5-20 The Sealed Gate Question


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

Heya,

I asked Kyle a few questions in private, but I realized that some of these would be best answered on the boards so other GMs can see them.

...especially given that one of them changes a whole encounter.

***
Super Important Question:
Page 15 - the Angazhani encounter - for tier 10-11 it doesn't say how many there should be
(since the 4 player reduction says "remove two" I'm guessing there's supposed to be more than 2 for tier 10-11?)
***

Lesser question:
Should I assume the "C = Crusader (D1 only)" on the map on page 13 is a misprint of some sort?

Thanks!

5/5

Super important answer: It was submitted with 5 monkeys at high tier. If you read the before combat tactics, it mentions 5 of them.

Less important answer: Yeah, must be from a different scenario? The T's are for the Tobongos.

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

Well, don't I feel like an idiot now.

That'll teach me to do my first read-throughs at 4-5am.

Thanks.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

well it mentions that 1 dimension doors 3 of them to the PCs, and that the 5th stays back. what does the 4th do?

5/5 5/55/55/5

Kyle Baird wrote:
Super important answer: It was submitted with 5 monkeys at high tier.

... i didn't know this was out.

but now i MUST buy it

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Purchased and read. Looking forward to prepping and running this next week!

5/5 5/55/55/5

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Holy BLEEP you're trying to kill people in this one.

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

Two more questions -

1 - If Nikolai withdraws / retreats to area C3, will he take part in the final battle?

2 - Is it possible for Silver Crusade PCs to earn both boons? I'm thinking it would be difficult but not 100% impossible, but I'd rather check just to be safe

5/5

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1) Yes. Keep in mind that his goal isn't to help one side or the other, but to work together to establish his lodge. His actions in either encounter will likely help and hurt the party.

2) It wasn't intended that way, but if the PCs are creative enough in your eyes to earn both boons, why not reward it?

Shadow Lodge 5/5

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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Holy BLEEP you're trying to kill people in this one.

I would never endeavor to do such a thing.

Grand Lodge 5/5

...persuasive predatory plant...

*chuckle*

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

Got one more while reviewing battle tactics.

APG wrote:
Divine Wrath (Sp): At 4th level, when a vindicator confirms a critical hit, he may sacrifice a prepared 1st-level spell or available 1st-level spell slot to invoke doom upon the target as an immediate action (using the vindicator's caster level). The save DC is increased by +2 if his weapon has a ×3 damage multiplier, or by +4 if it is ×4. The vindicator can also use this ability in response to being critically hit, even if the attack incapacitates or kills the vindicator.

Is that Doom as the spell, or some other invocation of doom that the APG forgot to mention?

5/5

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dhoooooom! (the spell)

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

Sorry for more bother, but just had another one -

In area B2, the PCs get one Knowledge Arcana check to activate "ze item" or else they have to use the "emergency ritual" Aram Zey's book provided them.

1 - Does it matter if they use the book or the "correct" ritual?

2 - Shall I assume that if they never get the book due to actions/inactions in area A, and if they all fail, that the mission is over/failed?

Thanks for fielding all the questions Kyle!

5/5

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The main mission of the PCs is to recover "ze item" and get Zey and Li back. If they didn't recover the folio and can't make he Know(Arcana) check, leave it up to the PCs what to do next. If they return to the base camp, it's likely they'll find the folio. If not, or if they have their own means to return to Absalom, consider having someone at the Grand Lodge assist them with activating the tapestry. Perhaps they get Li and Zey back through other means and then are urged to follow the fingerprints to go after Nikolai.

Also, the wording is a bit weird in B2. It only takes one PC to make the knowledge check to get the group through the portal. The clarification is that each PC can make a check only once to get it right.

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

Got it - thanks again!

Liberty's Edge 5/5

holy crap... the first encounter is "NASTY!"

4/5

Where exactly are Zey and Li?

Also under calm emotions, what sort of actions can the PCs take? Can they set up charge lanes and buff for when they fail the save next table?

5/5

David_Bross wrote:

Where exactly are Zey and Li?

Also under calm emotions, what sort of actions can the PCs take? Can they set up charge lanes and buff for when they fail the save next table?

