The Battle of Four Bards
The party
agrees to share the rewards evenly with the bandits from the Argossey, the twin
bardic brothers Archilochus & Aristeas and their twenty men, who agree to a
raid on the Black Knight's old manor now occupied by Vignetta the fire-witch
and Pascale the bard because they are convinced that battle will be easy. An
inordinate amount of tactics discussion follows, resulting in a
straight-forward advance on the building at night. The disposition of the four
squads of common soldiers is the largest part of the discussion. Ultimately two
of them are assigned to protect their bardic employers, one will protect the
druid, and the last will carry a siege ladder.
The invading army crosses through the cattle gate at the edge of the manor's domain, marked off by a thick and wild hedge of thorns. In the distance the manor house stands alone, a bullseye lantern hanging off the roof like a single eye peering into the darkness (this imagery is helped by the fact that the DM built the front of the manor out of Lego). They begin the long trudge across the fields, armoured men clinking and clanking. Just before they enter the edges of the lantern's illumination, the house wakes up: nine more lanterns flare into life and the strains of a battle hymn can be heard from across the field. Ironically, this is the only bardic music in the entire battle, despite the unnatural quantity of singing men involved.
Things soon go from bad to worse. Two of the squads of soldiers fall into pit traps, trapping Aristeas and the druid. The squad with the ladder gets hit by a flaming sphere and a storm of arrows. The cleric uses a minor spell to counter the flaming sphere by dousing it in water (a clever tactic the DM will remember and make use of in the future!). The last squad diverts to help their comrades out of the pit. So the main advance has collapsed at literally the first contact with the enemy.
Vignetta launches her best tactic, using Pyrotechnics to blind everyone on the battlefield. Her men are trained to close their eyes at the sound of the preceding warning bell. Unfortunately only the ranger is affected and he crumples to the ground, rubbing his eyes.
The barbarian (rendered invisible by bardic magic) attacks the door with his axe and seems disappointed when it does not collapse, instead emitting a fan of flame hot enough to slay ordinary men on touch. To add insult to injury a barrel of oil is tipped out of the second floor onto his head, soaking the flagstones in slippery doom. The barbarian is sturdier than all that (he's actually sturdier than the door itself) and steps to the side to ready his crossbow, planning on shooting through the peephole. He narrowly avoids the bear trap in the bushes (in general he proves immune to all the traps, saving against everything except the Flaming Hands spell).
The bard has pulled the druid from the pit and now the druid runs forward to play his part. He chants in a mystical tongue, calling the door to remember its wild nature, and door twists and warps and falls from its hinges, revealing Vignetta and Pascale. They make a fateful decision to stand their ground instead of retreating immediately, based solely on the fact that the barbarian is invisible and thus concealing the closeness of danger. She calls out a command; arrows rain down; and the druid collapses like a pincushion so thoroughly pricked that she turns her attention to the soldier squads, blasting another one of her flaming spheres.
The cleric douses this sphere one while the bard heals the druid from the brink of death. The barbarian readies his great axe again and charges through the open door, easily navigating the oily terrain. He slashes at Vignetta, sending chainmail links and blood flying. Pascale bravely tries to save his mistress, casting a spell that would render the barbarian utterly helpless with hideous laughter. Despite the heavy odds the barbarian shrugs off the effect and smashes Pascale with his axe, almost killing the man in one hit. Vignetta sees the lay of the land, and with a hastily muttered apology, slips through the door behind her, closing and locking it in her wake. Then she casts again through the narrow peephole, flooding the entrance chamber in flames.
This is too much for Pascale, who succumbs in wailing agony. The first enemy casualty is an act of friendly fire. Speaking of fire, the barbarian is now on fire thanks to his oil bath, in addition to the effects of the spell. He drops to the ground, trying to snuff out the flames.
Outside the druid sits up and starts to cast another spell, then looks up at the manor house full of archers and decides not to draw more attention to himself. The archers turn their aim to the squad with the ladder, driving the last of that squad to the ground with more arrows. The ranger has returned to the battle; he takes a shot at a figure in the dark but hits only its shadow. Still this challenge draws an answer and the ranger sprouts several arrows from his chest. Severely depleted, the ranger calls for a medic. The cleric summons a fog to hide himself, and his companions quickly sprint to its safety, leaving Archilochus and his squad as the only viable targets. They are still rescuing Aristeas and some of their fellows from the pit.
