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Getting ready to have my "army" enter into the Catacombs of Wrath upper level (Burnt Offerings) and am curious if other GMs have had their players take area B2 or B3 to enter into the CoW and in very short order make their way to B13 and confront Erylium?
I am debating removing the tunnel leading from B1 to B2 and removing the opening from B1 to B3 to push them into the middle of the CoW so there is a greater chance of encountering Koruvus before the Erylium fight.
Any thoughts?
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Getting ready to have my "army" enter into the Catacombs of Wrath upper level (Burnt Offerings) and am curious if other GMs have had their players take area B2 or B3 to enter into the CoW and in very short order make their way to B13 and confront Erylium?
I am debating removing the tunnel leading from B1 to B2 and removing the opening from B1 to B3 to push them into the middle of the CoW so there is a greater chance of encountering Koruvus before the Erylium fight.
Any thoughts?
My group did exactly that, entering the CoW from B2, then moving on through B12 into B13. I nerfed the Erylium fight. All of my players are new, and I was worried that dying so early in the campaign would be discouraging. I regret this decision now. I should have let things play out. Live and learn.
My group explored the rest of the CoW after they slayed Erylium, running into Koruvus later. Our last session ended right after the Koruvus fight.
So, it's entirely possible that your party will do the same thing, but everything ended up great for my group. Except for the magus who actually drank the Waters of Lamashtu in B12, but that's another story...
Depends on your party. My party all had bows, including the paladin.
A composite longbow Smiting Evil doesn't take long to turn Elyrium to dust.
But you need:
(a) A paladin
(b) Ranged weapons
Without the paladin, her DR and fast heal are enough to make her a LOOOONG, painful fight with a bunch of 1st-level characters trolling for crits.
I suggest reading through the Erylium thread to see many of the creative ways parties dealt with her.
I don't know that delaying the inevitable conflict will help.
My only other suggestion is having anyone with Knowledge: Planes roll to see whether they recognize what a 'quasit' is. (My favorite tactic as a GM: "Everyone roll a d20 and tell me what you get. OK. Moving on...")
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Ranged weapons with my army are rather thin, the gunslinger, ranger and alchemist being the only ranged combatants. The weird thing is everyone is fascinated with spears or pole-arms, which is fine, but everyone has one. I imagine everyone is going to throw theirs and then scramble to retrieve it to do so again.
All of them are 2nd level as with this large of a group, I am following the level advancement guide and they all just reached 2nd level at the conclusion of the glassworks.
I figure it will be a good fight, I just wanted the resources to be a little lower before that confrontation. I plan on having Koruvus in the center of the pits and having him bull rush anyone that gets close. I figure the humor of possibly having him fall into the pit still plays to the goblin mind, but the waters giving him enough deviousness that the idea of pushing others into the pits is there.
I really regretted the way I played Koruvus. I had him in full bat-spit crazy mode, he charged, the bard Greased the floor, and he slid spitting kicking and bellowing into the barbarian and the paladin.
Funny? Yes! Resource-intensive? No!
I wouldn't worry too much about Elyrium being 'too easy'. Most of our "RotRL AE clan" report parties having immense troubles with her. Flying, invisibility, damage reduction, and fast heal really minimize the economy of action advantage the party (in theory) has. My group was one of the few groups that obliterated her cleanly, and some days you just can't deal with a paladin rolling nothing below a 17 while Smiting Evil with a composite bow. Even then, it took my party a few rounds, one party member ran off from Elyrium's fear effect, and she was enough of a pain that the paladin had her dress made into a hanky out of sheer spite for the little pain in the rear.
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Eyrlium is too epic to change anything. I would let it play out normally. However, that doesn't mean that you need to let the battle go on and on forever. If you happen to read the account of events in my campaign, you will see I had to do a little improvisation. Erylium is a bit insane, so she may not always make the best move round after round. If you party doesn't defeat her quickly, let the little demon be overconfident and make a mistake.
