KSB Snow Owl's page

Agreed. They aren't going to be able to openly sell this armor in Korvosa. Perhaps one of them has ties to the Cerulean Society (the thieves' guild), and could fence it there (that's what happened in my campaign), as thieves would probably find potential use in disguising someone as a Gray Maiden. But your average armorer shop on the street? Hell no, they're not touching that, at least not without a STEEP discount.

Alternatively, they can wait to sell it after Escape from Old Korvosa (probably not many who could afford to pay market rate for the armor IN Old Korvosa, but there would definitely be people who would want the armor there, as it would allow them to potentially get off the island (though the bridges are already destroyed by that point, so it definitely wouldn't be easy... though I think there are patrols of Gray Maidens listed as a random encounter in EfOK... so the possibility exists)).

My party is nearing the end of Skeletons of Scarwall. They just slew the final of the initial four spirit anchors, plus Knurlott, which Mithrodar roped into being a new spirit anchor 24 hours after Castothrane was destroyed. This week they'll try to destroy Mithrodar.

One question about the entry for the Great Hall. On page 38 of the original module, it states:

As long as at least one spirit anchor remains, Mithrodar cannot be slain. As detailed under the chained spirit entry on page 78, the undead menace reforms at full strength in one minute. Fortunately, Mithrodar is bound to this chamber and cannot leave it to pursue fleeing characters.

How hard and fast is this intended to be? Is it merely in reference to the chained spirit's Spectral Bindings ability? That's how I'm reading it. Now that all the spirit anchors are defeated, Mithrodar is free to roam the entire castle, right? (But is still entrapped within Scarwall, as the curse is still in place.)

Or should he still be stuck in the Great Hall? Having him stuck there would make for a more "iconic" final boss battle, I suppose, but I know the party will just wipe the floor with him (they learned their lesson after the hag tricked them into the Great Hall once before; they have buffed with Life's Grace, a Death Ward-like spell that also protects against ability damage/drain from undead attacks... basically he can't do squat to them).

Alternatively, he can now slink incorporeally through the walls of Scarwall, and play a cat and mouse game with the party now, and try to lead them into traps and phasms to gain some sort of advantage over the party.

Thoughts? Now that Mithrodar's spirit anchors are all gone, should he still be confined to the Great Hall? Or should he undertake a cat-and-mouse approach to assaulting the party throughout the castle?

I admit that Castothrane is a tough one. One of the things I did was when an anchor was killed, the PCs would hear scream that reverberated through out the castle, and feel that the very foundation shuddered for a minute. I also had the characters walking around with this feeling (aura) of oppression and dread. When an anchor was killed they felt a weakening in that aura of dread.

The first anchor my party killed was Castothrane as they decided to fly on to D2a and enter into D1.

My party has chosen to enter much the same way. After lifting the first portcullis, blocking it open with an immovable rod, then breaking a hole in the barred door, and having the Monk explore the bone-strewn hall beyond for a round or so, they decided to look for another way up, and the Eldritch Disciple cast a Fly spell on the Barbarian, and he followed the Barb up by spider climbing up the wall to D2a.

Everyone else hung out down at the main entrance while those two looked around up on the parapet. When they started breaking through the southwest door into area D1/23, one Gargoyle brute came down to fight them. The Cleric then cast a polymorph spell that turned him into a minor angel for 12 rounds, and flew up with a rope, which he tied to one of the crenelations as the Barb and Warlock/Cleric broke through the door, and Castothrane took a readied attack.

A wonderful split-party fight began, in which DM mercy is was a factor in the Warlock not being damaged to Strength 0. Castothrane is only injured down to 80% health, and that's where we had to end things for the week (playing via Roll 20 has been... interesting... Can't wait for life to get back to normal...)

Excellent idea about the reverberating scream. I think I'll use that this next week (assuming they do succeed in slaying Castothrane).

As a lover of Ravenloft, I actually want to keep the Mist unique to that setting. But, that does give me the idea to entrap the party another way... Just use the mechanic presented in the Skeletons of Scarwall adventure, and move the soultrapping nature of the haunting up to nearly-immediate.

"Undead creatures and living creatures who enter and remain in Scarwall for a week must make a DC 22 Will save to avoid being bound in the same way [as if by a hedged prison binding spell]."

I think I'll just call for that Will save vs. entrapping the first time any of the party members attempt to leave the castle proper (I plan to leave the Causeway as a partial extension of the castle... I want the PC's to be able to back off of it to save Zellara if she survives the initial "Zellara's Doom" assault, but once one of the PC's is soulbound to the castle, I don't want them to be able to just camp on the far south end of the causeway). So, every time they enter and leave the castle, there is a chance at least one of them gets bound into the Hedged Prison of Scarwall. Then obviously also call for said Will save if they stay in the haunted castle for an entire week.

It sticks to the theme of the castle as presented, matches with information from the Brotherhood of Bones that no previous expeditions into the castle have ever reported back, matches a lot better with the immediate soul-capturing of Zellara, and neatly forces all the wonderful "stuck in a haunted castle at night" tropes.

Has anyone else given the players any subtle indication of the dimensional anchor effect prior to them attempting to teleport in or out of Scarwall?

Dimensional Anchor usually causes the target to glow emerald green ("Any creature or object struck by the ray is covered with a shimmering emerald field that completely blocks extradimensional travel.")... and I'm debating if I should have a subtle emerald glow cover the characters' skin (perhaps so subtle it would require a Spot check to notice? The Monk's ranks are high enough he almost auto-succeeds).

The other side is that I could make the glow more obvious, and have the "ghostly lights" seen in the windows also be greenish... which may head-fake them into thinking the ghostly glows in the windows that vanish upon inspection are a result of other creatures inside also emanating a green glow...

Thoughts?

Does the module specify the wererats are in Old Korvosa? I don't recall that being the case. In either event, I ran it as the wererat den being under the main part of the city, not Old Korvosa.

I'm very behind on updating my list of character deaths...

Name of PC: Jorj
Class/Level: Whisper Gnome Rogue 3/Wizard 2/Unseen Seer 5
Adventure: A History of Ashes
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: The party foolishly decided to set a trap for the Red Mantis, in the same bar Blayze was beheaded in...
Story: The party was still in Kaer Maga, the same day Red Mantis Assassins had beheaded Blayze (see my previous post in this thread). They purchased a scroll of Resurrection, and succeeded in activating it and bringing Blayze back.

Since I'm running the original module, but planned on inserting Deathhead Vault from the Anniversary Edition, I treated the Cinderlands contingent of Red Mantis as having a Cinnabar equivalet as their captain, since Cinnabar herself would be in Deathhead Vault. Though I didn't use this captain's higher CR stat block in the solo encounter that resulted in Blayze's death, in my mind it was this captain that beheaded him, which meant he had Resurrection Sense, and would know if Blayze was brought back from the dead. The Red Mantis had also parted out Blayze's head (hair, teeth, eyelashes, etc), so any member could Scry him easily at just about any point.

After Resurrecting Blayze, then resting the night unaccosted, the party decided it was a good idea for the half-orc to head off with the bard, so Jayson the Bard could spread false info throughout taverns, about where the party was staying, where they were heading, etc., so as to confound the Red Mantis attempts to track the party down.

Shortly after those two left, some of the other party members convinced Blayze to go back to the tavern where he had been beheaded, and make a drunken ruckus, so hopefully the Red Mantis would hear of a large, drunk Shoanti with a spiked chain back in the same tavern, hoping to draw them into a trap...

As the party was headed that way through the city, Jorj the Unseen Seer noted a Scrying sensor following Blayze (thanks to his Detect Scrying spell) as the party walked through the streets. He succeeded on the caster level check to see back through the sensor, viewing a male RMA without his mask on, peering into his scrying device. It also allowed Jorj to note the direction and distance, and he realized the scrier was inside Kaer Maga, in the Bis district. He quickly told the party that he sensed where they scrier was, and they should use the info to go ambush the Red Mantis in their own hideout... except he said this while the scrying sensor was sitting right there... Yep, the Red Mantis quickly started packing up and got out of there... But, the captain continued to watch through the scrying.

Almost immediately after saying it, Jorj realized how dumb that was, so they decided to instead use the scrying sensor to trick the Mantis into coming to them. They headed back to the tavern in which Blayze had been beheaded the day before, and sat down and ordered drinks. Blayze sat at his same table, and the party readied to attack any Red Mantis Assassins that entered the tavern, then waited.

... What they weren't ready for was five Fiendish Giant Praying Mantises being summoned inside the tavern (as the tavern is inside one of the massive walls of Kaer Maga, it has no need for windows, just barred metal shutters to lock up at night; they would be open during business hours to get air circulation, allowing line of effect for the RMA's standing on the other side of the street). Combat began with the Shoanti Barbarian and the Cleric both getting grappled by the giant vermin. The Barbarian Enlarged himself with his magic belt, and the Eldritch Disciple of Asmodeus stepped over to hit him with a Freedom of Movement spell.

Three Red Mantis Assassins stepped into the three doorways, blocking any attempts to exit, and two of them weaving their sabres in Prayer Attacks, successfully fascinating both Blayze and Jorj. The two assassins standing outside yet, ordered the summoned giant mantises near the two fascinated PC's to switch targets, so as to not disrupt the fascination effects.

Blayze and Jorj stood motionlessly fascinated, while the priest of Asmodeus tried to free Blayze by casting a Resurgence spell to give him another save versus the Prayer Attack, but it did not work (note, I don't think they ever tried injuring the fascinated party mates to try waking them). The Cleric of Iomedae remained grappled by a Giant Praying Mantis, and the two sabre-weaving RMA's stepped closer to their fascinated targets, preparing to behead them. Another, invisible Assassin tumbled into the tavern, through a summoned giant mantis' space, and when noticed by the Disciple of Asmodeus (he has always-on See Invisibility), he tried to fascinate him, too. Luckily, Zi-irri the disciple of Asmodeus succeeded on his save. The cleric of Iomedae continued to get hammered in a grapple with a giant mantis, and the others failed to grab Zi-irri.

The Disciple of Asmodeus nailed the invisible Red Mantis Assassin with a Glitterdust, while the Cleric of Iomedae remained trapped in a grapple, and the others were fascinated. The RMA standing in the front door finally entered, and he and the invisible one both tried and failed to use their Prayer Attack on Zi-irri. But then one of the summoned Giant Praying Mantises finally succeeded in grappling the Asmodean priest.

Yeah, things got REAL dire for the party.

Blayze and Jorj remained fascinated, then Zi-irri escaped the grapple by using his once per day Teleport SLA (Fiendish Legacy feat) to cross the room, arriving spider climbing on the wall next to the grappled Cleric of Iomedae. The Cleric failed again to get out of the grapple, and with that, the Red Mantis Assassin's turns came...

One five-foot-stepped up to Blayze and swung her sabre in a coup de grace. However, he damage was abysmally low, triggering a mere DC 28 Fortitude save to survive. Blayze rolled a Nat 19, succeeding on the DC 28 Fort save. Zi-irri screamed out "Blayze the Thrice Beheaded!" as he has henceforth come to be nicknamed.

Jorj was not so lucky. The Red Mantis Assassin facing him also rolled poorly on her damage, inflicting only 20 points of damage, but Jorj failed the resulting DC 30 Fort save, and his head was swiftly lopped from his shoulders.

The summoned giant vermin resumed their attacks against the party (the Red Mantis Captain was the one across the street, having summoned the creatures), but their attacks were ineffective.

Blayze's mind was finally clear, and he injured the RMA that had been fascinating him, while Zi-irri cast another Freedom of Movement spell, which allowed the Cleric of Iomedae to escape the grapple later in the round. Immediately after he escaped, the duration of the summon ended, and all the Fiendish Giant Praying Mantises disappeared. The injured RMA near Blayze activated her Red Shroud ability, and attempted to fascinate Blayze again with a new Prayer Attack... and the Shoanti failed his save. He had a Benediction spell active on him, and expended it to gain a reroll of his saving throw... and still failed again.

The other three RMA's in the tavern tried to fascinate the two party clerics, but both made their saves. Blayze stood there fascinated, while Zi-irri pulled out a wand of Web, activating it with Use Magic Device, blanketing the tavern in movement-restricting webbing (but not for Zi-irri; his Warlock-granted Spider Climb makes him immune to the stickiness of a Web spell).

The details are not important hereafter. Every living party member could move through the webbing unimpeded, and Zi-irri scurried close enough to see the RMA fascinating Blayze. He cast a Wall of Fire around her, blocking line of sight from her to Blayze, ending the fascination effect. The Cleric of Iomedae called down a Flame Strike on a single RMA, as that was the only way to avoid any bar patrons and the party members.

Blayze succeeded on two or three more fascination saves, and slaughtered the two Assassins stuck in the middle of the tavern by the webbing. The one in the Wall of Fire ring stepped through it, surviving, and fled into the city. Once Zi-irri dismissed the Wall of Fire and was surprised to see the RMA missing, he and Blayze, and Magnus ran into the streets, trying to catch her.

...No one did anything to stop the burning webbing that had been set alight by Magnus' Flame Strike. It ended up burning through the tavern, killing two patrons, nearly killing the owner and a worker (both self-stabilized in negative hit points), and two other patrons survived, merely injured by the fire.

The Disciple of Asmodeus held that over the head of the Cleric of Iomedae for a long time...

That's all I have time to write up today, but I have several more deaths to recount...

Campaign Total: 13 PC deaths.
Agnar, Davoth, Maze, Killgore, Sirus, Eric, Jair, Grim, Uté, Vayne, Sal, Blayze, and Jorj with the honorable mention of WH the Elemental Companion.
There is one original character still alive from the start of the campaign (the Rogue/Bard).

I still need to write up the deaths of Davomichs, Lionel, Zi-irri, and Avery (which makes for a total of 17 PC deaths so far).

My party has a very bad habit of losing sight of their goal(s). As such, they damn near killed Cindermaw, but with the party half-orc swallowed (not the PC they intended to get swallowed... but when the half-orc deals 75 damage to Cindermaw just before the great worm's turn...) and having no dagger to cut his way out...

I called for Wisdom checks at the start of each character's turn, and we actually ended the session basically right there (half-orc swallowed), with the others realizing that Cindermaw was almost dead... close enough to the point that the half-orc cutting his way out might kill it... And Cindermaw ended the night by retreating underground, along with the swallowed half-orc.

Cue an argument between the players over the next week as to if killing Cindermaw would negate their recreation of the legend...

In the end I secretly maxxed Cindermaw's hit points (which I should have done anyway, since I have 6 players), and decided that his fire healing would grand him fast healing X, with X being equal to half the number of dice of the fire effect he was exposed to (minimum 1). Then I decided there was an underground lava flow not too far under the surface, and the half-orc would need to survive 5 rounds in Cindermaw's stomach before the worm had burrowed down to the lava flow, then reversed coarse for the surface.

The half-orc dumped all the charges from his Healing Belt into Cindermaw's stomach, hopefully healing it enough so it would survive him cutting his way out...

A couple rounds later Cindermaw reemerged in the midst of the party, in a fountain of magma, having enjoyed two rounds of Fast Healing 10 (lava does 20d6 for full immersion), and splattered Trinia with a glob of lava (everyone else avoided with a DC 12 Reflex save).

One of the party clerics had cast a Greater Status spell on the half-orc, allowing him to track his health, direction and distance, as well as cast 2nd level and lower harmless spells on him through a mystical link (though the mystical link might have been some other spell effect). So the cleric had been dumping all his spells into converting them into Cure Moderate Wounds spells, trying to keep the half-orc alive long enough to get out (he was taking ~23 damage each round on average? Thanks to some Damage Reduction-granting items).

The half-orc ended up using an arrow to cut his way out. He stupidly waited until the worm was fully above ground before even beginning (telepathic bond allowed the party to tell him the worm was coming back up, and when it resurfaced), then failed to cut his way out in one turn.

The next round, Cindermaw's stomach dealt 35 damage to him (lessened to 27 damage, thanks to DR 8/–) placing him at 0 hit points. Cindermaw then ate the other party barbarian (the one the party intended to be eaten) after the Shoanti Bluffed the great worm into eating him, so he could go rescue the half-orc.

The cleric telepathically told the half-orc to delay so he could heal him. He delayed and was healed up to 11 hit point, so he could finish cutting his way out without falling unconscious. Then the Shoanti was swallowed, and proceeded to cut his way out in one round.

Also, I wasn't happy with any of the miniature options to represent Cindermaw, so I decided to paint my own...

https://imgur.com/gallery/7ojf1lK

That is Reaper Miniatures' Goremaw the Great Worm mini. It is my first creature miniature that I've completed painting. I don't have an air brush, so it took me about 48 hours of work over a 5 month time period.

Most of what I've painted so far is terrain pieces. Here was the Trial of the Totems, last night:

https://i.imgur.com/OKtAnkD.jpg

I made the plateau pieces from 1.5" thick XPS insulation foam.

