Bonekeep Level 2 [SPOILERS]


GM Discussion

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1/5

Castilliano wrote:
Those free attacks shouldn't have occurred unless you mean you had to find places to fit, which I think you could do by using your friends as cover.

Friends don't provide cover though. (CRB p193, Moving through a square)

5/5 **** Venture-Lieutenant, Michigan—Detroit

How tall are the ceilings in the rooms of level 2? I ran this over the weekend and there was a large + flying mount. I assumed enough ceiling for it to fly everywhere, but the maze section. With 5 ft. wide corridors, I assumed the maze section had a 5 ft. tall ceiling.

How far apart are the sections? It matters for spells that are up. For example, if shield other is cast on player A by player B in room 2 and then either player steps through a portal to room 3 or 4, will the spell still be in effect? (shield other, a Close spell, ends if the 2 people are separated by more than the spell's range.)

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I assumed that the rooms are as far apart as the map shows that they are. (Aka the actual layout of the rooms on the map is their actual relation in space.)

The Exchange 1/5

Part one of the dungeon is a slog but a decent party can move through. Found the fighter backed up by a cleric worked best. I blew through part of a wand of owls wisdom to try to boost the partys saves so we went through that part of the dungeon in rounds. This helped keep the party inline because everyone gets 1 thing to do going around the table even out of combat.

Part two wasn't two bad till we lost two people who just rolled bad saves to the killer effect. First guy went down and second tried to breath of life him and went down as well. Boom party done.

Shadow Lodge 5/5

so Kind of necro here but had something come up in a discussion the other night that led me to a question about the ogre fight

if that thing goes off

do the PC's make 7 saves ... or 1

I looked at the text in the Scenario and it reads like its 1 save since only 1 damage value listed (1 for each tier)

when it comes to resist energy that could be a big deal (10 or 20 off each explosion)

TBH without resist energy it wont matter ... even 1/2 damage is enough to kill almost any PC there is at that level

Sovereign Court

Wraith235 wrote:
TBH without resist energy it wont matter ... even 1/2 damage is enough to kill almost any PC there is at that level

It'd also matter if they have evasion. With evasion and a good reflex (like nearly all characters with evasion have) - they may fail 1, possibly two if rolled seperately - and likely survive, if it's one saving throw, it's all or nothing.

Shadow Lodge 5/5

Like I said this was spawned from another topic ... tho your adendum also has merit

Sovereign Court 4/5

I ran Bonekeep 2 last weekend at a local RPG convention. The party composition ranged character levels from 5 to 7 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7 IIRC) and they pretty much breezed through most of the encounters, only the lvl 11 enchanter giving them a hard time with AoE blasts, eventually killing three PCs (one was raised at the spot with a clever use of boons and vanities). With only 15 minutes left they managed to turn down the crystal mound's defenses and in three rounds one character dealt enough damage to destroy it.

In my opinion the scaling has failed in this special. The monsters on higher subtier are not substantially harder than on the lower one. ACs increase by only 1, DCs by only 2 and so forth. The ogre fight especially was rather useless as the strong party managed to slash them dead in two rounds' time.

Conclusion? Too easy. Come on, you can do better. :)

Grand Lodge 5/5

Deussu wrote:

I ran Bonekeep 2 last weekend at a local RPG convention. The party composition ranged character levels from 5 to 7 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7 IIRC) and they pretty much breezed through most of the encounters, only the lvl 11 enchanter giving them a hard time with AoE blasts, eventually killing three PCs (one was raised at the spot with a clever use of boons and vanities). With only 15 minutes left they managed to turn down the crystal mound's defenses and in three rounds one character dealt enough damage to destroy it.

In my opinion the scaling has failed in this special. The monsters on higher subtier are not substantially harder than on the lower one. ACs increase by only 1, DCs by only 2 and so forth. The ogre fight especially was rather useless as the strong party managed to slash them dead in two rounds' time.

Conclusion? Too easy. Come on, you can do better. :)

Hitting the one of the ogres with fire (an alchemist's bomb) set off a 39d6 fireball on most of our party (which hurts quite a bit, luckily due to evasion and positioning only killed 1, who got a BoL scroll), and the final fight nearly killed us (in fact we had to teleport out holding two dead in our hands), while we fairly well breezed through 1 and 3. YMMV.

Grand Lodge 5/5 Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic

Joe Ducey wrote:
Hitting the one of the ogres with fire (an alchemist's bomb) set off a 39d6 fireball on most of our party (which hurts quite a bit, luckily due to evasion and positioning only killed 1, who got a BoL scroll), and the final fight nearly killed us (in fact we had to teleport out holding two dead in our hands), while we fairly well breezed through 1 and 3. YMMV.
CRB: Necklace of Fireballs wrote:
If the necklace is being worn or carried by a character who fails her saving throw against a magical fire attack, the item must make a saving throw as well (with a save bonus of +7). If the necklace fails to save, all its remaining spheres detonate simultaneously, often with regrettable consequences for the wearer.

