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Let's Read Neverwinter: Ashmadai Encounters
The enemy table for the Ashmadai includes Heroic-tier devils and cambions from several books, and also several humanoid opponents that could be reskinned as cultists. We also get a few new stat blocks for cultists and devils, and for the cult’s leaders.
Seared Devil
Looking like a stinky burned corpse, this devil hurls itself at its victims, driven by envy of their uncooked state. It’s a Level 3 Soldier with 50 HP, speed 5, and Resist 10 Fire. Its basic attack is an Ashen Slam that damages and marks for a turn on a hit. Enemies that ignore the mark are hit by the Choking Ashes power, taking 5 fire damage and getting slowed for a turn.
Branded Zealot
Those who get initiated into the cult are branded with the symbol of Asmodeus. Most of them use this stat block. The typical zealot has a frightful temper and is easily goaded into fights. They’re Level 4 Brutes with 66 HP.
Zealots attack in melee with a Branding Iron that deals fire damage, and at range with a Range 3 Hellfire Chain spell that deals fire damage, pulls 2 squares, and slows for a turn on a hit.
Their special move is named Bow to Your Master, and it lets them do a Hellfire chain attack followed by a Branding Iron attack if the target is adjacent to them. It recharges when neither attack hits. If both of them do, the target falls prone.
Hellfire Warlock
A more discreet cultist, who got infernal warlock powers from deals with Asmodeus. They’re better at concealing their brands and like to infiltrate enemy centers to spy and sabotage them. They’re Level 4 Artillery with 48 HP.
The warlock’s Hellfire Affinity gives them +2 to defenses against enemies who are taking ongoing fire damage. Both of their basic attacks (a dagger for melee and a Hellfire bolt for ranged combat) damage and inflict ongoing fire damage (save ends).
Once per encounter they can release a Concussive Inferno in a Close Burst 2, targeting enemies. On a hit, this deals fire and force damage, pushes the targets 2 squares, and knocks them prone. On a miss it still deals half damage and pushes 2 squares.
If a creature within 10 squares of the warlock is taking fire damage, they can Ride the Fire as a move action (recharge 5+) and teleport to swap places with them.
Fimbrul Devil
Looks just like a seared devil, but is cold. These things hail from Nessus or Cania, and it is said that someone who survives a fight with them suffers from persistent chills for years afterwards. They’re Level 5 Controllers with 66 HP, Speed 6 with Ice Walk, and Resist 10 to both fire and cold damage.
Their Icy Claws deal cold damage; their Icy Exhalation hits a Close Blast 3, deals cold damage, and slows for a turn. Targets that were already slowed are instead immobilized. Once per encounter they can encase a creature in a Frozen Prison as a ranged attack, which deals cold damage and restrains (save ends). On a miss, the target takes half damage and is immobilized (save ends).
Mordai Vell
The pleasant face of the cult, Mordai Vell is a tiefling aristocrat descended from one of Neverwinter’s minor noble clans that was largely unaffected by the cataclysm. This doesn’t give him a claim to the throne, but does leave him with a lot of inherited wealth. His money and title make him an influent character in the city’s politics, and his public reputation is generally good because he’s almost as charismatic as he thinks he is. He sees Asmodeus not as his master, but as a means to an end.
In addition to the deals and schemes detailed above, Vell is also dealing with a duergar named Nimor Ironvoice who claims to have access to a source of hellthorn, a special metallic alloy that is very easy to enchant with infernal magic. He has people following Ironvoice around for a while now, but the duergar is careful enough to avoid revealing his sources.
When faced in combat, Vell is a Level 6 Lurker with 60 HP and Resist 10 Fire. His basic melee attack is with a rod that damages and pushes 2 squares, but his special powers are the most interesting part about him.
Fiery Corona attacks a Close Burst 2, dealing fire and force damage and inflicting ongoing fire damage. Shrouded in Fire deals 5 automatic fire damage to everyone adjacent to Mordai and lets him become invisible and teleport 5 squares. He remains invisible until he attacks or until the end of his next turn. Using one of these powers recharges the other, so he’s going to alternate them if possible.
Favria
Favria had been enslaved by a far-away band of Asmodeus-worshiping duergar since her birth. She escaped their service, but kept their faith. She made her way to Neverwinter to search for Gauntlgrym, joining up with the local cult and rising to a leadership position mostly through force and intimidation.
If Vell is the pleasant lie, Favria is the harsh reality of Asmodeus worship. Instead of lies and intrigue, she prefers to deal with problems by the direct application of violence. Still, she sees value in his way of doing things, and cooperates by keeping herself and her underlings mostly out of Neverwinter proper. They have a hideout in the ruins of the village of Thundertree.
