Dealing with Malachie
by Ezio PignatelliNot-so-long-ago, I asked about more information on Malachie du Marais. My players were just going to meet him in the module X2, where he is loosely described and much less powered than in the other supplements. I was just thinking to share with you the -somewhat different- way my players chose to follow, once that Malachie was returned by me to his real, powerful status.
In the module X2 players are supposed to go and kill Malachie, a M10/werewolf with no further description, supposed to have all the stats at mean value. I put the canon stats instead, while supposing that, during X2, Malachie is still a level NM werewolf. The result was almost to double his hps, and to power him a lot in all his attacks.
Another little change I made was in the magical square in the cellar of the Castle of Amber. One of the demons is supposed to turn the player into a werewolf, 'under the control of the DM'. I used PC4 rules instead, and cheated a bit so that one of my player, a long-term wolf fans that had his degree thesis on wolf population, got the transformation, becoming a werewolf cub. You should have seen his smile when I told him what happened. :)))
Now, while the group was looking for the castle of Sylaire (little lost in the forest) this player got his second transformation. He failed the alignment control, and run away, losing the group. There, he (actually, the character is a she) was found by Malachie in werewolf form and his pack. Malachie told her what happened (I used the werewolf introduction in PC4), and started to teach her how to master the transformation.
The remnant of the group, since they were not able to locate the cleric anymore, found Sylaire and asked for the sword they were looking for to Sephora. Then, in agreement with the module, Sephora asked her for the skin of the white werewolf.
At this point, the module assumes that Sephora is much too powerful for the group. I powered her just a bit by giving her 2 level 8 male bodyguard, under charm by the sorceress.
Luckily, only 2 of my players are human males, and succeeded to resist the charm of Sephora. The elf strongly refused to be the killer of anyone... so they faked to agree, and went out looking for Malachie.
The "canon" Malachie had no problems at all in catching a level 5 group looking for him in the forest. A stone wall was enough to block them while he asked what they wanted to do.
To make it short, once they found their cleric friend of Malachie, the group agreed to trap Sephora. They went back with a frog polymorphed into a white wolf, gagged and tied, out of the tower. Filled with rage by seeing her long-term enemy, Sephora went out of the tower together with their bodyguards, ready to kill the wolf.
The problem of high-level mages is that they still have few hps, and if attacked by surprise.... well, she lost initiative for 2 rounds. The 2 bodyguards made something, but Malachie, my werewolf player and their pack engaged them...
In the end, when they searched the tower, I added the "Emotional Landscapes" scroll that I have seen on the list. A nice touch, which they loved. :) Congratulations to the authors.
Since things went fairly differently
from how they was supposed to do, I had to improvise a lot. I
always feel uneasy when I expand in unknown regions, so I would
like to know if any of you have some comments on how things went
(what do you disliked, or liked; what you feel was "wrong", i.e.
strongly unrealistic.