I'm going to say he could have played center for the ancient Egyptian basketball team at... 5'11''.
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I think it's probably best if the OG Werecabbage Five zip it until this thing's actually been shipped. Heathy, if James Jacobs wants to come on here and answer your questions, that's probably the best thing for those of us involved to keep us from getting smacked down. How about this quote from Jimmy Jakes (taken from ENWorld): Vices was a very conscious word choice. The Sehan campaign arc has some pretty creepy stuff going on in it. It won't be drawing upon the cysts and other material presented in Dragon; the Far Realm elements in the Sehan arc are a lot more subtle.
Nebochazar’s demonhide armor (Dungeons and Dragons) The barbazu Nebochazar was a mercenary in the Blood War. Marked by an unquenchable blood lust, the fearsome bearded devil would wade into the fray, his glaive a slashing arc of death. Seen as somewhat unstable even from the beginning, he would carve pieces of skin from the bodies of the demons he slew, collecting the swaths of hide as grisly trophies. Eventually, for one reason or another, Nebochazar’s tenuous grip on sanity slipped. Despite accumulating vast sums of treasure as pay for his demon-slaying proficiencies, he abandoned the mercenary life to live as a hermit in the deadly mires of Minauros, the third layer of the Nine Hells. Apparently quite mad, Nebochazar now wanders the swamps of Minauros clad in armor he crafted himself from the trophies he collected during his previous life as a sell-sword. This +5 greater electricity resistance leather armor was crafted by the barbazu druid, Nebochazar (Brb5/Drd11), from the flesh of his demonic enemies. The armor was designed to aid him in surviving the hellish bogs of his adopted home, Minauros, the third layer of Baator. Nebochazar’s armor continues to function and provide an armor bonus normally while the wearer is wild shaped, taking the form of +5 leather barding of the appropriate size and shape. It also continues to provide electricity resistance 30. The wearer may use water walk and control winds, each once per day, on command. Strong transmutation; CL 11th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, resist energy, water walk, control winds, baleful polymorph, creator must be able to wild shape; Price 168,220 gp.
Ring of the Graven Snake (Dungeons and Dragons) This ring is a cunning magical trap, forged by the conjurer Mezistralis and left amongst his many items of arcane power to ensnare those who would dare to steal from him. Upon close examination, the iron band is engraved with a phrase in Common, partially obscured by the rust, which appears to reveal the ring’s powers and command word for activating them. The inscription is a ruse, however, and hidden within the words is a powerful variation of a sepia snake sigil known as a graven snake sigil. Anyone reading the inscription must make a DC 17 Reflex save or be struck by the graven snake which springs forth from the ring. A stricken creature becomes trapped within the amber stone of the ring for 1d4 + 15 days, or until it is released. The spell effect of this ring behaves in all other ways as that of a sepia snake sigil. A successful dispel magic, targeted upon the ring, will release the trapped occupant. The ring can bind within it only one creature at a time; if a second creature falls victim to the trap, the already-bound creature is released from the spell. There is a 10% chance that the ring has a creature bound within it when it is discovered. The ring has no effect when worn. Strong conjuration; CL 15th; Forge Ring, sepia snake sigil; Price 6,000 gp.
A note on skill checks --- whenever a PC is not a high-stress situation (like combat), they can take 10 on (almost?) any skill check. Asking for a DC 5 Balance check to get into a rowboat is not unreasonable; however, all the PCs should have been allowed to take 10 instead of rolling --- they take time and care to step in. Unless they have a -10 armor check penalty, they're not going to fall in the drink. The archer probably should have been allowed to fire from one knee in the boat. If he was using a longbow, he could have turned it sideways in a crossbow orientation --- very "Legolasian." Remember, this is fantasy; PCs should be allowed to do semi-fantastic things, even at 1st level. Unless there were pirates leaning over the rail and shooting at him, I probably would have allowed the fighter to take 10 on his Climb check as well; though sometimes bad rolls happen to good people and that's all there is to it.