Unlike Vell, Favria knows exactly what the unholy relic of Asmodeus held by the Thayans is capable of, which is why she is so intent on recovering it. She’s also still looking for Gauntlgrym. She is unaware that it’s currently occupied by Asmodeus-worshiping duergar, and her reaction to that discovery is unpredictable. Will she readily cooperate with her fellows in faith, or will she try to kill them to avenge her suffering at the hands of a similar group?
Favria is a Level 5 Skirmisher with 68 HP. She has Resist 5 to fire and poison, and fights using a pair of custom bladed hand crossbows that can be used in melee or at range. The melee attack deals extra damage if the target grants combat advantage, and the ranged attack fires poisoned bolts that damage and inflict ongoing poison damage (save ends). Dual Assault lets her make one of each attack once per encounter, recharging if neither hits.
Impressions
I did say I wasn’t inclined to make the Ashmadai a major thread but if I still wanted them to have a bit of staying power I’d probably tone down Mordai Vell’s personality.
As written, his demeanor is so Trump-like any players here in 2023 will immediately figure out he’s a bad guy and do their best to gank him early. That might bring some attention from the other factions, but would remove the cult itself as an effective threat.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Ashmadai
Since before the cataclysm that destroyed the city, the Neverwinter region was being infiltrated by the Ashmadai, a particularly powerful cult of Asmodeus. There’s a lot of backstory here, which seems to tie into to a Drizz’t novel. Let’s try to go over it quickly.
So back before the Cataclysm, the Ashmadai mostly worked as flunkies for the Thayans, because the Thayan leader Szass Tam had in his possession a scepter believed to be an unholy relic of Asmodeus. They were the wizards’ muscle when they tried to destroy Neverwinter to build the Dread Ring, their super necromantic fortress.
After that plan fell through in a Drizz’t novel, the Thayans fled the area and left the Ashmadai to their own devices until recently, when this Thayan lich named Valindra came back and announced she was the unholy scepter’s new owner, demanding the cultists’ loyalty.
The cult now finds itself split into two sub-factions:
The traditionalists are older and less educated, and serve out of genuine faith in their evil god. They’re okay with going back to being Thayan flunkies because of the scepter, which they value highly. They’re led by a dwarf named Favria.
The “new guard” is less religious and a lot more pragmatic. They want to retain their independence and rule the region themselves. They’re led by a tiefling named Mordai Vell.
Goals
Those two sub-factions are actually quite friendly with each other. Their leaders meet regularly, even though their lower-ranking members have no contact. Favria will happily leave the Thayans’ service if Vell can steal the scepter from them. Vell also wants to capture Valindra’s soul vessel, which will let him extract some payback from the lich for all the abuse she has been heaping upon them.
Once they’ve attained their independence, the Ashmadai plan to move on to dominating the region. What exactly this means is up to the GM, and will inform their strategies. Do they want to rule the region openly as its new imperial masters? Do they want to establish themselves as a “legitimate” religion and rule that way? Do they want to be a power behind the throne? Do they want to harness Maegera’s power to do so?
That said, the Ashmadai are by far the weakest of the major factions from this book, so a lot of their more immediate goals revolve around fixing that and avoiding the notice of the others.
The pragmatist faction operates mostly from the shadows. Mordai Vell established a complex system of cells or “pods”, where the highest-ranking leaders report to him but don’t know each other, and this structure repeats down each leader’s hierarchy all the way down to the dumb muscle on the ground.
The traditionalist faction is more direct and violent, though they mostly keep out of town unless called upon. In areas already under their control, they paint their symbol on buildings and alleys as a way to remind the local populace who’s boss.
Like the aboleths, the Ashmadai are fond of kidnapping people. Their victims become sacrifices in a peculiar arrangement they have with their diabolic patron. For each devil they summon into the world, they must also bind a mortal to a devil’s spirit. These possessed individuals can look like mortals while using devil stats, or use their original stats with the addition of a couple of thematic powers. I guess this devil-summoning must be the Ashmadai’s primary means of increasing their firepower, but since those possessions are framed as the price of the summonings I’m guessing the possessed are not directly beholden to the cult’s hierarchy. Whether it’s possible to rescue them from this possession is up to the GM.
Player Tie-Ins
The Devil’s Pawn is on a collision course with the Ashmadai, who will make big efforts to recruit them. They will also go after people who look like they can rise to positions of power in Neverwinter, like the Noble.
Whether the cult tries to actively recruit the PCs or not, they can certainly use their services against the aboleth menace. PCs who would never accept working with diabolists might be approached by disguised agents intending to point them at their enemies.
