Dear all, playing Second Darkness - Armageddon Echo [spoiler adead]. The final boss is a illusionist Wizard and I need some effective and fun tactics for the fight against him. All spells are viable. He is a 10th level Drow Wizard Illusionist. Special feature is, that the fight takes place on a demiplane of shadows, where shadow magic ist 40% more real.
The battle ground is an observatory in a tower with a model of the planetary system in the middle, so rather little space. The wizard knows that the players are coming and can prepare.
I played the adventure today (after participating as a player long time ago). The monster would be ok, if it wasn't also invisible with 50% miss chance, this sucks up even more damage! You should allow (as the monster gets virtually a bonus attack for each character it hit before) that its grappling does not prevent normal melee attacks and spells from "glued" characters. Then they have at least a chance to kill the thing within the 2 rounds they have until killed by it themselves. Otherwise, if played as written, no 4 player 5th level group stands any chance at all.
*spoilers ahead*
This has probably been asked before, but maybe you can confirm it (if it is true).
I also wanted to expand on this scenario. I will draw the three witches into this, as it is a pity to just make them yet another canon fodder in the Kreeg lair. They of course will taunt and torture the nymphs ghost, but they should also interact with the PCs...I think they will take the forms of nymphs themselves, seducing the male players to follow into death traps in order to "save their sister" I just still need the "tests" the PCs have to "pass". Maybe one will also shortly reveal her face to the only female player, to sow dissent among the party.
GRU wrote:
The "Paradise" is an amusement ship which Lucretia provides to the inhabitants of Turtleback Ferry. In the first part of the book, there is a chapter called: The Sihedron Sign, there the story of the Paradise is briefly mentioned. James Jacobs admitted, that this part was cut from the module due to space limits. I personally think it is worth to have the PCs encounter Lucretia already on her ship and later witness the burning. You will have to find another reason to bring the PCs to Turtleback Ferry though, which again removes some timeline inconsistencies.
Ian Watt wrote:
Its a pitty, that the Paradise was cut from the original adventure, so Lucretia is just reduced to just another monster to slay (this one sentence where she might reveal who cheated the Black Arrows does not help much...by the way the traitor in this case is the long lost brother to my Ranger). The rogue got an audience with Lucretia by flashing around his Sihedron Medallion, telling her to stop "this" operation...of course she knew he was lying, but decided to pull the plug anyway and burn the ship, with the players on it and 30 people from town to save.roguerouge wrote:
I don't think they read any spoilers. Its just that all adventures follow the cliche and after more than 10 years of gaming, you can just guess, what the plot will be, I guess. That's my question, when did you last really surprise your players with a plot twist? Most of the time it is like this: the very friendly merchant comes around and offers the PCs good jobs and money. player: this merchant is just too nice, he is the bad guy, we should kill him right away.
I just started Hook Mountain Massacre and made some small changes, weaving in some character background, reviving the Paradise etc (to get some more RP enocunters, before the big slaughtering begins), but after last game night the I finally realized with 100% certainty, that nothing can really surprise my players any more (this is not a critique about the AP per sei, mind me). Every twist and turn in the adventure is anticipated one of the players or another and if only in a joke he makes. Without encountering Lucretia, just from seeing that she is somehow involved with the Sihedron, made them suspect, that she is a Lamia, and there are many things which they are not surprised about.
Yes, with Adobe Acrobat 8 I got the black background, although I am lucky to own Photoshop where I could use the magic wand to select all black and fill it with white. But funnily lately I have a different problem: I could only select pieces of the picture, so that I would have to select them seperately and put them together like a puzzle, I even have this with pictures I already selected and copied as a complete picture before.
In the Akropolis of the Thrallkeeper there are some points:
My group, who now tackle the Thistletop Goblins:
Retired: Luran male Shoanti human Druid (followed Shalelu into the wild after her visit to Sandpoint, but his name was honored by Kad'Rak who named his horse Luran).