There are only three lines about the Arena in the backdrop article; the only real information there is that the arena is called "Sasserine Arena," Shouldn't it be called "Sassarena?" :P
Our Warforged Exorcist of the Silver Flame exploded during the final battle when Kyuss killed him. I rolled a natural 1 and the blast was enough to put Kyuss over his hp. Awesome. Why/how did the warforged explode?
::confused:: And the winner is...? *drumroll*
"If the healing fails to bring the creature's hit point total up past –10 hit points, the creature remains dead (although further castings of cure mortal wounds could still save the creature, as long as its allotted minute has not passed)." Reading this, I had a vision of a cleric casting Cure Mortal Wounds on a dead PC over and over again, shouting "Clear!" each time. I like it. :)
Is it just me, or does one of those giant worms (the one on the right) look just ... wrong? It's issue #124...and I don't see 'it'.
Savage Tide, eh? Who knew laundry detergent could be so feral...
I'm pretty sure Paizo's policy is that every submission must be completely original, unpublished material -- including the maps.
Touche. I guess the point is that an intelligent item is both a sentient construct AND an item. It is affected along with all the other characters gear, but I would also allow it saving throw if it doesn't want to be enlarged. See Peruhain's comments about the spirit of the spell.
The sword stays medium. If a wild-shaped druid or polymorphed wizard picks up an item, does that item meld into their body like their gear did at the time of casting? Nope. An intelligent weapon is treated as a sentient construct (see beginning of itelligent items section in DMG) -- it would be allowed a Fort save to resist the enlarge if it wanted to resist.
IIRC, the people killed by the energy drain would not rise immediately as wights. In the mean time, the party (or its successors if a TPK occurred) could use Knowledge (arcana) or possiblt Heal checks to determine the cause of death. Then the group would have to lead a massive effort to cremate the bodies before they rise. At any rate, this whole thread is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. Basterd has it right...anyone killed by energy drain rises as a spawn of the creature that killed them or, more generally, as a wight, *the following night*. Check your DMGs and MMs for "energy drain." A quick thinking cleric (or someone with Knowledge (religion)) will realize that all the bodies must be burned *fast*. In Sharn, they would all be thrown into the lava pits beneath the city. No wight problem, but almost 10% of the population of the city is wiped out. That's still very bad.
Umm, it's not wraiths -- it's *wights* that the ulgurstasta creates. They're not incorporeal and not as nasty as wraiths, but still a huge problem.
I'm in the midst of running this now for a party of 3 7th level and 3 6th level PCs. I've had to make some changes, like making Lucian an afflicted werebear Brb2/Ftr3. One player cleverly asked if he could use locate object on the flour found at Svan's place to locate the rest of the flour. I ruled no. ;) They haven't thought of it yet, but can the PCs scry on Ziki by using the blood she left in Drummer's room?
Thanks, Obscure, I will be appropriating that idea for my campaign (of course, it's going to be forever until they get to that point - they're just now starting in on the third temple in 3FoE). No problem! :) My group is now solving murders in Sharn between EaBK and TCB, so we've got a while to go too.
As for snapping worms in half--most worms (annelids and nematodes, anyway) are so simple anatomically that cutting them in half doesn't kill them. Remember the old high school biology experiment of cutting an earthworm in half and watching both halves heal, regenerate, and go on about their business of burrowing? I guess the worms should have DR 20/bludgeoning then... ;)
That *is* evil; however, I think ripping the worm in half does at least 1 hp of damage -- in which case, that worm is done. Of course, you could give them more hp, or ignore the hp.
Can you say Sathar mixed with Vrusk? Maybe Ethergaunts from MM2...at least they look 'plausable' Ak'chazar rakshasas, baby. MM3...obsessed with creating undead...have an alternate humanoid form. Perfect for replacing avolakias in Eberron, where the Age of Worms is being orchestrated by classed rakshasas (the Lords of Dust). p.s. The ethergaunts are in the Fiend Folio. You have to get that right on these boards, since Erik Mona created the ethergaunts. ;)
I like your idea of requiring a Spot check before a ranged attack (i.e., Magic Missle) can be used against such a small creature. On that note, shouldn't the AC for the worms be higher? They're Fine, which gives them a size modifier of +8. Even if their Dex mod while attached is -5, they should still be at AC 13.
