Night Below Modifications

Now that the long campaign is over, I can talk about some changes I made to the adventure as presented in the module, and some of the reasons I made the changes. I doubt many people are going to take up a super-long campaign with this (one campaign I read about started in the 90’s and well into the current decade – something like 8 years including all the book in the module) at this point, but you never know.

Some of the things I read online when I started the campaign were how players were pretty sick of the oppression and the simple hack and slash of the adventure as it proceeds to the City of The Glass Pool. By that point, role-playing was mostly confined to interacting with a variety of evil and neutral tribes of creatures in the Underwilderness. But in reality, it was I who was getting a bit tired of throwing things at the party in the same setting again and again for two years. So some of my change-ups were not just to save time, but to give me a little variety. Here are some of the things I did, for posterities sake if nothing else.

*Time saving: I think this is key in TNB. This campaign takes people years and years to finish, if they don’t get fed up with it by then. I didn’t want to make a lifetime commitment out of The Night Below. So I cut corners as much as I could even though this particular campaign did not include Book 1 or Book 3. Even with an eye towards time management, this campaign has gone on for a bit over two years. We play for around 3-4 hours twice a month, so if you play a lot more than that then time is not that much of an issue for you. Many of the changes I made in this module cut down on some of the challenges, but they saved months worth of sessions. Where I did remove or tone-down foes, I tried to compensate with other, less time-consuming challenges.

A Sketchy Timeline of Changes

*I bought a used Night Below boxed set on Ebay several months into a casual campaign that had PC’s working for a caravan from the big city of Tanmoor. This caravan was travelling to the southernmost frontier towns of the Tanmoor Kingdom. Ultimately, the players planned (through the urgings of the young ranger NPC “Dia”) to go to a classic dungeon crawl further south in the Hobbit lands. I switched things over then to a Night Below campaign instead. Because much adventure had been experienced in the villages and towns of the south, I completely skipped the Book 1 portion of the module. I literally used nothing from that book. I just had the party come to the largest town in the area, and discover that spell casters and others were being kidnapped wholesale and taken to caverns down below. Two of those kidnapped spellcasters would be new players Big Ben and Paul’s characters, who appeared in the clutches of hungry, stew-making Gnolls in the upper tunnels when it was time for them to join our group.

For little Ben, a player who had played a bit more than Big B and Paul, I came up with some cool stuff for his gnome to get him involved. Mainly, a sub-surface sort of panic room below town that his great uncle had built hundreds of years ago, and below this was found “SouthGem,” an old abandoned surface gnome town from ancient times that a family of gnomes from up north, The Toolos, were living in and studying and restoring. This not only gave the gnome character some gravitas, but having some things in the sub-surface area before the underdark as a buffer to the isolation below added a little color, and possible places to retreat to and rest without having to go all the way up to town.

* I added in surface town encounters with a party of drow (travelling incognito). This party, led by a drow city ex-pat named Avatara (is an NPC I have used on and off for decades) encountered a couple of the characters a bunch of games ago. They are still around the area, and have been on a mission to explore the ruins of the drow city at the Sunless Sea in Book 3. With the PC Krysantha being a drow, and The Night Below lacking in the presence of dark elves, I thought it would be interesting to have this group lurking around.

*I totally threw out the Rockseer Elf part of the adventure. Yes, I know they are a big part of it as written, but I just did not want them and their baggage involved in the game, nor did I want them to become a part of the surface world as the end of Book 3 would tell you to do. So Rockseers, including their magic items, artifacts, and bickering NPC’s are nowhere to be found. Sure, they could be around as they are, but I just don’t involve them. This saves a bunch of time (at the point in the module you encounter the Rockseers, you need to backtrack many days to go to their area), though not using them deprives the players of an opportunity to have an 11th level MU, with an enhanced set of boots and cloak of elvinkind, assist in the attack on the City of the Glass Pool.

