The Waking Rune on Hard Mode - Wish Us Luck!


Pathfinder Society

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Grand Lodge

So, a group of us are going to try to take on a Runelord this coming Saturday. We are all at 32xp (level 11.2) and this will be our final hurrah before going through the retirement arc at the end of the month. I think that we have a pretty good shot, but I am perfectly fine if I have to get a true res (that is what prestige is for). We are going to have a very good GM and a table of experienced players. I am expecting this to be epic and frustratingly fun.

Here is our party makeup:

Cleric of the Lantern King - Positive channeler
Cleric of Asmodeus - can summon hellhounds, cerberi and Erinyes as a standard action
Archer Fighter
Ray Specialist Sorcerer
Summoner with a flying, pouncing cat that has holy claws (and will be our tank)
A know-it-all wizard

We have been prepping for this for months. Wish us luck!

p.s. - Please, no spoilers.

Lantern Lodge 5/5

If you believe in luck, good luck.

A better suggestion: prepare well.

5/5 *****

Four level 11 full casters and a summoner. I suspect it may not be possible to fail.

1/5

andreww wrote:
Four level 11 full casters and a summoner. I suspect it may not be possible to fail.

Unless he ends the fight in round 1 with a single spell. While the GM may chose not to it's incredibly likely to insta wipe if he get's a single action in combat.

EDIT: But if anyone could do it this would be the group.

3/5

Undone wrote:
andreww wrote:
Four level 11 full casters and a summoner. I suspect it may not be possible to fail.
Unless he ends the fight in round 1 with a single spell. While the GM may chose not to it's incredibly likely to insta wipe if he get's a single action in combat.

Spells are iffy they can get disrupted pretty easily. So whoever readies to dirupt the other first usually wins.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Craft: Coffin: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (6) + 8 = 14

Well, that's the best I can do for you....

5/5

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Undone... you really should edit your post - he specifically asked for no spoilers.

Best of luck E. Quint! You're going to need it!

Grand Lodge

Undone wrote:
andreww wrote:
Four level 11 full casters and a summoner. I suspect it may not be possible to fail.

Unless he ends the fight in round 1 with a single spell. While the GM may chose not to it's incredibly likely to insta wipe if he get's a single action in combat.

EDIT: But if anyone could do it this would be the group.

We are preparing for anything that we can think of. These are our three main assumptions in our planning:

He is a level 20 conjurer

We are playing on his turf

He is not going to be alone

My character has spent about 10,000 gold in consumables to prepare for the scenario.

5/5 *****

Undone wrote:
andreww wrote:
Four level 11 full casters and a summoner. I suspect it may not be possible to fail.

Unless he ends the fight in round 1 with a single spell. While the GM may chose not to it's incredibly likely to insta wipe if he get's a single action in combat.

EDIT: But if anyone could do it this would be the group.

Not if you follow his stated tactics it isnt.

Shadow Lodge 3/5

spoilerama!

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Yeah, having read the scenario, I bet ol' Krune lasts about 2-3 rounds, tops. Sure, if he...uh, points his trump card sunward, some will probably die, but that's not something you could ever hope to prep for.

The Exchange

Just so everyone knows, Krune does not like fruitcakes.

-s

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

I have run hard mode twice, for both venture captains and game designers, I can honestly say that hard mode has serious potential to ruin some parties while other parties will present a much more difficult challenge for the NPCs.

One item that came up in some games were i think potions of orchid's drop, which grant an alchemical bonus to saves for hour/lvl. May want to look into that before you go.

Grand Lodge

Taenia wrote:

I have run hard mode twice, for both venture captains and game designers, I can honestly say that hard mode has serious potential to ruin some parties while other parties will present a much more difficult challenge for the NPCs.

One item that came up in some games were i think potions of orchid's drop, which grant an alchemical bonus to saves for hour/lvl. May want to look into that before you go.

