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[QUOTE!!!If you want to keep it more in theme, instead of a glow cover it in fungus (or glowing fungus) that immediately covers any damage done to the door and repairs it. And the rouge should enjoy having the door actively moving his lock picks on him as fungus in the mechanism swells and shrinks.
that's a great idea!!! I think i'm going to go with that
I have a couple of questions about exorcising Vorel's spirit after dealing with the Skinsaw Man.
According to page 108 of the Anniversary Edition, the party need to cast 'hallow and a consecrate spell or a dispel evil spell.'
First of all, how are they supposed to know this? A knowledge (religion) check (and if so, what DC)? Or do they need to consult with Father Zantus?
My party's cleric is only 6th level, so still several levels away from being able to cast hallow (and dispel evil). What's the 'normal' way this should play out; is the party expected to leave the manor for some time while they go off to Magnimar etc, or are they expected to procure scrolls, e.g. from Sandpoint? I know my players; they're like a dog with a bone and won't want to go anywhere until the house is dealt with once and for all.
My players wouldn't let it go either, and in fact their first goal when arriving in Magnimar wasn't to track down Aldern's townhouse or Pug's shop, but rather to find information about hauntings and liches. I had secretly decided that if they destroyed the fungus in the basement (with holy water, acid splash, whatever) then there was a brief window in which the house could be burned down before Vorel's spirit reinhabited the place and grew the fungus back. In fact, their consultations with Father Zantus and later with Zadendi in Magnimar (pre-events of Dawn of the Scarlet Sun) found them in agreement that fire was the cure-all here. For whatever reason though, they either didn't think to burn the place or didn't want to.
In the end, the temple of Pharasma took the talk of haunted houses and liches very seriously. The high priest (Annamentus Jivorus) isn't high enough level to cast dispel evil either, but on the sly he procured a scroll at crafting-cost from the temple of Iomedae and went with the PCs to try it, and rolled a natural 20 on the attempt. Once they found out he had wasted a scroll to do it, they reimbursed him for the full cost and he agreed to send out a couple of acolytes periodically to make sure that the spell actually worked.
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Also, Tsuto survived in my game and was thrown in jail by the PCs and Sheriff Hemlock. After being interrogated, he was picked up by Justice Ironbriar to be taken back to Magnimar and stand trial. It was a nice way to foreshadow the Justice and set up a reunion later on with Tsuto.
Totally stealing that idea.
Here's a question: is there any way to break Ironbriar's code WITHOUT the Linguistics skill? I ask because of the four players and one NPC, none possess all three required languages AND the Linguistics skill. We've a couple with Draconic, one with Infernal, and a couple with Elvish... and the one player with Linguistics (which is only a 6) only has Draconic.
But without breaking the code, how would the players learn of Xanesha's role with the Brothers? (I mean, outside of the ravens... and I'm not sure people would necessarily think "messenger raven")
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Don't forget they're in Magnimar -- I had them ask some locals they trusted (the kitsune clans for those following my thread) for advice on who might be able to break the code, and they ended up going to the Stone of the Seers and hiring an NPC wizard to break the code.
Have gold, will pay someone else to travel...
Somehow I fear that there is no correct/official answer. I think I read somewhere that Nualias Sihedron amulet was added in the AE to have a greater connection (I don't have the old version, so I can't check that), but I think that whoever added this detail didn't think this through.
So now I'm just trying to make this work somehow, because I'd like Nualia to kill an Aasimar NPC in Magnimar as the background of a PC, another Aasimar who would be that NPCs sister.
So my take on this (I haven't read beyond chapter 2 yet, so I don't know if this fits nicely):
Nualia comes to Magnimar late 4702 (winter)
She gets in contact with the cult and has Delek killed
She stays a few month, but doesn't know what to do with herself, but her dreams become stronger
She decides (on her own) to follow those dreams that lead her to the catacombs where she meets Erylium. This might have been in late 4703
Nualia stays with Erylium for a few month, maybe even till mid 4706 (almost 3 years)
She decides to find Melfeshnekor but knows that she can't do it without help. So she returns to Magnimar to find some help, again contacting the cult. She meets Tsuto and the rest of her new party. This takes a few month, probably till early 4707. This will also be the time when she kills that NPC I mentioned.
