Author Topic: Forest Friends  (Read 9529 times)

Offline phaedrusxy

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Forest Friends
« on: July 29, 2017, 04:49:50 PM »

Levoid
m NG Forest Gnome Druid, Level 3, Init 6, HP 30/33, Speed 20
AC 17, Touch 13, Flat-footed 15, Fort 8, Ref 4, Will 8, Base Attack Bonus 3   
  club +3 (1d4-1, 20/x2)
  sling (10 bullets (1 sp)) +6 (1d3-1,  )
  Produce Flame (melee touch) +3 (1d6+4, 20/x2)
  +1 leather,   heavy wooden (+3 Armor, +1 Shield, +2 Dex, +1 Size)
Abilities Str 9, Dex 14, Con 17, Int 16, Wis 17, Cha 15
Condition None

(click to show/hide)

I started running a D&D game for my 9 year old son today, and thought I'd post a log of it here. I made up a quick adventure on the fly, and after the first encounter a friend of his came over and wanted to play, and so did my four year old daughter. :D

My son is using a forest gnome druid that I'd made a while back, his friend said he wanted to play an animal and after a bit of discussion we decided to go with an awakened parrot warlock named Sunshine. My daughter said she wanted to be a fairy, so I just let her use a "stock" pixie, whom she said has a pink bunny pet named Cutie Pie. (Update: She's a White-haired Witch 1/Monk 1 now. She said she wanted magical hair like my wife's witch, and my wife said she isn't going to play anymore, so I'm just going to gestalt their characters. I'm also going to use the PF Pixie as it has more magical abilities (which my daughter likes to make up on the fly... :p) and the d20srd is down right now...)


[SIZE=+1]Tinkerbell[/SIZE][/URL]
F   Pixie (PF) White-haired Witch/Monk, Level 1/1, Init 10, HP 18/18, DR 10/cold iron, Speed 
AC 24, Touch 24, Flat-footed 18, Fort 5, Ref 8, Will 6, Base Attack Bonus 1   
grab + constrict (+9) hair +8 (1d4+4, 20/x2)
  unarmed strike (claws) +8 (1d6+4,  )
  MW light crossbow +8 (1d8, 19-20/x2)
 (+6 Dex, +1 Size, +7 Misc)
Abilities Str 5, Dex 22, Con 16, Int 24, Wis 14, Cha 20
Condition None

In the first encounter, my son's druid, Levoid, saw smoke near his home (which he said is an "invisible hut"). He snuck up to investigate, and saw three goblins sitting around a campfire roasting a rabbit. Unfortunately one of the goblins spotted him. He hit them with an Entangle, and called for his animal friends (riding dog AC and two pet "deer", which mechanically I used mule stats for...). Only one of them gets caught in the Entangle, and another hit Levoid with a javelin, but then his animals massacred the two that had escaped the entangle.

He talks to the entangled one, and it says that they'd only came there to hunt. So after getting it to promise never to return, he lets it go. However, he tracks it and follows it back to a huge encampment with hundreds or maybe even a couple thousand goblins. He remembers that there is a village nearby and rides off to warn them.

He convinces the mayor of the danger, and then goes off to gather forest friends to slow down the encroaching goblin army while the townspeople prepare to evacuate to the nearest city. The other two characters come in at this point, and we ad-hoc a lot of this. They recruit some grizzly bears to roll boulders down into a narrow gorge to block it, and then use eldritch blast and more animal heavy labor to dig out a ford in the river to make it too deep to pass easily. This slows the goblins down enough to let the townspeople make it to the city unharmed, and then we all rejoiced and they went outside to play on the monkey bars. :D

Now I need to decide where to go with this from here. Likely it will be just my son and me, but my daughter might want to play as well. I might continue the whole goblin army thing, or I might just have that be resolved in the back ground by NPC armies, etc. (After all... how much can a lone level 1 gnome druid and a pixie do against an army?) If anyone wants to throw out some quick and easy adventure hooks I'm all ears. :D

I'm thinking that I'll have some grateful NPC award him with a Candycane of Awesomness for saving the village and warning the city of the army, to see if he remembers/recognizes it. :P Maybe they'll drop another quest in his lap, too (something about finding out where all these goblins came from, who is organizing them, etc).

