5-17 Fate of the Fiend - GM Discussion


GM Discussion

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Scarab Sages 5/5 5/55/55/5

TriOmegaZero wrote:
I'm hoping for low subtler. The variant bulettes really slowed my table down.

One was a real sweety. They're so cute when the ground shakes when you rub their belly!

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 **

I just ran this scenario and had a huge fight break out at my table during the final encounter. So I'd like some peer review. As context, Severina's tactics say that

Spoiler:
"Severina fights for five rounds or until she has 30 or fewer HP, whichever comes first. At that point, she realizes this battle does nothing to serve her, and she attempts to leave the chamber and teleport away."

I had a player (who had previously GMed the scenario) argue with me about what invalidates her tactics. Here is the situation:

As a INT 22 creature, I ruled that getting hit for 2/3 of her total HP in a SINGLE attack (by an uber min-maxed character) is sufficient to trigger the "she realizes this battle does nothing to serve her" in that she realizes that "one more hit from this person and I'm dead." So at 52/125ish HP I had her try to Dimension Door away one round 1, defensively (she does). One round later, she uses her scroll of Teleport and boom, gone, done with scenario. Y'all win! Yay! (After all, she just wants to leave! And half the party was OK with this in the first place.)

SO, then, the player (using metagame knowledge from previously GMing) calls me out on this. I read the tactics aloud to the table, verbatim, and six of my seven players agree that, yes, I made the right call. That a 22 INT lich would be smart enough to know she's doomed, and this would thereby invalidate the tactics. But the one player makes me RESTART the combat from the Dimension Door, wasting 20 minutes of everyone's time as two rounds later she is reduced to 20 HP and the same result.

SO. My question: Is this situation a fair example of tactics becoming invalidated? If so, did I make a reasonable call (as most of my table thought) or not? If not, what should I have done better?

Grand Lodge 4/5

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

Sounds reasonable to me. They had a round to try and stop her from getting clear, and should have had the knowledge that dimension door was short range.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

I concur with your tactics. I personally wouldn't have agreed to restart a combat after it was over with, and would have instead invited the player to bring any concerns to my local VC - *especially* if every other player agreed with you.

Good job keeping your cool!

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Yup, your call sounds 100% reasonable. No reason for the lich to have to die and reform - that's all sorts of inconvenient.

5/5

I agree with the idea of running from that monster of a hit. Only thing that might not work is the dimension door. It depends on when you start counting for the dropping of the forbiddance, since as long as that is up ddoor doesn't work inside (and she can't leave).

EDIT: It says 1 minute from breaching the tomb...when do you actually "breach" the tomb?

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 **

They spent a a good while talking to her before the combat started.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/5

Jim Harris wrote:
They spent a a good while talking to her before the combat started.

Then she had more than enough time. If they attack her right away, I'd say not enough time has passed, but they didn't. A diplomacy check is sup[posed to take a minute and if they let her talk then it is definitely enough time.

Grand Lodge 5/5

Talk? Hells I was trying to get her to hook up with Colson Maldris!

4/5

Jim Harris wrote:

I just ran this scenario and had a huge fight break out at my table during the final encounter. So I'd like some peer review. As context, Severina's tactics say that

** spoiler omitted **

I had a player (who had previously GMed the scenario) argue with me about what invalidates her tactics. Here is the situation:

As a INT 22 creature, I ruled that getting hit for 2/3 of her total HP in a SINGLE attack (by an uber min-maxed character) is sufficient to trigger the "she realizes this battle does nothing to serve her" in that she realizes that "one more hit from this person and I'm dead." So at 52/125ish HP I had her try to Dimension Door away one round 1, defensively (she does). One round later, she uses her scroll of Teleport and boom, gone, done with scenario. Y'all win! Yay! (After all, she just wants to leave! And half the party was OK with this in the first place.)

SO, then, the player (using metagame knowledge from previously GMing) calls me out on this. I read the tactics aloud to the table, verbatim, and six of my seven players agree that, yes, I made the right call. That a 22 INT lich would be smart enough to know she's doomed, and this would thereby invalidate the tactics. But the one player makes me RESTART the combat from the Dimension Door, wasting 20 minutes of everyone's time as two rounds later she is reduced to 20 HP and the same result.