Good point. But then again, I would like at least one worm to get inside a PC, just so the cleric can scramble to use Filge's silver operating instruments to remove the worm with a Heal check. :)
Picking the worms off is basically a grapple check, and since they're basically unable to beat a PC's grapple check (-21 penalty for 1 Strength and Fine size), I'd simply call it an unarmed strike against AC10. This was my reasoning as well (though I went with unarmed touch attack rather than unarmed strike). But looking at the entry for stirges, they get a +12 racial bonus to grapple checks when attached. To remove them with a grapple, you must achieve a pin. On the other hand, the worms only have 1 hp, and a successful grapple check against them, even just to start the grapple, would deal at least 1 point of non-lethal damage. So they would likely be knocked out and fall off.
Sounds to me like you're doing it correctly...just double the number of monsters (or add more monsters of the same or similar CR) so that the XP gets doubled. You should also double the treaseure, although AoW has way too much treasure to begin with (according to the wealth guidelines in the DMG). If you're doing this and your players are complaining, that's their problem, not yours. If they don't like it, they can take a hike and you can go back to 4-5 players. What you DON'T want to do is start replacing CR 2 monsters with CR 4 monsters, for example. This would also double the XP, but could quickly lead to player deaths as the tougher monsters may have abilities the PCs (even 7 of them) can't handle. Like say, a harpy's song ability, which could end up hypnotizing all 7 of them.
In the entries for the Spawn of Kyuss provided in issue #126 and Monster Manual II, there are mechanics for dealing with attached Kyuss worms. Is just me, or are these mechanics a little...lacking? The worms have AC 10 and 1 hp, implying they can be attacked while attached (and killed by the touch of silver). But what happens when a PC swings his greataxe to kill a worm on his neck? That sounds dangerous! What if the PC wants to just grab the worm and pull it off, or squish it? What if a wizard want to blast the worms off his companion with magic missles? Burn them off with a torch? Almost all of these issues came up when I ran the ending of EaBK (except the torch one) a little while ago. I ended up making the following rulings "on the fly" (I hope I did Monte Cook proud :P ) - You can attack the worms with a weapon at a -4 penalty to avoid taking a chunk out of yourself. It didn't come up, but I'm thinking that attacks with light weapons could be made without a penalty. - A succussful melee touch atttack against AC 10 allows you to grab a worm and the grapple check to pull it off or squish it automatically succeeds (since the worms should have a grapple modifier of -16 - Str modifier). This should provoke attacks of opportunity -- something which I may have forgotten in my session (can't remember). Of course, the worms could have a racial bonus to grapple.... - I ruled that magic missles would work fine, killing one worm per missle without threat to the PC the worms are on. - I also ruled that if a Spawn rolled high enough on a slam attack to hit the PC's touch AC, it successfully transferred a worm onto the PC, despite doing no damage. Without this rule, the enounter would have been a cakewalk. The easiet route among these is pretty clear -- my PCs ended up pulling the worms off with touch attacks. My players were terrified of the worms getting into them (heh heh), but because of the easy touch attacks, there was never any real threat of that happening. The PCs just ended up spending a lot of their actions pulling worms off instead of attacking the Spawn, who weren't able to hit very often with their slams. In order to really have a shot at infecting a PC, there would need to be three Spawn teaming up on one PC, with some other monsters keeping the other PCs occupied. I'm interesting in hearing how others are handling the Spawn worm mechanics, and if you think mine make sense.
Here is a list of every Prestige Class ever published by WotC, with sources. Go nuts. :) http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/prc Oozemaster is indeed from Masters of the Wild and appears not to have been updated.
I drew the maze out on the battlemat and numbered each axis, rolling a d24 and a d30 to determine where they landed (that’s right, 2 dice proving their worth in a world that shuns them!). There's a Cambodian diner down the street from where I live that has 30 items on the menu and a d30 on the counter for anyone who's having trouble deciding. :) I'd never seen a d30 before going in there...still haven't seen a d24.