By now Xanesha has taken over the cult and finds some interest in Nualia, giving her the amulet only now (probably after finding out about her time with Erylium in a Thassilonian catacomb).
Nualia and her "friends" leave for Thistletop and begin their scheme on Sandpoint. Does this make sense? Am I missing something? Would this work?
I'm still not sure why Xanesha has any interest in Nualia. Besides the lamias usual worship of Lamashtu. But Xanesha is working vor Karzoug now, wouldn't she try to have someone like Nualia work for her course and probably send her to Sandpoint to harvest some greedy souls, instead of Aldern later on? But I guess I can ignore that as this will probably not come up in...
Who is to say the the brothers of seven didn't just already have few sihedron medallions and felt that Nualia had the potential to be a strong ally? It is really just a Thassilonion artifact that there could be a large number of. My thought is that if xanesha gave the medallion to Nualia, Karzoug would know about it and be able to scry on her and the players earlier, but in the item description (at least in the AE) it says that he doesn't know about Nualia
On an unrelated note what haunts have secondary effects that would have an effect the paladin in my group? Also if the paladin triggered a haunt, would it just not do anything or would he still see the things, but just not care? I was considering just not having the pali trigger the haunts, but that would leave just 2 characters to be possibly effected by them all, unless I make the eidolon trigger them, hmm.
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Here's a question: is there any way to break Ironbriar's code WITHOUT the Linguistics skill? I ask because of the four players and one NPC, none possess all three required languages AND the Linguistics skill. We've a couple with Draconic, one with Infernal, and a couple with Elvish... and the one player with Linguistics (which is only a 6) only has Draconic.
But without breaking the code, how would the players learn of Xanesha's role with the Brothers? (I mean, outside of the ravens... and I'm not sure people would necessarily think "messenger raven")
I had a couple of guest players along for the game session that culminated with the Ironbriar fight. I statted up Cyrdak Drokkus and Jasper Korvaski for them, had them show up in Magnimar after Jasper had a vision from Abadar that the city itself was somehow being used to thwart the PCs and try to get them killed. In the process of picking out equipment for them, I picked spectacles of understanding semi-randomly as a good fit for Jasper, as detecting forgeries and working in documents in a variety of languages would make sense for his job at the Sandpoint Mercantile League. And then promptly forgot about them. The player remembered though, so when it came time to decipher, he had the glasses and a couple ranks of Linguistics from his level of Expert. However, what basically amounts to a permanent comprehend languages effect is not the same as actually *knowing* the language. The journal is a cipher, rather than being written in a real language, after all. I decided that Elven is a fairly standard phonetic alphabet (like most Western languages), while Draconic is a syllabic language (each "character" is a syllable, and combining them in different ways can alter meanings), and Infernal is an logographic language (each character represents a single word). It would be immediately obvious that permanent comprehend languages is helpful but not a cure-all, when you look at a string of alternating text and it translates to "F-La-Cruel-Sh-Nur-Head/Skull", etc. So I decided that he would still need help from Sandpoint's other local scholars in working out the cipher.
Basically what it amounted to was that I let Jasper make the main Linguistics roll, and allowed "aid another" rolls from other people, NPCs or PCs if they fit any of the following criteria. Note these are all my own personal rulings, to incorporate NPCs the party was familiar with:
Trained in Linguistics and knows any of the relevant languages (as many people as fit the criteria): Ilsoari Gandethus, Brodert Quink. In my game, Brodert was still working on safely collapsing the Catacombs of Wrath, and thus unavailable to help.
Trained in Linguistics but doesn't know any of the relevant languages (no limit to number of assistants, roll at -5): Chask Haladan, Ameiko Kaijitsu. These people understand the mechanics of cryptography and can suggest strategies, but need native speakers or dictionary translations to understand what they're working on.
