Feel free to steal, that's why I posted it here hehe.
The ability to relocate is why I marked it as a standard action, so they couldn't Shard then swing their swords, I agree that would be troublesome. Removing the ability to make a move action after kind of makes there not much reason to not use the full-round version unless they have to move before attacking to get in an optimal position for a line attack; I'm also okay with that. I'll reword it with that limitation next time =)
Trying to think of a good property to put on their swords. The Ghostly Guards had ghost touch so they could use it and still harm the corporeal PCs, obviously my guys won't be needing that. Any of the elemental damage abilities will likely be useless at this level, PCs will have plenty of resistance gear/spells for that sort of thing, especially after dealing with Frost Giant/Ilth/Jabberwock/Zomog/Linnorm and likely expecting more once inside the House. Don't want it to be too powerful, but would be nice to have a little something.
Make the swords +3 wounding. ^__^
Wounding, huh? Putting some sharp glass edges on those swords there... I'll look that up when I get home, sounds like a winner to me...
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Alright, with all those suggestions in mind... Beta! Reduced their HD, and with it the DCs and damage on their abilities - 12 HD might be a tad too high for a CR9 critter so reduced it to 10 (same as the Ghostly Guards, who are also CR9, was my reasoning). Also reduced the Reconstruction timer from 1d6 to 1d4 rounds, and added the dimension door wording to the end of Shards.
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CR 9: XP 6400 each
N Medium Construct
Init +4 Senses Perception +0, Darkvision 60 ft., Low-Light Vision
DEFENSE
AC 26 (+10 Armor, +4 Dex, +2 Nat) Touch 14 Flat-Footed 22
HP 70 (10d10+20)
Fort +3 Ref +7 Will +3
Defensive Abilities Construct traits, Mindless, Reconstruction, Reflection
DR 20/Adamantine, Feyforged
Weaknesses Feyforged, Force and Sonic Vulnerability
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft
Melee +1 glassteel wounding bastard sword +18/+13 (1d10+7 plus 1 bleed) and slam +12 (1d4+3 plus 1d8 piercing)
or +1 glassteel wounding bastard sword +18/+13 (1d10+10 plus 1 bleed)
or two slams +17 (1d4+3 plus 1d8 piercing)
STATISTICS
STR 24 DEX 18 CON -- INT -- WIS 10 CHA 10
Base Atk +10 CMB +17 CMD 21
Feats None
Skills None
Languages Aklo, Sylvan (cannot speak)
Special Attacks Death throes, Shards
SQ Glass body
Gear +1 glassteel wounding bastard sword, +2 glassteel full plate
Death Throes (Ex) When a Glass Knight is reduced to 0 hit points, it comes apart in a furious explosion of glass shrapnel. All creatures within a thirty-foot radius from the Glass Knight must make a Reflex save (DC 19) or take 10d6 points of piercing damage; success reduces this damage by half. This damage is considered adamantine for the purposes of damage reduction.
Feyforged (Su) Though their DR is pierced by adamantine, the nature of the Glass Knight's construction in the First World makes them partially vulnerable to Cold Iron. A Cold Iron weapon bypasses the first 10 points of their Damage Reduction; if an attack with a cold iron weapon deals at least one point of damage to a Glass Knight (after being reduced by the other 10 DR that can only be beaten with adamantine), the Glass Knight must make a Fortitude save (DC equal to the damage dealt) or be staggered for one round as the cold iron disrupts the magic holding it together, revealing the myriad cracks between the tiny shards of glass that compose its body.
Force and Sonic Vulnerability (Ex) A Glass Knight's body is fragile and takes 50% extra damage from Force and Sonic effects.
Glass Body (Ex) Glass Knights, being made of glass, are extremely lightweight compared to metal or stone constructs of similar design. All of their equipment is glassteel, but is just as much a part of their body as they are; when destroyed their equipment is destroyed with them. A Glass Knight's slam attack deals an extra 1d8 piercing damage due to the jutting shards of glass protruding from its fists.
