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We just finished our first session of the Emerald Spire. Although some members of the group bellyached about the darkness on the first floor, for the most part they had a good time. The big complaint and this relates back to me as well was no map of the area that they can use and no map of Fort inevitable. Does anyone have maps of the area and of fort inevitable without the numbers on them possible that I can use for VTT play? Thanks!
I bought the module on fantasy grounds and it is really good. I only played the last three modules roughly with it though, starting up when the pandemic hit. But now people have moved away and we continue to use it.
Sorry, I meant that the group would know she has to perform the ritual for multiple days. I may just end up telling them.
Is there anywhere in the module that discusses the fact that Illeosa has to perform the ritual for multiple days? I’ve been looking through it but have not seen anything of note. My group is currently fighting her and it is not going well due to how drained they were fighting the Scarlett walker and immortal ichor. The slayer with serienthial grabbed the gem and and was trapped inside it so when the group finally made it to the ichor and smashed the gem the slayer appeared with none of his gear on in the end battle which as you may know was not in his favour for sure.
Yes Krojun was the result of a bad harrow draw. As far as I know they are only going to be away from the sword for around fifteen minutes.
So the group attacked the sunken queen but did not get past Bierawash. In the fight, the character that had Serinthial died and dropped the sword. The group beat a hasty retreat but left the sword behind in Bierawash’s lair. Now I need to think, does the devil fish grab it and move it into his larder, does Illeosa using her clairvoyance/clairaudience abailty send someone to grab it. What would people do here? So far Togomar died, but Vimanda, Vavana and Krojun are with the queen in the pyramid.
Name: Caliente
So the group figured out a way to breathe but not how to move or operate under water. Dropping down they entered the lobby and were attacked by Bierawash who immediately struck the slayer and grappled him. Immediately performing his savage bite he criticaled it and delivered truly massive damage. But the slayer went from 149hp to 4hp and was still alive. The cleric tried to move up and dimension door away with the slayer, swashbuckler/shadowdancer and himself. But failing the caster check failed the teleportation effect and caused 20d6 damage to the three of them. Killing the slayer and wounding the Swashbuckler/SD.
I think the issue comes from G7 and G5 where the room is too small with five foot squares. Not to mention G13 the green tubes are holding a large monster. I think it is just easier to run it at 10ft squares rather than 5ft.
Well my group used the Harrow deck of many things today, or maybe I should say the deck of a couple things because they drew a lot of the same cards. Many Harrow points were used to avoid effects but of them some things came up. Namely the queen mother, so do they get a Formian Myrmarch ally forever? That one kind of stinks for me as the GM haha.
It took my group a little over a month of in game time to get from book 4 to the start of book 6
The red mantis also do not assassinate the king. The queen does with the poison. They just provide it. I look at it as they were hired to do a job, the job is going south but they cannot get out because their word is their bond. If they went back and said oh well then they would be killed or worse for the failure they have provided.
I love paladins, but pretty much 90% of the population play them and lawful good wrong. I really wish they did not have detect evil just to prevent this from happening. The Paladin in my home brew game used detect evil as some guaranteed compliance with killing every “bad” person they came across. I finally had to take the Paladin class away from him and change his alignment. But this and lawful good always broke out into arguments at the table about what it really means. It did not help that this player always plays “chaotic good” with a heavy smattering of neutral evil mixed in.
My group also entered from the roof in a same sort of fashion. Using silence spells and gaseous form they drilled a hole into the second floor room right outside the good doctors office. From there the launched an assault and fought their way down to the lower level. I as well almost had the doctor escape in the stairwell but they webbed him and stopped that.
I stated him out as a 5th level ranger with a horse companion. Had the party ride out to blackbird ranch with him from Trots.
Great job Seems on the citadel Volshynek map. I am using it in Fantasy grounds for my game. My group griped about the diagonal squares in the straightish keep walls. I found it helped with movement down the walls.
Your English as a second language is above 90% of the people here who have English as a first language… That being said, I fully closed the doors to the acadamae just to limit the amount of allies my group had in the start. I also liked the foreshadowing of the city on the brink of implosion…
The book really undersells just how bad Korvosa is through out the adventures. Cressidia goes into hiding with the rebels after Illeosa starts to disband all of the existing law and militia in Korvosa. By the third book, I had Cressidia and just a handful of other militia people working the fort. They were so understaffed they could not even leave to police the rest of the city. When my group asked to be “deputized” Cressidia said she did not want that attention on the Korvosa militia. The group needed to act in the shadows in case their actions would come back to her. Another thing the game seems to underplay is all of the things happening behind the scenes, like Illeosa taking blood, taking down the sable company etc.