Not trained in Linguistics but knows one of the relevant languages (one "untrained" assistant per language, roll at -5). Sabyl Sorn, Cyrdak Drokkus, any number of elf or half-elf locals. This is where PCs could primarily help out, though they have the hardest roll to make (untrained Linguistics means Intelligence check at -5, target 10). Even though they don't understand the deciphering process, they can still contribute by doing things like offering how a specific character in Infernal would sound when spoken aloud, or whether a specific set of sounds means something in another language they know, that sort of thing.
Ultimately I wanted the journal to not be completely indecipherable, but to force the PCs to make decisions regarding:
1) How many people are in the know. Once they hit the "aha" moment and are able to start working on the mechanical substitution process to understand the journal, who knows what secrets will be spilled out for every assisting NPC to see?
2) The deciphering process is still SLOW. Can they wait five days for the journal to be translated, if it means Xanesha is using that time to continue having her faceless stalkers murder people? Are they willing to refuse Ironbriar's offers of assistance and take the moral high road, and risk wasting days and his journal being completely irrelevant? After all, it's not even clearly HIS- it was just among his trophies, some of which absolutely aren't his, and doesn't handily say "Justice Ironbriar's Big Book of Misdeeds" on the front cover.
Question, and sorry if this has been posted already but I couldn't find it.
For the Impaler or Thorns, Xensha is a large size creature, so I would assume it is a large size weapon, but it is a longspear, and medium size longspears do 1d8, which is the listed damage. Is she wielding a medium sized weapon?
Question, and sorry if this has been posted already but I couldn't find it.
For the Impaler or Thorns, Xensha is a large size creature, so I would assume it is a large size weapon, but it is a longspear, and medium size longspears do 1d8, which is the listed damage. Is she wielding a medium sized weapon?
Correct. Like centaurs, even though lamia matriarchs are large creatures, they wield medium-sized weapons.
I modified all of the Skinsaw Cult to be higher level and be a diverse group of races, classes, and so forth. The group steamrollered them. The end result was that after taking out the basement and shutting down the waterwheels (using an adamantium longsword as a lever after the shutdown lever snapped - I was quite impressed and the player rolled well with Engineering) they killed the four men on the first floor - one tried climbing up to warn the others and was set upon by a swarm of summoned dogs and died horribly. This warned the next floor, who sent someone to tell Judge Ironbriar. Six cultists (who included a Magus/Rogue, a Barbarian/Rogue, a couple cleric/rogues, and so forth) and a beefed up Ironbriar were waiting to ambush the group on the 2nd level.
What he didn't realize was that the PC cleric had the Travel Domain and could look through doors. She peeked, saw four of the cultists and the judge, and ambushed the ambush with a lightning bolt and a swarm tactic. Two cultists weren't surprised but even so the villains started falling to the five PCs and two cohorts. (Action economy. It's deadly.)
Final tally? After Ironbriar was taken down (by a Spiritual Weapon and a shortbow shot by the cleric) the Barbarian and a straight Rogue jumped down one of the chutes and escaped. The halfling then realized this was Judge Ironbriar - who'd ordered their arrest earlier (the guards warned them and were thinking Ironbriar was going nuts from stress in not catching the cultists). And having taken him alive? This gives a chance to realize about the Charm Person on him. It should make for a most fascinating battle up ahead.
So I'm still in Burnt Offerings and I had Aldern go on the boar hunt and show interest in the party Elf Witch. She's thick skinned and very put off. The problem is, the party ninja is very suspicious of him and rolled a very good gather information on him and learned some rumors about his family history and the Misgivings. I'm worried they're going to figure out the murders too soon when they begin.
Is there any good way to throw them off his trail? Or am I worrying over nothing?
There are several red herrings. One good one is to play up the Scarnetti family connection.
Since my players have decided to keep and renovate Thistletop, I had Titus Scarnetti stop by under the guise of greeting them as lumber mill customers--reminding them that through some crazy random happenstance, there's only the one left standing--and then tell them in no uncertain terms that he was not going to stand for them thinking that they were in any way the equals of members of the noble's council. So hopefully that will throw them off a bit.
