Ekaj's page

So one of my players is trying to make a deal with Nhimbaloth.

He's been using the Whispering Reeds *a lot* and after another party member bit the dust, he decided he couldn't take any more chances, aside from this one on Nhimbaloth of course. He set up this really cool ritual and honestly I think deserves to at least draw her attention a little bit (he also rolled a really great Will save after he did all this). Was trying to think of a good way to do this, I want some good stuff up front before his soul probably gets consumed by her, of course.

Was thinking maybe a bonus of some kind with the Lenses, a bonus to hit the attack with them most likely. Then afterwards while she's dragging Belcorra's ghost down, she might snag on to him as well? Honestly I'm ok with him dying there, the player probably would be too, the PC has had it coming for awhile and the player knows this.

What do you guys think? He's been really into the Whispering Reeds and I wanna reward his great RP in some way, but also have it bite him in the ass later down the line.

So, we just finished up the final fight and I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences.

The final fight was... rough.
The party bipassed the tower and just flew to the top, meaning that the cultists all joine din the for fight, making it extra hard.
Ariadnah has so many save-or-suck spells that they were bound to fail one. Our paladin got grappled by the Star Seed's projectile right off the bat, and was basically out for the fight as he could never break the grapple. Our sorcerer got turned to stone, Hilda (who i just reskinned to Weiralai) used destruction on our swashbuckler and killed him outright, and our rogue and paladin survived by the edge of their teeth thanks to the sorcerer's prismatic wall

Once the rogue realized that this was a losing fight, he and the Paladin decided to hope for the best with the wall. They allowed themselves to be hit by the wall, saved against a lot of the damage (though the paladin died in the process) and used the final bit of the wall to transfer planes, dragging the stone sorcerer with. I randomly rolled and they ended up in the Plane of Water, with the Rogue I ruled (as they had already lost so I let em have their small victory) eventually found land, was able to eventually get the dead paladin and the stone sorcerer back, raised them, and using wish were able to get the swashbuckler back.

Though the final fight was a loss, they just said they lived out the remainder of their days on the Plane of Water, just vibin.

MY thoughts on the final fight and campaign as a whole:

First of all, save or suck spells suck. I hated casting flesh to stone on the sorcerer, but that's what she'd do in that case, it makes sense. He was a big threat. But alas, that's part of the game.
I do wish Ariadnah was teased throughout the game more. I know Lowls is still really the "BBEG," but she's not mentioned at all aside from in Book 2, (and the tiniest bit of a retcon from the Pallid Mask in 6) when they think the woman they killed back then WAS the witch. Maybe have the party receive visions when approaching Star Stelea of Ariadnah and the Thrushmoore Vanishing, among other things important to her.

*REALLY* push harder than the book suggests to get the party to go through the tower. The book does its best, but a fly spell and some damn good rolls for the Yellow Sign meant that the party now had two incredibly hard fights going on at the same time.

There's a LOT of grapple in this adventure. Make sure you're familiar with the grapple rules (as familiar as anyone can be) or have a flowchart open.

I think the tone of the campaign was on point, lots of moments where our players would be uncomfortable (in an acceptable, appropriate way) with the descriptions of creatures or events. Book 4 fell a little short, and was my least favorite overall, but it was fine.

All in all, one of my best gaming experiences of all time. The year and a half campaign was a little sad on ending in a loss, but that's just how the dice decided to fall.

Ekaj wrote:

So I have a question for those who have run the final fight. Ariadnah's stat block lists that on her second turn she uses Greater Possession. I'm wondering how it was for anyone that ran the game that way SPECIFICALLY for the player who was possessed. In my mind, she'll target our sorcerer (as it says she targets the one wearing the least amount of armor) He's got a +14 against a DC 27, but we all know how dice like to act.

The big thing that I'm worried about, is that she possesses him, and suddenly he just sits out the rest of the fight. I don't find that fun in the slightest for him. Yes I can twirl my evil DM mustache that I now have to make the party kill one of their own, but I'd rather my party have at least some fun, ok not fun, but actually feel like they're doing something, in the final battle. Any recommendations for maybe a spell to replace that with? Or a reassurance that it'll probably be ok?

