I love when the players surprise me, but I hate being caught unprepared. Browsing this board has been a great help preventing being caught unprepared, while leaving plenty of room for surprise. So I thought I would contribute with a situation that came up during our game.
In TotSE where mass travel spells like Windwalk was still out of reach, several days of trekking towards the cathedral was expected.
I was very surprised when I realized that the 9.L. sorcerer had selected Phantom Steed as one of his only 3, third level spells. A good hour later they were all traveling at speed 180’on silent phantom horses. Kaurophon had already estimated that the journey would take about a week (speed 20’), but with their new steeds they could make the distance in … one day!
The group elected to bypass all encounters if possible, with full focus on reaching the Cathedral as soon as possible. How do you to catch anything with a base speed of 180’?
If necessary the party could even hustle at speed 360’ for up to 4 hours without killing the steeds. A Slaad could have fireballed the entire bunch, probably destroying the steeds, but that seemed a little farfetched to me and not entirely fair.
As it turned out I let them bypass most of my planned encounters, unsure of how to deal with situation (unprepared). The group really needed the XP from the combat encounters to keep up the pace, and noncombat interaction with some of the residents, to make Occipitus more “alive”.
Some of my planned encounters could fortunately be used later in the adventure, which brought up another question. One of my players made a comment during a combat with some demons. “Vrocks, Telekinesis and Plasma-in-the-sky!” The spell is “by will” and can be used at range 1000’. After roughly 7 rounds, 8d6 fire and 8d6 evil each round (no save) will ruin most character’s day. Could be nasty!
Anyone used telekinesis to lift the characters high up in the air?
I love when the players surprise me, but I hate being caught unprepared. Browsing this board has been a great help preventing being caught unprepared, while leaving plenty of room for surprise. So I thought I would contribute with a situation that came up during our game.
In TotSE where mass travel spells like Windwalk was still out of reach, several days of trekking towards the cathedral was expected.
I was very surprised when I realized that the 9.L. sorcerer had selected Phantom Steed as one of his only 3, third level spells. A good hour later they were all traveling at speed 180’on silent phantom horses. Kaurophon had already estimated that the journey would take about a week (speed 20’), but with their new steeds they could make the distance in … one day!
The group elected to bypass all encounters if possible, with full focus on reaching the Cathedral as soon as possible. How do you to catch anything with a base speed of 180’?
If necessary the party could even hustle at speed 360’ for up to 4 hours without killing the steeds. A Slaad could have fireballed the entire bunch, probably destroying the steeds, but that seemed a little farfetched to me and not entirely fair.
As it turned out I let them bypass most of my planned encounters, unsure of how to deal with situation (unprepared). The group really needed the XP from the combat encounters to keep up the pace, and noncombat interaction with some of the residents, to make Occipitus more “alive”.
Some of my planned encounters could fortunately be used later in the adventure, which brought up another question. One of my players made a comment during a combat with some demons. “Vrocks, Telekinesis and Plasma-in-the-sky!” The spell is “by will” and can be used at range 1000’. After roughly 7 rounds, 8d6 fire and 8d6 evil each round (no save) will ruin most character’s day. Could be nasty!
Anyone used telekinesis to lift the characters high up in the air?
SoEgern
I haven't used telekinesis, but as far as the encounters go, the tests do need to be completed and if the group wants to bypass random encounters and side quests, add some guards or beef up the encounters they can't bypass. If at any point they complain about it being too tough, let them know that some side encounters are for their benefit xp and treasure wise, and that falling too far behind in level could be disastrous. if they think they can handle it, let them continue trying to find the quick way through life, it's usually a quick way to death.
I find that some groups forget to exhibit any caution that a right minded group of adventurers would exhibit.
In fact the test is waived (as written in the Dungeon) and you never need to do all three to try to get the Smoking eye, only the last one but nobody will tell you.
As often outdoor the PC can easily escape encounters and fall low on xp but I think a trip to the Abyss is worth itself a bit and if you don't want a TPK they have to be right level to goes on.
Great idea for Telekinesis... soon they're going to Occipitus Bwhaaaaaa!!
Heh, since we were 9th lvl when we started Test of the Smoking Eye, my wizard already had both Teleport and Phantom Steed. I wanted to Teleport, but DM just said I can't because we'd miss cool encounters and Ranger didn't want to ride my steeds because his Bear couldn't keep up.
So we had to dredge through Occipitus and it was the most boring and pointless chapter of the campaign because it was just random enounters followed by random encounters followed by random encounters disguised as plot encounters.
As Erevis Cale wrote, there is a danger of Occipitus becoming “the most boring and pointless chapter of the campaign”. That’s why I had planned some potentially nonviolent encounters to make the plane more alive and interesting.
And yes, in an outdoor adventure characters have the option to avoid most encounters. I just didn’t expect it. I had added some insanity rules, to represent relative low level characters exposure to The Abyss. That might have spurred them on.
Anyway, I did exactly what you suggested MundinIronHand and the characters earned their XP later on in TotSE. They had some tough encounters, but didn’t complain all that much:), even though the dwarf FtrRog bought the ticket against two Vrocks and some Babaus.
Throughout the campaign I have occasionally handed out “story” awards to keep them on par. At least two of the players really enjoy “taking a shortcut” to surprise the bad guys. It can be a lot of fun but they sometimes end up missing vital clues, treasure and XP. A thorough search of a dungeon is seldom very attractive, once you have killed the main villain.
So I turned to Kaurophon to make Occipitus more alive and he was fun to play. He had such a well of information that the characters didn’t know what to ask, as every answer brought three new questions. The fact that he was recognized by several natives, and had his motives questioned, put him in a bad light and kept the players at their toes. Altogether kauroFUN!
During the trek across Occipitus it became apparent to Kaurophon, that he wouldn’t be able to defeat the characters at the final test. So slowly his attitude changed, as his confidence drained away. His exited and arrogant self became more and more sullen.
The players (not the characters) were disappointed when Kaurophon didn’t attack them in the end, which they for some time had expected. They were looking forward to “putting him out of his misery”:)
Come to think of it, Kaurophon is capable of the Plasma-in-the-sky trick himself, so maybe he could have evened the odds by a nice little assassination attempt:) Well he didn’t, and halfway through Foundation of Flame (where we are now), is probably a little late for a reappearance.
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