You could just let the souleater arrive at the spellcaster watch, so no coup de grace, otherwise I would say that even if it's a surprise round the coup de grace could be done.
I actually have a question about the Soul Eater, it seeks out the party arcane caster and would probably try to attack him in the night. With a +30 stealth at night it seems impossible for whichever player on watch to see him coming. The most obviously deadly action for the Soul Eater to take is to just coup-de-grace the arcane caster. How does that work with the on-guard character finding out in the middle or after the coup-de-grace and also with the difficulties of a full round coup-de-grace fitting between the suprise round and 1st round? How would this scenario play out? Would the rules work out in a way to prevent this?
Assuming the party are sleeping around a campfire with someone on watch, I don't think the Soul Eater could move up to a sleeping arcane caster outside of combat and then start combat with a coup-de-grace. Even with its +30 stealth, it can't hide in plain sight.
So, things start with the Soul Eater off in the darkness. Anyone who is awake (e.g. the person on watch) gets to attempt a perception check vs. the Soul Eater's stealth to see if they're surprised. Most likely they'll fail, so the Soul Eater gets a surprise round, and it can fly up to the sleeping caster with its one action. It's no longer in concealment, so it can no longer use stealth.
First actual round of combat, anyone who is awake is automatically aware of the Soul Eater and acts in initiative order. With its +10 initiative, the chances are good that the Soul Eater will get to act first anyway. Assuming the caster is still asleep when the Soul Eater acts, it can use a full-round action to coup-de-grace them while they're sleeping helplessly. Pretty brutal, although it most likely won't get to eat their soul unless they've taken wisdom damage previously.
The limitations of a surprise round are kind of odd with this sort of scenario where the Soul Eater is attacking from the darkness. For example, the Soul Eater can't use Flyby Attack during the surprise round because it requires a move and a standard action, so maybe it waits out in the darkness until after the surprise round... but if it doesn't attack in the surprise round, combat isn't triggered and it's back to attacking in the surprise round!
IMC, I plan on having the Soul Eater circle the party in the darkness during the surprise round, howling or calling out a challenge in Abyssal during its move to trigger combat. Because it will continue to move after announcing its presence like that, the player's won't automatically know where in the darkness it finishes its move. Once normal combat starts, it can then do a flyby attack. It will probably just do the one each time, and then fly off for minutes or hours before returning.
I had a general question about the Nomen Centaurs. It says they lack male warriors due to losses inflicted by the Taldans, but that happened in 2009 AR. Assuming that most of us are playing in the current time period, wouldn't that give them plenty of time to have recovered? 2700 years would be enough to correct any population imbalance, right?
I didn't notice that. Thanks for pointing it out!
Altough I seem to remember that the male-female role-inversion was something related to culture and not a response to recent events, this, coupled with the fact that i think that a spree of female births was also mentioned somewhere.. Maybe the year is wrong? Or maybe the losses and the female births percentage was worse than we think.
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According to the Iobaria timeline, there was also a plague which specifically killed males in Iobaria about 500 years after the Taldan armies of Exploration:
2546 AR Ohjar's Plague kills a third of all male centaurs, orcs, and humans across the land in a mere 8 months.
... but that was still 1,500 years ago, and you'd think that a gender imbalance caused by war or disease would correct itself within a few generations.
I haven't found anything in official Golarion lore that specifically says the cyclopes and centaurs were enemies back before Earthfall, but IMC I'm saying there was indeed such an enmity. That's why the Nomen centaurs today have inherited a duty to guard "the west" against Vordakai's return.
It's also going to be why, in Vordakai's tomb, I'm going to add a magical construct powered by the Four Horsemen, probably in W18, which visits plagues and death on male centaurs within 100 miles (since the males were the warriors when the thing was created). This ancient curse was the source of Ohjar's plague (which spread beyond the 100 mile radius once it got going), and continues to kill most of the male offspring of centaur tribes that dwell close to the Tors of Levenies. That's why the centaurs of the area still have a reputation of having "No men". It also means that if the PCs identify and destroy it as part of dealing with Vordakai, the local centaur tribes will start to increase in numbers, hopefully in time to be useful by the time we hit mass combat in War of the River Kings.
One of the book titles: "Centaur skyles..."
...what the heck is a skyle? All I can find is a Lithuanian rock band.
