Arden Belus's page

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.

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?

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.