I can't tell, but I think you have to both disrupt the ritual and stabilize the victim for them to not die. "This increase is most likely to happen if the PCs opt to spend time recovering after the fight in the Fiendish Watchtower, or if they investigate the ongoing ritual first. If the victim isn’t stabilized within 20 minutes of first falling unconscious, they die." implies that if you go deal with the ritual and don't stabilize the victim than the victim dies.
Wow, two of my PCs really like to blow things up. Because the storm druid can see through mist and scouted Scrapwall as a bird, the party made a beeline to the haunted space wreck. It was a tough set of encounters for them, so much so that I dropped the will-o-wisp. There's an android arcanist with a high engineering skill, so they were able to figure out what the cylex was immediately. And then the carnage began. When they fought Birdfood, they bluffed their way into the compound, then the arcanist used dimensional slide to drop the cylex behind Birdfood and the storm druid hit it (and birdfood) with a lightning bolt. That ended that encounter fast. They didn't blow anything up for a little while, then they got invited to the arena and put their heads together with Redtooth. The storm druid shifted into air elemental form and the arcanist cast some fly and invisibility spells the night before the invite. They put one charge of cylex on the antenna and went to the arena with the second one. They ended up underneath Kulgara's porch and decided to put the final charge of cylex on the chariot. Then they showed up for the fight. Kulgara roars, leaps onto the chariot, and the druid pulls out Redtooth's detonator and blows everything to hell. The brawler uses martial flexibility to use the grenade launcher, and the arcanist starts throwing fireballs. Kulgara never even got to make an attack roll. |