It's online! Check out Dragotha in all his majesty! Nice!
The reason there are so many high EL encounters is that there otherwise would not be enough XP in this mod to advance 13th level PCs to 15th. That's why they needed to throw in XP awards for seeing the visions. The tough encounters plus story awards barely get the party to 15. It's just an inherent flaw of this module that there isn't enough space in the mag to cover dealing with Manzorian, plus revealing all of Kyuss' history, plus having ~20 balanced encounters to advance the PCs two levels.
Cool; thanks, James.
I'm just curious as to how the 40,000 gp limit was arrived at. The text mentions that the Rod segment possessed by the PCs is worth about 23,000 gp, but this is assuming the minimum caster level of 11. I believe the segment was previously mentioned to operate at CL 20, making it worth more like 43,000 gp. At any rate, I suspect the 40,000 gp figure is not based on the actual value of the rod, but more on the expected wealth level of 13th level characters...?I think its the potential of the rod that's the big thing here. Manzorian either knows where other pieces of the rod are, or has a piece in his possession already (I think I read that somewhere). Flavor-wise, sure, that's why Manny's willing to fork over the dough. As an aside, this is actually a bit weak since the amount Manny is willing to pay is dependent on the number of PCs (if there are 4 PCs, he'll pay 160k for the segment; if there are 8 he'll pay 320k). I'm more interested in the metagame reasoning behind 40k.
I'm just curious as to how the 40,000 gp limit was arrived at. The text mentions that the Rod segment possessed by the PCs is worth about 23,000 gp, but this is assuming the minimum caster level of 11. I believe the segment was previously mentioned to operate at CL 20, making it worth more like 43,000 gp. At any rate, I suspect the 40,000 gp figure is not based on the actual value of the rod, but more on the expected wealth level of 13th level characters...?
Hmm, I think Bastard has the right of it. The snare spell creates what the DMG calls a "magic trap" or "spell trap," like a fire trap or a glyph of warding. Each snare should have its own CR of 4, (1 + spell level).
Hmm... on closer examination, it would appear that we'll be celebrating the 20th anneversary of Dungeon in issue #138, not #135. Sometimes numbers are hard. So, "Dawn of a New Age" in 135; 20th anniversary stuff in 138?
Not me.
That makes a lot of sense.
There's really nothing wrong with a couple of side-treks, but I wouldn't mind this.
I'm pretty impartial to this idea...the ties should be very subtle so as not to limit the plot at all.
Yes!
Nooooo! I would want the Eberron conversion notes to be much MORE detailed. I would rather have them posted online if it meant not losing details.
Helpful, but more difficult to make the adventures interesting using only low-CR stuff. An interesting challenge for the authors.
I'm all for that.
Sound advice.
Good.
Also sounds good!
Ah, this is why my e-mail to Customer Service has gone unanswered.... Congratulations, James, and I hope your replacement is as dedicated and friendly as you are.
I'm running AoW in Eberron, and I'm considering replacing HoHR with a few of the following: Murder in Oakbridge (scaled up for 7th level PCs) -- Dungeon 129
It's important to note that most Dungeon modules won't provide enough experience to level the PCs up to 9th level from 7th, so you'll have to replace HoHR with at least two 'regular' adventures.
It comes back into play in A Gathering Of Winds... the players use it as a key to free Allustan from a trap, and I believe in the process it becomes 'charged', becoming a fully-functional talisman. WHICH MEANS: there's a sphere in someone's future. This talisman-charging happened in the original draft of AGoW, as documented by ASEO's playtest notes (available on these boards) but no longer occurs in the published adventure. Instead, at the conclusion of the adventure, the spirit of Icosiol activates the talisman. Less flavorful, but perhaps it makes more sense. Interestingly, there is still a chandelier-like object in AGoW that looks like it is made of talismans of the sphere.