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Greetings, fellow travellers.
I am going to spin a tale (nothing special) for my group between #1 and #2 and would appreciate your insights and/or opinions!
I'd like to add Choppers-Revenge and Chopper's Island (from Wayfinder #7) in between to kick of the murders and give Das Korvut a little more time in the spotlight.
This should serve as red hering; would it work?
Has anybody done that before (couldn't find anything) and can share his/her experience?
Ruyan.
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Damn, I wished I'd known about these.
I did a sidebar adventure as well, but nothing like this. One of my players had gotten into a relationship with a waitress from the Fatman's Feedbag, and I decided, unbeknownst to him, that she was actually a Red Mantis assassin. While setting up to kill him, she was overwhelmed and killed by Aldren Foxglove, and became his subordinate partner.
Now that Aldren is dead (we are in chapter 4), shes a free roaming person, who has since stalked and killed the PC in question. Now shes shadowing the party. She's struck at them twice, once in the Clocktower fight, and again during the Siege on Sandpoint, though the party isn't aware of this one yet.
This may be a dumb question, but when distributing xp for the haunts in Foxglove Manor, do you split xp among the whole party like an encounter or give it all to the afflicted pc?
As it's an encounter, everybody gets XP, i.e. you split them.
Ruyan.
Three attacks a round, each one with the possibility of causing paralysis.
A lot of parties have been laid low by this. Admittedly, they have to close before they get a full attack... but if they group up on a guy, then it's doubtful more than one will go down unless the group is lucky with Channel Energy.
Also don't forget the Stench ability of the Ghast - area affect, causes a Sickened condition. -2 to hit and damage can hurt.
Also, have the Ghouls attack from Stealth. The only people who get to act are those who make their Perception check to detect the ghouls. This means the Ghouls WILL close, and probably get attacks on flatfooted PCs.
Be careful though. Paralysis can result in a TPK before you know it. While other GMs love to use Coup de Grace, don't. Have the ghouls drag off people to gnaw on them while they're still alive. More horrifying... and allows for rescues.
Yeah I see your point. This fight is basically hit or miss I guess, either a couple guys are gonna get paralysed and this is going to get ugly quick or they will steamroll the ghouls without batting an eye. I think I might put the ghouls on advanced template to make them a little tougher hit points wise. Either way, I will def use the stealth attack idea to spice things up.Three attacks a round, each one with the possibility of causing paralysis.
A lot of parties have been laid low by this. Admittedly, they have to close before they get a full attack... but if they group up on a guy, then it's doubtful more than one will go down unless the group is lucky with Channel Energy.
Also don't forget the Stench ability of the Ghast - area affect, causes a Sickened condition. -2 to hit and damage can hurt.
Also, have the Ghouls attack from Stealth. The only people who get to act are those who make their Perception check to detect the ghouls. This means the Ghouls WILL close, and probably get attacks on flatfooted PCs.
Be careful though. Paralysis can result in a TPK before you know it. While other GMs love to use Coup de Grace, don't. Have the ghouls drag off people to gnaw on them while they're still alive. More horrifying... and allows for rescues.
Be careful putting the advanced template on these ghouls. That literally turns them from ghouls into ghasts per Bestiary 1, and changes the entire narrative of the Skinsaw Murders. If you just want to beef them up, give them max HP for their HD.
As Tangent said, AC 20 against a +3 to hit isn't that big a deal. With 3 attacks per round, a ghoul has a 48.8% chance of hitting her round. A 4th level fighter with an 18 CON fails the save vs. paralysis 20% of the time.
So every round there's roughly a 10% chance of losing a party member PER GHOUL! And that's assuming all of them have AC 20 and stupid high Fort saves.
Six ghouls in close combat will be ugly, ugly, ugly.
And while I see a two-handed weapon fighter taking out a ghoul per round, I think the "each PC will kill one per round" is a bit optimistic. If that's really a worry, I agree with El Cuervo: Just give the ghouls max HP. That'll make it a nasty fight.