He has Greenbound Summoning (template)
« Last Edit: July 01, 2018, 08:29:45 PM by phaedrusxy »
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Offline Nanshork

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2017, 07:14:29 PM »
I know you're running D&D, but have you looked at Hero Kids?  It's really well done, simplified, but still requires dice rolls and is a legitimate RPG.  I ran it for my 6 year old little brother and my 8 year old little sister as well as a couple of adults and everyone had fun with it.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2017, 09:49:50 PM »
Looks very cool. I"ll check it out later when I have time.
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2017, 05:00:42 PM »
My wife might join us tonight. She said she wanted to play a witch, so I made this for her. :D


https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1293932
I'm handwaiving a few feat prereqs (and other things :P ) for the sake of fun in the game. So I gave her Imperious Command + Never Outnumbered, and used the White-haired witch pathfinder class which has prehensile hair as a special attack. I also gave her a monk level with Kung-Fu Genius for Improved Grapple and Int to AC, and I'm interpreting it to apply her Int to her unarmed strikes as well.

The adventure idea is that one (or more) of them notices that an old "hill" that the locals have long called "The Old Man" has actually moved... and it looks like perhaps its resemblance to a giant man isn't just coincidence. After they do some investigating, they'll find a warren of kobolds has been mining underneath it, and has dug into the "Old Man's" hide, which has injured and started to awaken the enormous giant.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 06:09:04 PM by phaedrusxy »
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2017, 10:14:34 AM »
My son is also going to keep a journal on this, so I'll post his writing here too. :D

Quote
DnD 1st game!
Hello I am a druid and I love animals. I was in my invisible cabin and was minding my own busieness when I smelled smoke ! I had three pets and  1 was a wolf and 2 others were deer. Anyway I told all of them to stay and I crept up towards the and saw three goblins killing rabbits and eating them and was so mad! Then before I could call my animals one of the goblins spoted me! I shot a spell at the goblins but only one of the goblins got caught in the vines of my spell so I  ran and called my animals and when the animals came the goblins were then scared and tried to run away but wolf teared ones throat out and the deer puntured a goblin in the heart. The goblin I tangled strugled to get out but couldn't. I asked him why are you here and he said to camp so I let him go and told him to never to return. He ran away quickly and I decided to follow and then I saw and army of gobilins and I thought they were going to a village near by so I decided to go to that village and warn the people and when I got there I told the guard and the guard told the mayor  and the guard brought me to the mayor and I told him all I saw and he said they should go to a village near by and I said ok. Then I went into the forest and gather all my friends and together we collected grizzly bears to help push down boulders from a high gorge to slow down the goblins and soon we made it.Then we saw the goblins coming so we hurried away and we saw the goblins also had to cross the river so my parrot friend blew fire and made the river deeper so the goblins could not pass the river and we then we ran away and my pixie friend turned invisble and flew back to see how the goblins were doing and my pixie friend told me the goblins had  pushed some of the boulders and were coming so hurried to the and told the mayor what we had done and he was happy and then we saw the the city in the distance we were all saved!
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline altpersona

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2017, 03:09:39 PM »
sorry to interrupt the game log...

very cool



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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2017, 03:43:08 PM »
No problem. We had another game today (the 2nd), and my wife did wind up playing. I had her "hut" be on top of "Old Man Mountain", and for it to be tipped up onto its side when the "mountain" started moving. She enlisted the druid and pixie to help her investigate what was causing the "earthquakes". They at first tried to talk the kobolds out of mining, but as often happens when negotiations failed things were solved by violence. :D They then used some curative magic on the giant/mountain's bleeding backside to make sure he didn't wake up anymore, and we ended it there.
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2017, 11:37:13 PM »
3rd game was tonight. I retold the "Pied Piper" story, but had him be a satyr, and the kids were all happily dancing and singing to his music in the forest when the PCs caught up with them (and eating cupcakes  :love ). The NPC kids didn't want to actually leave, and the PCs decided to travel all night to get back to the village quickly (to retrieve the satyr's gold), and got ambushed by goblins. The druid 3 and pixie witch 1/monk 1 handily defeated the 5 goblin rogue 1s and 1 druid 4 riding a worg (I didn't bring in a separate animal companion, and didn't alter the worg's stats to be his AC). Of course, the druid's "pets" did most of the work, but the pixie did manage to grapple the worg with her hair (she has improved grab + constrict with it, from the White-haired Witch PF Archetype), and the druid then used a Flaming Sphere to finish him off while he was grappled. :D

