Over the past few months ive been bugging you all with questions relating to Karrnath, Lake Dark, Emerald Claw etc well finally over the last month its all come together and i thought id share some "notes" of the first few sessions.
Lets start with the basics firstly were using 4ed for the first time as well so its new to everyone.
Secondly the characters are a specialist skirmisher unit from the War returning home to Karrnath:-
1) Dirk Pommer a human Cleric of the Sovereign Host - a good honest man who was the teams medic during the war.
2) Fabian Zernin a Razorclaw shifter Ranger who is the teams scout
3) Freja Oakwood an eladrin Swordmage whose natural abilities e.g. Fey Step proved most useful during the war
4) Finally we have Karg Reiner an Aranel elf wizard with perhaps a few too many dark tendencies e.g. seeks to learn necromantic magic from the Karrns and has long sinced turned his back on the teachings of his own people.
All in all in interesting mix of characters with a good solid background relating to the war and their relationship - off to a good start !
The First Session
The first session was all about learning the new combat rules and getting a feel for the characters.
Arriving at a small lake side "way station" the group are planning to take advantage of King Kaius III recent land act as per an article on the WOTC website. It is their intention to establish themselves a home base to the NW of Lake Dark in an area that was exensively fought over during the war and as such has been massively depleted in population.
The journey to Lakeside on the farside of the lake should take roughly 12 hours and is an overnight trip. The boat sets off and all is well several hours pass with pleasant conversation being shared with stew and dumplings along with the other passengers. The ship suddenly jerked to halt and the sounds of screams suddenly shattered the pleasant experience.
Without warning an oily black tentacle smashed through the side of the ship and pulled a passenger through the hole. More tentacles followed...
The characters caught initially off guard immediately come together as a unit and Fabian yells quick instructions. Two of them stay below deck (Dirk and Freja) fending off the tentacles and protecting the passengers whilst the other two head up on deck.
On deck the ship appears to be surrounded by 8 - 10 30' long tentacles that are lashing down upon the ship, occasionally a crew man/passenger is grabbed and thrown into the water.
Using their abilities the characters fought their way around the deck hacking, slashing and using magic to slowly grind out the victory against the tentacled beast.
On a quick side note the wizard (with dark tendencies) described his magic missile as a screaming mass of hungry mouths that screach as they tear into the flesh of their target - just how cool is that !
The ship suffered extensive damage but was still water tight for the most part and slowly limped its way to the docks at Lakeside.
When they arrived at Lakeside some of the locals were obviously shocked and horrified by the damage to the ship and tales of its crew and passengers. Others were more upset it didnt sink "with the stinking foreign land grabbers on it".... (Think 'Gangs of New York' to get the idea)
The session finished with the characters finding an inn on the dock side and discussing both the creature and the hostile locals and their plans for the next few days...
DM Stuff
OK 4ed plays so fast in combat it is just awesome. You can really go to town in terms of over the top fast paced action - my group (average age of 35) has a combined gaming experience of approximately 80 years and all of them thoroughly enjoyed the new rules - thumbs up to WOTC for that !
The 4ed rules certainly did not get in the way of any roleplay so again thumbs up.
The tentacled beast i created using the DMG rules and in simple terms each tentacle was created as a seperate beast, some of them as minions and others as lvl 1 brutes. The brutes had an extra ability that enabled them to smash down onto the deck but only if id rolled a 6 to recharge the ability.
Hopefully you found this interesting please feel free to offer an advice, input, criticism etc. I will post sessions 2 and 3 later.
Regards...
It seems as though your players are creative and hopefully that will continue to fester into even greater creativity when they gain more confidence with the rules.
Thank you for sharing. I really like how you seperated tentacles into different monsters, I don't know if I would have thought of that...
It seems as though your players are creative and hopefully that will continue to fester into even greater creativity when they gain more confidence with the rules.
Thanks for the input. I really wanted to have a lake monster but everything was way to powerful so i tried just to break it into its constituant parts - that way some tentacles got sliced apart with one blow others needed hacking it - very "Hollywoodesque".
Im blessed with some very creative players who do have a habit of going to town. Normally after 4 or 5 weeks or so i get 3 or 4 page backgrounds turning up in my 'inbox'. They like to wait a little while to get used to their characters and the relationships and then i get loads of good ideas.
An idea: as part of the "land act" they can get a small piece of land on the slopes of the Icetop mountains, there is nothing there but an old mine entrance, yet someone (an Emerald Claw agent) will offer to buy the land from the PCs for a suspicious large amount of gold. apparently the mine's tunnels intersects with the the Emerald's Claw secret Dragonshards mining facility.
Interestingly the characters are currently in the sewers beneath Lakeside investigating a giant, and i do mean "giant", bug infestation where they have stumbled across what appear to be torchered victims of the Emerald Claw. (Both victims had been branded on their foreheads with the mark of the Claw.