Session Report: Deep Carbon Observatory in Dolmenwood Pt 2
Battle Against the Crows
One of the great elements of Deep Carbon Observatory is the presence of a rival adventuring group called the Crows. As written, the Crows are horrible, infuriating opponents. As the party ascended back up the Chain that hung down the center of the eastern inverted spire they arrived in the Weighing Station for a second time and walked right into an ambush from the Crows. This was the most brutal, harrowing fight the party has been involved in so far.
By the end of this battle, 3 of the PCs were unconscious and at the edge of death. How did they end up winning? One key element was the very low loyalty for two of the members of the Crows, who decided to retreat after one of their number was killed. That first kill was achieved because the party had found items called Curved Space-Time Structures, one of which allowed them to manipulate gravity in a localized area. This sent their opponent up into the air allowing the ranged PCs to pelt one of them while they floated vulnerable 50 feet up.
After sending the remaining crows hurling down to the ground the brutal slog began. One of the Crows, Holloch By-Frosen fought to the death, and almost wiped out the entire party. Their luck was with them and the PCs emerged victorious, on the edge of death, but with everyone still alive.
Finding the Observer
Earlier in the adventure the party had found small, rough-hewn stairs that go down from a chamber into tunnels. They chose to bypass this area and continue exploring the larger chambers nearby. After their battle with the Crows they came back and explored these small side-tunnels and it was here that they found a startling discovery: one of the original observers remained. He was imprisoned in a horrific magical device which kept him alive in a tortured state. He had been trapped here as punishment and then abandoned.
The PCs weren't to know whether this elf-like man was friendly or not since he was unresponsive and perpetually at the edge of death. After figuring out a way to get the lock open they chose to expend one of their precious healing potions to bring him back from the brink. This resulted in the man, Tico, regaining his senses and being able to converse with the party, largely telepathically.
Tico was able to tell of the history of the Observatory, explain some of the strange things they had found in its rooms, and recall his own personal story. He spoke a weird dialect of High Elfin and he appeared like an Elf but with pale, grayish skin. He seemed to have strange psychic powers that did not look like the Fairy magic that the PC Elf, Aurora, could employ. It was these strange powers that allowed him to seal away his mind from the endless torment and preserve it these long years.
After resting some more, Tico chose to join the party since he desired to escape the Observatory and see what the world on the surface was like after his eons-long captivity.
Escaping With the Treasure
In order to access the upper levels of the Observatory safely, the PCs knew they needed 3 command words. From discussions with surviving creatures (including Tico) they had 2 of these words. With a very handy short-range teleportation ability they were able to bypass the need for the final word. They eventually found their way into the living quarters of those who had taken over and ruled the Observatory most recently, where the best of the treasure was kept. This is what they had been lusting after the whole expedition.
They spent some time in an ancient library and found several interesting tomes: future quest hooks, some ritual grimoires, and some spell books. It was the room beyond that was the big payoff: the treasure vault. They loaded up many sacks with treasure and planned to lug it out of the Observatory on the back of the Knight's war pony (he's a dwarf).
Before they could leave, they were confronted by a persistent enemy: a witch who seemed very resistant to dying and seemed to have the ability to appear from within almost any body of water, even a tiny puddle. She stood there, dripping wet, with new minions: undead Moss Dwarves taken from the honored dead of the local village and pressed into unholy service. There were no negotiations. Neither side was particularly interested in parley and so the final confrontation of the Observatory was on.
The PCs and their allies focused on stopping the Witch from casting spells. Meanwhile the undead dwarves proved to be extremely dangerous. While Tico managed a very important psychic attack on the Witch, the Cleric was able to attempt to flex the power of his Turning capabilities. Unfortunately, the ancient dead were too resilient to be turned so easily, but his powers at least held them at bay so long as he channeled and brandished his holy symbol. Slowly, the fight turned in the PCs favor and they won the day. With her mind bent to Tico's will, the party tried to dispatch the Witch once and for all, but she could not be killed merely by a stab or a cut and she dissolved into a puddle of water at the "killing" blow. The PCs knew she would be able to return.
GM Notes
I wanted to place some behind-the-screen thoughts about this session and the dungeon part of Deep Carbon Observatory here.
