Zero-Prep Pathfinder

It's spring break here which means more "doing" and less blogging but there is one thing I wanted to get out this week.I have been more and more impressed with Pathfinder and the amazing support for it by both Paizo and by others. Every time I touch it I come to like it a little more. One of the reasons for this is the realization that for me, it's the first time in a long time I feel like I could run a fairly detailed RPG with zero prep time.

First, some background: Basic/Expert D&D, and 1st-2nd Edition AD&D were fairly easy to run on the fly. Besides taking random generation of everything from monsters to maps to magic items as a legitimate way to play the game - something which has thinned out noticeably over the last few editions - these versions of the game had pretty simple monster stats. You didn't really even have a "stat block", you had a "stat line". This made it really easy to include abbreviated monster & NPC stats in the adventures wherever they showed up, with a longer entry in the back of the module or a reference to one of the monster manuals. This pretty much eliminated look-up time and let DM's just run things. This state of affairs made it especially easy when using a published adventure, as you just read the adventure, looked over the maps, tried to get an overview of the whole thing, look up any tricky bits, and you were ready to roll - at least that's how it worked for me.

Now we made plenty of our own stuff back then, and we also used the random generators sometimes as it made for a far less predictable experience. We also played a lot of published adventures because:

• They were ready to go. Once you read it you could run it, so it was great for those "hey let's play D&D" type summer days before we had to plan everything in advance.
• They were cool. Against the Giants, White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower of Inverness, Dwellers of the Forbidden City - those were a lot of fun.
• They were a big part of the shared experience of D&D. Pre-internet there weren't a bunch of places to talk about D&D outside of a letter in a gaming magazine, but if you ran into someone at the hobby shop or at a con you could instantly bond over going through adventures like these - "We figured out the answer to the Sphinx's riddle" - "Ah, my group didn't bother, we just attacked her - hey what did you do with the vampire and the globes farther down that hall?" 

Third edition made on-the-fly adventuring much tougher to do by assigning all monsters feats and skills, possibly class levels, and possibly specific weapon & armor types. plus many also had extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like abilities, all of which tended to force a DM to look them up beforehand or during the session to know what a monster could do. Every monster could end up as complicated as a player character. Trying to run a group of say regular orcs with a tougher orc leader type, a shaman, and a summoned demon was a nightmare in 3E because of all the different special abilities and the fact that each statblock was a fairly long item. The players loved it, but they only had one crunch-heavy masterpiece of optimization to manage. As a DM I had anywhere from 1 to 20 or even more on occasion, and then a new batch to learn and run during the next fight. I ran it for about 9 years but it ended up feeling like work quite a bit of the time.

It almost broke me

Even running published adventures (which usually included statblocks) the overhead of keeping up with the options and abilities available to a group of beasties was something that added more "homework" to the game, taking attention away from just running the thing and having fun. It might not have been a problem for everyone, and we managed, but it was less fun (for me anyway) after a while. I had printed index cards of most of the monsters sorted alphabetically in an index card holder because that at least gave me the stats at hand and let me pull out multiple monsters at once as needed as flipping through the monster manual every time you needed to check a new number got really old.

The next edition of the game helped somewhat by keeping all of the stats and effects needed to run a creature inside its own statblock, but I still had to print out those statblocks. The dream of the online reference was not fully realized as the way the monster handler tool was implemented was not really designed for in-play usage, but more for preparation beforehand. That was a huge missed opportunity, as I will demonstrate below, especially considering the amount of time and money spent on it.

So enough looking backwards - what about the whole zero-prep thing now? Well, zero-prep means either a published adventure or a random generator. Right now I am talking specifically about published adventures. I am also talking about Pathfinder, which  is pretty similar to 3E D&D which I just slammed for being unfriendly to this approach - so how does this work?  There are a few crucial tools. Before anything else you're going to need a computer, preferably a laptop, and the usual pencils, paper, and dice.

First, you'll need the first volume of one of the adventure paths. Take a look here. There are 14 of them now, hopefully you can find one you like. The PDF's run about $14 and will cover the first 4-6 levels of a party's career. Also download the free Player's Guide PDF for the AP that you've decided to run. Read them both - this is the extent of the prep work you will be doing.