The goblin druid won initiative and hit the whole PC party with an Entangle, but their dice were hot tonight as the druid PC was the only one who failed his save. :p Then it turned into a slugfest. The druid's new "pet", which is a warbeast leopard, was the one who took the most damage on the PC side, getting down to about 1/3 of its life. My son is writing up his own in-character summary which I'll post here once I have it. :)
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #8 on: September 10, 2017, 09:21:35 PM »
We finally got around to playing another game tonight. Since it had been so long, I let them level up 2 levels, making the druid 5th. I also decided to just count the pixie as a LA+2 basically.

My son has been playing minecraft and talking about undead and dungeons, so I had them tangle with a cleric necromancer and his minions which included a zombie heavy warhorse, 8 human skeletal archers (warriors), and 2 skeletal wolves. I also had a pit trap (CR 4, 80' deep) just inside the entrance to his cave lair.

I had the hook be him kidnapping the entire pixie village (to force them to construct sleep arrows for him, but the PCs don't know that yet). They tracked his minions down easily and headed right in. Very preciently, my son's druid cast Spider Climb on himself before entering and climbed along the ceiling. With the pixie flying along (both hidden and/or invisible) they avoided the pit trap and could have snuck past the four archers just on the other side of it. However, the archers heard them and started making some noises and pointing their bows in their direction, so the PCs decided to just attack. The druid dropped a flaming sphere, and the pixie tried her "scary voice" (intimidate + never outnumbered + imperious command)... not knowing that undead are immune to fear and morale effects (and neither of them had ranks in K: Religion).

A pitched battle ensued, with them taking down most of the skeletons before the rest arrived with the necromancer and his mount. He boasted and pronounced their doom alot, and did manage to blind the pixie with a glitterdust (using Darksun cleric rules... he's an old PC, and got it from a domain) and knock the druid down to 11 hit points before he had to flee himself (at 6 HP).

The druid's animals also got mangled pretty badly when he called them in to join the battle... and two of the four charged headfirst right into the pit trap. It took them down into the negatives but didn't quite finish them off... which was perfect. The blinded pixie managed to fly down and heal them with a wand before they died, while the druid was battling the necro and his minions above.

As the druid pulled back, dropped wildshape (and an eggshell grenade) and began healing himself with a wand of CLW... he heard the necro doing the same thing down the hall (which really made him mad :D ).

We had to call it a night there because it was bedtime, leaving them with a cliffhanger for by far their toughest battle yet.
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #9 on: September 15, 2017, 10:38:59 PM »
Finished up the battle against the evil cleric and his undead minions tonight. Both he and the druid stood back and healed themselves a bit, and then the druid got annoyed that he kept hearing the cleric heal himself down the hallway just out of sight. So he carried his two uninjured animals over the pit (he was wildshaped into a boar, and still had Spider Climb active), and... they all ran headfirst into another trap. It was a Glyph of Warding loaded with Sound Burst. Both the druid and pixie failed their saves and were stunned for a round... and the cleric and his remaining 5 skeletons and zombie warhorse charged out of the darkness to take advantage.

I had the cleric go after the druid's dog AC since it was leading the charge, and going around it would draw an AoO. The skeletons (and any other undead not commanded to attack a specific target) I just rolled randomly for target selection on every round. This likely wound up being a huge advantage for the "good guys"... as they focused fire on the cleric, and quickly dropped him down into the single digits again. So... being the no-good coward that he is, he defensively cast Meld Into Stone to hide and let his minions do the dirty work. :D My son's druid wound up getting dropped down to 1 hit point at the very end, but they did eventually take down the zombie horse, and then made short work all the skeletons.