It’s not actually stated anywhere within this entry, but other places in the book say the Ashmadai control the above-ground portion of Oghma’s temple, meaning Oghma’s Faithful is very likely to end up fighting them.
Relationships
The Ashmadai are hard at work trying to infiltrate New Neverwinter, but they haven’t managed to make any progress with Mayor Soman Galt (who, as we saw, is a pawn of the aboleths already). Mordai himself is busily trying to convert General Sabine of New Neverwinter to his cause, and has a good shot of managing this as her natural disposition is compatible with the cult’s.
The Abolethic Sovereignity is the competition, and they’re ahead. The cultists ideally want to seal the chasm leading to their base, or otherwise drive them off permanently, but they’re not even close to accomplishing this. The only reason the Ashmadai are still around is that the aboleths don’t consider them a serious threat.
As mentioned above, the Ashmadai are nominally serving the Thayans while looking for a way to break free of that servitude. They only do the minimum to prevent Valindra from suspecting them, but their rebellious plot is doomed to failure as Valindra does not have that relic scepter any more - she shipped it back to Szass Tam as soon as she was done showing it off.
The cult looks at the Netherese with much more genuine awe, though. They’ve begun holding secret talks to forge an alliance, though they’re still having to keep that hidden from the Thayans.
Impressions
As far as major factions go the Ashmadai are kinda weak. All of their major goals and strategies lead them down a path that ends in a face-first collision with one of the factions. They can’t recover the scepter because it’s not here any more. They can’t corrupt New Neverwinter entirely because the aboleths got there first. The direct approach to conquest doesn’t work because all the other would-be conquerors are stronger.
Of course, there’s a small chance that campaign events and PC actions end up giving them a leg up, if only because the PCs open a power vacuum the cult can exploit. I myself am not inclined to make them into a major threat, because it’s always refreshing to have a group of villains you can easily stomp into the ground.
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Underwater Dungeon Fantasy
Illustration by Geoffrey Ernault Underwater adventuring is one of those things that older editions of Dungeons and Dragons seemed to like more than their players did. Lots of monster books included a selection of monsters that could only be encountered under the sea, but every bit of commentary I read on those was always about how no one ever bothered to include submarine delves in their campaigns. If a sea monster couldn’t go up to the surface to attack a ship or climb on its deck, it was usually ignored by GMs.
The Dungeon Fantasy lines learned this lesson well, and don’t spend a lot of ink on support for underwater adventures. This was a big problem for me when I was GMing Hell’s Rebels to a group of friends. This particular adventure path follows the old tradition of making PCs spend a chunk of levels 5-8 underwater. When I got to that part in my GURPS conversion, I had no idea what to do and got a bit stressed out trying to figure this out on the spot.
Frantically researching rules in real time is no fun at all even when I am the only player, so for the benefit of my solo Hell’s Rebels game and any future run-throughs with actual players, I’m going to collect everything I know about fighting underwater in GURPS right here in this post.
I admit I don’t have all the officially published primary sources that discuss underwater adventuring. The ones I’m using are DF: Exploits and the simplified rules that can be found in Dungeon Fantastic, which do reference the sources I don’t have.
Underwater Fighting For Land-Lubbers
If you’re not an aquatic creature, you use these rules when fighting underwater.
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Your Move is limited to your Swimming move: Basic Speed/5, minimum 1.
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All of your skills are capped at the level of your DX-based Swimming.
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Thrusting and unarmed strikes receive no penalties.
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Some grappling techniques won’t work. Others work as normal. GM adjudicates.
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Swinging attacks with Reach 1+ weapons are impossible. This does cover pretty much every weapon listed in DF: Adventurers, as even small knives have a Reach of “C, 1” when swung.
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Shield bashes are -2 x DB to hit and do half damage. Don’t bother trying.
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Blocks are impossible but you still get your shield’s DB.
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Parries with Reach 1+ weapons are impossible. Parries with close-combat-only weapons like daggers, and unarmed parries, are allowed and suffer no penalties.
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Dodge is possible and not penalized, but you can’t Retreat.
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No thrown ranged attacks, even from Missile spells. Special underwater ranged weapons exist and use specific stats.
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Ranged attacks into our out of water have -4 to hit, 1/10 range, and do half damage.
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All through this, you’ll be holding your breath under Heavy Exertion (DF: Exploits p. 21)!
Underwater Fighting for Fish and Fish-People
Water adaptation in GURPS has two main components. One is the ability to breathe underwater. The other is the ability to move freely while submerged.
