So I ended last session with my players escaping the Feathergale Spire on a trio of giant vultures in the middle of the night. They are trying to head back for Red Larch, but no one has a riding skill or any class that might give them a better sense of direction (Fighter, bard, sorc, rogue).
So, what checks would you have them make to see if
1. they can even control their mount (I figure animal handling)
2. How far they can go
3. If they are heading in the right direction
4. Other things I am not thinking of.
M_Aurelius wrote:
M_Aurelius wrote:
I'd figure how difficult it would be if they'd just walked back.
I would only make the flight back marginally more difficult than that.
Otherwise you end up penalising players when they do cool stuff - it's the old trap of penalising the player who wants to swing from the chandalier to attack, so the players give up and just go 'I attack' and then the GM complains about uncreative players (and makes me want to strangle them!)
Even making it marginally more difficult is probably a bad idea.
Use the benchmark - could they have done it in a dull way? How difficult would that have been? Then don't make it much more difficult than that.
Red Larch should be visible FROM feathergale spire. Especially at night because human settlements use torches to see.
On the area map, feathergale spire looks like its 30 miles away, but the write up puts it only a couple miles away from town.
At my table I used the Shallow Graves plot hook to get the players to head towards the spire. Once rumors of the missing delegation started spreading, the sheep herder came forward with the information about the fresh graves. The party mistakenly believed the dead bodies were from the delegation.
They decided to talk their way through rather than fight, so they got a bunch of easy xp, but no treasure. They killed the manticore, so thurl decided to try to use them against the other cults. He gave them a map with directions to Rivergard Keep, Sacred Stone Monastery, and the Reaver Ambush site. Additionally, he gave the party permission(and taxi service) down to the sighing valley, but made them swear to avoid the 'sacred site' in the gully. So far they have cleared out the whole place except for the other manticore and the aurokakras, and they know where the gully is but havent broken their promise yet. They arent very heroic, lol so im not sure if they'll go there or not.
I would handle it like this
- After leaving the aerie, the vultures start circling the canyon, following the same predictable flight path they have traveled dozens of times previously. For a time this takes the party away from the aerie, but after a while the vultures start to circle back toward the aerie, having completed their circuit of the valley. What do you do?
In many ways this would reflect back on how horses respond when they conduct regular trail rides. They get stubborn and unwilling to deviate from their well traveled path.
Kalani wrote:
Noon wrote:
abanathie wrote:
Noon wrote:
Noon wrote:
Red larch is only about 2.5 miles from Feathergale Spire. At a fly spd of 50 it should only take a few minutes to get to town.
Also there are several flying encounters on the random chart, including Air cultists, Perytons, and Air Elementals. But they should get back well before 'random' things start happening.
What rolls do you require for the players to ride the 'free' horses from part 1? The vultures are trained mounts so they should be the same difficulty to control.
Byakugan01 wrote:
Skip to a couple pages before the feathergale spire right up and read the Shallow Graves plot hook. It's one of the hooks to get the players there. It takes them only a couple miles due east out of town and they specifically have sight of both the spire(a couple miles north) and red larch and the Dessarin road.
Byakugan01 wrote:
I would operate on the assumption of 30 miles myself due to the map; however, it is up to the DM.
Noon wrote:
Making it 30 miles away is a perfectly reasonable house rule. When I looked at the map I assumed the same thing. But when I preped it i realized my mistake.
For the mounts, I just assumed that the exotic saddles that come with flying mounts include straps to help people stay in the saddle. Since my players were peaceful and very interested in the mounts, so i let them spend part of the 'waiting time' before the manticore hunt touring the spire and getting to take a test drive of the hippogriffs. This also gave them a chance to 'impress' Savra and earn a little more information.
Byakugan01 wrote:
You quoted me, then said the same thing as me, except with a double-negative. reasonable = not not reasonable
But there is no -if- Red Larch were 2-3 miles away. Red Larch IS 2-3 miles away. It is spelled out in black and white. The DM can move it if he wishes...but that would be a house rule. A DM could just as easily say it only takes 3 hours to get to Waterdeep from Red Larch...but many would have issues with that.