Bottom line it is all about the game being fun. We still talk about Erylium months after it happened. (Yeah! I am just getting around to writing about it.)
Look forward to reading how it goes in your campaign.
Cheers,
Mazra
Eyrlium is too epic to change anything. I would let it play out normally. However, that doesn't mean that you need to let the battle go on and on forever. If you happen to read the account of events in my campaign, you will see I had to do a little improvisation. Erylium is a bit insane, so she may not always make the best move round after round. If you party doesn't defeat her quickly, let the little demon be overconfident and make a mistake.
Bottom line it is all about the game being fun. We still talk about Erylium months after it happened. (Yeah! I am just getting around to writing about it.)
Look forward to reading how it goes in your campaign.
Cheers,
Mazra
Hey, you! Quit posting on other people's threads and get back to writing!
:-P
My party had a hell of a time with her. They easily defeated her minions in the CoW but couldn't do anything to her and she escaped. She ended up following the party and striking from behind at the most inopportune times. She eventually went to Koruvus and had him release the zombies which shuffled off to attack the players in waves of two in the Vargouille room. My smart players backed into the pool room and each wave had multiple AOO's on them. This was followed by Koruvus and Erylium. Koruvus they killed and they thought they had imprisoned Erylium in the upward collapsed stair. Turns out she turned into a centipede and crawled up to the surface, freed Tsuto from jail and took off after the players in hot pursuit headed towards Thisltetop. In the major epic final battle with Nualia the forces were arranged with half of the party on one side of the portcullises with Nualia and Lyrie and half on the other side with Tusto, Bruthazamus, Erylium, Tsuto and Orik. When the monk in the party grabbled her and crit'd with his numchucks every player at the table whooped with joy. Sooo umm yeah my players did like Erylium at all. Turns out they as is with almost every party that has major probs with her were very low on ranged attacks
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My players attacked the first sinspawn, as expected. They stayed in the natural tunnel, finding the hole that drops into the jail cell, but decided to explore the statue. They then went up to Koruvus—going back to fight Elyrium afterwards.
As far as the Elyrium fight: enlarged dwarf with an enlarged long spear (and, not in a euphemistic way, either).
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My narration of room B12 was apparently terrifying enough that, despite it being the first room they entered, the party cleared out the rest of the complex and eventually collapsed the tunnels leading there without opening the double doors.
I agree it's a little weird for people to barge right in to the bossfight, but I'd probably make the door keyed instead of removing tunnels. Let them see it right away, but make them use Wrath-magic (Korovus's sword looks pretty Wrath-y to me) or a holy symbol of Lamashtu (plant one on Korovus or in the papers) to open it.
Cheers!
Landon
I modified the map a bit, to make it a bit more linear so that I could better predict what my party was going to do...
1) I removed the tunnel opening into B3. The only entrance was through B2.
2) The double doors between B12 (the shrine to Lamashtu) and B13 (Cathedral of Wrath) became secret doors with a very high perception DC (I think I set it to 30-- nigh impossible for a party of second-level PCs). The doors weren't secret from the Cathedral of Wrath side.
3) I put an easier-to-find secret door in the "floor" of B11 (Meditiation Chamber) that led to a narrow passageway that led to a ladder that went up into a trap door in the floor of the northern closet of B13.
I figured that would be the best way to ensure that the party went through the whole dungeon before coming to the boss battle and the Runewell.
The fight against the quasit wasn't actually all that tough, even though I added two more sinspawn and six normal animated skeletons to the encounter. The paladin got all smitey on the quasit, who didn't end up lasting very long.
Getting ready to have my "army" enter into the Catacombs of Wrath upper level (Burnt Offerings) and am curious if other GMs have had their players take area B2 or B3 to enter into the CoW and in very short order make their way to B13 and confront Erylium?
I am debating removing the tunnel leading from B1 to B2 and removing the opening from B1 to B3 to push them into the middle of the CoW so there is a greater chance of encountering Koruvus before the Erylium fight.
Any thoughts?
