So you guys know I'm passionate about D&D/Pathfinder. Anyway, I've recently been working on a massive, multilayered campaign taking place within the 3.XE Ravenloft world, with most rules modified for Pathfinder.

Basically, I'm making this thread because I'm wondering if I've got too much layered together and/or if there're any major paths the PCs could take that I'd be left flatfooted and be flailing to work with. Granted, I have enough experience DMing to know you can never plan for every eventuality, but the more advice I can get, the better.

The setting for this campaign is analogous to pre-Revolution France where you have the nobles and the poor people. The scenario is that the players have all been put into the employ of a noble, through various ways and serving as his private guard instead of the militia.

The first night they've spent having known each other culminated with being awoken by several explosions 2-3 floors down in the basement. The first session ended with them rushing to investigate things (being without their armor or most weapons) and finding several large rats with a taste for gunpowder; quickly learning that hitting the rats that fed leads to them exploding [[Skiggs from Iron Kingdoms with the serial number shaved off--I had to neuter the range and damage of their explosion]].

My plans down the road are:
* The rats were summoned as a distraction by a thief hired by a rival noble. While any potential guards or enforcers would be distracted, the thief then makes his way into the noble's massive library. Within a special section of the library, warded so that only natural-born humans could enter, lies a special book containing a ritual to devastate a noble's wealth.
* Said noble spends a few days pouring over the tome and decides to invoke the ritual, summoning "Red Jack." Red Jack is a murder fey who, when summoned, attempts to kills a male servant every noon and a female servant every midnight for a week.
* In the mean time before Jack's first strike, the employer's garden will provide an encounter in trying to stop his staff from killing each other; some spores from a plant called fearweed managed to linger on the character whose player had to leave the game and germinated. A few patches managed to grow and trigger their spore cloud which causes anyone caught within it to make a Fortitude save or perceive everything as dangerous and hostile.
* What is not yet known to the players is that their employer was killed and replaced by a doppelganger with delusions of grandeur who is just trying to see how long he can play the game. Each PC was hired by him prior to their arrival at his place ("Here's 500 gold, consider it a down payment for services and expenses. I expect to see you at my mansion in seven days").

I've got contingencies prepared for:
* The PCs decide to research the killings, looking into folk lore and arcana, as well as interviewing the ghosts, eventually understanding Red Jack.
* The PCs investigate the theft and track down the thief.
--* The PCs catch the thief and interrogate him about the job.

Either from hunting down the thief or researching the book/ritual/Jackm I'm imagining a climax where the PCs need to head into the estate to grab the book/kill the invoker (and find out that's not how Jack is stopped for the rest of the week).

My question to you people is; what would you do in this situation? Servants of your employer are dying every day, on the dot.


In case you're curious, the party is all 1st level characters:
* a human sorcerer with an elemental bloodline and able to see ghosts
* a godless human alchemist who only believes in science and dispels superstition, related to the setting's analog for Dr. Frankenstein
* a half-elf ranger, focused on fighting with natural weapons instead of archery or two-weapon fighting.
* One exchange due to real life schedule issues; going from a half-elf cleric of the stand-in religion for Wicca to a human witch disguised as a cleric of the analog for the Christian church.)

I apologize for all the text, but at least it's not a solid wall.

SoldierHawk wrote:

I'm not roleplaying as a particular character here so your mileage may vary, but it if was me? Every single servant goes into the safest, most defensible room I can manage at LEAST an hour before the killing is scheduled to start (or just make 'em live in there, if you can get away with it.) The party and I would be in there with them. Then we would defend and--if possible--send someone after the assassin once the attempt was finished. As for contingencies...do you have a "what if" on the off-chance that they somehow work out that they're working for a doppelganger? Long shot yeah, but you never know.

The alchemist's player was a Marine for 10 years so the fortification idea might come up.
A bit more detail about Jack is that as a murder fey, it won't be as easy as sealing a door to prevent him from killing in his pattern (and researching will show that he can appear from the tiniest sliver of shadow or the smallest droplet of blood). "Slaying" him causes him to dissolve into a quickly evaporating pile or gore, putting off the killing for 12 hours or so.

If they do kill off the doppelganger...
Short term--they can then go through the entire estate as they desire (with some sections warded off/trapped which lead to hidden chambers) and also the surviving staff will be looking elsewhere for employment, looking into rumors of a "cruise to Paradise"--actors paid well to feel/bait the poor people looking for an escape from the hell that is the Demiplane of Dread. They tell the marks to bring everything they have with them or sell it all off. Once the suckers are on the ship and it sails off, the dupes are made swiftly aware that their benefactors are disguised ghouls who sup on a few of the commoners until the ship arrives at a pirate cavern, the commoners are kicked off and left to fend for themselves and without any of their wealth or possessions.
Long term--They may still have to deal with the servants dying off, but beyond that I'll worry more about this stuff if it comes up.

One other thing about the doppelganger is that when he "came to power," overtaking the actual nobleman, one of his first orders was to throw out anything capable of casting a good reflection (unlike normal doppelgangers, due to some failed powers checks for his wickedness, any reflective surface reveals his true form as an albinoid vaguely humanoid-shaped...thing). So I'm thinking of rolling a Sense Motive check for everyone at the start of each day and if it beats the DC, I'll pass them a note about it.