Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 1: The Terrible Tower of Saltmarsh

 

With characters made but a few weeks left before the full team could gather I talked to the available players and we decided to get together and play some prequel sessions. This came together fairly quickly so was searching a bit to find some decent and short intro adventures. I didn't have anything home-brewed for 5th so I went back to my Saltmarsh idea. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, as presented in 5E's Ghosts of Saltmarsh, is nicely divided into two parts. This was a perfect fit since I had time for two sessions so I read through the thing, focusing on the Haunted House part  in particular. This was a good fit for an opening adventure of a new campaign and a new set of rules. It also pushed the nostalgia button pretty hard as Saltmarsh was the first published adventure I ever played in back when it was new - and all of us playing it were still fairly new too. 

So I started things off telling the players they needed to think of why their characters would have made the journey to Saltmarsh and what  they might be looking for as they poked around town for news & rumors. our cast of characters:

• Paladin Steve: Human Paladin
• Boom-Gun Brandon: Human Fighter
• Shootist Will: Mechanist Human Cleric
• Blaster:  Human-ish Wizard
• Official Spouse: Dwarf Warlock

So ... a couple of new bits of information there. Steve settled on trying out the new Paladin which most of us thought he would. Will is embracing the troupe-style play by making a cleric as his "backup" character while still intending to play a mechanist in the main campaign. Blaster went with wizard and not an elf which is uncommon for him but he has a concept he is pretty fired up about. Finally, the Official Spouse joined the game for her first RPG session ever! She figured she ought to play at least a few games so she would understand what we're all talking about and maybe get more of the jokes/references - even more nostalgia triggers are firing off here now.  

I want to mention that Brandon is Steve's son and Steve is a friend I have known since the 80's.  Blaster is my own son, and with the Official Spouse joining this run is a family-heavy affair and it is a blast. If you get a chance to play with your kids as they grow up it is incredibly rewarding. 

So with a 5-person party of first level characters roaming around the village of Saltmarsh, nostalgia feelings active, they head off to that same Haunted House I did with my friends back in 1981, right? 

No.

I made the mistake of mentioning that outside of town there were actually two main areas of interest. The haunted house is one but there is also ... the Tower of Zenopus! Yes, they put that reference in the 5E version! Did they put the dungeon in it? No! Of course not! Did the greedy wizard immediately focus on "definite wizard's tower" over "possibly haunted house" and push the party to go that way? Yes, yes he did.

Insert DM scramble here. The blog's namesake tower is the intro dungeon from the Holmes Basic Set circa 1977. It was the first dungeon I ever saw, ever read, and ever ran for some very uncertain friends around 1980. I pulled up a 5th edition version of it that I found a while back - because I couldn't find the one I did myself years ago - and started describing stone steps down into darkness ...

Side track - if you think it's tricky to tell people what D&D is about now you should envision what it was like then when there were no video or computer games to use as references, fantasy movies were mostly terrible, and the concept of an RPG was so unknown we hadn't even had the satanic panic yet. it was tricky to say the least.

So, drowning in more nostalgia feelings than I had expected I started describing the sights and sounds as our brave heroes formed up a marching order, cast some light spells, and descended into the dungeon. 

The short version is "they went right" and ended up in the ghoul room where "Two fanged and clawed humanoids are lurking...". This is where the group discovers that Sir Kentor (the paladin) has a -1 Dex modifier as he pulls off a mighty "zero" for his initiative. Despite this the group manages to take down the ghouls in just a couple of rounds with no one being paralyzed. The warlock is figuring out that a) eldritch blast is a pretty handy thing in a fight and b) a pseudodragon familiar (she's pact of the chain) with unlimited range for seeing and hearing through it is a damn handy thing everywhere else.

Ghouls are a tough first encounter for a new party but there were only two of them and the party is strong with ranged attacks. Paladin-Fighter-Fighty Cleric is a strong front line and a Wizard-Warlock backfield means they can do some damage at range. I was just glad we didn't immediately get into a multiple party member paralysis situation.

The party finds a long dirt tunnel leading out of the room and the familiar gets sent off down the thing first until it finds a group of people in a room chanting around an idol. That draws the rest of the PC's in and despite being offered a chance to join in the ritual our heroes choose violence when the Paladin throws a hammer at the lead cultist as he finishes his invitation. This goes poorly for the cultists and they are soon relieved of their lives and their nice shiny silver masks. The quick assessment is that this was a group of Orcus cultists (given the statue) trying to animate another ghoul (given the dead body laying at it's feet) and they probably did a good thing here. The cleric and paladin rebury the body and then we all move along.