Rules say magical & failed save. A direct hit from an alchemist's bomb has neither, so RAW this wouldn't happen.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Auke Teeninga wrote:
Joe Ducey wrote:
Hitting the one of the ogres with fire (an alchemist's bomb) set off a 39d6 fireball on most of our party (which hurts quite a bit, luckily due to evasion and positioning only killed 1, who got a BoL scroll), and the final fight nearly killed us (in fact we had to teleport out holding two dead in our hands), while we fairly well breezed through 1 and 3. YMMV.
CRB: Necklace of Fireballs wrote:
If the necklace is being worn or carried by a character who fails her saving throw against a magical fire attack, the item must make a saving throw as well (with a save bonus of +7). If the necklace fails to save, all its remaining spheres detonate simultaneously, often with regrettable consequences for the wearer.
Rules say magical & failed save. A direct hit from an alchemist's bomb has neither, so RAW this wouldn't happen.

An alchemist's bomb is definitely magical (it's supernatural) and depending on what discoveries the bomb had, it might require a save. Hell, no one ever said that the ogre got direct hit - it might have just failed its save versus the splash damage.

Grand Lodge 5/5

James McTeague wrote:
An alchemist's bomb is definitely magical (it's supernatural) and depending on what discoveries the bomb had, it might require a save. Hell, no one ever said that the ogre got direct hit - it might have just failed its save versus the splash damage.

Pretty sure it was exactly that (I know there was a failed reflex save involved).

Sovereign Court 4/5

I was half-hoping they would have ignited the necklace. After all one character had a constant detect magic on, so I said "there's a magic aura among one of these three ogres". They later found out about that necklace (which they put into good use; completely destroyed the spider swarms and the ogre spider by placing the necklace in the middle of the central room of Area 7, opening the door and immediately igniting the necklace. It was glorious.)

As for the party composition:

Monk lvl 6/Cleric lvl 1, brutal melee destroyer with a ridiculously high AC.
Hunter lvl 5, had an animal companion named "Oh Crab". Fairly competent, but was overshadowed by pretty much everyone else.
Monk (Zen Archer) lvl 6, as always a flurry of arrows is very destructive. Had five durable adamantine arrows, which were essential to their survival.
Pregen Swashbuckler lvl 7, BY GODS that pregen is powerful!
Paladin 4/Bloodrager 1, fairly competent melee attacker with sword & board, but was overshadowed by others.
And last but not least something we dubbed "Cheesedome". A kitsune wizard-something that utilized Emergency Force Sphere to a ridiculous degree, leaving enemies inside the unmovable force sphere. Also had an azata familiar who used wands of ill omen to further contribute to the "cheesiness". All hate/love/laughter generated by this cheesemonger character can be directed to the world's northest (?) venture-lieutenant Markus Hyytinen. :)

Grand Lodge 5/5 Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic

James McTeague wrote:
An alchemist's bomb is definitely magical (it's supernatural) and depending on what discoveries the bomb had, it might require a save. Hell, no one ever said that the ogre got direct hit - it might have just failed its save versus the splash damage.

Ah, sorry, I misread, I assumed "Hitting the one of the ogres with fire" implied a direct hit.

My last run the party actually threw an alchemist's fire on the ogre in question and nothing happened. :-( (no save, no magic).

Grand Lodge 5/5

Oh it is completely possible I also wrote that in a confusing manner. Just got done with our local con, where I ran Bonekeep 1, Race for the Runecarved Key, and a charity event while also playing Bonekeep 2 & 3, over two and half days, bookended by shifts at work.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

As the GM for the explosion in question - yes, it was a direct hit. The saves I rolled were for the Ogres vs the 39d6 fireball :P

Grand Lodge 3/5

Ran through it this last weekend at F.O.G.Con in Pekin, IL with our lovely VC running it, a group of 6 players at levels 6 and 7, and a forewarning that he has only ever had TPKs result, and no one made it past 4 rooms.

Holy crap.

Spoiler:
First off, props to our VC for building an amazing 3D representation of the level. It was stunning to behold and great to play on. Secondly it was brutal, and we were going through our resources a bit too quickly for my liking. While we had a cleric and a couple front-liners, we had at best 1 heavy damage (summoner's ACG THW eidolon), a couple other frontline combat maneuver specialists that could output a decent amount of damage, a rogue, and a ninja.

The Cleric and Summoner ate so many saves in the initial middle-finger of a fight while our low-will save front-liners managed to get through it with only a single failed will save. The GM's dice were hot and many of our players were just rolling garbage. I have to say I enjoyed coming across the corpse though. We also wasted a few (3) third level spells trying to get rid of the gas... probably our biggest mistake. The rats got stomped and we even captured two for information, though we didn't get a terrible amount out of them.

The arena took out our grappler barbarian in one round with two critical hits in a row, but we managed to Breath of Life him back, and then our cleric channeled which is probably the only reason why we didn't wipe in that room. The same cleric (fire domain) nearly fireballed them, but held back after the brawler managed to swipe the greatclubs. After searching the bodies we were very glad.