Arcesilaus wrote:
I always come from the 3.0 version: SRD3.0 wrote:
which could never kill the target. But you are right, the 3.5 harm spell really reads like you handle it, although I rather like to play in favor of the PCs, so I interpret it in the lenient version. But no errata.
That is really outragous. Sometimes my packages were caught by german customs (usually some D&D books I bought via Amazon Marketplace) when they were not properly labeled. And then the taxes were too low to be even collected (less than 5 Eu), the only annoying thing was to go an pick them up at the custom's office.
Of course the briars do not dampen the sound, but what I forgot was the waves crashing onto the cliffs below, which would dampen the sounds...and sure I should have left the dogs, where they were, I think that was the biggest mistake (although firepelt cougars are really nasty: bite claw claw pounce). Anyways, my players agreed to the Druids offer, I will rearrange some of the goblin guards and play on as is, alhtough I have another nasty plan: as Erylium escaped, I will change her alter self to cat and she will hide in a food barrel: "poor little kitty, should be food for nasty goblins, we take you along". Either she enters the fray on Nualyas side, if necessary, or she will take revenge on the Druid, making for a fun monster-monster fight later on, with the PCs not knowing whom to kill first...
I really don't know, but it is quite certain, that he is not buried, where he should be. Queen Ileosa poisoned the king, so he is probably burnt, in order to destroy evidence and then his ash is probably hidden away somewhere so that no one can resurrect the king or question him by speak with dead.
Would it be possible to introduce set pieces, which are more the RP type, with Rise of the Runelord being rather combat and dungeon crawling heavy (this is less for CotCT) this would be very welcome. I would like to see something like the ball in Prince of Redhand more often (eg. I would have loved to see the casino boat in Hookmountain Massacre fleshed out). This would give the opportunity to present RP heavy settings as optional parts of the adventure so people who do not like such things can leave them out.
I would like to do (although I won't have the time): Minion Monsters (lots of weak enemies, which you can hack through, but which still make a difference and you cannot ignore), the way remove affliction works (removing curses is just too easy in 3.5, so they are not really frightening), healing surges.
Maybe its already old for you, but I saw that WotC announces an Adventure Path for levels 1 through 30 in Dungeon (with 18 adventures). At least they are starting to do something right, from a business point of view (as early adventures will still be free, but later ones not any more), if they now started to do good adventures...
James Jacobs wrote:
Yes, I was thinking about this and first thought, the druid would never sacrifice his tribe to adventurers, but in the end he is a goblin, I guess even he is not able to think all this through to the end, or reasons, that enough goblins will survive for the tribe to recover. I will talk to my players as they insisted on rolling for stailisation to the bitter end (although I did not insist and told them, they cannot know, what happens while they are unconscious); the rogue made it, the barbarian not. I do not want to force them into something they would not like or feel like cheating. Thanks for the advice. As I said up to here it was one of the best RPG experiences I ever had.
tbug wrote: Stabilization makes sense. Nualia has to sacrifice living creatures to Lamashtu every time she does a religious service, and when she doesn't have prisoners she uses goblins. I'm sure that the refugees in particular (who are her first choice for sacrifices) would be eager for any alternate offerings. I thought about it, but the Druid does not like the "Longshanks" at all and would not deliver sacrifices to them, I thought about the Howling Hole, the druid always needs sacrifies for this.
Moonbeam wrote:
I do not like dragging characters along as mere "fight-bots" and from a RP point of view it was sensible, as the ranger was poisened to paralysis by Erylium and still a little bit shaky (like 6 Dex), so she stayed with the horses. In previous game sessions, it worked out nicely as A: the encounters were not that tough and B: my players were already one level ahead and I gave them 32 points for abilities.I am afraid I was just too tired and decided wrongly (leaving out the goblin dogs, or making the druid send them ahead and attacking seperately would have given the PCs a chance). Furthermore I have to get used to PCs dying. I am rather for story than for the quick kill ;-)
Hi there,
First, your two players are ....ah...no good gamers, put it like that. Either, stop inviting them. Or, if you want an ingame solution, give them what they want, send in a group of competitor heroes (maybe guys originally from Sandpoint) who save the day, who are always there saving the day and then mock the PCs for being late weak and ineffective, if your PCs attack them, they just teleport away and laugh. At least this gives you a revenge.
