Arden Belus's page

Never mind, I thought I had looked everywhere, but discovered my cats had knocked it back behind my desk. :)

With the holidays and whatnot, I didn't realize I never received this order. The tracking info says it was handed off to my local post office, so I'm assuming it was misdelivered, but I have no idea where.

I don't really need the Beginner Box, but will start it back up again afterwards -- I love the books in general.

Thanks.

The ommision was intentional, and in fact was my attempt to make the demilich a little less unfair. Making the demilich's ability able to punch through death ward is lame, in my opinion, especially in the case of something as powerful as this. For the version of the demilich we presented in Scarwall, I removed that line to make it so that death ward works just fine and provides total protection against the attack.

I can see how it'd prevent the negative levels on a successful save, but the demilich's Trap the Soul ability is based on a spell that isn't [Death]. I'm pretty sure Death Ward wouldn't have an effect against a Trap the Soul spell, so that's how I ruled Death Ward against the (Su) ability.

At least to my reading, removing that line makes the Trap the Soul (Su) ability *more* powerful, not less.

Generally, we try to make sure that encounters aren't super deadly. For various reasons I'm not gonna go into here to avoid spoilers for folk who haven't read the adventure, this particular encounter is unusual in that regard; it's a TOUGH encounter, but the adventure itself is built to foreshadow and arm PCs with it. Yet it's still really tough, and that's why we put in a big sidebar to warn GMs about it; they know their players better than we do, after all, and should adjust as necessary.

As the Eikl's DM I do have to voice a beef with the Demilich stat block as presented in the adventure. In both the epic level version and the ToH II version, there's a clause that "A potential victim protected by a death ward spell is not immune to trap the soul, but receives a +5 bonus on its Fortitude saving throw and is effective against the level loss on a successful save." At the time, I was just comparing the effect to the Trap the Soul spell (Conjuration [Summoning]) and I ruled that Death Ward had no effect.

I don't know if omitting that was intentional, but after Eikl got back from the gym, I ruled that it applied in this situation since it appears in both original sources. (side note: with that addition, the druid was basically immune to the demilich's soul trapping (couldn't fail the save except on a 1, and the Luck domain PFRPG cleric had a luck aura up, so even natural 1s weren't automatic failures)).

Generally, my players tend to be on the very powerful side. I've had to boost Kyuss, Karzoug and Demogorgon the equivalent of 5 CR or so to prevent the fights being entirely one-sided in the PCs favor. It's less so in Curse of the Crimson Throne since we're more or less PFRPG-core.

We're just finishing up The Bullywug Gambit and I'm not sure the players would even think of the various options provided to raise their scores.

Do you think I should have dropped hints during the module? Perhaps give hints for the first couple chapters until they get the hang of it?

I have a sinking feeling they are going to attempt to do something to Lady Rhiavadi as well. One of the PCs is a warlock with See the Unseen, and convinced the beholder to reveal the identity of his invisible spellcasting assistant back in Life's Bazaar. So they've had it in for her since Day 1. Also, they think she may be involved due to the "Veiled Lady" answer they got from Speak with Dead. But I've thought through that contingency as well.

So, last session, I sprung the assassination attempt on the players, and they made it through all alive (though several had to stabilize with Action Points). They cast Speak w/Dead on one of the assassins, and found out that the temple of Wee Jas had sent them.

Instead of being normal D&D players and going straight to the source, they are investigating legal means to try to intimidate Embril & Ike -- like building their tower in the line of Pelorite's view of the sunrise being emotional abuse.

This should be interesting.

I actually had a brilliant idea the other day.

I don't really want the party to turn on itself and sacrifice a member, and I'm fairly certain they wouldn't anyway. Given how important the smoking eye is, they're going to want it by the endgame.

Now, one of the PCs has the the "Touched in the Head" trait from the hardcover, so Adimarchus is already playing with her head. I sent her a bunch of dreams she's been having since she came to Occipitus to foreshadow the endgame, as well as a bit of the backstory.

