Aberian's Folly Pre-AP

It looks like my PCs are going to try to get into Aberian's Folly before auditions even happen, let alone the cast party. This won't involve much more than adding back the guards to A17 for the main house, but I'm going to have to backtrack a fair bit to get the state of the Knot and the Spiral, I think.

I'm hoping to get some feedback on my backtracking, and maybe we can add this information to the Council of Thieves GM's Guide (assuming that's still being maintained).

Has anyone already tackled this? It would be nice to be saved some effort.

In addition to guards being more evenly spaced around the house, there will also be servants maintaining their normal duties instead of all being tied up with serving the dining guests. The PCs will be far more likely to encounter ordinary servants during their walks within the manor if they go there before (or after) the cast party.

True enough. The sixteen live-in servants (not including Crosael Rasdovain and Sian Daemodus) are all level 2 experts, and all human (which seems odd, but I'm going to explain it by saying that the mayor doesn't like halfling slaves). I've statted one out already, and I'll use him as a template if I need more in a hurry.

I feel like I'm on top of changes to the main part of the Vaneo, but the Knot and the Spiral are going to take some work. I just thought I'd check to see if anyone had attempted this already.

I'm not sure you really need to make any changes to the Knot. By the original plan, Sian should have been finished with her work there before the cast party; the only required changes would be to remove the runecurse and Sian's pre-knowledge of the PC's existence. Everything else in the Knot could essentially be run as written.

Although the difficulty will likely be too great and would thus need to be reduced a bit, considering the PCs don't get the extra level from performing the play. The shadows in the staircase should probably be changed to lesser shadows (see What Lies in Dust), and most of the other monsters and NPCs might require a little nerfing too.

The Spiral shouldn't require any changes, since the PCs won't be particularly likely to reach it.

Sian enters the Knot two days before the cast party. The PCs are potentially going there before auditions, and there is a week of rehearsals before the show opens. Sian is, at this point, the rookie servant in Aberian's Folly, and I suspect Crosael gives her as many lousy jobs as possible given how unhappy she is to have Sian forced on her. I'm not sure if this will make Sian more likely or less likely to encounter the PCs, but it's something I'm keeping in mind.

The magical trap in A53 will still be intact. Sian has Perception +12 (including Trapfinding) and Disable Device +14, so the strongest the trap can be is DC 32 to locate and DC 34 to disarm. Except she unlocked a DC 35 lock in order to get into A53, so I think she must have masterwork thieves' tools that just aren't listed in her stat block (giving her +16).

Nothing in "Dungeon Deathtraps" from PF40 seems particularly appropriate, so I'm tempted to just use the Harm trap from p. 422 of the Core rules. Note that this is totally inappropriate for characters of their level; I'm choosing it based on how appropriate it is for the setting and what Sian could have bypassed.

Similarly, I don't intend to reduce the difficulty of the stuff inside the Knot. That's the deal I have with my players; I let them skip ahead in the adventure if they want to, but I don't softball it if they do. They like it this way, and they know that they can ask to change the deal.

My point was that as far as the story goes, you could simply have Sian enter the Knot at a time that's not related to the cast party, and thus she'd already be there when the PCs decide to tour the manor.

It's not necessary that her entry point is two days prior to the party (unless I'm forgetting something; it's been a while since I ran Sixfold Trial).

Oh! I completely misunderstood. Thank-you for the clarification!

I neglected to mention the flip-side of my agreement with my players. I let them go into places early, and I softball nothing; in exchange, they are allowed any advantages entering early would give them, based on how things are written.

In other words, it's fair for me to add a CR 14 harm trap but it's not fair for me to change the story on the fly just to rob them of their opportunities. If they go into some dungeon early then they probably die, but assuming they succeed the rewards are potentially greater, at least in terms of story.

Okay, I see :)

That throws my suggestion out the window then. Let me reread the relevant parts of the book..

The strongest trap Sian could reliably disarm would be DC 24 (by taking 10; you can't take 20 when disarming traps). Since she was able to disarm the trap due to information she had gathered beforehand, I'd say that would grant her a +6 bonus or thereabouts, and the trap would realistically be at DC 30 or so. I think the CR 14 trap is a bit too much, and would probably go for the CR 11 cone of cold trap if I was to run this.

(she used a potion of gaseous form to bypass the locks on the way to the trap, but a set of masterwork thieves' tools seems like something she should have anyway).