Glass Knights are proficient with their armor, and ignore all Dexterity and Speed limits regardless of the type of armor they wear. They are proficient with their bastard swords both as martial and exotic weapons, allowing them to wield them one-handed (and thus use their slam attack with their free hand) or two-handed.
A Glass Knight uses its Dexterity modifier in place of its Constitution for determining the DCs of its abilities.
Mindless (Ex) Glass Knights are controlled entirely by Nyrissa's magic and have no intelligence of their own. They are immune to all mind-effecting affects (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns, and phantasms).
Reconstruction (Su) When a Glass Knight is destroyed, the remnants of its body remain as shattered glass scattered about. Much of this remains functional and still possesses the Fey magic that animates the constructs, however; on average, about half of the glass used to make an individual Glass Knight still has enough magic in it to be reused, and Nyrissa does so as much as she is able. 1d4 rounds after being destroyed, a Glass Knight attempts to reconstruct itself as a full-round action. If a second Glass Knight has been destroyed within 30 feet, the still-animate shards of glass will combine to create a new Knight at full hit points, which will immediately resume fighting on the following turn. Alternatively, a single Glass Knight with no others near enough to combine can reconstruct itself as a smaller variant of itself; in this case, apply the Young simple template to the Glass Knight to create this smaller version. Small Glass Knights will focus primarily on getting close enough to others of their size or recently-destroyed full-sized Knights, at which point they can still combine and resume full size as a full-round action; if destroyed while still Small, the remaining totality of their components are ruined beyond use. Small Glass Knights have the damage on their Shards and Death Throes abilities reduced by half.
Reflection (Su) The reflective surface of a Glass Knight is enchanted to rebound spells that strike it. Any spell, spell-like ability, or supernatural ability that requires a touch attack or ranged touch attack and is not a splash weapon that strikes the Glass Knight has a 50% chance to reflect back at its original user, using their own attack and damage bonuses and DCs; in such cases, the spell has no effect on the Glass Knight at all. Spells that have the [Light] descriptor but do not require touch attacks or ranged touch attacks have a 75% chance to reflect back at the caster (or, if an Area of Effect spell, to an area centered around the Caster; this effect only happens once per spell, regardless of how many Glass Knights were originally within the spell's intended area). Spells that both require a touch or ranged touch attack AND have the [Light] descriptor have a 100% chance of reflection.
Shards (Su) As a standard action, a Glass Knight can collapse into its component shards of glass and ram through opponents as a mobile torrent of glass. Treat this as a line attack with a range of 60 feet that deals 10d6 points of piercing damage; characters in the line can attempt a Reflex save (DC 19) for half damage. This damage is considered adamantine for the purposes of damage reduction. The Glass Knight reforms at the end of the line; it can choose to shorten the length of the line if it so wishes with no change otherwise, or lengthen it to 120 feet by taking a full-round action instead. Regardless of length, the Glass Knight cannot take any actions after using this ability until its next turn, as if they had just used a dimension door.
There's also the Glass Golem from Bestiary 2. Did you use it as a base, or come up with the Glass Knight independently?
Of course, now that it's done, it looks pretty sweet.
I was not aware of the Glass Golem, no. Glad you like =)
ok, so having very rarely had multiple saving throws fail, the party of 7 have conspired to mostly fail against the dragons acid pool and its frightful presence.....v cool that even with nearly everyone having acid resistance/30....they still took 47 damage!!!
question: the dragons F.P is frightened on a fail and shaken on a save for 5d6 rounds?
question: the dragons F.P is frightened on a fail and shaken on a save for 5d6 rounds?
found answer, so move along....
is the little black dragon allowed to use
the staff of defence
bracers of armour
gem of seeing
Don't see why not.
Don't see why not.
wahoo AC 56??
10
-2 size
-1 dex
33 natural
4 shield
4 deflection (staff)*
7 armor
1 haste
can i swap out a second level spell for cats grace?
*i guess it needs UMD?
*i guess it needs UMD?
Dragons cast as Sorcs, so I would say no it doesn't.