Also in escape form old korvosa, I get them impression that glorio arkona really wants to “save” the city. He could “volunteer” the group to start looking into things by having one of the lower level goons approach the group. I suggest Boule from the third module. Or Cressidia could catch them and make them save the city as a penance for their other crimes, perhaps she sees a “good” in them or even a fight fire with fire approach, needing some “in the grey area of the law” actions investigating for a, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.
Have you read the rest of the adventures? Togmor is possessed by a devil. When you say “evil” what type of evil? If you need to persuade them there is always treasure. Or even the threat of the disease ripping through the selfish and evil PCs.
Looks really good. Nice work!
I agree, he does not stand a chance, plus I don’t put enough time into which monsters he is summoning either.
My group is just finishing up finally the castle, after killing the final anchor they are getting ready to fight the chained spirit. They love Laori and hate Sial.but for different reasons, Sial has shown again and again that he is absolutely useless in this adventure as a summoner. He has died once and almost twice more on different occasions. Even though he is trying his best to help the group. They still routinely make fun of him and call him useless. There is no doubt that when it comes to the curate they are going to throw him the the wolve…bats immediately.
His group already knows that Trinia is innocent, this party member wants to talk with the Queen to straighten things out but why not talk to his adoptive father the seneschal instead? The seneschal is missing right now, is he not worried about this fact? Who trained him to be an assassin, Neolandus? Who was he working for? You could also have Sabine visit him as mentioned above but instead to gather her own information about what is going on. Shirley she must doubt the fact this painter girl poisoned the king a little. I just remember that my party did not suspect the queen after meeting her for the first time but then became super focused on her, to the point where they were missing the big picture trying to make their own conclusion to the crime.
I look at it as above, the queen does not check her mail. It would go to her underlings who would fire it off to the necessary departments. The queen is busy right now with her other goals, and you will quickly realize that if she sits on her hands then none of the timeline makes sense. My group is in skeletons of scarwall right now and it has been just over two months of in game time. That is short order to accomplish all of the things she needs to accomplish in this adventure path. The biggest is how to get the grey maidens, hired, trained, and equipped in the time between edge and seven. This would keep the queen busy, really busy. With making wishes from her genie for armor and swords to dealing with the cult of urgathoa and the mantis.
I think one of the biggest things missing from these adventures is the hell knights of Korvosa. It is possibly that this letter got back to them and they are investigating the matter. Personally I would avoid the mantis because it is a cool encounter running into them at Vencarlos place for the first time. A few Hellknight investigators would get the PC’s knowing they are not in Kansas anymore and still keeps the cleans hands “clean”.
Our one character is a shadowdancer, when they were doing the cindermaw challenge the idea was to drain him of his strength, that shadow minion of hers almost killed him. First round was a crit and a normal hit doing 14pts of strength damage, the next two hits pumped it up to 22pts of dmg, poor cindermaw didn’t know what hit him. I think he slithered away with only 8 strength remaining.
Name of NPC: Sial
Ahh, my favourite thread in this forum. We used to have a house rule that said if you oiled a 20 it was base weapon max damage plus the dice for a crit. Too many close calls for my PC’s so we stopped it.
I have the original copy but have never read it actually. Think I will sit down and have a read though, little late to do it over now. They were scared originally then they just kept retreating, getting whatever they needed in the process. I let them do it twice before I thought, this is ruining the adventure because they are not scared at all. I had to break my rule of not messing with the adventure and “lock” the group into the castle. So now they have the pressure of never escaping if they don’t figure this out.
Yup I think that it is a good idea, they keep missing the secret doors in the star tower…barely. I’m hoping they take the olive branch of hints in the form of Lisbeth giving them info that will be coming up next game (unless they decided to pull an about face and go the other way, which they have a tendency to do haha) I think this is the longest they have spent on one of the modules so far.
Well the session today panned out as well as I thought for poor Gorstav. The group is a little lost, they know there is another anchor still but cannot figure it out. They also refuse to cast any form of divination spell to discern what is going on. Meanwhile the Fext( who is the anchor)keeps assaulting them and they keep throwing the body in the water. They asked today, ok…what are we missing, without hints. I said a whole tower, you stepped into it for one round then left and never came back. So they flew over to it, landed on the roof. Killed the spectres and came across Gorstav, who crited the cleric the first round for some decent damage…then never acted again. And like that Gorstav was a smear. The Nessian hell hounds did not fair much better honestly and we stopped it there for the night. The big takeaway is they know the sword is under the castle from the curse of the worm haunt and they think they can only get into the star tower by killing the chained ghost.
I’m talking about B14. Where the phantasm occurs to the first PC who enters. For some reason they remember this very well.cannot remember why they are here without coaching but remember that phantasm… 1) One of the adventurer was going to jump out the arrow slit but then two of the group started saying the arrow slits were too small because remember the halfling.
