In this installment of Critical Hit – A Major Spoilers Podcast: The cast members sit and discuss Samantha’s Pathfinder game.
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10 Comments
Thanks for a fantastic Western story! The whole game I was thinking Sam’s setting would be perfect for a the Witch class and the Harrow Handbook!
Thank you. The hag had class levels in Witch and I was pretty impressed with it.
I apologize for not commenting each episode, but really enjoyed the Weird Western, and was impressed with Sam as GM. As for Pathfinder, I was intrigued by all of the character options, but not a fan of all the “crunch” as it’s called, with the different bonuses and “touch AC” to keep track of. It’s all I can do in 5e to get my players to even use their features like Sorcery and Ki points, lol. I’m looking forward to Brian running his game, and of course, the future return of Orem and the gang. Looks like a bright future for the Critical Hit podast!
https://youtu.be/8qrriKcwvlY
The story about Sam trying to get a bard to help the team out, and her getting rebuffed, was pretty hilarious, and I was especially impressed with the reveal about the reasoning behind the magical tetanus and why it was necessary for Eshen and Russell to stay close together. I had no idea there was an ulterior motive there, so nicely done.
But my favorite revelation here was about how much authentic history went into this campaign. I recently listened to the “Game Master’s Workshop” episodes of Critical Hit (#58-62) for the first time, and realized I had absolutely no idea how much work went into running a well-prepared D&D session. Listening to Sam talk about her prep for this game was kind of intimidating, and I say that as someone who’s run a LOT of non-D&D games. What a neat thing to learn about a story after the fact!
The one remaining thing I’d really like to hear more about was the backstory of what happened to get Eshen exiled. We got all sorts of little pieces of it over time — I take it he was the leader of a war band who went up against the hag, and she ensorcelled him in some way (if I remember correctly, possibly she got him before they could attack, and he never showed up for the fight, and they thought he’d abandoned them? And then possibly they went in on their own and got killed, I don’t fully recall the details.) But what did she do with him, and how did he eventually slip her control?
Eshen’s war band was meant to fight humans who were encroaching on Kelesian territory to build the port city Los Brazos de Santiago. Unfortunately for them the humans were aware of the Kelesians since Tlatzca was working with Miller to orchestrate the construction. Also all the hags had been supposedly killed by then since Eshen’s father lied about not being able to defeat her. When she spotted Eshen’s warband on the move, she disguised herself as a female Kelesian and asked him to help her, using Charm Person to encourage him. He ran off from his band to do that and she kept him from the battle while informing the human soldiers exactly where to find the Kelesian war band waiting for their leader to show back up. They were all killed.
Tlatzca was quite literally wearing a lot of hats and had to get back to being Miriam, the port master’s assistant, and Moira Greenwood (as a note I was amusing myself with the names as they’re related with the origins going back to the Greek Fates) so she leaves the swamp and Eshen behind. Her spell only lasts about eight hours without being reinforced so he snaps out of it and returns to his village to explain what happened but gets himself exiled because his father can’t admit that there’s someone out there that actually could have charmed him without admitting his own lie.
Ah, fascinating! The idea that his war band wasn’t after her, but were fighting humans, was one piece I’d missed. Another was that his father was already corrupted at that point.
Where did the world “Kelesian” come from? I kept tripping over that as possibly being related to “Khaleesi,” especially since the word was so often tied to tribes and war parties.
Yeah, most of that is revealed in the Swamp of Sorrows episode.
Rob came up with the name. It’s the Mapuche word for lizard.
I was wondering Sam, I just listened to the part where you mentioned tying magic to physical items since the party didn’t have dispel magic yet.. does that mean somebody could have broken the mirror in the final fight to dispel his illusory effect with the miss chance? I was a little surprised nobody had tried that after the imafe appeared there. IN any case, really cool idea to have the party able to dispel magic without the ability.
Correct! The spell was tied to a symbol on the mirror. And thank you!