I thought about potions of orchid's drop, but you cannot get potions of that particular spell, being that is range: personal. If I could, I would gladly spend the 1250 gold for a potion that would give me +2 to all my saves and last 7 hours :)

Grand Lodge 4/5

I won't say how our NON-Hard mode fight went.. specifically. But Krune lasted 17 rounds against us.

Part of that was bad luck (and some bad skill rolls early on) on our part.

Lantern Lodge 5/5

4 people marked this as a favorite.

People, it is not hard to avoid spoilers.

If you're saying anything even remotely related to the fight/scenario/premise/duration, you're doing it wrong.

5/5 5/55/55/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.

The most important preparation you can make is a will.

Grand Lodge 4/5 ** Venture-Agent, Colorado—Denver

Best of luck! I played normal mode in low tier. Still got TPK'd. I would love to see how your party does with all casters. Ours was a classic mixed group (I played a vanilla rogue).

Please let us know how it went!

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/5 RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

Best of luck! May your dice roll true!!

Grand Lodge 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

I got to play it the day it was released at Paizocon 2013. The GMs had stickers for the players depending on how they did, was fun walking around with it on my badge saying I had killed Krune.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Taenia wrote:
I got to play it the day it was released at Paizocon 2013. The GMs had stickers for the players depending on how they did, was fun walking around with it on my badge saying I had killed Krune.

Huh. The stickers I got were the ones for being owned by Krune, but they were given out to us at the beginning of the slot.

I think we all felt a bit sorry for Krune, really. Things just didn't work out well for him, at all, at all.

4/5 ****

I have earned ~270xp playing Pathfinder Society. I have died twice.

Once was in Cult of the Ebon Destroyers to a humanoid that hit me 7 times in one round (including twice after I was unconscious).

The other time was at PaizoCon playing Waking Rune on Hard Mode, with Alex Greenshields as the GM.

So both my deaths are clearly his fault.

We won in the end though so I still got a cool sticker.

Picture of cool sticker with very minor Waking Rune Chronicle spoilers

Sczarni

I would love to see hard mode. When I played, there were 5 of us (2 of which were lvl 9) playing 10-11 tier on normal. We all knew what we were doing and Krune got Royally OWNED. But we achieved certain marks that other groups may not have gotten.

I want to say more but I have already said too much. Have tons of fun and let us know how it goes.

5/5 *****

E. Quint wrote:
I thought about potions of orchid's drop, but you cannot get potions of that particular spell, being that is range: personal. If I could, I would gladly spend the 1250 gold for a potion that would give me +2 to all my saves and last 7 hours :)

Potions of Heroism only last 50 minutes but they will grant you the +2 to saves and more besides.

4/5

Pirate Rob wrote:

I have earned ~270xp playing Pathfinder Society. I have died twice.

Once was in Cult of the Ebon Destroyers to a humanoid that hit me 7 times in one round (including twice after I was unconscious).

The other time was at PaizoCon playing Waking Rune on Hard Mode, with Alex Greenshields as the GM.

So both my deaths are clearly his fault.

We won in the end though so I still got a cool sticker.

Picture of cool sticker with very minor Waking Rune Chronicle spoilers

Wait...doesn't that make your first death Matt Goodall's fault?

Dark Archive 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Have fun storming the castle!

Grand Lodge

We finished up the Waking Rune on hard mode and it was a blast! Apparently we were sufficiently prepared because nobody died. I don't want to give anything away, so I will not give any specifics about the encounters. All the fights before the last one lasted only 2 rounds. The final fight lasted about 8 rounds. It turned out that Krune only had about 6 hit points remaining after the first round, but he managed to regroup and give us the runaround for a while. I think that what was mentioned earlier about our group having so many casters really helped us.

Great GM, great party, a bunch of fun. Now my cleric is level 12 and ready to go through the retirement arc!

4/5 ****

Mark Seifter wrote:
Wait...doesn't that make your first death Matt Goodall's fault?

Errr, so it does.

/me blames Greenshields anyway.

3/5

So, how'd it go?