Now that I'm thinking about the farmstead ghoul encounter, and since it's the next event in my campaign, I need to consider something. The ghoul paralysis is what makes this encounter so dangerous, but my party consists of two half-elves (one a cleric), an elf, and a human paladin. This party make-up essentially renders the ghoul paralysis useless.
Is there something else I should consider to make this encounter more challenging? It would be going against my own advice above, but applying the advanced template would mean the paralysis does work against elves. Anyone have any suggestions about what to do there?
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Also, there's the whole "setting the scene" thing. Picture this.
When the party enters the area, they're surrounded by rows of corn sitting 2-4' up off the ground, with them walking a through a trench-like road between them. Suddenly, they start hearing screams and groans coming from around them. They are being hunted. The moon overhead is suddenly covered by clouds moving into the area, making everything shadowy illumination at best. Torches flutter and flicker, causing sparks to whirl in the air. The party, afraid to set the corn of fire and be surrounded in a firestorm, put the torches out and start lighting lanterns and breaking out sunrods. They hear movement from somewhere nearby (DC 15 to hear it, DC 20 to know direction, DC 22-25 to pinpoint). The first "scarecrow" attacks, screaming and leaping out of the corn (did you see the picture in the book! Use it!). The scarecrow leaps on a random surprised and flat-footed individual, burying the hapless victim in a tatter of straw and cloth (+2 charge, +1 for height advantage, +3 to attack totals a +6!). Make it a bite, and it's two Fort saves. As the party turns to deal with this first foe, ANOTHER strikes, from a different direction. Perhaps it does the same attack, or perhaps it tries to grapple someone and drag them screaming back into the corn to feed! Any horses, in the mean time, are going nuts from the smell of the blood and death! Players get thrown from their mounts, who tear off down the road into the night, only to get buried under another ghoul and go down screaming in the darkness!
It's all in the setting. I had my party terrified at first, then very nervous after that. I never described the ghouls in great detail, just straw, tattered clothes, glowing eyes, claws, and fang filled mouths. Since the party continued to hear activity, they never stopped and bothered to undress a scarecrow to see what it really was. By the time they got to the farmhouse, they knew it was ghouls, but they didn't know how many. The party assaulted the farm house and cleared it, but as they did, the rest of the pack had zeroed in on them. What started out as a house assault ended up being a scene from The Walking Dead, with the party barricading the house and fighting off waves of ravenous ghouls, some of whom climbed the walls and broke to the house through second story windows!
It's all in the setup. Terrify them. Shut your eyes and imagine being in the same situation. How many of us wouldn't be wetting our pants in fear? Terrify them.
Elves are immune. Doesn't say anything about half-elves. This isn't even a racial thing - this is a species thing for ghouls. So I'd happily rule that half-elves are not immune to ghoulish paralysis. The paladin would have a bonus to saves but unless he has a high Charisma, I'd bet that the bonus is only likely to be +2. (Now myself, I think that Charisma is a better stat for Paladins than Strength, but I like to think outside the curve as GM.)
I used a thunderstorm to create tension. And I got the group panicked and fleeing to the barn and house when a lightning bolt struck a tree on the edge of the field - just for dramatic purposes mind you, but they're like "damn, we're in armor in a field! We need shelter!" and then fled into ghouls.
Heh heh heh.
I used thunderstorms several times so far for the game. Most enjoyable.
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You can totally rule that way, Tangent, but I'd rule the opposite way. Elf Blood means they count as elves for any racial effect that targets elves, so I believe that means a ghoul shouldn't be able to paralyze them. Ghasts totally can, though. Once again, your table, your call; my table, my call. :)
Except it's not a racial effect. It's a ghoul effect. If it were racial then it would be mentioned within the elvish race write-up in the core rulebook or even the Advanced Race Guide. It's not.
It's just one line in the ghoul setting.
In 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, elvish immunity to ghoulish paralysis was just for elves. It specifically states that half-elves are not immune. This can be found in the Monstrous Compendium.
Downpour. Or fog. (Though with fog I'd allow 15 feet of visibility - I find the "blind beyond five feet" rule to be... unwieldy and tends to force combats to go on for far too long.)