Is it something they overlooked during editing? Possibly. Would anyone looking at the 'free' version of PotA assume FGS is 20-30 miles away? Probably, because that plot hook isn't in the free version.
abanathie wrote:
TheBreen wrote:
No, the double negative was intentional. I was agreeing with you. Personally, I think it was an oversight by the publishers. They might not have considered the visual impact of having Red Larch that close to the spire.
@Noon I don't understand your answer. You'll need to spell it out more clearly for me. How am I shooting myself in the foot?
I think he means exactly what he is saying sarcastically, lol.
The players did something creative. IE presumeably snuck downstairs and stole some giant vultures rather than just leaving through the front door and and running away like they could have. What they did was -cooler- and thus should probably be funner than the normal option. Making up a bunch of skill checks to punish them probably won't contribute to the fun in any meaningful way, unless they are the kind of OCD players that like to meticulously track encumberance and love it when the DM makes them roll skill checks to tie their shoes. Such practices tend to inform the characters that their efforts to do cool things will just be punished...so their actions will turn into 'I move and attack...I move and attack...I cast damage spell...I move and attack...because they think you as the DM will just bog them down with checks if they do anything else. As the DM it is your job to generally make rulings that make the game more fun, so decide for yourself what you think your players will enjoy the most.
I've played under many DMs that enjoy describing every little detail, and making up skill rolls to interract with every mundane thing along the way. It can be fun, but it can also be very tedious, and can make adventures into one long string of annoying checks to notice everything from what race people are, to what kinds of flowers are growing, to what color of cloth someones cloak is....royal blue, not sky blue, or that dark blue that they made from beetle ichor back in the....etc...etc...That is one of the common DM mistakes, them overemphasizing things that they happen to know about or have some expertise in, that most people usually find utterly uninteresting, lol.
Byakugan01 wrote:
If you are worried about the party trying to use the mounts on a more permanent basis, the easiest fix is to just treat them like any other 'monster gear'. At the end of the session they go lame/escape. Just like any armor or weapons found would break or otherwise become useless.
My party wanted permanent flying mounts too. But I can't give them those in AL.
As I said before, I would probably treat them like trail horses - the vultures fly the same predictable route they always travel when scouting. This route will eventually circle back to FGS if the party does not give the signal to land at any point (and knowing the party, they lack said signal but might be able to guess it with an animal handling check).
The difference is an organic approach versus a ruled approach. I prefer to present dynamic circumstances that reinforce the rules of the campaign instead of just making a ruling when possible; however, this isn't really about my approach. The OP asked a question; I answered the question. Others seemed to take exception that the answers were inherent to bad DMing when there wasn't enough data to come to that conclusion.
In other words, it is possible for two disparate styles of play to be equally fun and right depending on circumstances. No one should be insinuating that another's style is just bad by describing it as a foot shot, especially when there is little attempt to see the other side of the coin. One can state their opinion on an approach on a matter without resorting to false characterization of an opposing approach.
TheBreen wrote:
abanathie wrote:
Fyi - we can't create our own random encounters. With that being said - there are several encounters on the table with aerial combatants (eg air cultists riding giant vultures)
Noon wrote:
Fair enough. I just wanted to clarify for those reading the thread.
If you have the PotA book, you'll notice the encounter "Shallow Graves" is also one of the options to be used elsewhere at a different time in the adventure. It's specifically called out as an option after the characters leave Beliard on the road south to follow the missing delegation's path.
In that particular use of this little scenario, the location of the graves is supposed to be completely on the other side of the Sumber Hills, yet it's still supposed to be within sight of Feathergale Spire.
It seems obvious that, consequentially, where this particular location takes place is a bit... well, I dunno where it's actually located. On the one hand, the book says one thing (replicated for the Encounters materials) and on the other hand it says another.
I'm confident that regardless of what the actual "writing" of the adventure says, it is useful in either/or both locations. I'm willing to bet the actual logistics of its location are less important than the spirit of its timing in the adventure as a whole.
abanathie wrote:
Noon wrote:
I would reccommend taking a look at the Manticore Hunt section of Feathergale Spire for some insight on the environmant and flying at night - it's the part of the quest if they do it 'diplomatically' rather than try to kill everything and then escape.
Every table I've run did it diplomatically - I decided to handwave the handle animal checks (of course, in that case the mounts were leant to the players by their owners. The animals might be less willing to cooperate if they were stolen)