*Deep Gnomes – I named their city Blingdenblang, and I gave them a much larger role than depicted in the module (to make up for removing Rockseer Elf involvement). They are a little more helpful, and Queen Carmenaran friendlier to them (though no less paranoid about being invaded by the evil below). They provide the usage of a flux point, and also offer up a certain amount of hospitality. I had the party save a royal engineer of Carmenaran’s from certain death at the hands of gnolls (they ate his legs), so his influence helped the party be accepted as well. I still had the gnomes a bit afraid of giving themselves away to the deadlier races down below, so they offered very limited access to the flux point (the party could only use it two or three times). I had to expand the city a bit one night when Paul’s thief/MU Lily went out to burgle a building. She snuck into a building and climbed some walls, filching from a chest in a room some gold and gems.

*I played down the big troll tribe encounter near the gnome city, and instead just had it be a small encounter with several trolls. Cutting back on this encounter probably saved at least one game session, while still providing a nice troll fight and a favor being done for the gnomes.

*No Grell! I threw out this encounter in its entirety. I really don’t like the Grell as a race or as a monster. For some reason the Grell also seemed sort of out of place and alien even for the Underdark. I really wanted the Illithid, Aboleth, and even the Kuo Toa to be the weirdest races down there. I substituted this place as a Dire Corby hunting ground, where at certain times intruders could expect to fight a “murder” (as flocks of crows are called) of them upwards of 100 at a time. As the PC’s slew around 80 of the beasts, they would cease to be a problem for anyone who passed by for some months.

*There are two encounter areas that I used almost completely as-is by the book. The first was the hook horror/quaggoth and Rakshasa areas, and the second was the Roper/Xorn areas. As usual I did fudge treasure a bit, plus I also decided these areas would have been outpost areas for the drow city on the Sunless Sea left over from its doom several hundred years ago. I included some faded drow artwork and writing on some walls, including a magical portrait of Pajarafane that had the illusion of movement and realism cast upon it (similar to the portraits in Hogwarts).

*Pajarafan/Finslayer: The only thing I changed about the historical ranger personality of Pajarafan was to make him instead a female from the past named Pajarafane. Finslayer was looking for a neutral good ranger over any other kind of owner, and the only individual that fit the bill best was the young NPC ranger Dia. I did not make Pajarafane a female to coincide with this, but it all made sense once Dia got her hands on the sword. The drow Krysantha at one point declared that Dia was the spirit of Pajarafane returned, but that was not my intention, and still might not be the case.

*Clovis the Underdark Ranger: I included this NPC as a sort of appearing/reappearing guide who could give guidance and information when I needed such things given to the players. I had thought about Underdark Rangers for a long time, so this was a chance to use one. Clovis turned out to be the son of famous ranger and Woodlord Arcturus Grimm who lived in the southern lands above currently. Both Clovis and Dia are children of Grimm (Dia only recently learned all this. Could Grimm be a descendant of Pajarafane?) Clovis was never meant to fight in the City of The Glass Pool. Instead, I have him mainly being concerned with trying to save slaves during the chaos of the city assault. His entire purpose as set up by Arcturus Grimm is as a friendly observer who can offer aid when possible, but otherwise sits on the sidelines.

*The party encountered a raiding party of Minotaur’s (from my using The Old School Encounter Reference for encounters instead of the books). When Krysantha the drow druid changed into a bat to go see where they came from, I went ahead and included a Minotaur maze city hidden a few miles off of the main passage. Krysantha did not look into it further, so I did not have to wing further encounters off of that. That would make a nice mini-campaign sometime in the future (because I think the maze city idea is hellacool).

*Book 2 really plays up the Jubilex shrine area, and seems to think it is an obligatory encounter. It isn’t. The party fought the Rakshasa (actually, they left him alone for ownership of the Deck of Many Things), the high level deranged magic-user, and some of the jelly/ooze overflow, but had no intention of going into the temple. I suspect a lot of players would avoid it, even if they suspect there is treasure. Nobody likes dealing with oozes. I think knowing about it, and hearing some lore about it, was more interesting than actually having the players go in there. The party bypassing it probably cut down on yet another session.

