Where Evil Dies: Jagged Edge Hideaway
I'm running a bi-weekly campaign using Where Evil Lives and posting my thoughts in the discord, but someone suggested I post it to Reddit as well. Each session is one of the lairs from the book where the crew of drudgers (my setting's term for adventurers, inspired by Victorian toshers) come together to defeat the villain. Everything between sessions happens outside of the game, and the players have a little time to describe all the cool stuff they've gotten up to since the last game. Which is based on an idea Colville had in one of his livestreams (I think).
Since Jagged Edge Hideaway was the first lair, the introduction was instead to who their characters are:
- Haakon Morgeldr, an arcanist cursed with the dark sight to see the dead and regularly experiences visions of the possible deaths those around him may suffer. (Artificer 1, Fighter 1)
- Teya, who guards a hidden cove that allows access to another realm. They protect the land with their Lightbender companion, Marsh Mallow. (Beastheart 2).
- Cormacc, the ranger of the mountains, who safeguards the roads and passes alongside his drakar, Kirvenn. (Beastheart 2).
- Advenia, a young woman traveling across the breadth of the broken kingdoms to unlock the potential of her hidden talent. (Talent 2)
There ends the new text, and the rest of this is copied from what I posted in the Discord. With some added context in places:
Not worrying about adding a retainer (note: the lair is balanced for a party of five) to round out the party of four was perfect, as it meant they barely survived half of the hideout they went through. They found both the trapped tunnel and Marrowgnaw's tunnel but decided to camp until morning before they went in. The party got a taste of the goblin's might with the scouting party investigating the tunnel collapse, which went well and led the party to an actual entrance.
Of course, one of the beasthearts tried to show off and use acrobatics to go down the trapdoor, rolled a natural one, and ping-ponged down the sides. And then failed his perception check to notice the pitfall trap and fell in that as well, but the artificer's rope was long enough to go down both pits and pull the beastheart out, only to get webbed by Marrowgnaw.
I don't usually run pre-made adventures, so it took me a minute to realize the webbing in the Marrowgnaw fight was the specific squares and not a general terrain feature like I'd do with a map not built to purpose. Which I think is a worthwhile reminder to GMs running the adventure: the map is built for the encounter, so don't extra punish your players by assuming every square is webbed.
Ultimately, the party barely survived because on an unrelated natural 20 saving throw roll against the webbing, the fall-prone beastheart noticed the potion of healing listed in the loot, fed that to the downed artificer, who then healed the other downed beastheart. Which is another useful lesson: loot that was already there doesn't feel like a cheap save if the players roll into an encounter under-prepared. And even if it wasn't there, how would the players have known?
Then the players met the caged goblin retainer, Toblobb. The artificer tried to melt the lock on the cage, but failed the roll. So the beefy beastheart pulled the cage open enough for him to squeeze out, but not without scraping his skull against the jagged edges of the bars. They then took a short rest, so I let the party choose between spending some time searching through the treasure horde, talking to Toblobb about what he knows of the goblins, or pitch me on something else they wanted to do to prepare. This was a very effective tool for making the players feel like they were doing more than just sitting around in a short rest.
Two of the party chose to search the goods, so I had them roll Investigation checks and for every 5 they found one of the items listed in the horde. I made an ad hoc table and mixed up the items from the bag of holding inside, so they found a few useful things among the trade goods. Same system with Toblobb, but an Investigation check using Charisma to ask the right questions to get useful information. They rolled pretty poorly, so I let them choose from learning an inaccurate count of the goblins in the Hideout, one of Queen Bargnot's abilities, or learn two abilities from one of her named lieutenants (or one ability from two lieutenants). They learned about Queen Bargnot's #1 villain action.
In retrospect, I should have kept it simple and just let them learn the whole treasure list if anyone spent their time looking through the horde. That way, they could have maybe used some of the magic loot in the Bargnot fight. But I thought it would be more fun for them to each find different things (and thus split up the bag of holding loot) and was wrong. The lightbender companion hunted spiders in Marrowgnaw's chamber for the short rest, so she started the next combat with a point of ferocity!
After the rest, they went through the secret door straight into the throne room. Everyone rolled awful for initiative, and most combatants had single-digit results. I thought the cramped quarters would make it easier for the lackeys to trigger their ability that causes a saving throw at the start of a foe's turn, but it only came up once. I accidentally misread Bargnot's summon ability and just spawned four minions on her first turn, so I didn't use the ability on the second turn to even it out. That also lead me to use her #3 villain action early since there were so many fighters on the board. I ended up downing one of the full-health beasthearts in a single shot with a lucky crit that rolled max damage, which was when the fight went from a narrow victory to probably a defeat. That's when I started putting my finger on the scale a little (shaving a point or two off of damage rolls here and there) to help even it up. If I hadn't rolled the critical "in front of the board," so to speak (using a VTT), I probably would have fudged that instead. I don't find it very fun to just drop a player out of nowhere, especially at low levels.
Luckily his drakar companion was in the mix with the queen and was still able to fight while he was down. While the module doesn't say the goblins will seek allies from other rooms, I figured since this was the queen they'd at least try. A minion ran into the skitterling room, riled them up, and then for a cool moment I had the skitterlings tear the minion apart to show how deadly they can be. So the artificer blocked up the door to keep them from entering. Eventually, they flew away to try and find another access point, which gave the cursespitter in the main room an Insight check to realize what was going on. He failed, so they wrote it off as just the skitterlings acting up again. Which the party needed since they were already on the downhill slope.
Pretty standard 5e combat otherwise. I never used Bargnot's #2 villain action because her goblins never had need of it, but I don't think that was a problem. The lack of maneuvering room was exacerbated by the two beasthearts, but it also kept the goblins from surrounding the party. Much like Marrowgnaw, the tight spaces made the fight possible for the party. All of the lackeys made the #3 villain action very lethal. I used it early because it made tactical sense, but in retrospect, I should have waited on it to deploy it toward the end more dramatically.
My internal metric for when Queen Bargnot would sue for peace was 1/4 health, but once the party spent a round focusing on her, she went down before it got to her turn again. Ultimately, the frenzying drakar tore into Bargnot in a very Jurassic Park-style death. I then ripped off the Cut! mechanic they've been working on for the MCDM RPG and gave my players a choice. The rest of the goblins were fleeing the hideaway with the death of Bargnot instead of being three more combat encounters. They could either chase down the goblins and kill them to get their treasure and the reputation of slaying the whole bandit tribe, or they could let them get away and save Toblobb, who was down and making death-saving throws. They chose to save Toblobb, so they'll have a new ally for the stuff they do in the time skip between lairs instead of more gold and a reputation as hardcore drudgers. Now I've got to prep Hanging Tree and choose one villain to tie into each of the player characters!
In all, my big takeaway from Jagged Edge Hideaway is to trust the designers more! I default to fixing the presentation and structure of every module I run, and I didn't challenge that mindset when I sat down to prep Jagged Edge. But the presentation of the lair (things like not making the treasure horde a table, the webs actually being on the battle map, etc.) is way more intentional than you usually see in a module. Which means I can take it easy for once and just run the damn thing instead of editing it!
Posted Sep 26, 2023, 2:06 AM UTC