I have a Life Oracle in my party who has lifesense and we are about to go into the big combat under Renchurch where the important NPC they are trying to save is hidden among a throng of undead wearing said NPC's face. This is supposed to be big and climactic and a struggle for them to find the NPC. But since everything in the room is undead except the NPC, my oracle player will essentially have a big fat beacon of exactly where the NPC is. I'm trying to figure out a way to foil the lifesense ability in this specific situation. Is there a spell that would make the NPC show as not alive? An item? Anything?
I don't want to cheese it and just say it doesn't work in that room, because this player is very perceptive and can be difficult. Even if I crafted a custom magic item to hide the NPC, I could at least point to something and say "there, that's why it didn't work" after the fact. Besides, all the baddies know the PCs are coming and have been trying to hide this NPC for books now, and they know all about the PCs and their abilities, so it wouldn't be unreasonable that they made something for this exact situation.
Help is appreciated!
I'm afraid I can't think of any spells or items that are pre-existing. There is always making the juju zombies into regular cultists if you think a created item would be too much.
I ran into a bit of a different problem with our group. I accidentally made the room a bit too big so there wasn't a lot of chaos. They found Galdana fairly quickly as there was a lot of space between zombies. It didn't seem to take away from anything as far as they were concerned.
It's possible if you had a tighter space, all those bodies moving around would make lifesense a bit harder - they would still detect the location but as a direction and not an exact spot (like they mention in the AP for use of perception). Flying of course would completely help this - but sometimes rewarding creativity or a specific skill of a player isn't always a bad thing.
You can create a mask using Undead Anatomy I (level 3 arcane spell). It would end up being quite expensive though, the base price would be 30,000gp (level 3 spell x level 5 caster x 2000gp), making it a 60,000gp treasure. If you don't want it to be useful to the party afterwards, it could be cursed to cause the wearer to be subsumed by the psychology of a juju-zombie (say a Will save every round the mask is worn).
It seems like this is the big chance for this ability to come into its own and be all that the player could hope for it to be. My instinct is to let it work, but make the fight more difficult in other ways, possibly by significantly increasing the number of undead (making it a race to get the NPC out of there rather than a room full of mooks to slaughter). I would definitely make the life oracle a huge target if he/she in any way reveals having this ability.
Of course, you mentioned that the player is difficult, so maybe nerfing a key ability the one time that it would actually be extremely useful is fair play.
I recall 3.5 had some sort of spell that temporarily made the target seem as if they were undead. Think it gave them undead properties also. Don't recall if it can be made into a potion but maybe you can say a NPC has brew potion and has been forceing the victim to drink one every day as his daily "water" to keep him alive and not die of thirst.
Ah, the problem is that Non-detection is the best spell for thia, but the text doesn't explicitly state that it stops supernatural abilities, just spells and magic items. You could infer that Lifesense is a form of Divination like Arcane Sight, True Seeing, See Invisibility, or Detect Thoughts. It definitely should be considered a form of divination, even if the text doesn't specifically say so.
If you wanted to be really tricky, you could have him possessed by one of the Ghost Necromancers in the dungeon, which would make him read as both.
Let it work. Don't penalize PCs for getting the right *whatever* to make an encounter easier.
Doesn't mean that getting to him will be easy.
Can't remember scale of the place but the range is 30'
Communication to other PCs could realistically be a problem not a huge issue but a Perception check to hear instruction over the clamor? Sense Motive to discern exactly who is being pointed out in the melee?
Other PCs don't know who it is and maybe lose track and head the wrong way? Is the Oracle spending the whole round keeping tabs or pointing "Its him", again PCs may get confused and grab the wrong one...
Just look at the ability and situation, play the encounter out in your head and see where things could go wrong or get confused in a fair and "realistic" way.
Vition wrote: You can create a mask using Undead Anatomy I (level 3 arcane spell). It would end up being quite expensive though, the base price would be 30,000gp (level 3 spell x level 5 caster x 2000gp), making it a 60,000gp treasure. If you don't want it to be useful to the party afterwards, it could be cursed to cause the wearer to be subsumed by the psychology of a juju-zombie (say a Will save every round the mask is worn). Thank you... this is the custom item I was thinking of, but as an amulet. Cursed is a great idea to make it less than useful to the party after they get it.
Rakshaka wrote: Ah, the problem is that Non-detection is the best spell for thia, but the text doesn't explicitly state that it stops supernatural abilities, just spells and magic items. You could infer that Lifesense is a form of Divination like Arcane Sight, True Seeing, See Invisibility, or Detect Thoughts. It definitely should be considered a form of divination, even if the text doesn't specifically say so.
If you wanted to be really tricky, you could have him possessed by one of the Ghost Necromancers in the dungeon, which would make him read as both.
This is another excellent idea, since they are already keeping spells up on the NPC that block divination. I could just say in this case that it blocks the lifesense, too, though that feels slightly cheesy.
tbug wrote: It seems like this is the big chance for this ability to come into its own and be all that the player could hope for it to be. Of course, you mentioned that the player is difficult, so maybe nerfing a key ability the one time that it would actually be extremely useful is fair play. Cardinal Chunder wrote: Let it work. Don't penalize PCs for getting the right *whatever* to make an encounter easier. Doesn't mean that getting to him will be easy. Just look at the ability and situation, play the encounter out in your head and see where things could go wrong or get confused in a fair and "realistic" way. So far, the lifesense ability has already totally won the day in multiple encounters. My players, despite their best intentions at trying to separate player knowledge and character knowledge, metagame like mad. And to date, we've let lifesense absolutely pinpoint living things even in a sea of chaos, without concentration (probably my fault for letting it be awesome, but the player feels like their character sucks otherwise, so I've been trying to let this be great). So if lifesense works in this encounter to tell them where my NPC is, even if I try to make it confusing and difficult, they'll just walk through it without the fun of the chaos. So I think making it not work by either blocking the lifesense through anti-divination means, or through a magic item, will make it as interesting as it could be, and make them rely on other skill checks to find the NPC. Especially since they are going to get a huge bonus out of this if successful: the NPC they rescue has quite a few class levels and will join them (and fill in much needed skills the party is lacking due to character deaths) for the rest of the AP.
Its a fine line between making it all plausible and making it seem like you're "punishing" the players. If you've set a precedent on how it works then mucking about with Perception checks, etc. in the chaos of battle isn't the way to go.
Yup, using non-detection/misdirection/Undead Anatomy would be my choice.
Good luck, its a fun encounter!!!
Misdirection is always my favorite bad guy spell. More fun to peg the local sheriff with the lich's aura of evil than just have the lich not ping as evil. Can do the same thing with the lich's aura of undeath and for fun have him detect as evil if the party has a paladin.
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