*Mixing up the Slaver attackers near the purple worm area: the diverse party of high level Slavers is a cool encounter and a brutal fight. On top of that, I added the character Xavier as leader. A high level fighter/thief, Xavier was created by Paul so his character Lily could have a bad man in her past. The module had this group attacking to kill in very brutal fashion. I found that silly considering these were slavers looking for more slaves to sell for top dollar. So I held off of the major killing attacks at first. That made the encounter less dangerous, but it was still a big challenge. Two characters were left in negative hit points (fighter Helena and MU elf Lumarin) when this fight ended (more or less in a draw, as the roof collapsed from all the powerful spells going off), forcing the party to find a side cave to rest in for a week (they had no access to high level cleric heals and such).

*Derro Town - Adding an urban location in the derro area, whatever the size, is a must. I like that this part of the Underdark (the southern Underdark in my world) is a wild wilderness compared to the northern Drow/Illithid/Cloaker empires, but the long-term isolation and oppressive surroundings are a bit much for player and DM alike. The module would have players travelling to the surface world again and again to restock supplies (and train, which I don’t really require) and rest, but I figure that an underground trading town near the City of The Glass Pool provides some shelter and stocking of equipment and scrolls and such when they need them the most, assuming the party does not just attack all the evil things. So I had a small mind flayer tower on a hill at the center of town, and several hundred derro (some of whom are under the control of the Crown of Domination) run the towns establishments.

Besides the Illithid tower (usually manned by a couple of mind flayers plus Zanticor the main mind flayer visits often. Also, a troop of ogre and troll guards are on the first level), there is a derro tavern (a large building open to all races who can pay), a brothel made up of various slave girls, a road house with rooms for rent, and a street market with food, supplies, animals, water, and even a group of derro dealing in scrolls and magic supplies. As long as a party of adventurers doesn’t draw undo attention, this is a great place to rest and resupply. Also, characters may just want to assault the tower and kill the mind flayers, which would cause some chaos in the town. In my game the party negotiated with the derro renegades so they would cause various distractions (cave-ins and explosions) on the outskirts of town so they could assault the tower with little interference. After all that, the party used the tower as an HQ, and a place for freed slaves to be safe while the party attacked the City of The Glass Pool.

*The Froghemoth – I never really got to use this behemoth that originally appeared in the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Nope, there is no Froghemoth in the Night Below material. But I thought it would be nice to have one around in case I needed just one last dose of possible death to hurl at the party. I decided that Kuo Toan priests could control its actions through special flutes (made from fish bones). They would keep it under the Glass Pool in a large water chamber, to be released under one of two circumstances: Either when the statue of Blipdoolpoolp was defeated (which they didn’t think would ever happen), or if I needed another big encounter and could have priests lead the Froghemoth into the next big cavern to attack the players tower, which would have been a cool set-piece. As it was, I had the creature appear after the fight with the statue, and the players booked right out of there. So never got to use it (although it will still be down there amidst the chaos of the broken Kuo Toan city).

If you’re a DM planning to use The Night Below (either for 1st edition as I did, or for it’s intended 2nd edition) and want more details, just search my blog for “Night Below.” My players discovered my blog late last year, so around then I’m a bit less open about my inner thoughts, but still there is a lot of good detail and ideas within those posts.

TPK in The Night Below

At least that is what I thought it was going to be. I know, false advertising. But in the previous game two weeks ago, the party went straight from the brutal fight in the Kuo Toan Priest Kings palace in The City of The Glass Pool, and depleted in hit point and vital spells went next door to the very Glass Pool itself, within the huge-domed Temple of The Sea Mother, to try and finish the job.

