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Prepping this scenario for running online on Thursday, and I found out that I have a paladin at the table. I haven't had to GM for a paladin before in a situation like this. so I was kind of curious what other people would do if the Paladin started racking up Heresy Points. I imagine at some point the paladin's god would go "What the hell?" right?
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First off; awesome scenario!
As for your question: I would not let the accumulation of Heresy Points threaten the paladins status. You should focus on the characters actions and how they relate to the paladins code.
None of the actions leading to Heresy Points are themselves Evil, Chaotic or against a paladin's code.
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This was such a good scenario, I ran it on Saturday and the players seemed to enjoy it a lot. I particularly liked the double twist in the plotline: first, the PCs are sent to what seems like a standard dungeon crawl, then they discover that the temple is still active, and finally they unravel the corruption there. The scenario could have been written with a briefing to go investigate strange happenings in a temple of Korada, but it's so much more interesting this way.
That said, there were a couple of points where I would have liked to have more explanation.
Background: Players, especially those who are in the Hao Jin tapestry for the first time, will surely wonder about the unexpected residents of the temple. There is no general information in the scenario about the people living in the tapestry, so it's difficult to answer questions about where the Korada cultists came, from how long they have been there etc. There is also not a well defined point of first contact with the PCs and the cultists. I dealt with this by having the PCs explore the first few rooms empty, and then meeting the cultists in the dining hall (I would have used the chapel, had they gone there first). As for questions about their origins, I gave vague answers that reflected their mental degradation from the corruption. A list of common questions to the residents would have been useful.
The suicide trap: this has potential to get touchy as it can lead to PC death. I ran this such that the haunted PC acts on his own turn, and once he tries to coup de grace himself it provokes attacks of opportunity from PCs standing next to him, which they can use to try to stop him, causing the secondary effect to trigger.
Heresy points: I found the wording about how the heresy points work in the final encounter a bit unclear. As I understood it, a PC has to take the worse of two in as many rolls as he has heresy points. Is this right?
Finally, I felt that this scenario had a bit too much DR in it, especially for a level 1-2 party.
Director of Brand Strategy
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I ran this last night, and I had a couple of questions/snags I wanted to ask about since I'll be running it again at GenCon:
1. Although the adventure indicates how often the font can be activated, it does not seem to indicate the duration the water remains in the bowl after it is activated (the bless weapon effect lasts 10 minutes due the caster level, I'm referring to the water itself).
2. Gastidem doesn't have different stats for the different tiers, so the PCs at my table never really had an encounter with him. The inquisitor (stealthed) pinged him as chaotic evil and shot him with a crossbow bolt, causing his immediate surrender. I don't necessarily thinks he needs more attack, but more HP so he doesn't die or immediately surrender would be nice.
3. The Heresy points were confusing for me as well. I ran it as the player must roll 1 + HP times and take the lowest of all rolls for the entire encounter against the demon (leading to a comical, but not really life-threatening situation of the demon ping-ponging his health until he ran out of channels). Some clarification here would be nice. If it is just "the first HP# rolls", that seems a little underpowered.
4. THANK YOU for making a map that fits entirely on a single flip mat with a little room to spare! However, due to the complexity of the temple, is it possible to get the temple as a flip-mat or can I go to kinko's and have an enlargment made?
-Michael
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I ran this last night, and I had a couple of questions/snags I wanted to ask about since I'll be running it again at GenCon:
** spoiler omitted **
-Michael
For #2 -
On the plus side, I just ran this last night and I'm preparing to run this again tonight. Last nights sessions was 2 solid hours of roleplaying followed by a 2 hour fight. This is shaping up to be the best scenario of season 3 so far.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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I ran this last night, and I had a couple of questions/snags I wanted to ask about since I'll be running it again at GenCon:
** spoiler omitted **
Answers to your questions are listed below:
1. Although the adventure indicates how often the font can be activated, it does not seem to indicate the duration the water remains in the bowl after it is activated (the bless weapon effect lasts 10 minutes due the caster level, I'm referring to the water itself).
The water should last the same duration as the spell (10 minutes), thus allowing a PC to activate the fountain, wait just under 10 minutes, bless his weapon, and then get another 10 minutes of effect.