In monsters, the first is handled by traits such as Gills, some variety of Doesn’t Breathe, or the ability to hold their breath for a really long time even in combat. A combatant with one of these traits doesn’t need to worry about the standard Breath Holding rules.
The second is handled by the Amphibious or Aquatic traits. If you have one of these traits, you get a lot of advantages over land-lubbers.
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Your get to use your full Move and skills, not limited by your Swimming.
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You are exempt from most skill penalties from being underwater and from many Swimming tests.
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You can Retreat!
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Your other attacks and defenses are limited as for land-lubbers. This is important for weapon users, not so much for aquatic beasts.
From Delver to Diver
If you’re a typical delver belonging to one of DFRPG’s standard ancestries, then you fall squarely in the “land-lubber” category, and you have to solve a couple of problems before you can dive in.
Breathing
If you don’t want your underwater life expectancy to be measured in seconds, you need to find a way to breathe in there. In most typical DF settings, that means magic.
Spells
The DFRPG boxed set includes two main drowning-prevention measures: the Breathe Water and Hold Breath spells. They have different prerequisite chains but work the same, letting you ignore that part of the rules for as long as they last. Both have a base duration of 1 minute and an energy cost of 4 to cast and 2 to maintain, reduced by skill as normal. Hold Breath is a little better because it also let you survive in non-watery environments.
Their main disadvantage is that their duration is relatively short. Unless the PC casting these spells has a skill of 20 or more with them, the affected character is only going to be able to remain underwater for a few minutes at a time. That’s nowhere near enough for a full delve, and it’s an even shorter time if you need to maintain this spell for multiple PCs. If the caster does have skill 20 then things get a lot easier, but that costs a lot of points.
Items
If we expand our scope a little to look at DF supplements, then we see that Dungeon Fantasy Magic Items 1 has an alchemical Water-Breathing Amulet. You can breathe underwater as long as you wear it… but it costs an amazing $23.400. Outfitting a party of 5 with that is a very expensive proposition, unless you find them as treasure.
A reusable casting item like a wand or ring with the Breathe Water spell would cost at least $8200. This basic version would be powered by the user, so it has the same duration limits as the spell. Doubling the price would halve the energy cost, which is better but not perfect.
However, if we expand our scope even further and break out of the DFRPG bubble, we can go to GURPS Magic and find an alchemical water-breathing elixir that costs $600 in a setting with common magic and gives you the ability to breathe water for 1d hours! Even a minimal roll gives you a nice amount of time to explore, and per that book’s rules you’ll know the duration is about to expire 5 minutes in advance, which is better than nothing.
That elixir is clearly the best approach for campaigns where underwater delves are a sometimes thing. They’re a little less convenient than the amulet, but the price can’t be beat. I’m definitely including this in my campaign.
Moving
Unless your delvers are willing to spend the time and points to become better-than-Olympic swimmers, solving their underwater movement issues also means resorting to magic.
Spells
DF: Spells gives us two options here: Swim and Ethereal Body. The first makes the subject effectively Amphibious, the second makes them intangible and thus able to ignore all that water. GURPS Magic additionally gives us Walk Through Water, which makes the user intangible only to water and ice. This means you don’t enjoy 3D movement while underwater… but your maneuvers in combat are unrestricted! I think I can kinda see why this one didn’t make the cut to the DFRPG.
As with water-breathing, our biggest limitation here are spell maintenance costs, which limit our unimpeded movement to a few minutes at most. These are also harder to completely eliminate, since Ethereal Body costs 4 energy per minute to maintain and the others cost 3. Still, a caster could conceivably save these for when a fight is about to start, and only cast it on the group’s physical fighters.
Magic Items
I couldn’t find an always-on item with a Swim enchantment in the books I own. A basic casting item for Swim will cost at least $20500, almost as expensive as the always-on water breathing amulet. Lowering its casting/maintenance cost from 6/3 to 3/2 doubles the price, lowering it to 2/1 quadruples it.
We might built this as a charged item instead, with each charge giving you 2 minutes of Swim time and costing 9 energy. A non-rechargeable item would cost $1350 per charge, a rechargeable one $2700 (plus $180 per charge to reload).
If Walk Through Water is allowed in the campaign, an item with the same duration per charge would be a tad cheaper: $910/$1820/$140.
In any of these cases, the item is best used sparingly, in the same manner as the spell. You activate it when it’s time for a big fight or a crucial skill test, and rely on your Swimming lessons the rest of the time.
Optimal Strategies
Given all of the above, I think we can pretty easily arrive at an “optimal” strategy for underwater expeditions.
