Reworking Zenith Splintershield


Shackled City Adventure Path


So my players are about to tackle Bhal Hamatugn in our next session, and I was considering reworking Zenith Splintershield entirely. I (regretfully) allowed my players to use the Complete series of books along with the Book of Nine Swords to create their characters, so because of the inevitable "power creep" resulting from those splat books, they are more powerful than your standard, 7th-level party. Looking at Zenith's stat block, I just know that he'd going to get slaughtered (or at least adequately subdued) in a couple of rounds. When you throw those splat books into the mix, fighters are really pretty weak. And Dwarven Defender just isn't very effective as a "big boss" PrC. What's he gonna do, just stand there in defensive stance while the spell casters nuke him?

Anyway, I thought he'd be much more formidable if I rebuilt him using the Book of Nine Swords. Warblade looked interesting, but he'd have to take a feat to get proficiency in heavy armor, and the flavor of the class doesn't feel quite right for Zenith's background. Crusader fits very nicely I think. He could have originally been a Crusader of Moradin who "lost his faith". His current Crusader abilities would actually be powered by his link with the Smoking Eye.

Any thoughts on this?


I had similar concerns when running BH. I softened up my players by using 12 Kuo Toa instead of 8 in the central area and used them in teams of four (2 whips + 2 soldiers/team) with disciplined lines of retreat across the three levels and abundant cross fire. I also had the temple floor in about 2 inches of water to force my players up the stairs. I actually managed to drag out the combat for the 20 rounds before Aushanna showed up. Indeed, the combat took 5 hours of real time. Once Aushanna showed up, she pretty much drove them out of the temple.

On their return, they ran into both Mangh-Mictho and the assasin in ZS' anteroom, which was then sealed shut and filled with water. The assassin killed the party cleric, and MM blinded the wizard and crushed the rogue while the confused fighter cut his way through the door to ZS room with an adamatine axe.

It was awesome.

Long story short: I think you can leave ZS just the way he is. You can do a lot of softening up with the KT squads, Aushanna, MM and the Assassin. BH is a setup that is expected to kill the party; make them feel it.

My two cents,
Olodrin


pennton wrote:
Any thoughts on this?

My players love them some powercreep as well! I found that, rather than having Saagagoi fight the party alone in the rooms before the throne room, the invisible monk/assassin would be a perfect distraction once Zenith goes into a defensive stance.

As Zenith is also bat-guano crazy, you can give him a boost to his hitpoints or strength (or both) to make the encounter last longer. Want to make the encounter extra-special creepy? Take all those corpses in the room, and give them an entangle effect as the necromantic energies cause them to lash out at the party.


I of course have no idea just how powerful your player's creep has become, but i myself am not at all worried about whether or not Zenith and his invisible pal are challenging enough for my players. After having played several relentless game sessions facing the likes of Aushanna, Mang-Mictho, and Dhorlot the Dragon-Father, they actually deserve to get to the end of the adventure and find something that may not threaten their lives for a change.

In other words, i don't think that Zenith Splintershield was meant to be the main bad guy in this adventure. While you may need to adjust him to meet the creep, i wouldn't attempt to make him the baddest monster in Bhal-Hamatugn.

Dark Archive

I agree with the original post. Book of Nine Swords makes the fighters in SCAP really obsolete. I'd love to see your changes to Zenith, please post them if you make them!


Before you change Zenith, consider his AC and saves. Yes, he can be killed pretty easily from a distance, but that isn't what the PCs want, is it? They have to take him alive, and that defensive stance means business in close quarters. Besides, even though I dropped a number of hints during the fight that he looked to have a strange look in his eyes, he seemed to be very concentrated, and so on, the players didn't catch on. They fought him for a serious amount of rounds, missing that AC 30 (I think) almost without fail.

Dark Archive

Yes, but I have a warblade in my party which can easily hit high 20's AC when she rolls below 10 on the dice. Zenith basically has no chance since one hit from her can do upwards of 60 damage.


Shimrath wrote:

I of course have no idea just how powerful your player's creep has become, but i myself am not at all worried about whether or not Zenith and his invisible pal are challenging enough for my players. After having played several relentless game sessions facing the likes of Aushanna, Mang-Mictho, and Dhorlot the Dragon-Father, they actually deserve to get to the end of the adventure and find something that may not threaten their lives for a change.

In other words, i don't think that Zenith Splintershield was meant to be the main bad guy in this adventure. While you may need to adjust him to meet the creep, i wouldn't attempt to make him the baddest monster in Bhal-Hamatugn.

This is dead on Shimrath. We just went through Bhal-Hamatugn this past Saturday, and by the time we got to Zenith, I was glad the party could subdue him with relative ease.

The multi-leveled room with Blipdoolpoolp's shrine was absolutely brutal. They set off the sonic blast trap on the door coming from the entryway, so everyone was waiting for them when they entered the main room. Luckily, my party was smart enough to do some research on Kuo-Toans before they left and had the foresight to have 20 points of electrical resistance for everyone in the party before heading in. That probably saved them because it made the whips' lightning bolts pretty much ineffective.

Because he had fair warning, Mangh-Mictho was geared up with spells and armor in time to take on the party right as they were finishing off the whips. Unfortunately, the party thought he was the main threat of the room, so they blew a lot of spells taking him out. Then Aushanna showed up...

Needless to say, she completely rocked their world and forced them to flee and come back after resting and recovering spells. On the second try, they successfully took her out along with Dhorlot and the rest of the named Kuo-Toans. Zenith was a push-over at that point, but I really didn't care. The party had earned the right to an easy fight, even if it was supposed to be CR10. I ended up leaving Zenith's build alone.

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