The Rise of the Entourage, or How to use Companion Characters
In the evolution of my Eberron game, I've found a practical use for Companion Characters as outlined in the DMG2. My current group numbers two steadfast players and their combination of characters. Currently they are playing two and three Player Characters each. This gets a bit cumbersome, both in roleplaying and combat. I am working on a couple of interesting and enticing Companion Characters to help "level" the playing field. While I know that out of the box, this isn't going to go down well with the players, I am going to illustrate how much faster combat and roleplaying is when limited down to a single "Player Character" and a Companion Character. I've been working on several companions that would fit in with the current storyline, and will be attaching them here in the coming week. First up though, is Captain Corgin Tarq. The Captain is a veteran of the Last War and also a "skyship captain". I'm trying to draw the players more in to the "pulp" style of play so I'm bringing back some of my favorite elements of the original setting. I will be working with them on Action Points and also looking to incorporate more "action-based" mechanics in to the Fourth Edition setting.
In the first series of Companion Characters, I'm providing the players in my group with a small airship, the Lady Belle, and her crew. The party of two players can then take up to three companion characters from the crew. The first batch, below, focuses on the Captain and his crew. I will be posting some more information later on as far as the ship and it's layout.
You can find the initial set of Companion Characters here for download.
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High Wizard’s Tower & Dungeon
by zencorners
This is the High Wizard's Tower and Dungeon that I'm using in my current game session. The Dungeon has been set upon by an Aurum Concordian that is in search of the second piece of the Cauldron of Ongurr. The Concordian has arrived before the party and has begun his search for the second piece. While searching he has sent out his security forces to secure the lower levels of the High Wizard's Tower.
The Aurum Concordian has brought together a small battalion of hobgoblins and bugbears to protect him in his search for the Cauldron of Ongurr. He is currently downstairs in the main room examining the altar. He hopes to uncover the secret mechanism to unlock the treasure room where the second piece of the Cauldron of Ongurr has been hidden away. His forces are split in to four groups in order to better deter the adventurers. He has even brought on a hobgoblin warcaster to guarantee him success in his endeavors. The remaining bulk of his security detail are stationed to the south and east of the dining hall. Here, two groups of hobgoblins and the bugbears are stationed to prevent the adventurers from continuing after the Concordian.
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Dawn of a new Adventure
Having just had my players achieve 5th level, I am re-examining their current series of adventures and where I am taking them with the plot that I've originally developed. On the one hand, I've realized that I am stringing out this plot more than I should have; and then considering some of the plot hooks I've realized I'm not doing enough to move the plot forward.
Having recently picked up the "Dungeon Master's Guide 2" and reading through some of the artifacts presented, I realized that I need to take a new approach with the artifact they are searching for, the Cauldron of Ongurr. In the DMG2, WotC presents the 4th Edition version of the "Rod of Seven Parts". My original plot for the current campaign deals with an ancient artifact that was split into seven parts in times past and ancient... For those that follow Eberron, this was during the Age of Monsters and the Daelkyr Wars, some 10,000 years before the current age.
As a DM, I always wanted my artifact to have special powers. Looking at the "Rod of Seven Parts", I see something that falls along the lines of what I was looking for in my original design notes for the Cauldron. I only need to change a couple of design elements, and of course the background story of the artifact.
I'm working on the next several series of encounters and am seriously considering to continue challenge the group with ranged combat. I've run several encounters using a simple group of gnoll minions (using a 20hp "house rule" for these minions), and several higher powered brutes and solos to make a very engaging encounter for the party. The next couple of encounters will probably focus around a similar set of base creatures, only because it fits in with my storyline.
Next up in my encounters is uncovering the artifact, a new "side quest" for the portion of the party that split off and a new set of adventurers. As the party split up to accomodate a couple of new PCs (see my post on the D&D Avengers earlier this year for more) I will begin them at 4th level versus the current party's 5th level. I clearly stated to the players this is more so that I can run them through "Seekers of the Ashen Crown" as the current party will more than likely attain 6th level before the end of their current story arc.
