Hi there,
I'm going to be running the umber hulk encounter in Ch.4 soon, and in prepping for it I'm putting together a pretty extensive 3D scene made out of cardstock buildings to set the action in. For some of the buildings I'm making both complete and ruined versions. So my question: How many buildings can I expect the umber hulk to trash before he gets taken down? How much damage did it do when you ran the encounter? I don't want to spend the time and printer ink on more ruined buildings than I'll need!
Thanks in advance!
Bump: I really would be grateful if previous SCAP DM's could share their experience with me on this! Thanks!
|
Hey Cleanthes; my umber hulk only got to pop out once before the party downed him. But at the time I was having a hard time gauging my party's power level (hint: high), and we have 6 players. Since I know you're running a large group, I would recommend tossing in an extra umber hulk or two to make it more interesting!
Thanks for the input, Zonto! I've often wondered if the hulk would be strong enough by itself to hold up for long, and if it doesn't, then you never get to add in all the extra elements to the encounter that make it interesting. I was already planning to have it burrow around more than the book suggests to keep the party on their toes, maybe even digging a couple of deadfalls for party members to fall into. I was also thinking of giving it full HP to keep it around a little longer. But having 2 on the scene maybe isn't a bad idea, especially since they devote most of their attacks to the buildings instead of the PC's.
Anyone else want to tell me how much destruction your umber hulk accomplished?
|
You can always have the second hulk waiting in reserve. Wait and see how the players handle the first one. If they are having an easy time of it, bring in the second one. Maybe only have one above ground at a time for a little while, giving them Spot checks to notice that it doesn't have that spear stuck in it anymore, etc.
Don't know if this is too late for you or not Cleanthes. The umber hulk in my campaign didn't have time to do much destruction at all. The thing I remember most about this encounter (it's been over a year now, so my memory is a bit hazy) was the umber hulk's confusion ability - it played havoc with the crowds as well as a few of the PCs. But with 7 PCs in the party - even with a couple confused - there were enough of them doing damage to the umber hulk that it simply couldn't ignore them for the sake of demolition. But the battle did take a number of rounds in any case.
Similarly, some of the scripted events described in the encounter just never took place, mostly because the battle never got that far down the street. The whole thing ended up taking place in a relatively small area of the map.
I enlarged the included map and printed out the scene, which made for a nice encounter - I had dozens of figures put out to represent all the citizens and it presented a memorable scene when the players first saw it. I can imagine it would be especially striking to have it all in 3D. Given how small an area the actual fight took place in I questioned whether it was worth it to print it all out, but I'm thinking now that I'll reuse the map for one of the scenes when I get to chapter 9 (Foundation of Flame). If you were to do it in 3D I imagine you might even be able to move some bits around and use it in more than one spot in that chapter.
Good luck, and post some pictures of your creation!
Thanks to everyone who responded, your feedback is really helpful! I haven't run the encounter yet, so there's still time for me to make adjustments. I have, however, built the set, so here's a link to that:
I'm thinking that I'm going to have the Umber Hulk use its burrowing ability a lot more to make it a harder target, and I may even have it create a couple deadfalls in the street where it thinks pursuers might chase it. I may also take Zonto's advice and have a 2nd hulk ready to go if it looks like the first one's not enough of a challenge. Fox's idea about the Spot check is a good one too. I think I should be ready now, if the players will just get there! :-)
My group was involved in this part last week. Mind you I am a player not the DM.
We had one player make the listen check (the druid) and he chose to cast might of the oak(Masters of the Wild/3rd ed) on the fighter. That alerted the rest of us so when hulky showed up we weren't too surprised. We were so far away that we had 3 or 4 crowds of townsfolk between us.
Rather than engage in melee my cleric of Wee Jass cast Celestial aspect( Book of Exhaulted Deeds) chose the Deva wings and took to the air. The rest of the party was trying to wade through the crowds or used long range spells. Next round I hit it with a 60 ft cone of celestial light(BoED) I can't remember the exact name of the spell and the wizard and fighter both hit it as well. I noticed the old man and his silly fruit cart but chose to ignore him. If he is too greedy to not run when his life is in danger then wee jass will be waiting for him.
The next round after taking some more damage the hukly flees and stays under for two rounds. I then help the old man and see to any dying or wounded now that the immediate threat is done.
The dwarf fighter is going nuts looking for this thing and the spell casters are buffing.