Grand Lodge

Vrog Skyreaver wrote:
So, how'd it go?

^2 posts above yours :)

It went very well. Our GM didn't pull any punches, but we prevailed without any casualties. The closest someone came to dying was our archer fighter was dropped to 1 hit point, but that wasn't that big of a deal because he immediately had two clerics step up and heal him. It really came down to a battle of attrition and we were pretty much able to counteract everything that he threw at us. The last few rounds, Krune was really just scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to figure out what he could do to us.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

E. Quint wrote:
Vrog Skyreaver wrote:
So, how'd it go?

^2 posts above yours :)

It went very well. Our GM didn't pull any punches, but we prevailed without any casualties. The closest someone came to dying was our archer fighter was dropped to 1 hit point, but that wasn't that big of a deal because he immediately had two clerics step up and heal him. It really came down to a battle of attrition and we were pretty much able to counteract everything that he threw at us. The last few rounds, Krune was really just scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to figure out what he could do to us.

Spoiler:
What did Krune do with his Wish? I see none of you were wished inside the Sun, heh
3/5

Spoiler:

or the herd of freakin' buffalo Aurochs that he summoned at our table in one direction around the middle area, and send cloudkills down the other way.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Muser wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
He used his wish to heal himself. The GM told us that the original plan was to bring back the herald of Lisala, but we dropped that corpse in an acid pit. Even if he tried to wish us all to the sun, it wouldn't have worked. One of the first things we did after the herald was to use the cerberus that the Asmodean cleric summoned to dimensionally lock all of us except the summoner and her eidolon.

He was down to 6 hit points by the time his second turn came up, so he buggered out of there to heal up. His first action was to cast a maximized empowered horrid wilting, which was counteracted by our wizard putting up an emergency force sphere, which broke line of effect to everyone but our fighter, who made his save. If that would have hit us, we would have all been hosed. In the first round his spear also cast slow on us, but we all made our will saves.

Spoiler:
As for cloudkill, we all either had necklaces of adaptation or were under the effect of life bubble.

1/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
E. Quint wrote:
Muser wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

Proof that a sufficiently prepared group of casters is indistinguishable from a god, or batman.

Dark Archive

Said Wizard here. There were a few things that took me by surprise, mainly to do with spells.

Spoiler:

Really I was surprised he didn't have some of the really nasty spells at higher level. I was expecting stuff like Maze, Time Stop, Mage's Disjunction, Plane Shift etc, hence the dimensional anchor curse, but he didn't have it. Really, Wish was one of the lesser worries as that spell has been nerfed pretty heavily over the last couple of decades. (From "I do what I want" to "I maybe sometimes can do what I want, but most of the time it's pretty well defined within the limitations of the spell") Many consumables died to bring us this information, but it was worth it.

3/5

In hard mode, couldn't he use

Spoiler:
his arcane bond class feature to cast wish as a "greater request" (see last paragraph of text of the wish spell) ...perhaps expending all 75,000 gp (that hard mode gives him) and duplicate the effects of the ascension spell?

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mythicAdventures/mythicSpells/ascension. html#ascension-mythic
It requires a minor artifact as a focus for the ascension spell (which he has).

Then Krune would be mythic tier 1 (archmage 1) for the fight. A little "wild arcana" with 5 mythic points to cast five 9th-level spells, say like summon monster IX (1d3 elder mud elementals). I seriously doubt anyone would beat him then however.


YIDM

Shadow Lodge 3/5

Why hasn't this thread been moderated for spoilers?

Silver Crusade Venture-Agent, Florida–Altamonte Springs

I don't know, maybe because is had been dead since may...

Anyway the only elemental you can summon are air, earth, fire, and water. See here for the latest discussion and a link on the second post to the actual ruling that hasn't changed in 3 years.

Also Ascension is not PFS legal

so a better use of wish:
A better use of wish is what I did which is use the planar teleport and wish the party to another plane."'I really wish you all would go to hell' make a will save"

Sovereign Court 2/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Tamec wrote:

I don't know, maybe because is had been dead since may...