Overall the kids used pretty good tactics. At one point they used an obscuring mist to block LoS for the skeletons, forcing them to waste a couple of rounds moving up to re-engage. My son plays minecraft and has played a bit of D&D Online, and being an avid reader he's probably scoured the PHB that I gave him a few times by now. I was quite proud of them. :D They rescued the pixies, and learned what the cleric's nefarious plot for them had been. My son left his animal companion to guard the spot where the cleric used Meld Into Stone, but he will have healed himself back to full while in the ground and so he has decent odds of getting away. I think he'll make a great recurring villain for them to hate, also. My son's already been complaining about him quite a bit. :P (Especially how "unfair" it is that his zombie heavy warhorse had 99 hit points and a 20 Str... to which I countered... yeah, but you beat him, so what does that say about your druid? :p )
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #10 on: September 16, 2017, 09:19:28 PM »
Well... so much for the recurring villain. His luck ran out when he came out of the stone and tried to escape. I had him heal himself to full and cast Sanctuary, and then cast Shocking Grasp and hold the charge before coming out of the ground. He also readied an action to zap anyone attacking him... The dog rolled very well on its saving throw, the cleric rolled really poorly with his touch, and the dog chomped and then tripped him. The cleric did then shock the dog for half its hit points, but the dog still managed to chomp him down into the negatives by the time the rest of the PC party showed up. My son decided to save him and take him prisoner, and the pixies decided that he was only so grumpy because he just didn't know how to have fun. So they volunteered to keep him as their "guest" so that they could teach him. He begged the druid to kill him as he was being dragged away to the pixie village. :D

I'm debating now on whether I have him escape again at some point, or actually have him become "redeemed". I think since this is a game for a four and nine year old that I'll go with genuine redemption, as that's probably a better message to send. :P

The cleric was this guy which I had used as a PC, but bumped up to 5th level, and with a full compliment of undead nasties.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2017, 09:21:49 PM by phaedrusxy »
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2017, 07:21:12 PM »
We finally got around to playing again... The kids were bored with it for a while, I think, and I've been insanely busy. This writeup actually includes two game sessions, but one of them was pretty light on the action and was a prelude to the second one anyway. So I'll just lump them together.

Levoid and Tinkerbell started out spending the night in the pixie village. Early in the morning, they were awakened by a pegasus that flew in with dire news: a nearby village of unicorns had completely gone missing! Naturally, the PCs went to investigate, and saw signs of a massive battle. There were a few dead unicorns, even more dead bugbears, and not a single living thing left. They followed the tracks of the unicorns to the ruins of an ancient keep that looked like a giant skull deep within the forest. This skull keep was along side a river, and its mouth opened up to act as a drawbridge over the river. The back of the skull was buried in the side of the mountainside, and it turned out that it was mostly just an opening for a set of tunnels that led deep into the ground.

They saw where a couple of decent sized boats had been moored nearby, but also saw tracks leading deeper into the caverns beneath "skull mountain", and opted to go into the tunnel. They killed three bugbears that were on their way back out from the depths towards the surface, and then bumbled into a myconoid colony, and managed to talk their way out of it without a fight (go go druid diplomacy! :D ). The myconoids warned them that there were terrible things deeper down in the tunnels, but of course they didn't let this deter them.

They found an enormous ancient lake, which obviously housed the ruins of an even more ancient city. There were broken pillars sticking up out of its depths like jagged teeth, and a long black bridge that seemed to cross over the middle of it. They started out on the bridge and encountered what appeared to be a group of 5 elven warriors. The PCs told them they were there to rescue a unicorn, and the "elves" said they were too, and that it was being held captive by a black dragon. Well... the "elves" were actually four skum, enslaved by an aboleth, and a Projected Image of the aboleth itself, all under the effects of a Veil spell.

The PCs suspected something was up (the druid's animal friends said the elves smelled like fish...), but still fell for the illusionary dragon when it appeared... chasing it right off the end of the broken bridge (covered with an illusion), and into a watery pit. The druid had already wild shaped into an octopus, and the pixie was flying, and so they weren't really affected, but the animal menagerie of the druid's were stuck climbing out of the water for a round. The druid himself actually made it to the "dragon" to make a swing at it... only for his tentacle to pass through it harmlessly... which is when the aboleth came up beneath him and struck him with a tentacle of its own (for max damage). He fled from it, and the pixie used her terrifying scream (Imperious Command + Never Outnumbered) to scatter most of the "elves". The projected image managed to draw the druid in for another harmless swipe, and then the aboleth cast a Shocking Grasp through it, leaving the druid at below half his hit points.

