I expected the superweapon to be a lot more super. I had trouble imagining the statblock presented being a menace to a dedicated naval effort to destroy it. I'll definitely be upgrading it 3-4 CR when I run it, to close off the direct fight option.
How about this?
Spoiler:
THE TERRAKEN CR 14
Zombie (variant) advanced dragon turtle
NE Gargantuan undead (aquatic)
Init -1; Senses darkvision 60 ft; Listen +0, Spot +0
DEFENSE
AC 33, touch 5, flat-footed 33
(-1 Dex, -4 size, +28 natural)
hp 211 (32d12 plus 3)
Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +18
DR 15/adamantine; Immune undead traits
OFFENSE
Spd 20 ft., swim 30 ft.
Melee bite +25 (6d6+13) and 2 claws +20 (3d8+6)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
TACTICS
During Combat The Terraken attacks anything it can reach.
Morale The Terraken automatically obeys the orders of its pilot. The ooze mephits currently at the helm have no qualms about fighting until the Terraken is destroyed, or abandoning it if they feel threatened.
STATISTICS
Str 37, Dex 8, Con –, Int -, Wis 10, Cha 1
Base Atk +16; Grp +41
Feats Toughness
Naturally, you might wonder why I have something like that lying around, and what that bit about "mephits currently at the helm" refers to...
Spoiler:
In my original manuscript, the Terraken was more of a war machine. It was actually hollow, with a 15 x 15 or so space within it. Sitting in the "Captain's chair" gave the sitter complete telepathic control over the Terraken's actions. So, when the PCs arrive, two ooze mephits are inside at the helm. The PCs need to break into the thing and wrest control from the mephits, as fighting it straight-up is a very bad idea at this CR. Here are some supporting bits if you choose to go this way:
Oubliette text:
Creatures: The beast in the water is the Terraken. It resembles a gigantic dragon turtle with grey, sickly skin and an adamantine beak. A steel hatch, two feet square, is visible on its carapace, five feet above its tail.
The power of the Terraken’s necromantic animation allows a pilot within its shell full control over the beast. A pair of ooze mephits is currently trading stints in the driver’s seat. The Terraken is only limited to single actions (as a typical zombie) when it is undirected.
Creatures:
OOZE MEPHITS (2) CR 3
hp 19; MM 183
TACTICS
During Combat When confronted by attackers within the Terraken, one mephit maintains control over the Terraken as long as targets remain outside. Otherwise, they each use their breath weapon, then attempt to summon another mephit and use their stinking cloud and acid arrow spell-like abilities, before using their breath weapon again.
Morale The mephits abandon the Terraken if reduced below 10 hp, jumping in the water to take advantage of their fast healing quality. If the hatch isn’t locked behind them, they’ll return as soon as they are recovered to full hp to try to regain control.
Development: With the geyser’s spray and the Terraken’s poor Spot check, it is relatively easy for the PCs to descend onto its carapace unseen. However, the Terraken (and the mephits) immediately become aware of any creature physically standing on the beast. The carapace is uneven and wet, and the Terraken’s movements are unpredictable, requiring a DC 15 Balance check to remain upright each round, with failure by 10 or more throwing the PC into the water. Standing on the back half of the carapace exposes a PC to claw attacks from one side of the beast, but only targets on the front half of the carapace are vulnerable to bite attacks. After three rounds with attackers on the carapace, the mephits put the Terraken through a roll as a full-round action, and anyone attempting to cling to the carapace must make a DC 15 Reflex save or be left in the water.
An opponent in the water is subject to all of the Terraken’s attacks.
Hatch: hardness 10, hp 30, Break DC 28, Open Lock DC 30.
The interior of the Terraken is bare and unlit, an empty shell. There is one simple chair bolted to the floor near the nose, facing forward. Any intelligent being seated in the chair automatically assumes control of the Terraken, including its senses (no check required).
The Terraken itself might be the only means available to the PCs to damage it, but whoever stays at the helm is in for a rough ride if they choose this route. If the Terraken’s claws are used against it, anyone inside must make a Reflex save with a DC equal to the damage dealt. Failure means the occupant takes bludgeoning damage equal to one-quarter of the damage dealt to the Terraken as they are tossed around the interior.
If no one controls the Terraken, it takes a single action reach round, attacking any creature within reach or moving forward. Unless it is constrained within the oubliette, it eventually digs its way through the rubble of the Lower Canal, climbs to the High Port, and swims out to Chimera Cove, although all of this may take days to accomplish.
