Goodman Games

SPOILERS obviously.

I'm not sure of the exact date, but round about now is the 1st birthday of the Castle Whiterock campaign I run (using the Pathfinder beta rules) and I thought it should be marked in some way...

In the group at the moment:
Marcus Tiberius, Human LG Paladin 10 of Justicia
Timmykins, Human CG Barbarian 11
Thanatos, Half-Elf N Cleric of Madrah 10
Wrath Rodgens, Dwarf LN Monk 2 / Rogue 8 (originally human, reincarnated falling prey to the Phantasmal Killer trap in the Clockwork Academy)
Rikki Rodgens, Gnome LN Monk 10 (originally human, reincarnated after being squashed by Drugila)

On hiatus:
Knightshade, Human CN Rogue 10 (she's resting in the Fane of Justicia and hanging out with Galdiera as the player has had to quit due to RL issues)

Obituaries:
Dadlen Longlimbs, Gnome Sorceror (abberrant bloodiline) 3
Squashed by Drugila.

Lord Edward McGinty-Armstrong IX, Half Orc Sorceror 6 / Barbarian 1
Critted by Forst. An ill-advised attempt to make a combat Sorceror, but such a fun character DM for. He believed Castle Whiterock was his ancestral property and was out to collect 'rent' from the inhabitants.

Kevin Rudd, Human Ranger 9. Slain by the lobster / spider things on Level 7 whose name escapes me.

The group has just cleared out the bottom floor of Level 10, having bypassed most of Level 9 by going more or less straight down the river. They found pretty much all the sublevels up to level 7, though they never got into the Lich's library and seem to have forgotten about that, and have only done the Pyramid so far in the immense cavern. I'm particularly impressed with the design of Delver encounter and the way it rewards problem-solving, as the party can bribe him to go away, but if they fight it will probably end up costing them a lot more in dissolved equipment (my group lost a heavy flail +3 and a monk's belt...).
They've been steamrollering through this level even with the recommendations for making it harder, but I think they'll have a tougher time when they get to Gora-Khan (especially with Timmykins having such a feeble Will save...)

Ah man, reading the list of the dead was a trip.
"Critted by Forst"...huzzah! The redcap took someone with him!

Happy Birthday, Whiterock campaign!

Happy B-day to your CW game as well. The list of the dead (and how they got there) was priceless!

I'm glad to hear the Delver encounter went well. I enjoyed designing without it having it be just another fight like most of the module.

Any more "Bring out your dead" lists from CW out there? The authors would enjoy it if you shared them!

Hmm, the actual date may be mid-July rather than late June.

Anyway, here's a question: in what book would I find the Lore Master and Seer feats that Geviss Ereluc has?

Lore Master and Seer are both from the Aereth boxed set.
They are a two-feat chain that reduces the spell level adjustment of metamagic feats by one each.

So Geviss, with both feats, could cast a Quickened (normally +4) lightning bolt (3rd level spell) as a 5th level spell (instead of a 7th level spell, as normal).

Thanks, will have to dig out that pdf.

One more for the list of obituaries:

Wrath, as above.
Took one look at the advanced bodak and dropped dead.

Oh and one more:
Timmykins, as above.
Slain by the death gaze of the bodak that Wrath turned into.

Oh, ouch!

No character deaths for months, and then 3 in 3 weeks. What's going on?

Thanatos, Half-elf Cleric of Madrah 11.
Slain by Gora-Khan (the new guardian of area 10-1, the players turfed him out of Koborth's tomb). Only with the longsword unfortunately.

The latest victim:

Knightshade, CN Human Rogue 11.
Slain by Ilyanassa's wail of the banshee.

Did I mention that Dadlen, Edward, Kevin, and Knightshade were all played by the same person? He's onto his 5th character now (Brought in Bristle, a half-orc druid), everyone else is still on their 1st (though most have died and been brought back once).

Man, that guy needs some kind of recognition for sticking to the game after losing so many heroes.
Glad to hear you guys are still fighting the good fight!

Ditto what he said. Great fortitude by you and the players!


Ouch. Yeah, she was a nasty one...!

RIP Timmykins, CG human Barbarian 12.
The party were pursuing a gaseous form Gora-Khan by using wind walk to try and track the vampire back to his coffin, as he's been plaguing them for some time now. Unfortunately the undead hobgoblin led them through the shooting gallery and the Mercenary Enchanter hit a gaseous Timmykins with a hold monster then summoned up a couple of fiendish dire apes to tear him to shreds (he is the party's biggest damage dealer, but word has spread around Narborg about his lack of willpower).
He did manage to make his save and throw off the hold spell, but by that time he was very weak and one of the apes finished him off.

Sounds like his player is bringing in a new character, so it's goodbye to one of the originals of this campaign.

Also here's a near-death experience one of my players had that I thought I'd share.
Thanatos the Cleric and Rikki the monk are facing off against the Mercenary Enchanter (who has been souped up a little). He's hit them with a lightning bolt, which did full damage to Thanatos but nothing to Rikki (darn Improved Evasion).
The duergar casts a Dominate spell on Rikki. This has a pretty poor chance of success, as the monk has an excellent Will save, +16 against mind-control effects against DC21, but it's not like the Enchanter knows that.
Rikki rolls a 3.
The duergar orders him to 'Kill the Priest'. Thanatos' player is starting to look worried. Rikki's player makes his second save - a 4! No-one can believe it, it looks like we're headed for one dead cleric and Rikki is just about to roll for the first attack of his flurry...
When I realize that Rikki gets a +2 on the second save as he has been commanded to do something against his nature, just putting him over. The monk 5ft steps to a nearby Duergar merc and takes him down. Thanatos' player keeps track of the hit and damage rolls and announces that he would have been dead in one round.
If I hadn't remembered the bonus, the outcome would have been less fair, but made for a much better story...