The barbarian picks himself up and smashes through the next door with pure force, eschewing the surer but slower process of chopping it down with an axe since he's decide to switch to his new favourite murder implement, the greatsword he won off of Ser Brandford. This door is a more ordinary affair than the heavily fortified front entrance but it's still a feat of impressive strength. He plunges through the darkened house to the main stairwell (recall that all of the party spent several days in the house only a few months ago, so they know the layout). Dashing up the twisting stairs he finds Vignetta and two archers at the top. She kicks a barrel of oil over, drenching the stairs in oil which once again fails to take the barbarian off his feet, and steps back. Her men shoot - one hits, and again, these arrows hurt - then drop their bows and ready sword and shield for a desperate defence. The barbarian charges them but in the narrow confines of the stairwell his greatsword proves unwieldy, causing him to miss both targets completely.
Vignetta responds once again with flame. Now the barbarian is really in the soup; the oil-soaked wooden staircase turns into an inferno. He forces his way onto the second floor, the ordinary soldiers no match for his brute strength and their feeble shortswords ineffective against his heavy armour. Vignetta summons light and shadow to blind and stun him, but only succeeds in disabling her own men.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party has hatched a new plan. The recently healed ranger and the bard run out to pick up the ladder while the archers are focused on the squad of soldiers marching towards the door in good formation. However, the squad cannot yet enter the house, as the front entrance is covered in burning oil. The archers bring both Aristeas and Archilochus to the ground in one round with lucky volley of shots (thus neatly disabling the DM’s plot trigger for when one of the brothers died) and then switch to the new threat of the ladder, where the bard is ascending and the ranger is covering him with his bow. Just before they can shoot the sitting duck on the ladder, the cleric moves forward and summons another fog, concealing the ranger and bard.
The bard makes it to the top unscathed and rises out of the mist. Armed only with his old spear - his fancy halberd requires two hands, one of which is currently clinging to the ladder - he engages an archer in melee and wins! Arrows sing past his head and he rolls onto the roof, followed by the ranger. Two archers rush to hold them while the rest spread out, trying to fire around their fellows. The ranger and bard quickly dispatch this weak opposition, but this leaves them fully exposed to the archers without any cover. At that moment the center of the roof caves in, sending a column of flame into the sky. The stairwell is now a vortex of pure flame and the house is well and truly on fire.
Downstairs the entrance has abated; the druid and cleric enter the house with the remains of the last squad. They see that the interior of the house is in flames and immediately begin searching for the peasants they came to claim. Discovering a locked trap door in the kitchen, the cleric calls out that the house is on fire and the sorceress cannot contain it. This is the magic phrase - the trap door bursts open and the women begin handing their children up, following in a mad panic.
On the roof, the bard reverses course and surrenders the ground he fought so hard to claim, recognizing that the entire house has become a death trap. Summing up magic, he casts a spell as he pushes the ranger back over the wall and leaps after him. They gently float to the ground, escaping the flaming building and protected from the hail of arrows by the mist. Soon they are followed by a rain of helmets and swords, as the archers on the roof signal their surrender and scamper down the ladder.
In the middle of the house the barbarian is in the thick of it. As he pushes his way past a blinded man, Vignetta wails in outrage. "Why won't you die!" she screams, and closes to melee, the last place in the world any spell caster wants to be. She avoids the barbarian's sword and reaches out to touch him; lighting flows through her fingers and the barbarian lights up like a Christmas tree. Her Shocking Grasp does a ton of damage, none of which he can avoid, and suddenly the barbarian finds himself in very real danger, his once-inexhaustible pool of supernatural vitality now merely a memory. More archers are pouring into the hall to defend their mistress and she is clearly readying another spell.
Just then the wall to his right caves into the bonfire that was the stairwell. Heat washes out, licking at the fighters, and air rushes in, trying to suck all of them into the inferno. The barbarian blunders back past the man he had just pushed past, finds an open door, and charges for a window. His strength does not fail him; he bursts through the narrow window frame, taking half of it out with him, and plunges into the rose bushes below. The fall proves to be the final blow; he hits the ground and does not get up.
Vignetta and her archers follow close behind. They are more interested in escape than the inert form of the barbarian. Vignetta, with her supernatural vitality, hits the ground running, leaving her men to fend for themselves. Just as it looks as if she will escape, the druid and cleric come around to the rear of the building, attracted by the sounds of splintering wood. While the cleric heals the barbarian, the druid reaches into his bag of tricks and pulls out an Entangle spell. Vignetta pushes through the grasping weeds but her flight is slowed. The barbarian, back on his feet, runs around to cut off her retreat. The druid pulls out his other worst trick, a swarm of bloodthirsty bats.
