Did anyone else think the shogi board encounter in the shadow plane was kind of like a shadow game from Yu-Gi-Oh?
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Oh, and when the PCs first hear the name, I'll have the ones who speak Tien roll Linguistics. Whoever rolls the lowest will interpret the name as Suika (西瓜), meaning... watermelon. Slash slash! 笑。 That's pretty funny.
I cut the yeti caves as well, or I should say I cut out almost all of the Yeti fights. I agree they are really monotonous and they make an already long dungeon even longer.
I'm on my first run through of the AP, currently doing Forest of Spirits, and have been running things mostly as printed. The only major change I did was adding a new significant NPC. On their way to Brinewall the PCs met Kinshiro Iseou, a bird merchant from Minkai who was stranded in the middle of nowhere. They agreed to take him back to Minkai and he served as a merchant with no monthly salary. Unbeknownst to them however, Kinshiro was actually the god Apsu in disguise and his precious birds were actually dragons! I did this to enforce the feeling of destiny, and also to make it more like traditional Odyssey stories, like...well the Odyssey, where the gods were always watching. The characters could build relationship points with Kinshiro and if communally they got enough he would bless them in part six with a big reveal. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. The story of Kinshiro ties into the one thing I wish I had changed so far, which was Katiyana's fight in the storm tower. My party was a monk, a bow fighter, a two weapon fighter, and a barbarian, so they were pretty handicapped to start. Not to mention the bow fighter was completely useless because of the winds. The fight turned into a 18 round long slog fest where Katiyana whittled down their HP while remaining mostly untouched. The barbarian died to an exploding electricity crystal, the monk was almost dead, the two weapon fighter was permanently blind, and bow fighter was still useless. Faced with a TPK, I did the only thing I could think of, deus ex machina. Apsu burst through the side of the Storm Tower and used his healing breath to revive and fully heal everyone, after which they took care of Katiyana pretty quickly. After revealing his presence Apsu left and erased everyone's memory of him, except for the PCs'. He also took the barbarian, who had died, to train him to fight evil dragons. I could have avoided this if I had toned down the wind speed, or not made mistakes with the fight like misreading call lightning storm or forgetting about the switch that stopped the winds for a little bit. The name for Apsu's alter ego was very intentional by the way. The chinese characters for his first name, kinshiro, are "metal" and "white". When combined they form the character "platinum". The characters for his last name, Iseou, are "dragon" and "king."
Name: Dines Race: Human Class: Invulnerable Rager Barbarian 8 Origin: Land of the Linnorm Kings Adventure: The Hungry Storm Location: The Storm Tower Cause of Death: Lightning Crystal So my horribly unbalance four fighter party and Sandru reached the top of the storm tower to square of against Katiyana. I knew the fight was going to be incredibly difficult for them because the Archer was shut down by windstorm level wind and they got thrown around when Air Walking, but they had steam rolled everything before that so I figured they would somehow come out on top. What followed was 18 grueling rounds of attrition as Katiyana disabled them with spells and whittled their HP down with Call Lightning Storm. Dines, heavily weakened by constant lightning strikes, decided to sunder a lightning crystal with his adamantine great sword. He did so handily and it exploded for 9d6 lightning damage, killing him. The rest of the party almost died if not for a timely Deus Ex Machina, and eventually managed to kill Katiyana.
and carried them through the whole fight without any of them ever taking damage. ... How? It can only cast resist energy on itself and its wielder in combat. It has a reach of 0 feet. It's the same for air walk. He can only technically cast see invisibility on himself, but for argument's sake, he can only cast it on his wielder. Air walk, see invis and resist energy can only be cast 3/day each, so I don't know how he put it on everyone-- or how the party knew they were going to be taking a ton of cold damage. Or how the party even knew what spells Suishen could cast. In this case it was that the TWF did so much damage a turn(half her hp after one full attack) that Kimandatsu had to keep away from him, but Suishen just hosed any of her attempts to keep him at bay so she never really got a chance to attack. BUT, you guys have given some pretty good advice and I'm thinking I may be overreacting to Suishen. I'll definitely throw the sword's ego around more and make the fighter earn its buffs.
My group has just gotten Suishen, they were lucky enough to keep Helgarvel around to fetch it, and they gave it to the two weapon fighter. Needless to say, they destroyed the rest of the Ravenscraeg. The party is an all fighter party, so as a group they do tremendous damage to begin with, but I was expecting Kimandatsu to give them a decent challenge. Instead, Suishen did what it was built to do, and carried them through the whole fight without any of them ever taking damage. I thought Kimandatsu had earned herself a break when she managed to charm monster the two weapon fighter, but the player suggested that Suishen just use its ego to dominate its wielder to force him to continue to fight. It did just that and Kimandatsu could do nothing to stop its onslaught. My big concern with Suishen is that it will make all the rest of the fights too easy, even for a group as poorly balanced as mine. It has eliminated almost all weaknesses the two weapon fighter has. Because its caster level is 20, all of its buffs are effectively infinite, and even if I use charm or fear effects, Suishen can just use its ego to dominate the player (he needs to roll a natural 20 to prevent it), which practically gives him immunity to such effects. To me it seems like a mistake to give the characters a minor artifact in part 2. Has anyone else had problems with Suishen, or any other thoughts about it? |