Zey and Li are in Hao Jin's demiplane. They don't currently have the means to quickly travel to another gate out of the tapestry, but are able to send word to those who can. I envision them sending word and waiting a day for Zey to prep spells. If the Nikolai isn't able to get the tapestry back aligned with the foci (to stabilize the gate Zey and Li are working on), Zey will get the two of them out himself.

Expect a lot of variations on calm emotions. Purposefully placing yourself in a strategic arrangement goes against the spirit of the effect. IMO, characters under such a compulsion should seek to not engage in combat and/or actively seek to end any fighting taking place (much like what Nikolai does).

5/5

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Andrew Christian wrote:
holy crap... the first encounter is "NASTY!"

There were more swarms until John asked me to allow at least 1% of PCs to survive.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

So Kyle, did you get tired of killing Caubo's character and now you want the rest of us to kill him for you?

5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
James McTeague wrote:
So Kyle, did you get tired of killing Caubo's character and now you want the rest of us to kill him for you?

I wanted to give everyone a chance to enjoy his tears!

5/5

4 people marked this as a favorite.

More seriously, we decided that we needed to start incorporating all these PC Venture-Captains we have now in the campaign. The seeker who may provide the PCs transportation is another PC who failed to become Venture-Captain.

4/5

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James McTeague wrote:
So Kyle, did you get tired of killing Caubo's character and now you want the rest of us to kill him for you?

James didn't even try to kill him. I was sad...

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

Kyle Baird wrote:
More seriously, we decided that we needed to start incorporating all these PC Venture-Captains we have now in the campaign. The seeker who may provide the PCs transportation is another PC who failed to become Venture-Captain.

Dude, that right there is a pretty amazing thing that I am 1000% in favor of seeing! :)

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Yeah, well had I known that I had the opportunity to kill Caubo's character, I wouldn't have brought my "Paladin of the Society" (actually a order of the dragon cavalier).

I am totally in favor of Seekers/PC Venture Captains being used in scenarios. *hatches a plan to write a scenario so he can include his own VC or Seeker*

Spoiler:
More likely, I would include someone else's VC. I have a couple player's VCs that I keep in my back pocket for giving out the missions for sanctioned modules. It's really fun when players realize that other players' characters are giving them missions, and the players like seeing their character actually do VC things.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

In other news, I feel like a genius for using the Village Square flip mat to represent the town back in Where Mammoths Dare Not Tread.

(I'm way too giddy about this scenario despite almost losing some really expensive armor. Part of this is that I can't wait until I get to run it. Oh god those swarms!)

Shadow Lodge 4/5

For the Tobongo encounter, (pg 15) "During Combat: During the second full round of combat, the tobongo uses its shake the earth ability and animates a pair of trees. It attacks the nearest opponents and doesn’t differentiate between the PCs and the angazhani."

Since Shake the Earth is a full round action and Animate Trees is a standard action, was animating the trees intended to be its next action in the following round?

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Additionally, it looks like the Tobongo should be throwing rocks or something in Round 1, since the shake the earth ability requires them to still be rooted to the ground.

5/5

Yeah, animating the trees is the next round.

The Tobongo are rooted and inactive during the Surprise Round and the first round. They are intended to "wake up" after the first round of combat.

3/5

Kyle Baird wrote:
More seriously, we decided that we needed to start incorporating all these PC Venture-Captains we have now in the campaign.

Interesting. Is this a one-time thing or will it become more pervasive going forward? Is there a set of criteria for having a PC included in a scenario? What can players do to meet these criteria? There are a looooot of PC Seekers and VCs out there, which is why I ask.

-Matt, curious and lookin' for a goal to set here.

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

I must say that I *do* enjoy the irony in the last name of the Venture Captain in the scenario (for those who speak at least a little Hebrew) :P

5/5

Mattastrophic wrote:
Kyle Baird wrote:
More seriously, we decided that we needed to start incorporating all these PC Venture-Captains we have now in the campaign.

Interesting. Is this a one-time thing or will it become more pervasive going forward? Is there a set of criteria for having a PC included in a scenario? What can players do to meet these criteria? There are a looooot of PC Seekers and VCs out there, which is why I ask.