If your group is about to embark in a campaign centered around underwater delving, your PC party should include a caster who can use Breathe Water at Skill-20, and also someone who can use Swim at Skill-15. A druid or wizard could do both, a cleric can use Breathe Water and leave Swim to someone else. This is a hefty investment, but worth it for the amount of use they’ll get out of it. Every PC, caster or not, should also consider investing points into the Swimming skill, because it can help conserve spell energy and is pretty useful in itself. You might want to give them extra points for these purposes depending on your desired power level.
An alternative here is for you to allow players to make PCs from ancestries that have an easy time underwater. Both Sea Elves from GURPS DF 3 and Argonians from this blog have Gills and are Amphibious. Warforged are a bit less nimble but don’t need to breathe at all. Each delver who is a natural-born diver will make the rest of the party’s life that much easier. For those who aren’t, Water-Breathing Amulets make excellent treasure.
If you’re planning a standard campaign that features a one-off underwater dungeon, Water-Breathing Elixirs are the way to go, possibly supplemented by one or two rechargeable Wands of Swimming. The elixirs should definitely be easily available in a nearby town (perhaps it’s a coastal fishing village?). The wands might be for sale as well, or might be found as treasure either before or during the delve. Proper safety procedure is to carry two elixirs per PC, saving the second one for the return trip if the first one wears off.
If you only have isolated underwater encounters, we’re back to learned spells, but they don’t need to have high levels. The submerged environment becomes an additional challenge, but no one is going to spend too long inside it.
Hell’s Rebels in particular fits the second category, so I’ll be using that solution.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels!
I started a Let’s Read of Hell’s Rebels way back when it was new, in 2017. I had gotten the campaign’s first three volumes with alongside a huge pile of other Pathfinder PDFs in one of Humble Bundle’s offerings.
I managed to publish articles about the first three of those books here, though I kinda stalled out between volumes 2 and 3. I still want to “Let’s Read” the rest one day.
This post, and the series it starts, are about something a bit different. You see, ever since I got those books I also had a desire to run this campaign, but I didn’t want to do so using Pathfinder 1e’s default system. No, I wanted, and still want, to use the Dungeon Fantasy RPG for it.
I actually did it, too! This was during the thick of the pandemic here in Brazil, so I ran it on Roll20 with a group of friends. We got through the first two adventures, but I ended up stopping that campaign because the combined workload became a bit too heavy for me. I had to convert everything, prepare battle maps and tokens for Roll20, adjudicate setting developments in response to PC actions, and do all of that on time for the next session in two weeks while juggling all the other stress sources those interesting times produced for me and my family.
I still wanted to go through the whole thing, whether as a GM or as a player. As a GM, I no longer had any confidence I could prepare everything I needed on schedule. As a player, I had that peculiar problem where the only person I knew who wanted to run that adventure in the exact way I wanted to play it was me. Clearly, there was only one solution.
Running this thing as a solo campaign
I actually decided to run Hell’s Rebels for myself as a solo campaign way back at the beginning of 2023, but it took until the start of June for me to finally find the inspiration I was lacking.
This won’t be my first “solo” campaign: I ran through the first two Zeitgeist adventures that way between 2015 and 2017, give or take a year. That attempt lost steam due to the issues I’m about to discuss, but it was pretty fun while it lasted.
My solo campaign attempts don’t have much in common with others I’ve seen online. Those games tend to be quite minimalistic, with a single protagonist run by the solo player, a setting sketched in broad strokes, and some sort of “divination engine” taking the place of the GM. There is no pre-defined plot at all - it’s entirely decided by asking questions to the engine and interpreting its answers. The protagonist might have a starting goal, but how hard that is to reach and what happens on the way are determined randomly. Note-taking seems pretty minimal, unless the player in question wants to post actual play reports online.
To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that approach and it is in fact the one I would recommend to most people who want to do a solo game. All of the solo game products out there support it, and it is excellent at replicating the experience of being a player in a game and not knowing what will happen next.
It’s also not the approach I’m going to use for myself. I guess I’m built different.
The biggest difference between this game and one using the “best practice” approach outlined above is that I have a pre-defined module I want to run: the Hell’s Rebels Adventure Path. Not only do I want to play that, I’ve already read the first four volumes quite closely. While I find it easy to “forget” this stuff when I’m just a player, here I’m also the GM, which makes separating this knowledge impossible.
And of course, I have this weird desire to run it in a way that mirrors a standard party-based campaign with multiple players as closely as possible. I want a party of heroes, and I want to be both player and GM at the same time. I want it to be GURPS, and I want to interact with the mechanical widgets of that system because I find them fun.