My party went straight to B12. Unfortunately, despite the warning of a quasit from Tsuto's papers, they did not make any checks to figure out what a quasit is, and were unprepared for the DR/cold iron.
After a very long fight where they ended up leaping from the upper ledge to get a mid-air attack on her several times, eventually Elyrium retreated.
So then they surrounded the runewell and cleared it out by summoning the last wrathspawns. I again asked what they wanted to do, and apparently that was it; they didn't feel like healing their wounds during the down time. As the last sinspawn was summoned and the runewell went dark, the double doors re-opened and Elyrium returned with Koruvus and another sinspawn.
I felt a little bit like a jerk doing that to them, but sometimes you get to reward knowledge, and sometimes you punish ignorance :)
Koruvus then put two heavily injured party members down to negative hp with his acid spit. Deviating a bit from the rules, I let the Kitsune ninja use up the rest of her Ki pool with an improvised bluff: She threatened to throw poo at the enemies. With the convincing proof in hand for a bluff modifier, I declared all the enemies staggered by her sheer madness.
Two potions later and the party was in full retreat. The foghorn leghorn inspired Tengu samurai held the enemies off through a slow retreat in the narrow corridors as the rest of the party raced away.
They would have all survived, the samurai cutting off his armor and gliding down to the water below the cliff, if the Vanaras Zen Archer hadn't decided to get ONE LAST ARROW in, then ate a charge from Koruvus.
All of this was recorded for posterity.
They returned with cold iron polearms and arrows, and took her down just fine.
If I had it to do over again, I'd have had the quasit fight them briefly in one of the outer rooms, long enough for them to get some knowledge checks and find out about the fast healing and DR/Cold iron. At that point they could go back into town to pick up cold iron weapons before returning, or just soldier on.
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Reading your post 119kuduo, it is interesting to see how similar your party's first encounter with Erylium was similar to ours with a very different mix of classes. ( Our Encounter with Erylium)
I don't believe that there is any specific reference to the existence of cold iron weapons in any of the shops in Sandpoint. So it is up to the DM to determine what is available, if any.
TO EVERYONE: How easy or hard should it be for the party to obtain Cold Iron weapons in Sandpoint?
Seems to me that Savah's is fairly well stocked so there should be at least something in Cold Iron.
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Seems to me that Savah's is fairly well stocked so there should be at least something in Cold Iron.
I agree. But would it be what was needed to fight Erylium, Cold Iron arrows, or bolts, or bullets, or maybe even a javelin or spear. And if so, then how much? At this point in RotR the party doesn't have a lot of resources.
I would say 10 Cold Iron arrows could be found for about 1gp each in Sandpoint. Is this too much, or not enough? Maybe a Cold Iron spear could be had for 10gp? They may have a sword too, but that would not be as useful in fighting Erylium.
Some basic things should be cheaper in Sandpoint than say Magnimar. That is in the AP. But rare items should be more. That is my thinking anyway. What is yours?
I ran a side-quest of my own design between the Swallowtail Festival and the Glassworks (party heads out to put down a small goblin splinter-tribe that was menacing a thorpe) and one item of loot was a masterwork cold iron scimitar, of orcish manufacture.
I worried about this exact same thing. My party just happened to work its way through the CoW in pretty much the perfect order though, so there was no real trouble. The reason being that they seemed to want to explore the more visible areas just 15-20 feet in front of them (and within light radius), rather than walking down a long, dark hallway to the shrine/cathedral. I realize that caution won't work for every group though. :D
And I would think that Savah's should be able to supply something cold iron, if specifically for this encounter. I made sure something fell into the party's hands for that reason.
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Cold iron for me isn't that rare of an item that it couldn't be purchased in Sandpoint. If Savah doesn't have an already crafted weapon available for sale, Das Korvus at the Red Dog Smithy may have a few bars that he could craft into something (given enough time), Vorvashali Voon at the Feathered Serpent could have an odd weapon made of it for sale. Then there is the market. The Sandpoint info says that every week (at the end of the week) vendors arrive to sell wares from as far away as Magnimar, etc. and those wares are generally 75% of book price. In my campaign I felt that was too often so every other week is the larger market. I would not allow it to be purchased at 75% off, but I would make it available there.