Second, you should pull up the d20PFSRD, a really well-done, thoroughly hyperlinked version of the open Pathfinder rules. It's a website and it's free. It's a nice resource to have at your fingertips during play. Also, if you or any of your players are really "thrifty" or just want to try all of this out before spending money on it, this has all of the rules of the game from character creation to combat to monsters to magic. It also may cover some of the expanded rules from books you don't have if one of your players goes off on a tangent.

Third, download Combat Manager here. It's free and it's amazing. Also note that it's not an internet application - once you download it then you're running locally, meaning you don't need an internet connection to run the game. I know that sometimes that matters.  This program is really the key that makes all of this work.

Fourth, get PCGen here or HeroLab here. PCGen is free, HeroLab is not but I think it does some things better than PCGen. Have your players create their characters in their tool of choice and send you the file.

One of Apprentice Blaster's Pathfinder characters - the kids don't bat an eye at using a character builder.

Now, to run the game all you need to do is import the character files into Combat Manager. When the party gets into a fight then the greatest hidden treasure of CM comes into play: All of the monsters and NPCS from published AP's are included in the monster database that comes with the program. You don't have to rebuild them. CM as a tool makes combat a snap to run, with instant access to monster stats, feats, spells, and class features just by hovering or clicking on the relevant text. Having all of the stats you need for combat at hand like that eliminates (for me) the need to try and prepare mechanical notes on different monsters and reduces my preparation to ... reading the adventure. That's it! I don't need cheatsheets or monster stat sheets or a hour in HeroLab to recreate that hobgoblin cavalier/monk.

Fighting dretches - they have some special abilities

Just hovering over a link shows a pop-up with the complete info on that ability

Or if I want I can click on the link which takes me to the Spell tab (in this case) and shows me the full info on the ability.

NPC info is included in CM's database, and yes you can throw them into combat as well. This lets you include things like party mounts, men-at-arms, war dogs, summoned monsters (for either side), hostages, those "freed prisoners" that were so common in old school adventures, and even annoying NPC's forced on you by the narrative in some adventures.

Yes, unfriendly NPCs are included too, with class levels and spells and everything.

I have yet to find anything that isn't covered by this package, and all I need is my laptop at the game table to make it work. I have mine sitting on a TV tray next to the table so it doesn't come between me and my players but it would serve as an effective DM screen if I did that I suppose.

So again, the high points:

• I have a published adventure. If I choose one that's been out for a while I have a tremendous amount of suggestions and advice on Paizo's forums and many other places. There may also be everything from miniatures to cards to poster maps for hat adventure as well. Assuming I already have a computer, this is really the only place I am spending money, either for the PDF or a print copy. If the campaign keeps going I could run for a year or more all the way to level 15-20, just by picking up the remaining adventures in the series. 
• I have an online rulebook which I can keep open on the same laptop, or a tablet, or I can just go buy the rulebook, a good idea if you're really going to run the game. It's regularly updated with new rules as they come out and any errata that is published as well.
• I have a character generator, free or paid, which lets my players play with printed sheets or electronic ones as they choose, and lets me see their stats and details as well.
• I have a combined reference resource and combat management tool that will tell me what monsters do and let me track a large number of different creatures and my PC's and all of their abilities in one easy screen.

The best part is that I can make some notes and change some things up and I probably will if I see something in the adventure that I don't like - but I don't have too! I also have damn near zero overhead in-play as far as keeping track of what monsters and players can do on any given round - it's a far cry from having to flip through the book or my old index card file. It lets me focus on the setting and NPC's and any plots or events that might come up and still let's me run one of the crunchiest RPG's out there. I cannot communicate how happy that makes me, but it's a huge win.

Now I'm not saying zero-prep is how you should run a campaign or even the best way to run a campaign. One of my big concerns though when running a crunchier game like this is being prepared for each run. These tools eliminate those concerns. I no longer have to set aside several hours each week to make sure I have all the resources I need to run things. I just read through my notes from last session, look through the section of the adventure the party is currently in, and I am ready to go!