XP award: Defeating the Terraken by gaining access to its interior and seizing control from the ooze mephits is an EL 10 encounter, while fighting it to the death from outside is an EL 14 encounter.
Feel free to ignore or use as you see fit; just thought I'd share since your thinking aligned with my initial take.
As I said I thoroughly enjoyed Chimera Cove just sorry we didn't get to finish it. I would appreciate it if you could keep me posted of any new adventures you do. My email is silverhair2008 at hotmail dot com. Thanks again.
Excellent! Will do!
silverhair2008 wrote:
What issue is The Quicksilver Hourglass in? Possibly the other issues you have adventures in if you please?
Here's Quicksilver Hourglass and here's Requiem of the Shadow Serpent. Took me a minute to find 'em. Little known fact: every issue of Dungeon containing an Anson Caralya adventure has a T. Rex on the cover.
Mr. Caralya, I am sorry that I misunderstood you earlier. I thought you meant to post on the Messageboards under Pathfinder Modules, so that is what I did. Then Kirth explained that it was to be on the page with the module itself. So you now have a review in both places. The one on the message boards is under "Just finished Treasure of Chimera Cove with a 3/4 TPK". If you read that let me know what you think.
Thanks for the extensive write-up, always a blast to hear about people's experiences with my adventures. I'll play it safe and spoilerguard my comments.
Spoiler:
silverhair2008 wrote:
The encounter with the Hand of the Deep was a little bit awkward. I had a hard time figuring out how it knew where the PC’s and NPC’s were on board if it couldn’t see them.
The Hand of the Deep doesn't know where the PCs and NPCs are in the boat, it's just reaching up around the boat in hopes of grabbing something tasty. Mechanically, the targets of its attacks all have cover since the boat is at least partially in the way.
silverhair2008 wrote:
Such as how does Poltur get to area 5 when the entire tunnel is collapsed. It might have been easier to understand if he entered the southwest tunnel leading to area 11. If that was the case and the party had followed him there could have been a way to avoid the entire rest of the module by following the tunnel leading from the Northeast of area 11 to area 5.
I think you've misread the orientation of the map of The Dragon -- the PCs are coming from the right-hand side, as would be Poltur, as The Lion is north of The Dragon. The blocked section of the tunnel is to the south of area 5, so there's no obstruction for Poltur or the PCs reach it.
silverhair2008 wrote:
Also, let me know when you do another module I would like to see it and maybe play in it next time.
I don't currently have anything in the Paizo queue, but hopefully I'll get something sooner or later. You can always check out J2: Guardians of Dragonfall or my old work in Dungeon, including my personal favorite, The Quicksilver Hourglass, featuring a +97 grapple bonus monster.
Honestly, I had a tough time thinking three-dimensionally with this one. I've not run it yet, despite having a nautical campaign going. Kudos for braving it!
Silverhair, houstonderek, Chinadoll, Kirth, sorry to hear the outcome for your characters, but it sounds like you had a good time as players. If I could ask a favor, would you mind writing a review of the adventure? (Go to Pathfinder / Pathfinder Modules / LB2.) To be clear, the request is to write a review, not to sugarcoat anything -- feel free to be critical. It's just that I take a morale penalty each time I see that my adventure is the only published one without a single review...
I am sorry that my running of your adventure has not turned out the way you had it laid out.
Hey, don't worry about me! A plan never survives contact with the enemy! Seriously though, we tried to account for the chance of something like this with the one sidebar. But as an author I want to devote most of my word-count to what I think will be the most likely course of events. It just happens that in this case, there's a pretty significant possible divergence fairly early. It's much less important to me that your party sticks to that most-likely path than that they enjoy the adventure.
We start what I think will be the last session of Treasure of Chimers Cove on Sunday. As I covered before they have killed Poltur. As I understand it that begins the flooding of the Oubliette. Now let me see if I can out this in some kind of order.
1. The Monk/Fighter took a potion of invisibility and is going ahead to try to find the control item we left him crawling through the debris field. Will the Terraken be able to sense him when he gets to the oubliette?
I'd say no, until the monk/fighter is in the water, at which point invisibility becomes much less meaningful (see Aquatic Terrain section and Invisibility sub-section). Then he might be in a fair amount of trouble.