Vignetta, seeing the end is near, has one final play. "See you in hell," she snarls to the barbarian, and raises her hand, crackling with power, to her own head. In a burst of energy the fire-witch's bandit career ends as fiercely as the manor's own fiery demise. The three men retreat from the angry swarm, abandoning the wounded archers to a dilemma of deaths: the bonfire behind them or the angry grass and hungry bats. No one is around to record their choice.
In the morning the sun rises over the smoking ashes as the fire finally burns itself out. Only five of Vignetta's men remain, having surrendered to the bard and ranger after the roof battle. Only four of the crew of the Argossey are left alive. This leaves all of the treasure in the hands of the party, a development they are not unhappy with. However, the crew points out two salient facts: 1) there are not enough of them to sail the ship, and 2) by tradition they are entitled to a quarter share of booty. Given how many of them died fighting the party's battle, they have a strong point. Nonetheless they are met with some opposition and the party considers cutting them loose with nothing but the now-useless ship for their share. One of the party suggests sending them to the nearest port to raise a crew for the boat, but this means sending them alone, since the nearest port is in Varsoulou. Pooling all of the booty the men would be entitled to yields enough to promote one of them to the knighthood, which is of course every mercenary's rasion de etre. Once this is on the table, the soldiers eagerly volunteer for the mission. It looks like the party is about to hand over a sack of gold and a promotion to four men who will then march off to enemy territory, with nothing more than the promise of a career as a castle guard to return to, until everyone belatedly remembers that half of the Argossey's crew is still back at the ruined keep.
The party decides to promote one of the men anyway, since they want to keep up morale. The archers from Vignetta's band are suitably moved by this generosity and pledge to our heroes' service without qualms. The group returns to the boat, collects what food and supplies they can carry, and begin the now-familiar trek home, planning to return later with enough men to rescue the ship. The women and children of the manor are not at all pleased with this development, but since they literally have nowhere else to go, they make the best of it. And they can’t even blame the party for their homelessness; this time, much to everyone’s surprise, the arson of a fine manor house was not the druid’s fault.
Along the way they encounter a basilisk they have avoided several times before. The creature gets the drop on them and creeps into their camp in the middle of the night. The bard tries to scare it off but fails; the ranger shoots at it but misses; and just before they have to suffer the ravages of its deadly gaze the barbarian intimidates it into running off. This buys them a round to prepare and when it comes back they open fire with spells and arrows. Even so it is going badly until the bard finally finds the right pitch and drives the creature off with a piercing whistle, dragging one of the druid's bat swarms in its wake.
Hours later the swarm returns and druid lets the spell lapse. Now they have conundrum: leave well enough alone, or go trekking through the bushes looking for a dead or possibly just severely wounded basilisk? The bard suggests caution but greed for treasure (and the desire to get rid of the monster while they have the upper hand) sends the party out into the bushes. This time they are luckier and the creature does not catch them by surprise. Its sluggish response gives them time to get an initial attack off and the creature succumbs to the force of the cleric's spiritual weapon (which is the most useful that spell has ever been).
A few days later they break out of the forest into the open plains of Edersarr, dominated by the Order of the Tower's stone spire. The Viscount Godard greets them warmly enough, sending stableboys to escort their peasants into the village for a meal and a rest and inviting them in for a drink. Here his true purpose comes out: he is feeling stung by playing dead to fool the Varsouloueans and desires revenge. And the party pretty obviously knows a safe path through the wilderness, given that they've just walked a bunch of peasants out of the woods. He forcefully invites them to lead his troops on a raid.
The party is not interested in returning to Varsoulou to slaughter a village for tael, judging that fighting bandits is morally distinguishable from wanton murder. Nor do they care about the Viscount's injured honor. They manage to escape the tower without provoking a duel, but it is clear the Order means more trouble for the party in the future. They march deeper into Edersarr with their army of refugees as the winds of war whistle across the plains at their heels, threatening fire and flame for more than just a manor house of bandits.