Name of PC: Blayze
Class/Level: Human Barbarian 8/Fighter 2
Adventure: A History of Ashes
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Foolishly wandering off alone in Kaer Maga to go drinking, for days on end.
Story: Blayze contined on with his second day of foolish drunkenness in the taverns of Kaer Maga, challenging people to drinking competitions. As I had done the day before, I had him roll 4 Fort saves just to see how he was doing. The third one was abysmally bad (below a 10), while the 4th was not great (only a 19), but still high enough that it would succeed versus most liquors, even after multiple drinks in the hour. In the end, the one failure resulted in him suffering 2 points of Dex damage and 1 point of Wisdom damage. (Alcohol rules from 3.0's Arms and Equipment Guide.)

I should mention that he was worried about getting pick-pocketed while alone in Kaer Maga, so he left all his magical gear in the party's inn room (the Unseen Seer was there all day scribing a spell into his spellbook). Blayze went about his day with only his back-up non-magical spiked chain, and a handful of coins to use in buying alcohol.

A chain-wrapped Shoanti challenging people to drinking games isn’t an especially difficult mark to track down for a group of feared assassins… and other members of the party were leaving a fairly noticeable presence of their passing as they traveled north (the party half-orc had stopped in at a tannery in Harse, asking the tanner to shrink the heads of Vimanda, Sivit, and Senshiir, which he had collected in the previous adventure...) The red mantis were also having occasional success scrying the half-orc, and two days earlier had been watching as the party walked through the massive, populated wall of Kaer Maga, and entered the Core to find an inn in the district of Hospice. There had also been failed attempts at scrying the party cleric, and a noticed successful scrying attempt on the half-orc in the party's inn room the previous day, but my PC's were oblivious to the implied danger of wandering off alone...

Three assassins entered the tavern’s main room, one from each entrance (front, back, kitchen), and Blayze was still sober enough to have noted their arrival (he rolled a Nat 20 on his Spot check), and so initiative was rolled. Blayze rolled a Nat 20, giving him a 21 or so on his initiative check. Unfortunately, the Red Mantis Assassins rolled a Nat 18, meaning they got a 23 on their initiative. The closest Red Mantis Assassin began his Prayer Attack, weaving his sawtooth sabre back and forth, successfully fascinating Blayze, who rolled only a 10 on his Will save. The Shoanti Barbarian sat there as the Red Mantis Assassin stepped up to him, noting with fascinated detachment as the patrons of the tavern backed away and hid behind furniture. Three rounds of fascination later, and the Red Mantis Assassin performed a coup de grace, inflicting 26 points of damage to the Barbarian. That was nothing in the grand scheme of his hit point total, but the resulting DC 36 Fort save was nearly unbeatable, as Blayze’s player noted. “You could always roll a Nat 20,” I replied…

...And he did! … There was much rejoicing.

The Mantis’ sawtooth sabre bit into the Shoanti Barbarian’s thick neck, but it did not decapitate him. Blayze was back in control of his wits and quick on his feet as he attempted to bull rush the Red Mantis Assassin out of the way of the door, so he could escape this lopsided fight. Blayze was an expert at this tactic, and pushed his way inside the assassin’s defenses… and was rebuffed. The Red Mantis Assassin had rolled a 20 on his defensive roll against Blayze’s bull rush, and the Shoanti rolled a Nat 1, which amounted to a 10 or so result on his Bull Rush attempt. In the panicked moment he had forgotten about the single Harrow Point he could have used to reroll any Strength check, and so his Bull Rush failed. Still, he had movement left, and failing a Bull Rush doesn’t technically end one’s moment, so far as I could find in the moment, and so he attempted to Tumble through the assassin’s square, so he could escape the kill box this tavern had become… He rolled a 23, missing the DC by 2. And so he was stuck in the tavern.

The other two Red Mantis Assassins did nothing but stand in their doorways, blocking them as a means of escape, and the assassin in the front door just began weaving his sawtooth sabre once again, and again Blayze failed the saving throw (he may have gotten a 16, which would beat the normal DC of 15, but I advanced my Red Mantis Assassins one level [I have 6 PC's], and used the granted feat slot to take the Ability Focus feat for their Prayer Attack, making the DC 18 for my Red Mantis Assassins). Three rounds of fascination later, and Blayze was subjected to a second coup de grace, this time for 34 points of damage, and requiring a DC 44 Fort save to survive. Again, only a Nat 20 would save him…

He rolled a 19 on the die. With that, Blayze was decapitated.

The Red Mantis Assassins took Blayze's head, so when a member of the party tracked him down later, the party's newly-purchased scroll of Raise Dead would not work to bring him back. Luckily, Blayze was sitting on a large sum of liquid coin (~20k gp), and had left all his gear in the party's room at the inn. The party performed a few divinations to determine if Blayze would want to come back or not, getting some non-specific results, and then purchased a scroll of Resurrection. We ended the session with the Cleric of Iomedea casting the scroll, and left it as a cliff-hanger as to if Blayze would come back to life or not.

The player is quite into role playing, and actually wants there to be something "wrong" when he comes back, so we will be drawing on the section from Heroes of Horror which has some suggestions of just how someone might come back "wrong."

Campaign Total: 12 PC deaths.
Agnar, Davoth, Maze, Killgore, Sirus, Eric, Jair, Grim, Uté, Vayne, Sal, and Blayze, with the honorable mention of WH the Elemental Companion.
There is one original character still alive from the start of the campaign (the Rogue/Bard).

Ultimately, I decided that if they save enough lives (Heroes of the city?) and befriend Ishani, he can redeem himself with the clerics of Abadar.

That seems a decent balance of making him suffer for his actions, but eventually resolve the issue.

I liked the idea of making him feel screwed up if he needs a healing, or making things a bit tougher for him, since he won't get any help from clerics of Abadar for now. But wouldn't it just be easier for him to head into the church of Pharasma, Asmodeus or Sarenrae for a cure or remove x/y/z spell?

Sure, it would be easier. But that doesn't mean those healers will have healing available for him.

The Hellknights are probably still around, helping institute small-scale quarantines, and escorting the Queen's Physicians through the city (at least, they hadn't abandoned Korvosa in my game until several weeks into the plague... Right before the PC's headed to the Hospice). With the Hellknights intermingling with the populous, they are going to get infected... The priests of Asmodeus would prioritize healing followers of Asmodeus over any paying "outsider."

The church of Sarenrae is only going to have one priest who can cast remove disease, probably 4 times per day (assuming he/she has the Healing domain).

That leaves Pharasma, which will be the Bard's best bet (in my estimation). But the Bard's choices have restricted his options to a large extent. I wouldn't make it all that painful for him, but I would still check each time he goes to get a Remove Disease spell cast... I'd peg it at about a 10% - 20% chance each day (assuming not at the crack of dawn) that both the priests of Pharasma that can cast Remove Disease have already cast all the preparations of the spell that they'd had ready for that day (remember that the priests are interacting with the sick as they go about healing people; the clerics are going to have to spend a decent number of spells just curing themselves each day). All those 3rd level clerics that are casting Lesser Restoration to help sick people hold on for another day or so... are getting exposed and possibly infected each time they touch a sick person to heal them (I also treated someone casting Remove Disease and touching the target as exposing themselves, too). All those clerics and adepts probably need curing of their own each day.

Realistically the small chance that the Bard can't get a remove disease spell "right this minute" isn't going to endanger his life all that much, but it will make things inconvenient, and possibly cost him some more coin in the end, as he ends up probably taking another daily hit to Con and Charisma before the Pharasman priests can heal him the next day, or possibly the Bard has to resort to receiving a Heal spell instead, which will cost significantly more.

So, largely what his actions have done is just reduce the Bard's options for seeking help. It won't necessarily be a huge burden, but it will possibly be inconvenient, just softly reinforcing the consequences of his actions.

Did anyone's party pocket Knurlott's armor? I expect my party to stuff it in their handy haversack, and I'm not sure whether he could get out again (but I definitely think he should).

Obviously I haven't gotten this far yet, but I had almost the exact same situation happen in a previous campaign. The party had defeated a D&D Sepulchral Thief (sort of a lich-like template for rogues). When they are "killed," their souls inhabit the single most expensive item in their possession (usually a weapon).

My party popped that weapon into their bag of holding and forgot about it... until several sessions later, they opened the bag to get something else out, and this undead creature leapt out and escaped (it gets a short-range shadow-jump ability, as well as Hide in Plain Sight).

So, just wait for the PC's to open the haversack... the problem is that a haversack is going to have a very small opening, and an armored Medium creature is almost assuredly not going to fit out of that... But he can still attack, and the party might end up rupturing the bag if they attack back (heck, maybe Knurlott could rupture it from inside...)

In fact, each [compartment of the haversack] is like a bag of holding...

If the bag [of holding] is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever.

Given that the biggest section of the Haversack has an 80-pound weight limit, Knurlott himself is likely to overload it as he is reforming... meaning the bag "breaks" and all the contents are lost on the Astral plane.

Additionally, since the original module indicates the curse of Scarwall extends into extradimensional spaces (as it will attack and claim Zellara, even if her Harrow deck is in an extradimensional space), I would rule that the party's Handy Haversack cannot leave Scarwall while Knurlott's armor is inside (assuming they haven't cleansed it).

...Let him live with the consequences of his actions .

Agreed with the above. Let him experience the consequences of his actions.

One thing to note, if you run the numbers of how many clerics Korvosa should actually have... Ishani is probably the second-most powerful cleric in the Bank of Abadar. Which means that Ishani would have to be the Abadarian cleric that the Rogue pick-pocketed.

Sorry, I'm about to go off on a tangent. Feel free to ignore the below.

Given the nature of Seven Days to the Grave, it actually kind of irked me that they spent that one sidebar telling you there aren't a lot of clerics, rather than just telling you how many clerics there are, and where they are located. I used the referenced NPC population mechanics from the DMG to extrapolate the numbers and logical locations of the NPC Clerics and Adepts. The adventure-writers didn't always follow the formula exactly (having 5th level Ishani, vs. a 6th level cleric as the NPC population mechanics would dictate; having two 13th-level clerics and one 11th level cleric, rather than three 12th level clerics, etc.), but it's close enough you can see where the listed NPC's would fit.

Here's what I worked up, using the DMG rules, and the NPC's listed in the modules, as well as the Guide to Korvosa (it's sort of a stream-of-consciousness composition, as I was working through the numbers; scroll down to the last part, with a bold headline, to see the final numbers):

SDttG, p. 20, Sidebar wrote:

Where Are All The Healers?

Page 138 of the DMG presents a way to determine how many characters of each class reside in a city. According to this method, the average population of a large city like Korvosa includes three 12th-level clerics, six 6th-level clerics, twelve 3rd-level clerics, and twenty-four 1st-level clerics. Of these clerics, only nine are of high enough level to cast remove disease. Even including the average of 24 paladins—of which there are only three of a high enough level to possess the remove disease ability—and disorganized numbers of rangers, druids, and visiting NPCs with access to healing magic, this is still less than 0.1 percent of the city’s population. With far more victims contracting blood veil every day, it’s easy to see how the city’s curative magics are quickly overwhelmed, even if every healer in the city were casting the maximum possible number of remove disease spells each day. To a certain extent, wands and potions and scrolls can bolster these numbers, but only as long as supplies hold out. When faced with a plague as virulent as blood veil, magic alone is not enough to save a city.

Adapting the above info (since Korvosa doesn’t actually follow it…) instead of having:

Three 12th-level Clerics (especially since the average isn’t 12… it’s 12.5…)
Six 6th-level Clerics
Twelve 3rd-level Clerics
Twenty-four 1st-level Clerics

Instead adapt it to trade out the three 12th-level Clerics for two 13th-level clerics, and one 11th-level (which is a valid set of rolls for the three highest-level clerics in a Large City).
(The two 13th-level Clerics can each cast 3 Heal spells [one actually gets 4 Heal spells due to having a Periapt of Wisdom +4] and 14 Remove Disease spells each, per day [not counting possible Domain slots*]. Also 6 and 7 Lesser Restorations, respectively, per day.)
(The 11th-level Cleric can cast 1 Heal spell per day, and 12 Remove Disease spells, each day. Also 5 Lesser Restoration spells per day.)
(The Four 6th-level Clerics can each cast 3 Remove Disease spells per day. Also 4 Lesser Restoration spells each, per day.)
(The single 5th-level Cleric can cast 2 Remove Disease spells each day. Also 3 Lesser Restoration spells each day.)
* The only way Domain slots could possibly come into play is if the High Priestess of Pharasma had the Healing domain, it would allow her to prepare two additional Heal spells each day (in her 6th & 7th level domain slots).

Thus, the Clerics in Korvosa can supply the following spells each day:
8 Heal spells
54 Remove Disease spells
37 + 24* = 61 Lesser Restoration spells

* From the 3rd-level Clerics

Two 13th-level Clerics (Archbanker of Abadar & Bishop of Pharasma)
One 11th-level Cleric (Ornher Reebs, High Priest of Asmodeus)
Four 6th-level Clerics (One is the unnamed “high priest” of Sarenrae, and the other the
high priest of Shelyn in the city)
Two 5th-level Clerics (Ishani Dhatri - Cleric of Abadar; Paravicar Acillmar [Clr 3/Wiz 3/
Mystic Theurge 2] - Order of the Nail)
Twelve 3rd-level Clerics (One each at Abadar & Pharasma; the rest at Pantheon of Many)
Twenty-four 1st-level Clerics (many of these are for the “lesser” gods at the Pantheon of Many)

In addition, Korvosa should have a similar allotment of Adepts.
(The Three 12th-level Adepts are the only ones who can cast Remove Disease; they will only have Wisdom scores of 16; that’s 3 spells per Adept, for a total of 9 Remove Disease spells from Adepts.) [Arguably a 12th-level Adept would still have NPC wealth… and thus a Periapt of Wisdom +2… allowing them the one bonus 4th-level spell per day… so a total of 12 Remove Disease spells from Adepts.]

The Adepts in Korvosa can supply the following spells each day:
12 Remove Disease spells

Note that Adepts do not get Lesser Restoration on their spell list.

Three 12th-level Adepts
Six 6th-level Adepts
Twelve 3rd-level Adepts (5) 7 are independently in the city
Eighty-nine 1st-level Adepts (24) 65 are independently in the city

Here is Korvosa’s allotment of Paladins
(29 Paladins in total; 5 that can use Remove Disease; 9 total Remove Disease spells per week):

The Paladins in Korvosa can supply the following spell-like abilities each WEEK:
9 Remove Disease

Two 11th-level Paladin Paladin of Erastil (LG god of trade, family; Community)
11th-level Paladin Paladin of Torag (LG god of the forge, protection; Protection, Law)
One 10th-level Paladin Paladin of Iomedae (LG god of rulership, justice; Law)
One 6th-level Paladins Paladin of Sarenrae (NG god of healing; Healing)
Andent Aryl: Paladin 6 of Abadar (LN god of cities, merchants, law; Law, Protection)
Four 5th-level Paladins
Two 3rd-level Paladins
Eight 2nd-level Paladins
Four 1st-level Paladins

The total relevant spells that are able to be cast each day (*assume one Paladin Remove Disease per day):
8 Heal spells
76* Remove Disease spells
61 Lesser Restoration spells

Note that roughly one-third (31.9%) of the 1st-level commoners have a chance of recovering on their own (getting two successful DC 16 Fort saves in a row, on two consecutive days).

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Temples in Korvosa, and their spellcaster allotments:
Bank of Abadar: Clr 13 (Archbanker Darb Tuttle); Clr 5 (Ishani Dhatri); Clr 3; Clr 1(4); Adept 1 (5)
Grand Cathedral of Pharasma: Clr 13 (Bishop Keppira d’Bear); Clr 6; Clr 3; Clr 1(4); Adept 1 (5)
Temple of Asmodeus: Clr 11 (High Priest Ornher Reebs); Clr 6; Clr 3; Clr 1(4); Adept 1 (5)
Temple of Sarenrae: Clr 6; Clr 3; Clr 1(4); Adept 12; Adept 1 (5)
Sanctuary of Shelyn: Clr 6; Clr 3; Clr 1(3); Adept 12; Adept 1 (4)
Pantheon of Many:
Erastil: Clr 3;
Iomedae: Clr 3: Clr 1
Torag: Clr 3; Clr 1
Sarenrae: Adept 3;
Shelyn: Adept 3;
Desna: Clr 3; Adept 12
Cayden Cailean: Clr 3;
Abadar: Adept 3;
Irori: Clr 3;
Gozreh: Adept 6;
Pharasma: Adept 3;
Nethys: Clr 3; Adept 6
Calistria: Adept 6;
Asmodeus: Adept 3;
Zon-Kuthon: Adept 6;
Urgathoa: Adept 6;
Norgorber: Adept 6;

Random 1st-level Clerics in the City (Not directly associated with the PoM): 5

Looking at my final numbers, I think I left out one of the six 6th-level clerics (I think I assumed my PC cleric was filling that slot, or something, or I just messed up and forgot it), and I could easily see that "extra" cleric being associated with one of the bigger temples in Korvosa, so maybe that was the cleric that your rogue pick-pocketed.