I intended the debris field to be pretty much impassable (unless this PC is a xorn), but if you don't want to run encounters 5-11 without the rematch with Poltur, this is an efficient way to skip them.
silverhair2008 wrote:
2. When Poltur died, the water elemental was released. Does the elemental stay in the caverns or does it fight through the Sea-Sworn Marines to get out of the caverns? Does the two-headed snake go with the elemental?
Because Shirqual (the water elemental) has control over the scrying pool, and is fairly cunning for an elemental, we can assume it knows just about everything worth knowing in Chimera Cove (except for the treasure concealed right under its nose). I'd say it would take the direct route to area 5, avoiding the marines, mephits, and the rest, then up to High Port, and out through the cove, with its pet snake, of course. No fighting necessary. If it runs into any PC opposition on the way out, it would probably attempt to pull some local monsters in to the fray, for example retreating onto the Silver Reign to involve Zasril and the mimics. Speaking of which, if your PCs are in High Port and Poltur is dead, Zasril will do whatever possible to lure the PCs onto the Silver Reign, as its opportunities for release are rapidly dwindling.
silverhair2008 wrote:
3. When Poltur dies, the Captain undoubtedly felt and heard the rumble of the flooding of the Oubliette. Could she be heading toward the Oubliette to try to regain the amulet of control? Also, what is the possible reaction of the Chimera?
I'd say she'd be aware of it and very concerned, but her mobility (and that of all other sea-sworn) is extremely limited in this setting -- note the very few wet areas on the map of The Dragon and the devastating effect of the curse of the sea-sworn. Although the sea-sworn have moved around a bit in the caverns, this has taken years, even decades, to accomplish (they're undead, so no big deal to them; this history isn't in the text because it's pretty deep back-story).
I intended the sea-sworn to be one of those troll-like annoying regenerating creatures whose Achilles' heel the PCs have to figure out, while their immobility gives the PCs a chance to disengage and think about it if necessary and not become re-engaged every 5 rounds after the things have regenerated their way back to full health. I'd say the captain only comes into play once the oubliette has completely flooded and waters are starting to flood the chambers of The Dragon, at which point she'd head straight for the Terraken and the amulet, with the marines from area 7 following a few rounds later, and the chimera last of all. Be careful not to overdo it, though, as sea-sworn in water are extremely tough.
SKR has covered point #4.
Can't wait to hear how tomorrow's session goes for your group!
Silverhair, I really enjoyed reading your summary of the adventure to date. Sounds like things flowed smoothly (and quickly!) for your group.
Chinadoll wrote:
Silverhair, I JUST found out what a Turducken is! So I wonder if the Terraken is a turtle stuffed inside a dragon, or vice versa? Hmmm..... I will ponder this one a while.
My etymology was "terrapin" with "kraken", but yours works too (and leaves me wondering if I had John Madden's Thanksgiving post-game show on in the background when I came up with that, as he's always distributing legs off a 6-legged turducken as awards).
I have a question about the Hand of the Deep, where roughly does it have its lair. As the description says it crawls out of its lair into the water after the water level drops.
Spoiler:
See the map on the module's inside front cover, near the top center. I'd place its nest about 10 feet below low-tide level, on the south side of the smaller of the two island-rocks.
silverhair2008 wrote:
It also says that if it suffers any significant damage it leaves the cove. It was my understanding that the seawalls blocked any type of exit out of the cove. Am I wrong?
Spoiler:
Yup, if the sea walls are up, it can't flee the cove. In that case I'd just have it use its jet ability to immediately shoot over to the other side of the cove and hide in a deep, dark spot.
silverhair2008 wrote:
It will probably be moot by the time you answer this but I thought I would ask anyway. We play tomorrow and I doubt you will see this until Monday or so.
You underestimate my ego-surfing compulsion in checking this thread.
I think you'll find that LB2 ports easily to other worlds; the central conflict in the backstory is based on events 50 years in the past and could be shifted to any two competing maritime powers in your campaign history. All of the action takes place in a (very) small coastal settlement (one small enough to be placed on a map just about anywhere) and a concealed dungeon of sorts, so nothing really geographical or nation-state specific there either.
I rank J2 among the best of the modules so far, so I can't express how happy I was to discover you were penning this one. Since I love the new monsters and magic items you made for that one, I was wondering how many we can expect to see in this adventure? The last two modules (D1.5 and LB1) each only had a single new monster in them, and I was hoping you'd be blessing us with another 3 like last time. Or 4 or 5 or 6...