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I'd argue that any effect that checks a character's race is a racial effect, and ghoul paralysis certainly does that. And saying that "this is how it was in 1st & 2nd Edition D&D" isn't a sound footing either - by the same token, basilisk blood couldn't revert 1d3 people back to flesh in previous editions of the game, but it can in PF.
Let us suppose that Bestiary 5 creates a hypothetical monster that orcs keep as pets, a scorpiorc. They've got venomous stingers, but orcs have become immune to the poison due to exposure. Let's say the poison has a DC 15, does 1d2 Con damage, and so on, but has the caveat that orcs are immune to this effect. Are half-orcs immune to scorpiorc poison, due to their Orc Blood trait? I mean, aren't we checking if the character's race has the orc subtype?
In the end, it doesn't really matter, since we're both able to rule whichever we want for our respective tables, but I am curious whether I've been wrong all this time on how ghoul paralysis works.
The immunity to ghoul paralysis is a holdover from 1st edition AD&D. It has made its way through 2nd and 3rd edition, and now to Pathfinder.
If I were to suspect, I'd say the reason for the lack of paralysis against elves harkens back to Legolas during "The Two Towers" - in the book, Legolas was not perturbed by the Paths of the Dead, or those in it.
I'm afraid that RAW is rather clear:
Elf Blood: Half-elves count as both elves and humans for any effect related to race.
I agree that I don't particularly like it; ghouls are a fairly standard terrifying low-level undead encounter, and having (almost) an entire party of elves and half-elves is rather annoying.
But imagine the greater horror when they laughingly do away with all the ghouls and then encounter their first ghast, who CAN paralyze elves and half-elves! :-P
And I have to admit, after several campaigns in which players insisted that they weren't affected by XXX because of their race, I was on the verge of banning all racial immunities outright. Elves are a particularly egregious example of "too many immunities for too few penalties."
But to the OP's point: Just mix in one ghast per 3 ghouls. That will turn the encounters into near-TPKs very readily, and scare the heck out of all of them.
It says somewhere that the journey from Magnimar to Sandpoint takes about two days on foot (see p370 of AE: some 50 miles).
From the map on p386 (AE) Foxglove Manor is about 10 miles south of Sandpoint (following the roads that is).
Assuming an 8hour "work day" for your adventurer (the rest is spent gathering food and sleeping/resting) and using the Movement and Distance table under Additional Rules (see PRD) that gives us about 3h20min walking time (assuming 30 ft. base speed).
Ruyan.
I'm afraid that RAW is rather clear:
Elf Blood: Half-elves count as both elves and humans for any effect related to race.
Is it? Elves are immune; humans are not and they count as both. Absent a FAQ or other official clarification I think you're on just as solid ground arguing either way. My inclination would be to give the half-elf a bonus to the save.
Any suggestions how to deal with aerial view? I expect my party's druid will probably wild shape into a bird and do some aerial recon. That could play havoc with the mystery aspect.
Not necessarily. All the bird can see is farmland with some scarecrows. Unless you get really close, perhaps dangerously close, there's no way to know there's more danger there just by flying over.
And keep in mind, if the players move to the farm directly or somehow think they're clever and bypass any possible encounters, they are setting Sandpoint up for some real carnage. There are over a dozen ghouls in play here, they're not going to stay static for long. If the players don't deal with everyone one of them, the "Night of the Ghouls" option becomes very likely (see AE version p. 87)
The AP has just crossed a critical juncture really almost exactly at this point - going forward and for the rest of the AP, if the PC's don't deal with it, Sandpoint is <insert very bad word that means really messed up.>
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How did you guys deal with the living scarecrows? In my session last night, each time they found one, the party had to split up to escort one back to Sandpoint (fortunately only two occasions). Did the rest of your groups just keep the survivors with you while you mopped up the map?
We moved on to the Misgivings and I have a couple of questions.