Regardless, make him live through the consequences of his actions. I could absolutely see the Bank of Abadar completely barring him from receiving healing from the Bank. Maybe Ishani would do it on the down-low, but Archbanker Darb Tuttle, and any other priests at the bank would refuse (and note that Ishani can only cast Remove Disease once per day; maybe he's already cast it by the time the Rogue comes to him for healing on any given day).

It also irked me that the writers didn't provide guidelines for the numbers of Korvosan citizens that would die each day. I wanted to provide plausible numbers to my PC's as each day progressed, so I actually rolled out fifty 1st-level Commoners' exposures to Blood Veil, and the saves and damage for each failed save, until each character died, or self-cured by succeeding in two consecutive saves. I then extrapolated these stats to the full population, assuming a certain exposure rate (something like 300 people exposed the first day, then x1.4 people each day after that, until the coins were no longer contagious after seven days; then a lesser exposure rate), and got a rolling extrapolation day-by-day, which then gave me death rates for each day.

I'm not going to post it here at the moment, but if you would like to have these final numbers, I can provide them for you later (it'll take a bit of formatting on my part, since the numbers are disbursed among the day entries of my extensive campaign notes word document). It really blew the party's minds when I told them at the meeting between Kroft, Ishani, Dr. Davaulus, various city healers, and the PC's (right after they first "meet" a Gray Maiden) that the daily death reports for the day were near 200, for that day alone...

My only other bit of advice is to make sure that you logically allow for the death rates to reach the numbers appropriate for the various "quests" the PC's go on. Don't do the vampire spawn one until people have been dying long enough for plague carters to have stacked dozens of bodies in an alleyway, for example.

Can anyone explain to me how Knurlott's attack bonus with his +2 greatsword is +26? I can't figure out the last +3.

Either it's just flat out wrong, or I'm missing something from some of the Pathfinder-specific feats that applies to get him that high.

Melee +2 cold iron greatsword +26/+21/+16 (2d6+19/17–20 plus 3d6 acid)
+12 BAB
+6 Str
+2 for Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus
+2 enhancement bonus
+1 bonus from desecrate aura
= +23

I can also only figure out up to 2d6+15 for his damage. No clue where the extra +4 comes from. (+9 for 1.5*Str, +2 enhancement, +4 weapon specialization and GWS).

I also can't figure out how his armor spikes attack modifiers are so high...

armor spikes +21/+16/+11 (1d6+9 plus 3d6 acid) or slam +15 (1d4+5)
+12 BAB
+6 Str
+1 bonus from desecrate aura
= +19

The armor spike damage is also wonky, unless there was some change in pathfinder that I don't know about (it appears he's getting 1.5x Strength to damage, even though they are light weapons?)

And why is his Slam attack at only +15, and only getting +5 of his +6 Strength bonus to damage?

I love the how that armour works.

Yeah, the armor is kind of what sold me on making sure I include Knurlott in my D&D 3.5 campaign through the original module.

Graveknights are awesome. They strike me as a combination of a Death Knight (MM2) and the Knight Haunt from Bestiary of Krynn, with a malign "post-death" ability added in Undead Revised.

The first 4 Adventure Paths are nice for me, because they were published for D&D 3.5, so I don't have to change anything, and can use the monster stat blocks as is. Since Graveknights were first published right after the AP transition to Pathfinder, I have to back-port it. Not a hard thing, it just forces me to debate how closely to emulate the PF one with D&D 3.5 abilities, and weigh that versus the CR adjustment relative to D&D as opposed to PF.

Basically I'm looking at making the following changes:
* +4 channel resistance becomes +4 Turn Resistance
* +8 racial bonus to Perception applying to both Spot & Listen
* changing racial HD into d12's rather than d8's (or maybe just changing all HD, even from class levels, to d12's, to match how it's done in 3.5 with Vampires & Liches, etc.)
* adding the Unholy Toughness ability WotC started giving some undead in MM3 and later books (still doesn't give Cha to Fort saves, though)
* change the Toughness bonus feat to 3.5's Improved Toughness (which is basically exactly what PF Toughness is)

The last two would just be flat-out additions on my part, for the purposes of emulating the fact PF undead get bonus hit points from Charisma. My D&D 3.5 Knurlott will also be immune to crits, unlike the PF version.

I might make Knurlott a Fighter 10/Blackguard 2. Sure, he loses a feat (but I would need to replace some of the PF-specific feats anyway), but would gain Charisma to saves from Dark Blessing.

Decisions, decisions...

I definitely let the inhabitants of Scarwall use their teleport ability.

Never really put much thought into the how's of the current anchors. I don't think my players will either. They haven't connected the anchors to Mithrodar. They have only killed one so far, and I had the water elemental in F1 anchored as a replacement.

My thoughts on this. If you use the rules strictly as written he would never be able to replace an anchor which makes the ability useless. I am sure it was not intended that way.

Excellent, I will have no qualms about allowing the fiends to teleport, then, either (obviously, Nihil will still have the 100-foot leash of the Anchor limiting her movements).

Regarding Mithrodar and the Chained Spirit abilities... If you are writing a new monster, specifically for a module scenario, there is absolutely no reason to not ensure that the monster actually works in the scenario you wrote it for. Screwing that up is Wizards of the Coast-level incompetence. Thus far I'd been impressed enough with Paizo's products (largely just this Adventure Path, admittedly) that such lazy writing actually surprises me.

Yeah, I'll just have to DM-fiat Mithrodar to work the way its obvious he's supposed to work (treat the range limit on using his Chain Spirit supernatural ability as being 500 feet for undead, and 100 feet for other creature types, and assume that his Spiritsense ability is not blocked by walls and such).

Alternatively, I suppose there is a strictly-legal way Mithrodar could have done these things, exactly as the abilities are written...

Chain Spirit (Su) As a standard action, once per day, a chained spirit can attempt to chain any evil-aligned intelligent, corporeal creature it can detect.

...
Spectral Sight (Su) A chain spirit can see and hear through the senses of any of its anchor spirits whenever it wishes, just as if it were using both effects of the spell clairaudience/clairvoyance.

In theory, he could have had different anchors at some earlier point in time. If one of those previous anchors got into the Chapel under his own power, then Mithrodar could see and hear through that anchor, and could have used those linked senses to target the demi-lich with his Chain Spirit ability, since he's detecting the demi-lich... just via a Clairvoyance ability.

So my party's experience with the Vivified Labyrinth has been rough thus far. We ended two sessions ago with the Wizard and Half-Orc Barbarian cut off from the rest of the party, made insane, and the rest of the party fleeing in a panic.

After the panicked PC's left, I continued on for a short bit with the two confused PC's in the Labyrinth. The Wizard ended up fleeing via a Dimension Door, and the next session the no-longer-panicked PC's actually caught him and eventually rectified his insanity. But the half-orc... well, I'll just say that he didn't make it out, and the player is making a new character for next week.

However, the confused Wizard did encounter "Vencarlo" in the labyrinth before his fleeing via teleportation, and Vimanda-in-disguise told him that "Glorio had sent them down to the Labyrinth to die." This of course got the Wizard and half-orc players to squirm all week with this knowledge that they couldn't yet share with the other players.

Well, tonight the Wizard was able to relay this info to the other party members, and after the initial reactions, calmer heads started to prevail. The Bard noted he never once picked up any lie from "Glorio" or the majordomo. And the Wizard pointed out that "Vencarlo" might have only been expressing his opinion, based upon limited information (Glorio claims to have placed Vencarlo and Neolandus in the Vivified Labyrinth to protect them from any attempt by the Crown to obtain them).

It should be noted that the initial revelation to the rest of the party of Vencarlo's claim of Glorio sending the party down to the Labyrinth to die was made during a telephone-operator conversation through the Majenko telepathic switchboard, while the party was locking the still-insane Wizard down via grappling, rope bindings, and a Silence spell... in the Arkona's visitor's lounge... with Carnochan waiting right outside...

Yep, Carnochan successfully used Detect Thoughts on Majenko and two of the PC's. So Carnochan and Glorio know that "Vencarlo" spoke with the wizard in the Labyrinth, and claimed "Glorio" sent them there to die. Obviously, "Glorio" is going to suspect Vimanda, and if he goes down to speak with Sivit, he will learn that Sivit 100% knows someone was running around the Labyrinth disguised as Vencarlo, while she had eyes on Vencarlo, chained up in her throne room. It will confirm to "Glorio" that Vimanda is trying to turn the party against him.

The party has retired for the day. They will get a new party member next week to replace the half-orc, and rest the night and reprep spells aimed at overcoming the Vivified Labyrinth (it should be noted that they've gotten this far in the module in less than two days of in-game time; "yesterday" morning is when Marcus Endrin attempted to assassinate the Queen).

Bahor sent Vimanda down to the Labyrinth hoping the PC's would kill her. Now he knows she is going to try and backstab him by turning the party against him. Thus, he won't want her back in the Labyrinth the next day when the PC's return. He obviously won't outright attack her to prevent it, but he won't send her down the next day, either.

But Vimanda has an advantage... the party is still carrying the Raktavarna. So she will know when the party is heading back to Palace Arkona, and she can head down to the Labyrinth ahead of them, just like the normal set-up. Bahor may not know about the Raktavarna (but he & Carnochan have noted there was an "extra" mind in the room with the party... but it saved both times, so no surface thoughts revealed).

The party is debating returning to the Vivified Labyrinth via Dimension Door, or by just politely walking back up to Palace Arkona and asking to go back down. "Glorio" has no sway in which they decide, obviously, and if they go in secretly via Dimension Door, Vimanda will have the advantage (due to the Detect Scrying, Bahor can't watch the party constantly, especially when they are out of the palace; right now the party suspects the scrying is targeted at the Arkonas, and I don't want them to change their mind because I was pinging the Detect Scrying too much).

But, if the party returns politely through the palace proper, I was thinking of having "Glorio" leave this sealed letter with Carnochan, to be given to the party when they return, in the hopes it bends the situation back to his advantage, and allays any suspicions that Vimanda may have succeeded in planting in the party's minds.

Jayson, Magnus, Gree, Jorj, and Blayze,

Carnochan told me of your panicked flight from our home yesterday. It is unfortunate news that it appears the half-orc did not make it out with the rest of you. I am sincerely and unexpectedly sorry for the magical impediments that have caused you so much trouble.
I have investigated the scrying that you warned me about yesterday. I learned that a magic-wielding servant of our house may be trying to betray me. I fear that the timing of your arrival here may tempt her into ensnaring you in her schemes. Be wary of subterfuge when below the palace.
You have already done so much in service to Old Korvosa, and my house; I cannot thank you enough. I wish you speed and good luck in rescuing the men you seek.

Sincerely,
Glorio Arkona

Thoughts?

Does this letter seem like it would further Bahor's goals of undermining Vimanda's backstabbing, keeping PC suspicions of Glorio low, and ensuring the party escapes with Neolandus? Or do I have some unintentional "tell" that gives too much away?

I'm hoping it is vague enough to plant the seed in their minds that "Vencarlo" might have just been this traitor using magic to try and sway the party against Glorio, while also being vague enough the party could suspect the message of referring to either Sivit or Vimanda after the fact (depending upon what they encounter next week).

I'm also hoping the letter harkens back to the Harrow Reading Zellara gave the party for Escape from Old Korvosa, and sparks my players to revisit it, and analyze its meanings more, now that they are 3/4 of the way through the module. (They are terrible about almost never revisiting a Harrow Reading after the session it happens...)

For the Past/Law reading:

An abusive father strikes his child when he talks back.
A Despotic Warlord brooks no dissension in his ranks, meeting it with flaying and crucifixtion.
A Tyrannical Monarch crushes resistance with steel & fire.

For the Present/Neutral reading:
Through law or anarchy, tyrants rule with a mailed fist.
They seek out those who have wounded them, or seek to wound them again.
They send their puppets to snip the strings of resistance.

For the Future/Chaos reading:
The Hero strides across the stage, avoiding the embrace of a faceless beauty,
unaware of the fiendish predators lurking in the wings.
He reacts to the slashing claws and gleaming teeth
without seeing the shadowed forms that pull his strings,
laughing.

Not sure how I should handle this.

The party ... decided that burning ... the pillars (thus collapsing the ceiling) was how to end him. They set the chair on fire and were attempting to lite the pillars on fire when Mithrodar reformed again. They decided to run this time.

Now my quandary is, will the castle and the Mithrodar defend/prevent the pillars from burning, or does it burn?

Keep in mind that solid sections of wood don't light on fire that easily. Hold a match to a log, and it isn't going to light. The only description we are given is "Thick wooden columns, their sides caked with dust..." The map depicts them to be roughly 5 feet in diameter.

I would assume that columns such as these have had their bark peeled, and been somewhat sanded and smoothed. They may still display some of the natural undulations of the trees they were formed from, but they wouldn't have lots of small fibers that would easily catch fire.

Also keep in mind the Hardness rules. Wood has Hardness 5, and 10 hit points per inch of thickness. That's Hardness 5, and 600 hit points for a 5-foot section of a column. And fire damage is halved before applying Hardness, so any fire used to light them would have to deal at least 12 points of damage to have any chance of actually damaging the column for even a single hit point of damage. As a quick spit-ball, I would say you need to deal consistent, round-to-round damage, dealing at least 10% of the total hit points (so, 60 hit points) before the column would actually catch fire and continue to burn on its own.

Of course, accelerant would make it easier to accomplish the above; I didn't catch exactly what your PC's did, and if they got the columns lit.

I feel your pain on the prospect of your PC's inflicting massive structural damage/changes on a set-piece encounter location like Scarwall. I once had a druid use Transmute Rock to Mud (I think that was it, anyway) on a central portion of Castle Ravenloft... That is, until I looked into the rules of the spell, and learned it could not be used on worked stone. It's important to know the limitations of the PC's methods before adjudicating what occurs.

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On to matters of my own. I'm just beginning my first read-through of Skeletons of Scarwall, and I've noted a few things that I've got questions about. For reference, I am running the original module in D&D 3.5, with a six-player party. I've noted NobodysHome's recommendation to run the original, less-populated module, to keep the creepy factor, and prevent it from turning into a slog. I largely plan to do this, but do want to cherry pick one or two encounters/monsters from the Anniversary Edition to place into the castle when I run it.

Primary among the new encounters I want to import is the Graveknight, Knurlott. However, just having him hang out in his quarters seems... dull. Anyone have a suggestion on a better spot to place him in the mostly-empty original incarnation of Scarwall?

I've seen reference by posters in this thread about various monsters not being able to use their teleport SLA's, but I was under the impression that the dimensional anchor effect of the Unhallow laying over the castle only affected non-residents of the castle.

Unhallow: The entirety of Castle Scarwall lies within a permanent unhallow effect. All of the castle’s inhabitants gain protection from good. Turn undead checks are made at a –4 penalty, and rebuke undead attempts gain a +4 profane bonus. This effect also creates a dimensional anchor effect for all non-inhabitants of the castle. This unhallow effect functions at CL 20th, and if dispelled, automatically returns after 1d4 rounds of being suppressed.

As such, shouldn't Nihil, as well as the Barbed Devils and Bone Devils be able to use their Greater Teleport SLA's? (I haven't gotten that far through the module yet, but noted it being mentioned here in this thread.) Is there something I'm missing?

In the original, Sergeant Lashton's steed is just a skeleton Nightmare, and as such has no intelligence or special abilities from before its death and reanimation. I note in the Anniversary Edition that the mount is instead a Skeletal Champion Nightmare (which does retain intelligence and abilities), but it is noted as being unable to use its Plane Shift ability. Why is this? Wouldn't it and Lashton be considered residents of the castle?

Along that line of thinking, I'm planning to add the Dread Skeleton template (Advanced Bestiary; already used for the Dread Skeleton Minotaurs) to a Nightmare to make the mount. This would allow it to retain some intelligence, as well as the 3.5 versions of the Nightmare's planar travel abilities (Supernatural astral projection & etherealness). Obviously the entrapping curse would keep Lashton and his steed from astrally projecting, but is there any good reason that I'm missing for not allowing them to travel ethereally? They would still be "in" the castle, and could not leave its grounds, and there are ghosts in the castle (Pegg & Loute) who are there ethereally. If one argued that Lashton and the Nightmare couldn't go ethereal, would you also rule that Pegg & Loute must remain manifested, and could not stop manifesting onto the Material Plane?

This last question I think I figured out earlier tonight, but I'm going to pose it anyway, just in case I'm still not understanding things correctly...

How is Mithrodar chaining some of the creatures like Zev Ravenka (the demi-lich)? Mithrodar is anchored to one spot (presumably the middle of area 18), and automatically returns there after each of his turns. He also only has a fly speed of 60 feet. There is more than 60 feet between area 18 and the chapel (area 39). He would not have ever been able to move the distance from where he is anchored, to see the demi-lich in the chapel, and still have an action left to activate his Chain Spirit supernatural ability.

