Castle Whiterock Playthrough
Finally finished Castle Whiterock this Friday. Completing it felt pretty epic and I thought I'd write out some thoughts and observations on it now that I am done. Spoilers will abound here so if you don't want to know probably should stop read right about now.
Some background: this was a two player game. I ran the entire party and my wife DMed. We used Pathfinder rules although if stats were provided by the books those were used. XP was initially gained using the fast track in the Pathfinder core. Later this was modified (around level 9 or 10) as the party was starting to outpace the encounters. At that point CR for encounters was calculated as CR -2. This seemed to balanced things out a bit. Additionally the party was allowed to sell anything back for full value so they were probably rather better equipped then their "default" counterparts. Psionics were allowed and initially handled as entirely separate from magic but later a few tweaks were added. One creatures immune to magic were immune to psionics and anti-magic fields suppressed psionics as well. (Null psionics fields in turn suppressed magic.)
Initial party starting out at 1st level were a Half-Giant Fighter, Dwarven Druid, Gnome Rogue, Blue (psionic goblin) Psion, Half-Orc Paladin, and Human Ranger. The Dwarven Druid died on the 3rd level and was replaced by a Dwavern Cleric. Due to the fact that the party was all run by me I had no problems with party members acting purely in support roles or withdrawing from fights they were ill-equipped to handle.
Overall feeling on the campaign as a whole: pure awesome. In general the early levels were probably the most enjoyable. This was probably due to the fact that they felt quite challenging although this may have partly been due to the lack of a strong healer. Paladin/druid just don't match up to clerics for healing! Least favorite levels probably were the later levels of the duergar fortress. This was due to the fact the encounters tended to be one way pushovers where all the defenders would be dropped in the first round. It's fun to be able to blow away the opponents once in awhile but do this for 3 levels and everyone just wants something fresh and new. Unfortunately for the DM the scaling information just added more enemies who died just as quickly. Kinectist psion == mass destruction. This was the point where we realized that the party was rather massively overpowered for the scenario as written. See above for the adjustments made to try and balance this out.
Scariest monster prize goes to the destrachans! Pathfinder really toned down these beasts from D&D 3.5. A fair amount of disagreement was had over which edition of the monster to use was had and several pieces of equipment were lost. In my view at higher levels these kind of monsters can problematic unless the party is very careful or lucky enough to have some who can cast "Silence" a lot! In the end we learned to have the rogue (who did carry anything shatterable) ahead to check for these metal breakers. Previously I would not have thought much of them but Whiterock has given me a new appreciation on them.
I greatly enjoyed that there were non-hostile NPCs scattered throughout that we could interact and ally with or save. The party would generally go out of its way to help all sorts of creatures despite the extra trouble it might cause them. The moral conundrum of what to do when encountering oppressed evil creatures came up several times making for some memorable roleplaying moments.
In the end the party opted to have a couple of the NPCs negotiate with the local king to gain them the deed for Whiterock and intend to use it as their new base of operations. Sadly as far as I'm aware there are no Dungeon Crawl Classics for level 15+.
Final thoughts: had a blast! This was totally worth it. I'm sad it ends at 15 but look forward (after my DM gets a break) to letting the party develop Castle Whiterock into their own!
Some background: this was a two player game. I ran the entire party and my wife DMed. We used Pathfinder rules although if stats were provided by the books those were used. XP was initially gained using the fast track in the Pathfinder core. Later this was modified (around level 9 or 10) as the party was starting to outpace the encounters. At that point CR for encounters was calculated as CR -2. This seemed to balanced things out a bit. Additionally the party was allowed to sell anything back for full value so they were probably rather better equipped then their "default" counterparts. Psionics were allowed and initially handled as entirely separate from magic but later a few tweaks were added. One creatures immune to magic were immune to psionics and anti-magic fields suppressed psionics as well. (Null psionics fields in turn suppressed magic.)
Initial party starting out at 1st level were a Half-Giant Fighter, Dwarven Druid, Gnome Rogue, Blue (psionic goblin) Psion, Half-Orc Paladin, and Human Ranger. The Dwarven Druid died on the 3rd level and was replaced by a Dwavern Cleric. Due to the fact that the party was all run by me I had no problems with party members acting purely in support roles or withdrawing from fights they were ill-equipped to handle.
Overall feeling on the campaign as a whole: pure awesome. In general the early levels were probably the most enjoyable. This was probably due to the fact that they felt quite challenging although this may have partly been due to the lack of a strong healer. Paladin/druid just don't match up to clerics for healing! Least favorite levels probably were the later levels of the duergar fortress. This was due to the fact the encounters tended to be one way pushovers where all the defenders would be dropped in the first round. It's fun to be able to blow away the opponents once in awhile but do this for 3 levels and everyone just wants something fresh and new. Unfortunately for the DM the scaling information just added more enemies who died just as quickly. Kinectist psion == mass destruction. This was the point where we realized that the party was rather massively overpowered for the scenario as written. See above for the adjustments made to try and balance this out.
Scariest monster prize goes to the destrachans! Pathfinder really toned down these beasts from D&D 3.5. A fair amount of disagreement was had over which edition of the monster to use was had and several pieces of equipment were lost. In my view at higher levels these kind of monsters can problematic unless the party is very careful or lucky enough to have some who can cast "Silence" a lot! In the end we learned to have the rogue (who did carry anything shatterable) ahead to check for these metal breakers. Previously I would not have thought much of them but Whiterock has given me a new appreciation on them.
I greatly enjoyed that there were non-hostile NPCs scattered throughout that we could interact and ally with or save. The party would generally go out of its way to help all sorts of creatures despite the extra trouble it might cause them. The moral conundrum of what to do when encountering oppressed evil creatures came up several times making for some memorable roleplaying moments.
In the end the party opted to have a couple of the NPCs negotiate with the local king to gain them the deed for Whiterock and intend to use it as their new base of operations. Sadly as far as I'm aware there are no Dungeon Crawl Classics for level 15+.
Final thoughts: had a blast! This was totally worth it. I'm sad it ends at 15 but look forward (after my DM gets a break) to letting the party develop Castle Whiterock into their own!
Labels: Castle Whiterock, dungeon crawl classics, pathfinder
posted by Beeks at 4:40 AM
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