And yeah, you can fiddle with her spell list all you like. I usually completely retool dragons from what the book gives. It's your game. =)
may be a bit mean....though there are 7 of them.....and it will be session number 60 so about time i had a win!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If they're taking on Ilthy, they're level 15 or so... they can handle it. ;) And if they die, that's what resurrection is for.
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Since I plan on postponing this chapter for my group until after an altered Choral chapter, I've been looking at it for ideas to amp up the challenge to suit a group that will probably be closer to 20 when they reach this point. Here's what I have so far.
> Retool Thousandbreaths so that the various "zones" directly reference certain fairy tales. For example, paths leading to Kargstaad's zone will suddenly become vertical walls of vines as soon as PCs enter them; climbing to the top will lead to a cloudscape graveyard where the giants are waiting.
> The Knurly Witch will be moved closer to the House, so that the castle can be surrounded by her briars a-la Sleeping Beauty. I'm also rolling her, Ilthuliak, and the linnorm guard into one creature: Ilth was brought/invited to Thousandbreaths by Nyrissa ages ago, and her time here has warped her in multiple ways - the growth of a second head, her sorcerer spellcasting pulling from the witch list instead (haven't picked patron yet) and the addition of hexes, perhaps some plant-controlling ability (probably stolen from the green dragon), and maybe even the linnorm's death curse. She'll attack the PCs from her garden, retreat to the House gate if injured or slain (she can afford a contingent resurrection, but I'll probably waive it if she escapes before being killed in humanoid form, or just not have her retreat until after it's triggered, or something), then attack in dragon form, that way I can get my Maleficent apperance. =) The linnorm will be replaced, but I haven't decided what with.
> Phomandala will be upgraded from a saurian medusa to a half-dragon, with the template tweaked to mimic the jabberwock. Among other things, this will give her wings and the ability to trade her stone gaze for Mistah J's eye rays. She and the Wriggling Man will probably have contingencies placed on them by the latter to teleport them to the Fable once they take a certain amount of damage, allowing Nyrissa to heal them up and for them both to be present with her during the final battle.
> Speaking of the Fable, I will probably have it be a separate plane of its own, a pocket within Thousandbreaths regardless of whether or not the PCs get the place uprooted. There is just not enough room in the mundane Fable for Nyrissa, Phomandala, TWM, and my three PCs (one of whom is a centaur and thus Large) and that's presuming they won't have cohorts by that time. Nyrissa will probably be advanced a few levels in Sorc or MT (I forget if she's maxed out her MT levels yet). Depending on how things go, I am tempted to have another minion - someone/thing physical, since there's already three casters there - to serve as a meat shield/distraction for the final battle.
I'm open to other suggestions, as I'm away from my books at the moment due to being at work. ;)
Using your idea of the Fable being a separate plane, how about a thorn/hedge maze to get into the Fable? Covered, of course, so they can't fly over it. Somewhere inside is a pool or portal to get to the Fable, and it's filled with Plant creatures that when you kill them "explode" into a Rot Grub Swarm? It wouldn't have to be particularly "challenging", but it could help bleed resources prior to going into the Fable. There could be more of those Glass Knights or Glass Golems wandering throughout as well for variety.
Or a "Jurassic Park", filled with dinosaurs that have all kinds of bizarre templates added. I like this idea because it could be another of Nyrissa's playthings from ages ago that has since been discarded.
And then an "Ice Age Park", because who doesn't like Advanced Giant Dire Bears, Dire Tigers, Mastodons, Taiga Giants, etc?
I like the Dinosaurs/Ice Age idea. Definitely using that. I used Unseelie Deinonychus in my Savage Tide game to great effect, and still have their stats; converting the template from 3.5 shouldn't be too hard.
Maybe stick a plant-templated Minotaur in the hedge maze. Topiary labyrinth!
A super-minotaur that can sense and move through the walls of its Labyrinth, specifically via Spring Attack, is all kinds of nasty-cool.