2. Gastidem doesn't have different stats for the different tiers, so the PCs at my table never really had an encounter with him. The inquisitor (stealthed) pinged him as chaotic evil and shot him with a crossbow bolt, causing his immediate surrender. I don't necessarily thinks he needs more attack, but more HP so he doesn't die or immediately surrender would be nice.
Gastidem is not meant to be a combatant, which is why he isn't scaled for each subtier. The trap scales, but Gastidem was intentionally left static across both subtiers. Simply shooting someone for being chaotic evil is a pretty harsh action, even for a religious zealot, and note that Gastidem's low HD means he's only going to register as a faint aura. In any case, he should be the same level for both subtiers.
3. The Heresy points were confusing for me as well. I ran it as the player must roll 1 + HP times and take the lowest of all rolls for the entire encounter against the demon (leading to a comical, but not really life-threatening situation of the demon ping-ponging his health until he ran out of channels). Some clarification here would be nice. If it is just "the first HP# rolls", that seems a little underpowered.
I made a more thorough clarification on the scenario's product page. Check it out for an example of how the Heresy Points should play out in use.
4. THANK YOU for making a map that fits entirely on a single flip mat with a little room to spare! However, due to the complexity of the temple, is it possible to get the temple as a flip-mat or can I go to kinko's and have an enlargment made?
The cartography for this map was not ordered at a resolution or level of detail needed to make a flip-mat, and is more specific in content and scope than we typically use for our generic map products. That said, you can print the map at any resolution you want, though Kinkos or other professional print shops sometimes have hangups about printing commercially-produced PDFs. If you need someone from Paizo's permission to print this map at a 1" scale, you can refer them to this post, granting you that permission as long as the PDF from which it's printed is watermarked with your name.
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Ran this one today. I had a day to prepare, being I was an overflow table gm, and found this was not a problem at all. I was looking forward to a nice role-play heavy session where I could bust out all my favorite cheese-ball faux eastern mysticism phrases. Sadly, this did not occur as I had hoped.
Party make-up:
Dwarf alchemist 1
Human rogue 2
Human monk 1
Human ninja 2
I made the temple a living, non-static entity. The cultists interacted with the group, making a good faith effort to integrate the PCs into the cult. This was somewhat successful as I used this to introduce the party to the meditation room. Since the PCs did not speak Tian, they had no idea what they were speaking; *ding* one heresy point! Eventually, they were given a map of the temple and invited to dinner. Three of the four ate; *dong* two heresy points!
Sadly, this scenario came to an end soon after. After exploring the library, and viewing the garden without actually doing anything, the group declared they were going to the statue hallway on their way to the crypt. It was at this point things fell apart. I acknowledged they were moving to the hallway and started to leaf through the scenario looking for the appropriate text. I looked up and saw everyone grouped by the door to the crypt, within range of the trap. I verbally announced said trap activating which prompted the player who had moved everyone's mini down the hallway to complain that it was "unfair" that I had not read the text to the encounter area and that there was no way the trap should have activated. His friend agreed with him while the other two players said, "No, you moved us there, and we have not searched for traps this entire adventure." I ruled that since he had moved them there, the characters had traversed down the hallway, regardless of the encounter's description.
I rolled to hit the three PCs within range of the trap, hitting two of them (oddly enough, I missed the PC who instigated this endeavor). I rolled damage and both PCs went unconscious. The monk was within a few rounds of death, while the alchemist had several rounds to bleed. The monk was stabilized and the group poured the right mutagen down the alchemist's throat, bringing her to positive hp. It was at this point the player who rushed the exploration announced he was going to prop the monk against the wall and open the door to the crypt.
Me: "What? You're going to open the door and go in?
Him: "Yes."
Me: Pause "OK."
I awarded the group a surprise round even though I should not have. The fight went badly for the PCs. The rouge was a knife fighter who did very little damage to the skeletons. The ninja had two light maces which he dual-wielded to some success; the vanilla skeletons went down quickly; the skeletal champion? Not so much. The two rouges maneuvered themselves such that the champion had a clear path to the alchemist. The alchemist with two hit points left. I attacked, unconscious again. After the alchemist went down, the champion concentrated on the ninja since he could actually hurt it. Near the end of the encounter, the rouges had one hit point each while the champion had two. They could have pulled it out. They did not. I hit the ninja who fell unconscious. The rouge ran into the corner. I followed. One round later, the rouge was unconscious.
