. I saw an opportunity to allow them to feel like they’d really accomplished something, so I went with the Rule of Cool and let it happen.

The fight with the Tyrant was really hard for them, and was pretty brutal, which is just as a solo encounter should be, in my opinion. A beholder is something to be feared, and I think my players were pretty worried toward the end. Kryagin had gotten reduced below 0 twice, Chance had been downed once, and Sredni had been downed once (by Kragyin, actually, under the command of the Tyrant and with a damage bonus that Sredni, himself, had granted to Kraygin. Seriously. You can’t make this shit up.), and the party was pretty low on healing. I think they were glad that they had been storing up healing potions for so long. At 7th level, healing potions become sort of a last resort because you don’t get as much bang for your healing surge as most other healing powers will give you. However, when you’ve blown your second wind, your warlord and paladin and multiclass bard are all out of healing abilities, and you’re close to 0, you can’t afford to be that picky and you start drinking those potions and getting the hit points that you can out of them.

I ended this encounter early, too, because the players had already done 300 points of damage to the Tyrant and I saw the writing on the wall. However, I’m a little dissatisfied with the way I ended it. My reasoning was that the beholder would retreat because staying would mean certain death even if the PCs were killed (it was taking ongoing 20 damage at this point, that it couldn’t save against, because of the dimensional seal), and because self preservation is important to intelligent creatures like beholders. Also, I like recurring villains. However, I think the Tyrant’s retreat at a time when the players were not certain in their victory seemed a little artificial, a little bit like a deus ex machina. In retrospect, I wish I had simply had the beholder die the next time it took damage. It would have been a less obvious early end to the encounter and probably would have been more satisfying to the players.

I do, however, think that the players are going to have to get used to villains that don’t fight to the death, and who flee to fight another day.

For those who are interested, I will be posting the stats for the Tyrant and some guidelines for the encounter within the next couple of days.

I played the final session of D&D Encounters (season one) last night. Overall, I think it was a good encounter, and I’ll probably be stealing some elements from it for future use.

The thing that this encounter really served to highlight was how important a factor terrain can be in a fight when the monsters and the environment are built to go together. The environment was a cave with a rushing, icy river running down the middle of it. There were two main ways across the river: jumping across (which would be difficult for those not trained in Athletics), and navigating a slippery bridge that required an Acrobatics check if you wanted to move more than two squares on your turn. Most of the monsters were on the far side of the river (and there were a few that seemed placed specifically to block the party from the BBEG), which meant that the river was always going to be a factor that you had to consider.

What made it even more interesting was that more than one of the creatures had abilities that capitalized on the environment in some way or another. In fact, all of them did. The choker and the spider could both crawl around on the ceiling, dropping on unsuspecting PCs and avoiding the river entirely. The archers were placed well, far away and with multiple obstacles between them and the PCs, forcing the PCs to endure their attacks for a while before they could close the gap. The BBEG had multiple abilities that pushed and pulled, and he used them to knock us all into the water as frequently as he possibly could.

What this really reminded me of is that, when you create an interesting environment, you want to select your monsters carefully to make sure they fight well in that environment. Similarly, if you have a bunch of monsters with similar abilities, the right environmental effect can make those abilities a lot more effective in combat. Pushes and pulls on their own are more a nuisance than a threat, but as soon as damaging terrain enters the equation–particularly if said damaging terrain is difficult to navigate around in the first place–those pushes and pulls become a true threat.

I feel that creating encounters such that your monsters and your environment harmonize without being too difficult or annoying is a subtle art, and one I have yet to master. I think I occasionally pull off some good combinations, but I think I have a lot to learn about how best to implement this kind of combat.

I just read a post on Mike’s D&D Blog in which Mike asks for advice on how to remember all of the NPCs in the game that he’s playing in. I think it’s admirable that he’s seeking advice on how to be a better player, and as a DM, I know it can be irksome when my players can’t keep the NPCs straight. This is why I, whenever possible, try to use a technique that Paul Tevis refers to as “Conservation of NPCs”.

The idea is simple. Whenever you’re in need of an NPC to fill a particular role in your adventure or campaign, look at the roster of NPCs that you’ve already introduced. If someone in that roster can potentially fill this new role without breaking verisimilitude, do it. See, if you give your players more opportunities to interact with an NPC, they’re going to develop stronger feelings toward that NPC. If it’s an ally, they’ll grow more attached. If it’s a villain, they’ll start to hate him more. If you introduce a new NPC every time you need an NPC for a particular role, most of your NPCs are going to be throw-aways, and the players won’t care that much about them.

There are some definite benefits to doing things this way. First of all, with fewer important NPCs running around, it’s going to be a lot easier for your players to keep track of them and remember who’s who. Second, if your players get attached to a particular merchant or guard or airship captain, they’re going to respond more quickly and more intensely when he or she is put in danger. Similarly, recurring villains are much more satisfying to defeat than one-shot villains are, and as such the players are much more likely to go to great lengths to bring them down.