SO. My question: Is this situation a fair example of tactics becoming invalidated? If so, did I make a reasonable call (as most of my table thought) or not? If not, what should I have done better?

Wouldn't this sequence of events fail the mission for the PCs?

Spoiler:
In addition to her gear, Severina Helsprex
keeps an ivory baton (see the sidebar) on one of the
bookshelves. Depending on how the PCs handle the
encounter, they either receive the baton without a fight,
recover it from Severina’s remains, or lose the baton
when Severina flees combat.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The PCs successfully complete their main mission so
long as they recover Severina Helsprex’s ivory baton, lead
at least eight of her golems out of Rachikan, and transport
the golems back to the Grand Lodge. Doing so earns each
PC 1 Prestige Point.

With such high stakes, I would not have let her escape before the requisite 5 rounds. I suppose she could always drop the baton before she DDoored away in the hopes that the "scary powerful" PCs won't try to track her down somehow.

I do agree that it is intuitive for a highly intelligent PC to flee after a devastating opening volley, especially since she didn't really want to fight in the first place. I definitely agree that the player with GM knowledge shouldn't be acting like that, though it's a tough pill to swallow if they actually did fail the mission(presumably they did not since you didn't mention it).

5/5 *****

They can only lose it when she flees if she is able to pick it up on the way out.

4/5

I was under the impression that she is using the baton to control her golem allies. At second glance their tactics seem to indicate that they protect her regardless, and only in the high tier.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 **

And my table was playing lower tier.

Silver Crusade 4/5

I'll be running this at a con. Any suggestions for how to ensure this stays within the time slot?

Sovereign Court 5/5

Prethen wrote:
I'll be running this at a con. Any suggestions for how to ensure this stays within the time slot?

Two major fights have friendly NPCs already programmed in as a mechanic.

You can have the friendly morlocks at the bulette ambush be in sufficient force to make sure that fight stays short.

The major battle against the demons, with morlock and hellknight allies, can also be rigged to use allies again to make sure the fight only lasts so long and to make sure there's time at the end to deal with the colossus puzzle and the BBEG encounter.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

Prethen wrote:
I'll be running this at a con. Any suggestions for how to ensure this stays within the time slot?

Pre-rolling all of your initiatives especially for the big fights will help. Also, you can pre-roll perception/other checks for NPCs who will be interacting with the PCs, or just assume they take 10 (i.e. the prison guards might be taking 10) - this one *can* run long, so every die roll you don't have to do helps :)

Silver Crusade 4/5

What are some good time milestones to watch the clock with during my con run? There are 5 encounter areas that I see. What time marks might indicate I'm okay with time?

I realize in PFS you're technically not allowed to get too creative with the scenario, but I'd sure hate to just end the scenario if I run out of time. In fact, I'm not even sure what happens if that would occur. I guess the players would probably lose out on a bunch of gold and both PP?

So, the taboo PFS question to ask is, if I have to get creative to get the party towards the finish line (but not just let them "walk over" any encounters) what suggestions do you have? And, I completely agree with the other suggestions to have as many rolls pre-rolled as possible. I usually do that with initiatives and certain perception checks anyway for all scenarios I run at a physical table.

One thing I have done in the past and I'd be very willing to do in this case is if the party is basically mopping up on an encounter to call it and move on. Other than that, I'm not sure since I don't want to just hand the table a "gift" so to speak.

5/5 *****

I am prepping to run this tomorrow and there are some fairly basic editing errors in the editing section which I am hoping someone can help me with.

When you fail a check to control the Golem it thrashes about. This is what it days:

Quote:

Each time the PCs fail one of these checks, the behemoth golem thrashes about to shake off the unwanted occupants. Any creature in or on the golem must attempt a Reflex save (DC equals the result of the

golem’s combat maneuver check [CMB +47]). Creatures standing anywhere other than within the fortress that fail their save fall to the plaza below, taking 4d6 damage (2d6 if the golem is crouching). Creatures within the fortress that fail their saves are jumbled about and take
10d6 bludgeoning damage (Reflex DC 21 for half ). In Subtier 7–8, the golem only thrashes once for every third failed skill check.

