I am posting next week's column early, because I expect to be traveling part of the holidays. Enjoy your own solstice celebrations, and I will see you here again next year!
[This column contains spoilers for the adventures "Choosing Night," "Children's Crusade," and "Drive for Justice."]
Choosing Night
The introductory adventure in the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook has numerous good points, but can be a very challenging adventure for 1st-level characters and for GMs and players new to the system.
First of all, the adventure suggests that Choosing Night participants should not bring armor unless they have very good reason. However, this will make a challenging adventure even harder, so I would advise allowing the characters to bring whatever gear they wish, but perhaps make that choice affect role-playing with the other, noncombatant campers.
The spirits are challenging foes, even encountered one at a time. Some are Moderate threats, even before adding on their arcana powers, and most have better Defenses then starting characters. The party should have a minimum of four PCs, and the heroes will need good tactics and a certain amount of luck to defeat the monsters. (In my initial run, I made the mistake of trying it with three PCs, and we nearly had a TPK in the second or third fight. The adventure ran to two sessions, so for the second session, I promoted one of the NPC youths to a healer mage to help the PCs.) In the final fight, most of the spirits are intent on their goal unless and until they are attacked first, so if the heroes do not focus fire on one spirit at a time, expect them to get overwhelmed quickly.
This dangerous part of the adventure is composed of numerous episodes over the space of one evening. The heroes will have little time to rest and recover Health or Magic Points between fights, so be sure that you know (and frequently remind the players of) the rules for the Heal action and breathers after each encounter.
(My errata for the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook, including "Choosing Night," can be found here.)
The spirits are challenging foes, even encountered one at a time. Some are Moderate threats, even before adding on their arcana powers, and most have better Defenses then starting characters. The party should have a minimum of four PCs, and the heroes will need good tactics and a certain amount of luck to defeat the monsters. (In my initial run, I made the mistake of trying it with three PCs, and we nearly had a TPK in the second or third fight. The adventure ran to two sessions, so for the second session, I promoted one of the NPC youths to a healer mage to help the PCs.) In the final fight, most of the spirits are intent on their goal unless and until they are attacked first, so if the heroes do not focus fire on one spirit at a time, expect them to get overwhelmed quickly.
This dangerous part of the adventure is composed of numerous episodes over the space of one evening. The heroes will have little time to rest and recover Health or Magic Points between fights, so be sure that you know (and frequently remind the players of) the rules for the Heal action and breathers after each encounter.
(My errata for the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook, including "Choosing Night," can be found here.)
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| Dunmara's ghost and the arcane spirits |
Children's Crusade
"Children's Crusade" is a short side-quest adventure for 1st-4th level characters. This adventure is easier to scale to the party's size than "Choosing Night," because the number of foes is determined by the number of heroes. All enemies are Minor threats, with pretty average Defenses, but they have ability focuses for their attacks, which most PCs will not have access to until their 2nd-level advancement.As with "Choosing Night," smart tactics and good use of Heal actions and breathers will be key to success. This adventure does have enough time pass between encounters to allow the heroes to rest and recover Health and Magic Points as needed.
(My errata for "Children's Crusade" can be found here.)
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| The opening scene of "Children's Crusade" |
Drive for Justice
"Drive for Justice" is a short side-quest adventure for 1st-3rd level characters. This adventure focuses more on roleplaying challenges and investigation than the two scenarios above do, but does provide some opportunities for fighting.I have not yet run this adventure, so have no errata or in-depth commentary to offer for it. I have included it here for completeness's sake.
Past columns about Fantasy AGE
Freeport Iconics for Fantasy AGESome thoughts about using Fantasy AGE
"The Lost Island" PCs for Fantasy AGE
Character Creation in Fantasy AGE
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