They didn't even get to the bad guy. Oh, well... next time.
Final score: TPK
Naturally, I felt bad about this, but... just... really?
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We TPKed on this one today.
The big bad guy just wiped out everyone, as he just spider climbed on the wall and rained spells down on us. The ranged people were previously cursed from participating in the rituals before they understood what was going on, so they couldn't hit him. When they could hit him, they had a hard time breaking DR. The melee people weren't cursed, but couldn't do anything as he was out of reach, other than rain ineffectual ranged weapons for near 0 damage due to DR. Plus, he healed the little damage we did.
The DR alone blocked most of our damage, and no one had any means to bypass it. Especially with half the party rolling 2-3 times and taking the worst to even hit.
Combined with the spider climb and large walls, I couldn't see any reason why the guy would even enter melee.
Our caster bought us a few rounds from making the guy eat himself a while, but he healed pretty much everything we did to him as soon as that was over
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Ran this one today. I had a day to prepare, being I was an overflow table gm, and found this was not a problem at all. I was looking forward to a nice role-play heavy session where I could bust out all my favorite cheese-ball faux eastern mysticism phrases. Sadly, this did not occur as I had hoped.
** spoiler omitted **...
So THAT's what was going on at your table today...Classic! At least you will sleep with a clear conscience....as they evidently did themselves in. ;)
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No one in the group spoke Tian, and there were no ranks in Linguistics from anyone. I made the group pantomime as much as possible and used day one foreign language class exercises. This proved to be a lot of fun and helped establish a light-hearted mood.
That sounds like fun, but I'm not sure what the designer's intent was with the language. It (oddly) isn't mentioned in the adventure text whether the cultists speak Common or not, but all NPCs with languages listed in the stat block (Dakang, Gastidem and the Aasimar guards) do speak Common. I assumed that at least a few of the other cultists spoke Common so the PCs didn't have to struggle with communication.
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No one in the group spoke Tian, and there were no ranks in Linguistics from anyone. I made the group pantomime as much as possible and used day one foreign language class exercises. This proved to be a lot of fun and helped establish a light-hearted mood.That sounds like fun, but I'm not sure what the designer's intent was with the language. It (oddly) isn't mentioned in the adventure text whether the cultists speak Common or not, but all NPCs with languages listed in the stat block (Dakang, Gastidem and the Aasimar guards) do speak Common. I assumed that at least a few of the other cultists spoke Common so the PCs didn't have to struggle with communication.
Once the group met Gastidem at the dinner, I used him as a translator. Thus the group did learn a bit about the methodology, eg, the mantra in the meditation room. The group didn't last long enough to learn anything else.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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No one in the group spoke Tian, and there were no ranks in Linguistics from anyone. I made the group pantomime as much as possible and used day one foreign language class exercises. This proved to be a lot of fun and helped establish a light-hearted mood.That sounds like fun, but I'm not sure what the designer's intent was with the language. It (oddly) isn't mentioned in the adventure text whether the cultists speak Common or not, but all NPCs with languages listed in the stat block (Dakang, Gastidem and the Aasimar guards) do speak Common. I assumed that at least a few of the other cultists spoke Common so the PCs didn't have to struggle with communication.
The cultists should all speak Common.
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Combined with the spider climb and large walls, I couldn't see any reason why the guy would even enter melee.He probably shouldn't, but he'll soon run out of area-effect spells and have to come down. An important note about Dakang's abilities is that his mass inflict light wounds can only target 3 people (his caster level). As one of those three is usually Dakang himself, it isn't something he can bombard the entire party with.
His channel energy is something he can bombard the party with, but only four times, for 1d6 damage each time and a save for half. That could be an awful lot of damage against 1st- or 2nd-level PCs, but it's spread out over time.
Thanks for the clarification. As a player, I didn't get a look at the stat-block, but he was up there at least 8 rounds of casting, plus several when he was confused due to the CC we had. Most of those casting rounds were channels, so maybe the DM misread it.
All I know is that he only used the melee to try to finish off the last ranged character, as everyone else was down before he closed. At the end, he had at least 50% of his hp after 10+ rounds despite us all ranging him as best we could, with half of the party being devoted ranged characters (although they were cursed and doubly cursed so they couldn't hit).