I stopped buying WoTC Novels after Year of the Rogue Dragon, I really loved The spiderqueen series (/apart from some minor details) but in TYotRD series you could just hear the dice rolling and book flipping for spells too much! And the author used too often the same phrases to describe combat and spell casting (maybe there was just too much fighting and too little story?). The Orc War Drizzt do Urden story was fine, but also this all seems to be made up too quickly and too forced out of the authors...
crosswiredmind wrote:
In this case it is not the DM's job, but if he creates an adventure, the players just cannot make it through with one set of resources, it is unfair of him to set a timer, they could not beat. If the players are making mistakes, then they have to live with them, either by entering combat with low resources, or by e.g. risking the hostages lives. And as I said, it should not all be about combat, IMHO.
crosswiredmind wrote:
Sure there are good things in 4e, too, but it seems to me that its more and more about fighting and that the "role" is not a good in-character performance, but a good in-battle performance. Maybe I just overstated this. In fact, I also like the 5 min rest and the healing surges. A 6 hour rest period does not seem very realistic to me, people need to sleep, where would all the "you are all still asleep" jokes and good raids at the camp site storys come from. By the way, is this 6 hours rest whenever, or is it 6 hours every day. If it is whenever, you could just also make it a 1 hour rest, then your characters can keep going for a very long time. Well it stays like it was, I want to see the complete system, before I judge if it is good.
15 minutes day, 1 hour day...they should put back the role in the role playing game. I guess every, or at least 90% of all systems will boil down to this, if everything you do is fighting. Have interparty interaction, NPCs you can talk to, puzzles you could solve with your brains and you have a game where you can play a whole day and more (in-game time) with out resting. If you just want to do hack'n slash all the time, give your group a recovery stone with X charges, which refreshes all their HP, Spell, Mana or whatever, or just fast forward over the rest every time they need it, problem solved. Just my opinion, but if I read, 4ed is more about role playing again, because it feels different if I play an eladrin fighter or an elven fightet, because the elf can whatever and the eladrin fighter can teleport I get sick (and not because of the super-duper-teleport-power).
Yes, a succubus is level 12 (with 6HD), not 7 or 8. She will be very frail, thus useless in combat at Party Lvl 14, but her abilities could prove invaluable. What makes her very unpredictable is her ability to summon a Balor with a 10% chance. You could, if you have access to it, take a Lvl 8 Succubus with less HD and abilities. The other advantage is, that the succubus is most probably chaotic and might leave if she is bored (e.g. a pain in the foot for the game/DM) ;-)
Unfortunately, it is not only providing stat blocks for both systems. If what Wizards tells is true, the whole philosophy of building encounters is changed and this probably to a degree which makes a 3.5-4.0 conversion very difficult, meaning that it is necessary to design a completely new encounter. Whatever Paizo does, I hope they take the right decission (from a comercial pov, that is).
I just read the Skinsaw Murders and am a little bit grieved by the waste of nice story..admitted, I also see that there is only so much space in a pathfinder.
I downloaded some fan-made introductions from the internet...unfortunately I cannot remember where I got them from, but there should be something out there for your players to read. Also make good use of Diamond Lake for roleplaying purpose. In later adventures there will not be much space to roleplay, rather consider inserting some sidetreks (if you have the time) and cutting some later adventures (at least remove some unnecessary parts).
Sir Kaikillah wrote:
They need an errata, it should say: "The exploding devil is destroyed and removed from the board." Hope these are really only the stats for the minis game. In my game I already make houserules which ban un-RPG words like: buff, pet, tank etc. because this really destroys flavor.
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