Honestly same with the maze spell as well. Our poor Paladin will get the brunt of it as the only divine caster, and he's got a sad -1 int which would also just take him out of the fight.

I agree with you that it is no fun for a player who is stuck and can do nothing for an entire fight. But there is something in the spell that might Ariadna consider to drop it early

Quote:

"If your body is slain, when the spell expires or the host’s body is killed, you are slain"

So, if one of the other players are going to coup de grace her body, she will certainly end the spell to prevent this.

If your players are not getting the idea by themself you can hint it at them that Ariadnas Body is lying motionless where she dropped after casting the spell. So you can have 2-3 rounds of body horror before your players comes to it senses again.

Yes but the problem comes from the fact that she's using Greater Possession, which gets rid of her body

This spell functions as possession, but when you possess a host, You enter the host’s body and your physical body vanishes. You are ejected to the closest empty square upon expiration of the spell or upon the host’s death.

I'm probably just gonna look for another spell to use in it's place, as at the end of the day, we're all in this to have fun, and sitting out for the final combat is just a little anticlimactic. They'll all probably die anyway, so oh well.

EDIT: Quickly looking down the witch spell list, I think Power Word Stun might be a good replacement. No save, so it's actually just guaranteed to happen for at least 1 round, and the individual is still actually there, which could lead to honestly even more danger (especially since my party flew right up to the top of the tower and saved against the Yellow Sign completely, meaning the cultists on the second floor will be in the fight as well), but at least the party member still feels like they're part of the fight.

So I have a question for those who have run the final fight. Ariadnah's stat block lists that on her second turn she uses Greater Possession. I'm wondering how it was for anyone that ran the game that way SPECIFICALLY for the player who was possessed. In my mind, she'll target our sorcerer (as it says she targets the one wearing the least amount of armor) He's got a +14 against a DC 27, but we all know how dice like to act.

The big thing that I'm worried about, is that she possesses him, and suddenly he just sits out the rest of the fight. I don't find that fun in the slightest for him. Yes I can twirl my evil DM mustache that I now have to make the party kill one of their own, but I'd rather my party have at least some fun, ok not fun, but actually feel like they're doing something, in the final battle. Any recommendations for maybe a spell to replace that with? Or a reassurance that it'll probably be ok?

Honestly same with the maze spell as well. Our poor Paladin will get the brunt of it as the only divine caster, and he's got a sad -1 int which would also just take him out of the fight.

So...you didn't warn the players ahead of time that rituals might be important, and then changed the rules for rituals to make sure they succeeded...why not just do the same here? You've essentially handwaved away the rituals once before, why not now?

Yeah you're right, I might just try and homebrew something to fit them a little bit more than knowledge checks, as I definitely didn't make sure they were super knowledge oriented. Which would be my bad, obv.

I also changed from the slavery story with Lowls. All my PCs had some kind of close connection with Lowls, two of them being assassins of sort, one being a bodyguard/ executioner, and the last actually being a close friend/ associate on the level of Munn. So yeah he didn't kill them because he did actually care about them, even in his own, twisted way.

This connection made their drive to murder the crap out of him eventually even stronger, they learned that they were all betrayed by a man they trusted.

I did honestly lower the DC for the DotYK rituals, and admittedly didn't run them exactly as written (I didn't realize I'm supposed to make the rolls in secret so I allowed the party to stop mid ritual if they were rolling poorly), so I might end up doing something similar. I'm just not a big fan of RPG elements with only one solution and really delays or outright stops the party because of afew bad rolls.

Getting to the moon was a similar thing for me, one bad diplomacy roll and the party was basically stopped until I just decided on the spot that the Shantak had a broken wing and would help the party if they healed it.

So... the Path to Black Stars ritual seems... hard. Especially for a party that isn't necessarily knowledge focused, like mine ended up being. I realize that referencing the Nec. gives a +10 to the primary caster and +5 to secondaries, and they can take wisdom drain to increase it even more, but even then, before taking wisdom drain our highest knowledge arcana (sorcerer) would need to roll a 13 (DC 40, 13[kn arc]+10[nec]+4[CL 12][I suppose Kaklateth might help in the ritual, giving a +1 from having 4 secondary casters, but still]). He *might* be willing to take wisdom drain, but I can never be sure with these guys.

