AA2.2 The Lost Tome

[Solomoriah]

Post your comments here for Dave Gerard's AA2.2 The Lost Tome.

[dymondy2k]

Chris.. I noticed that room 7 is missing the title.. It just says Area.. Other than that.. you did a great job beefing up my 1 page dungeon! I love the black ball on the pedestal in the alcove behind room 6! Definitely give yourself some co-author credit on this one!

[Solomoriah]

Chris.. I noticed that room 7 is missing the title.. It just says Area.. Other than that.. you did a great job beefing up my 1 page dungeon! I love the black ball on the pedestal in the alcove behind room 6!

Sorry I missed that "AREA" header. Will catch it in the next revision.

Definitely give yourself some co-author credit on this one!

I never do.

I will ask one question... how did the white dragon get in past the locked door to what is now area 2?

[dymondy2k]

Actually in that part of the library, the roof has collapsed and its open to the sky. I figure the frozen humanoids were the remains of orcs/goblins that tried to climb over the wall.

[Solomoriah]

Gotcha. Probably needs to be clear in the module, though. I'll take a look at it.

[dymondy2k]

I playtested this adventure this weekend. What I enjoyed was taking an NPC from my last adventure (Elias) and making him into the adventure hook for this one. So now it was intimated that he was part of a larger organization that had gotten word that somebody was hunting the Relic and they were going to try to find it first. He then asks the party to find the tome for him with an offer of 500 gold and a map to where the library is located. The party is still Level 3 and consists of a Fighter, Fighter/MU, Druid, Ranger and Thief.

The trip to the library was uneventful. No wandering monsters just an abandoned farm and a small mining town. At the library the thief was able to pick the lock into the main library. They found the password (but not the treasure) and were able to figure out what it was used for when they went into the east wing and met the Djinn. One of the players figured out what the clockwork closet was for and the thief succeeded at disabling it, shutting down the gargoyle guards in the Tomb room. All was going well until the got to the last door, the one with the dragon. First the thief missed the spot of the pressure plate and got blasted by the lightning trap. The druid healed her back up but it also meant there was a good chance the dragon was now awake and waiting for him.. and he was. The Druid took the thief's place checking the door and when he opened it, he and two other players behind him (the rogue and the fighter\mu) caught the full blast of cold. The rogue and the ranger made their save and only took half damage but the fighter/mu went down to 0 hp. I use the -10 rule in my game so she was incapped but not quite dead. They were able to pull her out of the line of fire and heal her. I think at this point they knew they couldn't beat the dragon so they decided to try and distract it while the rogue went in behind it and nabbed the treasure. It actually worked pretty well and the thief was able to get by and get the treasure (minus the armor). But while this was occurring the dragon got his breath weapon back and blasted the druid and ranger, neither made their save so it would up killing the both of them. The Fighter and the Fighter/MU were able to hide somewhere in the library and the thief escaped to run the book back to Elias. Since my players are my guinea pigs with these adventures I put together a quick scenario where Elias, now the patron of my players, teleports in a few days later with a high level cleric who raises both Needles and Bark but tells the party they owe his church a great boon and to come see him at his temple. Then in a show of 'Yes this NPC is a badass' Elias confronts the dragon mano on drago and toasts him with one fireball.

So I gave the PCs full XP for the adventure. They didn't kill the dragon but did find a way to get the book and return it.

What I learned from the play-test. When I created this adventure for M20, the dragon was only HD 4, very young. When I translated over to BFRPG I put the base stats in for a white dragon, unfortunately that made the dragon a HD 6 dragon and I didn't fix it. So when I played it, I played it as is, and even with an inventive party they got hammered. The other thing that gave me a challenge was the 'Dragon in a Room' scenario. The players did a good job of playing the walls, keeping out of line of sight etc. I tried to see if the dragon would be able to break through the walls but in looking at the rulebooks for wall thickness and material it just wasn't strong enough to do it with a claw/claw/bite. The dragons breath weapon didn't really seem like it would do damage to an inanimate object like it would to a living creature. So I played it out like that and that is what kept 3 of the PCs alive.

The play by play can be found here.. http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/ ... -lost-tome

[Solomoriah]

I applaud your player's approach to the dragon. When you can't beat it with a direct attack, the smart thing to do is outmaneuver it.

Or outthink it... were I a player in that game, I might consider enticing it to leave the "lair" by going outside and making noise near its entrance. If I had access to livestock, I might well make use of that.

[dymondy2k]

I never even thought about the livestock approach. The thief did take advantage of the missing roof by climbing the wall to the outside after stealing the treasure. The dragon gave pursuit, but all she did was stop on the other side. When it landed she popped back over and booked it to the door..

Whats your feeling on the dragon.. should I dial it down maybe 1 or 2 HD?

[Solomoriah]

If you want the player characters to be able to beat it, knock it down an age level or two. It shouldn't be a hatchling though... at least age level 2, which is 4 HD.

If you want it to be a challenge that is safer to overcome by avoiding combat, then leave it as is.