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Adventure Conversion Rules to Go By
While going through the adventures for the Chaos Star series you'll see me fall back on these six guidelines for my adaption of the adventure:
1. Level up the encounters: Add between +3 or +8 levels to each encounter. Challenge for a 5th level party.
2. Modify the monsters to keep in the theme of "Cthulhu": Aberrations with psychic powers or similar.
3. Level up the treasure parcels: 5th level Parcels less the ones already given out. Select items useful for the whole party.
4. Publish the new monsters for consumption. Creative Commons license for the items in a PDF on the site.
5. Give the encounters a similar feel for the players. Provide them with a "unified" foe.
6. Diversify content: How am I using Arcane Powers? How did I use Open Grave? Additional content brought in from DDI?
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The Chaos Scar in Eberron
Backstory to My Home Game
I recently was reviewing the D&D Insider site and flipping through the available content in Dungeon magazine. I am fishing around for some new and interesting pieces to add to my current Eberron campaign. To offer some background on my current game, the party is searching for a mythic artifact known as the "Cauldron of Ongurr". This artifact was used during the Age of Monsters to fortify a bridge between Eberron and Xoriat, the Plane of Madness. The Cauldron was held by the last great Goblin Emperor, Ongurr. The Cauldron and it's misuse lead to several of the rifts in the Goblin Empire and helped bring about the Goblin Civil War.
At the end of the Civil War, the Cauldron was captured by the Gatekeepers and allies within the imperial court; chief ally amongst the imperial court was Ongurr's vizier and chief wizard. He captured the Cauldron and provided it to Taichar, head of the Gatekeepers at the time. Tiachar, through some great magic was able to shatter the artifact in to seven pieces. He then sent these pieces out across the face of Khorvaire in order to protect them from being brought together again and bring Xoriat back into alignment with Eberron.
The machinations of the daelkyr are such that, only recently, a lead Provost at Morgraive University was approached about mounting an expidition to search for several pre-Galifarian artifacts. An anonymous benefactor contacted Provost Phineaus Nolan of the pre-Galifarian Studies department and through a proxy was able to convince the Provost to organize and mount the expidition. The party was the second group that was sent in search of the first piece of the Cauldron of Ongurr. They successfully located and retrieved the piece, but were also alerted to the fact that the Provost's mysterious benefactor was not the most upright of sponsors.
How the Chaos Scar Fits Eberron
With this in mind, the Chaos Scar material fits right in line with some of the story ideas that I have been incorporating in to my existing campaign. With the party currently located along the border between the Eldeen Reaches and the Shadow Marches, the possibilities of a dark meteor falling from space offered some great potential. Looking through the first adventure, I already know I am going to need to adjust several things.
Firstly, my current party is made up of 5th level characters. I will need to tweak all encounters up to their level. Second, I need to change the adventure hook. The party is currently traveling with the Provost, so I can add that there could be additional information or items of importance to be gathered at the site. The Provost traveling with the party really offers me the ability to generate plot hooks on the fly as needed. And finally, I will need to change around some of the treasure parcels. Thankfully the adventure provides some great information right up front on where and what parcels are currently in the base adventure, so I can easily pluck these out and incorporate some new parcels.
I will be updating the blog shortly with some of the updates and enhancements. Keep your fingers crossed. I should have some monsters posted in the next week or two, just moving house so it all depends on how much moving gets accomplished.
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Dungeon Delve
Just ran my most current installment of the "Shadows Over Khorvaire", and being hard pressed for time, I grabbed a complete "encounter" from the recently published "Dungeon Delve" as a filler for my usually planned out game encounters. I have to say, I was a bit hesitant at first, but the players genuinely enjoyed the encounters and the feel of the encounters.