I do recall having never used a particular deinonychus Wizard floating Round somewhere... ;)
Nyrissa Wins
20% chance she does her ship-in-a-bottle-thing
Proudly rolling the Kings Kingmaker dice a 19% comes up and after 60 sessions Nyrissa wins and the stolen lands are indeed stolen
We did have a magnificiently painted Nyrissa mini on hand
Back to someone else GMing and 1st level sanity next week
very, very good campaign indeed
Are the PCs trapped in the bottle? There's an amazing adventure to be played.
yes they are, as is a big part of the North of Golarion!!
Bottle is sat on a shelf, pride of place in the throne room of some as yet un-named First World Elder, as the now re-united with Briar 'Nyrissa' tries to gain influence once more....
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Are the PCs trapped in the bottle? There's an amazing adventure to be played.yes they are, as is a big part of the North of Golarion!!
Bottle is sat on a shelf, pride of place in the throne room of some as yet un-named First World Elder, as the now re-united with Briar 'Nyrissa' tries to gain influence once more....
WOW! :-)
They couldnt defeat the dragon in its watery lair, as i let it use the staff, gem and bracers. Plus i swapped out acid fog for antimagic field from discussions here nad elsewhere
we where unsure whether is DR/20 magic worked in an AMF as it is listed as both SU (wouldnt work) and EX (would work) in various books etc
The dragon put down the wielder of briar, and snatched it up and teleported, allowing the quite battered party to retreat before it came back!!
This menat the jabberwocky wasnt sent down and N therefore had a 20% win, from 2 blooms, and a19 was rolled
Are the PCs trapped in the bottle? There's an amazing adventure to be played.Revenge of the Micronauts!
Close enough. I approve.
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As it reads, this implies that it only happens when the PCs are actually in the First World. And while the benefits of it happening are definitly helpful to the PCs, I am questioning whether it has a chance to happen as they defeat blooms. I know the gaurdians listed do not actually show up in the blooms, but they have some control over them. This control reaches across the planes enough to make the bloom appear, so by destroying the bloom I would think that this would impact the chance that 1000Breath transfers, since it impacted the controling entity.
I would highly recommend against it, for several reasons.
First of all, there's nothing that specifically links the guardians to the blooms - they're linked to the glades, not the creatures that have to be defeated. For example, in area B, it's linked to the lightning treants, but the linked bloom involves the water elementals. In area J, it's the statues which are involved in the bloom, not the dragon. And so on.
Secondly, uprooting Thousandbreaths is supposed to be a big deal that makes the PCs feel like they accomplished something major. If it happens "off screen", when they aren't in the First World, then that's taken away from them. This is especially so if they hadn't even made it into the forest yet, so they don't know how things changed.
Finally, as a simple manner of mechanics, the more you roll, the more likely it is to happen. Even if it was just 1% chance every time you rolled, if you double the number of rolls, you double the chances of it occurring. And since it can't be undone (within the timeframe of the campaign), it's a pretty big bonus to give to the PCs for less effort than usual.
+1
I'm gearing up to run this adventure for my Kingmaker group and I've been checking out Nyrissa's quite impressive statblock. Some issues came up while talking about this with a friend and fellow GM though:
1) Her contingent cure critical wounds should probably cure 4d8+18 points of damage (caster level is 18, not 16).
2) Her flame blade should deal 1d8+9 damage (again, caster level is 18, not 16).
3) Her flame blade seems to be calculated using Weapon Finesse, which I don't think is right. Flame blade is like a scimitar which isn't a finesseable weapon. While it is a touch attack, it is not, however, a touch-delivered spell (like, e.g. shocking grasp). I don't think that touch attacks in general can be finessed. So in fact, her attack bonus should be based on Strength, resulting in +15/+10/+5/+0. In the end, I don't think this matters much, as she is not going to win the battle with her flame blade.
4) Why is a nymph's wild empathy abiliy a supernatural ability? It's extraordinary otherwise (and used to be extraordinary for the nymph in 3.5, too).
5) The DC of her sorcerer compulsion spells should be higher by 2 due to her fey bloodline arcana ability (e.g. DC30, not 28, for dominate person)
I don't think that touch attacks in general can be finessed.