This is a new section added as an optional piece by this version. It's a good addition as it adds a little more to the goings-on both in the dungeon and potentially to the town. Orcus cultists in the big graveyard outside of town? Sounds like trouble!

 

Heading south the group moves into a  smaller room and finds 3 skeletons leaning against the walls. apparently they are angry skeletons because they animate and attack! This is another short, though bloodier, fight as the party takes down the undead but the cleric takes a rusty sword to the gut (a critical) and goes down as well. Now the party gets a quick refresh on how death saves work and the cleric lives though it's a little tricky for him as he is the only one with healing magic - the paladin used his lay on hands earlier after taking some damage in the ghoul fight. 

This is normally an empty room but I wanted to keep things lively so I'm dropping wandering monster entries into these for now. The cleric only had 10 hit points so he couldn't do much about that hit. That's just how it goes at low levels sometimes - one hit can drop you.

This is an important lesson re-learned. Our heroes decide to pull back to the village to regroup and get the cleric back into shape. They end up with roughly 150 gold each after some wheeling and dealing with the local silversmith and retire to the inn to review the day's events. 

The next morning the party stops by the local temple to pick up some healing potions and the warlock decides to stay in town to do some "research". The rest gear back up and head back down, retracing their old steps. 

The next room they enter is full of piles of trash and they quickly spot multiple giant rats who look to charge as they enter the room but ranged attacks cut down many of them and Sir Kentor manages to kill one with an opportunity attack thanks to one of his talents when it tries to bite the fighter instead of him.

The party is getting more organized here as they wiped out most of the rats at range and then finished them off in melee on round 2. Strategies are starting to form.

Kicking down another door we find a seemingly empty room until someone looks up - and sees a couple of giant spiders hanging on the ceiling. The party does manage to get the drop on them and kill one quickly which is fortunate as the other starts shooing web across the room trying to entangle the fighters. It's not enough and soon the fight is over. 

This could have been a dangerous fight but the spiders did not have great luck and there were not enough of them to offset some bad rolls. 

Our heroes press on and find a long hallway with a couple of door options. Opening one reveals a round room with stairs going up... and the biggest snake they've ever seen lounging on those stairs. It notices them and raises its head but otherwise does not move. They decide it's time to head on back and recruit some help before they try to fight or sneak past this thing and so the second expedition ends with a rapid withdrawal to the surface and then to the village.

There was some dissension here between "oh we can take 'im" and "we're doing well so let's not screw it up at the end of the night." They chose caution and made it out OK. Once we worked through things these 4 had gained enough XP to make 2nd level.

Some initial thoughts on the game:

• I see people talking like ToV has power creep over 5E and it might but it's not because of stat inflation. Sure, you get more points but you lose the racial stat bonuses so you can end up slightly lower as the points do not make up for sticking another +1 or +2 on top of a 16. Having to buy those at full cost keeps the ability scores down more than you might think.
• The index for ToV is not great. Look under H for healing - nothing. Look under P for potions  - nothing. Look under C for cure - nothing. Look under S for skills - nothing. That's just a few seemingly obvious things from the first session. It's not crippling but it is inconvenient.
• My guys are a well-oiled machine when it comes to playing D&D. They know what they are doing at this point even with some new rules. It snaps back into place for me too hanging the initiative trackers on the new screen, knocking off hit points, watching for conditions ... it's a lot of fun and flows really easily. 
• Luck is looking like a pretty decent mechanic as it was earned and used for various things all during this session. My players love it.
• The updated version of the tower is good - you can find it here.

So there's our first run done - the next one is this weekend so more to come!

Temple of Elemental Evil - 5E Style - Experience Points & The Nodes

 

Ah, the Nodes  ... the most controversial part of the physical dungeon! If you've looked into online discussions of running the adventure - in any edition - you will find a lot of people either dislike the nodes or decide to drop them entirely. That's four separate dungeon levels in this place that many DM's decide to excise - but why?

The big complaint is that the nodes themselves are a slog. Some of them are much larger areas than the dungeon levels but only have 20-30-something encounter areas - and that's in this newest version where they took the extra effort to flesh out the nodes instead of making it a zone of purely random encounters. They can be tricky to get in and out of of as well depending on how your party is equipped and what they know. It's also entirely possible that your group may not have a great picture of what these things are for or why they should care about exploring them.