So is the DC 21 or the CMB check of 1d20+47? The first seems more likely but seems to be directly contradicted by the text. What exactly is the effect of the first save? I can sort of see a reading which says that the first save results in a character inside being flung outside and that the second is the save against the damage but it is far from clear.

Dark Archive 5/5 *

andreww wrote:

I am prepping to run this tomorrow and there are some fairly basic editing errors in the editing section which I am hoping someone can help me with.

When you fail a check to control the Golem it thrashes about. This is what it days:

Quote:

Each time the PCs fail one of these checks, the behemoth golem thrashes about to shake off the unwanted occupants. Any creature in or on the golem must attempt a Reflex save (DC equals the result of the

golem’s combat maneuver check [CMB +47]). Creatures standing anywhere other than within the fortress that fail their save fall to the plaza below, taking 4d6 damage (2d6 if the golem is crouching). Creatures within the fortress that fail their saves are jumbled about and take
10d6 bludgeoning damage (Reflex DC 21 for half ). In Subtier 7–8, the golem only thrashes once for every third failed skill check.
So is the DC 21 or the CMB check of 1d20+47? The first seems more likely but seems to be directly contradicted by the text. What exactly is the effect of the first save? I can sort of see a reading which says that the first save results in a character inside being flung outside and that the second is the save against the damage but it is far from clear.

Depends on the location of the pcs when it thrashes as outlined in the text

Silver Crusade 5/5

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The behemoth golem tries to shake off occupants, the Reflex DC is equal to 1d20+47 (the golem's cmb). Those who are inside the structure atop the golem that fail the save get a second reflex save at DC 21 to avoid being jostled about the fortress quite so roughly. So, the answer is first DC 1d20+47, then DC 21 to take half damage.


There is a pretty negative review of this module posted on the product page. The reason for the negativity is that the player(s) lost about 40,000 GP in gear to the slimed bulettes. I posted a reply there, but I thought it would be helpful to update this GM thread too, just in case it might keep a GM from sucking. Here you go.

Having read the encounter stats, those bulettes do have a demonic acid that does destroy your weapons. And yes, hardness is ignored, so your weapons are vulnerable. So the encounter is trying to ruin high-level gear on purpose and if gear is lost then it's working as intended.

However, while normal weapons are almost automatically destroyed, magical weapons are listed as getting a DC 23 reflex saving throw to avoid the damage entirely. Still, if a PC delivers 2 or 3 hits, even at high tier it's likely to fail at least one of those saving throws and end up with a damaged weapon.

Having said that, something like a +1 corrosive thundering katana has a hardness of 12 (10 base and 2 more for being a +1 magical weapon), and hit points of 20 (10 base and 10 more for being a +1 magical weapon). So taking 1 to 9 points of damage wouldn't even cause a problem, and taking 10 to 19 points would only put the weapon in a "broken" condition (-2 to hit/damage). Here is a link to the weapon hardness & hit point table.

In addition, even if the weapon were to be destroyed by taking 20+ points of damage, that weapon is not lost! The spell Make Whole will fully restore a fully destroyed weapon. Yes, even if it's completely destroyed, Make Whole will return it to perfect working condition! There is a risk/cost -- the person casting Make Whole must have a caster level "at least twice that of the item." So you may need a high level caster, and that might cost a little extra.

OK, so what is the level of the item? The rules say, "For an item with only an enhancement bonus and no other abilities, the caster level is three times the enhancement bonus. If an item has both an enhancement bonus and a special ability, the higher of the two caster level requirements must be met." So let's use the +1 corrosive thundering katana as an example. The enhancement is +1, so that's easy. Corrosive is +1 equivalent, and thundering is too. You pick the highest (they're all 1) and triple it -- so the caster level is merely 1x3 = 3! Make Whole says it'll fully restore the item if the person casting the spell has twice that level, or in this case is at level 6.