Okay, and the answer that I think I worked out... Mithrodar's Chain Spirit supernatural ability doesn't require line-of-sight, and he can use it on any evil corporeal creature he can sense with his Spiritsense ability. Meaning he can target any undead within 500 feet, regardless of any intervening walls, or any non-undead within 100 feet (but intervening walls block this sense, since it acts as Blindsight, which "must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object").

... But now that I'm typing out the above, I realize that this answer still doesn't work, because all the stone of the castle (1-foot-thick inner walls) would block Mithrodar's Spiritsense (as one foot of stone blocks it, as per detect undead). So, how did he possibly anchor Zev Ravenka?

I made it dark, and required the PCs to provide their own light sources.

This ends up being the right call. I thought to check the anniversary edition, and they addressed it there.

Ceiling height in the Vivified Labyrinth remains at 10 feet high, unless otherwise specified. The rooms themselves are unlit.

They also addressed ceiling height, which they hadn't done in the original. Presumably area E10 is more than 10 feet high, as the statue of Diomazul "rises ten feet above the surface of the water." That means that room is likely at least 15 feet high to the ceiling.

No other rooms have any height descriptors at all.

What are the light conditions within the Vivified Labyrinth? They are never clearly stated.

My PC's had a mildly tough fight with the Garden Guardians, so didn't get to the Vivified Labyrinth until near the end of the evening. Several of the PC's were cautious and hanging back, while the invisible Wizard and half-orc Barbarian investigated area E2. The Wizard pulled the lever, scissoring the half-orc for about 25 damage, and separating the two of them from the rest of the party.

When the Wizard pulled the lever in area E8, he and the Barbarian went insane, and brought Area E5 around to the rest of the party. One of them inspected the room with the well, and set off the Symbol of Fear; they all failed, and spent the next 14 rounds fleeing. Those players then left, and I did another half hour or so with the confused duo. But I completely forgot to deal with any lighting issues within the Labyrinth. I'm sure the wizard would have had a Light spell, but it slipped my mind at the time. It should be noted that "Vencarlo" is not noted as having a light source, nor can Vimanda cast light (obviously, Vimanda has Darkvision, but "Vencarlo" would need an external light source; failing to have one might mess up the rouse).

The confused duo met up with "Vencarlo" who told them "Glorio" sent them down here to die, but with only two of them, and both in confused states, they were in no position to further Vimanda's goals (it should be noted that one of the frightened & fleeing PC's has the Raktivarna dagger).

In his confused state, the wizard ended up casting Dimension Door to flee the Labyrinth, so now the half-orc barbarian is in the Labyrinth alone, confused, with Vimanda opting to provide him minor advice ("there is a magical healing well deeper in the labyrinth") and pulling a lever to avoid him "because he is too dangerous, right now." (Thanks to the Raktivarna, she knows the frightened party members have overcome that and are returning.)

Thoughts on if the Vivified Labyrinth should have its own light sources (everburning torches in each room)? On page 33 of the original module, it states "All rooms are lit at night by everburning torches," but this is seemingly about the above-ground palace (though there are torches noted in the grotto cavern, possibly also everburning).

Tomorrow night my PC's will descend below Arkona Palace, and should make it to the Vivified Labyrinth. I didn't like that Glorio is listed as telling the party the labyrinth is a set of gears*... What's the fun in that? So my Glorio did not tell them that, and they are going in "blind" relative to that feature.

*[Glorio will] even tell the PCs that the labyrinth can be adjusted by pulling key levers to rotate the four sections...

Since they are going in blind, I made each contiguous cluster of rooms on its own piece of cardboard, so I can lay out only the sections my PC's are in at the moment. If my party separates, I can lay the separate room clusters out, and mess with their minds a little bit by not laying them in their "appropriate" ordinal direction orientations, to add to the confusing labyrinthine nature of the place.

I bought tiny magnets that I could insert into the corrugations of the cardboard floors, and then attached magnets to actual levers I cut from a small dowel rod, and painted gray. I did a similar thing for the floating teleportation orbs, attaching a small bit of hard clear plastic tubing (I think it was from a small mylar balloon we got with a gift basket for my son's birth last year) with a magnet super-glued into the bottom end, and a painted pearl bead of the appropriate color super-glued to the top.

When I was drawing out room E14, I specifically made it one row too deep, then cut that extra row off after I had added the boarder. This gave me one row of squares that weren't square, but rather only ~3/4" wide. I drew a boarder around the one from the secret lever room location, and cut the rest off. Since this piece had been cut directly from the too-large E14 section, the corrugations matched up perfectly. This allowed me to glue toothpicks into the secret room single square, that mate up perfectly to the E14 room, to hold it secure once it is discovered, but not belying the secret room's presence before the PC's find it.

I look forward to reporting how this series of encounters goes. Just my luck, they'll probably get sidetracked by the Arkona Temple, and we won't actually get to the Vivified Labyrinth tomorrow...

I treated them as encamped nearby the city. Beyond Thief Camp, off the map. A few of them probably had an apartment or two somewhere in the city, to "keep an eye on the Korvosans," or something to that effect (but that never came up in my campaign, so as far as my PC's know, the tribe was encamped outside the city). They would also come into the city in small groups for various reasons (taverns, shopping errands, etc.)

...the quick-to-anger Shoanti who dwell in and near Korvosa is a constant battle for the ancient shaman.

"...my son and his kin are not so forgiving as I. They wish to return to the Skoan-Quah in the Cinderlands, to join with the Sklar-Quah and rally to war against Korvosa."

"My son and his kin...return to the Skoan-Quah in the Cinderlands..."

Various other Shoanti that are not of the Skoan-Quah tribe live scattered throughout Korvosa, working as Dock hands, tavern bouncers, etc. (there is an example one listed at the Three Rings Tavern). Admittedly I've only skimmed the world-flavor articles in the back halves of the original modules, but the one in A History of Ashes gives more in-depth info on the Shoanti, and lists more than the three Tribes that are mentioned briefly in EoA and the adventure part of AHoA (Skoan-Quah, Sklar-Quah, Lyrune-Quah).

For example, the Shriikirri-Quah (the Hawk Clan) are listed as "the most likely of the seven quahs to interact with other peoples. For many generations, the Clan of the Hawk has been the face of the Shoanti to the people of southwestern Varisia. Chelish inhabitants of Magnimar’s holdings and Ravenmoor regularly trade with emissaries from the Clan of the Hawk..." Their territory also spills off the Storval Plateau, southward all the way to the Churlwood (AHoA p. 70). I assume that the Shriikirri-Quah are the most largely-represented non-organized Shoanti in Korvosa, with smaller representations of the other clans (though, by my reckoning, the Skoan-Qua would have been the most represented, in a sense, at the start of Edge of Anarchy, due to the nearby encampment).

The stat block of the Beatific One has this ability:

Monk Qualities: A beatific one emulates many of the strengths of the monk character class. On top of its own racial abilities, the beatific one receives the AC bonus, unarmed damage, bonus feats, speed bonus, and weapon proficiencies of a monk with a level equal to its Hit Dice, along with the diamond body, flurry of blows, improved evasion, and still mind abilities. All of these benefits are included in the statistics above.

AC Bonus (Ex): When unarmored and unencumbered, the monk adds her Wisdom bonus (if any) to her AC. In addition, a monk gains a +1 bonus to AC at 5th level. This bonus increases by 1 for every five monk levels thereafter (+2 at 10th, +3 at 15th, and +4 at 20th level).

Shouldn't the Beatific One's AC be 32, not 25?

The attack bonus on her Kukri attack was left off. I'm assuming it should be +17, just like the Spear? It appears she takes no penalties for fighting with multiple weapons? Should Multiweapon Fighting penalties be applied?

Also, her Flurry of Blows attack line is completely wrong. As far as I can tell they forgot to add in her Strength bonus. It should be:
Flurry of Blows +17/+17/+17/+12/+7 (1d10+6)

The writer also forgot to add in the +16 bonus to Jump that is provided by her 70 foot move speed.

Matthew Starling wrote:

Shouldn't the DR for Rakshasas be Good and Piercing and Wood?...

Wood is not an "official" material as far as damage reduction goes. We introduced it in the nosferatu in Pathfinder 8, but that's the only time it's shown up, as far as I know. ...

In any event... rakshasas and the blessed crossbow bolts thing hasn't really been a part of the game since 2nd edition. ...

I know it's many years after the fact, but I thought I'd point out that both of these statements are actually incorrect.

The 3.0 WotC module The Standing Stone has some Tiny extraplanar lemur/squirrel creatures called Hobyahs that have DR 10/Wood.

Rakshasas suffered instant death from blessed crossbow bolts all the way through 3.0; it wasn't until 3.5 that they changed its Damage Reduction when trying to unify the DR rules. In 3.0 they had DR 20/+3, and this:

Vulnerable to Blessed Crossbow Bolts (Ex): Any hit scored with a blessed crossbow bolt instantly slays a rakshasa.

Note that in 3.0, Rakshasas were CR 9, and a 9th level Good-aligned cleric casting Greater Magic Weapon produced both a +3 weapon (or 50 pieces of +3 ammunition) and caused that weapon (or ammo) to be considered blessed.

So I've got a question for everyone, though I suppose James would be the most likely to know, if he sticks his head back in this thread... I was going to comment that the location of the "Conquerer's Bay" label was wrong... But now I'm finding conflicting info, and I wonder what is "right."

The large portrait-oriented map that comes in some of the Chronicles (in the Gazetteer, for example) labels Conquerer's Bay as Yossarian has done on his fabulous map. That is, the body of water west of Veldraine.

But in Guide to Korvosa on page 9 it clearly states "Korvosa sits at the end of Conquerer's Bay, where the Jeggare River spills into the sea." (The Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide says almost exactly the same thing.) This always led me to believe that Conquerer's Bay was the smaller body of water between Korvosa and Veldraine. It is a bay, after all.

So... What exactly is Conquerer's Bay? Where are its eastern and western ends?

@KSB Snow Owl

Curse of the Crimson Throne, Page 165 wrote:

This bloodstone’s faint divination aura, like all of the third eye bloodstones, is hidden by a magic aura (CL 10th).

That said, I don't believe the magic aura conceals an active sensor (such as when Bahor is actively looking through one) from detect scrying and therefore, while in use, the sensor would be picked up as per the normal rules for the spell.

Thank you very much for that! The quote gave me some key words to use to search the PDF, and the exact same description is in the original adventure (which is what I'm running), but LIFE has kept me from performing a second read-through of the adventure just before beginning it.

On first blush, I agree that Detect Scrying would still pick up the active sensor, but... On reading Magic Aura, I'm not so sure that it wouldn't prevent the PC's Detect Scrying spell from ever "pinging" on the sensor.

You alter an item’s aura so that it registers to detect spells (and spells with similar capabilities) as though it were nonmagical, or a magic item of a kind you specify, or the subject of a spell you specify.

If the object bearing magic aura has identify cast on it or is similarly examined, the examiner recognizes that the aura is false and detects the object’s actual qualities if he succeeds on a Will save. Otherwise, he believes the aura and no amount of testing reveals what the true magic is.

I think that's pretty ironclad; the only chance to ... Well, now I'm talking myself back into agreeing with you.

Detect Scrying absolutely falls into the category of a "detect spell" or spell with similar capabilities, so it absolutely wouldn't detect as magic (assuming that was the option chosen by the caster)...

You immediately become aware of any attempt to observe you by means of a divination (scrying) spell or effect. The spell’s area radiates from you and moves as you move. You know the location of every magical sensor within the spell’s area.

...

"You know the location of every magical sensor within the spell's area."

As of right now, I think the correct way to rule this (and the method I'm leaning toward at this point in time) is to say that the Detect Scrying does make the caster aware of an active attempt to observe through the bloodstones, however, he does NOT know the location of "every magical sensor" within the area, at least not with respect to the bloodstone, since as far as the Detect Scrying spell is concerned, the bloodstone isn't magical.

Yeah, I like that. It makes my PC's cautious spell selection useful, and feeds into his paranoia, but doesn't completely give away or negate the use of the bloodstones.

The PC will still get the opposed caster level check to look back and see who is scrying him. The party is still carrying around Verik Vancaskerkin's silver dagger... Hopefully Vimanda tells Bahor that one of the PC's has up Detect Scrying once she realizes they are coming to the Arkona estate... (though I don't know that she would do that...) Otherwise... Maybe Bahor is smart enough to never look through the bloodstones unless he first hides away from watchful eyes, and changes form into some other visage, on the off chance someone had Detect Scrying up? He wouldn't want someone to look back via that and see that Glorio is magically spying on people, I don't think.

As I said previously, I'm actually running the original modules in D&D 3.5, so I'll skip the updated anniversary edition's problematic addition of Mage's Private Sanctum to the Vivified Labyrinth. I certainly supplement my D&D 3.5 campaign with ideas from the anniversary edition, but in this case I'll stick with the original.

How would Detect Scrying interact with the bloodstones Bahor has placed around the Arkona palace? I have a PC that has become very paranoid after the Queen survived Marcus Endrin's assassination attempt, and has begun casting Detect Scrying every day.

Based upon the description of the Third Eye magic item, it doesn't appear that the bloodstones themselves are magical (for example, they are never italicized).

The owner of a third eye can use it to see through the donor creature’s remaining eye. The third eye can also be attuned to specially prepared bloodstones, allowing the user to observe things in that stone’s vicinity as if it were an eye as well.

... as if it were an eye as well.

Certainly the surviving creature's remaining eye doesn't detect as magical; if the bloodstone is treated "as if it were an eye" then it shouldn't detect as magical, either, correct?

Obviously, the party mage's Detect Scrying will detect the presence of the Third Eye in "Glorio's" palm, which may present issues, but so far as I can tell, the bloodstones themselves should not, yes?

But then again, they would be considered the magical sensors of the Third Eye...

You immediately become aware of any attempt to observe you by means of a divination (scrying) spell or effect. The spell’s area radiates from you and moves as you move. You know the location of every magical sensor within the spell’s area.

...

Should the cure that is devised via the research notes at the end of Seven Days to the Grave provide immunity, much like a vaccine? Or should it work to cure an infected individual, much like antibiotics?

Basically I'm asking if one dose should forever remove the threat of becoming infected with Blood Veil again.

Given the threat of running into pockets of Blood Veil in Escape from Old Korvosa, I'm guessing it should be the latter.

Thoughts?

Name of PC: Vayneglorious Rex (aka - Vayne)
Class/Level: Human Ranger 6/Scout1
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Misjudging a monster’s reach; deciding to risk an AoO rather than take a –2 penalty with a thrown flask of holy water, and “splitting” from the party.
Story: The previous session had ended on the perfect cliffhanger. They had slain Andaisin, and looted her body. After a minute or two, once they had moved their attention over to the slain Juju Zombies, one of them noticed thin streams of the seven corruptions had begun to pool around the dead priestess’ body, and then that body began to twitch…

The fight with “Daughter Andaisin” was a tough one. There were several buff spells still active on her corpse (spells don’t end just because the target or the caster died…) and I had a party of six PC’s, so my way of boosting the encounter to account for that was to make sure that every buff spell Andaisin had that was still running, was still running on her body when it was raised as a Daughter of Urgathoa. It should also be noted that my PC’s had made it all the way to the Hall of Pestilence the day before, and retreated when faced with the Leukodaemon that had been broken out of its containment tank, and disarmed the barbarian of the bow on his back, and also faced a second Leukodaemon that the real one had successfully summoned. Also, my players had opened the “Flask of True Healing” more than once… Everyone in the party except the Bard was secretly suffering a –2 penalty to all d20 rolls from the Flask of Curses. I would often forget to apply this penalty in my head the first time or two of a new session, but it was making everything a lot harder for the party.

The party was clustered around the entrance to the Inner Sanctum when Daughter Andaisin rose up, and they largely remained there, with the bard slowly retreating into the western hallway. After hitting Daughter Andaisin with a flask of holy water the first round of combat, Vayne resorted to his bow, rapid shotting to usually only hit her massive AC of 32 once per round (since the party had nearly gotten to her, and then retreated the day before, she was able to speak with the freed Leukodaemon, after dispelling the summoned one, and subduing the massively injured one that had been freed… and learned from it much of the party’s tactics. She changed a few of her prepped spells, and thus when Daughter Andaisin rose, she was already under the effects of Shield of Faith, Cat’s Grace, and her potion of Barkskin). Vayne began slowly maneuvering around the south side of the central pool (Daughter Andaisin was on the north side), and over several rounds got over “behind” the Daughter of Urgathoa, happy to finally not suffer any cover that would make the monster harder to hit. He pulled out a flask of holy water as he approached, and vacillated back and forth between throwing his flask from 10 feet away (within the first range increment for the flask) or from 15 feet away (in the second range increment, and thus suffering a –2 penalty). He was tired of penalties, so he opted for the first, understanding that his attack would go off, so long as he survived her AoO attack.