-Matt, curious and lookin' for a goal to set here.

Doubtful that it's a one-time thing, but I'm not aware of any plans to do it again. There was a reward at 2009 (10?) Gen Con that let a person name an NPC or something. I could see that happening again.

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

Sammy T wrote:

For the Tobongo encounter, (pg 15) "During Combat: During the second full round of combat, the tobongo uses its shake the earth ability and animates a pair of trees. It attacks the nearest opponents and doesn’t differentiate between the PCs and the angazhani."

Since Shake the Earth is a full round action and Animate Trees is a standard action, was animating the trees intended to be its next action in the following round?

Apparently I missed this the other day -

When I ran it, I had tobongo #1 do earth shake and #2 animated the trees - if there was only one, I'd definitely do it earth shake in round 2 and then trees in round 3.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Question about the jungle, effects & travel times:

THE JUNGLE'S HEART
"Temperatures beneath the canopy exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit and unprotected PCs must succeed at a Fortitude save every 10 minutes or be subjected to the effects of extreme heat (Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook 444)."

PRD:
"A character who takes any nonlethal damage from heat exposure now suffers from heatstroke and is fatigued. These penalties end when the character recovers from the nonlethal damage she took from the heat.

Extreme heat (air temperature over 140° F, fire, boiling water, lava) deals lethal damage. Breathing air in these temperatures deals 1d6 points of fire damage per minute (no save). In addition, a character must make a Fortitude save every 5 minutes (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage. Those wearing heavy clothing or any sort of armor take a –4 penalty on their saves."

So, every 10 minutes, if the PCs fail the save, they take 1d6 points of lethal AND make a Fort Save or take 1d4 non-lethal and get fatigued? Or was the The Jungle's Heart text referring only to the Fort save consequence?

Secondly, what are the approximate travel times for a party on foot between encounters:

From the portal to the Angazhani ambush?

From the ambush to Nikolai? (it says a mile travel, so I'm estimating 45 min to an hour in jungle terrain)

From Nikolia to the Alarune?

5/5

Not sure why the word "extreme" is in there. Should be "severe" instead.

The distance from Nikolai to the alraune is within his dimension door range.

The other distances are left vague to leave it up to the GM to decide what would be enjoyable for the table. Keep in mind the speed of the party and the effects of traveling through undergrowth (or heavy undergrowth if venturing off the tracks left by the alraune and company.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Thanks, Kyle. I'll be running this on Monday, so hope to have a game report later that night or the next morning.

Silver Crusade 4/5

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Care Baird wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Holy BLEEP you're trying to kill people in this one.
I would never endeavor to do such a thing.

You nearly broke my perfect record this time. Perhaps you will try harder next time.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Ran this last night for the FLGS. I'm remembering this a night of little sleep, so the minor details may be wrong, but the overall picture should be pretty true to how things went down.

Subtier: 7-8
Party Size: 7

Party:
Cleric 7
Hospitaller Paladin 7
Naga Aspirant Druid 7
Stonelord Paladin 8
Invulnerable Rager Urban Barbarian 9
Rogue/Fighter 9
Wolf Shaman Druid/Horizon Walker 10

Pre-Game:
Over the weekend, I contacted the players via e-mail (and then again in-person before the game) took a secret vote on hard mode. One player voted Nay, so it would be 7-person table. I figured there would be one or two iffy rounds, but most of the adventure would be a walk over with overwhelming amount of divine types. I took another vote pre-game and votes remained the same. The scenario would be be in normal mode.

Base Camp Blues:

The party 'ported in and immediately disbelieved the illusion.

1 Vescavor Swarm and the Derakni percept the party, some of the party percept the sounds of the demons.

During the surprise round, the rogue moves way from the clumped party towards the north where he hears sounds. From the south, VSwarm swoops in, enveloping 2 PCs. Most of the party makes their Gibber saves. The Barbarian (in swarm) and the Stonelord get confused. The Barbarian fails his DC 15 reflex Ravenous save. I break his Ring of Prot (broken has no effect on it). The Dekrani flies onto a roof to survey the battlefield.