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I loved this scenario, it is great fun to run, but this one will benefit from some good prep on the GMs part. Here's some quick observations:
*Just because this is heavy RP, don't assume its a softball. Dakang is a challenge at either tier and the Ju Ju Zombies are brutal at 4-5.
*Do yourself a favor and make notes on your map key of all of the names of the cultists. Then regardless of where your PCs go, you can easily reference whom they meet. Come up with one quirk/feature for each cultist to help the PCs distinguish and don't forget to roll Perception checks for missing fingers each time they meet someone new.
*The scenario suggests it and I highly recommend tracking init for this one on index cards where you record the following stats for each character at the beginning of the game: Knowledge (religion), Knowledge (the planes), Sense Motive, Perception, Fortitude Save. Make secret rolls, even when nothing is going on. A paranoid PC is an engaged PC. You can also keep track of heresy points on these cards and then tick them off during the opening rounds of the final combat.
*Don't forget the second save for the poison and don't forget to apply any penalties the PCs incur to Sense Motive, Perception and Will saves later in the adventure. This is awesome fun when they don't even know they've been poisoned.
*Watch the timing. The open-ended RP nature of everything up until the PCs have explored the 4th location can eat up lots of time. Leave yourself at least 90 minutes for the dretch(es), encounter with the guards and Dakang.
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After running this twice now, I've been able to see just how different the encounters can be based on the party members involved. I don't know how long my players spent the other night trying to figure out a way to clear the garden because they didn't want to confront Gastidem and start a confrontation. I tried to clarify as much as I could, but in the end, they didn't really understand that they couldn't just clear it out without confronting him, so I had him start a little tiff after they began cutting his prized bushes down.
For the most part, they were fairly non-confrontational. Only two of them gained more than a single Heresy Point while one of them did participate in the meditation and mantra.
*Though I didn't do it the other night, the first time I ran it I had an index card listed (as Kristie suggested) with Knowledge (religion), Knowledge (the planes), Sense Motive, Perception, Fortitude Save all listed. I also included AC in order to speed things along as opposed to constantly asking every time there was a combat what my PCs armor class was.
*The second time I GMed this, we skipped the Dretch encounter because of time constraints. Pay attention to those to avoid rushing anything.
*I killed one of my players (well, they killed themselves) in the kitchen encounter with the haunt. I personally love haunts and like this one in particular given most of the roleplaying puts the characters at ease before something like this goes down. Poor, poor rogue didn't stand a chance against herself.
*If you have a decent amount of prep time to do so, map the temple out before the game. I did this my first session GMing it and it helped a lot. The second time around I'll admit to being a bit lazy and just tossing the map down on the table and the players listed what each room was.
Overall, awesome encounter and definitely had a different experience both times I GMed. The first time through my players kept joking that all the cultists were going to turn into werewolves at some point because of how little combat there was. The second time around they went in and tried to stay as straightforward to things as possible while being completely non-confrontational. Both times though they avoided combat with the aasimar and convinced the guards to assist them.
+1 for a great scenario!
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Played in this on Monday. We had levels 1, 2, 4, & 5 and played up. I was the level 5 playing an archaeologist bard. Everything was fine, talking to folks, learning new things like they worship a demon lord, how to meditate, why you shouldn't trust people who are missing fingers, etc. It was great fun and everyone was enjoying themselves. Then we opened the crypt. I knew I should have run away when both martial characters were bleeding out and the only meat shield I had left was a level 2 sorcerer. But hey, we gave our local VC his first TPK so that's something. Better now than in Eyes of the Ten.
I love this Scenario.
This group (save for the newbie) was pretty well entranced with the story (it's a GREAT story). The TPK was unfortunate but they all seemed to take it in stride. I was surprised at first, but looking deeper into the mod it was pretty obvious that I should have been even more vocal about the difficulty by playing up.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Played in this on Monday. We had levels 1, 2, 4, & 5 and played up. I was the level 5 playing an archaeologist bard. Everything was fine, talking to folks, learning new things like they worship a demon lord, how to meditate, why you shouldn't trust people who are missing fingers, etc. It was great fun and everyone was enjoying themselves. Then we opened the crypt. I knew I should have run away when both martial characters were bleeding out and the only meat shield I had left was a level 2 sorcerer. But hey, we gave our local VC his first TPK so that's something. Better now than in Eyes of the Ten.
