Andreas Hempel's page

My players scried on the captured party member and I described them the scene in the black octagonal room as written (whole party tied to chairs). Now they are thinking of teleporting in to rescue her. My question now is: would you allow this?

After one of the group died in the watery tunnel in the crushing grasp of the giant octopus they were too afraid to continue adventuring, but afterwards the in-group doppelganger was uncovered and now they want their friend back.
The spell descriptions seem to say that you could use the two spells in conjunction. But I fear (and have read about this happening) that they could exploit this tactic (especially in the future) and miss out on the rest of Sodden Hold. What if they simply teleport back out (given they get their hands on a scroll with a CL high enough to transport them all)? What if they make it a habit to scry and teleport? I do not want to railroad them too much, but I see not many opportunities.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Hi all,

for some time now I am thinking of tweaking the Champion´s Belt gladiatorial fights.

After my players left on kind of good terms with Filge and Smenk in WC (after hitting him hard, they negotiated with Filge for the skeletons and let him live), I had them hear the rumor in the Free City, that Smenk got hold of a manager licence. They just entered the Sodden Hold but are hoping that they can convince Smenk to let them fight for him.

Of course that will not happen...
My first thought was to pump Filge, Kullen and "the Gang" up a bit and pitch them against my players in the first arena fight. Change filge to a Dread Necromancer, make Kullen even stronger and dumber and so on.
I just discovered the Corpsecrafter feat-chain from Libris Mortis, which would make the undead mooks of Filge even scarier.

First question: what would the audience, the Champion´s Games and the city administration say to undead in the fights? Only take "uncivilized" base creatures (Gnolls, Animals, Magical Beasts, Troglodytes...)? Say that those are the remains of condemned criminals? Let the authorities grudgingly accept their existence and the crowd boo the "bad, evil mage"?

Then I thought "What the heck, let´s exchange Filge´s Gang with Pitch Blade." Raknian is taking no chances with the PCs and wants to get them out of the picture as soon as possible. He bought some rounds of truce from the other groups of gladiators so that his battle-dwarfs can concentrate on the PCs.
In exchange I wanted to put a cleric in Filges team, which would hit the front lines of battle and support the undeads with the Necromantic Presence and Necromantic Might feats from Libris Mortis. That should help to toughen the fight.

Next question: what do you think of the idea to introduce Darl Quethos (from LoLR) here already? I do not plan on letting him occur any more until the PC´s see him in LoLR but having them fight him already in the arena (without the Hand of Vecna and stuff) they will hopefully enjoy meeting him again even more.
Smenk would simply have asked around for some cleric that could help his team and Darl is needing money for his next quests.

Last question: I still have to learn about my PC´s tactics, but they will probably have at least some fireball-ish at the ready, when they face a "horde" of undead mooks. What can I do to toughen them against the wizards most favorite tool, area blasting? Any mean DM tricks I can pull out of the box?

Thanks for reading and your suggestions,
Andreas

Hi everyone,

yesterday my group concluded Encounter at Blackwall Keep. I want to thank Peter Fuesz for his great idea concerning this adventure (detailed in this post: http://paizo.com/dungeon/messageboards/ageOfWorms/archives/howIChangedTheBl ackwallKeepAdventureSPOILERS), my players enjoyed the alternate characters I made up for them immensely. They almost beat up the first Spawn of Kyuss, but luckily I could infest one of the poor soldiers, before the undead went down.
My dilemma (?) started earlier: my players negotiated with Hishka the shaman and agreed to rid the lizardfolk of the kobolds (which only took one fireball, overall pretty anti-climactic battles in this module), so the tribe could relocate. And then they decided to take the dragon egg. So now they have a worm-infested "black dragon egg" in their Handy Haversack and plan to hand it over / sell it to the Mage´s Guild.
What should I let happen? A surprising burst of the egg, because the time for the worms to infest the hatchlings has come? While it is being examined or in the Haversack? Does Ilthane send minions to retrieve the egg? Does it get stolen in the night? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Andreas