And of course, I don’t want to just keep a minimal set of notes. I’m not gonna write things as a novel or anything, but I kinda want to see the game’s events rendered as a reasonably comprehensive actual play report of the sort I see in the Dungeon Fantastic blog. I’d do that even if I didn’t intend to post them publicly - it’s what I did for Zeitgeist.
How I’m doing this
My strange preferences bring two big risks to this endeavor.
The first one is the lack of an “information barrier” between player and GM. This barrier and the dramatic tension it brings do not exist when player and GM are the same person. The usual strategies for separating in-character knowledge from out-of-character information do not work here, at least for me. This gives me the strange simultaneous feeling that I’m “cheating” (as a player) and “going too easy on the PCs” (as a GM). This is obviously an obstacle to fun.
The other issue is with preparing maps and tokens. Sure, this would be much easier on me if I ran everything in the theater of the mind, but I like moving figures around on a battle map. The problem on my earlier attempts was that I would usually leave the building of those battle maps to the very last second, when I’d be in a rush to get on with the action. This also means I never took the necessary time to familiarize myself with the software I was using. So I’d stall, and procrastinate, and take two months to finish something that could have been done in a couple of days.
To solve both of these issues, I’m going to make a resolution to never wear the GM and player hats at the same time. The GM hat is for preparation. The player hat is for “actual play”.
The GM Hat
During preparation, I’m going to consider myself a mix of GM and designer and I’m going to lean on my newly-discovered feelings of Miniature Envy. You see, a lot of the online friends I’ve made in the past year and a half are very much into tabletop wargaming. They have extensive miniature collections and extremely well-organized workspaces for assembling and painting them. They often post the results of their work online and it always looks awesome.
I have neither the space, skill, nor the budget to do the same thing, but I can look at the process of building battle maps and actor tokens in GCS, TokenTool and Foundry with the same sort of perspective. Learning how to use the software and actually building the things, then, becomes a hobby in itself. And there’s no time or schedule pressure, so there’s no problem if I take a bit longer in this part.
This will also be when I actually convert enemy stats, tests, and treasure from the adventure’s original Pathfinder 1e to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. I’ll try to make them useful to others who want to try running the adventure in a more traditional manner, but I won’t bother converting rules material for those paths my PCs never take.
I will also perform some significant “condensation” in the campaign. Like all Pathfinder adventure paths, Hell’s Rebels includes a lot of filler fights placed to give your PCs enough XP for them to hit the expected character levels at the right times. It also features lots of elements that get added only on later books but which could be relevant from the start. Neither of these things are necessary in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign where the PCs already start out powerful and advance in a completely different manner.
As soon as I have a large enough chunk of unplayed material, I’m going to take off my GM hat and become a player.
The Player Hat
To solve the information barrier issue, I’m going to just learn to stop worrying and love the cheese. When I’m wearing my player hat, it will be like I’m playing a computer game with a walkthrough open. Sure, I might know what’s coming, and I might even have a party custom-tailored to overcome those challenges, but the process of overcoming those challenges can still be quite fun. It can even still be surprising, depending on what the dice tell me.
It helps that this is the campaign whose main goal is punching fantasy Nazis. Even if I know what’s coming, the actual process of going through it can still be fun. Let us make awesome heroes tailored to the challenge and completely stomp those fascist fuckers into the fucking ground! Let’s kick their asses all the way to the Hell they came from! I want catharsis, dangit!
I will also try to pay special attention to my characters’ disadvantages and other traits, and obey the dictates of those self-control rolls. And when some kind of question appears during the “actual play” part, I’m going to use the Mythic GM Emulator to answer it.
What’s in this for you?
This effort is going to generate a lot of material for this blog! I expect readers will get some use out of my premade PCs, and out of the enemy stat blocks I generate. Everything from those stats to the “actual play” reports and design commentary is going to be published here.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Abolethic Sovereignity Encounters
The table of standard monsters that make up the AbSov’s roster includes pretty much every heroic-tier aberrant creature, from Fell Taints (MM2) to the weaker varieties of Mooncalf (Threats to the Nentir Vale). It also includes Heroic-Tier versions of iconic aberrants usually found in Paragon, and non-aberrant creatures and humanoids that can act as covert agents or as the basis for mutated monstrosities with the Plaguechanged Monster theme described here.
We’ll take a look at the new monsters, NPCs, and at the template here.
Aboleth Opener
This is an aboleth specializing in brute-force psychic intrusion, “opening the mind” of its victims using mental attacks and then dominating them for transport to the underground base, where they will become test subjects. It’s a Large Aberrant Magical Beast and a Level 7 Controller with 82 HP and the Aquatic keyword. It has darkvision, a ground speed of 5, and a swim speed of 7.
