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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The Abandoned Village
by zencorners
During a journey across the Eldeen, the party encounters what looks like an abandoned village. Recently, the village has seen a number of goblins take up residence as a forward base for the upcoming invasion to the south. The goblins have a regular patrol around their common area and look to scare, rather than kill any wayward travelers who happen by. The patrol will usually consist of a goblin delver and two gnoll minions. If they are able to surprise the party, the scouts will go back to the village and organize an ambush in larger numbers rather than attack the party that is obviously more powerful than the scouting party. The remains of an even older village lies to the north of the abandoned village, and the goblins have taken to moving their refuse here. They use this area for cover during any assault. The hedge surrounding the village offers the goblins only two entrances to defend and a great advantage for the gnoll minion, who prefer to hold the party at range for as long as possible.
The village is protected by a group of 3 goblin delvers, 6 gnoll minions and an advanced hobgoblin warcaster. This works out to a 5th level encounter at 1,025 experience points.
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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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Chaos Scar Encounter #1
And So It Begins...
Reading through the adventure Sunday morning, and I started jotting down how I wanted to tone up the first encounter in the series. The original encounter is a straight forward 1st level encounter with an XP budget of 526 points. My players I am running for currently have a party of five fifth level adventurers. So based on this I am adding four levels to the encounter and bring my XP budget up to at least 1,000 points.
In reading through the tactics and looking at the maps, I am considering several options for bringing the encounter level up, while also making the monsters a bit more "non-standard". In the original encounter the players are confronted with an even mix of Bullywug Croakers, Muckers and Twitchers. I was interested in using the same composition, but adding a bit extra to them. In my first iteration, I will be throwing the party against a 5th level encounter at 1,050 XP and up against 3 Bullywug Croakers, 2 Bullywug Muckers and 2 Bullywug Twitchers. In my version of the encounter, I am dropping one each of the Muckers and Twitchers, but I've increased their levels and also added an some powers.
The extra powers are to make the encounter a bit more interesting for the players, and with the additional powers, I've bumped up the base XP per Mucker and Twitcher by an extra 50 XP each. I am considering dropping the additional powers on the Twitchers and Muckers, lowering the XP value by the same 50 points each and then possibly adding several more Croakers or an additional Twitcher to the encounter. So there is my brainstorm on the first encounter. I am putting this out to provide some samples to the community for some feedback. Attached below is a zip file with the Monster write-ups. Hope you enjoy them!
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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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Eberron Player’s Guide
Having recently acquired a copy of the Eberron Player's Guide, I've set about to see what I can incorporate into my Home Game. Going through the book, there is a lot of interesting things to take in. One thing that was quite noticeable (and somewhat of a disappointment) was the book's overall size. Weighing in at 160 pages, the EPG is one of the thinner 4th Edition books released. The book's layout and content though makes up for the lack of girth.0
The book looks quite interesting as far as content, especially as the majority of the book deals with information that is completely relevant to the Players and their Characters. The book does a very good job of incorporating the newer 4th Edition components in to the original 3rd Edition setting. I was quite pleased with the incorporation of the previous story elements from Eberron and how they were adapted in to the 4th Edition.
Some of the more enjoyable points of interest is the inclusion of the the 4th Edition Races. The EPG lays out information for the inclusion of the races from both the Player's Handbook 2 (PHB2), the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide (FRPG) and the Dragon articles. The setting history relies heavily on the goblinoid races, so the major focus from the EPG is on the monsterous races published in the Dragon magazine.
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The Town of Greenheart
The party managed to narrowly escape the ambush set upon them by the gnolls in the southern woods of the Eldeen. The event left them very nervous and their progress through the woods has been cautious and slow paced to say the least. As the party traverses the wilds and come closer to civilization in the ancient woods of the Eldeen, the party sees more and more prevalent signs of human and demihuman activity.
They have made their way to Greenheart, capital of the Eldeen Reaches. Here they hope to find a guide that knows the ancient Eldeen woods and can assist them in their travels in search of the second piece of the ancient Cauldron of Ongur.
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