I've read conflicting information on how Detect Magic interacts with undead. Essentially, it seems a little cheap to let Detect Magic function as an at-will Detect Undead, so I've ruled that DM does *not* detect undead. I also assumed that haunts count as undead, is that wrong? So, essentially, Detect Magic will detect very little in the Misgivings, really. Mood-buildingwise at least it seemed to work, because it seemed to freak out the players when Detect Magic never did anything, but do you think I should reverse my call for next session?
How did you deal with revealing the backstory of the Misgivings? I've dealt with one haunt so far, the scarf haunt on the ground floor -- it flew up and strangled the vengeful character, and they got a brief flash of Aldern's image strangling them...but beyond that, nothing. Should they have gotten more of an infodump? Like, a flood of Iesha's memories from that incident perhaps? I'm concerned that without infodumping more, the players might not have enough material to put together a coherent narrative. How did it work out for you?
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No, I totally agree, Samy. Detect magic shouldn't detect a haunt, unless the haunt specifically says it can. Otherwise, detect undead or an appropriate detect alignment spells are your only early warning spells to catch them.
I haven't run it yet, but I've got some thoughts on how to do this. My plan is to write up index cards for each of the haunts, and only the player affected gets to read it. They'll all be from the perspective of the spirit powering the haunt, and it will be up to them to put together the narrative from these scenes.
How did you guys deal with the living scarecrows? In my session last night, each time they found one, the party had to split up to escort one back to Sandpoint (fortunately only two occasions). Did the rest of your groups just keep the survivors with you while you mopped up the map?
We moved on to the Misgivings and I have a couple of questions.
I've read conflicting information on how Detect Magic interacts with undead. Essentially, it seems a little cheap to let Detect Magic function as an at-will Detect Undead, so I've ruled that DM does *not* detect undead. I also assumed that haunts count as undead, is that wrong? So, essentially, Detect Magic will detect very little in the Misgivings, really. Mood-buildingwise at least it seemed to work, because it seemed to freak out the players when Detect Magic never did anything, but do you think I should reverse my call for next session?
How did you deal with revealing the backstory of the Misgivings? I've dealt with one haunt so far, the scarf haunt on the ground floor -- it flew up and strangled the vengeful character, and they got a brief flash of Aldern's image strangling them...but beyond that, nothing. Should they have gotten more of an infodump? Like, a flood of Iesha's memories from that incident perhaps? I'm concerned that without infodumping more, the players might not have enough material to put together a coherent narrative. How did it work out for you?
I'm just starting this as well, so I'm speaking from my impressions at this point. I would probably suggest that any survivors are going to want to run home. If the PCs insist, they might stick around until they see a ghoul. Then they'd bugger off.
As to the infodumping. I would check in with the party at a few points. "Okay, guys, what do you think is going on?" If they're catching on, or at least trying to put the clues together, keep doing what you're doing. If not, add a little more info. If they haven't figured it out after the confrontation with Aldern, you can spill the beans.|
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One more thing. The stained glass windows on four floors. Are they breakable? My party tried to break them but I wasn't sure if they're breakable or not. The fact that they're still there after the house has taken so much damage suggests they're pretty sturdy, maybe even magically protected. Is Vorel's spirit strengthening them somehow?
If they can be broken, would that have any consequences? Would it exorcise the house? Send ghosts after the party? Nothing? What?
They most definitely can be broken. But breaking them doesn't do anything really, other than possibly allow the Carrion Swarm entry into the house.
Answering a lot of questions at once:
- My party had horses hobbled a few hundred yards away. They took the survivors, wrapped them in blankets, and put them on the horses, assuring them that if the ghouls came anywhere near the horses, the horses would make more than enough noise to bring the party a-runnin'. Worked well.
- Detect Magic cannot detect undead. Otherwise a 0th-level spell would render a 1st-level spell (Detect Undead) pretty pointless.
- Given that, and given that haunts are undead, I would canonically rule that Detect Magic cannot detect haunts.
- My personal feeling is that it should be an info dump, because that adds greatly to the mood. My take on the scarf haunt, for example, was, "You are Iesha Foxglove, a young Varisian woman. Your beloved husband, Aldern, fades into view. He is clearly enraged, and wraps his hands around your throat, strangling you. You are terrified, broken-hearted, and in immense pain. But your greatest pain is that you do not know why he is doing it. You try to call out his name, to ask him why he would do such a thing, but your breath cannot escape your throat..."