In Underdark dwarven society, two primary warrior castes exist: the warmains and the shieldmains. Warmains are trained for aggressive combat, pushing into enemy lines, and participating in full-scale wars. The much more common shieldmains are the defenders of dwarven settlements, trained to patrol, eliminate threats, and protect their fellows. Frederick was raised in the warrior caste, and chose the path of the shieldmain in order to both remain close to to his home settlement of Kharazh and to help combat the constant threat of troglodytes and kua-toa.

When Frederick was thirty, only a few years out of his apprenticeship, Kharazh was attacked by a force of drow in quantities rarely seen in the shallows. The drow made quick work of most of the patrolling shieldmains and either killed or enslaved the bulk of the population of Kharazh. Frederick survived because he was patrolling on the opposite side of the town from the attack, and was unable to make it home to defend Kharazh in time; by the time he arrived at the walls, the battle was already over.

Frederick is no expert tracker, and the drow had covered their tracks well. Only a few shieldmains and warmains remained after the battle, as well as a handful of citizens. Rather than hunt the drow down and fight them in their city, possibly losing the rest of the population in the process, Frederick led the remaining dwarves to the surface dwarven city of Hammerfast. Once he was sure they were safe, he left them.

Frederick blames himself for what happened, and longs for vengeance against the drow, whom he hates more than anything now. He knows that he is not strong enough to fight them, so he seeks out those who are, in the hopes of gaining allies in his quest.

Frederick is accustomed to protecting people, but doesn’t trust his own skills. Because of this, it will be some time before he has the confidence to lead; as such, he makes an excellent follower for the PCs (see the ally card above). Frederick can also be a good source of quests, as he will likely try to convince the PCs to go to the Underdark and confront the drow, hopefully saving his people int he process.

I’m using very few house rules in my current game (I don’t consider custom monsters to be house rules), and I thought I’d share them. I’ve talked about a few of them already, but I’ll give you some updates.

Renown Points
I’ve already explained my rationale for using Renown Points, and I like the way it worked in the last session. I monkeyed with some of the values and achievements so that rarer achievements are worth more, and so that they work a little more as intended. Here’s my new score card.

Ally Cards
I shamelessly stole this idea from someone else. I’m modifying it a little to suit my tastes. Here’s how they work in my game.

Actions
Allies do not have their own actions; each ally is attached to one of the players and is under his/her control. Whenever a PC takes a move action, that player’s attached ally can also do so. The PC can spend a minor action to activate one of the ally’s encounter or daily abilities. Allies do not make opportunity attacks or take any other actions on their own. Some allies have passive abilities; these do not require an action to take effect. When an ally uses an encounter or daily ability, no roll is required; however, an ally cannot deal damage automatically. Instead, any ally power that deals damage must do so as a result of a PC’s roll, effectively granting bonus damage to a PC’s attack.

Damage and Healing
Allies do not have hit points; instead, they have hit boxes. When an ally takes damage from any source, mark off a hit box. Like minions, allies do not take damage from a miss, but can take automatic damage from an aura or other effect. When all hit boxes are marked off, the ally is unconscious. If an unconscious ally takes damage, that ally dies. Allies do not make death saving throws while they are unconscious; they are automatically stable.

Whenever an ally benefits from a healing ability that allows that ally to spend a healing surge or heal as if a healing surge had been spent, that ally erases one marked off hit box. Allies do not, however, have healing surges. During a short rest, an ally can erase all marked off hit boxes.

Resistances and vulnerabilities do not apply to allies.

Sample Ally Cards

Healbots
One of my players plays a warlord, and is the only leader in the party. The paladin and warlock can both do some healing, but not much, and both have access to healing on a daily basis rather than an encounter basis. The warlord is often unavailable, and until recently I simply had another player run his character. That, however, slowed things down and was, in general, complicated and not as effective as it could be. I also tried creating a monster version of the warlord, Sredni, so that he’d be easier to run. This, too, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then, I came across this post, which I’m going to shamelessly steal from (again). I’m modifying the healbot rules a little to give Sredni a little bit more autonomy, and so that the players still benefit from his passive abilities (warlords have awesome passive abilities). I’m also going to continue to have a player run him, but now there will be significantly less for that player to have to keep track of. I give you Sredni Vashtar, healbot:

A new session report is up. It was a great session, during which I debuted a few new mechanics that I’ve talked about on this blog in the past.

I tried out the Renown Point system, and my players really seemed to like it. It didn’t overcomplicate things, and it’s always nice to be rewarded. I do think I need to adjust some of the reward values and tweak a few of the Renown achievements.

The second mechanic that I tried out was a system for allied characters, which was a big hit. The party now has group of nine NPCs (one of them a dire wolf) following them around and crewing their new airship, which I think they really like. They’ve gotten somewhat attached to a few of the NPCs, and I think they like having an entourage.