Hi, I've been running CW for our C&C campaign for a few months now. This is the most successful party we've run through it yet.
We tried before and TPK'd on the first floor (using D&D3.5) and had another wipeout on the fourth floor (using Pathfinder Beta). I was worried that a group playing C&C would have a harder time of it, but it turns out the first two times were just ill fated.
Our party members:
Brew, Drawf Barbarian, level 6
Kyla, Elf Knight, level 6
Alyssa, Elf Wizard, level 5
Ladis, Human Palladin, level 5
Auxillary members include:
Mik, Human Ranger, level 5
Vitae, Human Cleric, level 5
Teran, Dwarf Assassin, level 6
and Whiskers, Gnome Druid, level 6
The auxillary members usually play. But not every time we have game day. the Main members have not missed a session yet.
We have just cleared level 6, and on the threshold of 6a last night. It was awesome. Gunrolz kept "getting away" and coming back at the worst times. Like, when the party was fighting Sossank, or later he came back and almost kidnapped the team's wizardess as she stood back from while everyone else that was engaged in melee with about 5 children of Bobugbubilz. The Dwarf assassin took Gunrolz out finally with a nat 20 on a Death Attack (followed by Gunrolz rolling a '3' on his save).

That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm glad you used Gunrolz as a nagging bad guy. Did this group encounter Grime, the other mephit?

RIP:
Bristle, Half-orc Druid 11
Talladay Arrowmelt, Rogue 1 / Fighter 6 / Duelist 6 (NPC)
Stirge swarms are nasty.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to use the Pack of the Night-Wolf.
My first plan was to have them ambush the party outside of the Fane of Justicia when they were low on spells and resources, with a veil spell from Johan making them all look like Gora-Khan (who they really, really hate and are obssessed with finding his coffin, he's been plaguing them for months, in both game-time and real-time). They would be struggling to figure out which was the real vampire when in fact none of them were. However after the stirge swarm disaster the group ended up just using word of recall to go straight inside and missed the Pack altogether.
In my game the heroes were able to resurrect Galdeira. I didn't really want an NPC in the party full-time though, so I decided that she wouldn't be ready to go back to adventuring until the heroes were able to recover her sword Damarel (which they have shown no interest in doing so far) as a way of putting off deciding what to do with her. She's been hanging out in the Fane and casting the odd lesser restoration when needed.
The PCs are heading back to Cillamar and could be there for a while as they'll probably get some items crafted, etc.
While they are away, the Pack (who have set up a temporary base in area 7-6) launches a raid (via teleport) on the Fane and captures Galdeira, leaving Rolad in her place. They will then probably launch an attack on the party from inside the Fane, when they are weakened and depleted.

This plan appeals to me because they've been taking Galdeira for granted a bit and it uses that against them.
Also, unless they spot the deception and rescue Galdeira quicksmart, I figure that the Pack will be holding her captive and brainwashing her, until she falls victim to Stockholm syndrome and ends up becoming a Blackguard.
The guy in my group who plays the paladin doesn't really get into the roleplaying side of things much, I'm hoping this will give him something meaty to work with ("I could have stopped her from falling...")
Oh and as an extra bit of mischief, the Pack have convinced Gora-Khan to give up the headband of wisdom and charisma and the boots of striding and springing that he looted off Thanatos' corpse. They realize, you see, that that is how the party has been able to track Gora-Khan outside of Narborg with locate object. So, they give the headband and boots to Roakgroth as a present.

That's delicious what you're doing with the Pack. All those characters were based off buddies of mine and their SCA personas...they'll love the stories.

Too bad about poor Talladay, though. Poor little halfling...

Yeah, stirge swarms are nasty. I wrote that level, but Mr. Pommier gets credit for designing the swarms. If I recall, he gave me a few options to pick from. Looks like I chose wisely!

This is awesome! I enjoy the fact that the NPCs are evolving as the PCs evolve, and the encounters reflect changes from the PCs tactics.

Keep the story going. I can't wait to hear how they deal with the lower levels.

Funny you should say that, my group didn't really bond with him, and weren't particularly sad when he died. Plus, if he hadn't been around, they would have been able to just use word of recall to go from Koborth's Tomb to the Fane of Justicia, the stirge swarms would have been avoided, and young Brendan wouldn't be rolling up his sixth character of the campaign!

So here's what the group consists of as at the end of the latest session:

Thanatos, N male half-elf cleric 13
Marcus Tiberius, LG male human paladin 13
Rikki Rodgens, LN male gnome monk 13 (originally human, reincarnated)
Arianan, NG female human fighter 7 / duelist 5
Volkane, CG male human sorceror 5 / gold dragon disciple 7

They had the big face-off with Galdeira and the Pack of the Night-Wolf this session. They were pretty surprised when Galdeira turned on them, and it was a good fight that went on for most of the evening, they did slay all the bad guys though. I was thinking of having them teleport out to fight another day but once Korlav and Sabin went down I figured the others would fight to the end, just to keep it simple. When only Johan was left I was going to have him use word of recall, but they finished him off before I could.

So they'll be going back to Narborg next session. They spent several months back in Cillarmar crafting items etc, so I figure that some of level 11 (which they had pretty much cleared out) will be restocked. There'll be a duergar druid in charge of the shooting gallery and a fiendish young adult blue dragon will be teaming up with Gora-Khan (now a 13th level ranger) to guard the walkway.

Gee, how careless are my group?
They just leave the bodies of the Pack of the Night Wolf lying around in the Fane, where anyone could teleport in, retrieve them, and (eventually) raise them...