These have included a caged Adimarchus calling her "daughter", and scenes of Graz'zt's tricking Adimarchus into the cage. We'll see if the message I gave her "You are both your most valuable ally, as well as your most potent enemy" leads the crazy girl into sacrificing herself. :)

If she did, it'd work out nicely...first off, the rest of the party is scared to death of the crazy girl getting control of a plane, so it'd lead to some fun situations. Also, she is a fire-specialized psion with a modified elemental savant prestige class, so she's turning into a fire elemental. The Smoking Eye is right up her alley.

They'll probably get to the Test of Sacrifice tomorrow night; I'm excited to see how everything goes down.

get the Rakshasa and the Fire Giant from last test

That's actually quite a good idea. The PCs are already convinced the Rakshasa and the Giant are allies of Kaurophon when he mentioned them as rivals for the Smoking Eye. May as well play into their fears. I had boosted Kaurophon a couple levels (the PCs demanded a side-quest during the winter months between Flood Festival and Zenith Trajectory in the spring, so they're a bit over the recommended party level. Due to the way that the half-fiend template works, there's a jump in CR right around 12 -> 13 hit dice due to the extra spell-like abilities.

As it is, I'm pretty sure they're going to go through the first two tests and quit when they come to the third. They're pretty strongly good-aligned, and I can't see them sacrificing a PC or a cohort.

Midian wrote:

Maybe I read the spell descriptions wrong, but Word of Chaos and Blasphemy are powerful enough to take out most characters. Since his caster level is 30, unless the characters are 21st level, instant death to all good (blasphemy) or lawful (word of chaos) characters.

I believe this was errata'd to caster level 20. Can anyone in the know confirm this?

James Jacobs confirmed that it should be CL 20.

I'd split the difference and put it in late Patchwall or early Ready'reat.

That's exactly what I ended up doing:

Life's Bazaar: Patchwall 16
Drakthar's way: Ready’reat 23
Flood Season: I treated the winter festival as being between Ready’reat and Sunsebb -- winter being the rainy season
Zenith Trajectory: Coldeven 14
Demonskar Legacy: Planting 6

So, my group is pretty damn paranoid. I think the encounter with the beholder taking their victory from them early on set the mood for them...so when the soon-to-be-dead Alek recommended them to seek the Smoking Eye, and then the half-fiend Kaurophon appeared shortly afterwards, they didn't trust him at all.

One divination later (cast the next morning after resting after the glabrezu messed them up something awful) laid bare K's eventual betrayal of them, they decided to follow him only as much as they had to. They're planning on killing him off as soon as they're done with the first test. Of course, unless they get off a lucky hit, he'll just dim door out of the battle and wait.

My original plan was just to have him occasionally scry upon them (he's traveled with them for almost a week--he knows they're most active within an hour or two of dawn when the cleric gets her spells), and just teleport into the third test when they get there. (pre-buffed, of course. I bet they'll take more than 30 seconds to discuss their options, and that's 10 rounds of buffs right there, assuming I use the dramatic "of course he's scrying on you right then")

Does that seem fair? Considering they have to sacrifice an "ally", would the guy they've traveled with and fought alongside still count as an ally after they turn on him? Should I change the last test to be the sacrifice of a "companion", which he certainly was at one point even if they didn't trust him enough to be an ally? Or let him try to get them and assuming they win, not let them obtain the template unless they actually sacrifice a party member (or discover the "good" way of succeeding).

Yes, please change the title. I think "Vhalanthru Has Eye Rays Because He's the Beholder" would be about the only title less ambiguous. Thanks for blowing the surprise for hundreds of players.

~Qualidar~

Well, one of my players was spoiled inadvertantly while reading through Lords of Madness for a game he was running. "Vhalantru" was given as a suggested name for beholders.

Oops. I tried to play it off as coincidence, but I'm not sure he bought it.

Heh, yeah that's actually what ended up happening (see original post for this thread).

Kyuss, Lashonna, 3 broodfiends, and 3 elite Blessed Angels. At once. Even fully rested, we were hard-pressed, and rightly so.

Well, from the other side of the screen, it didn't seem like "hard-pressed", but that's OK.

My only regret was having to do all the work on the fly--it made it feel arbitrary. "Uh, ok, he's got triple HP, and a couple extra feats." I've been DMing long enough that I should have either factored in the party's strength and capabilities ahead of time, or planned my tactics better. I can't believe I forgot the "deities are immune" clause to antimagic field. All things considered, however, I think things went fairly well. A memorable fight against a memorable foe.

