Lessons From Behind the Screen – Building a Legend

The Setup

For this encounter my players are headed into an encounter that has them hip-deep in Forgotten Realms lore. They are going into ancient ruins for the sword Godsbane, the sword that killed several gods back in the introduction to 2nd edition D&D. At the time this sword was the hiding place for the god, Mask, who was being chased by the primordial being called Kezef the Chaos Hound.

In the 4e design of the Realms Mask and Kezef have worked out their differences, so to speak (Mask died)…but in my campaign there are allusions to the idea that that tension is still there and Mask (in some form) still hides when he can. “Mask” is spending a lot of his time hiding in the sealed off plane that is the prison/home of Cyric, the mad god partially responsible for the Spellplague. In fact, it’s Cyric that has the PCs on the trail of the sword.

So the idea is that I want to have a few, quick encounters on the way into the vault where the sword is being held. There will be a fight with a lot of environmental effects, and some cool guardians, but nothing that should be too taxing for the PCs. That said, the “coolness” of these creatures might convince the players that this is the big fight and have them expending resources…that’s not accidental.

Upon their exit, however, they will have to deal with Kezef, who is hoping to catch Mask in his old hiding place.

The Design

To come up with inspiration for my design of Kezef I did a few things. One, I want to try and encourage a fast-paced encounter since many players are likely to be thinking that the game session was almost over before Kezef shows up, I don’t want to hit them with an encounter that will run for two hours but I do want a challenge worthy of a creature that hunts gods.

The other area of inspiration for my design was to do a bit of research. Exploring the Kezef entry in the Forgotten Realms wiki provided wealth of information about how this creature has worked in the past. He had an aura of decay, his coat of maggots would devour the souls of the fallen, we know he can bite (he bit the hand off a god once), and he leaves a trail of flaming ichor when he moves. It is also described that he was insubstantial when he wanted to be.

This gives me a lot to work with. The Aura of Decay is 20 necrotic damage within 3 and I opted to also make Maggot Consumption an additional aura within 10 that only effects bloodied creatures (there’s a real reason to want to stay healthy in this fight). Additionally I created the God Hunter trait to indicate his history as a creature who hunts gods and feeds on the souls of the Faithful. So if you’re a divine being you take double damage from Kezef.

Double damage adds up, since I wanted to represent the basic attack, the bite, with something that would be easy to resolve quickly. So there’s very little dice rolling to be done but a hefty bonus (d12+50).

Burning Tracks is move action that creates a wall of fire in the Hound’s path and Corrosive Blood tops off this creature (and is inspired by Mike Shea from Sly Flourish) where if you attack Kezef his blood flies out and hurts everyone within 4, bringing the strategic thinking of this encounter to a new level.

I didn’t want to deal with insubstantial, it has a real tendency to slow down a fight needlessly, but to represent it I gave Kezef a move speed with the ability to phase, which will work well for the environment I’ll be using.

The encounter doesn’t go until the party kills Kezef, which they would find difficult at best since it’s a level 28 solo and they’re level 21, but I’m thinking that once Kezef is bloodied and then hit with Godsbane the creature will be scared off.

All in all, I have a threatening legendary creature that captures the story of it’s previous incarnations pretty well, I think, and when it’s all said and done every one of it’s powers can come into effect in multiple rounds and I only need to take the time to make a single attack roll. Will that make it simple to run or will there be too many reactions and auras to remember?

The Experience

“So, how did it go?” you ask. Really well.

In fact, I’m really glad that I didn’t pull any punches (lots of auto-damage and a level way too high for the PCs) and had planned to give the party an out to end the encounter when Kezef was bloodied. Why? Because players are tenacious.

My players saw Kezef come phasing through the wall and freaked out a bit. Then they did some knowledge checks, figured out who Kezef was, and completely freaked out. Kezef charged and, low and behold, the party wizard managed to trap Kezef in an spell that he could sustain as a minor. Sure no one could hurt it, but it couldn’t get out either. Then the big debate happened.

“I don’t think we CAN kill it.” “It’s not going to stop hunting us as long as I have this sword…and the sword won’t let me put it down. So we HAVE to kill it.” “But the gods couldn’t kill it…I’m certain we can’t do it.” “But we have to.” “But we can’t.”

I was in DMs heaven.

Eventually they decided to give fighting the beast a chance. They surrounded it, set themselves up in strategic locations, and released the hound. They started blasting away at it (having a hard time hitting it’s high defenses) and being torn up by the Corrosive Blood and the Aura of Decay.

Kezef focused all his attention on the PC carrying Godsbane, doing a good amount of damage with his bite. I held back on using the action point because that PC was already practically dead and taking massive amounts of damage from the combination of  the Aura of Decay and the  Maggot Consumption. So I held back a bit and gave the party a chance to get in some healing (it’s not like he wasn’t going to get slammed again when Kezef’s next action game around).

I got to use Kezef’s cool scary powers, the Corrosive Blood, the Bite that does lots of damage, and the Maggot Consumption. I was happy and the PCs were worried.

There were a few things I made some last minute adjustments on in the midst of the fight, and there was one thing I think I would have done a bit differently if I had a chance to do it again, but there always is.

First, the party managed to bloody Kezef in a couple of rounds…and then thanks to the ranger double-critting in one round they got the beast to negative hit points in one round. I didn’t expect them to be able to take on a level 28 solo at their level, but they did it. So I decided that Kezef doesn’t go unconscious, you’d have to get it to it’s negative bloodied value to kill it, but as consolation he can’t do anything but run away once it’s reached negative.

Second, I originally wrote the Corrosive Blood power as an immediate reaction, but in reality, I should have made it an aura. Maybe I avoided that in the design because the thing already had two auras, but the problem was that my vision for the blood was that each and every time it was attacked with a melee attack, people had to pay for it. As an immediate power it doesn’t happen every time. I quickly ruled that this power was the exception to the rule.

Lastly, the thing I would have done differently was that I would have given Kezef some status protection. The party managed to stun him one round and daze him another. The daze isn’t a big deal, Kezef only really uses one power anyway. But the stunning is what allowed them to get the thing to negative hit points before it could get away and made it so that I never got a second chance to break out those action points like I wanted to, which would have given the PCs one last freakout before it bolted. I could have at least done a bite, action point to bite again, and then run away with the move action in the last round if it hadn’t been for the daze but at that point, the damage was really already done. Luckily, even dazed and stunned Kezef could beat up the party pretty well, since it was doing damage with auras.

All in all, the feedback from my players confirmed this encounter went really well. They had a blast, they were scared of the situation, had to make some hard choices, and felt that even though they did well in the fight there was a serious challenge for them to overcome. I’m putting this one in the win column as a truly legendary fight.

Similar Posts:

•      Minionize Me.
•      The battle of the bog: ways to keep your game from bogging down
•      The Speed of Choice: the Real Reason your 4e Fights are so Damn Slow.