The Opener projects an Eroding Mucus Haze, an aura (5) that is difficult terrain for enemies and deals 5 psychic damage to any dazed enemy that starts their turn inside. It can fight in melee with its Flaying Tentacles, which do immediate and ongoing damage, but it prefers to stick to mental attacks if possible in order to avoid damaging the goods.
The creature’s title comes from its Mental Lance ranged attack, which deals psychic damage and dazes for a turn. It can then target dazed targets with Enslaved Open Mind, a minor action power that dominates the target (save ends). This recharges whenever the Opener has no dominated victims.
Aboleth Remnant
Not even the aboleths themselves are immune to Spellplague corruption. Exposure tends to turn them into these Remnants, whose body constantly spawns and sheds tentacles and other limbs, and whose mind is in tatters. Remnants can fly, unlike typical aboleths. They’re treated like the rest of the base’s “trash”, and sent up the chasm to harass Neverwinter.
These wretches are Large Aberrant Magical Beasts and Level 5 Brutes with 78 HP and the Aquatic keyword. They have darkvision, a ground speed of 5, a flight speed of 7 (hover) and a swim speed of 10. They project an aura (2) of Maddening Mucus, which acts as difficult terrain for enemies and makes them grant combat advantage while inside.
Their attacks are a Reach 2 Telescoping Tentacle that damages and knocks prone on a hit, and a Tentacle Flurry that targets enemies in a Close Burst 2, damaging and dazing them on a hit (save ends). A miss here deals half damage. This recharges when the creature is first bloodied.
Grell Strangler
This less-venomous variety of Grell is fond of strangling its victims. It’s a Medium Aberrant Magical Beast with the Blind keyword. It has Blindsight 12, a ground speed of 1, and a flight speed of 6 (hover).
Its basic attack is a Reach 2 Tentacle Lash that deals physical damage and forces the target to grant combat advantage for a turn. That last one seems to be a poison effect.
If the strangler isn’t grabbing anyone at the moment, it can use Grasping Tentacles to remedy the situation. This Reach 2 attack does a bit of physical damage and grabs the target (escape DC 16). The grell can immediately shift 1 square and pull the victim up to 2 squares, and while the grab persists the victim takes 5 ongoing damage.
Once the strangler grabs someone, it will use Haul Away to do exactly that. This move action lets it shift half its speed and drag a victim along with it.
These are great for separating the party and messing up their formations. Defenders and controllers should focus on locking them down to prevent that.
Nothic Plagegazer
This monster is entirely made by the chaotic magic of the Spellplague pocket. Its gaze can inflict a debilitating spell sickness on its victims.
Plaguegazers are Medium Aberrant Humanoids and Level 6 Artillery with 60 HP. They have a speed of 6, darkvision, and truesight 10. They exude an Oozing Plague from their skin that causes any creature that ends their turn adjacent to the nothic to take ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends).
The nothic prefers to keep away from enemies and attack them with its Sickening Gaze, which deals necrotic damage, ongoing 5 poison damage, and slows (save ends both). After the first failed save, the Slowed condition worsens to Immobilized.
It can also use an area attack named Spread the Infection. This targets a creature taking ongoing poison damage, and affects an Area Burst 1 centered on them. It deals necrotic damage and inflicts ongoing 10 poison damage (save ends) on those it hits. On a miss, it still inflicts half its immediate and ongoing damage. It recharges when the nothic is bloodied.
If it has no other choices, it will use its claws in melee. They have no riders, but Oozing Plague will probably be in effect here.
Nothic Mindwarp
Another nothic produced by the plague pocket. It’s more insane than usual, and likes to caper and cackle about as it drives others mad with its gaze. It’s a Level 3 Lurker with 42 HP and a Speed of 6.
The mindwarp will try to affect someone with its Warping Gaze, a ranged attack that deals psychic damage and forces the target to grant CA (save ends). While the target is affected by this condition, the nothic becomes invisible to everyone but the target, and its basic claw attack does 1d6 extra damage. On a miss, the nothic still has partial concealment for a turn. The power recharges when the victim saves against it.
So the tactic here is to use Warping Gaze on someone, and then try to attack someone else with enhanced claw attacks, repeating the procedure when the gaze’s victim saves against it.
If the nothic gets surrounded, it can use its Forbidding Glare encounter power to attack enemies in a Close Burst 2, dealing psychic damage and pushing them 2 squares on a hit.