Beyond what I am describing here I am also cautiously optimistic that I could run a conversion of a 3rd edition era adventure on the fly with this approach and that I could run a 1E or 2E adventure with just a page or two of conversion notes on monster types and challenge ratings, difficulties, and treasure. That's not zero-prep but it's less than some of the conversions I've done.

Hmmmmm...

Anyway, that's the epic post for this week. It's a recent discovery for me and really opened my eyes as to what I could do with these things now. I could potentially run several different campaigns a week using this approach and I think that's a remarkable thing nowadays.

Motivational Monday - Spring Break Edition

Hey, guess what we're doing?

Star Trek Mania

My birthday is in February so I took a look around and decided to use some of that birthday money to finally pick up Star Trek Attack Wing. It's about $40 and there's a lot of stuff in the box.

Three ships is enough to play some games and get to know the rules but of course the temptation is to go get more ships, which we have. First things first though: How does it play? Short version: It's X-Wing. If you've played X-Wing you know how to play this game. Ships have square bases all the same size, there are 4 basic stats for each plus special capabilities, movement is done with cardboard templates, and combat uses a range ruler. The rules are available here. Nuances discussed below.

There are a few differences. One, Ships average around 4 attack dice but typically only have 1 defense dice as they are mostly big cruiser types. So when someone shoots there is usually damage. The ships in the box have 3-4 shields and 4-5 hull so they are tougher than X-Wing ships. Firing arcs can also be different among different ship classes.

There are also a lot more things you can do to your ships. Every one of them has a captain, many with special abilities,  and the captain's rating is effectively your imitative for the game. Generic captains have a "1" and have no special tricks while Riker is a "6" and Picard is a "9" and each has their own set of things they can do, as does pretty much any named captain. Beyond this there are

• Crew cards for people like Worf or Miles O'Brien that do special things.
• Weapon upgrades like photons and plasma torpedoes that give special attacks
• Tech upgrades for things like Transwarp Drive 

So you can take two similar ships and give them very different setups beyond the basic numbers by using these cards. All of these things, including the ships and captains, are rated in points. There's a lot more to the building element here.

I tried X-Wing last summer and while I like the system overall it just didn't grab me. For whatever reason, STAW does and it's the one I will be expanding, though I may have to give Star Wars another try with a new ship or two. STAW's setup of 3 factions in the starter box is much better than the 2 on 1 arrangement of X-Wing.

Factions: Blaster has taken a shine to his cloaking Romulans, I've taken the Feds, and Red has gotten interested in the Klingons, and we have fought several times over the last few weeks.

Our first battle was in the eye-searing Paisley Nebula:

Once again the Romulans are sneaking around and it's up to Picard and the Enterprise to set things straight. We pretty much went straight at each other and Blaster learned the hard way that the cloaking device is not guaranteed immunity.

In STAW cloaking means you get 4 extra defense dice but your shields are inactive - pretty true to canon.The downside though is that there are 2 kinds of hits in the game: regular hits, which just take off shields and hull, and critical hits, which do that plus some other nasty side effect. As long as you have shields then hits are hits and it doesn't matter. Once the shields are gone though, crits start counting and your ship can be limping along on the verge of an explosion if your guns are still operable.

He was not running Battle Stations at the time.

To frame the above roll the star-looking thing on the red dice at the top is a regular hit, the explosion-looking ones with the hole in the middle are crits. He was cloaked, so no shields, and he had a single evasion result on the green defense dice. Regular hits come off first, so he took 4 crits on a  ship with only 5 hull. Needless to say he didn't last long after this. It was a very lucky roll, but it shows how fast it can play and how quickly even a big ship can be wrecked under certain circumstances.

Picard wins again!

I played again with Red trying out the Klingons. We circled around for a while after I managed to blow off his shields and dent his hull, then I ended up with a Klingon on my tail.

Pursuit Course!

Closer!

Now we have them!

Feds: Full Reverse!
Klingons: Wait, what?

Blurry but that's 4 hits vs. no successes as the Federation unloads on the Vorcha 

...and that was the end of it as the Enterprise pulls out another one.

We danced for something like 12 turns total and he blasted me good (two critical hits) near the end but then I managed to pull a full reverse as he charged forward and he was in my firing arc and I was out of his - game over!