All in all I was please at how this battle turned out - several people almost died and everyone was forced to go beyond their comfort zone and find new tactics or take new risks. The vast disparity in levels really can be smoothed out with enough planning and preparation - at some point I'll put the Manor House up on DriveThruRPG as a minor adventure in the style of Tucker's Kobolds. This adventure also gave me a chance to show how the world changes in reaction to what they do. Finally, giving them a keep and peasants to go with it anchors them - if your party seems disaffected or unconcerned with the fate of world around them, just give them a source of profits to protect!
The invading army crosses through the cattle gate at the edge of the manor's domain, marked off by a thick and wild hedge of thorns. In the distance the manor house stands alone, a bullseye lantern hanging off the roof like a single eye peering into the darkness (this imagery is helped by the fact that the DM built the front of the manor out of Lego). They begin the long trudge across the fields, armoured men clinking and clanking. Just before they enter the edges of the lantern's illumination, the house wakes up: nine more lanterns flare into life and the strains of a battle hymn can be heard from across the field. Ironically, this is the only bardic music in the entire battle, despite the unnatural quantity of singing men involved.
Things soon go from bad to worse. Two of the squads of soldiers fall into pit traps, trapping Aristeas and the druid. The squad with the ladder gets hit by a flaming sphere and a storm of arrows. The cleric uses a minor spell to counter the flaming sphere by dousing it in water (a clever tactic the DM will remember and make use of in the future!). The last squad diverts to help their comrades out of the pit. So the main advance has collapsed at literally the first contact with the enemy.
Vignetta launches her best tactic, using Pyrotechnics to blind everyone on the battlefield. Her men are trained to close their eyes at the sound of the preceding warning bell. Unfortunately only the ranger is affected and he crumples to the ground, rubbing his eyes.
The barbarian (rendered invisible by bardic magic) attacks the door with his axe and seems disappointed when it does not collapse, instead emitting a fan of flame hot enough to slay ordinary men on touch. To add insult to injury a barrel of oil is tipped out of the second floor onto his head, soaking the flagstones in slippery doom. The barbarian is sturdier than all that (he's actually sturdier than the door itself) and steps to the side to ready his crossbow, planning on shooting through the peephole. He narrowly avoids the bear trap in the bushes (in general he proves immune to all the traps, saving against everything except the Flaming Hands spell).
The bard has pulled the druid from the pit and now the druid runs forward to play his part. He chants in a mystical tongue, calling the door to remember its wild nature, and door twists and warps and falls from its hinges, revealing Vignetta and Pascale. They make a fateful decision to stand their ground instead of retreating immediately, based solely on the fact that the barbarian is invisible and thus concealing the closeness of danger. She calls out a command; arrows rain down; and the druid collapses like a pincushion so thoroughly pricked that she turns her attention to the soldier squads, blasting another one of her flaming spheres.
The cleric douses this sphere one while the bard heals the druid from the brink of death. The barbarian readies his great axe again and charges through the open door, easily navigating the oily terrain. He slashes at Vignetta, sending chainmail links and blood flying. Pascale bravely tries to save his mistress, casting a spell that would render the barbarian utterly helpless with hideous laughter. Despite the heavy odds the barbarian shrugs off the effect and smashes Pascale with his axe, almost killing the man in one hit. Vignetta sees the lay of the land, and with a hastily muttered apology, slips through the door behind her, closing and locking it in her wake. Then she casts again through the narrow peephole, flooding the entrance chamber in flames.
This is too much for Pascale, who succumbs in wailing agony. The first enemy casualty is an act of friendly fire. Speaking of fire, the barbarian is now on fire thanks to his oil bath, in addition to the effects of the spell. He drops to the ground, trying to snuff out the flames.
Outside the druid sits up and starts to cast another spell, then looks up at the manor house full of archers and decides not to draw more attention to himself. The archers turn their aim to the squad with the ladder, driving the last of that squad to the ground with more arrows. The ranger has returned to the battle; he takes a shot at a figure in the dark but hits only its shadow. Still this challenge draws an answer and the ranger sprouts several arrows from his chest. Severely depleted, the ranger calls for a medic. The cleric summons a fog to hide himself, and his companions quickly sprint to its safety, leaving Archilochus and his squad as the only viable targets. They are still rescuing Aristeas and some of their fellows from the pit.