The Crows
The fight against the Crows turned out to be the most difficult fight of the adventure and was nearly a TPK. The layout of the dungeon is very strange and this played a large part in the fight. I was using this opportunity to introduce a new PC to the group, so I had them originally as a mercenary with the Crows, only to conveniently defect once the Crows were defeated. I put that PC with the Crow's necromancer across a chasm from the ambush location thinking they'd come in from behind and put pressure on the PCs. Instead that positioning made it almost impossible for the necromancer's undead to get to the PCs in time to make any difference.
The biggest impact on the fight was the low morale of two of the four members of the Crows. In-fiction their low morale scores make sense: they were mercenaries with absolutely no loyalty to the leaders of the Crows, the By-Frosens. Those morale failures left the fight as a 5v2 battle, which the PCs eventually won. I have found time and again that having very clear and rigorous morale rules in place has been the biggest impact on how encounters will go once violence becomes inevitable. When I was running 5e you could use morale rules, but I always felt they were somewhat unclear. The conditions under which morale checks are suggested mirror what is suggested in Old-School Essentials or Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but the actual resolution is a saving throw against a fairly low DC. It's also a rule easily missed since it is presented as an optional rule and you would only know about it if you stumbled on it near the back of the DMG. It is also marked as optional in OSE, but it is presented directly next to the main section on combat and is much harder to miss. I recommend using it for your games. You can always overrule its usage on a per-combat basis if you already have an idea of whether a monster or group would ever choose to flee or surrender.
The reason the battle against the Crows did not result in PC deaths was because we were not using either the LotFP or the OSE death rules, but a homebrew rule adopted from some online suggestions. The goal was the produce PCs that were in a middle-ground between the extremely fragile "death at 0" and the super-heroic feeling that I believe 5e's death saving rules create. So far, I think this middle ground is a success and this is a result of having a discussion with my players about just how lethal we wanted the campaign to be.
Switching Classes
The PC I introduced to the party was being played by a friend that joined the campaign to get us up to 6 players. I felt this was a good number for an old-school campaign and made us more resilient for when players couldn't show up to some sessions. He chose to play a Mage which is a class presented in Necrotic Gnome's Carcass Crawler Issue #1. After the session he chose to switch to a magic-user instead.
We both agreed that the Mage class was great and would be fun to play, but for his specific character and play style it wasn't going to work. He had rolled a very low Dexterity and that meant it was hard to engage in melee as it seemed the class was intended to do (think Gandalf hitting orcs with his staff and Glamdring, instead of only standing in the back slinging spells).
By switching to magic-user he would get to flex my significant changes to the magic-user spellcasting rules which has been going very well. I think he's very much enjoying it and I'm glad to see someone able to test out the rules I've pieced together. Perhaps I will detail how these rules work in a future post.
The final thoughts on this are that I have no problem with a player switching the class of their PC at any time. I want the players to feel like the choices they make for their characters are meaningful, but I don't think there is much value in forcing players to play a character that doesn't feel right to them. Sometimes the way to achieve this would be to retire the character in-fiction and bring in a new one, and other times it would be to tweak the existing character.
Deep Carbon Observatory Is Weird
The feeling of this module is strange and altogether alien. I think this is a strength. If you want to inject some weirdness into your campaign then place the Observatory into your setting is a good way to do it. Along the way, in order to make the Observatory fit into Dolmenwood that is the backdrop for this campaign I had to make a lot of substitutions. This included a lot of the treasure the PCs found in the vault. I filled in details, rewrote, or completely substituted treasures for the ones listed in the module.
I think this is completely normal and something you should be doing with most modules when you integrate them into your campaign.
Swapping in or out elements is something you should get comfortable doing. This does require some prep work, though. It would be hard to run modules off-the-cuff doing substitutions on the fly. Substituting treasure, monsters, and NPCs is a great way to make a module feel like it seamlessly fits into your ongoing campaign. DCO in particular would require a lot of changes to make it feel completely seamless with Dolmenwood and I didn't bother trying. Having the weirdness stand out against the often dark Fairytale feeling of the rest the setting worked for me.
Conclusion
I am enjoying this Dolmenwood campaign immensely. The excursion to Deep Carbon Observatory was a hook I dangled at my players right from the beginning of the campaign and they latched onto that hook. I had a lot of fun slowly revealing the strangeness of the Observatory and working to integrate it into the larger campaign.
Now, the party has traveled back to their home base of Prigwort and is planning for their next adventure. For now they seem satisfied to stay above ground.
Comments
Post a Comment