Glad J2 worked for you! I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that my final draft of LB2 included 3 new monsters and 2 new magic items. But the Paizo guys need to fit it all between 2 covers with artwork added in, so no promises that that's exactly what you'll see when it ships.
Yup, the great mystery is resolved, the wraps are off the authorship of LB2: it's me! Happy to answer questions on it within the constraints of 1) not spoiling anything, and 2) not knowing what made the final edit... which means I can't say much, actually.
And I'll forgive Steve for forgetting that I also penned Guardians of Dragonfall as I'm sure he was busy cramming goodness into LB1 when it came out.
A little Google-fu tells me Nocticula is a Queen of the Succubi in TSR's Planescape setting (but no exact book refreneces), and she also appears in Green Ronin's Book Fiends.
She dates all the way back to the 1E MM2, though only as a name in a list.
Just wanted to point out while we're in the earliest days here that one of the wonkiest things about 3E epic came about from "leaving it for later" -- that being the x10 cost multiplier on magic items above +5/+6 enhancement. I hate that. It would be great to have a magic item system from the start in which the potential power of any item caps out at the same cost (say, 200k if you're staying close to 3E pricing), so that additional power at epic levels is a smooth progression, but still generally unavailable pre-epic. Now, some things don't need to fit this system -- scrolls and wands and potions cap out by spell level -- but why not standardize the rest? By the pricing formulas, each plus in a weapon is twice as valuable as a plus in a suit of armor, so why put the total plus cap in the same place? If my character wants to be about defense, why can't he put just as much power/cost into his armor as someone else could put in his sword? Is it just about the sacred cow of "+5" being the best? I haven't studied this closely and don't know if I'm missing something basic. The only thing that jumps out at me as completely unaligned with this approach are the super-cheap items giving a competence skill bonus, which would give a +77 (wrong) bonus if you let them continue up to 200k. My thought there is just to raise their per-plus cost a bit. But hey, if we're willing to slaughter the "wizards get d4 HD" cow, why not the "+5 armor is as good as it gets" cow?
Other random epic thoughts: I'd cap it at 30th level rather than leave it completely open-ended, and say anything beyond 30th is really some sort of demigod. But at the same time, I think I'd make the power curve at epic levels a bit steeper. I'd continue the normal BAB and save progressions -- I don't think by 30th level the disparities present a terrible problem, and the Tweedledee/Tweedledum different BAB by class order just isn't right to my D&D heart. I'd drop "Improved Spell Capacity" and just continue normal spell progressions, adding 10th, 11th, and 12th level slots, with accompanying spells (and some metamagic feats with bigger adjustments to make additional use of these slots - say a +9 feat to use the spell at-will as a spell-like ability for the day, or a +7 to change a touch spell to a ranged spread), and 7th and 8th level spell slots and spells for bards, etc. for rangers and paladins. And it hurts me a little to say it, but I'd drop Epic Spellcasting. I like the spirit of it, but the existing system is broken and it would be a bear to fix. It really belongs in a game system where all spells are devised that way. In fact, I'd do away with the "epic feat" category entirely, and just add new feats that have such long trees for qualification or high BAB/save/ability/whatever requirements that they'd only be taken by epic characters or powerful monsters (more the former restrictions than the latter). To mix things up a little from plain old extrapolated advancement forever, I might encourage epic characters to broaden themselves a bit by allowing them to take one level in a class (a class which they already have some levels in, but less than half their total character level) and gain the benefit of two class levels for the purposes of everything except BAB and saves, which don't progress at all. To the steeper power curve, I might give a +1 ability bonus every other level and a feat every level (or maybe double the pre-epic feat/special ability frequency).
Saern, here's a few bits from my notes on ranged attack-based PCs from over the (recent) years, for your consideration:
Feats of interest: Able Sniper (Races of the Wild), Woodland Archer (Races of the Wild, tactical), Greater Manyshot (XPH, kinda unbelievable), Improved Rapid Shot (Complete Warrior), Improved Diversion (Complete Adventurer, excellent for snipers), Deadeye Shot (PHBII, nice if you have any ability to do sneak attack damage), and Penetrating Shot (PHBII). I recall "Shot on the Run" or something similar, and "Power Shot," but can't find either right now. I'd probably go with the Greater Manyshot tree and throw in Improved Initiative, and that probably fills all your pre-epic feat slots.