Next round, the other Vescavor Swarm swoops in from the north, enveloping the Rogue. More Gibber saves that only one person fails. The Dekrani flies to another rooftop (to keep Drone up), enervates the L7 Cleric, zapping him for 3 levels, and quick summons a nuisance CR2 bat swarm. The Barbarian gets confused again, fails his Ravenous save and I break his back up bow. The rest of the PCs scatter the best they can.

So, pretty much the surprise round/first round have gone as expected--swarms swoop in, some folks get confused, maybe equipment gets damaged and the Derakni is pewpewpewing from range. I figured that from here, the party would rally, smash the monsters and be on their merry way.

This encounter would last almost 2 hours.

General Gist:
Rogue uses Sleeve of Many Garments to put on a swarm suit, uses celestial armor and goes after Derakni. The reachweapon Stonelord Paladin who is confused gets to act normal for the round also goes after the Derakni, attacking it from the ground while the Rogue flanks from above. The Hospitaller paladin tags along but does not have reach weapon, so heals/moves for a few rounds before running behind a building to drink a potion of fly. Most of the time they are trying to take the Derakni down, a VSwarm harasses them.

The Barbarian fails his Gibber save 3 or 4 times, and ends up babbling/hurting himself. I break his bow, his Headband of Intelligence, his armor and destroy his Ring of Prot. Yes, he failed his reflex save that many times. He is in the swarm so long, he has to make the save vs schizophrenia...which he passes. Barely.

The Wolf Shaman, who has a Baneswarm clasp (yay!), falls back, heals himself, then repeatedly spring attacks the Barbarian's VSwarm...with each spring attack doing single digit damage.

The Naga Aspirant drops a fireball on the VSwarms. Fails his SR check on one. Even with the 50% boost from AoE, the damage roll is low, the swarm makes its save and it has fire resist...so it takes very little damage. He falls back to heal himself and then summon.

The enervated Cleric who now only has 25hp, has a CR 2 nuisance swarm of bats on him. He drops a buff, drops a channel or two and then spends the rest of the combat pulling out alchemist's fires and trying to kill his bat swarm. He consistently rolls 1s or 2s on his fire damage and the 13hp bat swarm flaps after him doing its thing. That swarm would live for 9 rounds when I thought it would die the same round it was summoned.

So, for most of the combat the party is semi-scattered around town square, fighting a series of mini-skirmishes (i.e. not focus firing). I hint a couple of times they can always retreat, but they slog on.

The Flying Rogue and the Reach Stonelord work the 3D flank on the rooftop Dekrani, hitting him for gobs of damage (the poor Stonelord has to deal being attacked by a VSwarm at the same time--getting his Boulder Helmet broken--while the Rogue is eating Derakni full attacks). The Hospitaller runs off to drink a potion of fly so he can get onto the roof. The Rogue and Stonelord had done enough damage that the Dekrani tries to flee. The Dekrani fails 2 cast defensively checks in a row and only has 3 HP left. The Hospitaller Paladin flies onto the rooftop...only to see the Naga Aspirant's summoned stirges attach and CON-drain the Dekrani into death.

VSwarm mop up takes a few more rounds, which involves the single-digit-damage Wolf Shaman giving his Swarmbane Clasp to the Stonelord Paladin to kill one swarm and Naga Aspirant casting Burst of Radiance on the other...which probably would have been much better an hour or so earlier in the fight lol

TL;DR
Some bad rolls, some mediocre tactics, not enough AoE pewpew early in the fight.

GM TIP:
I had a confusion cheat sheet and a random magic item cheat sheet on hand (I just used a slightly modified Items Affected By Magical Attacks table from HERE). I should have had a Vescavor Gibber tracking sheet because not all PCs will be immune to every VSwarm and you need to know who still has to make saves vs Gibber when within 15' of a particular swarm.

A cave you say...:

This was pretty straight forward. The Stonelord sent his earth elemental forward to scout via earthglide and tremor sense. The elemental emerged in the Hao Jin tapestry room. The Deathtrap dropped and then moved to engage the elemental. The party moved in when they heard the clang of Deathtrap dropping.