Not only did it turn out that the newly claimed Crown of Derro Domination would not contact Derro from a distance (the nearest ones were across the city), but on the way into the temple dome a stone giant had thrown a boulder, crushing NPC Dia into the negatives. Still, with all that against them ending last game, Andy’s bard Vaidno took up the sword Finslayer from Dia and led the charge into what was more or less the final fight of the campaign. That last game they had defeated the high priest and some others, but it left a couple of characters under Hold Person. They started this game severly down in manpower. Three strong fighters, including the badly wounded Dia, where unavailable for this combat. I confided to Terry a few days ago on the way to the Pub Session, running the held Helena, that she should not be too shocked if she lost this character and could do nothing about it. It was the decision of Andy and the others to take on the temple straight after another huge fight. I thought it would be the death of them.

So much happened in this fight. So much high level stuff. There was not just a couple of giant lobsters In the pool, but a large water elemental as well. And within a few short rounds the entirety of the Kou Toan army would be busting in. The big challenge was the statue of Blipdoolpoolp that the party came to blow up with the dwarvish bomb (their last). The statue was basically an avatar of the Sea Mother, and it was next to invulnerable to almost everything but weapons +2 or better. It also got a deadly bite if both claws hit you (for 2d8 each); if you were held in both claws and the head bite got a natural 19 or 20 on the hit roll, the victims head is taken clean off, and the body thrown into the pool for the giant lobsters to tear apart. Krysantha the drow druid turned into a bird an bravely flew the bomb over to the statue, but attacks from both the water elemental and the now animated statue made it hard to light a bomb fuse. Krys got grabbed up in those arms, and I made the bite roll in the open, telling them that a 19 or higher was the end of the character. I don’t think I have ever seen a roll watched with more baited breath in my life than Dan watching that dice I got a 15 and it hit, but no head off.

Unfortunately, I would get no more chances at the cool head bite. My rolls for the monster, which are usually notoriously good, were not so great. I think I only hit a 20 crit twice at most, and that was for lobsters and normal Kuo Toa. Man, I coulda used that 20 with the statue, or at least a water elemental attack.

At one point Lumarin the high elf MU broke out his magic gong, and summoned the Asian Gong Warrior, who held off some of the tougher Kuo Toa captains for awhile before succumbing to the hoard that was rushing in. Lumarin also had an Invisible Stalker holding back the hoard from another entrance, so plenty of good magical stuff going on. Vaidno used his gem found long ago in a dwarven forge to summon the fire elemental that had promised to help if ever released from the gem, but the water elemental quickly left the pool to extinguish the fire elemental, and hit some of the characters with some pounding wave actions.

By the time Krysantha fell down at zero hit points, the statue was already badly tore up, and when Vaidno’s final blows from his flashing blades (including Finslayer) broke the statue to bits, the kuo toan mobs fell to madness and the battle was over. Not one damn character death in this fight. Wow. I was so sure this would be at least a near TPK. Perhaps surviving characters taken down to the Sunless Sea as slaves for the Aboleth.

We ended with characters headed back to the tower in the Derro Town they previously claimed from the Mind Flayers. So it’s looking like next time will be the campaign epilogue game. They still have to deal with the slaves they saved, but there are still political groups around, including both the formerly dominated Derro, the Renegade Derro the characters dealt with, Avatara and the other drow who took over the Derro tavern (and their gang of Quaggoths), and a few other random bits. Unless the party heads back into the City of the Glass Pool to try and do some looting (although the city is insane right now, it doesn’t mean they won’t have to fight their way around the city; Kuo Toans are notoriously more dangerous insane than sane), it should be a nice and fun game to run. The campaign finale after more than two years. Wow.

Symbol: Insanity

In last week’s Night Below session, you could tell things had gotten really high level. The party continued the assault on the Kuo Toa Priest King’s palace, and took on the king (a 12th level fighter/cleric), the last Illithid in the city (as far as the players knew), a couple of the kings 10th level fighter guards (complete with good armor and magical great swords), and a handful of 5th level “whips” (fighter/thieves). The main temple of Blipdoolpoolp might have been a better strategy, in that the destruction of the statue in that place would reduce all Kuo Toa priests in power, including the king. But the decision was settled on to take on the palace because the Illithid there bore the Crown of Derro Domination. And they managed to get their hands on it, in addition to fairly handily take care of the royal guards and the king.