For those questioning the "fully rested": they had just gone through Lashonna's lair, and taken out the Unlife Vortex...and then rested up extra-dimensionally before trying to take on Lashonna. Believe me, the spire was ready for an assault after the vortex was taken out. However, they did an end run around her, and went directly for the spire's roof (where they thought she'd be), rather than coming in the bottom and working their way through the various minions. When they saw Kyuss emerging from the monolith, there was a collective "oh crap!" as they realized what was going on. I felt I owed them a fight that lived up to their expectations. :)

Those minions that could came to assist Kyuss. I did make the decision to leave out the various medium-sized minions, they really wouldn't have been a threat against the huge 45' reach (spiked chain + some undead graft) trip specialist. As it was he tripped Kyuss at least once.

This is the way it would have gone if I hadn't boosted him up:

Round 1 (Kyuss emerging): Wiz smacks him w/sphere of annihilation. K down to 330 HP.
Monk wearing Zoziel's circlet dire charges K, hits every time, takes him down to around 100.

Round 2 (Kyuss emerging): Wiz smacks him again w/sphere. Kyuss dies, world is saved, PCs wonder why he was such a big deal.

I thought that was very anticlimatic, so I arbitrarily increased his HP, and he sprouted multispell for those quickened harms. Quickened spells was pretty much all the spellcasting he could get away with...said monk was a Mageslayer, and there was also a Huge (augmented Expansion) psiwarrior w/Spellcasting Harrier.

As it was, Kyuss had 3 broodfiends, 3 elite blessed angels, and Lashonna on his side in the fight--it didn't really matter. Lashonna got mazed after dominating said psiwarrior, and there were enough expendable gated creatures in (solars and titans, oh my) to keep the broodfiends busy, and the Blessed Angels could barely hit the PCs.

Such is high-level highly-optmized D&D PCs, I guess. The only near-fatality was the monk, who got engulfed in Kyuss' first round of actual combat. However his death by Int drain had to be retconned once we realized that improved evasion made him immune to the Int drain (since that only happens on a failed save).

As it was, they hadn't reduced despair, and I halved his penalties for the destroyed unlife vortex. In the end, I think I should have realized what sort of a threat the 21st level PCs were, and gone office_ninja's route. Not the TPK, but I bet they could have handled serveral more class levels, and even a divine rank or two.

He's specifically written as wanting to avoid combat, since his phylactary has been destroyed.

In fact, I really like the suggestion in the other Harbinger thread that he's resigned to his fate -- he must die in order for the Age of Worms to come about. (too bad I didn't read about that ahead of time so I could have flavored his discussion that way)

A prepared lich, the overworm, and several knights would definitely have been a TPK for my group. The battles with the 2 callers and the overworm, and the 3 Kyuss knights were completely different affairs. (actually had one PC death per fight, hence the use of Greater Teleport to get to Greyhawk and get them raised/resurrected).

So, the PCs have made it through the Spire of Long Shadows, with several trips back to Greyhawk to resupply. They enter the room with the Harbinger, and as written, he does not hasten to get into combat with them. They talk for a while (long enough that the rogue's Improved Invis ring wears off), and then the PCs get sick of it and roll initiative.

I rolled a 23 for the Harbinger. The PCs rolled better.

The wizard got a 28, the rogue (with an item of constant Gravestrike he got from Tenser) a 26, and the dragon diciple monk a 24.

The wiz lets off a sudden maximized, sudden empowered Greater Disrupt Undead (from the SC, level d8 dmg to undead, 10d8 cap) for 102 or so damage. Then the rogue sneak attacks the flat-footed chaotic lich with the (axiomatic) sword of Aaqa, and drops him. And even if the rogue didn't have the grave strike item, I'm sure the monk would have dropped him in one hit (and wouldn't have been affected by the lich's DR either).

Kinda anticlimactic, but what can you do?

Oh, and PC #1, when I was describing the power players in town, decided to try to strike up a friendship with Lord Vhalentru when he found out about V's "sponsorship" of enterprising adventurers. I must say that this is going to get interesting.

I'm trying not to be "that DM". You know, the kind that kills off PCs' families.