Spells: Arrow Mind (Complete Adventurer - absolute must-have)
Items: Check out Races of the Wild for additional arrow types, the elvencraft bow, and the swordbow.
Since magic arrows don't stack with a magic bow its not as useful as it might at first appear. Though thinking about it I suppose you could use the money to buy a bow +1 with all sorts of other enhancements on it and rely on the Arcane Archers ability to get high plus arrows from class abilities. That'd give you one heck of a bow.
You got it. Don't get stuff that doesn't stack. With your +5 enhancement coming from the arrows, get yourself that +1 speed exit wound (CW) bow and a strength-boosting item.
especially because in 3.5e the enhanced arrows are sort of meaningless.
Why do you say that? At 16th level you've got unlimited +5 arrows, and it requires no special action on your part to make 'em. That's better than any three archery feats put together IMHO. Everyone else is coughing up 1,000 gp for each of those arrows.
I've never played an AA, but I've thought about it quite a bit (same as Master Transmogrifist, Arcane Hierophant, Dervish, etc.). If you're really going to rely on archery, I'd give serious thought to picking up two levels of Order of the Bow Initiate from Complete Warrior first for Close Combat Shot. Drawing AoO's every time you play to your strength ain't good. (Any other ways to do this? Only other option I know is to focus in an exotic bow and take a level of Exotic Weapon Master.)
I think the main feature of this class (the escalating enhancement bonus to arrows) was much more useful in 3E when it was just the properties of the arrows that were applied against DR, not the bow's, and DR included weapon pluses. With bow's features applying against DR, and amount of pluses irrelevant, and the advent of all the feats of PHB2, I'd agree that a fighter can be a more effective archer than an AA, but that's no reason not to do it.
What energy is Tornulis' Tongue of Rebuke guardian supposed to be imbued with?
Fire. Must have been dropped somewhere in the editing process, although Tornulis' "During Combat" guidelines still indirectly suggest it ("If she begins to run low on offensive firepower, she casts open/close to open the fire port and directs her shield guardian to bull rush foes into the line of fire and grapple them there").
I'm curious - who is Anson Caralya? Not a name I am familiar with.
Anson Caralya is just a humble freelance writer whose obsession with the epic rules put him in the book of records for the highest level adventure ever published in Dungeon, the aforementioned "Quicksilver Hourglass." He followed that up with "Requiem of the Shadow Serpent" a bit over a year later, a mid-level FR adventure that grew out of his somewhat less intense obsession with dead magic zones. In appreciation for the excellent job he did cleaning Dr. Pepper stains and Dorito crumbs off the Paizo carpets the last few years, Paizo gave him the opportunity to write a GameMastery module, which allowed him to wallow in his beyond-obsession interest in all things draconic. He is available for your adventure-writing and snack-food-shrapnel-removal needs at very reasonable rates.
Conversation duly noted, and I'll now return to writing the manuscript for J2: Dragonfall.
Personally, I'm a 3-4 syllable dragon name guy, and while I try to make sure they don't look randomly assembled, I also don't want an English word with one letter replaced. But the Draconic/Common split idea is very nice; I'll need to think about where to go with that. I think the one dragon name set in stone at this point is "Auranorex", a gold dragon mentioned in the adventure's promo.
Although he never gave her stats, Gygax did gave her a fairly significant supporting role in his books, beginning with Artifact of Evil. From those sources, she appears to be on power-par with demon princes.
5. The Union of Eclipses from Quicksilver Hourglass – an epic party of Undead intent on killing all life in the material plane – nice.
Thanks! Considering the span of time this thread covers, wow, I'm amazed that a creation of mine is able to shine in such august company. As I said on the favorite site thread, warms my heart to hear my little adventure at the end of time mentioned here at the end of Dungeon time.
The Wormcrawl Fissure
The aboleth ruins in "The Lightless Depths"
Kuluth-Mar
The Quicksilver Hourglass
The Styes
Sharn, of Chimes at Midnight, Steel Shadows and Murder at Oakbridge
Warms my heart to hear my little adventure at the end of time mentioned here at the end of Dungeon time.
messy wrote:
quicksilver hourglass! which is a strange choice, since i can barely understand the dang thing :-)
Flashback: A young Downer bumps into Lobo in some bottom-dwellers joint, a fight turns into mutual admiration for each others' underhandedness, and they gang up to steal Aqua-man's lunch money.