This happened to a table of mine last night. A party of 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 was unprepared for the 3x juju beasts with AC 22, HP 30, cleave, power attack, and a base of +10 to hit for 1d10+10 on an 18-20/x2 crit. It went about like this.
Surprise round: 3 attacks on PC 1, down.
Round 1: win initiative, 3 attacks on PC 2, down.
Round 2: 3 attacks on PC 3, down. One juju down.
Round 3: 2 cleaves through PC 4 and 5, down down. One more juju down
Round 4: 1 crit confirm on PC 6, down.
They were unprepared :'(
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I don't recall any warnings about off limit areas, except perhaps the leaders personal living space. Not that it would have mattered. We're Pathfinders: we break down doors, neutralize the creatures (people) behind them, and take their stuff.
Your warning was that the door you entered by was boarded over. Noone asked why, just started busting it down. ;)
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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But they were warned that that part of the temple was off-limits, no?
They actually were. Their halfling escort fellow said something along the lines of "oh, we don't go in there... we've never had a reason to. The other rooms have everything we need for spiritual enlightenment..." and then left as the intrepid crew began to break in the door. The best was that their frontliner triggered the trap, took enough damage to almost kill her, and then, before getting fully healed, opened the door. I was biting my lip so hard, but really, she should have known better ;)
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I felt really special during this adventure.
I had ALL the relevent skills + the skilled evolution for diplomacy.
Managed jack squat in actual combat though. I barely got anything through the DR and was feared in the final fight. I should have dropped the shield and used my katana 2-handed.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Why are we spoiling in a Forum that warns about spoilers?
Nosig what do you mean you by this?
"and I hate even more how they are run by judges. (basicly as undetectable traps)."
They almost are undetectable. Unless you are looking for them (Detect undead or detect alignment spells of the appropriate type).
Though reading it again I can see how some GMs can be confused.
The rules say "cannot be easily observed until the round in which they manifest", some GMs might see that as you can't detect them until they manifest, which by then would be too late. But what that actually means is you get the chance to detect them before they manifest in that round they are triggered as long as you beat it's initiative.
Though even if you detect it before it manifests some GMs may decide you have no idea what it is. As an example you hear a moan, that could be anything. Though I can't find any rules on that in Haunts.
All this happens in a Surprise round, so even if you do detect it before it manifests, you are limited what you can do.
They are a B#@@*, and the deadly ones can be annoying because most characters have nothing they can do other then try to warn and run.
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A lot of GMs are requiring the Knowledge (Religion) check to recognize it as being a haunt. While this makes sense for the first 1 or 2, you as a character probably know what one is, and at some point it should be assumed that characters are familiar with haunts. It seems that a lot of people are letting ooc unfamiliarity with the rules affect ic actions.
Haunts are a part of Golarion. Most people, especially in a group such as the Pathfinder Society, should have at least heard about them. There's no need to place rules like these checks over them. (I do not believe RAW calls for one).
On the other hand, if you fail the perception check, you can't act in the surprise round. MOST haunts don't last past a single action. Also, haunts don't wait to 'trap' the most people unless it's specifically written that it's what they do. They have a trigger just like regular traps.
It sounds to me like there's a lot of people unfamiliar with haunts and are running them a tad unfairly.
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I dislike haunts a DM and as a player, since they slow the pace of the game to a crawl even worse than traps do.
The only character I have killed in a PFS scenario died to a haunt, and I run them pretty leniently compared to most. I feel really bad about that kill because a)haunts are badly designed and b)it as someone's tiefling that got offed.
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Tad - you feel a Haunt is a trap? so it's an "undetectable until triggered trap"?
Although haunts function like traps, they are difficult to detect since they cannot be easily observed until the round in which they manifest. Detect undead or detect alignment spells of the appropriate type allow an observer a chance to notice a haunt even before it manifests (allowing that character the appropriate check to notice the haunt, but at a –4 penalty).
So they function as traps. And they are undetectable unless you have the proper spells up. Most of the time, you won't. Once they activate, everyone gets the chance to see them. Everyone will have a chance to do something, it's just in the hands of the dice. Unless you tanked your Dex, the odds are in your favor. The bigger issue seems to be a lack of people able or willing to attack it.
The haunt in this Scenario is just quite a bit nastier than most.
I LOVE haunts because they are like regular traps but have a story.