Arkadia #3

My current set up, the DM’s screen for a quick rules reference, the adventure on the laptop, the start of a bullet journal, and real dice for a change.

So far, I have survived with just Helios the Seer. Now I am in an adventure site, introducing an NPC would be slightly harder, although the adventure does have some NPC villagers that I could draft in if needed.

Impossible to Proceed

This is one of those things that puts people off published adventures. The adventure location has an entrance chamber with a door into the adventure site. Unless you have the Knock spell, it is impossible to progress further. It is a dead stop.

In a previous area there was a chance to learn three spells from some ancient carvings, comprehend
languages, detect magic, and identify. I am going to add Knock to those carvings otherwise the adventure ends here.

I started out using a d20 oracle, but I am swapping to a d12. The d12 is a very satisfying die to use, it rolls well and the 12 options divide down nicely by 3, 4, 6, giving lots of possibilities. for now, I am using it
1-2 no and…
3-4 no
5-6 no, but…
7-8 yes, but…
9-10 yes
11-12 yes, and…
I could use a d8, but d12s roll better.

OK, so this is worse than I had imagined. Adding knock to the available spells does nothing to resolve the problem as this is a first level adventure and Knock is a second level spell. Even with it, any wizard in the party could not cast it.

There may be a continuity error here as well. The Merrow have been grabbing villagers in their nets and bringing them into the temple. The mission is to rescue the villagers. There are only two chambers that are accessible to the Merrow and there are no villagers here. I found the answer to this one, the Merrow are not bringing the villagers in through the temple. There is still a continuity error, but that isn’t it and the other didn’t occur to me until two days later so it cannot be that bad.

My fix for now is to say that the key I found will open the door, magical lock and all.

Milestone vs Exp levelling?

The adventure uses milestone levelling. Once the villagers are rescued from the final chamber of the temple, you have hit the milestone and become second level. I had not been doing that because I didn’t realise they were using milestone leveling. It kind of makes sense. I had encounters two or three Merrow at a time and if it had been a party or five it would have been not a huge challenge and barely 60 experience each for both encounters. I had been collecting experience for each battle one, and I awarded myself an extra 100xp for saving the villager, because I am nice person. One character collecting all the experience meant that by the end of the first part, rather than being second level, I am now a couple of hundred experience over third level.

There was one horrible crisis point in this mission as a solo character. One of the tougher Merrow had Charm Person prepared. The entire battle hinged on whether I made or failed that saving throw. If I had failed then it was game over. If I made it, I got to fight on. There was a hoplite NPC in the villagers fishing boat that had rowed me over to the island, I could have activated them as an NPC, made them feel guilty for leaving me there, and had them follow me down into the temple, just to arrive in the nick of time and carry on the battle after Helios succumbed to the Charm Person spell. As it happened, I made the save (I had advantage because we were already in combat) and killed the Merrow before they acted again, I had lost the initiative the first round, and won it the second round, giving me back to back attacks.

What Did I Learn?

In the first mission I had intentionally not used the “Is This True?” oracle question after reading spoilers. I wanted to play the first part fairly straight to see how it went. What I did was read the first part of the description of the location, and decide on my course of action, and then stick to it after reading the rest of the details.

That worked quite well, it did mean that I missed out on one encounter, I was playing Helios as favouring Thessa above all gods, and the adventure played out in a Thessan temple. There was a sarcophagus to loot, but I could not see Helios opening a sealed sarcophagus of a Thessan priest in a Thessan temple. It bit too sacriligeous to my mind. That did mean that I missed out on an encounter wtih a ghoul and its treasure/grave goods. I also missed out on looting an entire chamber because Helios would have put the needs of the captured villagers over any further exploring and looting.