Kiniticyst's page

Well it was a blast (literally), but the party TPK'd against Alaznist. A hell of a journey and a heartbreaking end to an epic adventure. Sometimes the heroes don't win.

Players are still reeling from the event so letting the session breathe for a while before we decide what to do next! Anyone else had experience with a loss at the final battle of an AP?

Have just spent a while fiddling with the map for Secrets of Warped Flesh to get it on to roll 20 and set up all the dynamic lighting for the tunnels.

Foolishly, I did this all before reading the encounter. Am I missing something or does this massive map of maze-like tunnels serve no purpose? Do the party just arrive on the shore of the underground lake and fight there? Why is there such a complex network of tunnels spanning 250 ft taking up 90% of the map?

It also mentions to put the fiendish template on a shoggoth to represent the portal, but the fiendish template doesn't seem to do much of anything for a Shoggoth:

it already has DR10/- (would gain DR10/good),
It already has SR30 (would gain SR 25)
It already has Fire resist 20 and cold immunity (would gain Cold & Fire Res 15)

The smite also is kind of useless since it only has a Cha mod of +1. So nothing is altered to add +1 CR to the creature, should I add the advanced template or something else?

If I remember correctly, once someone has been Judged by Pharasma, there is no Resurrection possibility. Xanderghul should have been dead a long, long time ago. He escaped his first Judgement with the little twist he had planned for if he died. Once the party kills him, she wastes no time in Judging him and sending him to where he needs to go.

Pharasma didn't get to judge Xanderghul. His soul got captured by the same astradaemon that took Karzoug's, this is shown in chapter 6.

Anyone got any ideas for encounters in Stethelos? The encounter table in the book unfortunately only has creatures that the PCs have already encountered or creatures that they will encounter later in the book. The only scripted fight is with the Time Flayer which they also already fought (albeit it is a cool encounter).

I really want the place to be memorable but looking at it, it comes across as them just walking down a path through a mossy island field for half a mile until they reach the Well of All.

Of course there are merchants but I don't really like the idea of presenting the deck of many things to them this late in the campaign (for risk of them derailing entirely or worse), including Baba Yaga (for having to handwaive that they worked in her shop for months?) or including technology from the Witchwyrd that none of them can identify or use nevermind recharge. There also doesn't seem to be much point in the Book Wagon since even if they had the spare gold on hand to buy a tome, sitting down to try and read it for a week while they take charisma drain every hour seems.. insane.

So each of the merchant's kills the narrative tempo of their drive to follow Alaznist's Wake and reach The Well, so at minimum I'd love an idea for an encounter or two on the way! Any creatures come to mind?

Can someone please help me figure out the Timeworn Tunnel? I can't get the pieces to fit together in a way that makes sense. My plan was to give my players the pieces and let them solve it, but if that isn't possible I will need to figure something else out.

The pieces don't actually match up unfortunately. I found the more interesting part is figuring out how to solve it. Actually going through the process of turning a lump of something so it fits against another is.. well it would be interesting to toddlers but I don't think most players would find satisfaction from fitting bits together.

Anyone want to share how their party interacted with Solethex Sarn? He does seem to be an interesting opponent to fight with a lot of complex revelations (albeit terribly low saving throw DCs for his spells).

One thing it mentions in his combat tactics which I can't figure out is:

"Once these options are exhausted, he wades into melee combat, focusing on dispelling his opponents’ buffs and whittling away their defenses before dealing massive damage with his kukri."

What effect/buff/class-feature or spell is allowing him deal massive damage with his kukri, let alone hit anything?

Welp, he didn't have to use any of his invisibility based abilities.. two prismatic sprays just obliterated my party, half dead, half scattered around the planes of existence... This is going to be an interesting one to try and pick up next week.

Nearly all of Xanderghul's tactics rely on some form of invisibility, one of my player's is a spontaneous caster with invisibility purge and it seems that no matter how many high level spells like Mind Blank or nondetection Xanderghul has, this 3rd level spell seems to counter them all. No save, no spell resistance..

Anyone have any tips for how to run the fight without any of Xanderghul's tactics? I feel like it'll be incredibly underwhelming experience as a final boss fight where the martials just walk up to him and whack him in the first round.

Until corrected, both.

Wat

Has there been a clarification on whether control modules are intended for ships yet? I'm surprised only one person mentioned that you're all mathing out how to emulate a 19th level class feature of the mechanic (practically it's capstone) with a cheap-ass computer and a handful of BP.

Even the ability to start warming up the engines from range is a 13th level ability for the mechanic. I can't believe that it was ever the intent for everyone to be able to do this so easily and cheaply.

Thanks for the responses all, I'll maybe try and convince one of the other party members to start investing in use magic device so we can get some cure light wounds for out of combat healing and use Kinetic Healer strictly for emergencies.

As some people have said, yes you can cause the target to accept the burn and that's great for stabilizing unconscious enemies or healing NPC's you don't really care about but I don't want to have to say to the tanky meatwall fighter "Hey man I know you took a hefty hit this morning so I'll heal you, it'll make you worse for the rest of the day, cool?"

Or if the Wizard got smashed in a nasty aoe "Hey bud, I know you're squishy as a turd and get almost one-shot most of the time, but here have less health!".

Until we get enough gold to have the healer role filled by crates of cure light wounds pots I'm going to take the Combat Vigor feat and toe the line as a 1/4 health guy most of the time.