I've always thought they could. Used to be pretty common for mages with a feat to spare to burn it on WF so they could make melee touches a bit more accurate due to dumped STR.
All the Touch Attack section of the combat page says is that it's an attack roll, with all the removed non-Touch bonuses to AC. I've always assumed that to mean it is otherwise considered an attack roll as per normal with whatever weapon you're using to deliver the touch, and as most people would simply use their hand - an unarmed strike or natural attack is always a light weapon - it would qualify for WF.
Might need to be FAQed, but that's how I've seen it done from both sides of the GM screen for years.
Does the Horned Hunter leave a trophy? I can't seem to find one listed.
Seems to have been left off his statblock.
I'd rule one of his arrows suitable, or perhaps even just any piece of his equipment.
Hm, I've checked again, and I think he doesn't count as a bloom, so no trophy.
How hard would it be to use SoTS as a module outside of the Kingmaker story line? I have a group which has a small outpost in an a forested area (city managed using kingdom building rules, but has not followed kingmaker AP at all). They've just hit level 16, and I'm looking for a non-dungeon adventure for them to chew on. This seems like it would fit in well, but I wanted some opinions before I buy (I used an alternate ending for my own KM campaign, so I've never seen the product).
It would represent an otherworldly hostile force attempting to overrun and conquer their kingdom. You'll need to modify it to fit your campaign (otherwise, it's game over before they can find where to kick otherworldly butt).
Fairly easily, but it does reference the previous book (War of the River Kings) for some things, including Briar, the weapon designed to defeat the big bad. You could always just place it elsewhere though or do away with it entirely.
Excise Briar, they won't really need it.
If you remove Briar, you should probably also change Nyrissa's wish - if she isn't expecting the PCs to be coming at her with a vorpal sword, there's really no need for a contingency against decapitation, and you can probably safely presume she knows her enemies well enough to prepare against something they DO use.
Thanks, great pointers.
As an appeasement gift to the Elders, hoping that she'll be able to bribe them into ending her exile.
She succeeded in our campaign and she is all reconciled with her 'masters'
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I know Mythic Adventures has only just starting being released. But has anyone considered adding mythic tiers to Nyrissa? Can't think of anyone more suited for a mythic upgrade than her...
My entire game is going into Mythic, starting with a tier-1 Hargulka.
She'd probably be best as a Dual-Pathed Archmage and Hierophant.
I can see that combo for Nyrissa. Archmage is a solid choice, especially with her bloodline and so forth. Hierophant is a tougher match (no deity, domains, channeling, wild shape, etc.), but there are still a few path abilities there that are thematic and/or useful.
Tempted to give her Divine Source. Hmm...
Divine Source would help justify her madness. "Look! I can grant spells! CLEARLY that means I am now one of the Eldest! How DARE they do this to me!"
A couple of quick questions:
After 4 blooms, my party gathered their totems and checked out the gate (at the castle of knives). They went through to 1000 Breaths. They defeated the Ents, and traveled up to the orchard and deafeated the Mandragora. At this point they roll very lucky and uproot 1000 breaths. Sooooo....
1) There were more blooms to come. I can't find where it says what happens to the blooms if 1000 breaths is Uprooted. I am guessing they stop (for years) as Nyrissa hides in the Fable gathering power to restore 1000 breaths to the first world. Do the encouter's count as defeated for structure (ie add worms if defeated)? I would assume they do not count as defeated for XP. What did you do?
2) It is a little moot, as 1000 Breaths is no longer in the first world. But how does the plane's eternal twilight effect a cleric's ability to pray for spells (if they get them at dawn for example). I don't think this will come into play as I expect Nyrissa might be defeated/ or the party will die before she restores 1000 Breaths. I ruled that since actual time runs in parity with the prime material, he could pray when it would be the appropriate time. What did others do?
PS: Best moment of the book so far was when the party rested in 1000 Beaths and the Rook triggered nightmares where a couple of PCs saved, but enough PCs failed where a secure shelter was filled with black tenacles, a T-rex, a whirlwind, and a succubus. Most disappointing/humorous orgy ever.