Hulky appears and zaps the mother and baby but dies after three party members make their listen check and are waiting for him to come up outta his new hole. After multiple attacks of opportunity hulky was cut to ribbons very fast and I on angel wings flew up and rescued the baby and mother.
My DM was NOT!! happy about how the fight went down because he felt me being able to spontaneously cast sacred spells from BoED gave me a little of an unfair advantage. I pointed out that since the game designers used it in the AP and it's counter the BoVD that it was a fair material. By the time the fight was done my strength score was down to 8 from a normal 14 BUT no loss of life and the property damage was minimal.
Thats how it went down in our party, aside from the party cleric sprouting wings and being rather vulgar in his display of magic I think it ran just like every other party.
Final report: It took us two and a half sessions to run the encounter, but it's done now. So I guess you could say I managed to avoid having the umber hulk go under in a couple rounds! This is for the following reasons:
-1- I had the hulk use its burrowing ability a lot more than the official book suggests. Instead of just mindlessly chopping at the building while it got whupped on, I had it move around a lot underground, so the party didn't know where to be, and the melee-weak characters were totally freaked that it might pop up right next to them.
-2- The party wizard blew a lot of his caster checks against spell resistance, and also wasted a fire spell on it that its fire resistance absorbed.
-3- A party member fell prey to the confusing gaze and ended up running around in the crowds wailing on innocent bystanders. He knocked two people unconscious and ended up outright killing another person one round before the gaze wore off. He's an exalted character, so that will be fun to play out. I also decided that the deceased person was the only living parent of the baby who had been saved by the party a moment before. So now the exalted monk is responsible for making this kid into an orphan. (Mwahahaha...)
-4- The party allowed itself to be distracted by all the civilians in the area (and I introduced the different distractions a little earlier than recommended in the book, too.) The wizard flew off to save the baby, and then the baby got passed around a bit while party members tried unsuccessfully to get the people in the inn to open the door and take the baby, until finally the charismatic bard got the kid and got the innfolk to open the door. Otherwise the bard spent all her time moving the confused crowds out of the way. The main party tank got hijacked helping to move the apple cart. Once the thief showed up, another party member ended up chasing her for a while, killing her, and then getting tangled up with some town guards who saw him kill her but didn't know why. (He had some explaining to do.) And when the town guard showed up to fight the hulk, half of them failed their saves, and they mostly ended up fighting each other and getting in the party's way.
Ultimately the encounter ran 15 rounds, and the hulk destroyed 2 buildings and was well into his third. If the MTA gnomes hadn't shown up and done some damage with their magic missiles, it probably would have gone longer. All in all, a pretty memorable encounter! And now a couple of the party members are going to have to answer for their actions in court, too. Bonus! :-)
So, Cleanthes, are you Steven Tindall's DM, or is it just coincidence that you were both playing and posting at the same time?
If you are the same game, bizarrely different highlights!
If not, cool -- glad to see the game is still getting played widely.
So, Cleanthes, are you Steven Tindall's DM, or is it just coincidence that you were both playing and posting at the same time?
If you are the same game, bizarrely different highlights!
If not, cool -- glad to see the game is still getting played widely.
No while I'm sure he is a fine DM Cleanthes is not MY DM.
The group I have been playing with for the past decade or so have been having a blast with this AP. We started this one after finishing up the last eberron module and we needed something new. We all died during the Age of Worms (we tried to do too much too quick and didn't rest between major fights, plus there was NO teamwork amongst our group)but we liked the greyhawk setting because we had never really played in it before.
Mostly we do the realms so greyhawk is kindda new and fun, none of us know the history or anything about the place but we all have the realms memorized from every edition.
After this is over were going back to the age of worms to allow a very inexperienced DM a chance to cut his teeth and if he changes too much we can smack him down. After that then we have Savage Tide. Then we will probably have no choice but to go to PF modules and retcon them back to 3.5 rules.
Our group is in Norfolk,VA and we have a full table but we would love to talk to other folks in VA.
So, Cleanthes, are you Steven Tindall's DM, or is it just coincidence that you were both playing and posting at the same time?
If you are the same game, bizarrely different highlights!
If not, cool -- glad to see the game is still getting played widely.
Yep, while I'm sure StevenTindall is a fine player, he's not MY player ;-)
I think there's probably still a lot of people out there playing SCAP, if the number of people I see posting new questions and stories about it on this forum is any indication. And it's a great campaign, especially with the large and growing treasure trove of DM-created material for it out there. It's unbelievable how many resources there are to draw on. So why not?