The pixie killed the last skum, and they then talked to the aboleth's projected image for a bit, rather than fighting it. He found them amusing, and so talked to them a bit, and then didn't chase when they decided to use the better part of valor... They went and told the story to the archdruid, a treant named Trelore, who told them what he knew of aboleths and also helped them guess at why the bugbears stopped off to take a unicorn deep into the tunnels. They likely bargained with the aboleth for some terrible knowledge, and the price it asked was one of their captured unicorns. The PCs then decided to go back and try to follow the "tracks" of the bugbears (who are in boats now) and their unicorn prisoners. They're also toying with the idea of trying to gather all of their friends that they can convince, and going back down into the watery lake to destroy the aboleth, but I think "Trelore" has talked them out of this. (Although if that's what they decide to do, it will be an easy session because I already have the aboleth's stats and environment made up. :P )

I also decided to use my Knowledge house rules but didn't bother telling them, because they're still very green and don't need to know details like this.

Edit: They recruited 6 pixies, went back and killed the aboleth. The fight got cut a bit short due to it failing vs. a sleep arrow... but it was bed time, anyway. :p
« Last Edit: December 11, 2017, 07:55:06 PM by phaedrusxy »
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #12 on: December 13, 2017, 02:19:34 PM »
Had another short game today with just my son, since his school was canceled due to snow and I was out from work sick. He and I both played my daughter's pixie witch/monk, as well.

They headed down river trying to track down the bugbears and the captured unicorns, which had about a two day head start on them but are on boats and so aren't going quite as fast. They came to a fork in the river, and the druid asked some of the local forest animals if they'd seen the boats and they told them which fork they took. Near nightfall, they came to a small logging town. The townsfolk were quite suspicious acting (which might be understandable... given that a green-haired gnome, a pixie, a unicorn, and a bunch of wild animals walked in...). After getting nowhere trying to question the townsfolk (who basically told them to bugger off), they did see two bugbears standing outside what looked like a building that probably doubled as the townhall/church.

The PC party went over there and angrily started demanding answers as to why the bugbears were there, where the unicorns were, etc, and it was looking like it was going to come down to an angry mob vs. the PCs, but then the door opened and a pleasant, well spoken man came out and introduced himself as the mayor. He calmly explained that yes the bugbears had passed through the town a day ago, and had stopped for the night. He'd hired these two on as guards at that time. A few sense motive checks later, they smelled something fishy, but decided it wasn't worth having to fight the whole town (who were likely innocents). So the druid asked the mayor if they could speak in private...

And of course... the mayor was a vampire (spawn) who almost immediately attacked once the door was closed. The pixie had followed along invisibly, and even then the vampire was looking like it was going to spank the both of them (CR 4 vs two ECL 7s :D ). Then they called for the rest of the crew, who quickly massacred the bugbears and rushed in to help knock the spawn down to 0 (it really helped that the druid started using Flaming Sphere, bypassing the vampire's DR).

After it was forced into gaseous form, they talked to an old man NPC (*wink wink*) who said that if they really wanted to kill a vampire, that they'd have to do so at its coffin. So the dog went and sniffed around in the graveyard until they found him. Unfortunately, that took long enough that he was back at full hit points... At this point, my son had a really interesting idea... and used Shape Earth and Stone to cause the ground around the vampire's sarcophagus to turn into mud, causing it to shrink into the ground in a muddy soup. This helped them out later...

They were all ready to pounce on him as soon as he dug himself out of the mud, and they made quick work of him, even though he tried to quickly shift to gaseous form and fly away. The druid eventually finished him off with a wand of Produce Flame, causing him to once again shift to gaseous form... except that now his coffin was buried in the mud, where he couldn't get to it as a cloud of gas. So they just waited till the sun came up and fried him. :D
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline awaken_D_M_golem

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #13 on: December 14, 2017, 06:29:14 PM »
Get well soon, the game sounds so cute.