A really high level spell was encountered in the king’s chamber, a Symbol of Insanity that the king inscribed upon the floor of the center of the room to hopefully catching any foolish enough to charge right in. Well, Vaidno the Bard was so foolish (actually, a pretty brave character who comes off these days more like an acrobatic fighter), and he tripped up the symbol.

What a powerful spell this is. See, the king had the spell per the module, and I hadn’t really studied on it significantly. So when it was set off and I looked up the save, it said “special.” The Symbol spells have a variety of affects, but it turns out in the case of this one there is no save. On the spot I could not really figure it out, and we even looked in the DM guide. The only indication of save is in the Confusion spell that you are directed to for rolling on a table for affect (run away, fight your friends, etc). That spell gives a save -2. Anyway, not wanting to burn the player with a permanent spell that only a Wish or Heal spell will cure (ironically, it was a player complaint that kept Terry from running two characters some time back, depriving the party of high level hobbit cleric Kayla, who was the only character that could provide a Heal spell), I decided to give that save as per confusion. “Surviveno” made the save, as usual.

Was it wrong to not go by the book and mess up this character, effectvly taking him out of the game for the final session of the campaign? Well, I wasn’t sure of the spell, and basically decided it was better to decide in favor of the character in case there was some addendum to this spell that we later would find, after Vaidno had already ran screaming into the Underdark or was dispatched by the others for attacking them.

In all honest, I know we are dealing with high level spells, and some of them can just mess you up, saving throw or not. But a spell that a character would just step on and be really messed up with no kind of save seems kind of bogus to me. The character could easily have missed his save and been jacked-up anyway. It seems much more exciting to make a save of some kind. A freaking fighting chance.

Anyway, I’m going to have to take the time to better understand these higher level mess-you-up spells for the next session for sure, so I can decide in advance if I want to nerf them or not.

Don’t rush the campaign, bro

After several years without so much as a cold (good times wherein I got to use almost all of my sick days for fun things), I got hit hard by this flu that is going around late last week, and am still trying to shake off its evil grip. So last night instead of getting back into the heat of things with the assault on The City of The Glass Pool, I had Big Ben do a session of his elf-centric campaign since I wasn’t really feeling on-point. In a couple of weeks we’ll get back to my campaign, but this has given me a chance to rethink some things about how I am letting myself feel about my now high-level campaign.

In the last few months I feel I have been thinking a bit too feverishly about finishing the current Night Below campaign, which has been going on strong for around two and a half years now (the actual underground portion being about two years). I have enjoyed the epic nature of the adventure, but I think I have let my desire to run other things make me too obsessed with the end of this thing. I keep saying “two or so games to go,” but the fact is that I don’t really know how much more there is too do. The party has taken care of one or two goals that are required to cause the breakdown of the Kuo Toan society in TCOTGP, but there are still a couple of big things to be accomplished to bring it all home. Plus, who knows what other plans the party might have in terms of some looting and other activities they might engage in after the fall of the nasty little city. And of course a long campaign like this will require at least a full session of epilogue for the characters after all is said and done (the return to the surface world, personal affairs, etc). So although I judge that the immediate adventure should take 2-4 more sessions, I’m not going to rush it anymore.

The fact is I’m having much more fun running for higher level characters than I thought it would. It’s been many a harvest moon since I did regular games for characters over 7th level. I’m usually ending a campaign after about a year and moving on to do new characters. Not that the higher characters careers end or anything like that; but their presence in the game world in the past has often been relegated to cameos.