The barbarian picks himself up and smashes through the next door with pure force, eschewing the surer but slower process of chopping it down with an axe since he's decide to switch to his new favourite murder implement, the greatsword he won off of Ser Brandford. This door is a more ordinary affair than the heavily fortified front entrance but it's still a feat of impressive strength. He plunges through the darkened house to the main stairwell (recall that all of the party spent several days in the house only a few months ago, so they know the layout). Dashing up the twisting stairs he finds Vignetta and two archers at the top. She kicks a barrel of oil over, drenching the stairs in oil which once again fails to take the barbarian off his feet, and steps back. Her men shoot - one hits, and again, these arrows hurt - then drop their bows and ready sword and shield for a desperate defence. The barbarian charges them but in the narrow confines of the stairwell his greatsword proves unwieldy, causing him to miss both targets completely.
Vignetta responds once again with flame. Now the barbarian is really in the soup; the oil-soaked wooden staircase turns into an inferno. He forces his way onto the second floor, the ordinary soldiers no match for his brute strength and their feeble shortswords ineffective against his heavy armour. Vignetta summons light and shadow to blind and stun him, but only succeeds in disabling her own men.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party has hatched a new plan. The recently healed ranger and the bard run out to pick up the ladder while the archers are focused on the squad of soldiers marching towards the door in good formation. However, the squad cannot yet enter the house, as the front entrance is covered in burning oil. The archers bring both Aristeas and Archilochus to the ground in one round with lucky volley of shots (thus neatly disabling the DM’s plot trigger for when one of the brothers died) and then switch to the new threat of the ladder, where the bard is ascending and the ranger is covering him with his bow. Just before they can shoot the sitting duck on the ladder, the cleric moves forward and summons another fog, concealing the ranger and bard.
The bard makes it to the top unscathed and rises out of the mist. Armed only with his old spear - his fancy halberd requires two hands, one of which is currently clinging to the ladder - he engages an archer in melee and wins! Arrows sing past his head and he rolls onto the roof, followed by the ranger. Two archers rush to hold them while the rest spread out, trying to fire around their fellows. The ranger and bard quickly dispatch this weak opposition, but this leaves them fully exposed to the archers without any cover. At that moment the center of the roof caves in, sending a column of flame into the sky. The stairwell is now a vortex of pure flame and the house is well and truly on fire.
Downstairs the entrance has abated; the druid and cleric enter the house with the remains of the last squad. They see that the interior of the house is in flames and immediately begin searching for the peasants they came to claim. Discovering a locked trap door in the kitchen, the cleric calls out that the house is on fire and the sorceress cannot contain it. This is the magic phrase - the trap door bursts open and the women begin handing their children up, following in a mad panic.
On the roof, the bard reverses course and surrenders the ground he fought so hard to claim, recognizing that the entire house has become a death trap. Summing up magic, he casts a spell as he pushes the ranger back over the wall and leaps after him. They gently float to the ground, escaping the flaming building and protected from the hail of arrows by the mist. Soon they are followed by a rain of helmets and swords, as the archers on the roof signal their surrender and scamper down the ladder.
In the middle of the house the barbarian is in the thick of it. As he pushes his way past a blinded man, Vignetta wails in outrage. "Why won't you die!" she screams, and closes to melee, the last place in the world any spell caster wants to be. She avoids the barbarian's sword and reaches out to touch him; lighting flows through her fingers and the barbarian lights up like a Christmas tree. Her Shocking Grasp does a ton of damage, none of which he can avoid, and suddenly the barbarian finds himself in very real danger, his once-inexhaustible pool of supernatural vitality now merely a memory. More archers are pouring into the hall to defend their mistress and she is clearly readying another spell.
Just then the wall to his right caves into the bonfire that was the stairwell. Heat washes out, licking at the fighters, and air rushes in, trying to suck all of them into the inferno. The barbarian blunders back past the man he had just pushed past, finds an open door, and charges for a window. His strength does not fail him; he bursts through the narrow window frame, taking half of it out with him, and plunges into the rose bushes below. The fall proves to be the final blow; he hits the ground and does not get up.
Vignetta and her archers follow close behind. They are more interested in escape than the inert form of the barbarian. Vignetta, with her supernatural vitality, hits the ground running, leaving her men to fend for themselves. Just as it looks as if she will escape, the druid and cleric come around to the rear of the building, attracted by the sounds of splintering wood. While the cleric heals the barbarian, the druid reaches into his bag of tricks and pulls out an Entangle spell. Vignetta pushes through the grasping weeds but her flight is slowed. The barbarian, back on his feet, runs around to cut off her retreat. The druid pulls out his other worst trick, a swarm of bloodthirsty bats.