We've played several times since these and it's been a lot of fun. It plays fast, the rules are clean, and there is no painting overhead. There's no random or collectible/rarity element to it - ships are packaged individually and are all the same price so far. My next step is to come up with some kind of dedicated playing board for our games at home. It's spurred both of the boys to take a little more interest in Trek to the point we are watching episodes of TOS and TNG each week here now.

If you're looking at getting into one of these games I would say go with whichever universe does more for you (costs are the same and support is extensive for both), and right now for me it's Trek.

Catching Up: Ferburary, March, and Campaign Summaries

Whew! 28 posts on one subject in 28 days!I am almost caught up - I just ran session 30 on Friday night. I'll get 29 and 30 up this week and then try to stay on top of it from then on. I feel like I accomplished something I've been wanting to do for months now - determination check successful!

Some of those had been posted before so there was a little slack in there, but I reworked those a little in some places, and added some new pics to some of them too.

Now to catch up on some of the other stuff, like the Pathfinder campaign. Current main activities:

• Running the 4E game regularly after a long gap (feels good)
• Running the Pathfinder game on a regular schedule (it's been a lot of fun)
• Playing in an irregularly scheduled Pathfinder game (it's been a lot of fun too)
• Warhammer 40,000 - Apprentice Red is in local escalation league so his interest level is "high"
• Exploring Star Trek: Attack Wing (more on that later)

Some of us have also been playing a lot of Star Trek Online and watching some of the shows. It's been pretty Trek heavy around here lately for some reason.  

What we haven't been doing that I wish we could:

• Supers! We haven't touched a superhero game in months. Spring break is coming up so maybe I can work in a short run or a one-shot with the Apprentices. 
• Stonehell/Basic/Labyrinth Lord - We have a nice fast-playing set of rules and a nice big megadungeon that we could rip through in small chunks of playing time but we never seem to have time. This is pretty minor as we are getting a lot of "dungeon" already with the other games but I'd still like to find a way to work it in. 
• Trek RPG - with so much trek happening here I'd love to work in a Trek RPG, even a single scenario run, and I hope this might happen down the road a bit. More to come I hope.

Anyway, there should be more variety this month. 

Motivational Monday

SSoI - Session 28: Airstrike!

Our Heroes (10th level):

• Lt. Alex Gravis, Water Genasi Warlord (and Ivan, owlbear paratrooper) 
• Gartok, Dwarf Earth Warden
• No-Name, Elf Bow Ranger 
• Torin Tsai, Half-Orc Slayer
• Xyla, Drow Vampire

Note: Full Attendance! Just to restate, standard 4E encounter balance is built around a 5-man party. I stayed with this as we had six players when we started. So I build for five - if six show up they have an advantage, five is even, and if only four show then they are at a disadvantage. If only three or less can make it we just don't play that week.

This worked really well for much of the campaign but we're down to five players now and two of them are involved in an organization that has out of town weekend events fairly often. That means that quite a bit of the time I either have all five or I have only three. With six players it just meant a weaker party sometimes, but now it means no game. Add this unusual wrinkle in to the usual job/kid/family/holiday schedule complications in trying to get six adults together regularly and we had a very spotty latter half of 2013. I haven't fully solved it at this point so it was good to have a full team this time.

As the last of the fire's from Abrithiax's rampage are stamped out the bucket-brigading townsfolk raise a cheer for our heroes. Appreciating the appreciation is short-lived though as a telepathic contact comes in form Lord Cartwrtight that the western gate is under heavy bombardment. Some hellish green flame is being catapulted in and it's clinging to everything it hits and even the gatehouse is beginning to melt under the assault. He asks the heroes to risk an airborne trip outside the walls to destroy the infernal siege engines that are behind the attack. naturally, our heroes agree. Whistling for the owls, they leap into the saddle and are airborne in minutes.

They easily spot the launching point of the blazing green hellfire, but as they angle towards it other winged shapes are rising to meet them. As the gap closes they become familiar leonine beasts - manticores!