The format for each chapter in the book consists of a series of encounters for a given level. In my case, I used the "Orken Stronghold" from the book. Prep time for the session was easy, with stats and tactics provided for each encounter. I had already worked on a treasure allotment for the party, so I simply replaced the included treasure with my "parcels". One of the great things that dawned on me over the course of play is how badly I had been pacing combat and encounters. This book was a real eye-opener for how to properly scale out a series of adventures. I'm going back to the drawing board with my adventures and encounters and plotting them out using this book as a guideline.
There are some seriously wicked encounters in the book, and even the offer for how to expand them out in to full-blown "adventures" rather than just a packaged, yet random encounter. I'm genuinely pleased with this and would recommend it greatly to the time-pressed GM out there.
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Game Aids
Recently installed a copy of Adobe's Acrobat 9. This product has some pretty nifty functions for creating and combining PDF files. Attached, you can find the game aid that I'm distributing to my players. It includes the Character Sheets, Treasure Inventory and an overview of where they currently are on the continent of Khorvaire. You can download and view the file from the link below.
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House Rules
Wanted to introduce a couple of things in to the next game to help add flavor to the game. I have a deck of barajas españolas that I want to bring in to use in the game. I wanted to introduce some new house rules in to the game this weekend.
At the beginning of each session, each character will draw two cards from the deck. Each card has an effect as listed in the table below. Just trying to flesh these out. If we see that things are too overpowered, we can get rid of them as you like.
In addition to this, the DM will get to randomly draw a number of poker chips equal to the cards drawn. The poker chips will be taken from a group of white, red and blue chips. There will be 25 white, 10 red, and 5 blue.
- The White chips can be used on a one-to-one basis to give any non-minion monster a Healing Surge equal to 25% of their base HP, or a +2 to any attack roll or saving throw; must commit before rolling. Also I can combine three White chips to gain the effects of a Red chip, or I can combine 5 white chips to gain the effects of a Blue chip.
- The Red chips can be used on a one-to-one basis to give any non-minion monster a Healing Surge equal to 30% of their base HP, or a +2 to any attack roll or saving throw, including after the roll is made. Also I can combine three Red chips to gain the effects of a Blue chip, or I can sell down a Red chip for two White chips.
- The Blue chips can be used on a one-to-one basis to give any non-minion monster a Healing Surge equal to 40% of their base HP, or a +5 to any attack roll or saving throw; must commit befor rolling. Also I can sell down a Blue chip for two Red chips or four White chips.
Card powers taken from Gnome Stew, and used without permission.
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Preperations for Game Day
Just a quick note regarding my preparations for my upcoming Game Day. I've been using OneNote more and more to organize my games and it's really working out. Going to also be incorporating some "brainstorming" for jotting notes using MPTW (a quick and easy wiki tool) and Dropbox to keep it in sync between my home and work machines. This helps LOADS as I can keep both my OneNote binder and my ideas all in one place without having to rely on "SneakerNet v2.0" a.k.a. my thumb drive.
Also for those interested, a couple of new additions will be posted to the Maps section on Sunday (after the game).
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Arcane Power
Just received a copy of the book. Reading through bits and pieces now and really looking forward to incorporating things in to the 4th Edition Game. The book has so far been very interesting, and I look forward to incorporating the Familiar rules into play with the group. My players have a wizard and a warlock in the party, and I'm certain that I can find use for the material presented for both of them.
The most interesting rule set presented in the book may be those for the warlock. I say this as I want to incorporate a more "mystical" tone to the setting and providing both the divine and arcane players with a grander sense of the setting and history available for them to draw upon. So far the players have really grasped the campaign setting's history, but I've had a much harder time getting them to grab hold of the "fantastic" undertones of the setting. I've been looking to incorporate a more "Cthulhu-esque" tone to the setting and bring in elements of dark fantasy and horror in for them. I will be formulating a couple of things over the next week or so to present to the players and incorporate in to the next game sessions.
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- *New post* The Rise of the Entourage, or How to use Companion Characters - http://tinyurl.com/ylmo99l
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