Modified Rannos & Gremag scenario, part 1

Whew, lots of comments. Let's get started:

Well, you are right. It would make sense, in terms of realism, to add similar scripts for everyone in Hommlet (or at least those lying near badger patrol routes). But as you said, players most likely won't attack anyone else, and if they do, they're probably going to go the full monty anyway (i.e. butcher all of Hommlet). All in all, it adds very little and would involve a lot of effort, IMO. I'd rather concentrate on other things, such as...

Well, first off, regarding LE parties, I forgot to mention that LE parties actually can attack, just as long as the speaker is not lawful. I'd always imagined LE characters as being the kind of people who let others do their dirty work for them, unless they absolutely have to (of course, they'd get dragged into the fight if their NE buddy initiated it, anyway, but still...)

Second, now that I think about it, one of the things that caused me to condition that dialogue option on party alignment way is the way I worded it. It seemed inappropriate for a lawful character. Yes, I am aware it's a dumb reason which is part of why I'm now also leaning towards adding the option for Lawful parties (but with different wording of course).

Third, I think the assassination attempt alone doesn't provide enough hard evidence that the traders are actually affiliated with the Temple themselves (and thus actively involved in the attempt on your life). At least for Lawful parties. In conjunction with the courier or laborer spy outing, yes, I suppose what you said makes sense. Does this sound reasonable?

The courier never struck me as a strong fighter, and if you boost Raimol too much then the party can get an overpowered NPC follower too early in the game (not to mention that he comes off as too 'green' to be a hardened fighter. What does the module say about him?). As for the mercenaries, I'd imagine R&G have enough contacts in the Temple to acquire some (as they did in the revenge encounter). Or, as someone mentioned (Old Book IIRC, or was it Spike) - mercenaries from Dyvers. I'd love to add a time delay for their return, but like I said, timed scripts have a tendency of malfunctioning.

Well, I figured they'd attempt one last act of sabotage before the council actually convenes - that's how I reasoned why they'd stick around. They'd be justified in getting guards regardless of anything else once you attacked them (as long as they weren't convicted of course, in which case the badgers would be out to get them anyway). But maybe you are correct, and it would make more sense for them to just leave on the condition that you've revealed them to Burne already.

Not to mention there's always one of them hanging around the bridge near the trading post...

Well, the point was to break up the fight since the traders are at a disadvantage (in fact it was quite unfair! ). Having an option to dismiss the badger means you once again get a free pass at the traders.

I'm toying with the idea of having him actually attempt to arrest you though. Suppose the following happens:
-Diplomatically challenged groups will get arrested along with the traders. If you haven't reported anything to Burne yet (so the traders aren't suspects), they'll co-operate, but nothing much will ultimately come of it (and furthermore you'd lose credibility in the eyes of Burne, perhaps even botching the laborer spy quest). If you HAVE reported them, then THEY will use their diplomacy skill on the badger to avoid the arrest.
-You choose to intimidate the badger - well, I think this should definitely be reserved for evil parties, first off. As far as the effect goes, it would make the badger go away and let you carry on with the fight, but add a 'lawbreaker' rep that makes Hommletans go KOS unless you agree to surrender. (similar to Butcher of Hommlet, but halfway reversible - assuming you didn't butcher some of Hommlet as a result, that is )
-You choose the Diplomacy option - convince the badger to back down and let it slip this time, similar to what's currently scripted in effect. Will teleport you outside, however, and let the badgers run off. (again, to prevent the unfair fight)
-Bluff - 'nothing happened, officer, we were just LARPing'. Would require the cooperation of the traders, however. Like I said, if they're already suspect of collaborating with the Temple, they'd go along with it, otherwise, they might try to get you arrested.

What do you think?

Currently, I handled that in part 2 of the mod (which I'm still working on). The effect of reporting the assassin incident or Temple courier is to make Burne tighten security before the council meeting, preventing the trap from being set.

Yup, that's currently scripted in the 2nd part - they're pissed at you for ruining their little operation, even if you don't attack them directly.

Nah.

 

Okay. Cool. Different wording for different alignments/reasons is a great idea.

Yes. And I apparently left that part out. When I was talking about after the assassin attacked, I was assuming the party already uncovered them to be spies and sabotaging work on the castle. That was my mistake for forgetting that you don't necessarily have to do them in that order.

I wasn't talking of making him more than 2nd level, possibly 3rd, with Elite Array (15,14,13,12,10,8) stats. Right now he's 1st level with absolutely horrid stats (In the original module, I believe he's a 0th level fighter). Even if he were 3rd level, Elmo's still a lot better choice for a fighter due to both level and having awesome stats. As it stands now, nobody bothers to hire Raimol and he gets killed as an after-thought during the fight with Rannos and Gremag. A boost would make him more useful in the fight, and also give parties a reason to hire him, which could also open up future modding possibilities where he functions as a spy in the party, reporting back to Rannos and Gremag (which I believe is also mentioned in the module if the party chooses to hire him). Making him worth hiring could also increase the difficulty of the battle with the Traders, as he'll likely get a couple levels under his belt before the confrontation.