A secondary complaint is that these things are a serious hassle.  The whole area is slow to explore, some of them cause environmental damage just for being there, many of your spells are altered as far as how they work or even if they work in a given node. Also as mentioned it can be tricky to get in and out of them as the various gates between them are scattered around and must be located anew in each node. All of this ups the hassle factor a great deal and a party that's just spent months of real time clearing out temple bad guys may not think it's worth all of that. I get it.

For me personally I've run and played in several attempts on the Temple over the decades and none of them ever made it to the nodes. I don't think this is particularly unusual. They're mainly accessed from the 4th dungeon level and by that time a successful party will have basically wiped out (or be close to wiping out) the whole operation. If you destroy all of the factions and creatures in the place you've effectively ended the current threat. It's true that the seeds for a future revival of the cult will still exist but the heroes don't really have to venture into the elemental nodes to put this one in the win column. 

So why am I planning to keep them in my campaign right now? A few reasons:

• For one, Goodman Games put in the effort to make these a more traditional keyed map with specific fixed encounters in addition to a table for wandering monsters for each node. This is a big improvement in what we had before and makes it quite a bit more "runnable" from the DM side of the table.
• I think with the right setup these turn from a slog into a search for some items that are needed to accomplish the ultimate goal of the adventure - sure, you can wipe out the cult but if you go about things right you can destroy the whole temple and its source of power - ending this particular evil for good rather than just for now. 
• Most importantly these things put the "Elemental" in the Temple of Elemental Evil! A lot of the dungeon is not terribly heavy on the theme. There are main temples and shrines and things here and there but the environments and the opposition tend to be fairly "normal" humanoids and monster types. Players may be wondering "where is the fire"? - well, here you go - a chunk of the elemental plane of fire you need to investigate to implement a final solution - and it's full of fiery things and terrain and creatures and it's one piece of a 4-part finale to this big honkin' adventure! 
  
  It is interesting when you see people complain that the temple isn't "elemental" enough - and I agree with that to a point - as they also mention that the nodes are a boring slog that they are eliminating. I mean, how about we make those things less boring and use them to add a huge dose of "elemental" to the final section of our campaign?

I will grant that ideally the nodes would be more integrated into the main dungeon areas or at least there could be more elemental stuff in the main dungeons - this would be more on-theme - but it's important to remember that the elemental thing is kind of a scam too - the divine powers involved here are using it for their own ends and are not really elemental powers themselves. It's really more of a cover story and marketing for beings otherwise not all that appealing to the masses. 

I'll talk more about my thoughts on setting up the nodes for a better game in a future post - for now let's look at the numbers involved. I'll warn you now - it gets pretty silly.

• Air Node: There are 32 keyed areas here and it adds up to just over 85,000 experience points. If we take our theoretical 6-man party from the prior post that was at 23,000 XP and 7th level after clearing out the other dungeon levels (but has not defeated the Big Bad) we can add over 14,000 XP to that total - they will hit the next level at 34,000 so our new 37,000 puts them easily into 8th.
  
  Now that seems like a lot and it is but over half of it is wrapped up in 3 big encounters and two thirds of it comes with 6 total encounters so this area is going to be some big fights in some fairly open areas. 
  
  
• Earth Node: Here we have 24 keyed areas which add up to just over 68,000 XP. This means just over 11,000 per character putting us at 48,000 total XP which his just enough to hit 9th.
  
  Here too about half of the points come from about 4 encounters but this area is much more confined so this will be a more dungeon-like set of encounters in a set of natural caves. 
  
  
• Fire Node: This node has 36 keyed areas and yields just over 63,000 XP. Our 6-man party will add 10,500 to their total here and 58,500 is still well within 9th level. 
  
  This is another carved rooms & tunnels type dungeon area and looks a lot like the prior temple dungeon levels - just with more fire. Over half of the experience here comes from just two encounters so those should be exciting to say the least.  
  
  
• Water Node: In this node we have 24 keyed areas and an impressive XP yield of 96,000! That puts our party up to 74,500 which is over 10th (64,000) and halfway to 11th!
  
  This is a large open area and of course being able to breathe under water is significant here. Roughly two-thirds of this XP comes from just 3 encounters so there could be some big moments in this section. 

This is ignoring wandering monsters - many of which in the nodes are part of a lair anyway - but even with some additional XP from those I think 11th is still too far away to be achieved this way. 

However, this total does not account for defeating the big bad opponent in this adventure which is possible and awards a variable amount of XP based on the condition it is when the fight happens. There is also an additional XP award for destroying the temple itself and that can actually earn enough XP to make it to 11th for our party. That's not counting any side adventures or wilderness encounters or locations. 