Plaguechanged Monster Theme
A monster theme modifies a monster in a less drastic way than a monster template. Templates turn a regular into an elite or an elite into a solo. Themes add a couple of flavorful powers without changing the monster’s level or “quality”. They’re a great way to really tie a dungeon together, even if the base creatures are very disparate otherwise.
Plaguechanged monsters are affected by the Spellplague. They show the scars or mutations associated with it, and possess magic abilities that use its characteristic blue flames and corruptive effects.
I was mistaken before - plaguechanged monsters do not gain the ability to sense spellscarred PCs, nor do they suffer defense penalties against these PCs. To create one, you just add one attack and one utility power to the base creature from the sets provided here.
Attack powers include:
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Blue Fire Burst: Encounter, triggers when first bloodied. Close burst 2 vs. Reflex, deals fire and force damage, pushes 2 squares.
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Inferno Step: Teleport 5 squares and attack a Close Burst 1 on arrival. This deals fire damage and knocks prone on a hit.
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Scouring Lash: At-will reach 2 melee attack, deals fire and force damage and slides 1 square on a hit.
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Unraveling Touch Encounter reach 1 melee attack, deals necrotic damage and dazes (save ends).
The attack and damage from all of these are expressed in terms of the base creature’s level, so they can be applied to any monster from any book - even minions, as the DMG2 has rules for applying themes to them.
Utility powers include:
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Burning Gaze Encounter, minor action. Invisible or otherwise hidden enemies within 5 squares of the creature glow with blue flame, losing the benefits from cover and concealment and granting combat advantage until the end of the creature’s next turn.
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Devourer of Flame: Encounter, triggers in reaction to taking fire damage. The creature gains temporary HP equal to half the fire damage, and a +4 bonus do damage rolls until the end of its next turn.
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Wings of Blue Fire: Encounter, move action. The creature flies its speed, and anyone making opportunity attacks against it during this movement takes fire damage equal to the creature’s level.
Rohini, The Prophet of Helm’s Hold
Here we have a surprise NPC big-shot belonging to the AbSov faction. Rohini is the person in charge of Helm’s Hold, which as we saw before has been converted into a hospital for Spellplague victims and has a Realms-wide good reputation for its humanitarian efforts. This is where we learn that the Hold is a front for the Abolethic Sovereignity, and Rohini is their agent. There was already some mention of it in the New Neverwinter section, but this one gives us the full details.
The Prophet of Helm’s Hold presents herself as an attractive and charismatic female human, but she’s something fair weirder. Not long ago, she was a succubus summoned by the Ashmadai and tasked with infiltrating the spellscarred treatment center in Neverwinter’s House of Knowledge. There, a priest corrupted by the Sovereignity exposed her to an artifact named the Hex Locus, a solidified chunk of Spellplague magic. This warped the devil and infused her with the same essence that turns humans into foulspawn.
Rohini’s main mission is to safeguard the Locus, which she moved to Helm’s Hold. Her secondary goal is to collect new Choir candidates from among the Hold’s patients and send them to the underground base. She is called the Prophet because she makes statements about future events that tend to come true (due to AbSov meddling). Her healing blessings are entirely fake, and make patients feel good just as their condition steadily worsens.
Rohini has stats very similar to a standard succubus, making her a Level 9 Controller. There are some important differences, though. She’s Aberrant instead of Immortal. Her basic Corrupting Touch is upgraded to a Maddening Touch that does psychic damage and slides 2 squares. Her Charming Kiss turns into a Soul-Wrenching Kiss that places more restrictions upon the victim.
As before, the victim of the kiss is unable to attack the succubus, but they also can’t willingly move away from her, closing the main loophole in the basic succubus’ power. They also take 10 ongoing fire and psychic damage while under the effect of the kiss. All of this is a (save ends) package, and it also ends when Rohini attacks the victim or uses the kiss on someone else.
Her Loyal Consort power is upgraded to Mind-Warped Bodyguard. Now it works as long as the victim of the Kiss is within 5 squares of Rohini, and lets them teleport to switch places before redirecting attacks to the victim.
Chartilifax
This complicated name belongs to a young green dragon who used to inhabit the Neverwinter Wood, and which Rohini managed to seduce and subvert. Experiments performed by the AbSov’s foulspawn sorcerers have given him the ability to transform into a Medium humanoid like his master, and the Devourer of Flame power from the Plaguechanged theme.
Chartilifax spends most of his days in the shape of a green-skinned elf in the basements under Helm’s Hold, performing menial tasks. He’s also pretty close to Rohini’s seat of power, so he’s gonna be there as a nasty surprise when the PCs manage to corner her.
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