Here's my list: - Palace of Twisted King. The most trivial adventure since The Orc And The Pie. Three rooms with some meenlocks in them. I suppose this was just filler in an already crammed issue (SCAP conclusion, 30 Best Adventures, etc.). - Secrets of the Arch Wood, and anything else by Skip Williams (having read his free adventures on WotC site). One-dimensional dungeon crawls devoid of plot, seemingly just showcases for (what he thinks are) interesting monsters. - Fiendish Footprints. Seems like Leati started off with a good idea for an interesting magic item with a nice history, and wanted to build an adventure around that. We get another one-dimensional dungeon crawl, (although kudos for using NPC levels for the villains). The fiendish foot maybe should have been submitted as a campaign workbook write-up. - The Amarantha Agenda. Basically just one glorified encounter with a lot of trimmings; not a lot of depth here. Again, may have suffered from having three other features in the same issue.
Although not a bad guy (in most campaigns), probably the most famous NPC to come out of 3e so far is Meepo the Kobold, Keeper of Dragons. He was an NPC in the first 3e module (outside of Dungeon), The Sunless Citadel. Why is Meepo so popular? It's a question for the ages. Depending on how the DM ran him, you either get it or you don't, it seems. But going by various polls on the WotC site, he seems to be at least as well-known as The Tarrasque.
The special marilith, daugther of a Demon lord serving Demogorgon in the same module was awesome, don't remember her name but I took 118 hp in the first round an 128 in the second without her taking one, don't trust wizards if they tell you that the place is secure.... That would be The Catheter, er, I mean Cathezar. Both equally unpleasant....
This is true. Libris Mortis expands on this info (which is from the back of the Monster Manual, by the way) with the following: "With 8 or more consecutive hours of inactivity in any 24-hour period, an undead with an Intelligence score recovers 1 hit point per Hit Die. If such an undead is completely inactive for a full 24-hour period, it recovers 2 hit points per Hit Die." This is called "Necromantic Healing" and is essentially identical to Natural Healing for a living creature.
You can run the encounter with a top-down view and write each character's elevation in a corner of their square. Conversely, you can run it with a side view and write down each character's 'depth' into the battlemat. If you can't write on your battlemat, you can use homemade tokens.
I'm running AoW, adapted to Eberron.
Aren't there grapple modifiers for additional limbs. The Ebon Aspect has more than two limbs (if I'm remembering correctly). Even if the additional limbs don't have hands (once again if I'm remembering correctly), they would give some kind of modifier to grapple. There's no official rule on that (that I'm aware of), at least not in the core books (I recall something from Sword and Fist). At any rate, if there is a +3 bonus on grapple checks for having three extra hands, an explanation should have been included in the stat block.
The trouble with a phase spider having sorcerer levels is phase spiders can't speak, so no verbal spell components. Also, sorcerer levels don't give our phase spider the same "flavor" as Flycatcher -- who can't cast spells. I whipped up a quick classed-phase spider. Assuming rogue and shadowdancer are associated class levels (normally they wouldn't be for a Magical Beast, but phase spiders rely on hit-and-run sneak tactics), this guy is a CR 12. I didn't give him any equipment -- bracers of armor would help with his low-ish AC. Phase spider rogue 2/shadowdancer 5
AC 17, touch 14, flat-footed 12; Dodge, Mobility, improved uncanny dodge
Spd 40 ft, climb 20 ft.
Abilities: Str 18, Dex 21, Con 19, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Can't say that I do, but it usually takes 2-3 weeks to get to me in Canada.
Goth = demon??? "Goth" means "German" or "Germanic" in Latin. Malgoth = "bad German" :)
In Greek, it's "paheed'-zo." http://www.sabda.org/sabdaweb/tools/lexicon/?w=3815&l=greek&lang=en glish&theme=original&study=on Two syllables (it's not "pa-heed-zo"), the first one sounds like "pie" as in the food. And it does start with the letter "pi" as the logo hints at.
The 3.0e stats can be found in the Arms and Equipment Guide. The powers for each segment are the same as above, but at CL 20 with a save DC of 17 + spell level. Joining segments gives these additional powers: Two segments: fly at will.
Also, having 6 or 7 segments gives the wielder Two-Weapon Fighting (and Ambidexterity).
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