I like the idea, tough you will have to do a significant amount of rework. I would suggest to use some sort of fey instead of humanoids, you can keep the theme and also create some nice NPCs.. Useful for a little foreshadowing maybe? The hero could be a couple of erlking plus amadryad whom beat the thing by sealing him at the cost of their life,
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Idle thought I just had: there's this massive linnorm skeleton a couple of hexes away from the necromancer BBEG's lair. What if, perhaps after the PCs have gone into the lair but had to retreat for to rest or for a kingdom turn, it got animated and parked outside as a guard dog? The only disappointment is that, although it's physically imposing, even a max HD skeleton is only CR 8. OTOH it's a pretty deadly CR 8 with all of those attacks.
Idle thought I just had: there's this massive linnorm skeleton a couple of hexes away from the necromancer BBEG's lair. What if, perhaps after the PCs have gone into the lair but had to retreat for to rest or for a kingdom turn, it got animated and parked outside as a guard dog? The only disappointment is that, although it's physically imposing, even a max HD skeleton is only CR 8. OTOH it's a pretty deadly CR 8 with all of those attacks.
Wow, I totally overlooked that potential. Thanks for the thought!
It could be a good consequence if the PCs take too long to rescue Xamanthe, too. She definitely knows about the Linnorm skeleton (unlike the Varnholders, who probably don't), so V might learn about it from her in her delirium if he holds on to her for long enough.
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The Horror Adventures has a template in it that is ridiculously perfect for Vordakai: The Dread Lord. Although instead of the borders of its domain being applied right away, I figured a rate of 6 miles per month would be dramatically appropriate.
Cheers!
CB out.
Alright. I have read through this thread and see. Some good ideas (well, - ton of amazing ones,) but not I. Reference to precisely what I'm looking for?
PCs have fought their way through a good portion so far, just finished up with the piscodaemon and find Xamanthe. But now they intend to retreat to rest. Not just, like, inside the tower, but leave it entirely.
V knows about them, obviously, and will send a soul eater along, but what should I do for their return back INTO the tower? Does it repopulate? I'm thinking the piscodaemon will be back, it almost killed our gunslinger, but I feel like V, seeing what the PCs have done, would gird his loins here, so to speak, and up tower defenses? Any thoughts?
I'm at a similar position, except the PCs have retreated several times already.
He can bind a daemon 1/week. The piscodaemon is the most powerful option of those available, although soul eaters are good for hunting someone down outside of the tomb. There's no reason for the party to go back through the piscodaemon's original room now that they've rescued Xamanthe, so V would have it guarding some place useful based on how they've been entering the island (ground floor or ledge door).
It's pretty trivial for V to, for example, slap arcane locks on the doors. Depending on if you've added anything to the adventure he may have an associate with access to cleric magic as well, which could provide some cheap traps like glyph of warding. That won't stop the players but it would slow them down. Alarm spells can also alert V of when the players breach certain areas; he can then direct forces (piscodaemon, dread zombie cyclops) to set an ambush for them while they work on bypassing the locked doors.
If you want to get evil, have V be part of the ambush as well.
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According to the Iobaria timeline, there was also a plague which specifically killed males in Iobaria about 500 years after the Taldan armies of Exploration:
2546 AR Ohjar's Plague kills a third of all male centaurs, orcs, and humans across the land in a mere 8 months.... but that was still 1,500 years ago, and you'd think that a gender imbalance caused by war or disease would correct itself within a few generations.
I haven't found anything in official Golarion lore that specifically says the cyclopes and centaurs were enemies back before Earthfall, but IMC I'm saying there was indeed such an enmity. That's why the Nomen centaurs today have inherited a duty to guard "the west" against Vordakai's return.
It's also going to be why, in Vordakai's tomb, I'm going to add a magical construct powered by the Four Horsemen, probably in W18, which visits plagues and death on male centaurs within 100 miles (since the males were the warriors when the thing was created). This ancient curse was the source of Ohjar's plague (which spread beyond the 100 mile radius once it got going), and continues to kill most of the male offspring of centaur tribes that dwell close to the Tors of Levenies. That's why the centaurs of the area still have a reputation of having "No men". It also means that if the PCs identify and destroy it as part of dealing with Vordakai, the local centaur tribes will start to increase in numbers, hopefully in time to be useful by the time we hit mass combat in War of the River Kings.
I interpreted these not as there being very few male centaurs in the current time, but rather that the heavy losses shifted their society to a matriarchal one. That is, a couple of generations with very few men in the tribes caused their gender roles to flip around, with male centaurs being regarded as the "stay in camp" gender and the females being in charge and defending the tribe.
So in my game, currently the tribe does have roughly equal numbers of men and women, but the females are the ones doing what we would view as the "traditionally male" jobs.