I'd love to see a situation where the party gets attacked by the assassin without selling any of Lareth's stuff, but simply because Raimol informed Rannos and Gremag of Lareth's demise. The assassin shows up, and if the PCs get him to talk and ask how he knows, the assassin mentions his spies relaying the information to him. Raimol promptly freaks out and runs away. When the party gets back to Homlett, they find Raimol back in the trading post, getting yelled at by the Traders for 1) running away and making himself look guilty and 2) not sticking around to make sure the PCs were dead. Of course, the Traders cut off in mid-sentence when the party enters and try to bluff them by denying knowledge of who sent the assassin and apologizing for their fighting man's cowardice.

I know, I've been spitting out a lot of ideas lately that would take a lot of work.

Right. Prior to being revealed they have every reason to stick around. And if the party attacks them first, then Burne would naturally be skeptical if the party tried to inform him about their espionage and sabotage after the fact, as the party apparently has some sort of grudge against them and may just be trying to make them look bad. But once they've been revealed and have had swords drawn on them, they're going to get out of town as soon as they can.

And I understand the perfectly. I'm just of opinion that things should be done to even up the fight, rather than preventing the party from doing it outright (and making the villiagers KOS for the party is pretty much the same as making it undoable unless the party is evil.)

I like this idea, particularly the botching of the Laborer Spy quest. As I said above, once the party attacks the Traders, their motivations are suspect.

I don't think the town as a whole should go KOS for the lawbreaker rep. Widow Mathilde, for example, is not going to try and "arrest" a bunch of well-armed adventures. That's what the Badgers are for. However, any and all NPCs should refuse to deal with the party when spoken to (anyone clicked on has the floating text "I have nothing to say to you, lawbreaker") and the villiage's big-guns (Calmert, Terjon, Jaroo, Burne and Rufus) should try to arrest the PCs if spoken to. The Badgers, also, should patrol the town in force and try to arrest the PCs. If the PCs resist arrest, then we get into the Butcher of Homlett rep and the whole villiage becomes KOS.

Teleport the party outside where? Back outside the trading post, so the party has to walk back inside. I'm not sure what you're suggesting here.

Makes sense. I like the idea of the party getting arrested if they haven't reported Rannos and Gremag. How about if the party has reported them, then once they Bluff the Badger into leaving, the Traders immediately swear their revenge, use their dust and leave town?

Okay.

Sounds good.

Thanks for being a good sport about this, Sitra. I know it can't be happy-making to come back after doing something like this and seeing a huge debate. The basic idea is really good, we're all just chiming in with what we feel would be ways to make it even better. Glad you see us as trying to be helpful instead of critical.

 

I've tested your mod, here's what happened:
First my party discovered that they are spies for the
temple but didn't tell Burne. I attacked them, they
threw me out. Raimol said they'll be back and they
were. Then I started a fight with them by the conversation,
their thugs were tough for my lvl 3 characters (that's good )
I managed to kill Rannos and two of the thugs and Gremag
said he'll avenge Rannos's death and ran off.

The second version of events I tried was telling Burne about them being
spies and selling Lareth's stuff to them to trigger the assassin encounter.
I killed him and went to speak to them but there was no option
to mention the assassin's attack I tried to talk about it with a
neutral good character as well as a chaotic neutral and no assassin dialogue.
Note: I installed your second release. Then everything went as in the first
scenario (I had to attack them myself and yes, I looted the assassin)

 

Problem is, would you take him in, knowing that he's going to betray you eventually? Let's face it, most people would just take him out to the Deklo Grove and execute him, maybe unless it's the first time they've played the game. Yes, it's meta-gaming and thus some of the blame rests on the player, but I think only ultra hardcore roleplayers would really go along with it. Furthermore, as you said, Elmo would still be a much better choice, even with the boost (both in fighting ability and loyalty), so those who didn't hire him and kill him afterwards would most likely just not take him.

Not to mention, maggit here just said he managed to beat the two guards I added, who are level 6 and 8 packing masterwork gear, with a level 3 party. Unless you buff Raimol to that level (and probably higher), he still won't be much help.

Again, odds are most people would skip Raimol. Perhaps if there were a better reason to hire him than just 'another meatshield'... can't really think of one though. If you can think of a reason why a player would hire him, despite knowing that he's wasting hard earned XP (which is going to be reduced soon, as it seems), then I'm all for it.

Agreed.