I presume your kids are too young to be told how
an Ewok and Chewy's sister made a Bug-baby-bear.      Use the force ...
Well maybe the ~Dizney version.
Your codpiece is a mimic.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2017, 02:16:09 PM »
My son told (and we recorded) a 15 minute long stream-of-consciousness fantasy story during our drive home last night that was surprisingly good. :D It involved him killing a lot of dragons, so I think I'll have this upcoming BBEG ride a dragon of some kind into battle. I did have one short game with them since my last post, which I'll summarize here.

They decided to search out someone to "cure" my son's negative levels from his fight with the vampire spawn before they had a chance to become permanent. The helpful unicorn and "old man" NPCs told them that the nearest temple was over a day away, and so too far, but there were some ancient, ruined temples in the desert whose guardians might be able to help them. So they set off on a journey into the desert where they encountered a few different kinds of sphinxes and a purple worm. I had the NPC tell them tales of horrible giant worms that live in the desert that were too dangerous to even consider fighting, and also had the ground rumble a round before the worms would actually appear (warning them to take cover). At first, I had the (purple) worm appear alone while they were traveling (after a round of earthquake-like rumbling). They all managed to scramble up into the air, onto a cliff, or into an extradimensional space (I gave my son a magic tent that is always connected at one end to his druidic grove :P ) before the worm appeared.

Then it reappeared while they were fighting a couple of heraicosphinxes. While everyone else scattered (including the sphinxes...) the pixie readied a glitterdust and managed to blind the worm, which then just sat there "looking" around dumbly for a few rounds before disappearing back into the ground. I had one of the sphinxes actually follow the druid and his animals through his magic tent and into his grove... which caused a fun moment of confusion and chaos. Eventually he chased it back through with a flaming sphere spell, and it flew away (they'd already beaten it up fairly well, and I figured it had decided that this meal was too tough to bother trying further to subdue). The pixie in the meantime used her "scary voice" (i.e. Intimidate + Imperious Command) to scare the other sphinx away.

Then I had an androsphinx show up and compliment her on her "scary voice", and also say that he liked the spell she'd used. He offered to teach her how to imitate his own roar (and provide a magic item that allows this) in exchange for her teaching him to cast Glitterdust. After a bit more discussion, he also disclosed that he had a nearby friend (a lammasu... which I'm basically just treating like a different kind of sphinx... because really... that's what they are) that could cure the druid's negative levels. After a bit of diplomacy and negotiating, they convinced the lammasu to go with them to fight the vampire and its minions. In exchange, the druid would leave behind some of his animals to guard the temple that the lammasu was pledged to protect (I made up a backstory about the sphinxes being the last servants of a sun deity, and being bound to protect his temples for eternity... even though the temples were long ago fallen into ruin, and the deity himself largely forgotten, and the civilization that worshiped him lost to the dusts of history). The "sphinx" (lammasu) also helped them puzzle out why the vampire and its minions might be stealing unicorns. She revealed an ancient secret: that the light of the sun on the world was directly tied to the unicorns, who used to live in the lands that the sphinxes protect when it was a lush grassland instead of a desert. As the civilization that worshiped the sun god faltered, and the lands were overtaken by deserts, the unicorns eventually migrated to greener pastures, and their secret link to the sunlight was forgotten to almost everyone... but of course the aboleth that the vampire had consulted still knew, and no doubt this was the secret that the vampire had bargained for from it, and hence kicked off this whole unicorn kidnapping spree.

So now they know what the overarching plot is really about, and they're heading out with a powerful new ally to find and confront the vampire, and free the unicorns. I'm going to have the days start getting progressively shorter, and I'm going to have the vampire be very elusive, requiring a lot of hoops to jump through (and minions to defeat) before they eventually encounter him (which may occur in some kind of pocket dimension, or at least in a deep subterranean lair unreachable via means other than some kind of magical gate that they'll have to first find the "key" to). My son has voiced his frequent dismay at having many of the fights occur in areas with no plant life, because he has become a firm believer in the greatness of the Entangle spell... so I'll have to make sure to have some of the intervening encounters occur where he can use that. :p