Anyway the only elemental you can summon are air, earth, fire, and water. See here for the latest discussion and a link on the second post to the actual ruling that hasn't changed in 3 years.

Also Ascension is not PFS legal ** spoiler omitted **

Seems like an awfully anticlimactic way to deal with the players.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

E. Quint wrote:
Muser wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
It would have been better to use the wish to bring in a Ghaele Azata or a Trumpet Archon. Both have Heal on their spell list. Then the next round use Monster Summoning IX to summon the other one. I really wanted to run this on hard mode so I could bring in both the good aligned outsiders to really give it to the players.

Additionally, a widened wall of stone would have given him like 60 squares, so he could have literally built a maze for the players to get through and sent his good aligned summons in the other side.

Silver Crusade Venture-Agent, Florida–Altamonte Springs

Acedio wrote:
Seems like an awfully anticlimactic way to deal with the players.

Didn't seem anticlimactic:

It was almost 3.9 hours of straight combat, most of which was with Krune. Krune was out of summons, due to banishments. Cloudkill was useless due to everyone having necklaces of adaptation or proof vs poison, and a seemingly endless supply of protection from evil slowed up the summon combat. It was a hard fought battle, Krune actually drove them back to the entrance. My players seemed to enjoy the ending. Because of the way I ran krune they thought he had an endless supply of summons and still had plenty of spells left.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

I just ran this on hard mode the other day:
TL;DR - don't try to run this in a 4 hour slot!

Party makeup:
Cleric-11
Cleric-9 / Swashbuckler-1
Oracle-9
Fighter-11
Magus-11
Zen Paladin-11 (can't remember exact build)

Party arrives ready for war.
Kurshu wins initiative at 28 (the first PC was at 27).
Kurshu uses Limited Wish for Mislead, sending her copy to the back corner while she flies opposite.
Party fails 2 rounds of Will saves to notice the illusion.
Kurshu uses Displacement.
Kurshu uses her 2nd Limited Wish for Fickle Winds (after seeing the Zen Paladin at work).
Oracle casts Invisibility Purge and tells his Air Walking Celestial Tiger to pounce.
First blood.
Kurshu notices Tiger's outsider-ness.
Kurshu full round attacks the kitty, dropping its INT to zero.
Next round is spent devouring kitty.
Unfortunately, by now, the front-line Fighter and Battle Cleric of Forum had closed in, and Kurshu was no more.
The Magus used Acid Splash to kill her Regeneration.

But they didn't dispose of the body.

Fast-forward to Krune.

Party buffs with Life Bubble and Freedom of movement.
The round before he awakes, the Oracle Stone Shapes the sarcophagus into the shape of a cage. Zen Paladin unloads as a full round.
Krune swift action Black Tentacles then Dimension Steps away.
Summons Bone Devil, tells it to start making Walls of Ice.
Activates Ring of Spell Turning, using Boots of Speed to move to Kurshu.
Wishes Kurshu back to life.
Summons Greater Air Elemental to vacuum up anybody with a holy symbol.
Stone-shaping Oracle has bypassed all of the Ice Walls. Bone Devil dies.
Elemental wastes actions trying to whirlwind people under FoM.

At this point, we're past the 4 hour time slot, and the store is closing.

Krune gets Zen Paladin'd to -10hp.
Kurshu uses Cure Serious.
Krune has the opportunity to Dimension Steps away and summon more baddies. But, because of the time crunch, he casts Empowered Horrid Wilting instead. The Cleric with Shield Other active dies, but gets BoL'd the next round.

Kurshu and the Elemental have to be hand-waved in our expediency to get packed up.

3/5

Tamec wrote:

I don't know, maybe because is had been dead since may...

Anyway the only elemental you can summon are air, earth, fire, and water. See here for the latest discussion and a link on the second post to the actual ruling that hasn't changed in 3 years.