Specifically, that knowledge nobility one is the one I'm dreading the most. I've never played in a game where that skill was used and suddenly the party will need to take a d4 of wisdom drain, and roll a 14 to make it.

Even though the ritual only needs 4/6 successes, it still just could all fall apart with a couple bad die rolls. Any thoughts? Anyone who has run this in a similar situation with a party of not super intelligent PCs have you been ok with the ritual?

I have a question about the Oasis. Is the doubles fight going to be too easy if I don't do the tree fight? The tree really just seems unnecessary for the story, and it really doesn't make sense for it to occur and then the Mad Poet walks out and is all like "oh hello, didn't know you were here." So is the party going to be too strong for the final fight without it? Any unique experiences in general that anyone had with this section would also be appreciated.

That is what I ended up doing and it worked fairly well.

Coolio thanks

I'm way back in book three but had this thought when skimming so I thought I'd ask. I'm using milestone leveling instead of XP. When should the party reach 17th level? The wording makes it seem like after the final fight, but that's no fun for the party. Just quickly glancing at the CRs of encounters, I was thinking maybe at the end of part 4? That way they go through all of the final fights at their strongest.

Ekaj wrote:

On the idol of Bokrug, I'm hoping my players just focus on stealing the idol and GTFOing. Knowing them they won't, but would this just be a disarm check? Reading the rules it seems that you have to use a weapon to disarm, and the item disarmed is just dropped. But if a party member were to just try and take the idol out of the priest's hands, I'd rule they don't get the -4 from not using a weapon, and the idol wouldn't drop. Does that make sense?

A successful Disarm forces the target to drop an item it is holding, so this would potentially work. Knocking out or killing the priest also works. There are no game rules for a 'tug of war', but some form of contested Strength or Combat maneuver check would make sense. It should probably also still provoke.

Yeah I ended up using Disarm after actually reading through Combat Maneuvers.

I do have another question. I have the stats and everything prepped for the nightmare encounter at the end of the book. I kind of swapped around the class levels of a few characters, notably, our Paladin's double is of course an antipaladin. And the Antipaladin has a very *very* good ability when paired with the Nightmare template's Fear Aura, namely the Antipaladin's Aura of Cowardice that gives a -4 to all fear saving throws as well as getting rid of our Paladin's fear immunity (something I'm actually super ok with, he's had it coming). Is this just too much? The more I twist my evil DM mustache, the more I kinda feel like it might be too much. But at the same time, it's just an all but guaranteed -2 to everything, is that too bad?

Also does each party member have to make the save against each nightmare? So everyone makes 4 saves? Seems like it'd bog the game down a little. I could just have everyone make a save against the Sorcerer's DC as his is the highest, or make their chances very slim.

On the idol of Bokrug, I'm hoping my players just focus on stealing the idol and GTFOing. Knowing them they won't, but would this just be a disarm check? Reading the rules it seems that you have to use a weapon to disarm, and the item disarmed is just dropped. But if a party member were to just try and take the idol out of the priest's hands, I'd rule they don't get the -4 from not using a weapon, and the idol wouldn't drop. Does that make sense?

Ekaj wrote:

Oooo cool now I have a question. So my players started out their dreamlands rituals very slow, I don't think they successfully got a research check for the first week or so (you can go back and find some of my old posts with me worrying that they're dumb as rocks), so I was pretty confident that they'd make it to Cassomir either before finishing the dreamquests, or at the same time. Though now they're on Day 36 and have finished all the research as well as three of the quests. I'm just wondering if they're going to run into any kind of problem with finishing the quests and going back to the caravansarai (Part 3) before reaching their destination? Ideally they'd finish Part 1 and Part 2 within the same few days, but if they do everything on pace with what they've been doing, they'll be done with the quests before reaching Lake Kallas. I'm worried:

1. They'll be too weak to take on all the stuff in part 3 (as I'm doing exp level up for this book as I talked about in an earlier comment)
2. They'll lose all the context they get from Part 1 that has to do with Part 3, and even Part 2.
3. They'll finish Part 3 and then feel like the rest of Part 1 is a cakewalk and anti-climactic (this is the most important one for me).