Edit- Also remember these are the Heroes of Sandpoint™ here! "If yer using it tah save ar arse, you can have it! Just give me sumtin when yah can."
I've had 3 parties do RotRL, the latest being last night. The first party caught Erylium last and were ranged heavy. The Bard managed to land a Hideous Laughter on her that brought her down, then the party beat her to death with melee attacks.
The second party backdoored the mod and did Erylium first. They enlarged their grappling dwarf monk who promptly snatched her up in 2 hands and forced her to make multiple concentration checks to get off any spells. She eventually got free with a lucky Hold Person but it didn't take them long to finish her off from there.
Last night the party backdoored the mod and had the Druid entangle most of the cathedral. The Sinspawn were stuck for about 12 rounds and pegged of with ranged. Erylium stayed out of range until she had to come in close to use Summon Monster II (hellhound) and the rest of her abilities. She managed to paralyze the fighter who took some dmg from the hell hound but their oracle enlarged herself and kept swinging for Erylium with ops. She eventually backed off, summoned another Sinspawn and when the opportunity arose, she bolted for the door with invisibility. The party was miffed she got away, but after 15 rounds of combat, it was my fastest option for ending the fight. They didn't have much of a chance of piercing her DR or keeping up with her healing and it was alread 6 hours in to the session.
We wrapped after that but the silver lining I gave the party is that she's out there and out of spells. They intend to give chase next session. I've already decided that she's going to run for the wand in her meditation room and link up with Koruvus and her Zombie flock for round 2.
Against the group I'm running she is totally ineffectual as a combatant. She was able to escape the first time they encountered her though. The next day they went back to finish her off and to block off the runewell. When they got back to the CoW they found her with a roomful of sinspawn. They were able to slaughter them pretty easily. She made a run for it but they caught her and beat her into the negatives before tying her up for interrogation. Next session started with a half hour plus interrogation scene. She was trying to buy some time to heal and maybe manipulate the group (that didn't work). In the end she was able to escape again because of her polymorph powers (and the group rolled horrible on grapple checks--two 1's in a row). Anyway she turned into a centipede and crawled away. The party was justifiably frustrated with the situation. Now I just have to figure out how best to use her.
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My players basically went straight for her. I have 6 players, and I believe they were 4th level at that point. The group includes a bard/paladin and a ranger/paladin, who aren't afraid to detect evil. They knew they were walking into a fight. (Note: I'm running a modified RotRL campaign.)
They ended up facing Erylium, Tsuto, and a handful of sinspawn.
Erylium ended up being the easiest for them. One of the paladins got her with Smite Evil and went to town. I'm not sure she even got to take any real actions before she plummeted to the ground.
I had the same fear looking at the map and solved it by locking the door with a wrath magic protected key/lock and had Elyrium keep the key in her favorite book in the meditation room I justified it by saying that the key used to be the Scribbler's key to the minor runewell and now Elyrium keeps it outside the runewell and occasionally "gifts" Koruvus with the usage of the item. My PCs actually ended up going through the rest of the dungeon before even discovering the runewell where we had to wrap-up the session for the night. The next week when we got together they had to be reminded that they did in fact find a mysterious key, and that this, being the last room in the dungeon and the only actual surviving door in any decent working order might be a fit for it. The fight itself was fairly difficult as the PCs are very melee heavy, but between fairly clever usage of the ranseur they took from the statue of Alzanist and a crit from our cleric of Sarenrae with the flame of the dawnflower trait (which in that case I ruled would count as being good aligned for the purposes of overcoming DR, not what's written, granted, but I thought it was a bit too climactic and cool not to do) they managed to take her down. The cleric got a really great moment to shine and really strike a pose, so all things considered, it came out alright.