Encounter At Blackwall Keep

There in no map for Blackwall Keep itself. I really felt that including one was essentially a mistake. Its only value would be if the the 'siege' scene had become too literal and the players had some how moved into the Keep without defeating the Lizard Folk out front. A situation which was bad news because trying to DM an assault on the keep itself while making it fun would be tough to pull off.

I made sure to emphasize to my players the difficulties of getting to the keep.

• To get around the Lizard Folk you'd have to move through the swamp - and lizard folk are a lot better then you knee deep in swamp water

• An attack from the rear will allow the keeps defenders to get the Lizard Folk in a crossfire

Once the siege scene was played out I did not want to be mapping this...my players would presumably explore the place if I put it on the map.

There was, of course, a map for the Lizard Folk Lair. Here I find myself making some fairly substantial changes. First off I did not want to have a series of encounters each with 5 lizard folk or something. That sounds pretty boring.

I choose to consolidate the initial encounters down to one with the Harpy's and the dangerous plants for one encounter. Then I created another that featured most of the standard lizard folk pouring into the Otyugh's lair which I put into the centre of the lair with Lizard Folk living quarters radiating out from that room.

After that I designed a series of encounters that where pretty much in a straight line. The Lizard Folk lieutenant, then the role playing encounter with the Lizard Folk Shaman, then the Lizard King, the kobolds and finally the egg chamber.

Note the map also has layout for The Terror Below for the final encounter of the adventure.

Here is the map.

Encounter At Blackwall Keep

The Ebon Aspect

Most of my statblocks for Three Faces of Evil are pretty obvious stuff from the Monster Builder the Ebon Aspect presents more of an issue as its not really like anything else out there and is therefore more trouble to create/convert.

Here is my version. Note that I emphasize the cold elements of the pool as opposed to the elements of the three Gods this is a fetus of. That is intentional as I did not really want to lock the Ebon Aspect to specific Gods.

More Housekeeping

Here is the map for the Labyrinth. I think this is pretty close to the original with one huge difference - the Labyrinth itself has been excluded! The reason for this is that I feel that this Labyrinth in particular and generally most in general, are best handled as skill challenges. Actually mapping the things out takes a ton of time and is generally only an activity between the DM and the mapper for an extended period. I think its just bad gaming unless there is a really good reason why what is taking place in the Labyrinth will be engaging to all the players.

I did not feel this quite qualified - while combat can take place in this Labyrinth it'd generally become fairly static and I felt it was better to just draw some 'Labyrinth like' area on the battle map if that occurred.

Three Faces of Evil - Labyrinth

Catching Up

I've been hesitating on updating this blog mainly because there are some problem elements with the maps for Three Faces of Evil. The First part of the complex never even got turned into a 3D map as my players where hot on my heels in terms of prep time at this point.

The second part of the complex did get turned into a 3D map and I'll include it but its got issues. The U shaped cavern is so complex that I suspect my 3D map is near useless for anyone but myself - I know whats being represented because I made the damn thing but for other people your often trying to figure out what the heck is going on through up too three layers of transparency.

The map for the last part of the cavern is significantly modified from the original campaign modules as well as I felt that the plethora of small encounters really did not cut it in a module that was essentially a single dungeon crawl that was already too long. My encounter here essentially just saw the remains of the tribe come pouring into the main room for a final battle royal. This section of the adventure reaches its highlight in the U shaped cavern and I don't feel its justified to have more then a single big fight after that climax in any case.

I made a number of changes in this part of the adventure as well. Most significantly I changed the Grimlocks to Orcs - Grimlocks are really high level in 4E and I did not want to bring them down that many levels. I gave the Orcs darkvision to allow them to operate effectively and tossed in a Goblin lackey encounter at the start and one with the Krenshars featured a Bugbear who controlled them.

I also condensed the encounters in the U shaped cavern down to two. one on each side of the cavern. This worked really well...note that all the enemies don't actually have to be working together to be in an encounter.

Three Faces of Evil - The Caves

Anatomy of a failed encounter

Sigh.