Yet they cannot figure out the chained spirit is anchoring to new people…
Sorry for the double post, my group would jump all over me citing the halfling being stuck in the other part of the castle. Sadly, I think poor Gorstav will not fair well against this group
There are no windows in E11 though, only an arrow slit.
There are no windows that I see in E11 though.I like the idea, my group is going to shred Gorstav.
They just dropped him, not destroyed. He only managed one action before they completely obliterated him. It went two handed weapon critical, 9 die channel, three hits from the swashbuckler for minimal damage and then an orb of light from the sorc. They tried to talk to him at first as he was rising up I was curious how I was going to play it. My guess is he would stop being an anchor until he is captured again by the chained spirit. But Ukwar who was also captured by the CS earlier, is not destroyed so I deemed she stays chained to the spirit until she is permanently defeated. The DL is back in 7days, and the CS can chain another person in one day. So I imagine it will be Gorstav.
So my group fought Zev the demilich today. All I can say is wow, I totally expected at least one player death and they cake walked him. Two rounds he was dead from rising up and only got off one devour the soul on the Sorc who passed his save and had death ward on. It was very anticlimactic and I’m of the impression now the rest of the adventure is going to be very easy for them.
I get how you don’t feel the sunken queen. Are you going to run the encounters from the sunken queen in the castle instead? How about a little grind down in the basement of castle korvosa and then a gate or teleport circle out to the sunken queen? As for the encounters illeosa has the same weakness, anti magic field. One spell makes her completely useless. I would think of contingency’s for that. My group of four always keeps an AMF in their back pocket I read on here before about a large golem that illeosa had “made” from another persons campaign that I always liked the sound of as well! Who does not love a golem or two
Name of PC: Yashana
No true wizard or cleric, very interesting.
Yup fickle winds, made go look through my old notes to see if that was the spell I used against my alchemist PC I had forgot about mirror image and tower shields as well.
Any alchemist worth their salt takes force bombs as soon as they get them. That bomb pretty much nullifies any resistance a monster may have. In a previous campaign we had an alchemist with fast bombs yata yata yata, he held them for big monsters/fights and relied on his bow for most combat. He was truly brutal. One way to get around them is to give enemies deflect arrows or other similar abilities, ind wall, protection from arrows etc. Puts a real damper on them, but they get bitter very fast…trust me. In my eyes, alchemist is a slightly over powered class. I had a 9th level NPC villan alchemist vs my 14th level party and he put them on the ropes immediately. Area damage levels the playing field pretty fast. But Awesomness is right, it is a very accommodating party.
My party has a full time cleric in class only. He mostly cast buffs and the few limited damaging spells. My point is the group is doing fine, they have to wait to get ability damage healed. Does not seem to slow them down much honestly. That party is pretty stacked, most fights will be over before they start.
Zarmangarof is huge, so did they use the barred force cage to capture him?
Hmm, your party is pretty stacked, no cleric which is a bit of a hit, but the paladin is so powerful in this module. I am not sure about low level alchemists but high level alchemist are powerful death dealing cannons.
I agree, for my group of four players it has been hit and miss. Book three was difficult because of the traps, book four was hard for deaths head vault (almost tpk) and the acropolis. I am in the fifth book right now and they are having a slow grind of it. The saves and energy drain is difficult..I feel the first half of book 6 will be easy for the group but the last half may be tough. All in all, it seems pretty balanced and all depends on how you run it and like the others have said the make up of your group.
My group absolutely walked the hag encounter. Really good rolls on their behalf and really poor roles on my side. The vampire spawn started off the same way, so I decided to start dominating and whoa, they barely made it out alive. When the group invaded the temple they had a fairly decent plan and cake walked it right up until the leukodaemon. And then it was “why do you hate us” and what CR is this? The fight was hard but they persevered. They chose not to fight the nosferatu and instead deal with him. The rest was a cake walk as well. The sorcerer had kept most of his spells back so the big fight with Rolth was simple. When it came to fighting Lady A the swashbuckler pretty much solo’ed her in two rounds. The hardest thing about this module is the group needs to keep expending second and third level spells to remove the disease on themselves or others. My group is very charisma based and they suffered a lot due to blood veil. Also as a note, I am running the adventure 100% as written. So no level bumps or whatever on the encounters.
I like that idea Awsomeness, almost rather than regeneration she has a constant shield other effect with kleestad.
Perhaps Serathiel is a being rather than a sword, An emissary from iomadae that mandravious became possessive over. She tells the PC’s what they need to do to enchant their items in order to hurt the queen. Or even about a ritual they need to partake of in order to hurt and finally kill her. In that case I would give them a holy sword or whatever and leave it at that.
Yeah mobility would play a huge role in his superiority. In the stables, the group fanned out so no more than two people in the cone. So instead he focused melee attacks on the fighter and missed in a truly spectacular way with all but one wing buffet, that I rolled minimum damage for.
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