And then I have them roll the save to see what happens.
- Recall that Vorel's spirit repairs the house. The stained glass windows have probably broken many times over the years, and Vorel has repaired them. The PCs can break anything they want to. If they break enough, they start getting hit with spells as described in the description of the house.
- To answer your specific question, breaking just a few stained glass windows will just irritate Vorel. If they categorically destroy every single one, I'd start with the least of Vorel's offensive spells (Cause Fear being the best one to start with.) If they keep escalating the destruction, you can keep escalating the spells. (Confusion, then Phantasmal Killer if they just refuse to leave well enough alone.)
You can read my group's experience here, and I also recall that Gluttony had a lot of fun with this in her campaign journal.
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My players decided they would burn the scarecrows at range. They had heard of rumors of walking scarecrows and weren't taking any chances. The first scarecrow was a real scarecrow, went up in a few seconds with the cleric's spark.
The second scarecrow they tried this tactic on happened to be a ghoul scarecrow. The two ghouls they encountered there went down pretty quickly with the help of Sheriff Hemlock's guardsmen and my party of four.
Then they came across one of the still-living victims. Cleric sparks the victim's shirt... it goes up in flame nearly instantly; burlap sack on the "scarecrow's" head lights on fire... the victim begins struggling and screaming, and eventually the party realized this might not be a ghoul scarecrow.
The cleric cut the person down, but it was too late. They had just watched a helpless person burn to death and did not act quickly enough to save her. The best part was the realization of what they had done; the second best part was watching them explain to the OTHER still-living person what they had done to his wife.
As for what they did with the survivors, well, the PCs had earlier received a gift of a state-of-the-art adventurer's wagon from Bilivar Wheen for saving the town from the goblin menace, and they had four guardsmen with them. Any bodies, dead or alive, were loaded into the wagon to be brought back to town.
On to the Misgivings: the description in the book says clearly that the stained glass windows haven't been broken and the explanation is the house's reputation as being haunted has been enough over the many years to prevent vandals from breaking them. Considering the rest of the house is in an advanced state of decay, I'd say the windows do break, but Vorel's spirit becomes quite angry about them breaking; however, I would not have the house repair the windows (it hasn't repaired the weak flooring, loose shingles and handholds [to climb to the roof], or any other decaying construction materials, so why would it repair the windows?).
In the Community Created Stuff thread, there is a link to a really excellent write-up of all the haunts with descriptions of what the players perceive during each haunt. I'll also link that doc here: Misgivings Haunts.
It may need some updating -- I found it a bit confusing at first and then I realized that there is possibly an extra haunt in the doc (a holdover from the OGL PF#2 version?). In any case, aside from the minor confusion I found the write-ups to be good enough with some minor editing to fit my vision of the haunts.
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When I very first ran RotR we got to the first "scarecrow" encounter in our last session. The party came upon an abandoned house (I don't remember, but I think I had switched some stuff around from the module as written, but it largely doesn't matter) and half the party was inside the house investigating things...amongst the other half was our group's barbarian. He apparently got bored and started walking around...came upon a scarecrow, and just before I could tell him to make a Perception check to notice it was breathing/hear faint moaning (I knew it was a living person, but I don't remember if it was one that had ghoul fever or not) he told me he was going to walk up to it and whack it in half with his axe. I asked him if he was sure, and he said yep...he'd jog on up there and smash that ****er. I had him roll to hit, and everyone laughed, chanting ONE ONE ONE...he hit with a possible crit. I told him to confirm, and there was some debate as to being able to crit an object. I told him to just go ahead and humor me, so he proceeds to crit. And I had him roll damage. He does, and it wasn't max but it was high. So I tell him he gets a good swing, connects with the scarecrow, feels significantly more resistance than he expected, but gets the axe blade clear through the thing...showering him with blood. The player was absolutely mortified.