He immediately regretted his choice, and tried to argue I should let him change his action. No, you don’t get to change your mind after I just rolled a Nat 20 on my AoO. I confirmed it with another Nat 20, and confirmed that with another attack roll (one of our few house rules is an alteration of the “instant death rule,” where if you roll two Nat 20’s, and then confirm again, the critical’s multiplier increases by 1). So, the Bull’s Strength-buffed Daughter Andaisin (the monster’s stat block is short several spell slots; I filled it in with Bull’s Strength at 2nd level) critted with her Great Claw attack, dealing 3d8+36 thanks to the extra Nat 20 making it a x3 critical. She dealt 46 points of damage, dropping the Ranger deep into unconsciousness.

The fight raged on for another two rounds, during which other party members were healing and stabilizing other fallen party members, but Vayne was too far away to get to. Daughter Andaisin had struck Sal the Mystic Theurge, and blinded him with Blinding Sickness. The party Barbarians finally started hitting some (I was often forgetting to mentally apply their cursed –2 to their attack rolls… but then the newb Barbarian had forgotten to Rage, so it evened out in the end) and a Holy Storm was calling down holy rain upon the undead horror for the past several rounds. Daughter Andaisin found herself at 13 hit points, and had the option of casting an Inflict Light Wounds spell, or Deathknell to gain some temporary hit points, and kill a hero in the process. Being evil, she opted for the latter. She cast deathknell, struck the Ranger who was laying on the ground, bleeding, behind her, and Vayne failed his Will save. Daughter Andaisin sucked the last fragments of life out of his body, leaving only a corpse.

The party destroyed her before she got another turn.

Name of PC: Sal
Class/Level: Human Wizard (Focused Conjurer) 1/Archivist 3/Mystic Theurge 3
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Foolishly drinking unidentified things while injured
Story: The party destroyed the Daughter of Urgathoa, and solemnly gathered up their fallen comrade, Vayne, along with all the loot from the room. Then they began slowly working their way back to the cargo lift, looting everything along the way. Sal was blind, but he had survived the fight, despite being knocked unconscious by the blow that had infected him with blinding sickness. He made great use of his Touch of Healing reserve feat to get himself and everyone else in the party back up to full health before they left the Inner Sanctum.

They looted the bodies in the Hall of Pestilence, then those in the Blood Vats room, then they opened the door to Ramoska Arkminos’ laboratory, to see if the Nosferatu had stayed true to his word, and left the injured and diseased Ruan behind (the party had left the day before… giving Ramoska time to conduct his experiment; Ruan was infected with about half a dozen different diseases), honoring his deal with the party. The undead scientist had honored their agreement, and the Bard trickled a potion of Remove Disease down the young man’s throat, curing his afflictions. The levers on the table were illegible to the Bard, but he was knowledgable enough about the humans in this region to know that the words were written in Varisian. The only party member who could read Varisian was Sal… who was now blind.

Still, they proceeded intelligently, healing Ruan quite a bit before operating the levers, and they chose correctly, loosening one of them on the first try, and then did the same with all the other levers, getting the young musician out without inflicting any injury.

The party proceeded all the way back to the Doctor’s Indoctrination, otherwise known as the physicians’ coat closet, and busted into the locked cabinet. They found several onyx gems, and four potion flasks. The Bard sipped the first one and tried to identify it with a DC 25 Spellcraft check, but failed. Sal gave it a try, also failing. Realizing Sal was the most likely to succeed, the Bard asked him to proceed with testing the remaining three flasks; Sal agreed. The very next one was the cursed Potion of Poison. I called for a Fort save, and he made it. The party gathered up all the rest of the doctor’s outfits, and got into the cargo lift to head back aboveground. I called for a second Fortitude save from Sal, and he failed. I rolled to see how much of the 1d10 Constitution damage he took… 10 points. A ten point drop in Con means a character loses 5 hit points per hit die (caveat that you must always receive at least one hit point for each level, no matter your Con penalty… but that’s full-health; damage could still kill you…) As a 7th level character, that means his hit points just dropped by 35. That would not have been a problem if he had been at his full health of 41 hit points. But after the battle with Daughter Andaisin, he had only healed himself back up to half (20 hp’s), which is the max his freely-usable Touch of Healing feat would allow. (Never mind the fact they had several wands of Cure Moderate Wounds...) But his injuries, combined with his sudden loss of Constitution dropped his hit points below –10, and he was struck dead instantly.

It was a sad day for the party. They nearly all made it through alive. But "nearly" only counts in horse shoes and holy water.

Campaign Total: 11 PC deaths.
Agnar, Davoth, Maze, Killgore, Sirus, Eric, Jair, Grim, Uté, Vayne, and Sal, with the honorable mention of WH the Elemental Companion.
There is one original character still alive from the start of the campaign (the Rogue/Bard).

For further explanation on the Arkonas and their goals (more for _Escape from Old Korvosa_, but it may help inform you for your current situation) see this post, and the three posts that follow it:

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2huw9?Escape-from-Old-Korvosa#30

Hmmmm... I'm still debating how I'm going to handle the two possible public ceremonies. After mulling over the possibility of combining them, I had landed on doing them separately, with Marcus Endrin awarding the PC's their royal writs...

However, last session did not go as I had expected, and it was largely a series of setbacks for the party, and then recuperating, selling loot, and buying new gear to head back in to finish things off. So I have time to think over the ceremony aspect some more.

At the end of the previous session, the party had been beating up on the freed Leukodaemon, and damaging it pretty hard with Holy Storm, before it snagged a longbow from a PC, then retreated a short bit down the hall toward the inner sanctum, and (unbeknownst to my PC's) successfully summoned another Leukodaemon.

In this last session the injured Leukodaemon took up position behind the summoned one at full health, and they eventually started to wreck the party, hitting often, inflicting decent and consistent damage, and eventually starting to infect PC's with nasty diseases (I was forgetting the aura that penalizes saves against disease...)

The party successfully retreated, nearly losing a PC in their withdrawal from the pursuing still-healthy summoned fiend.

The next day the PC's returned, encountering three additional Queen's Physicians in the Temple (they had been out, "treating the sick" while the PC's assaulted the location previously), that were placed partly so Andaisin could use her same tactics of being alerted by her Status spell when one of her allies is injured/slain. The party ended up checking out that side lab on their way back down, encountering Ramoska Arkminos... and it is merely through benevolent DM fiat that they are not all dead... (they went in swinging, even though Arkminos' first act was to talk, and tell them to go away; he ended up Dominating a Barbarian and a Mystic Theurge, and the PC Cleric was bleeding to death before the party begged to talk things out...)

Side comment on the Nosferatu template... if the PC's attack and "slay" Arkminos to 0 hit points, he turns into a swarm (I prefer a bat swarm). A swarm that can no longer take damage, and cannot be destroyed via weapons (and unlikely via D&D Turning). He has an hour to harass the PC's, inflicting 1d6 damage to at least one PC every round, and causing bleeding damage. The PC's will have to flee (into daylight) or will be dead long before Arkminos needs to retreat to his coffin. Nosferatu are nasty.

Anyway, that's where we ended the session, which gives me time to have figured out what had happened the "day before" after the PC's left. The injured Leukodaemon and its summoned companion would have started to track down anyone to kill, as it implies in the module. So they went to go kill Andaisin (just about the only person left by that point). Andaisin was easily able to Dispel the summoned Leukodaemon, and then easily beat the 8 hp Leukodaemon into unconscious submission with nonlethal damage (remember, they wanted the Leukodaemons for sacrifice, to make more powerful strains of Blood Veil).

Here are my thoughts:

1. Andaisin would have gotten 2,000+ XP for "defeating" the CR 9 Leukodaemon by herself, so I'm going to level her up to 11th level (I had already leveled her up to 10th level, as per the Anniversary Edition, even though I'm running D&D 3.5), and reprepare spells at midnight.

2. Urgathoa has her eye on Andaisin and her efforts, and we already know there is going to be a divine intervention here as regards to Andaisin. I was flipping through Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary (which the AP makes use of already, ala Dread Skeleton Minotaurs, etc., in Scarwall) and saw the Divine Guardian template... I'm going to have Urgathoa herself bestow the Divine Guardian template on the one surviving Leukodaemon, instilling in it a desire to protect this Temple of Urgathoa. It also explains getting the "extra" Queen's Physicians back into the temple (since the PC's now have the magic button for the cargo lift), as the Divine Guardian can Dimension Door within the site it is guarding, which would include the warehouse up above.

3. Andaisin will turn the three dead Leukodaemons (in the containment tanks) into undead creatures, though I'm struggling to figure out what undead creature templates I should utilize for this. Zombie is okay... though the Leukodaemons would lose all their disease abilities. There's also the HD limit; even with a Desecrate, two such Zombies would basically max out what Andaisin could create with a single Animate Dead spell. Dread Zombie from Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary would keep several of those abilities, though there's no true method given in those "Dread" templates as to how those types of undead are created (just "magic going awry"... maybe another gift from Urgathoa...)

Andaisin also still has her Juju Zombies (another influence from the Anniversary Edition that I inserted into my campaign). Fluff-wise, I am treating them as Korvosan Guards that started getting too nosy at the Hospice. They were captured, and Andasin killed them with her Death Domain Death Touch ability (fitting the fluff means by which Juju Zombies come into being, ala Tome of Horrors).

Any criticisms or suggestions? The above additions will cause my six-PC party to reach 8th level prior to starting Escape from Old Korvosa, but I don't think that will prove to be an issue.

I started my D&D campaign on Gozran 8th, 4708 AR.

They are just about to finish Seven Days to the Grave, and are on "Day 62" of the campaign. That means that by the time they get to A History of Ashes, it will probably be mid summer already. Oh well. Didn't plan one way or the other for that (I hadn't yet read through AHoA when we started the campaign), I just always tend to start my campaigns in Spring.

My party of PC's is nearly through the climax. They dealt with the Hospital up above one session, then last session they got 85% of the way through the Temple of Urgathoa. All that they have left is the VERY injured Leukodaemon, a second Leukodaemon that the injured one successfully summoned, Ramoska Arkminos, and then the last "inner sanctum" with Andaisin (and all that comes with that).

My big question is how to deal with the Conclusion section of the module. The early part of Escape from Old Korvosa presumes that Queen Ileosa has not been seen publicly since Trinia's botched execution. It seems that generally, most groups aren't expected to make it to "Saviors of the City" status, and thus most would only get the reward from Cressida Kroft. But my PC's have gone over and above, convincing the Bank of Abadar to boil their coinage, thinking Ishani's herbal brew (that he was making in the Soldado home) actually would help, an altruistic PC (Vow of Poverty) bought the ingredients in bulk, and worked with any Adepts, Herbalists, and healers in the city that he could find, to have this concoction made up and used for the sick. They even convinced the Crown to allot 20k gp to help pay for Remove Disease spells from the Bank of Abadar for the people of Korvosa.

For all this extra work, I assigned a "saved citizens" value. Despite a few near party wipes (only one PC that started this module is still alive), they have successfully completed all the little citizen-saving quests (Hungry Dead, etc.), and will most likely be seeing to the "patients" and prisoners in the Hospital and the Temple being healed and saved.

So they are very definitely going to reach Saviors of the City status. Even before entering the Hospice and encountering Grey Maidens, they began thinking that Queen Ileosa is being everything, though they have not publicly said as such (which would trigger Marcus Endrin awarding them the "Saviors of the City" reward, rather than the Queen). But I'm still very hesitant to have a public address with the PC's present before Ileosa gets her Crown of Fangs.

How should I deal with this?

Have Ileosa award the PC's at a public ceremony, but just have Sabina and lots of other Gray Maidens present, as well as having Togomor waiting at the edge of the ceremony, in case the PC's get some crazy idea?

Have Marcus Endrin do the ceremony anyway?

Have Ileosa do the ceremony, and presume that she already has the completed Crown of Fangs, and is wearing it, but in a concealed manner (such as being wrapped in a headdress/veil of some sort). Something like THIS, but with the crown under the head garments?

Any insight on how to avoid the PC's doing something they shouldn't?

I'm tempted to just go with Marcus Endrin leading the ceremony, on behalf of and with the thanks of the Crown. It will avoid problems, align with the presumptions of EfOK, and provide a personal interaction with Endrin just before his demise off-screen a few "days" later (really later in the same session).

Thoughts?

NobodysHome wrote:

A few non-spoilery comments:

(1) The AE edition of Scarwall is quite the mess. They didn't add any rooms, but they more than doubled the number of encounters. So yes, the AE version is a grindy drag, no matter which way you slice it. I ran it once. I will never run it again. The original is much better, in my personal opinion as a GM. A haunted castle is creepy because of all the empty rooms and haunts. Not because there's a CR-appropriate undead encounter in every single room.
...

I'm glad you mentioned Point 1...

I'm also glad he mentioned it, and thank you, Misroi, for commenting as such, and thus bringing this thread up to the top.

I'm just about to start reading through Skeletons of Scarwall, but I have both versions of the AP, and from a quick perusal I had already noticed that they'd vastly increased the numbers of foes in the reprinted/updated AP. I'm running the original modules (we play D&D, not PF), but was planning to draw more heavily from the updated AP for Scarwall, since it seemed they thought it needed updating for some reason...

I'm glad to hear that the original plays better. I'll probably cherry-pick an extra foe or two (I really liked the Grave Knight when I was thumbing through the Anniversary Edition), but otherwise stick with the original module.

Anyone have any insight as to how much more XP and leveling occurs with the updated Skeletons of Scarwall, than the original? In the original modules, the first 3 get the party up to 10th level, then AHoA theoretically only gains the party one level (which puts them at 11th... going into SoS, which is designed for a 12th-level party...), and SoS should get the party another 2 levels (level 12 to level 14). I imagine I'll easily be able to stretch A History of Ashes to give my large party 2 levels' worth of XP (I plan to add in the Gray Maiden indoctrination dungeon, etc, from the updated version).

Glancing at the Scarwall chapter beginning in the updated AP, I think I've found the answer to my own question. I see that it's supposed to be for levels 13 - 15. So they made the castle harder so as to provide the greater amount of XP needed for the 13 to 15 level-up, rather than the 12 to 14 level-up.

Interesting.

I ran the Carowyn Manor encounter about a month ago, and I took inspiration from this thread about adding the weaponized Vorel's Phage smoke bombs back into the scenario (they are mentioned in the original adventure, but no stats or tactics are provided concerning them).

I didn't want to make them too devastatingly strong, so I gave it a 1 minute incubation period, and then damage every hour after the initial damage. I started with the generic smoke bombs in the 3.5 DMG (which don't have a listed duration for the smoke... I treated it as 10 rounds absent any strong winds), and just added Vorel's Phage to it.

Smoke Bombs (DMG p. 145): Cost: 70 gp, Damage (Smoke), Blast Radius (20-foot cloud of smoke),
Range Increment: (10 ft.), Weight: (1 lb.), Damage Type: (–/none)
Smoke Bomb: This cylindrical bomb must be lit before it is thrown. Lighting it is a move action. Two rounds after it is lit, this nondamaging explosive emits a cloud of smoke (as a fog cloud spell) in a 20-foot radius. A moderate wind (11+ mph) disperses the smoke in 4 rounds; a strong wind (21+ mph) disperses the fog in 1 round. [Treat the duration as a CL 1st Fog Cloud spell, meaning the smoke persists for 10 rounds, normally.]
Jolistina’s smoke bombs also expose those in the smoke’s radius to a weaponized, fast-acting version of Vorel’s Phage (Pathfinder #2: The Skinsaw Murders, p. 27). To most victims, the phage causes a painful and hideous outbreak of facial tumors and a sickening deterioration of the skin across the entire body. [A different effect occurs only to those “of Vorel’s blood.”]
Weaponized Vorel’s Phage:
Infection — contact or ingestion; Fortitude DC 20; Incubation 1 minute; Damage 1d4 Charisma and 1d4 Constitution. Further damage inflicted every hour, rather than every day. Cured by two consecutive successful saves.

It worked out rather well, I got the entire party exposed with Jolistina's 2nd smoke bomb (the first was thrown at the party after they opened the doors to the manor; one of them kicked it away before it started emitting smoke), because Jolistina was invisible, lit the bomb, then held on to it until right before it started emitting smoke (I treated her as having been exposed as well), then chucked it at the party.

Two of five PC's failed their saves. Then combat ensued for several more rounds. As the party was securing the unconscious elf, and moving around the building while avoiding the infected smoke that was filling most of the stairway, the Bard and the Wizard/Archivist both broke out in facial tumors. Luckily the party still had the wand they'd looted from Vendra, so they immediately cured themselves, and recurrent instances of damage didn't ever happen.

With alchemists being a thing in the Pathfinder universe, concocting a germ-based disease is not such a far stretch. It also gives you two advantages: the coins do not detect as magic and anyone can disinfect them by boiling them. It can even be a great way for your PCs to contribute to fighting the plague, if they make it known that boiling the coins saves lives. It's an alternative way for your heroes to shine, so go with it!

I ended up settling on "contagion" theory, which was the understanding at the time of the Black Death. They know touching infected stuff is bad. Knowing that it's tiny microscopic germs... well, they know boiling works. That's about as far as germ theory has gotten in my campaign.