Any ideas?

Well, my party had two PCs with maxed-out Knowledge skills, so they finished the entire set of dream quests, plus the meeting with the Mad Poet, all by Day 29 of the journey.

So the river run will be a cake walk, but I think they'll enjoy it just because they've now gone from level 7 to level 10 and received exactly -0- gold pieces for doing it (actually -125 gp each because they paid for their passages), so killing low-level mooks and stealing their stuff will be a welcome change of pace.

Though the lack of anywhere to do any proper shopping is still a serious sore point with them.

Ok so yeah maybe I will be ok. Thanks!

I did actually bump up the first encounter with those pirate guys to day 29 just because things were dragging on, so they do have a little stuff to take with them, but yeah they're probably enjoy being OP for awhile.

Oooo cool now I have a question. So my players started out their dreamlands rituals very slow, I don't think they successfully got a research check for the first week or so (you can go back and find some of my old posts with me worrying that they're dumb as rocks), so I was pretty confident that they'd make it to Cassomir either before finishing the dreamquests, or at the same time. Though now they're on Day 36 and have finished all the research as well as three of the quests. I'm just wondering if they're going to run into any kind of problem with finishing the quests and going back to the caravansarai (Part 3) before reaching their destination? Ideally they'd finish Part 1 and Part 2 within the same few days, but if they do everything on pace with what they've been doing, they'll be done with the quests before reaching Lake Kallas. I'm worried:
1. They'll be too weak to take on all the stuff in part 3 (as I'm doing exp level up for this book as I talked about in an earlier comment)
2. They'll lose all the context they get from Part 1 that has to do with Part 3, and even Part 2.
3. They'll finish Part 3 and then feel like the rest of Part 1 is a cakewalk and anti-climactic (this is the most important one for me).

Any ideas?

In my opinion it would be totally legit to mess arround with the class levels of the twins.

After all the characters might either be tricked in the past or they where exactly knowing what lowls was trying to do. In other words: The characters might have been bad guys, too.

With this in mind you can argue that a person with a differend mindset or moral code could easily follow another path of "education"

This is what I did. Two of my characters I can see having taken slightly different paths while the other two probably would've continued with their regular growth while still being "evil"

Our Paladin will instead be an anti-Paladin while our rogue/ vivi alch will instead be rogue/ Assassin. I rebuilt character sheets accordingly.

The Swashbuckler and Sorcerer just kinda stay the same in my eyes

I'm a little confused on xp rewards for some of the dreamquests. Most of all the Vicount's Signet Ring. Should I give my party experience for defeating the three dance partners? I feel like they deserve way more than what they'll get for killing the spiders.

I've got the same problem for the other dreamquests with largely social components because I don't see any experience rewards listed.

Anyone else have this problem?

Any time an encounter is overcome, experience should be awarded. This doesn't necessarily need to be combat. I usually give social encounters less XP, but still give them some. So I'd probably give the vampire 2,400 XP, Ardvin 800, and the girl I would just go with none because it's part of an encounter.

Milestone XP for the win! No obsessive need to kill everything to soak up XP like some sort of murder-sponge, and most importantly, no math. I hate math like a fat lady hates bad analogies.

I'm in the same boat, but milestone XP for this specific book is hard because they constantly switch back and forth between part one and two, so it's hard to gauge when they should reach level 8. I switched the party over to XP gain for this book and I'll switch back once we're done with it. OR even just when we're done with the dreamquests

Good ideas, I'll incorporate the scholars more for sure. Thanks guys!

So... My party is dumb as f$%#. Like highest intelligence is 12 dumb. It just kinda worked out like that with the classes they chose (Paladin, Swashbuckler, Rogue [who's now multicalssing into vivi alch so he'll be bumping his up soon], and Sorcerer). How should I handle the knowledge checks for the dreamlands ritual? They will surely fail them 19/20 times, and I definitely don't want them to just feel like traveling is hopeless. I've thought about lowering the DC or changing how the research and ritual works. Any ideas?