Area B1 will be essentially empty; the haversack and the scrolls within were placed by Sian, and the dead elf will instead be a living elf in B8. The kyton in B12 will be perfectly alive. It looks like that's all the changes that need to be made to the adventure due to Sian's non-appearance.

I'd forgotten about the potion of gaseous form. Thanks for the reminder. I think I'll take your advice and leave her the masterwork thieves' tools, but good catch on the potion!

I considered the cone of cold trap but chose harm because it only affected the person attempting to open the door, not some poor mayor who happened to be standing nearby when an idiot servant started dusting. In retrospect, this a) seems like overthinking and b) doesn't sound like something House Thrune would care about during set-up. I'll switch to the cone of cold.

I guess Sian still has the haversack in her quarters (say A5), hidden as best she can. There are sixteen live-in servants senior to her, and only fourteen beds (six in A5 and eight in A10), so maybe they sleep in shifts? I put Sian in A5 because I figured she'd want the outside door.

Elandriu the elf is still alive and imprisoned in B8 (and insane). He tried to rob the Folly and failed, so maybe rogue 5? He and Szamir can shout at each other down the hall, and maybe be heard. (As an aside, I'm still not sure why an immortal devil and a near-ageless elf would go insane in only three decades, though I'd certainly believe a couple of humans would. I'll just go with it and hope the players don't question it too closely...)

Probably the biggest change is that the kyton in B12 is still alive. This doesn't require any prep, other than to know how he's likely to address anyone visiting him. He's not named anywhere, is he?

So if I prep an insane elf I think I'm good to go with the Knot, right? I'll also need to be ready in case the PCs somehow get a heal or greater restoration cast on Elandriu, but mostly that'll just be thirty-year-old dirt on the Council of Thieves. Maybe he knows rumours about the Drovenges, but other than that I don't know what he could know that would be useful.

It sounds like you've thought this through very well :)

The kyton isn't named anywhere that I can recall.

30 years of solitude (or near-solitude) is a pretty long time. I don't find it unlikely that someone could go mad in that situation, even with a very long lifespan. I'd imagine a human could easily go mad in 3-5 years of only having sparse spoken contact with one other person, and never seeing anyone or knowing if anyone even know you exist. Eventually you'd think the other person was only a figment of your imagination, and then things would only get worse.

Elandriu probably wouldn't know much about the Council. Its existence isn't public knowledge, after all, and most regular thieves wouldn't be in contact with it. He might know rumors of nobles being related to it, but not much more than that. Perhaps he'd have heard of Vassindio Drovenge being one of its leaders.

One quick thing you may have thought of already: The fireplaces, sink faucets, and other magical effects powered by Liebdaga should still work normally, since Sian hasn't yet done any damage to the power conduits (instead it will likely be the PCs who do this damage, if they succeed at entering the Knot).

The PCs have all moved into the mayoral manor and have been quite enjoying the magical effects. Once they start to malfunction it will be extremely obvious to them all.

They're going into the Knot next session. With some extremely good diplomacy checks they managed to convince Aberian to let them enter the Knot and "clear out all the monsters". He has warned them that he's going to make it tough on them when they come out, just to make sure that nothing has affected them.

I think that Sian is going to knock out the mayor, take on his appearance, and join them. Since she hasn't been in the Knot yet, and in fact since she was only just hired, she doesn't have the handy haversack. She has neither set alarms nor disarmed the wards and traps in a way that damaged the Knot's connection to the Nessian Spiral (as mentioned on p. 38). So I think I just need to go through and rejigger the trap situation. I'll use your DC calculations above as my guideline.

Any thoughts on what kind of traps or wards would be necessary for the connection, such that disarming them would damage such a connection but still leave no trace behind?

Okay, I'm putting four pillars of hellfire into B1. The alcoves exist so that it's easy to just walk around the pillars, but Sian disabled them anyway (not being sure what they did). These are the connections from the knot to the manor house that she damaged in addition to killing the kyton.

Another big problem is that the PCs can't get out the way they came in. Getting out through B1 requires a key, and presumably Vheed had it and it was destroyed in the accident that killed him. They'll have no choice but to make their way through the entire Knot before they can leave, or else do a Use Magic Device check to get through. Should a Disable Device check be added too? DC 30 on both?