I have mentally added an additional "Korvosans saved" number to the number of people the party's actions will end up saving. I was thinking about 500 people, due to the curtailing of infected coins being dispersed by the Bank.

They have done fairly well throughout the module, aside from their multiple failures at encountering the vampire spawn (first time 4 of 5 PC's died; second time 2 of 5 PC's died, and 2 were Dominated). A few of them got bitten by some wererats (I threw one additional wererat at them, in the sewer tunnels long before the lair; it was a "teaching through bad guys' tactics" instructional moment... One was bitten there and failed his save vs. Lycanthropy [he even blew his last two Harrow points to reroll it twice; he rolled three 7's...], but a few others were bitten in that encounter, and the already infected one was bitten again by Girrigz in the wererat lair [and again failed his save; he also failed every second-chance save allowed via consuming Wolfsbane]). I guess the Fates want him to be a wererat...

Anyway, they just swam down to the Direption at the end of last session. We'll start next week with combat against Yvicca. Then they'll find my recreation of your map. I'm not going to put a glaring red X on it, but the Bard has a fairly good modifier for Knowledge (Nobility & Royalty), so a simple DC 20 check could quickly tell them what Lost End is, and a separate DC 15 check will allow him to recall House Porphyria's history with the Crown. Both can also be researched at a local library, if need be.

I am happy to report that the third time was the charm. Two new characters (an Undead Turning-focused full cleric, and a replacement Wiz/Archivist), plus I was exceedingly nice, and the vampires "forgot" to concentrate on the Domination effects for two days, and the two Dominated PC's broke free after 48 hours of mental enslavement.

The party actually went in with a plan, and though the plan didn't exactly work out the way they were hoping, they were able to pull things off with the worst casualty being the new cleric gaining two negative levels (there will be plenty of time to get that handled magically in-game next session). This is the first time they have had a full cleric since Agnar was eaten by Gobblegut at level 1. A Sun Domain greater turning smoked three of the vampire spawn, and the other two had already been turned the round before.

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting to be back here this quickly…

Name of PC: Grim
Class/Level: Human Paladin 4
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Lack of planning; failure to retreat
Story: Last week’s surviving Bard recruited a new set of adventurers to go slay Vampire Spawn, and collect lots of loot from the slain party members. For whatever reason, they decided to head back the very same night (about two hours later; after sundown). The surviving Rogue 2/Bard 2 had only used two uses of Bardic Music in the previous fight (he has 6 per day), one spell, and he had not been injured in the combat.

So the party is told what the Bard knows of the Vampire Spawn’s tactics, and makes some of their own Knowledge (Religion) checks before going in, learning that Vampire Spawn have fast healing. In discussion with Grim’s player over the week, I told him that it might be a good idea to inform his less-tactically-minded party mates about the importance of focusing fire. Him making the Knowledge check to learn of their fast healing should have really enforced the importance of bringing that topic up while they were making their assault plan. He did not do so.

Their plan consisted of a Hide from Undead spell for three of the five party members (note that it ends for everyone once any of them attack), and splitting the party, with three going in the front, and two going in the side, through the hole in the wall. It was nighttime by now, and no one noticed the vampire spawn look-out on the roof across the street. It watched a cat familiar, and two of the new PC’s wandering down the alleyway, and sort of inspecting the bodies. Bodies that had once again been piled to conceal the hole in the wall. Upon seeing this, those two PC’s decided to backtrack to the front of Giotorri’s Toys, and enter through the broken display window, like the rest of the party.

I gave those two PC’s, and the cat familiar, an opportunity to notice the vampire spawn on the roof as he moved to continue watching them as they went around the front. One of them heard a boot scuff, and then the spawn shrieked out a warning to the awake vampire spawn in the building. Despite the alarm, the party cast another set of buff spells and pressed on, with Grim the Paladin opening the door to the workshop, and stepping through, followed by a spiked chain-wielding barbarian.

In the back room of the toy store they saw a wight sitting on the stool by the work bench. Sirus’ risen corpse, still wearing the banded mail armor that the vampire spawn had no use for. (Note that while this made the wight’s AC a hefty 21, it also imposed a massive –7 penalty to his attacks, since wights are not proficient with armor…)

This first round is just combat between the wight and the two PC warriors. The vampire spawn were taking a round to get into position below the trap door, and the rest of the party stayed back in the front room of the toy shop. The wight lost half its hit points to a chain attack from the barbarian, but then struck back with a Nat 20, though the crit did not confirm… one negative level inflicted upon the barbarian.

Grim struck a blow to the wight; it was barely above 1/4 its full hit points. Then the vampire spawn went. They leapt out of the crawlspace in exactly the same fashion as last time, with three of the four vampire spawn using their Domination abilities. The barbarian failed his save. Grim the paladin failed one of the two saves he had to make, but thankfully had cast a Protection from Evil spell shortly before entering the back room.

Between a Dominated Barbarian party member, a handful of vampire spawn, and a well-armored wight that he never could quite finish off, Grim met a very grisly end a few rounds later. Multiple times he rolled a 19 to hit versus the Wight’s armored AC of 21. The wight never did hit him, I don’t think. But Grim ended up flanked by three vampire spawn, plus his chain-wielding Dominated party mate. After a few rounds slowly creeping down toward the inevitable, a Vampire Spawn struck a blow that knocked the Paladin unconscious. The vampire told the Dominated Barbarian to go stand in the corner, then the vampires dog piled the downed Paladin. It was a race to see how much blood they could drain before he died, or the wight level drained him to death. In the end, he died from a combination of Con drain stacking the hurt upon his hit point loss.

Name of PC: Uté
Class/Level: Human Shoanti Wizard 1/Archivist 3
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Lack of planning; failure to retreat soon enough
Story: Same encounter as Grim’s death, above. While the Paladin and the Barbarian pressed into the room containing the wight, Uté positioned himself to see through the open door leading from the toy store into the workshop. When the Vampire Spawn sprang up from the trap door, and took positions on the west side of the room, he decided to lock them down with a Web spell (he had access to this spell from the Precocious Apprentice feat). However, three of the four vampire spawn succeeded on their Reflex saves, and on their following turn, Uté learned, to his horror, how useless Web is against vampire spawn… as they turned to mist and just wafted their way out of the webbing, and into advantageous tactical positions. Sure, one took a hit from Grim’s AoO with a magical longsword… no matter.

However, before the vampires turned into mist, the vampire spawn that had been watching from across the street popped up in the broken display window; he had come down after seeing the whole party enter the toy store. He used his Domination ability on the Ranger, who had been hanging out in the back of the party, shooting over the Wizard/Archivist’s shoulder, at the Wight in the next room. One failed Will save later, and Uté’s attention was distracted by his own new party mate firing an arrow at the back of his head (and missing… Uté’s AC was buffed to the max).

One of the gaseous form vampires that had escaped the Web floated into the front room of the toy shop, and the next round solidified up on the wall, above Uté’s head. Uté avoided the creature’s AoO as he backed away and started summoning a hippogriff. He and the bard fought off the mental assaults of the vampires’ Domination abilities (thankfully they both also had Protection from Evil cast upon them). The summoned hippogriff arrived and full-attacked the wall-climbing vampire spawn; since it did not achieve any forward movement during its turn, it promptly fell down upon the Bard, inflicting 2 points of damage and trapping him under its bulk.

More Domination-fueled arrows were slung toward Uté, but his buffed AC, plus the cover provided by the shop counter and the hippogriff ensured that the scholarly spellcaster was all but unhittable… at least from that angle… As the Hippogriff moved to reposition itself, the wall-crawling vampire spawn scampered over to take position on the ceiling directly above Uté. She struck, dealing damage and a negative level.

Too late, Uté decided it was time to retreat. His attempt to flee drew an attack of opportunity from the vampire spawn on the ceiling. She hit, downing the Archivist to –1 hit points. As the Bard fled once again out the shop’s broken display window, the vampire descended upon the unconscious Shoanti scholar. She cared little for the hippogriff’s attacks, and before long, Uté was slain from a combination of Constitution drain and hit point loss.

Honorable Mention
Name of PC: Blayze
Class/Level: Human Shoanti Barbarian 2/Fighter 2
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Domination
Story: Same encounter as the the others. Blayze failed his first Will save against Domination and became a hindrance to his party forthwith. Once Grim was down, and the vampires began dog piling him in a bloody frenzy, he was ordered to stand in the corner.

I did not torture my players with playing out what will become of Blayze and the Ranger. The vampire spawn will likely keep them around as daytime guards, and slowly drain their blood over the next several days. It is possible whatever new set of adventurers the Bard can gather together can save them before their final demise.

Honorable Mention
Name of PC: Vayne
Class/Level: Human Ranger 4
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Domination
Story: Same encounter as the the others. Vayne failed his first Will save against Domination and became a hindrance to his party. We effectively ended the encounter, and the session, before he was given any new orders, or dealt with in any other way. His fate is likely to be similar to that of Blayze.

In truth, I always forget about the secondary save that they added to Domination in 3.5 (it did not exist in 3.0), so I did forget to give Blayze and Vayne opportunities to make a secondary save with a +2 bonus when they were ordered to attack their own party mates. Oh well, sh*t happens. I will have the vampire spawn “forget” to concentrate on the Domination effects over the next day, so they will get a chance to throw off the compulsion the next night. Maybe they will survive as characters, to return to the party once more.

I only noted two previous entries regarding the Hungry Dead vampire spawn encounter, and it seems each of those cases claimed the life of only one PC at a time. Well, hold on to your butts, because it’s about to get messy…

Name of PC: Killgore
Class/Level: Human “Urban Druid” 4 (using a bunch of ACF’s from Cityscape/web enhancement and Unearthed Arcana)
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Failing to be a good investigator
Story: Still running a party of five (5) PC’s through CotCT, and they had gotten a sealed letter from Field Marshal Kroft, asking them to investigate Racker’s Alley. The party twiddles their thumbs about it and stop off at the Sticky Mermaid to drum up some rumors and info, and do some good works with the sick along the way. They finally get to the shadowy alleyway as the sun is low in the sky (~10 - 15 minutes before sundown). They note the piled bodies, and visually “search” the area from 10 feet away, refusing to approach the bodies. Instead, Killgore decides to use his Fiery Burst [reserve] feat to pummel the body pile for 10 or 20 rounds, charring the bodies, and disrupting them enough to get the pile to collapse a little bit, revealing the hole in the wall.

Unfortunately for Killgore (and his companions, but we’ll get to them in a bit…) this gave the sleeping Vampire Spawn (effective Listen +1 vs a DC –4 check to hear “combat” through a wooden floor, and maybe 10 feet of distance) ample opportunity to hear the multitudinous eruptions, and the PC’s talking, and the “cop knock” they proceeded to use on the door in the barred balcony across the alley (after looking in the hole, seeing the doll heads, and NOPING the f*ck out). After investigating the apartment on the other side of that barred balcony across the street, and finding two people who had died of Blood Veil, the party finally returned to the hole in the wall. They never inspected the bodies, and never found fang holes in their necks…

I treated the hole as extremely difficult terrain (costing 4 squares of movement to pass through; it was narrow and low), as the vampire spawn would not have needed to make the hole very large (they could just Gaseous Form through it), but still large enough that a human could squeeze through it without needing an escape artist check. The party starts to file into the workshop. First Killgore’s elemental companion (ACF from Complete Mage), then Killgore, then the Monk with an Everburning Torch. I call for Spot checks, and Killgore notices the creature climbing up on the wall, near the ceiling, above and the to right of the hole through which they entered. The vampire spawn sees the “Urban Druid” looking at him, lets out an ear-splitting screech, and initiative is rolled. The vampire spawn go first…

The vampire spawn on the wall slams at the Monk within reach, hitting for 8 damage and 1 negative level (effectively dealing 13 damage to a character that has 22 hit points at full health. The four* vampire spawn waiting, awake, down in the crawlspace, open the door, and climb up, with the three who didn’t need to waste an action opening the trap door either attacking the earth elemental companion, or glaring unsuccessful Domination effects at the two humans in the room.

With movement into the room hampered by the small hole, and the monk in the way (he was standing in the spot where just about every outdoor PC’s movement would have to end to pass through the hole), several PC’s delayed actions, or started buffs outside (bardic music, etc). Killgore took advantage of a clustering of three Vampire Spawn to nail them all with Fiery Burst… for 5 (or 2) points of damage. The Monk, finding himself at effectively 9 hit points, identified the Vampire Spawn, yelled out to the others about them, then decided to tuck tail and run, attempting to flee back through the hole… and getting struck by an attack of opportunity from the wall-crawling vampire spawn. It was a crit. The monk collapsed into the hole, unconscious at –6 hit points. His unconscious form was largely blocking the hole (9/10th cover), and leaving the Urban Druid and his elemental companion feeling rather lonely, in a room full of five Vampire Spawn.

After a few rounds of lonely combat, fending off Domination and grapple attempts while his companions barely healed the Monk (only to stable unconsciousness), cumbrously applied silversheen to weapons, and fired cover-ignoring magical rays through the tiniest of gaps between the wall and the monk’s collapsed body, the Urban Druid panicked, and in a moment of self-preserving foolishness, backed himself into a corner and cast Obscuring Mist.

Sure, Vampire Spawn could no longer attempt to Dominate the Druid (or the unconscious Monk) from across the room. But the ray-firing & alchemy flask-throwing Sorcerer was now entirely neutered.

As the party slowly filed into the misty room, one of the vampires succeeded in grappling Killgore. The next round he pinned the old human, and started draining blood and Con each round (only 1 or 2 each time; it was uncanny how long he held up). Over the next 6 or so rounds, Killgore knew he had virtually no chance of fighting his way out of the grapple, so he spent most of his time activating Supernatural abilities he possessed, Fiery Bursting vampires a time or two (one time hitting himself and three vampire spawn all at once… for 2 damage), and expending spells to grant Fast Healing 1, and later Fast Healing 2, to his allies (another ACF, Spontaneous Rejuvenation, PHB2). Despite the feeble attempts by his earth elemental companion and the Bard to attack the grappling vampire spawn (the Bard with the silver dagger from Verik’s room in All the World’s Meat…), no one was making headway against a vampire spawn that was fast healing and gaining temporary hit points from sucking blood each round. Killgore heroically spent what he knew might be his last turn expending another spell to grant fast healing 1 that would linger after his death. Then Killgore was sucked dry by the vampire spawn. His Constitution drained to 0, Killgore expired.

*Since the encounter was written for 4 PC’s, and had 4 Vampire Spawn, I added a 5th Vampire Spawn, since I have 5 PC’s.

Name of PC: Sirus
Class/Level: Human Fighter 2/Cleric 2 of Iomedae
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Obscuring Mist, party members’ cowardice & failure to focus fire
Story: Same encounter as Killgore’s death, above. When initiative was rolled, Sirus was standing just outside the hole, and with his armor-slowed movement, he could only just get through the tight hole to the other side, but only if the Monk wasn’t standing in his way. When the Monk called out that there were Vampire Spawn, the Bard made a Bardic Knowledge check, succeeding sufficiently to know that silver overcame the creatures’ damage reduction. Thus, after activating Bardic Music, the Bard pulled out a vial of Silversheen and proffered it to Sirus. On his turn, the warrior priest Quick Drew his longsword, dropped it to the ground as a free action, then used his non-tower-shield-wielding hand to snatch the silversheen from the Bard’s hand, and pour it over his prone blade.

By his next turn, the Bard had stabilized the Monk, but no one had pulled him out of Sirus’ way. No matter, the warrior priest cast Protection from Evil and picked up his newly-silvered sword. Before his next turn arrived, the Monk was yanked out of the hole in the wall, dragged to the back of the room by one of the Vampire Spawn, and then fog shrouded the room, spilling out the hole and into the alleyway. He strode through the breech, and saw a vampire lurking in the mist; he swung his sword, missing with a Nat 1. He took one blow (and negative level) from the vampire spawn still lurking on the wall, then swung his sword, missing again. Troubled by his failure to hit, and his negative level, he 5-foot stepped away, into the mist, hiding himself from the two vampires who had been threatening him.

The next round a vampire spawn in the southeast corner, the one corner not shrouded in magical mist, could see Sirus standing in the edge of the spell’s effect. It approached to attack, and so this next round, unhindered by mist concealing his foe, Sirus was able to strike true, dealing 11 damage to the fully healthy vampire spawn. Soon Sirus found himself facing two vampire spawn, and his dice were not helping. Partly due to his use of a tower shield, though helping resist slam attacks several times through the night, even proficient use of it inflicts a –2 penalty to attack rolls when you have it equipped. A few times the mist ended up foiling his attack, and at least twice he missed hitting a vampire spawn by one. He suffered one negative level, then was struck for a crit, dealing two more negative levels. The fast healing rejuvenation ability of the druid eventually brought the unconscious Monk back to consciousness; his eventual help in flanking (which provided Sirus with a +4 bonus, thanks to Vexing Flanker) helped offset the penalties, and between the two of them, some solid hits with the silversheened longsword, and a lucky break of the mist foiling one vampire’s attack against the warrior priest, one of those two vampire spawn was “slain” and turned into mist, which quickly disappeared into the magical fog shrouding most of the room.