Spellcasting services cost "caster level × spell level × 10 gp." So 6th level caster x 2nd level spell x 10 gp = 120 GP. Yes, that's right. To restore our completely destroyed example item, it's a mere 120 GP!!!

So for anyone who thought that fight was brutal and sad, you would be correct. However, if you thought your amazing magical weapon was lost, you would be incorrect. Head to a town, hire a wizard, get Make Whole cast for 120 GP, and get your item back, completely restored.

If the item is +2 (or has an ability that is +2 equivalent, such as Defiant), then the item caster level is 6, and you need to hire a 12th level caster to do Make Whole. That costs 240 GP. If the item is +3 or equivalent, then you need to spend 360 GP to get Make Whole cast. Items that are +4 or higher... I dunno... maybe they're lost? They need a wizard or cleric casting at level 24, and that level doesn't exist in Pathfinder. Maybe there is a way to cast at a higher level (for example, arcanists using Potent Magic), so maybe you could somehow get a +4 item repaired, but it's a big maybe.

Hopefully any GMs reading this will run that fight as brutal and mean as it is intended to be, and let the players be shocked at the loss of awesome weapons, but then -- importantly -- tell the players how easily their items can be brought back to life!!!

4/5 ** Venture-Agent, Missouri—St. Louis

Use Greater Make Whole. 4th level spell, but you only need to have a caster of the same CL as the item.

Silver Crusade 5/5

Mike Brock has clarified that you can get Make Whole cast at whatever level needed to fix an item, even if it isn't strictly speaking possible (for items with a CL over 20). I don't currently have the link to it, but doing a quick search through Mike's posts should point you in the right direction.

Edit: Found link.

4/5

outshyn wrote:

The spell Make Whole will fully restore a fully destroyed weapon. Yes, even if it's completely destroyed, Make Whole will return it to perfect working condition! There is a risk/cost -- the person casting Make Whole must have a caster level "at least twice that of the item." So you may need a high level caster, and that might cost a little extra.

OK, so what is the level of the item? The rules say, "For an item with only an enhancement bonus and no other abilities, the caster level is three times the enhancement bonus. If an item has both an enhancement bonus and a special ability, the higher of the two caster level requirements must be met." So let's use the +1 corrosive thundering katana as an example. The enhancement is +1, so that's easy. Corrosive is +1 equivalent, and thundering is too. You pick the highest (they're all 1) and triple it -- so the caster level is merely 1x3 = 3! Make Whole says it'll fully restore the item if the person casting the spell has twice that level, or in this case is at level 6.

Spellcasting services cost "caster level × spell level × 10 gp." So 6th level caster x 2nd level spell x 10 gp = 120 GP. Yes, that's right. To restore our completely destroyed example item, it's a mere 120 GP!!!

You're calculating this wrong in your example

a +1 weapon requires a caster level of 3
Weapon Special Abilities - Caster Level for Weapons wrote:
For an item with only an enhancement bonus and no other abilities, the caster level is three times the enhancement bonus.

A corrosive weapon has a caster level of 10

A thundering weapon has a caster level of 5
Weapon Special Abilities - Caster Level for Weapons wrote:
The caster level of a weapon with a special ability is given in the item description.
Corrosive wrote:
Price +1 bonus; Aura moderate evocation; CL 10th; Weight —
Thundering wrote:
Price +1 bonus; Aura faint necromancy; CL 5th; Weight —

So a +1 corrosive thundering katana, would have a final CL of 10 (the highest of the three) and thus the make whole would require a 20th level caster (thus putting the cost at 20 x 2 x 10 = 400 gp)

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East

What happens if they take out the Behemoth Golem in a single round? Or in extreme cases, in a single hit? Yes, I have a character that can one-shot it. At level 9.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Then the PCs need to figure out some other way of getting up to the lich. Time to get creative!

And they better hope they don't miss, because if they even leave it at 1 hit point, then it's collapsing the cavern. Mission Over. Time to pass out chronicle sheets.

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