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Why don't you run it first? Players will surprise you.
A metal weapon has hardness 10 so the damage dice would have to be 11 or 12 to actually give it the broken condition. It might scare the players, but it's not likely going to destroy their entire arsenal. There are other ways around its defenses. They might grapple & pin it, then acid splash it into oblivion for instance.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Well, to be fair, it only breaks weapons struck, not destroys them. And at 2d6 damage it has to get a little lucky to damage a metal weapon (hardness 10) and cannot hurt a mithral weapon. Also, bows and other ranged weapons are not affected. (only the arrows that hit it but they are broken anyways.) When I played it, the barbarian who could do lethal unarmed made pretty short work of it. You could grapple it and tie it up and move on. You could grapple it and smash it's head against the wall, you could grab one of the small statues and use it as an improvised weapon, you could retreat and go the other way (I don't think it follows you out of the room.)
I think there is a very narrow range of low level magic that hurts it. (Remember it is only immune to magic that is affected by SR, I think there is like one attack spell somewhere that ignores SR, but I could be wrong)
Energy attacks ignore DR, even mundane energy, so you could light a torch and start swinging, or use alchemy.
Umm... Trying to think of other things.
Oh yeah. Someone on one of the other thread, back when there were faction missions, and one of the groups faction mission was "bring us a sample of living stone" the group grappled, pinned, tied the statue up, carried it back to faction head quarters and dumped it in their lap and said "here is your sample"
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Take a look at the hardness by weapon type. Most of the time, the damage won't go through and actually be a problem. If it does, though, they're in trouble. The real value of this is that its a resource sink. When they see DR, they'll be worried and try to have someone do something arcane, eating a spell to no effect. They can chip it down, but it will cause damage in the meantime. This isn't the nastiest fight in the scenario, by far.
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I ran this scenario this evening and this encounter didn't even seem to challenge the PCs. I guess I seriously underestimated their damage output. The DR didn't seem to matter that much; they were hitting hard enough it wasn't that big of a deal.
My last player group had some problems with it, but that was at sub-tier 3-4, I was rolling well to hit, and the meat shield was the first level fighter.
Almost killed the fighter by crit, and that with the fighter following advice to go total defense, so his AC was 24.
The higher level PCs managed to kill the two statues, with some effort.
Fighter had stepped up, as the good AC, not bad hit points, type. Went total defense, so 24 AC during the encounter. Statues are +8 to hit, so only a 1 in 4 chance, and had hit once already.
Crit threat. Rolled the confirm. You, as GM know that a crit on the fighter at this time will outright kill the fighter because of their already damaged condition. The player's second PFS game, first time playing with their actual PC.
Confirm die shows up with a 16. Do you:
1) Confirm the crit, killing the PC?
2) Grab the die, hope no one saw the number clearly, and claim it was a 15?
3) Do somethign different, that I couldn't think of?
I chose number 2, and even with that, the fighter was in the negatives form that hit.
Did I do wrong? Should I have just rolled the crit anyhow?
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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it occurs to me that you could have loaned the player a folio, and allowed them to reroll the crit you rolled before you rolled to confirm. It is a little questionable, since it is not clear that a player can use a folio to reroll someone elses die. (The guide just says player may reroll one d20 roll. Not "one d20 roll they have made.) ) There is some further debate about when you can transfer ownership of a folio per game.
But most tables seem to accept the GM having a folio and donating it to the table at large to reroll one roll.
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I had the final encounter of the Dalsine Affair go a bit out of control. I tried to ease it back by using second-rate tactics, not always using
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Just remember, once they do almost anything to her, it will wake her up.
When I ran it recently, they managed to Sleep her, but woke her up when they decided to use their first attack to sunder another of the tendrils/tentacles from her.
Then again, the whole batch of 5 zombies, and at the sub-tier I ran it, they were just zombies, went down fairly rapidly. Channeling Cleric and some PCs who actually had good bonuses to hit.
Of course, they almost forgot to deal with the tin can, but that was almost another story....
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So, interesting question. If you sleep her and then try to sunder the brain box, does that wake her up?
Second question, can the brainbox (yes, I really am too lazy to look up his name) wake her up by screaming in her head with his telepathy?
This is similar to my original line of thinking. Essentially shouldn't the possessing entity be able to jar her out of a slept condition?
OR- Perhaps she ignores the spell because its an overlapping and competing mental control spell (CRB 209)?
OR- Perhaps the possessing wizard/gate can jettison one of the umbilical cords on her turn and thus damage her and wake her up?
OR- Maybe she just falls asleep like a baby. IDK.
I kind of like the umbilical cord jettison idea because it still allows her to be slept and lose a turn of actions and begin from a prone position. But it doesn't end the entire scene in one stroke, and seems to be in line with whats plausible in this scenario.
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Almost killed the fighter by crit, and that with the fighter following advice to go total defense, so his AC was 24.
The higher level PCs managed to kill the two statues, with some effort.
** spoiler omitted **
I had a similar issue when I ran it. All in all, the combats where not that lethal, but I rolled really well for a statue and dropped our highest level tank to near death in the first round of combat. A lot of poor rolls on the players part almost destroyed a weapon, but it as I recall it took a while. In my opinion, it is one of the better scenarios over all, (can't really blame the combats as an earlier scenario), and has so much potential for a DM to toss in some great flavor and set the mood for horror and madness.
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Of course, they almost forgot to deal with the tin can, but that was almost another story....We detached the can from the gate after neutralizing her, but we didn't know to destroy it (since nobody could read the notes upstairs), instead taking it back to the Society to be cataloged.
What I'm wondering is, does the Canned Brain open the gate and influence Ms. Blackrose by having flipped an "on" switch (which can only be switched to "off" by killing it)? Or must it continually exert effort to do so?
If it's the latter, just taking C.B. out of telepathic range (60'?) or sticking it in a lead container should be enough to shut down the gate & possession.
It's been a while, but I think that anyone interacting with it in such a fashion, trying to take it somewhere, winds up having to make one or more Will saves as it tries to take them over.
Nope,doesn't include the information needed to do that, just that it will try to dominate someone else to try again to open the gate if it isn't destroyed.
I also have a question about this adventure... I usually see an event sign in sheet for players in these scenarios right before the end, before the advertisements and the chronicle sheets... I can't find one in my download copy of Voice in the Void. What's up with that? Do I need it? I figured that was something I keep for my GM records, isn't it? Help? This is not a retired scenario, so I'm not sure what's up? But I'm supposed to be running this on Friday (with several different GMs running scenarios for our PFS, I kind of had to pick a line so we didn't end up prepping the same things so I picked all the Blakros-related ones).
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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The event sheet is not required, it's just helpful. You're supposed to report the scenarios you run to Paizo.com, and the event sheet helps make sure you record all the players' information that you need. But any other form that carries the same information is just as good.
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Venture-Agent, Colorado—Denver
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I also have a question about this adventure... I usually see an event sign in sheet for players in these scenarios right before the end, before the advertisements and the chronicle sheets... I can't find one in my download copy of Voice in the Void. What's up with that? Do I need it? I figured that was something I keep for my GM records, isn't it? Help? This is not a retired scenario, so I'm not sure what's up? But I'm supposed to be running this on Friday (with several different GMs running scenarios for our PFS, I kind of had to pick a line so we didn't end up prepping the same things so I picked all the Blakros-related ones).
As long as you have the scenario number & name, your players' names, pfs numbers and faction on a piece of paper, that is all you need to report the session.
If your organizer leaves it up to you to report the session afterwards yourself, we're here to help if you need any assistance.