While a few combatants hang back and shoot, an aerial joust shapes up between the three biggest manticores and the four close-combatant party members, slashing and striking as they flash past each other hundreds of feet above the ground. Thinking outside of her usual melee box Xyla focuses her glowing eyes on one manticore and dominates it, sending the beast to attack one of its own. Aiming for the wings, the slayer and ranger both manage to send manticores spiraling down out of the fight, sometimes temporarily, sometimes for good as two of them plummet straight into the ground to their deaths! One beast gets tangled up with the slayer who goes after the wings (hey it worked the first time) and then realizes his mistake as the manticore, the slayer, and the owl all begin falling from the sky. He manages to break free before impact, but it's a near thing. 

Stay in formation!

Blasting through the manticores, the party reorients themselves, climbs back up out of bow range as they cross over a group of hobgoblins, then dives down over the artillery site. Leaping free they take stock of the opposition - dwarves! Strange dwarves with infernal symbols operating large mechanical siege engines - Charduni? No, Duergar!

There are 3 of them, one working each machine, plus a clear leader type shouting orders and one tough-looking customer with a big warhammer who is already eyeballing the party in general and Gartok in particular.

Starting things off right No-Name plants an arrow in the leader with his usual style as he gracefully leaps from his mount. The evil dwarf staggers back but is then charged by the slayer who is winding up for a ferocious fullblade strike. Desperate, the dwarf summons a legion devil between him and the onrushing half orc. One swipe of the blade cuts the devil in half, the follow through bloodies the duergar, and a final slice puts the dwarf down for good - and the fight has only just begun!

Gartok moves to engage what is clearly the duergar champion and the two go at it like angry blacksmiths, hammers ringing. He is aided by Xyla who is happy to meet a victim that doesn't drop at the first hit - finally a challenge! 

Gravis and Ivan, quickly joined by Torin and No-Name, begin attacking the artillerists to put a stop to the bombardment. They prove to be no weaklings themselves as they back off and team up, wielding frost-weapon morning stars and tossing explosive devices whenever the heroes group up. It's an unpleasant new tactic, as the dwarves are willing to grit their teeth and drop bombs in close, counting on their innate resistance to fire to protect them form the worst of it. The battle is mobile, shifting in and around the massive siege engines. The explosions take their toll but the defenders of Brindol are not deterred and one by one the duergar fall, leaving only the champion upright.

Battered but not beaten, the champion suddenly grows to the size of an ogre, slashing out with his spiked beard and laying about with rapid strikes from his hammer. If he can't save the others he can at least destroy these upstarts. Xyla and Gartok take some hits but the rest of the party rushes in after felling the last engineer and under the weight of those  attacks the dwarf staggers. Torin goes for the killing stroke, misses, but an incredible shot from the ranger deflects his blade into the massive champion finishing him after all. 

Realizing that the Red Hand army is all around them the group sets about destroying the hell-forged artillery and then escapes on their owl companions before the hostile forces can react, winging back over the walls of Brindol to safety.

DM Notes: This was a pair of battles in unusual conditions to change things up. First, the aerial battle with the manticores to try out the 4E flying combat rules. They worked pretty well but are very risky as "proned" = "falling" if the target is flying. This made for a very three-dimensional fight as the party does have some proning attacks. Some of the manticores had grab attacks which  led to some tricky situations as the grabbed character prones the grabbing manticore, sending both of them downwards. The mants have lots of ranged attacks too which meant they didn't have to close and our melee monsters had to work a little harder to jump on things. Even given that the fight only lasted 4 rounds, and these were not minions.

Exchange of the game:

DM: "...and these manticores attack the ranger" 

Gartok's player: "Yeeeeeeah yes yes yes!"

Gravis' player: "You're a terrible defender."

The duergar fight involved a new opponent for them and had a time limit, though they didn't know this had an actual mechanical element. It is night, but they are dropping in on a unit in the middle of the enemy army. Now that army has given the dwarves plenty of room to work, but if the engines stop firing and sounds of fighting break out, they will come to investigate. So, after the firing stops and combat starts, the party has ten rounds unmolested. After that, soldiers from the nearest units start coming to investigate. As it turned out it didn't matter as that fight only lasted 6 rounds, plus a few more to destroy the artillery. All the rest of the Red Hand got to do was shake their fists as the PC's flew off. 