I made one minor error here: when the deathtrap dropped, the Suggestion trap should have triggered and been burned on the elemental...but I mistakenly thought elementals were immune to mind-affecting stuff, so it would not be a valid target and the trap would not trigger.

The party rushed in, I had the trap trigger and only the Naga Aspirant failed his save and began walking back to camp. The Cleric used Prot Evil...to no effect since it is a CN trap. The Wolf Shaman simply trip-locked the Aspirant while everyone else finished the ooze in short order (albeit with a few "omgs" when it hit, grabbed and constricted). The party tripped/grappled the Aspirant and the Barbarian spull sundered the suggestion.

I'll post the rest in a few hours.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Into the Woods:

The party had purchase a wand of endure elements earlier expecting cold weather. So, they were prepared for the weather conditions in the Tapestry.

The Aspirant and the Rogue spotted the Apes.

Surprise Round:
Aspirant calls out a warning, casts fireball at a distance on the Apes, and 5' steps with woodland stride into overgrowth to take advantage of concealment it grants.

Singed Apes DimDoor in. One Ape full attacks, hits 3 times (2 of the 4 misses were from concealment). The Aspirant goes negative HP.

The Rogue positions himself for a flank.

1st Round:
Cleric casts Blessing of Divine Fervor. Party focus fires an ape for 100ish damage while the Wolf Shaman woodland strides into overgrowth to stabilize Aspirant. Apes swing away, putting the hurt onto the party.

2nd Round
Party drops 1 Ape and injures the other. The Tobongo awakens and knocks everyone down except the Rogue. The Aspirant after the earth shake is a few HP from dead.

3rd Round
Everyone is happy to have the swift stand up option from Divine Fervor. Party focus fires and kills the 2nd Ape. The Druids talk to the Tobango, averting continued combat (but are unable to wrangle helpful info)

Other than the scariness of a full attacking Aganzhani, the party rallied and brought their resources to bear to end this fight quickly.

People Are Talking:

The PCs met Nikolai and parlay. They decide to go meet this decemverite member who is giving orders to Nikolai. The Cleric asks if Nikolai can cast Restoration on him. The noble sort that he is, Nikolia obliges in helping a fellow Pathfinder.

She's So Purdy:

At this point we only had 45 minutes left before the store closed.

The party proceeded with Nikolai in tow.

The party parlayed briefly, taking note of the 2 Pathfinders who appeared to be digging their own graves. When the Stonelord stepped up to Detect Evil, he got hit with the Calm Emotions. After some more talking, the Alraune new the gig was up and combat began.

Round 1:
Rogue tries to non-lethal sap Nikolai since he's right next to the PCs. He misses. Nikolai uses his domain power and 'ports away. The Kapre steps out of a tree and nauseates most of the party with its smoke. The Alraune drops the Wall of Thorns, splitting the party and trapping the paladin and cleric within it. Nauseated folk move away the best they can, while the barbarian engages the Kapre. The Calmed Stonelord moves up to talk to Nikolai.*

*Adjudicating Calm Emotions was difficult. I simply had the Stonelord come up with a valid, non-tactical reason he would move forward. So, he decided to diplomacize Nikolai to find out exactly what was going on.

Rounds until time runs out:
The Paladin needs a 20 on STR check to escape. He pretty much realizes he's trapped in the Wall of Thorns for the rest of the combat. The Cleric casts Freedom of Movement and steps out of the thorns. The Barbarian and Kapre trade blows one-on-one, but the Kapre has the concealment going on while the Barbarian does not. The Aspirant and Wolf Shaman circle through the jungle and prepare to call lightning or do other spell stuff.

The Alraune turns off it's aura and engages the Stonelord and Rogue in hand to hand with Nikolai jumping in as well...

...and I had to call it after 4h35 min of play as the store was closing.

I gave 1 XP for combat.

I gave 1 PP for the secondary success condition of not killing any of the other Pathfinders as they took very deliberate actions not to hurt any of them. Upon rereading it now without the haze of burnout, I realize I should have given 0 PP as it was tied to the primary success condition being completed first.