October (139) - "There is No Honor" by James Jacobs and "Requiem of the Shadow Serpent" by Anson Caralya.
Shroomy, you have just allayed my fears that falling between the inaugural entry in a new AP and the latest Maure Castle installment, my little adventure would be entirely overlooked. Thank you!
Messrs. Vaughan, G-cubed, and Logue: thanks for the lightning-quick feedback! Last week I had no clue how writing for WotC might compare to writing for Paizo, but you've de-mystified it quite a bit. Thanks again!
I'm going to stray a bit off-topic here because I find elements of this conversation fascinating, and perhaps others like me who are a few steps behind the estimable Messrs. Logue, Pett, Vaughan {insert subroutine here to re-order authors based on viewer} would be interested as well. When I began submitting to Dungeon I figured success here might open doors at WotC and elsewhere. Recently, as pointed out in this thread, I find that WotC products' credits often do include regular Dungeon contributors (as well as staff). So, first question: How did this come about? Did they come to you or vice versa? I've looked at WotC's designer challenge once or twice, but I'd much rather spend my time submitting proposals to Paizo and then writing adventures following proposal acceptance than writing a full adventure for WotC with little hope they will actually do anything with it. Also, if I want to impress someone with my adventure writing skill, the most natural thing to do seems to be pointing them at my published work. Any feedback on how others made this leap would be welcome. Second question: is writing adventures for WotC fulfilling? Working to a detailed outline and then having your work extensively re-written after hand-off sounds... well, not ideal. Something I'd like to accomplish some day is having my name, alone, on a stand-alone product, and I always figured it would be a WotC adventure if it was anything. But if I'm going to barely recognize the end product, I might move on to my next dream instead (someone has to write the next Star Wars film trilogy, right?).
Thanks for the comments, Anson. I appreciate you taking the time to read my query. Yeah, it kinda has that 1st time proposal "squeeze as much into it as I can" feel, doesn't it? I mentioned on another thread that i think its important not to get too hung up on the little details and just stick to the main ones, I think I'll try that on my next query.
By the way, this proposal is based on a dungeon I made to prep my players for Quicksilver Hourglass. They're not done yet but I'm looking forward to playing yours.
As I said earlier, I definitely enjoyed reading it! Good luck with running Hourglass!
I thought the query was very interesting and well-done. Aside from Shroomy's comments, though, I think there might've been one really big knock against it. Given the difficulty of writing an effective epic-level adventure, I doubt the editors would accept any query for one from a first-time writer. I'd try to get in one or two lower-level scenarios before hitting them with the big guns.
I think "Quicksilver Hourglass" was from a first time writer.
Yup, that was my first published adventure, so, No, established history with the editors is not a prerequisite (although the writer's guidelines indicate otherwise, unless they've been updated recently).
Luz, I enjoyed reading your proposal; coming up with threats deserving of epic PC's attention is not easy. One suggestion would be to ease off on the level of detail -- I don't think you need to devote a paragraph to each monster/encounter, but you do need to make clear to the editors what's cool about your proposal.
Here's my latest rejection, because it was too similar to something already in the pipeline (so sayeth Sutter):(
I bet it's "Requiem of the Shadow Serpent," from #139. I was reading the adventure last night and wondered where I had seen something similar in the past few days. :)
Sorry, Medesha. I'm sure this means that my next brilliant proposal will get axed because you've gotten the green light on something similar. That said, please don't use the gorbel; it's my personal mission to bring back this forgotten gem of the old Fiend Folio...
TBH, I don't doubt there will be a 4E at some point. What I find confusing is the constant release of books supporting 3.5E that continue to be churned out every month. Surely people are going to stop buying these if there's talk of a 4E?
There have been a few extras that have found their way into the game, such a Swift and Immediate Actions; will these become core? How do you decide what the core characters will be when there have been so many others in the numerous supplements? How can we be satisfied with the core feats when we may have been using many others? This is all assuming 4E is similar to 3.5E.
However, I'm opening up this thread to ask: What will 4E be like?
You can also find tons and tons of discussion on this very topic on ENWorld. (I don't feel bad about referencing another board here because the Dungeon staff regularly posts there.)