It can be a real let down when an encounter goes downhill. I don't mean the standard run of the mill encounter but instead one which you put a bunch of work into and where really looking forward too. Maybe its one in which your awesome bad guy gets mobbed and dispatched by the players without managing to do a single thing of interest or the PCs had a magic item or trick that just blindsided you or likely a whole slew of other possibilities could explain why an encounter fell down.

Probably some of the blame falls to the DM in nearly all cases but the percentage of blame that one can lay at the DMs feet certainly can vary.

I had this situation on game night recently. I finally got a chance to run my encounter "Zombie Miner Apocalypse" (see below) but it just did not work very well. First off my theory of having a zombie fall on the control panel and cause the machine to make a racket fell through - my players fled back to the entrance to the cavern even in the midst of the fight to see if anything would show up - I had to 'abort' my game notes that said that the noise would attract the zombies because the encounter would be unbelievably lousy if the players where in a single file tunnel.

Fortunately my players eventually returned to the cavern, killed the last of the three zombies initially placed in the chamber and fiddled with the mining machine - so I pretended that fiddling with the machine was what would set off the encounter - I hate going back on my notes like this but better that then a bad encounter.

Once the zombies started to pour into the room things became exciting for a few rounds but it soon became apparent that the players could set themselves up in such a way that with the wizard laying down a cloud of daggers every round most of the zombies could not get at the PCs. Except in single file after the parties Paladin Defender and a bit after the parties cleric. We'd eventually get this situation where the zombies where just piling up waiting for their turn to move up to one of these two and get cut down.

Once the PCs figured out how to use the machine it turned out that my set up made resolving the encounter take too long considering that the excitement level had already (quickly) peaked and was now becoming just a chore. Finally the wizard player realized that he could drop a flaming sphere and really make the zombies situation hopeless. At this point I just called the encounter and said "OK you guys win - lets move on".

If I ran this encounter again I'd do a number of things differently.

1. Skip the few initial zombies - depend on the players setting the encounter off by investigating the machine, walking on the metal floor might be enough to set things off.
2. Move the control panel away from the machine to insure that the PCs can't use it as part of a wall to limit the space the zombies can get at them with. Make it essentially a one space 'podium' with controls on it.
   
3. Make the area around the machine much wider so that the zombies are not so easily funneled.
4. Once the controls are cracked its time to begin wrapping this encounter up. Let the PCs block a passage every turn so long as some one is working the controls.
   

Zombie Miner Apocalypse

Been a while since I posted as my players have just been playing through Whispering Cairn. However they are now fairly far in and I'm busy preping Three Faces of Evil.

I've decided to add an encounter in the mines of Three Faces of Evil prior to their entering the Dark Cathedral as I think 4E really does Zombie Apocalypse type encounters well and I want them to experience this type of encounter before they get too high in level. 4E also really works well with encounters that involve the players trying to accomplish some other task during combat and, as a conversion of a 3.5 AP there are not really enough of this style of encounter.

So here the PCs need to stop from being overrun by the zombie hordes by figuring out how to use an ancient mining machine to block up the tunnels from which the zombies are emerging while fighting off the zombies that have already emerged.

Zombie Miner Apocalypse Encounter 1.0

Zombie Miner Apocalypse Map

Filge's Operating Theatre Encounter

I finished working out this encounter including the battle map and the written text. One of the things I found interesting with designing both this encounter and the battle in The Feral Dog is that encounters with humans and their ilk are not as problematic as I initially thought when I reviewed the rules for monsters. Sure Filge does have more hps then a standard character of this level (though not actually as much as a PC has after counting any significant number of healing surges) but he does not really have as much as a 'monster' equivalent. In other words you do get that 'glass cannon' effect when fighting NPC classed characters - more powers and even more powerful powers in general but not as many hps. Filge - for all his power is actually the Achilles heel of this encounter - if the PCs concentrate on him they can win a tough fight without having to actually kill all his zombies. Of course he'll try to avoid this but I suspect that this is the easiest way for the PCs to win this fight.

Here are the files for this encounter. I hope you enjoy them.
Filge's Operating Theatre Battle Map
Filge's Operating Theatre Encounter 1.0