I gave reduced gold as they did not finish the final battle (which led to a brief debate from one player that they should get the gold because it was not their fault time ran out). GM thoughts on this issue?

No boons were earned.

Timing Note:
When I began the optional encounter with the Ape ambush, there were 2 hours left. Knowing the players, I (sucessfully) guessed the druids would parlay with the Tobango and party would parlay with Nikolai and save time overall, which is why I ran it.

However, I didn't realize how effective Wall of Thorns would be splitting the party and that, again, they would scatter about...which dragged out the fight. They would have won given another 20-30 minutes, but I'm pretty sure I would I have easily downed 1 and very likely killed the barbarian who stalwartly fought one-on-one vs Kapre that had undergrowth concealment (in fact, I rolled 2 nat 1s in a single full attack, which kept the Barbarian alive right before the game was called).

Ok, now I really have to get back to work.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Man, I really need to proofread if I haven't slept well the night before.

5/5

Did they enjoy themselves despite the struggles?

Grand Lodge 4/5

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

Man, sounds like you had even more trouble than my party did. Losing initiative on those swarms was rough, but thankfully my oracle had taken silence. :) Of course, I wasn't awake enough on the third day of PCC to remember to cast it on someone else. XP She now has a silent metamagic rod for those occasions. It took us half the slot to finish that fight and left the summoner at 1 Con thanks to multiple hits of the poison. A few Restorations later and we were good to go. Sadly, the time crunch left us no time to actually understand what was going on with Nikolai after defeating the alraune. I basically rolled a Diplomacy check at +27 and got my faction boon.

Great scenario Kyle, hoping to take my experience and improve on it when I run it at our game day.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

@TriOmegaZero, I forgot about the poison! The party Rogue took 4 CON damage while battling that Dekrani.

@Kyle, I know I would have enjoyed this as a player. I'll check in with them after they decompress to see how they feel lol

4/5

Kyle Baird wrote:
Did they enjoy themselves despite the struggles?

I was the Stonelord Paladin in Sammy's game. I enjoyed myself, as I far prefer scenarios where there are problems to solve and this scenario had a lot of problems. Unfortunately, I also found myself shamefully underprepared.

As usual, Sammy did a great job running this.

First, I was quite happy to see that the camp location this character had scouted was the one chosen. I was even happier to learn that the poor native tribe we'd slaughtered had made a miraculous recovery.

I was next to useless in the swarm encounter. My lone alchemist's fire flask couldn't pierce their resistance so I didn't even bother with it. Since my only option was to hunt down the Derakni, that's what I did. I could have taken her down faster but I was hoarding my Fly potion figuring I would almost certainly need it later. As bad as this encounter was for us, it should have been a lot worse. She had way more spells fail and miss than she should have, so we got off lucky considering how long we let her take potshots at us.

Lesson learned: invest in Sleeves of Many Garments/Swarmsuit/Swarmbane Clasp

This was the first time my Earth Elemental has survived an encounter. He usually ends up dying to some ambush or trap. Considering he triggered both in the cave, I was sure he was dead. I think this was one of the few times we did something right as a party in sending him ahead to scout.

Lesson learned: continue exploiting earth elementals

The apes weren't too much trouble, despite the fact that they nearly outright killed one of us and had a few more on the ropes. I was actually pretty excited about going toe-to-toe with a tree, as plant life is the natural enemy of earth and stone (what with their intrusive roots getting all up ins). Nonetheless, I was glad we were able to shave off some time talking it down.

Lesson learned: roll better initiative, continue talking to trees

After parlaying with the tree, I was itching for a fight and really wanted to rough up that evil little gnome. Cooler heads prevailed, though (and I could see my Silver Crusader friends had some kind of agenda) so we agreed to follow Dickolai to see his new friend.

Lesson learned: don't trust gnomes

In retrospect, I should have taken the shirt reroll when the Alraune's aura hit me, but I don't think it would have made the difference for us. I made a lot of tactical mistakes at this point--it was late, I was worried about finishing, I was trying really hard not to meta-game the Calm Emotions. Even so, I wasn't too worried about being grappled--until I realized both my back-up weapons were broken.

Lesson learned: grapple happens. Find an alternate solution to trading headbutts for constricts.