So, even thought I will be starting some Knights of the Old Republic sometime in the next couple of months (the gang seems to have come up with some interesting characters for that – most of them have downloaded PDF’s of the rules). I’m going to go ahead and let book 2 of NB play out, without any sort of imposed ending by me. Does this mean I’ll go right into them going into the lowest depths and into The Sunless Sea of book 3 of Night Below right away? Maybe not. Book 3 ends in an assault on an evil underground city as well. So I think I may have some mods to make, and will probably want some time to pass so the players don’t get bored. Judging from my online research on NB, the majority of campaigns barely make it to the end of book 2 before all involved are fed-up.

But it has been a fun campaign, challenging and rewarding to run, so I’m not going to be in such a rush to put a stopper in it any more. Let it go where it goes.

A Sword Named "Finslayer"

Finslayer, the most iconic magic item to be found within the Night Below setting for AD&D 2nd edition, is about to be found by the party in my current 1st edition AD&D run of NB. Located (as indicated in book 2 of the 3 book set) in the treasure trove of a Rakshasa and hook horrors, it is looking to be taken into the possession of a neutral good Ranger.

Finslayer was created a few hundred years ago by an unnamed wizard, for a ranger named “Pajarifan.” Pajarifan had different racial enemies than the typical ranger. Instead of goblins and giants, Pajarifan hated Koa Toa and Drow. Finslayer was made to complement the hatreds of Pajarafan, who, as the greatest hero of the southern settlements, quested into the southern Underdark to defeat his enemies. Finally defeating the drow, Pajarifan unwittingly opened the door for the Aboleth to one day rule this part of the underworld. In the module, Pajarifan’s final fate was unrevealed, but it may be safe to assume he took the fight to the Aboleth eventually, and met his doom somewhere around The Sunless Sea.

Here are Finslayer’s powers and abilities:

-Finslayer is a long sword, +3, +4 vs. aboleth and drow, +5 vs kuo-toa.
-It is of NG alignment, very intelligent and has an ego to match.
-It converses with you via telepathy. It speaks in common with the others. It also speaks Undercommon, Drow, Aboleth, and Kuo-toa.
-At will (or by your request) it can:
o detect invisible objects within 10'
o detect secret doors within 5'
o detect magic within 10'
-It can cast "Strength" on you once per day, but the duration is a full 18 hours. If Finslayer strikes a kuo-toa it will confuse it for 2d6 rounds (they get a ST)
• Finslayer will not stick to kuo-toan armor.
• While holding Finslayer you are immune to kuo-toan Symbols of Insanity.
• Finslayer has extensive knowledge of kuo-toa, drow, and aboleth.
Finslayer will come in very handy at the climax of book 2, “The City of the Glass Pool,” where a Kuo Toa army is one of the obstacles to be faced.

Now, I made a couple of changes to the history of Finslayer. For one thing, I decided for some reason I wanted Pajarifan to be a female, so I added an “e” to the end of the name and made it “Pajarifane.” Nice, eh?

So at the game tomorrow night the party is about to dig in to the treasure trove, and Finslayer will be found. As it turns out (quite by accident, I created her long before deciding to do Night Below), the NPC in the party is a teenager ranger girl from the same area as Pajarifane, named “Dia.” The party had already discovered that she is special. A dozen games ago or so they found out she was the secret daughter of Arcturus Grimm, the most famous ranger in history and occasional benefactor to the characters. So Dia comes along being exactly what Finslayer is looking for – a neutral good ranger. So the weapon will most likely go to the NPC. That is probably going to work out pretty good, because it leaves me free to do what I like with Finslayer without basically controlling a player character.

So we will see how it goes tomorrow night. It is especially going to be a fun night, because it is all around the biggest and best treasure find I am bestowing upon the players in a year and a half of these characters adventures. I’ll hopefully get to kick back most of the night while the players argue out who gets what in all the great stuff, that in addition to Finslayer will include a druidic Scimitar +2, +4 when used outdoors in full sunlight, an elvish +2, +4 vs. goblin types long bow, +2 mace, wand of lightening bolts, and a few other goodies (note: I have heavily modified the treasure trove from what the book indicates).