Also Ascension is not PFS legal ** spoiler omitted **

The Bestiary, Bestiary 2,3,4 are all listed in the Additional Resources page, with the same exact text.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/about/additionalResources

I am curious, how then, by the RAW are air, earth, fire, water elementals allowed, but mud elementals not allowed? It's not that I don't necessarily believe you, just trying to figure how they came to that conclusion because it doesn't seem obvious with both books listed on the additional resource page (and same text for both).

Also, per the summary text of the Addtional Resource page, it seems to apply only to PFS legal player character options, and says nothing that it would indicate it also restricts GM's running encounters.

Quote:


Additional Resources
Last Updated Monday, December 15, 2014

Below is a specific list of Paizo Publishing products and the equipment, traits, deities, spells, feats, and classes contained within that are legal for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. While most of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook is legal for play (with some feat and spell exceptions), these additional resources give you new character options. If a product does not appear on this list, then it is not considered legal for play. This list will be updated frequently as new products are released.

In order to utilize content from an Additional Resource, a player must have a physical copy of the Additional Resource in question, a name-watermarked Paizo PDF of it, or a printout of the relevant pages from it, as well as a copy of the current version of the Additional Resources list. (If you're bringing a printout of the pages, it must be from the Paizo PDF and not text copied and pasted into a blank word processing document). Since the core assumption for Pathfinder Society Organized Play is the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play, we cannot assume that every Game Master will have the products listed below. As such, it's up to players to bring these items in order to familiarize their Game Masters with the rules.

Emphasis mine.

Now, that sort of implies that the Additional Resources page only applies to legal player character options.

YIDM

2/5

Don't forget the monument boosts in your pre-mission prep time, it saved my rogue.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

YIDM wrote:
I am curious, how then, by the RAW are air, earth, fire, water elementals allowed, but mud elementals not allowed?

It's not RAW.

It's SBCL ("Stated by Campaign Leadership").

Yes, that acronym is wholly my creation

Silver Crusade Venture-Agent, Florida–Altamonte Springs

Nefreet wrote:
YIDM wrote:
I am curious, how then, by the RAW are air, earth, fire, water elementals allowed, but mud elementals not allowed?

It's not RAW.

It's SBCL ("Stated by Campaign Leadership").

Yes, that acronym is wholly my creation

As Nefreet stated above and is linked to here and here by the people who make the game that the summon list in the CRB is the list, and elemental = air, earth, fire, water. We might not agree with it, I don't, but for pfs we have to follow RAW, and SBCL otherwise we are playing a home game. I'm going to be starting an Iron Gods (in campaign mode if it gets sanctioned) game next year and in that I will allow my players to summon other elementals (lightning elementals are particularly handy against gearsmen.)

The Exchange 4/5

My Magus got to get the killing hit on Krune when I played it. He now has his head in a jar he likes to display to people.

Silver Crusade 4/5

My game is coming up and this is freaking me out.

5/5

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
jalroy wrote:
My Magus got to get the killing hit on Krune when I played it. He now has his head in a jar he likes to display to people.

Yeah, same with my magus. I dropped a 133 point crit on him, it didn't drop him but it really hurt. Krune is part of his "Greatest Hits" collection along with a dragon from another scenario.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Soluzar wrote:
jalroy wrote:
My Magus got to get the killing hit on Krune when I played it. He now has his head in a jar he likes to display to people.
Yeah, same with my magus. I dropped a 133 point crit on him, it didn't drop him but it really hurt. Krune is part of his "Greatest Hits" collection along with a dragon from another scenario.

On the opposite side of the coin, my fighter didn't do much damage to Krune, himself, but he facilitated one of his allies taking Krune out, by passing on a critical from his 15-20 weapon to the barbarian wielding an x3 weapon.

5 attacks, one of them my critical, one of them her own, all hits, since Krune was prone (also my doing).

Greater Trip, Greater Disarm, Butterfly's Sting....

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