Edit: I suppose I'd really just have to push them to use the two scholars on the boat with them, but that doesn't solve the problem of the 2/3 DC 25's to do the ritual itself (Our sorcerer has a +5 knowledge Arcana, he's not the brightest). Any tips for the ritual?

Yeah I'm back I know. I'm confused about Event 7 in combination with Risi attacking. It seems the trigger for both event is the same, Melisenn learning of the PC's, but they don't really work together. Why does Risi not work with the cultists? Also, I assume when Risi performs her death attack, she goes for the instakill option (I kinda hate death effects entirely, no matter how low the DC, so I'm still thinking on what I wanna do on that) but the Cultists want the party alive to take them back for sacrifices. Both are sent by Melisenn, so she seems to be contradicting herself on what she wants to happen to the PCs.

Any advice on how to run this? I was thinking maybe replacing two of the cultists with Risi and just running it from there, but I'm not sure.

Edit: So I think what I'm gonna do is save Risi for a little later, if the PCs ever leave the Fort to rest and stuff, she'll be waiting then. Kind of like Melisenn getting desperate and sending her best out to take em out. So it'll be awhile on that.

Yeah I'm back I know. I'm confused about Event 7 in combination with Risi attacking. It seems the trigger for both event is the same, Melisenn learning of the PC's, but they don't really work together. Why does Risi not work with the cultists? Also, I assume when Risi performs her death attack, she goes for the instakill option (I kinda hate death effects entirely, no matter how low the DC, so I'm still thinking on what I wanna do on that) but the Cultists want the party alive to take them back for sacrifices. Both are sent by Melisenn, so she seems to be contradicting herself on what she wants to happen to the PCs.
Any advice on how to run this? I was thinking maybe replacing two of the cultists with Risi and just running it from there, but I'm not sure.

Ekaj wrote:

So as I'm reading this, I'm trying to figure out a way that the party can use the aqueduct systems to get into Hailcorse and Iris Hill. How do I let them know about the aqueducts without outright telling them "this is how you do it"? As far as I can tell, the book doesn't really mention other than that the skum used them to get in.

I'm not sure if they'll go for the more aggressive approach with entering or this more stealthy method, but I wanna know for sure.

As my PCs were walking around town, I made sure to mention all the wells they passed. They thought something fishy was up with the wells because I kept mentioning them, but nothing ever came of it since they just got into places through the front doors. Oh well.

Good idea, I'll incorporate that

So as I'm reading this, I'm trying to figure out a way that the party can use the aqueduct systems to get into Hailcorse and Iris Hill. How do I let them know about the aqueducts without outright telling them "this is how you do it"? As far as I can tell, the book doesn't really mention other than that the skum used them to get in.
I'm not sure if they'll go for the more aggressive approach with entering or this more stealthy method, but I wanna know for sure.

Ok thanks, I've always gotten Hit Dice and levels mixed up. I might rework it a little bit just because I don't want half of my players to not have any fun in the battle because they're running the whole time, and my party isn't exactly the smartest when it comes to retreating (They fought Debis for about an hour real time before even thinking of running to find the knights) , possibly give them another save after a few rounds at a penalty to overcome it. They do have a Paladin so he's for sure fine the whole fight and I'm not super worried about them winning, but I want em to have at least a little fun.

Now that I look even more into it, should the party even be affected by Frightful Presence? According to the rules for frightful presence, it only affects creatures who are a lower level than the creature. The Tatterman is level 3, as are the players. If that's the case, why is it even included?

Should the Tatterman's Fear Aura and Frightful Presence have durations on them? I've looked into both abilities and they usually say that the description should have a duration on them, or the duration is around 5d6. That's an average of 17-18 turns which just seems way too long for any encounter. My party stopped a few turns into the battle because one member had to leave and I hate missing people, so I've been looking into the Tatterman's abilities more. Two members failed their saving throws and are currently running (one of which is a psychic-blood sorcerer so he's kinda boned for this encounter). Should they be getting saves every turn? Or is there a duration?