I have to agree with posts above that a strong frontline character with high damage output (or three) is invaluable. We took so long getting through the maze because of enemy positioning and poor luck on rolls, it was what ultimately caused us to run out of time getting through the dungeon.

In the Mind Spiders room we killed one, but ended up grappling and removing them from our allies, and chucking the spiders through the portals. We hit time right as we finished searching the room. Our GM gave us a review of what else there was, however, and I think we would have been able to make it the rest of the way had we more time. It turns out we let a spider loose on the goblins, and with the other two we would have been able to kill them before we had to deal with the Ogre spider. I was sad we didn't get to deal with the fallout of that room... I wanted to see if the spider got any of the goblins.

Total score: We cleared 5 rooms and all survived. We spent about 2 hours trying to figure out how to get through the maze and past the creatures there as most of us would get dropped before we had a chance to take one down, a weapon stolen, or in the case of our combat maneuver specialists... roll low and not be able to pull one back through the portal into the open area where we could gang up on it. We all felt pretty proud for being able to walk out without a death, that was a disgusting slug-fest. Props to the author for being a jerk. :D

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

How should one handle the PCs hacking down the maze walls with adamantine weapons or stone shaping?

5/5 *****

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
How should one handle the PCs hacking down the maze walls with adamantine weapons or stone shaping?

Unless there is something unusual about the walls how would you normally handle it?

I tend to discourage dungeon tunnelling. Firstly I don't believe any old adamantine weapon will cut through walls, you need one suited to breaking them down as per HERE

Quote:
Ineffective Weapons: Certain weapons just can't effectively deal damage to certain objects. For example, a bludgeoning weapon cannot be used to damage a rope. Likewise, most melee weapons have little effect on stone walls and doors, unless they are designed for breaking up stone, such as a pick or hammer.

Ignoring Hardness doesn't help you if your weapon is incapable of damaging the object in the first place.

In addition the PC's rarely have the same sort of overview of the area as the players do looking at the map. If my players did want to engage in this then I would be looking for some sort of Knowledge Engineering checks to make sure they kept on target and to ensure the whole tunnel didn't collapse on them.

Finally this sort of thing causes a lot of noise and enemies don't necessarily just sit in their rooms waiting to be slaughtered. If you create that sort of disruption you could well find more than one encounters worth of enemies coming to investigate.

Having said that I did make a lot of use out of Stone Shape in Emerald Spire to bypass a variety of doors. Our fighter did suggest dungeon tunnelling on level 10 but we dissuaded him given the sheet quantity of lava on that level.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

We were already in combat, so the party who couldn't move through the portal were using their actions to hack at the wall for lack of anything better to do.

5/5 *****

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
We were already in combat, so the party who couldn't move through the portal were using their actions to hack at the wall for lack of anything better to do.

Well, if it is was me running and they weren't using some sort of adamantine bludgeoning or pick type weapon then they wouldn't have any effect. If they were then walls are generally hardness 8 with anything between 90 and 900hp per 10' square section as per HERE although it isn't clear how much thickness those HP represent.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

What if the wall is between two corridors and only rides the grid line? Like in this scenario.

5/5 *****

Then I would probably use the base value on the table. I might even quarter it for a 5x5 square.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

It's not a 5x5 square. It's literally the grid line between two empty squares.

5/5 *****

It's sill a 5x5 surface area you are trying to break through even if the depth isn't clear.

5/5 *****

The alternative might be to give it an arbitrary thickness and treat it like the wall of stone spell

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Okay, that makes sense.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Starfinder Superscriber
Deussu wrote:
Conclusion? Too easy. Come on, you can do better. :)

shudder

shudder

shudder

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Deussu wrote:
And last but not least something we dubbed "Cheesedome". A kitsune wizard-something that utilized Emergency Force Sphere to a ridiculous degree, leaving enemies inside the unmovable force sphere. Also had an azata familiar who used wands of ill omen to further contribute to the "cheesiness". All hate/love/laughter generated by this cheesemonger character can be directed to the world's northest (?) venture-lieutenant Markus Hyytinen. :)

Hmm, I would like to know how he used a 5ft sphere centered on himself to trap his enemies. Maybe I hit him up.

Shadow Lodge 5/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Deussu wrote:
And last but not least something we dubbed "Cheesedome". A kitsune wizard-something that utilized Emergency Force Sphere to a ridiculous degree, leaving enemies inside the unmovable force sphere. Also had an azata familiar who used wands of ill omen to further contribute to the "cheesiness". All hate/love/laughter generated by this cheesemonger character can be directed to the world's northest (?) venture-lieutenant Markus Hyytinen. :)
Hmm, I would like to know how he used a 5ft sphere centered on himself to trap his enemies. Maybe I hit him up.

its a 5 foot radius so using the apex you COULD cover 4 PC's

I do this all the time in Iron gods

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