One final XP note - a character could be as high as 4th level when they start this and while they might hit some levels earlier than starting at zero the numbers get so big that those initial few hundred or few thousand XP don't change the ending point of 10th or 11th level. 

Also a reminder  -this is pretty close to the maximum. Odds are an actual party playing through it will have somewhat lower XP numbers than this and of course the number of PCs will make a big difference here as well. My point in doing this exercise is to show that it's there if your party wants it.

There is also some variability here in how much XP one awards for not just beating down opponents. There are many opportunities to negotiate with opponents all through the temple dungeons and yes even in the nodes too. There are a lot of intelligent creatures in this one and they are not all fanatical cultists nor do many of them even like each other nor are all of them volunteers! This can be a delicate area as if your players find out they are getting less XP for talking through an encounter than they would for solving it with violence then the talking may go by the wayside outside of dire circumstances. I'm leaning towards keeping the full XP regardless as solving a problem is solving a problem but I need to think through it more.

The last thing I have to consider now is that having done the math is that my goal of moving on to "Against the Giants" after this is .. actually dead on. Tales from the Yawning Portal (which contains the 5E version) recommends starting it at 11th level so ... wow ... that works out very nicely.

Now of course I have to see how the chaos of a big group actually playing through this works out. It should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to it even more now that I have run through this whole effort.

Temple of Elemental Evil 5E Style - Experience Points

 

I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to check how much XP is actually available under 5E style rules (technically ToV but they are the same). Some of this is to help me figure out where the party should be as they make their way through the adventure in case I need to make adjustments. It's also to give me some idea of where they might be when they finish it up. 

This analysis will be from the Goodman Games two-book version of the adventure. 

A couple of other notes: 

• I am assuming the party will "defeat" all of the monsters in a given area or level. There are hidden areas in this adventure but I don't think there is a point to trying to calculate the chance they will or will not enter a given area. Let's assume they figure it out and go after everything and if they come up a bit short, well, that's on them. 
• I decided not to count wandering monsters in this exercise because you never know how much they are going to show up in play. I know some people use them and others don't. I do intend to use them but since both the frequency and composition of those encounters is tied to random chance I decided it was better left as potential bonus XP rather than counted as part of the fixed stuff. This applies to both the wilderness random encounters and the dungeon ones. 
• I am not including the fixed wilderness encounters either. The GG team added some interesting side treks in the area and I am sure a few of them will come up but I'm not sure how easily my players will be distracted from the Moathouse and the Temple so I don't want to assume which ones - or that all of them - will be investigated. My suspicion is that many of these will come into play when we are short most of the party. Again, I'll treat these as bonus XP.
• As a hopefully unnecessary note I am not tallying up Hommlet either. It's not that kind of campaign and I don't have that kind of player group.
• Finally I decided not to tally up money and magic items as part of this - yet. For one, Bullgrit did an excellent summary of this years ago and the treasure is not greatly changed in this version. Secondly I don't care that much how much treasure they pick up as it's not XP in this version and they aren't likely to be crafting magic items with it in this version either. I will look at magic items in a separate post as I may end up tweaking those too but for now I don't want to post up a "loot list" where my players might see it if they remember I have a blog where I talk about this stuff.

 So our first area is The Moathouse:

• The upper level of the Moathouse totals out to about 1,350 XP. If we figure a party of six  - I expect 5-6 to be my average - we can see that we're a few points short of the 300 needed to get to second level as we are coming in at 225.
  
  Now this is close enough that a random wilderness encounter might put them over the top. I also expect that some of them will not be at 0 XP as there are several ideas out there for "things that happen on the way to Hommet." I may also be running some prelude adventures with the part of the crew that is not tied up for the rest of the month. Outside of a raw new character coming in at 0XP and heading straight for the Moathouse I think it's safe to assume most of the party should hit 2nd level after this. Fifth edition and similar games are set up to make 1st and 2nd levels go by pretty quick.
• The Moathouse Dungeon totals out to 5,450 XP based on creatures and then there is some opportunity for a little more depending on rescuing prisoners etc. Assuming a party of six again that should be more than enough to get us to 3rd level (900 XP), even for a totally new character. 
  
  Prior XP, side encounters, wandering monsters ... all of that still nets out to a party at level 3 here. I do not see any real way anyone gets to 4th and that's fine. I think hitting 3rd as they finish up the Moathouse is perfectly fine. 5E/ToV doesn't really have an official "Quest XP" element like 4E did but I will likely award some kind of bonus here for clearing out the Moathouse which is the closest den of evil to the village. It's a big deal and hey - for years this was as much as you could do to fight the temple!