Duergar are fun in 4E. This was my first run with them and I'm looking forward to more. The poor hellcaller died on round 1 but he did get to pop his fun power:

It didn't matter as the slayer still killed the devil AND the hellcaller but doing the facial expressions and (very short) conversation (BAMF! Yes o mighty mast-ACK!) as this all happened was quite a bit of fun.

The artillery crew had some fun stuff too.

Now these particular duergar had resist fire 5, and the champion had resist fire 10 - note the damage can exceed that pretty easily, but desperate times you know. The champion at one point was shouting at them to target him so the attackers would be getting hit as they ganged up on him and was just gritting his teeth as the 5-6 points punched through his tough hide and the push let him get some movement in that didn't provoke OA's - it seemed like a perfectly evil dwarfish thing to do. 

Also note: This pair of battles does not appear in the original adventure. I am freelancing quite a bit for the siege to make it appropriately climactic, to use some of the things 4E does well, and in some cases just because I want to. 

Everyone seemed to have fun, the good guys won pretty handily and the western gate was saved.

R.I.P. Aaron Allston

Very sad to see that Aaron Allston has left this world. There are only a few people in our hobby who's name on something means to me that it's worth a look, even if it's something I might not otherwise care about. His was one of those few names.

Champions is where I first ran across his name but he did good work on other games too. The book above turned a hexmap and a few paragraphs of text from the Expert Set into a full-on campaign setting with a really nice balance of detail and breathing room for a DM to use.

Heck, I even liked Wraith Squadron.

This was the first and most useful of the 2E brown books for me. His name's on it.

A lot of people think this is the finest version of D&D published yet, and he was the lead guy on it too.

He was a Texas guy too which made a little more of a connection for me. At a time when most of the gaming "names" seemed to come from the midwest, here was a guy right down I-35 that was putting out stuff with the best of them.

Anyway, so long Mr. Allston. I appreciate your fine work.

SSoI - Session 27 - Red Dragon Fight

Our Heroes (still 10th level):

• Lt. Alex Gravis, Water Genasi Warlord (and starting second base-bear Ivan!) 
• Gartok, Dwarf Earth Warden
• No-Name, Elf Bow Ranger 
• Torin Tsai, Half-Orc Slayer
• Zarra, Drow Vampire (in a torpor for this session after gorging herself on hill giant "juice")

Returning to Brindol after their emergency expedition the heroes realize that much of the city has been evacuated, presumably during their expedition to the Fane of Tiamat. They are invited to a council of war to share their advice and help plan a strategy for the defense of the city. As the most powerful adventurers in the city they are an important resource, and the city leaders know it.

Mechanically this is a 3-part skill challenge that will help frame the rest of the climax of the adventure.

Part 1: Formal Introductions

In this opening discussion the party meets the city leaders and makes their first impression on each. 

Success or failure here will affect how difficult the targets for the subsequent skill challenges are, initial attitudes of some of the NPC's,  and some of the offers that might be made by some of the individual NPC's.

This goes extremely well. The major players are:

• Lord Cartwright, ruler of the city 
• Lady Kaal, leader of a powerful trading house
• Marshal Ulverth, head of the city watch
• Lady Goldenbrow, high priestess of Lathander
• Immerstal the Red, leading wizard of Brindol

Also Appearing:

• Sorana and Speaker Wiston from Drellin's Ferry
• Sellyria Starsinger representing the Tiri-Kotor elves
• Captain Helmbreaker, leader of a dwarf mercenary company 

This was a Level 10 Complexity 2 skill challenge to make a good impression on the town leaders. Previous successful efforts in the adventure drop this to a level 8. Primaries are Diplomacy, Religion, and Insight. Secondaries are History, Arcana, Streetwise, and Perception.

The party blew right through this one. They are very good at some of those skills, had good references from Drellin's Ferry and the elves, and handled themselves perfectly.

Part 2: Strategy Session

With the introductions out of the way the talk turns to a debate on how to use the forces available to best defend the city.

This counts as one of the "battles" in the defense of the city. There are definite wise and unwise options on the table and choosing the bad ones will count as a defeat and remove some of the assets available to defend the city. This, combined with the results of our played encounters will determine the "finale" scenarios and the fate of Brindol - a successful, heroic defense and breaking of the Red Hand's siege, or a desperate rear guard action as the horde overwhelms the city's defenses and the remaining defenders flee for their lives.

