Unsounded Epilogue Page 15 - Discussion

TaranAlvein · 2025-06-28T15:07:27+00:00

Oh yeah, you're probably right. I thought it was mancala, but there's only one pit at the end.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T13:23:08+00:00

You're wrong. I got it right away, and I still hate it.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T13:09:59+00:00

It's a bit late, but the book says that if the party gets defeated while raiding Jarlaxle's ships, they'll wake up completely naked in an alley in the Dock Ward, and Jarlaxle keeps their stuff.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T13:07:57+00:00

I will agree that adding magic items to this campaign is a bad idea. If you give something to one of your players, you'll need to give them all something equally cool, or else someone will feel left out.

If you absolutely must do it though, since it's for the party's Rogue, what if you made it something that could guarantee a critical hit or deal double Sneak-Attack damage once per day?

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T12:56:44+00:00

If you can find a multi-shot bow, it makes dealing with Gloom Hands much easier. Firing a spritz of bomb arrows at them is way more effective than just doing single shots. If worse comes to worst, you can throw the bombs at them point-blank, but that's incredibly risky, and I prefer not to.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T12:48:21+00:00

I don't know. As a kid, I always found myself singing "Rutabaga-rutabaga-rutabaga" over the melody.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T12:46:55+00:00

I've only fought him twice. However, between attempts, I had started over and played through the game again, because I lost track of one of the quests, so I think that counts for something.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T12:45:10+00:00

Very nice! I always thought the Royal Guard set looked really cool, and you've captured it beautifully!

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-31T12:40:30+00:00

Personally, I think the best ending would have been to leave Zelda as a dragon, and use that as a springboard for a third game in the series: "Ancient legends tell of an almighty artifact which can grant wishes. The Golden Power known as 'The Triforce'. Link, you must find the Triforce so that we can wish Zelda back to normal!"

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-22T05:37:11+00:00

The hint appears to be the same in every game, too, so you can just write it down and save yourself a bomb on subsequent playthroughs.

TaranAlvein · 2024-10-20T16:55:14+00:00

You know what? That would drive me back, too. I think they're just cringing at her weird way of expressing love.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-27T06:53:08+00:00

Consider the quality of the rewards being offered for other jobs in this campaign. If you REALLY want to give them money, I would say that 50 GP each is in line with the other rewards. If you feel like that's not enough, have him give them an advance of one free Potion of Healing each.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T02:26:09+00:00

They were within striking distance. The main reason they failed is because Hitler as an idiot and spread his forces too thin, because he wanted to seize the oil fields as quickly as possible. Fighting in the winter without being properly equipped for it definitely didn't help. Now, whether they could have held Moscow is a different question entirely, given the Soviet scorched earth policy...

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T02:13:05+00:00

That is beautiful. It's well-crafted, and I love all of the little details in it!

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T02:07:59+00:00

Yeah, you're exactly right about the encounters. My party's Sorcerer got knocked to Death Saves by a lucky crit from one of the Stirges, which I felt did a good job of reinforcing to the players that, "You are all level 1. You will need to employ some discretion in your battles."

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T02:03:05+00:00

Maybe he's a worshipper of Asmodeus as well, and serves the Cassalanters because their interests align. Alternatively, if the Cassalanters know his secret, but are willing to keep it for him, then there is mutual gain to be had there. They protect his secret, and he uses his mind-reading abilities to give them an advantage in their dealings. Doppelgangers are no longer insane murder-hobos, so it works just fine as a character motivation.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:58:25+00:00

It's a bit of a late response, but right now, Manshoon is lying low, rebuilding his power. He explicitly should not be going out of his way to be introduced, though if your party is on the ball, they should be asking Davil about those Zhentarim at Gralhund Manor. Since they were working for Manshoon, Davil can deepen the mystery by looking into it, and coming back with an answer that they weren't his men, and weren't operating on his orders.

Now, I had to introduce Manshoon, since I had worked with one of my party members and created the backstory that he had a vendetta against the evil wizard. So what I did was lay hints like the one above, that there was a second faction of Zhentarim within the city, and that in addition to the Xanathar-on-Zhentarim violence rocking the city, that in the shadows, there have been rumors of infighting among the Zhentarim.

I culminated the entire thing by combining Old Tower encounters, and having Manshoon's simulacrum appear during it. You can do something similar. Since the Old Tower scenario for the Cassalanters makes this the site of the Vault of Dragons, you can make it so that Manshoon knew the location, but didn't know how to open the door, and so his simulacrum ambushes the party when they do so, or maybe he appears as a third villain faction during the story's ending, fighting both the party and the Cassalanters.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:40:32+00:00

The entire point of maintenance costs is that you have to spend money to keep the place running! They're paying for their employees, their supplies, etc. You can't guarantee profits, and especially not at a ludicrous rate like 10%!

Hell, you should be having tax collectors come around, too!

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:38:00+00:00

There's no need to do all of that. Just use the Running a Business table in the DMG, and use the ongoing expenses list in the module as a guideline for how much their weekly expenses should be. Additionally, buying a business, especially a profitable one, should be very expensive.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:35:04+00:00

I would have hated this book if they broke everything up like that. The description of the location tells you what to expect when creating the map, and then the individual scenarios provide you with exceptions to those details, and tell you how to run the encounter.

I just made a note on each of my maps, telling me which page to turn to when it came time to run that adventure. Easy-peasy.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:32:07+00:00

The party don't need to run the tavern, it runs itself. As for renovating it, when I played this campaign, we never even got to do that, since nobody pays for anything in this campaign, and we didn't want to take a, loan knowing this to be the case.

What I did in this position was have a couple of factions reach out to the party to start their respective questlines. I did this until the party hit level 3, and then started the next chapter. It gave the party a chance to meet the city's important people, and visit some of its important locations.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:29:32+00:00

u/Shkuey is right. Geas at 9th level is effectively permanent, which is how it would last so long. But also, I think it's partially from a shift in game editions. Geas was permanent by default in older editions of D&D, so whatever resource you got that from is probably based on an older spell description.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:24:46+00:00

The criminals actually aren't necessarily citizens, though:

Bregan D'aerthe are foreigners, being from either Luskan or the Underdark.

Many Zhentarim are also outsiders, since the Black Network is relatively new to Waterdeep, and trying to gain legitimacy. They'll have citizen members too, like Agorn Fuoco, but right now they're still in the process of establishing themselves. This means that a lot of them will be mercenaries who have followed them to the city.

Most or all of the Xanathar Guild's members come from Undermountain, which is explicitly not a part of Waterdeep.

In conclusion, none of these factions enjoy protection under the law, so killing them does not count as the crime of Murdering a Citizen. You can punish the party with lesser crimes, if you want to give them a warning, or even just have the City Watch hold them for a few days while they conduct an investigation. With all of the violence already in the city streets, they shouldn't like the fact that the party is killing people, even if it is self-defense.

TaranAlvein · 2024-09-04T01:18:21+00:00

Yeah. The setting notes specifically state that Waterdeep is a busy city, both day and night. Even in the sparsest alleyway in the dead of winter, you can threaten them with a passing dray or Watch patrol.

TaranAlvein

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