Had a slip of the pen there. I meant you and the badgers leave the building, and while you're out, the traders sneak from the back door and get away (to return with reinforcements later, unless of course you've already revealed their activities to Burne as we discussed). Presumably the badger would be watching you long enough after the incident to let the traders escape. (i.e. the abstraction is that you can't actually enter the building immediately after, so even if the very next thing you do is click the door icon again, the traders had enough time to flee. Maybe I'll add a post-exit dialogue trigger where the badger questions you a bit so it's less of an abstraction).

Sounds good. They'd have an excuse to keep a fair distance from you, inching towards the back door, while readying the dust for immediate use, so they wouldn't waste two turns of combat doing the usual run off script.

Like I said, your feedback is greatly appreciated

Could you go into detail on how the battle went? What tactics, what spells you were using? I was actually hoping to prevent low level parties from beating them at all, so that either you trigger their escape by doing the laborer spy quest or return much later with a high level party, where the XP and loot will have less of an impact.

Regarding not having the assassin dialogue option: did you expose the courier or confront them about the spy yet? If not, the option should be there. If so, well, that's the way it is in the original. I should probably add the option though, doesn't make sense NOT to have it as far as I can tell.

As for the second version vs. the first, it's the same as the first version, but built on top of Chuchulain's new weapons mod for compatibility.

 

I think I simply got lucky rolls, note that there was
Gremag and the guy with huge flail alive. Did I forgot to
mention that they were beating the crap out of me depite
having killed two of them? I think my mage was dead because
the assassin killed her, so I used my cleric with Sound Burst
and bard's fascinate, so I had one of them off my head for a
while. You can pump'em up a bit but I don't know if there's much
sense in it. What I'd really love to see is the encounter at the town
council.

Oh, and I have revealed the spy, I guess there wouldn't have been
any problems about that if there were no 5 response limit in one
conversation window.

 

Using fascinate isn't considered an exploit ?

 

Some people who do know better might take him just because there's a storyline involved now. Yes, people might take him out to the woods, kill him and dump him, but people can do that with Kobort and Turuko, or Zert to avoid the ambush after Lareth's death as well.

Well, again, more needs to be done with that fight than just boosting Raimol. Changing their tactics so they go for the dust first, allowing them to make sneak attacks is another one. (Although I just realized the problem with this is the infinite AOO bug with Improved Invisibility. So I guess that tactic won't work.) The big problem is they're rogues, but they're not getting themselves into position to sneak attack.

Ah. See, I was thinking a successful Diplomacy check would allow the party to continue fighting. Again, I'm opposed to the idea of making things "No, you can't do that." However, if this is pre-reporting them to Burne and/or pre-assassination attempt, I can understand the Badger preventing things from continuing, even with a successful Diplomacy check.

However, if the party does everything "right" (Reports the Trader's to Burne and waits until after the assassination attempt) they should have a chance to make the Diplomacy check and be able to fight them. Althought, I suppose we could still have Rannos and Gremag slip out the back while the party is distracted by talking to the Badger. If the parties follow them outback, they discover Rannos and Gremag have reinforcements. I don't know. I guess, from a story perspective, I'm more willing to accept the badguys slip away while the heroes try to convince the authorities their behavior is justified than the heroes being manhandled out of the building by one lone guard and then questioned. *shrugs* But that's more personal opinion, than any real difference in what actually happens.

I do, but others feel getting rid of it would unneccessarily weaken the bard. *shrugs*

 

I was thinking at work today, a LN's starting quest is to find the bandits and get rid of them. now from playing a CE game and having the traders send me to the moathouse I know they're in league with the bandits. So would a well informed LN party have more right to just deal to the trades as they see fit than any other alignment, without having to report to burne etc. anyway I see it going something like this...

anyother party pre labourcamp spy quest - trouble makers.
anyother party post labourcamp spy quest - PI.
Burne and Co - Local sherifs.
LN party - Feds/Spooks.

in this case I see Burne and Co being able to pull rank over any group, unless they reveal themselfs to be agents of a higher power.

 

interesting, so I'll either sick with my what I said - its like cops working overseas or even better - James Bond working in Japan, or just enjoy the plot holes and inconsistencies that role-playing is all about.

 

What I think may happen if you successfully used the diplomacy option would be something like the badgers say well this is distressing news indeed, we will take these 2 directly to Burne and have him deal with the situation. (or to that extent)

And when you go to Burne's he either doesnt know anything about it (the Burnes Badgers that jumped in were actually working for the traders) or tells you that R&G got away from the guards. either way the target of revenge is triggered.

But I also think that the work that has been done with this already is very impressive and appreciate all the mods that have came out already.

 

by plot holes I do mean the parts to be filled in by the DM or in our case, use your imagination to fill the hole to make a plasable story.

on that note I can think of several reasons why there would be a badger in this scenario, of several reasons for R&G to come back from running away and several different ways the uninformed local hicks would look at you depending on the circumstances before you attacked them the first time.