This goes well too. It's a Level 10 Complexity 5 challenge. Primaries are Diplomacy, History, and Religion, Secondaries are Arcana, Bluff, Insight, Nature, and Streetwise. The basic debate is whether to meet the enemy in the field with the Lion Knights leading the way, or to hold the walls, giving up the initiative but maintaining a stronger defensive posture. Lord Cartwright and the knights are in favor of the field battle while the marshal favors holding the walls. The others hold varying positions or are undecided.

Gravis the warlord quickly realizes the army is not large enough to take the Red Hand on straight up ad argues forcefully and persuasively for holding the walls. Aided by his companions, they convince the lords of the city to play defense instead of a glorious but foolhardy charge into a stronger foe.

Part 3: Defending the City

Having decided on defense, the question arises as to what happens if they get inside the walls.

This affects some of the possible scenarios later in the campaign and there are advantages and disadvantages to both sides. This isn't a win/lose so much as it is a way for the players to decide how they want to handle things later.

One option is to run a resistance cell type of defense - small groups of snipers with makeshift barricades spread throughout the city making the entire area dangerous for invaders. The danger is that healing and power may be spread too thin. The alternative is a centralized defense stationed around the High Cathedral of Lathander. Clerics and elite defenders would be staged there to provide centralized healing and a rally point for any retreating defenders and to act a dispatch-able fire brigade if things are going wrong at any point on the walls. The danger here is that if this group/location falls, the whole city may fall. Lord Cartwright, Immerstal, and the high priestess favor the centralized defense while the rest favor a distributed defense as they are unwilling to abandon their individual holdings.

This is a level 10 complexity 2 challenge and the party once again blows it away with Torin setting Gravis up for an intense but diplomatic illustration of the perils of the distributed defense. Success here = the players get to choose how this goes, failure = a distributed defense regardless as the disunited leaders refuse to pool their resources and only defend their own holdings

After this the party is made the leading edge of the city's defense. To ensure communications the wizard uses a scroll of telepathic Bond to link Lord Cartwright to Gravis so they can communicate from anywhere in the city. Then word comes that giants are making another push for one gate, siege engines are bombarding the north wall ... and a red dragon has just landed inside the city and is setting that quarter ablaze. Our heroes mount up on giant owls and head out to deal with the dragon.

Abrithiax, the red dragon, has driven off the gate guards, smashed some smaller buildings, and set others on fire. He shows no fear as the party rushes in. In fact, though they have faced several dragons, none were as large and powerful as this one and his magnificence has an effect on them - briefly. All of them charge in (except for the ranger, though he does open fire). They wound the dragon but he repsonds with fiery breath and furious claws leaving Gartok bloodied. The warden stays in the fight, and the slayer keeps swinging, but a tail slap knocks the warlord across the street!

Continuing hits from the others are beginning to hurt the great beast and it unloads more flame on Torin and Ivan but Gravis gets back in the fight and shots encouragement to everyone. As the dwarf holds the red's attention, the slayer unloads a series of punishing slashes with his fullblade, and the ranger plants a final arrow in the thing's head as it staggers and falls.

After the dragon is slain it's a Level 10 Complexity 3 skill challenge to put out the fires. This was a little more freeform as to skill relevance so I let the players justify their skill choices. It was a lot of fun and a nice way to wrap up this session.

Marked, Quarried, and Bloodied - that's a tough situation

DM Notes: Most of my notes are above but I wanted to give the players some say in the defense of the city and the skill challenges worked very well. Their characters are the highest level beings in the valley other than the enemy leaders, and given their track record so far it makes sense that the town leaders would listen to their counsel. Note they are not just turning it all over to the PC's, but they are treating them as valuable partners, maybe even equals. I had notes on each leader's position on each of these questions and let the player's direction drive whose opinions were swayed. Skill challenges play much faster than a typical combat, so it's easy to include a few, make them feel fairly important to what's going on, and then wrap it all up with a fight against a big dragon I was very happy with the way this one went and I think the players were too. The decisions made here will shape a lot of the remainder of the adventure when it comes to encounters and the opposition.