(BTW, I'm totally ripping this unicorn/sunlight thing off from a campaign that I played in as a PC about 20 years ago... and I think even that DM ripped it off somewhat from the old Tom Cruise movie Legend :D I think I'm going to have the vampire slowly convert the unicorns into vampires to explain the encroaching darkness, though, not just kill them and cut their horns off. There will be some kind of MacGuffin that the PCs will have to use to restore them, either before, after, or during their destruction of the master vampire... likely involving Sunlight.)
« Last Edit: December 27, 2017, 02:24:59 PM by phaedrusxy »
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #15 on: January 05, 2018, 11:20:06 PM »
Plans for next game(s): they're heading into a swamp. I've already had them spot a yellow musk zombie, and an encounter with a yellow musk creeper and its zombies will be one encounter. I also think I'll have them come upon a swamp with several bugbear bodies, and a dead unicorn, all burned by acid and clawed/bitten, but no actual black dragon or its corpse... If they search well... they'll find some black onyx fragments. :D I'll also throw in some half-dragons for encounters in the area (likely half-dragon dire wolves). I've also considered a hydra, or roper(s).

THis might be useful: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/indexes-and-tables/encounter-tables/#TOC-Swamp-Avg.-CR-7-
« Last Edit: January 07, 2018, 06:34:26 PM by phaedrusxy »
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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2018, 10:04:24 PM »
Well... the best laid plans...

I did have them come upon the scene of several dead bugbears burned by acid, and then... they turned the adventure on its head. The mischievous pixie, who is played by my 5 year old, had just discovered the spell Detect Thoughts and thought it would be funny to read the druid's thoughts... However, she also detected thoughts of two creatures besides those in their party (which were the two black half-dragon dire wolves under the swamp water). She detected mostly really primitive thoughts/emotions like *afraid* *hungry* *eat*, but also... *mother* along with sadness.

And so... instead of engaging in combat with the two dragonlings... they asked them why they were sad, and what happened to their mother... and managed to use diplomacy to convince them to join the party for revenge. :D
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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #17 on: March 06, 2018, 03:09:42 AM »
A mini-BBEG showdown!

They followed the unicorn-kidnapping bugbears to an old ruin deep in the swamp. There, they had a showdown with zombie mommy dragon, a vampiric (black) unicorn, and the remaining bugbears. The PCs opening shot consisted of the (invisible) pixie using her new sphinx-roar to cause what was left of the ruin to collapse, killing most of the bugbears. The unicorn then dominated her, and she turned and attacked her allies for a round until their "sphinx" (actually a lammasu) ally flew up next to her with a magic circle, suppressing the dominate. They mopped up the bugbears quickly, beat on the unicorn until it used its greater teleport (I decided that the swamp around the collapsed ruin was its new "forest home"), and had beaten the dragon down enough to it was a foregone conclusion and so we called the game for the night.

We RPd them digging the ruins out and trying to figure out what happened to the rest of the unicorns over the next few days. Basically, I had decided that there would be a series of these towers linked to the movement of the sun. The vampire is going around corrupting unicorns at them to shorten the daylight hours, and eventually bring on "eternal darkness". If you know how, you can teleport from the 12 satellite towers to the 13th central one, and the vampire must have done this and taken the rest of the unicorns with him. So now they have to chase down this vampire before he corrupts them all.

Edit: I am putting some more plans in my private threads here. We had a very short game today in which they met with the leader of the order of "sphinxes", who told them about the towers, and gave them a map, and also got a gift from the Archdruid that lets them use Transport Via Plants once per day. They traveled to a plains area where another of the towers is, diplomancied some centaurs, and got them to take them to the nearest Sun Temple ruins. This temple happened to be the one with the Beacon of Hope, which is guarded by a powerful golem. They camped outside for the night (and I rolled secretly to see if the vampire and his posse came for that temple next, and they didn't). By the next day, the sun didn't come up until 11 AM (and it set the prior day at 2 PM). So there are very few hours of daylight left. The vampire is moving very fast at corrupting temples. (And the DM is speeding towards the climax of the campaign instead of dragging it out for as long as I'd initially planned. :P )
« Last Edit: March 25, 2018, 08:19:27 PM by phaedrusxy »
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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #18 on: July 01, 2018, 09:30:38 PM »
Haven't updated in a while, and we haven't played that much, either. Here's a brief recap:
They got the Beacon of Hope with no trouble by convincing the awakened golem guarding it that they're the good guys (they had a unicorn and a lammasu with them, so it wasn't that hard. :D).

