I imagine some of you have run this beast of an adventure, so i'll assume that you have first hand knowlege as a player, gm, or just as an avid Greyhawk fan.
I've been running this campaign on and off for almost two years now. The party just hit 9th. level, and up until this point has made tremendous headway. We are half way through the Crater Ridge Mines, which the Pc's will move on for a third time next session. The Main and South gates have been breached. The Earth, and Air temples are in ruins, and the players possess enough lesser keys to make a go at the Outer Fane, though very unlikely.
I guess what i'm saying is that this game has just begun. Everything up until this point has been prep work for whats to come.
I have been anything but easy on these guys, and it is not my intention to lighten up now. What I need now is to create a formidable defense with what I have left in the Crater Ridge, and with those assets I can pull from the Outer Fane. I want them fighting for every 5ft. square.
Here are my basic plans for the Crater Ridge, some additional force allocations, and possible ambush plans. Mind you I don't let my npc's, troops, and creatures sit around waiting for the pc's to come kicking doors down. This is a dynamic ever changing enviroment, and the bad guys know the good guys are here. Truth be told I see this as the Doomdreamer's Waterloo and it wouldn't be right to let them go down without one hell of a fight.
1. By the order of Hedrack the forces of both the Water and Fire temples have pulled back to the areas imediatly surrounding their respective temple altar. Neither temple has taken losses so both groups are large and strong. These temples have suspended open hostilities toward each other for the sake of a strong defense.
2. The remaining Crater Ridge force has retaken the main gate, and consists of all remaining orc, gnoll, elf, and human troops not connected to the Water or Fire temples. They are supported by a handful of ogres and trolls from the eastern bridge complex, and are led by Eeridik and Oamarthis with D'Gran as an messenger between this group and the Outer Fane.
3. At this point all outer Fane forces are all accounted for eccept Ukemil and his dire lions, they were all killed in an ambush that caused the only two pc deaths so far, ooops...
Here are some questions to consider
1. When should I use Hedrack's assassins Victor and Bethe?
2. How do I play Thrommel? The options seem limitless, i'd really like to use him to create some vampires/vampire spawn, but some how I don't think Hedrack would let that fly, and wouldn't he want to escape at the first possible chance? Maybe into the underdark?
3. The Cornugon in the Outer Fane, I'm having a hard time deciding how to play him as well. With all the crazyness in the Crater Ridge I get the feeling a Baatezu wouldn't want to miss out. Any ideas?
4. Varachan? Any ideas on how to play out the fallen priest of Tharizdun would help.
Hopefully somebody loves this game as much as I do.
I'd love to hear any all comments. Thanks-Alvin
When I was running this campaign a year ago, I took the stance that once the champion was found, the crater ridge mines became cannon fodder and a delaying force for the rest of the doomdreamers to complete their work at the original temple.
The Outer Fane became a place of frustration for the players. The Gurdians of the Fire, Earth, and Water doors gave my PCs fits. Heck, the Earth Elmental Killed three PCs in one Cleaving Blow (two of the hits were criticals) and they just avoided the Dragon after some of them got a face full of breath weapon. The Bearded Devils took on the disguses of the poor NPCs mopping up the blood. Boy, was our scouting rogue surprised when they began to deal some serious wounding damage with those mops. He made it back to the rest of the party, sputtered out a few words and then succomed to the wounding damage. The Cornugon took that moment to ambush the party.
Okay, before this devolves into me telling you all about the adventure I ran, let me just condense it down to some tasty nuggets and responses to your questions.
1) The assassins were used once in my run. They disguesed themselves for an ambush as NPCs that were rescued and the party had left alone for awhile, coupled with Tac, the monk, and the were-rat sorcerer. The assassins fled back across the bridge to the outer fane after performing their death attacks and almost killing one PC.
Keep them alive as long as possible, hit and run tactics. They were chosen by Hedrack for a reason (I see him as the most sensible and devious of the worshipers of Tharizdun) and he probably would like to keep them alive.
2) Thrommel was used as his encouter dictated the first time. The party just staked him and left him for re-dead . . . only trouble being that there was one last cleric running around collecting a force to ambush the party after they had left the spire. I wound up not using this party since the PCs had a devil of time in that thing.
I would suggest that if you have woven him into the fore-story somehow that you would want to use him in a more dramatic manner. I would say that he would not wander too far from his coffin, but into the crater ridge mines would be alright. Given time, he might set himself up at one of the bridge complexes and await the party there, possibly pulling in some unwilling servents.
3)The Cornugon was content for the party to wander into his, personally, hilarious trap as detailed above. I'm not really sure how else I would have used him.
4)Varachan was always working behind the scenes for the PCs, diverting forces and making their lives a bit easier in the mines near the end. The PCs used the Dwarven bolt-hole for a good bit of their treck through the mines and Varachan left one or two notes for them there. They only met him once in his room where he told them about the Talisman, the Teleporter, what he knew of the Champion and warned them away form the top of the Spire. When they returned to his room after their fiasco at the spire, he had taken what few possesions he could carry and fled the complex, along with most of the others who were still alive/undead in the Fane
I am glad to see another fan of Monte Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. It is by far my favorite adventure in v.3.x days.
WampaX makes some great suggestions. I am only going to point out Cook's official RttToEE board. These guys are freaking experts at this super-adventure and they always offer sound, knowledgable advice. So, run your question by them, too. Clicl below.
I'm still currently playing in this campaign. It has been about 2 1/2 years and going (however, we only play every OTHER week for about 6 hours or so). Anyways, it's still brutal on PCs any way you put it, unfortuanly as players we are struck with constnad bad luck. I think over the course of the years, about 8 PCs have died. Much of our time is trying to put the group back together. AHHH!!!
........................Omote
FPQ _________________ Prince Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Castles and Crusades Society
Well, that board would have been great for me . . . the Errata alone would have saved me many an evening pouring over that tome trying to get all the editing mistakes corrected.
It did help flex my D&D muscles, though, finding the mistakes and fixing them. I was much more knowledgeable in the encounters since I had worked on all the numbers for them.
I would also suggest that anyone using this product take the time to write down all the main NPC stats on notecards. I didn't have to keep flipping to the back of the book and I could incorporate any errata changes I had made to the individuals. I organized mine by the map numbers so I could quickly tell where beings were at any particular time. It also allowed me to easily move the forces of the mines and fanes around but still be accessed quickly. Some of the more complex monsters/encounters were also put on notecards so I wouldn't have flip to multiple pages in the MM. The generic NPCs got one card for each of the different types so I could just use them over and over again.
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