In the end, facing one vampire spawn between himself and the Monk, Sirus was hit with another Nat 20. It didn’t confirm, but the concealing mist was no help this time. He crumpled to the ground, his body drained of life, the sound of his clanging armor driving dread and hopelessness into his remaining companions, who could not see his final demise.

Name of PC: Eric
Class/Level: Human Monk 4
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Cowardice & failure to focus fire
Story: Same encounter as Killgore’s and Sirus’ deaths, above. When initiative was rolled, Eric was the first one struck by the wall-crawling vampire spawn. He had rolled fairly poorly on his hit point rolls, and did not have much of a Constitution bonus (he had 22 hit points, compared to Killgore’s 37 hit points). That initial hit for 8 damage, plus –5 hit points from the negative level, really freaked him out. His first action in combat was to flee back through the hole in the wall, provoking an attack of opportunity from the wall-crawling vampire spawn. It was a crit, which dealt two more negative levels in addition to the crit damage. Looking back at the numbers, I’m positive the player (relatively new) messed up tracking his hit points, and that crit should have killed him by bringing him to –10 hit points (22 - 8 - 15 [3 neg levels] = –1 hit points… Then minimum crit damage for a vampire spawn is 10… I’m assuming the crit damage actually took him down to –6, and he didn’t apply the –10 hit points from the negative levels.

Regardless, he collapsed, at “–6” hit points, and largely blocking up the hole in the wall, creating 9/10 cover (one house rule the group agreed on was using 3.0 cover and concealment rules, as well as striking cover being standard).

A round and a half later, having been healed to “–3” hit points, and stable, one of the vampire spawn grabbed Eric, and dragged him into the workshop. This opened up the hole for other party members to come into the room, but a fraction of a round later, Killgore the urban Druid filled the room with Obscuring Mist, which really neutered the ranged characters throughout the fight.

Three rounds later, Killgore first activated his Spontaneous Rejuvenation ability, so Eric was Fast healed from –3 to –2, then the next round to –1. The round after that, Killgore activated Spontaneous Rejuvenation by expending a 2nd level spell, and so this round Eric fast healed from –1 to 1 hit point, and consciousness. He awoke to find himself on the floor near the east side of the room, situationally positioned such that he was flanking one of a pair of vampire spawn with Sirus, the Fighter/Cleric. Does he stand and try to help attack the vampire spawn? Nope, he continues to lay there, and sneaks drinking a Cure Light Wounds potion. But, Sirus sees he is awake, and points it out to the vampire spawn on his next turn (“look over there!”) and does indeed gain flanking for his own attack, thanks to the conscious Monk.

Eric stood (I even “forgot” to take the pair of AoO’s that action would have provoked, since the vampires were now aware that he was awake…) and attacked one vampire. I can’t recall at this point when he hit or didn’t hit over the next several rounds. It didn’t much matter; between their DR 5/Silver and Fast Healing 2, any hits Eric the Monk did achieve were effectively negated, at least on average, and the concealment miss chance from the Obscuring Mist didn’t help matters, either. The biggest effect Eric had was providing flanking to Sirus, who due to the Vexing Flanker feat, got a +4 bonus to attacks when flanking. That aid allowed Sirus to “mist” one vampire spawn, though shortly thereafter the Fighter/Cleric was slain by gaining his 4th negative level. Then the remaining vampire spawn that had still been between them turned its attentions on Eric. The monk spent a round or two full attacking with Flurry of Blows while repositioning with 5-foot steps to get into a position from where he could withdraw. His flurries generally failed to hit, and him hitting once every two rounds was, as mentioned before, effectively meaningless. He even exclaimed in frustration about it being BS that they were fighting monsters with 50+ hit points… to which the more experienced players responded that they don’t… but they kept quiet on the metagame knowledge Eric wouldn’t have about the fast healing.

The one chance Eric had to be really useful was the round before he withdrew. He could have 5-foot stepped such that he fell down through the trap door into the crawlspace, where the vampire spawns’ coffins are located. Maybe then someone could have actually destroyed one of them… But alas, the Monk instead decided to withdraw into a boxed-in position in the northeast part of the workshop. The next round the vampire followed him through the mist (I rolled a d3 to see which square it blindly headed for… by chance it followed directly after the Monk), and slammed him right then, or possibly the round after that, inflicting a 4th negative level on Eric the Monk, killing him.

Name of PC: Jair
Class/Level: Human Sorcerer 4
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Obscuring Mist
Story: Same encounter as the three deaths above. When initiative was rolled, Jair was still out in the alleyway. He actually did pretty well, given the situation presented to him. He initially delayed, hoping for Eric the Monk to move further into the room, and make the square just inside the hole open for others to start filing into the room. Instead, Eric tried to flee, and in doing so was criticaled, and dropped, unconscious, into the hole, largely blocking it. Jair made the best of the situation and whipped out Targeting Ray, which ignores anything but total cover. Over two rounds, he snaked two of those rays into the workshop, and dealt 12 & 18 points of electricity damage (2 & 8 points, after the resistance the Sorcerer didn’t know about) to one of the vampire spawn.

After the Obscuring Mist was cast by Killgore, Jair really found himself neutered. The first round of the mist, he delayed, not really knowing what he could do, but came back into initiative later in the round, after Sirus moved southeast, opening up the space just inside the hole. Jair stepped through, and found the wall-crawling vampire spawn threatening him… and learned the real extent of how much the Obscuring Mist screwed him over. He could attack with a melee touch spell, but would have to cast defensively to do so, or he could attack with a ranged spell, provoking attacks of opportunity for either the casting and/or the ranged attack while threatened (since he can only see targets within 5 feet, he couldn’t attack very effectively from outside their threatened areas), or he could pull out an alchemy flask of some sort, but those largely suffered the same issues as the ranged spells.

After dithering on how to proceed for a bit, he ended up attempting to defensively cast Shocking Grasp. He failed the Concentration check by 3; the vampire would have resisted much of the damage anyway… The round after that, he activated one of his brand new items: a necklace of vermin, which he used to summon a Giant Wasp. With a damage value of 1d3+6, the wasp did actually do damage to the vampire each time it hit, but not enough that it made much of a difference once the vampire spawn’s fast healing was factored in. Also, he directed the vermin to attack the wall-crawling vampire… he was the one that had inflicted 3 negative levels on the Monk, so he had a nice, large buffer of 15 temporary hit points, making him the single “beefiest” foe in the room.

The next two rounds, Jair the alchemy-focused Sorcerer pulled out flasks of holy water. It should be noted that I’d implied several times to the party of PC’s living in an imp-infested city that they really should all be carrying holy water… At least one of them followed that advice. I was even exceedingly nice, and allowed Jair to uncork the flasks, and attack with them as melee touch attacks, so he could avoid the AoO’s that throwing them would provoke. He hit once for a small bit of damage. After those two rounds, the wall-crawling vampire spawn succeeded in grappling Jair (this was before Killgore had succumbed, so things were looking dire, but not hopeless yet). Jair was taking Con drain much faster than Killgore was (rolls of 3 on average), though right at the end, after two of the party members were already dead, Jair did miraculously succeed in breaking the vampire’s pin, thus holding off his Con drain death for one more round. Two rounds after Eric’s death, Jair was drained and killed.

Honorable Mention
Name of NPC: WH (short for What’s His nuts)
Class/Level: 4 HD Medium Earth Elemental
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Following his foolish master
Story: Same encounter as the other deaths. WH was the earth elemental companion of Killgore the Urban Druid (ACF from Complete Mage). In short summary, he spent the whole fight battling beside his master, and did actually “mist” one of the vampire spawn. In many of the party’s previous encounters, WH was the biggest bad ass bruiser in the group. It’s Earth Mastery ability, combined with fighting in the Dead Warrens, or in cobblestoned streets, and the Bard’s bardic music ability, meant he was usually attacking at +10 melee for 1d8+9 damage.

Well, in this fight they were in a wood-floored workshop, so his ability to escape by earth gliding straight down into the floor was gone, and he was missing out on Earth Mastery. Combined with a negative level inflicted early in the fight, the vampire spawns’ damage reduction, and lower-than-normal rolls on damage, and he wasn’t as much of a bad ass as he usually was.

After “misting” the first vampire spawn, he turned his attention to the vampire spawn sucking the blood of his druid master. In the end, the resisted damage of his and the bard’s attacks failed to overly injure the grappling undead. Once Killgore was dead, WH went berserk, attacking as best he could. Once he received his 3rd negative level, he tried to flee though the storefront, but aimed for the front door, and was impeded when he found it locked (the bard had previous come around to the front, and entered by breaking the display window). That miscalculation gave the vampire spawn, who had now slain everyone except the Bard (who was the only one to escape, back out through the broken display window) ample time to catch up, miss with its slam attack, but then hit with an AoO as WH tried to head out the window, inflicting a 4th negative level, slaying the elemental.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It should be noted that it is less than 10 minutes before sundown, and two of the PC’s and the elemental were slain by Energy Drain… so later this evening, they will rise as wights (though I am debating having the elemental companion rise as a Necromental from Libris Mortis instead).

The Bard flees into the long shadows of Old Korvosa’s streets. He will have to recruit a new party to go recover his friends' bodies, and their gear. As he flees, he starts to fret, as he's not sure WHO had the signed letter from Field Marshal Kroft, that allowed the party to get past the quarantine blockade... That valuable piece of paper is likely still in the toy shop...

For clarification, I am running the original modules in D&D 3.5, not Pathfinder.

How have people dealt with a Paladin in the party, whose free use of Detect Evil will surely show the Gray Maidens to be evil from the outset?

I just had a near TPK (write up to be posted to the obituaries thread shortly), and one of the players is coming in with a 4th level Paladin as his replacement character. The queen has means of obscuring her alignment, the Queen's Physicians have means of obscuring their alignments... but all the Gray Maidens (aside from Sabina) are technically Lawful Evil.

At first blush, my thought is to make it so not ALL the gray maidens are evil... Just a large portion of them. So when the PC's encounter the gray maidens that are enforcing the brand new quarantine of Old Korvosa (I'm in the early parts of Seven Days; the quarantine just went up a session or two ago), I KNOW the Paladin player is going to use detect evil. Maybe only ~70% of the maidens are evil? That would allow some plausible deniability, and pointing out that many of their ranks were recruited from the Hell Knights.

Thoughts?

So a few questions about the new and improved Yvicca.

Her Tactic says she uses evil eye to daze her opponents before going into melee, but there is no dc on her evil eye in her stats.
Looked up the sea hag evil eye ability, but that is not a daze effect.

Ah, but it WAS a daze effect when this adventure was first written. As an experienced DM who has often used modules from previous editions and had to update them, this is something I'm accustomed to dealing with, and seen many others run afoul of when not looking at a module in totality.

Pathfinder's Sea Hags don't inflict a dazed condition with their evil eye ability, but 3.5's Sea Hags did. Pathfinder changed it from 'target dazed for 3 days' to 'target staggered for 1 day; possibly comatose for 3 days after a further save.'

You always have to remember to go back to the original source material when running across something like this. The adventure was originally written for D&D 3.5, so look at 3.5's rules when noticing a discrepancy like this. (They're out there on-line, for free.) Even if only to understand why some odd-seeming statement is present in the text.

Also find it strange she cast speak with animals to talk to all those summons she can't make. But being able to tell the shark to flank does seem nice.

Again, look to the original material. She originally had 5 Druid levels, giving her lots of spell slots to use on summoning things like Medium Sharks and Fiendish Crocodiles, that would last five rounds each. Even in the updated module, she could still summon a Dolphin, though it would only last two rounds.

I'm just starting Seven Days, and could use a little advice on how to handle a few things. I'm actually running the original modules, in D&D 3.5, in case that makes any difference compared to the hardcover updated AP and running it in Pathfinder. I'm also planning to implement MrVergee's excellent advice of basing the Red Mantis, Dr. Devaulus, Rolth, and the Urgathoans out of the abandoned House Porphyria villa of Lost End, and having the evidence found in the Direption pointing there, and only there.

Our previous session was mostly down-time between modules, with the only SDttG event that happened being the sinking of the Direption. Then, in tonight's session we started things in ernest; Grau came to the PC's for help, they cured Brienna, did the new Harrow reading, and escorted Trinia out of the city.

When Grau came to the party for help, the party was wise enough to stop at the Bank of Abadar on the way to Trail's End to secure a means of curing Brienna's sickness before even seeing her (they secured the services of a 6th-level paladin, the on-the-spot-dreampt-up captain of the Bank's guards, as the 150 gp for his Remove Disease was much cheaper than the cost of a scroll). They visited the Soldado home, spoke with Ishani (learning his concerns about not recognizing the combination of symptoms), had Brienna healed, and asked her about what she had been doing the previous few days. She told them about playing with a friend, and buying candy. That elicited a question from one of the PC's (and subsequently a surprised Tayce) about where she got money for candy. Brienna said she found it along the riverbank.

My PC's immediately latched on to either the candy or the coins being the vector of infection, and if the coins, then they came from the sunken "pirate" ship. While some went to check on if Brienna's friend was sick, the rest of the party went to the pastry and candy shop* to investigate. The merchant running the shop was already displaying symptoms of Blood Veil, and the party Druid asked to inspect his coinage, where he then cast Detect Magic to inspect the coins. For now I said that they did not detect as magical (if they should detect as magical, any infected coins could have easily been given as change in the 2 days since he obtained them from Brienna, providing the reason as to why none happened to be there currently).

So that's my first question: Should the infected coins detect as magical? They are made to carry the infection from the magic of the Death's Head Coffers, but it isn't clearly laid out as to if the DHC's effect is instantaneous, or if there is some lingering magic on the coins after they are removed. Since it doesn't say, I'm tempted to lean toward the coins not detecting as magical. It's an "instantaneous" effect that wears off after a stated duration. After all, we've seen Paizo do this exact same thing subsequently; there is that spell from the Second Darkness AP that allows the PC's to wear the corpse of a Drow, which is set up to work that same way. It is an "instantaneous" magical effect (thus it does not show up to most magical detections; the exception being Detect Undead, IIRC), but it ends after a set duration that isn't technically a "duration."

If I do go this route, what might be a different "Achille's Heel" of detection for a diseased coin, similar to how Detect Undead would light up on the Drow corpses used for that spell from Second Darkness (sorry, the name escapes me at the moment)?

Second, due to one of the PC's getting sick that first day, and thus they visited Ishani at the Bank of Abadar before he sends an acolyte to call for them (wasn't planning to have that happen for another five days or so), they learned very quickly that several of the other vaultkeepers were sick (and since cured). Since the PC's now strongly suspect the coinage is infected, they advised Ishani that the Bank of Abadar should boil all coinage that they have in their vault, and all coins that they might get their hands on in the future.

Should boiling the coinage kill the infection that they are carrying? I could go either way on this, but which way I go depends on if the infected coins remain magical or not. If the infected coins aren't magical, then I think one should rule that boiling the coins will work to kill any infection they are carrying. However, if the infected coins do detect as magical, then I could see letting the infection persist even after boiling. All in all, I'm tempted to go with the "coins don't detect as magical; boiling the coins will cleanse them of infection" route, as the other way makes it too easy to track down all the infected coins. At least with the non-magical coins some will continue to circulate undetected. Also, the cultists of Urgathoa could still "accidentally" "drop" infected coins in the streets (one coin every city block or two), to continue that infectious vector after the plans to boil the coinage becomes widespread.

I did caution my players to remember that germ theory probably isn't a thing in the game world, but reasonable precautions are fine and don't risk metagaming. To wit, one of them pointed out that in Game of Thrones someone had an infected wound cleaned out with boiling wine. Sure, seems reasonable.

Now to figure out how to fill another four days of in-game time before the first-infected start dying...

* The pastry and candy shop was named "Pete's Pastries" on the fly, by me. To which one of my players replied, "you mean Pete's Petri Dish."

... There may have been pressure to maintain their fellow soldiers with confiscated goods before, but Cressida specifically absolves the players, even her own guards, for these series of missions she has in mind, to better equip them for missions to come.

All excellent points, thank you. I think I will implement a somewhat more medieval perspective in a general sense.

That said, I should make clear that I was looking for this information for some "down time" guard shifts the Guardsman character played through (during the few weeks down time between Edge of Anarchy and Seven Days to the Grave, when the Guard is looking for Trinia, and there is a rising crime wave), not for the actual published adventure "missions." For the actual published adventure missions, he is treated as being on detached duty (keeping the ragtag group of mercenaries in-line and on-task), and gets to loot to his heart's content along with the rest of the party.

I agree it wouldn't make sense to let the guardsmen loot people they've killed/arrested. But I'm thinking of letting them do it for monsters.