Technically the expected next area is the wretched hive of scum and villainy known as Nulb. There are things that can happen here but it's not really expected that the party is going to start clearing out the village - even this awful village. It's more about schemes and interaction and discovering clues. So I'm not going to assign a value here. There is likely XP to be earned but it could go in any number of directions or the whole place could be skipped entirely - who knows? We will just have to see.

Then we finally get to the temple proper!

The Upper Works:

Between the various spread-out encounter areas in this chapter there is 4,150 XP to be found here. All of this is concentrated into 3 main areas and bad tactics in any of those could turn into  a real challenge for the party. If we assume an average of six PC's at 3rd level by this point then they will still not make 4th at roughly 1600 total XP.

With a bunch of enemies in a small divided area - this area's theme for sure - the trick I think is to draw them out and not get pulled into a crushing melee where a small group could be overwhelmed. Smart use of barriers like pools of flaming oil could be important here too. That's my pregame assessment anyway - we will see how it goes. If my guys have eight 3rd-level characters when they hit one of these we may just see a brute-force collision as they try to simply plow through the opposition and it may work. This will be an interesting time. 

First Dungeon Level:

It is a big dungeon level, really big. There are 53 marked rooms and it adds up to just over 24,000 XP. Given a party of six that's going to put them at 5600 XP total which is 4th level (2700) headed for 5th (6500). There are two main areas on this level that look particularly dangerous - if you're familiar with the adventure then you probably know what I'm talking about:

• One involves an area with multiple groups of dangerous undead that could hit the group in waves and drain their ability to overcome the negative effects. I suspect we will see how tough ToV characters really can be here. I can see a range of results here from "that was a little sweaty" to "TPK". A cleric will definitely help here - maybe bring two! 
• The other is a group of fairly tough creatures in what amounts to their home environment that pretty much have to be dealt with to accomplish certain goals. This one has a lot of good treasure but it's not all obvious and getting it over their dead bodies will be something to brag about. Analyzing the opposition and playing smart will be important. 

Now that said one of the knocks on 5th edition is that characters are too powerful and the threat of death is rarely present. That may be true but it will be tested here and that is one of the beautiful things about running an old-style adventure with no apologies or concessions to balanced encounter design. They will be at least 3rd and possibly 4th by the time they hit these so they will have experience with what their characters can do.

Second Dungeon level:

This one has 46 marked areas and yields about 49,000 XP. For a party of 6 that's another 8000 XP each which puts our party at 10,700 or 5th level, halfway to 6th. I don't see as many potential problem areas on this level - it feels like things are a little more broken up. There are a lot of humanoids but there are also a lot of named NPC's running the show here and creating opportunities to get involved with some factional warfare. 

Third Dungeon Level:

This level is a little weird as it is setup differently than the others. There are 52 marked areas and if the party fights through all the critters on this level it adds up to about 48,000 XP. So, 8000 each for our hypothetical party which puts them at 14,700 or just over the line for 6th (14,000). 

Now what I left out of that total is that the major opponent of the adventure is on this level and if defeated awards from 33k-50k XP - there are things the PC's can do to affect the toughness of this fight and the easier the fight the less XP we get. Now this confrontation may not happen at the same time as much of the rest of the level so I've broken it out separately but that is a big chunk of XP hat could push the party to almost 7th. Let's track that separately for now. 

Fourth Dungeon Level:

There are only 35 marked areas on this level. Now on this one especially my numbers may be off a bit as there are a lot of notes on creature X is here unless an alert is sounded in which case they go to X and these other creatures move from Y to here. So I may have not counted enough of one thing and counted too many of another but I think it's pretty close. The number is right about 54,000 XP or 9000 each for our party. This would bump them to 23,000 XP or right at 7th (which is achieved at 23000). 

Now that's not accounting for the big bad thing which could add another 5500-10K which would put them at the halfway point or more but not all the way to 8th.

Conclusions:

We're going to pause here and tackle the nodes in tomorrow's post but this covers all of the set encounters from the Moathouse down through the 4 conventional dungeon levels and gets our hypothetical 6-man party to 7th level. 

This does not include wandering monsters (some of which are accounted for in fixed location numbers and some of which are not) or wilderness locations out in the countryside around Hommlet, Nulb, and the temple. It also does not encounter for any side treks the DM decides to drop in as I will likely do when attendance is low for a session. There is enough XP out there for the taking to potentially make a difference on when your PC's level but I think the total is still going to top out around 7th.