The first PC is practically asking for it, and I don't feel bad about it. He's the son of a power-hungry merchant woman in Cauldron, who killed his father years ago to gain control of the family business and fortune. He mentioned to me that of late she'd taken a group of young girls in town under her wing and put them to work painting the pottery the family business puts out. He said to be as creepy as I want, and even hinted I go the Lady Bathory route. In describing the town, he decided that Lady Rhivadi would make a good friend for mommy dearest, since they're both power-hungry and looking out for #1. And Rhivadi might have introduced the PC's mother to Embril, thinking that the Cagewrights could use the family fortune to help fund the workings. I'm thinking of making Embril some sort of undead, probably a fleshbound vampire (template from the Book of Templates--they pass for human easily). Easy enough to do--make the windows in the Wee Jasian temple some sort of magical filter to make the sunlight not make her go *poof*.

Anyway, mommy dearest gets temporarily immortality (and keeps her aging good looks) by drinking Embril's blood (the Half-Vampire template from that same book) and pledges her support to Wee Jas (which by proxy means Cagewrights). The cadre of pottery painters become Vampiric Thralls by drinking mommy's diluted blood (again from the Book of Templates). I haven't decided how much to have her in the know, or just have her supply of blood dry up.

The other PC I have is a aasimar spellthief (black sheep of hte family). He decided his older brother is a paladin of St. Cuthbert, and helps out Alec from time to time. So, the question is, how to work the brother into Alec's plot. Obviously, he's not going to be in the Starry Mirror with Alec, but my first thought was that the PCs come across his nearly dead body, and have him point them towards Alec's whereabouts.

This time through (just starting Life's Bazaar tonight):
* Human Spellthief
* Human (maybe dwarf, not quite finished yet) Fighter
* Human Warlock
* Human (not sure yet) Psion heading towards a custom Psionic elemental savant (fire) PrC
* and a 5th completely unknown until tonight. Hopefully cleric, but we'll see.

Some corrections as chargen was finalized:

Aasimar Spellthief w/Noble trait
Human Big Dumb Fighter (tm) w/longaxe
Human Warlock w/Scion of Surabar trait
Human Psion (kineticst) w/Noble trait
Human Rogue (heading for dual dagger wielding PrC) w/Scarred Soul trait.

Actually, one of the PCs turned out to be Shackleborn (took the "Scarred Soul" trait from the HC), so that led to a lot of very interesting RP as the PCs were coming together and the Warlock mentioned, "Do you know you have an invisible mark on your face?".

I'm now waiting for said Warlock to mention it to his mentor, Lord Vhalentru. :) When I was going over the background of the city, I mentioned that Lord V was known for sponsoring adventurers, and even having statues commissioned of famous ones ("Sadly, most of them can't be here today, as adventuring is such a dangerous profession...."). The player jumped at it, and initiated enough of a relationship with V that V is definitely going to keep an eye on him as the module progresses.

First time through:

* Human Elf-wannabe Cleric of some Elfy god/Divine Oracle/Elffriend (from RoD) archer w/Divine Metamagic & Persistent spell w/persisted Righteous Might, Divine Power, etc
* Human monk/paladin/kensai w/Vow of Poverty
* Dwarven Fighter/Dwarven Defender
* Human Warmage
* Human Psionic Rogue (from Wizard's web site)

This time through (just starting Life's Bazaar tonight):
* Human Spellthief
* Human (maybe dwarf, not quite finished yet) Fighter
* Human Warlock
* Human (not sure yet) Psion heading towards a custom Psionic elemental savant (fire) PrC
* and a 5th completely unknown until tonight. Hopefully cleric, but we'll see.

Yeah, his backstory is that his mother is a scheming, evil woman who he suspects killed his father when he was young. He's using it as a first line of defense against her, and cast every day.

I'm planning on working the mother into the workings of House Rivaldi later on, so this might work out. He might have seen Rivaldi in passing at one of his mother's parties, but doesn't know her by name or anything--I'm not sure.

I'm starting SC again (I ran it all the way through with great success last year) with a new group.

I've got a player who is playing a Warlock with the See the Unseen invocation (see invisibility and darkvision 60', 24 hour duration). I'm trying to decide if being aware of the Carcerian Sign from the get-go (they'll plainly see it on Terram's face when they attempt the rescue) is a bad thing or not.