The First Vault Project

I’m going to kick this off by talking about Haidar Yunan and the Breath of Nethys, the two defining features of the final encounter in the Refuge. I created Haidar as a solo monster who would represent the powerful combination of a lycanthrope’s bestial fury with the paranoia and dementia brought about by long-term exposure to the Breath. This resulted in a few signature abilities. Defensively, Haidar’s lycanthropic regeneration is doubled in the Breath, he gains concealment … Read entire article »

This last week’s session was all about the Refuge of Nethys. I include this side trek at this point in the adventure for a number of reasons: it is suggested in the original adventure that this is the most likely time for the PCs to explore the Refuge, the encounter levels here are above those of the monastery but lower than most of Kelmarane, and the PCs could really benefit from hitting level 3 before … Read entire article »

Our second session featured the Chapter House (stirges), the Deanery & Kitchen (baboons), and the Laboratory (oozes). The encounters were less smooth this time around; compared to the early pugwampi encounters, the difficulty of these was significantly increased. The baboon fight took a lot out of the party, and the oozes threatened a TPK that had to be averted through some old-fashioned DM intervention, which I’ll get to further down. The stirge fight was very straightforward, … Read entire article »

This is hardly what you could call a straightforward encounter. First, and foremost, an environmental hazard (the cacti) features just as prominently as the single monster the PCs are up against. The hazard poses a challenge for the party before, during, and after the real meat of the encounter. Second, the “win condition” here is two-fold. Yes, killing the pugwampi is important to clearing Dashki’s name, but rescuing Rombard is a more immediate concern (plenty … Read entire article »

I’ve found myself sort of preparing both parts 1 and 2 of this adventure at the same time. A lot of this has to do with the fact that, mechanically, there isn’t a lot of meat to the first part of the adventure. It’s only got one combat encounter, and even that is debatable. It isn’t until the PCs reach the monastery that they find themselves exposed to the typical dungeon-exploring tropes of the game. … Read entire article »