Any suggestions on what becomes of the gear guardsmen take to Citadel Volshyenek along with any dead criminals? Presumably the Guard would use it or sell it. Maybe let guardsmen buy such things from the Korvosan Guard at half price? It still allows for possible corruption (purposefully killing someone under color of authority, as a means to legally obtain what they have), but I'm not sure what the Korvosan Guard would do with such stuff otherwise.

I finished Edge of Anarchy a few weeks ago, and then spent two sessions of "down time," when a few different players couldn't make it, covering two to three weeks of in-game time between the end of EoA, and the sinking of the Direption to start off Seven Days to the Grave. I used the "fluff" sessions to give the players a better opportunity to become familiar with the city itself (the Guide to Korvosa is invaluable for this).

One of my PC's is a member of the Korvosan Guard, who stopped showing up for his shifts when the riots broke out. His first character was eaten by Gobblegut, and so his current character (friend of the dead character) bumped into the remaining party just as the riots were getting going, late in the evening. The party went the next day to recover other PCs' bodies (and gear) from the ship tied to Gaedren's warehouse (two died to the Drain Spiders), and in the process, the Korvosan Guardsman & other party members took a bunch of Strength damage.

Due to that, and a few other issues, the party did not want to brave the riotous streets until they were back to full Strength, and so did not return the brooch to the Queen, and then go meet Cressida Kroft until 3.5 days after the riots had broken out. Thus, he was not in Kroft's good graces from the get-go.

Anyway, after finishing EoA, during the fluff sessions I ran a few encounters with the Guardsman working a few shifts (getting back into the Field Marshal's good graces). In the first of those, he and his patrol (I had the other players playing as other guardsmen for a half hour; I made little character sheets for them) were searching the Shingles for Trinia, the fugitive (as the intro portion of 7DttG mentions the Guard doing). In the process, they fought a few chokers, and ended up looting a thousand coins, and a scroll (yay random treasure rolls). In another encounter (during a shift a "week" later), they killed some street thugs that had murdered someone during a mugging (showing the rising crime wave that 7DttG mentions). There was potential loot from that encounter as well.

Then the question came up of what happens when fighting things while "on duty?" Presumably the muggers would have their gear turned over as evidence (they killed one mugger, and a second one surrendered), thus the party couldn't gain it as loot. But what about monsters? And what if all the humanoid criminals refuse to surrender, and are killed?

I've done an internet search to see if this issue has come up in threads before, but I'm not finding anything. A quick perusal of the books doesn't seem to turn up any mention one way or another. Without any other guidance, I'm tempted to go with "the Laws of Korvosa apply to humanoids and other relatively intelligent creatures" (thus, imps and pseudodragons may have protections under the law), but the Law doesn't care about menaces like Chokers (intelligence 4), and they can be killed & looted at will.

Thoughts? Should I just put the demarcation at humanoids being protected under the law (thus imps & pseudodragons could be killed on a whim with no legal repercussions)? Anyone have a lead on any reference in the books to rules about members of the Korvosan Guard getting loot from killing people and/or creatures while on duty?

Oof, now that's one tough start to a campaign! The part with the spiders was just plain bad luck ( i admit it's kinda funny, in a way). I played Edge of Anarchy with five players as well. I had three well-built paladins with lots of hit points in my party, but still Gobblegut almost ripped one of them to pieces! He's a dangerous one alright.

I hope your party had a smoother road going forward in the campaign!

You have no idea HOW funny the Beguiler's death really is. That same player, with his Level 1 Rogue in our last campaign (4 years prior) died in almost the EXACT same way. Stepped up to search a door for traps; the square he stepped on to do that was a trap-door. He fell, took 6 points of falling damage, which brought his Elf to 0 hit points... and there was a creature in the bottom of the pit... and his party mates couldn't save him before he bled out.

As it was happening in Edge of Anarchy, my jaw was almost hitting the table, that the exact same thing was happening again.

Looks like it will no doubt be a guard/mercenary type game since 3/4 of the original party is dead.

Things have gone alright, and it hasn't turned into a Korvosan Guard campaign (yet). I actually had 6 players for the campaign, but one of them couldn't make it to the first 3 sessions (all the described deaths, above, happened in the 3rd session). So when I introduced the 6th character (who had received & ignored the Harrow card from Zellara), I just ended up introducing a few other characters, too.

I've also had a bit of player attrition in the last few months (we are 12 weekly sessions in, and they are in the Dead Warrens). Maze's player is a PhD student in his final semester (writing thesis, will be defending, needs to look for a job), so he actually quit after Maze's death. It was his first time playing D&D, and he did have fun. If he stays in the area, I expect he'll be back someday. Davoth's player made an uninspired replacedment character... who hates the city of Korvosa, and the "first and only time he had fun in the campaign" was during the riots, where he talked some plotting dock workers (who were likely arsonists from the previous evening) into doing a better job of organizing and burning down more buildings. This was AFTER the party had already been hired to help the Korvosan Guard get things under control... For whatever reason, the player was unable to heed my advice to make a character that cares about the City of Korvosa. And so he wasn't having fun. He quit after 9 sessions.

But, I've since recruited 2 new players, and am back up to 6 PC's (though we'll play with as little as 4 present; so far we've only had as many as 5 present at any game). Everyone is loving how rich and living the city feels, with rumors they can learn (I was able to obtain and use the rumor tables from the hardcover version), and as they were wanting a 'political intrigue' and social campaign, they are having fun building some things of their own, and making connections with the city (the Psion & the Druid have taken over Zellara's home, fixed it up, and turned it into an orphanage (Saint Gaedren's) for some of the orphans they befriended and saved from the Old Fishery).

The party currently consists of:
Rogue 1/Bard 2 - Original party member
Psion (Telepath) 3 - Original party member
"Urban Druid" 3 - "Original" party member (couldn't attend first 3 sessions)
Fighter 2/Cleric 1 of Iomedae - Agnar's replacement character, and friend of Agnar, who came searching Zellara's address after Agnar never came back from his mysterious meeting.
Sorcerer 3 - Just a guy who happened to be staying at the Three Rings Tavern while the party was put up there by Cressida.
Monk 3 - Someone who they ran into in an alleyway, after seeing and stopping an imp from stealing a rotting dock dumpling from a starving orphan girl, and taunting her with it.

The Fighter 2/Cleric 1 is the only one that is a member of the Korvosan Guard (he got a reaming when the party visited Cressida the first time, for deserting his post during the riots; he was running around with the party, and had written shirking his shifts since the riots started into his backstory...) and has been placed on detached duty with the party, to keep an eye on Cressida's little mercenary strike-force.

They are currently in the Dead Warrens, and due to the late evening we had to end the last session in the middle of a Derro fight that wasn't going all that well for the party... They're actually in a much better place, hit point wise, than I had thought at the end of the session, but they are almost completely out of spells, and one member has been down (and feigning death, at 1 hit point) since the surprise round (Derro caught them unawares coming out of the Otyugh corpse pit... Four readied attacks, two hit (one a crit) with poisoned bolts against the first one out (the Sorcerer). I may very well have another obituary or two to write next week, if things go poorly.

Name of PC: Agnar
Class/Level: Human Cleric 1 of Iomedae
Adventure: Edge of Anarchy
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Gobblegut
Story: I was running a party of five (5) PC's through Edge of Anarchy, so I had made a few changes to the encounters (increasing the number of foes by 25%, increasing some monster CR's by 1, etc.), including a second dog (Blacky, friend of Bloo), and a second Half-Orc henchmen (Giggles' brother, Chortle). For the encounter in Gaedren's Playground, I wanted to fix the rules discrepancy whereby a Medium alligator cannot use its Improved Grab ability against a Medium foe. I ended up taking a Giant Crocodile (Huge) and reducing its size to Large (–8 Str, –4 Con, smaller damage dice, etc.), and removing 1 HD. I ended up with a nominally CR 3 creature that only has a +1 higher bonus to attack, dealt 1d10+6 bite damage (as opposed to the normal Gobblegut's 1d8+6), the same AC of 15, but significantly more hit points (39, as opposed to 22).

The nearly entirely-human party does almost all their investigations and assaults of the Old Fishery at night. So after killing everyone else, and most all of the orphans fleeing into the night, the party makes its way down to Gaedren's Playground. Agnar the Cleric is the first to enter the nearly-dark lower portion of the fishery. He can see Gaedren standing at the north end of the room, silhouetted by the light of a single candle. Gaedren can't see the face of his formerly addicted Shiver-buyer, so he waits. Agnar begins to approach, and once he's about halfway there and verbally threatens the old man, Gaedren fires into the water... missing Gobblegut due to concealment.

But Gaedren is quick, winning initiative, and immediately shooting at the alligator again, this time striking the reptile. The rest of the party slowly files into the room, as the gator thrashes about. The Beguiler enters the room and stuns the alligator with a Color Spray. Agnar approaches Gaedren, trying to convince the old man to give up, and getting him to lower his crossbow. The Rogue and Bard take the long-way around Gobblegut's pit, lighting the room with a sunrod, and Agnar saw through Gaedren's rouse, noting the old man drawing a dagger. The cleric had readied his sword for just such a threat, hitting for 9 damage, and dodging the old man's feeble attack.

Gobblegut comes to his senses, and tries to climb up the underpier to snap at the Beguiler near the door, but failed to climb close enough. Arrows and quarrels were fired at Gaedren, all missing. The Beguiler and Psion step back, out of the room, and away from the gator.

Then Gobblegut directed its pained fury at a new target, swimming across the open area, and clamoring up the underpier with an 18 on the die. The beast snapped at Agnar, rolling well and sinking its teeth into mail-clad flesh. Nine damage, Agnar is reduced to 0 hit points, and fails his grapple check to avoid getting pulled into the water with the gator.

Agnar's last action was attempting to extricate himself from the alligator's jaws. He failed, and bled to –1 hit point. Gaedren picked up his hand crossbow and reloaded just before an arrow knocked him to negatives. The Rogue threw a tanglefoot bag at the gator, but it didn't glue the reptile in place. The gator chomped down, and swam away with his bloody meal. No one had even attacked it with a weapon, aside from Gaedren.

For the record, all of my enhanced Gobblegut's rolls would have ended in the exact same results, even had I used the original stats. The only die that was different was the 1d10 base damage die on the bite; he only rolled a 3. It's quite probable a 1d8+6 bite damage would have ended the same.

In related news, the party failed to make sure Gaedren actually bled out. The old criminal stabilized and woke up the next day, but in his weakened state he ended up falling into the water in the underpier, and the jigsaw shark ate him (the PC's stole the row boat).

Name of PC: Davoth
Class/Level: Illumian Beguiler 1
Adventure: Edge of Anarchy
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Foolishness
Story: Same session as Agnar's death, and the same night in-game. After searching Gaedren's room and finding all the loot, the Ranger was really intent on investigating the boat docked next to the Old Fishery. So the party piled into the rowboat and rowed around to the starboard side of the Kraken's Folly. They throw up a rope and grappling hook, and the Beguiler climbs up. It is important to note that this illumian was a spy trying to pass himself off as human, and so he had the feat that allowed him to continue gaining his sigils' benefit, despite having them doused. So, on a moonless night this effectively-human character climbs up to the ship's railing, forward of where the catwalk is, next to the ship. He has no light sources, so I don't read him the boxed text that describes the decking as looking old and rotten.

He leaps over the railing right onto the rotted deck without checking it first. He busts through the deck, and falls to the spider-infested hold below, taking 6 points of falling damage (which, thanks to his Middle Aged status, was all the hit points he had). So he's laying there at 0 hit points, and starts to hear the scuttling of creatures in the dark... A few bites, and he was down and bleeding...

Name of PC: Maze
Class/Level: Human Ranger 1
Adventure: Edge of Anarchy
Rules Set: D&D 3.5
Catalyst: Unabashed heroism
Story: So Davoth had just fallen into the spider-infested hold, and Maze was climbing up the rope behind Davoth. So Maze finishes climbing up to the ship's railing, and heroically jumps down into the hold to save his new comrade (pretty sure he made the Jump check to reduce the falling damage to 0, too). Poor Maze. I've never seen a new player roll so many Nat 1's on attack rolls in my entire life. Through 8 rounds of combat he hit one Drain Spider ONE time, knocking it down to 0 hit points (on its next action it bit at Maze, then dropped to –1). However, in that 8 rounds Maze succeeded at stabilizing the dying Davoth via a Heal check, and the Ranger succeeded on most of his Fort saves versus poison.

Keep in mind that Maze is human, and is in a dark ship's hold, on a moonless night... The Rogue's attempt to throw the Sunrod up over the ship's railing failed utterly; it instead landed in the water, and as its luminescence sank into the river, he noticed the multitudinous ring-like glints of metal cruising by (Agnar in Gobblegut's mouth).

As Maze was starting to falter a bit, the Rogue finally climbed up onto the ship, and dropped another Sunrod down into the hold. He then tested the decking and found a safe place to alight on the deck. Maze finally dropped to –1 hit points, and the Rogue tried to get into the aft cabin to get down to them, but once he had opened the door and stepped in, he saw the Sunrod's light gleaming up through the stairwell, and encountered another Drain Spider. Maze stabilized and was no longer bleeding out. But after failing to hit the drain spider twice, and taking an instance or two of damage and poison, the Rogue abandoned his comrades to their fates, and scurried away on the catwalk.

The Drain Spiders had quite a feast in Davoth and Maze.

This thing is MASSIVE, almost to the point of being too big for a Large creature. Standing it next to the Huge-sized Mountain Troll mini produced by WotC, this Troll Champion is less than 1/4 inch shorter. It is twice the height of the previous Pathfinder troll miniature.

Maybe find a happy medium? Holy crap.

I do not have a Pathfinder core book in front of me, but if you look in the 3.5 PHB, table 9-4: Hampered Movement (around page 163) it notes that poor visibility costs double movement, and gives the examples of "darkness or fog." I imagine the Pathfinder book has a similar table.

Fog is defined as
Whether in the form of a low-lying cloud or a mist rising from the ground, fog obscures all sight, including darkvision, beyond 5 feet. Creatures 5 feet away have concealment (attacks by or against them have a 20% miss chance).

That is, the fog created by obscuring mist is exactly as dense as naturally occurring as defined by the rules.

Therefore, obscuring mist does cause "poor visibility" and hampers movement.

Whether that prevents one from 5-foot stepping is still debatable, however, as the rules merely state that you cannot 5-foot step if your movement isn't hampered by difficult terrain or darkness. It says nothing about fog, shadowy illumination, or the like.

This is why I think any self-healing mechanism has to be less effective than a healing spell. My approach means that you penalize yourself and you risk having the "healed" damage returned to you if you do too much. Magical healing is still much better with this system.

This Bandage system is interesting. I'll have to think on implementing something similar for a future d20 Wheel of Time game I'm planning on running.

I'd love to have perhaps a more polished self healing system than my own that does not replace the cleric/druid or even the Bard...but still makes it possible to go on without them (and in a setting or level range that has low amounts of wands and potions).

One thing I just thought of while reading this thread (that I'm also adding to my WoT game) is another use for action points.

I thought it might work to allow action points to mitigate damage from an attack. Basically, when the 2nd level party rogue gets hit for 10 points of damage, he can immediately spend an action point to mitigate 1d6 points of damage. Note, he can't invoke this later; it must be as the damage happens. Thus, it's not "healing" per se, but just an expression of luck. Now, this viewpoint is based in the concept of the Wheel of Time world, where fate and chance (around ta'veren, at least) plays a big part in things.

Example: Had you not been distracted and turned to look at the giggling child, you would have been dead in the sights of the assassin's arrow; by pure chance you turned at the right moment, and it was off-mark by 2 inches, becoming only a glancing blow.

Let me explain I have a form of dyslexia that involves numbers.so yes math like 4 /6 or 8 x4 I can not do in my head at all.

Let me preface this by stating that I mean no disrespect to you personally.

Sorry, but the game should not be designed to accomodate every person's disabilities. It should be designed around what is reasonable for a "normal" person to do. Is it reasonable for someone to divide your ranks by 2 before adding it to your other bonuses? Absolutely.

Take an 8th level character with max ranks in a cross class skill, a +2 ability mod, and a +2 miscellaneous bonus:

(cc) 2+11+2 = 9

That took me a grand total of 2 seconds to compute.

If you have trouble doing the whole thing in your head, use a piece of scratch paper (which has always been suggested during character creation anyways...)

2 + 5 + 2 = 9

No calculator needed.

It's not like you are dividing by unwieldy numbers; you are dividing (or multiplying, at first level) by two, and two only. (Psst - Multiplying by 4 is the same as multiplying by 2 twice...)

PS - Another vote for the "Epic Meepo System" (TM).

Keep skill points. I really liked epic meepo's little tweek though.

Another solution is to fold Tumble into Acrobatics together with Balance and Escape Artist, and you create a good reason for a player to put points into that skill, since all three applications can be important at some point or other. :)

Um... Isn't tumble already a part of the Acrobatics skill? Read the Acrobatics skill itself - it allows you to move without provoking AoO's, etc...