Vignetta, seeing the end is near, has one final play. "See you in hell," she snarls to the barbarian, and raises her hand, crackling with power, to her own head. In a burst of energy the fire-witch's bandit career ends as fiercely as the manor's own fiery demise. The three men retreat from the angry swarm, abandoning the wounded archers to a dilemma of deaths: the bonfire behind them or the angry grass and hungry bats. No one is around to record their choice.
In the morning the sun rises over the smoking ashes as the fire finally burns itself out. Only five of Vignetta's men remain, having surrendered to the bard and ranger after the roof battle. Only four of the crew of the Argossey are left alive. This leaves all of the treasure in the hands of the party, a development they are not unhappy with. However, the crew points out two salient facts: 1) there are not enough of them to sail the ship, and 2) by tradition they are entitled to a quarter share of booty. Given how many of them died fighting the party's battle, they have a strong point. Nonetheless they are met with some opposition and the party considers cutting them loose with nothing but the now-useless ship for their share. One of the party suggests sending them to the nearest port to raise a crew for the boat, but this means sending them alone, since the nearest port is in Varsoulou. Pooling all of the booty the men would be entitled to yields enough to promote one of them to the knighthood, which is of course every mercenary's rasion de etre. Once this is on the table, the soldiers eagerly volunteer for the mission. It looks like the party is about to hand over a sack of gold and a promotion to four men who will then march off to enemy territory, with nothing more than the promise of a career as a castle guard to return to, until everyone belatedly remembers that half of the Argossey's crew is still back at the ruined keep.
The party decides to promote one of the men anyway, since they want to keep up morale. The archers from Vignetta's band are suitably moved by this generosity and pledge to our heroes' service without qualms. The group returns to the boat, collects what food and supplies they can carry, and begin the now-familiar trek home, planning to return later with enough men to rescue the ship. The women and children of the manor are not at all pleased with this development, but since they literally have nowhere else to go, they make the best of it. And they can’t even blame the party for their homelessness; this time, much to everyone’s surprise, the arson of a fine manor house was not the druid’s fault.
Along the way they encounter a basilisk they have avoided several times before. The creature gets the drop on them and creeps into their camp in the middle of the night. The bard tries to scare it off but fails; the ranger shoots at it but misses; and just before they have to suffer the ravages of its deadly gaze the barbarian intimidates it into running off. This buys them a round to prepare and when it comes back they open fire with spells and arrows. Even so it is going badly until the bard finally finds the right pitch and drives the creature off with a piercing whistle, dragging one of the druid's bat swarms in its wake.
Hours later the swarm returns and druid lets the spell lapse. Now they have conundrum: leave well enough alone, or go trekking through the bushes looking for a dead or possibly just severely wounded basilisk? The bard suggests caution but greed for treasure (and the desire to get rid of the monster while they have the upper hand) sends the party out into the bushes. This time they are luckier and the creature does not catch them by surprise. Its sluggish response gives them time to get an initial attack off and the creature succumbs to the force of the cleric's spiritual weapon (which is the most useful that spell has ever been).
A few days later they break out of the forest into the open plains of Edersarr, dominated by the Order of the Tower's stone spire. The Viscount Godard greets them warmly enough, sending stableboys to escort their peasants into the village for a meal and a rest and inviting them in for a drink. Here his true purpose comes out: he is feeling stung by playing dead to fool the Varsouloueans and desires revenge. And the party pretty obviously knows a safe path through the wilderness, given that they've just walked a bunch of peasants out of the woods. He forcefully invites them to lead his troops on a raid.
The party is not interested in returning to Varsoulou to slaughter a village for tael, judging that fighting bandits is morally distinguishable from wanton murder. Nor do they care about the Viscount's injured honor. They manage to escape the tower without provoking a duel, but it is clear the Order means more trouble for the party in the future. They march deeper into Edersarr with their army of refugees as the winds of war whistle across the plains at their heels, threatening fire and flame for more than just a manor house of bandits.
All in all I was please at how this battle turned out - several people almost died and everyone was forced to go beyond their comfort zone and find new tactics or take new risks. The vast disparity in levels really can be smoothed out with enough planning and preparation - at some point I'll put the Manor House up on DriveThruRPG as a minor adventure in the style of Tucker's Kobolds. This adventure also gave me a chance to show how the world changes in reaction to what they do. Finally, giving them a keep and peasants to go with it anchors them - if your party seems disaffected or unconcerned with the fate of world around them, just give them a source of profits to protect!
No comments:
Post a Comment