By the time we called it, I was relatively confident we'd succeed eventually, but it would have been another drag-out, with us chasing her across the map--and I'm pretty sure the Barbarian would have died.

I was frustrated, but not with the scenario or Sammy. The swarms exploited a gap in our party. We should have been able to overcome that, but we took far too long to regroup and work as a team. Our eventual solution of handing the Swarmbane Clasp to someone else who could do more damage with it should have happened in round 2 or 3. Not round 8 (9? 17?)

I really enjoyed the story, even as we all recognized from the briefing that this new VC was going to be a problem.

I just wish Ragnar could manage to get a boon every once in a while that doesn't involve being revered by Orcs.

If I do have a complaint, it would be that we got dinged for not finishing while also doing the optional encounter. But that's not something the GM can know will happen a priori so I don't fault Sammy for it.

The Exchange 5/5

In your imagination, what does a vescavor swarm sound like? Are they speaking in different voices like the din at a cocktail party in a psych ward? Do they sound like a thousand hungry red-faced babies with wet diapers? Do they make a noise like a chainsaw as they chew up their environment?

I'm trying to write a description doc for the Shared Prep site so the entry can't be too long. It needs to make an impression in less than 50 words.

5/5

Endless chorus of the abyss. Pure chaos. I imagine it like trying to hear and understand a thousand conversations at once, slowly driving you insane as it's impossible to understand or focus on any one voice.

The Exchange 5/5

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Kyle Baird wrote:
Endless chorus of the abyss. Pure chaos. I imagine it like trying to hear and understand a thousand conversations at once, slowly driving you insane as it's impossible to understand or focus on any one voice.

Ahhh, so it's like trying to listen to your GM read the Venture-Captain briefing at GenCon in the Sagamore Ballroom on Saturday night ;)

How's this? "You hear them before you see them. The keening noise of a thousand shrill voices surrounds you, manically shouting unintelligible phrases that make you want to tear off your ears. A swarm of diminutive beasties, bat-winged and shark-toothed, darkens the sky with their numbers."

3/5

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Are the Vescavor Swarms supposed to have blindsense, tremorsense, or scent? Somehow our GM was chasing the invisible PCs with the swarms.

Also, the final encounter is really crappy if you run it on the beach flip-map and group everyone (all the PCs and NPCs) up at the east end of the map.

If the PCs fail their will save on seeing the town, should they be able to see the bug demons behind the buildings if the bug demons are hiding behind the buildings that the PCs can't see? It is an interesting take on the whole "illusion masking" approach and could make for a much more interesting beginning to that encounter. I can imagine a marshal character failing the will save, seeing the demon, running into the building, getting another will save, and feeling very odd about the whole situation. I am asking because my GM ran so much of it wrong that I am not sure what to make of it all.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Christopher Hamilton wrote:

Are the Vescavor Swarms supposed to have blindsense, tremorsense, or scent? Somehow our GM was chasing the invisible PCs with the swarms.

The Vescavor Swarms don't, but the Derakani does have Scent, so it could direct the swarms in the general direction of the invisible PCs. It doesn't sound like your GM was doing that, though.

Christopher Hamilton wrote:
Also, the final encounter is really crappy if you run it on the beach flip-map and group everyone (all the PCs and NPCs) up at the east end of the map.

Well, the initially visible NPCs are supposed to be grouped at the east end, but nothing says that the PCs all have to be standing right in front of the alraune to talk to it.

Christopher Hamilton wrote:

If the PCs fail their will save on seeing the town, should they be able to see the bug demons behind the buildings if the bug demons are hiding behind the buildings that the PCs can't see? It is an interesting take on the whole "illusion masking" approach and could make for a much more interesting beginning to that encounter. I can imagine a marshal character failing the will save, seeing the demon, running into the building, getting another will save, and feeling very odd about the whole situation. I am asking because my GM ran so much of it wrong that I am not sure what to make of it all.

The illusion masks the buildings and everything inside them, otherwise you'd be able to see the contents of the buildings floating there. It was intended to hide the camp and its occupants from the demons, so if you could see the people inside it would be doing a really poor job.

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