I used the Hourglass as the culminating moment of our epic campaign. That was only about a month ago, in fact. I made several modifications to suit my storyline, of course. The party level was 28 when they enter the Hourglass (which I simply called "the Nexus").
Glad to hear that the adventure worked well for you!
Crust wrote:
Be careful with the gargantuan blackstone gigant. With four huge slam attacks and that fort DC 50 to avoid being turned to stone, it could end the entire group in a few rounds. I removed it.
Yes, the gigant is very mean. Its +97 grapple check is probably my favorite stat in the whole thing. However, its hp aren't terribly high and it has no ability to heal itself, so it has a bit of a glass jaw.
Crust wrote:
I also removed Erivatius (sp?) and replaced him with the campaign's reoccuring arch-villain (a half-fiend evolved vampire epic sorcerer/blood magus). I didn't want to mess with the PCs fighting an avatar.
I also did away with the time warp aspect of the Hourglass, but I did enforce the ban on extradimensional spellcasting.
There were some insanely epic moments. Voursol was dev. criticaled by the barbarian (actually an enlarged human barbarian 13/fighter 6/champion of Gwynwarhyf 8 - Exhalted Deeds). Natural 20 to confirm the critical.
It was a great thing to have the Quicksilver Hourglass on hand. It worked itself in the campaign beautifully. Modifications were simple. I'd like to see another module set for levels 30+. I was fascinated by it, really.
Other than the guy who cursed about Voursuol TPK'ing his party, that's the sweetest feedback I've heard about the adventure!
Fun adventure, I plan on running it after the Age of Worms. At the end the Queen of Stars indicates that they an even greater threat will soon be rising.
Any plans for that? I don't see my players going much further then the mid twenties and I planned on ending the campaign with Hourglass. I have all the current Dungeon epics and plan to use them for the build up to Hourglass, but I was wondering if there where any epic adventures planned for pcs that make it past Dawn of a new age on the horizon.
Lord Vile -- I had some thoughts on a follow-up to Hourglass, building on the comments made by Morwel, Ojhalia, and the tertian, but haven't done any real development yet, so nothing is coming from me in the short term. (I'm currently concentrating on returning to Dungeon with some non-epic adventures, where the stat blocks are only painful, rather than excruciating.) I threw in the comments of a greater threat to paint the epic-level world as dynamic in its own ways, and to open the door for PC's to create relationships at the highest levels ("Mr. Wolf, I have Celestian on line one and Ehlonna on line two, and they both say it's urgent...").
Our gaming group is also going to be running the Quicksilver Hourglass, but for that onewe'll be making Epic level characters: three of us will be porting our 1st edition characters (circa 1985).
Sorry if this comment has already been made and I missed it, but: employ a proof-reader. Knowledge of D&D is not a prerequisite for the role. Hand them this thread and the "black hole" thread for guidance. It's amazing what you can miss in a boiled-down write-up when you've immersed yourself in the idea and everything seems obvious to you. Give them a nickel every time they begin a sentence, "Why does...?"
You see, I just can't do like you others who churn out proposal after proposal like mad. I'm the sort that has to have an adventure plotted out in detail, completely mapped out and partially written before I feel comfortable preparing a proposal for it. This is because I am a perfectionist and it takes me a long time to bring together everything "just so". If I whipped up proposals and, god forbid, actually had something accepted, I'm pretty sure I couldn't bring an unwritten adventure together in the, presumably, short amount of time that would be required.
Perhaps I'll never get published this way, but I know how I work and I'm not sure how well I would handle pushing my envelope here.
Unless anyone has some suggestions?
Jenni
Me too, I need to put dozens of hours into a submission before I feel good about it. But that's my proposal-writing speed. I can tell you from experience that you don't need to submit 47 proposals in order to get one accepted, so don't give up just because you can't churn out a proposal a day.
My only suggestion would be this: Look at how much your concept changed over the second half of the time you spent on it. If the answer is, "Not much," I'd recommend calling it good and sending it in once you feel like you've got the essentials covered (this is what I'm trying to do now). As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, you'll likely get asked to change quite a few things anyway, so pinning down all of the details prior to submission likely just means that much more re-work.
As for the latest round of adventure proposals, the next issue is shipping out on Monday (to the printer) so I should be able to get back on the reply shtick next week.
Jeremy, can you update us on this? Any chance of getting responses out before the holidays? Personally I'd love to do some writing during the downtime.