They have to light this on the highest mountain. So they used the druid's 1x/day Transport via Trees spell (or whatever it's called) to teleport as close as they could to the mountain. They couldn't go all the way because its summit is above the treeline. In fact, they only got to the foothills near it. As they were trudging their way up through a pass, they encountered a couple of stone giants playing catch with boulders. After dodging a couple of boulders, they convinced the stone giants to be friends, and the giants suggested they take a shortcut through some dwarven ruins. They avoided falling down a "bottomless" crevasse by not actually riding on the mining carts... and just as they were nearing the exit, they were attacked by an unseen vrock's telekinesis. After a pitched battle, they got the vrock down to 2 hit points where it promptly teleported away. (The greenbound giant crocodile summoned by the druid did most of the heavy lifting...  with the pixie repeatedly intimidating the vrock with Imperious Command to keep it cowering for several rounds so it couldn't really put up much of a defense...)

The next encounter will be the "final battle" against the BBEG and his minions. The druid will be 9th level.
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Re: Forest Friends
« Reply #19 on: July 25, 2018, 04:05:49 PM »
We finally concluded the last battle, which was appropriately dramatic (I hope). The PCs saw starlight filtering in from the exit to the dwarven ruins they'd been navigating, and heard the chaotic sounds of hundreds of voices. The pixie buffed and flew up to scout, and saw that there was an army of gnolls camped just outside, along with the cleric they'd defeated earlier in the game, his horde of undead, 11 black unicorns (vampire unicorns) with vampire spawn riders, and finally the BBEG himself: a bald, purple-robed, flying vampire wizard. The BBEG had See Invisible up (he's a divination specialist, and his minions had tangled with the PCs numerous times, including the vrock very recently, so he was well informed of who they were and when they'd show up). So he saw her and tried to hit her with a Glitterdust. They rolled initiative checks, and she won by 1 point, so I said she managed to get out of the way before it "landed". She flew back into the cavern, and they began buffing and summoning like they never had before. I offered several tips about useful defensive spells, and they used their "ace" and called the dragon that they'd reincarnated earlier. It had originally been a black, but was reincarnated as a copper (mature adult). It came along with its two half-(black)dragon dire wolf children. She also began buffing, and before long they all had Death Ward, a spell that let them bypass DR/silver, and Resist Energy: Fire. The druid and his companion also had Luminous Armor, and he summoned a quartet of greenbound hippogriffs. The hippogriffs laid down a continuous supply of Wall of Thorns in the tunnel exit, with the dragon spewing acid into it as frequently as possible. They massacred a huge number of bugbears trying to rush through the bottleneck.

Eventually half the black unicorns and their riders came down the tunnel with bugbear reinforcements. The dragon breathed and wiped out the spawn and bugbears, but the unicorns kept coming until a lucky turning roll by the lone remaining good unicorn (who had been buffed by me to a celestial charger) turned them all...

Then they hatched a plan: the druid summoned an earth elemental, and turned into a small bird. The earth elemental then picked up he and the pixie and carried them to the surface through the rocky mountain above them. They sent the elemental back, and the pixie hid and slowly crept to the top of the "tallest mountain" with the Beacon of Hope (MacGuffin) while the druid flew up (as a rhino) and went mano-a-mano with the wizard and his called vrock (who had been healed back to full since they last encountered him). With a stoneskin effect from Heart of Earth, as well as his other buffs, he was holding his own against them for several rounds. He was wearing a Hathran Mask of True Seeing he'd borrowed from the pixie to bypass their Mirror Images, and his buffs also let him bypass their damage reduction. The wizard's 30 AC was a bit tough, though. He summoned two giant crocodiles, imbued with Celestial Aspect for wings, and together they managed to land a few good blows on the wizard, and even grapple him for a round (until he activated his Heart of Water for Freedom of Movement).

Finally, the weak sun crested the horizon, and the pixie finished the battle with two dramatic flourishes. She used her Horn of the Androsphinx to cause a cave-in and crush most of the army, and trap the rest of it within the cavern. She also held up the MacGuffin (Beacon) so that it focused the sun's weak light into a beam that first destroyed the BBEG, then transformed the "black unicorns" back into their normal selves, banishing the darkness and saving the world. :D
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.