Monele's page

The rest of the session, we refereed to his character as "Rubblebane." Bless his heart.

Suddenly, giving out XP for "just" climbing rubble doesn't seem so silly anymore :)

Aah, custom scenarios start making an appearance, neat! And not a bad concept to start with. I don't have the game yet so I can't playtest this, but in regard to the "no weapon/spell/etc" complaint, why not take something from the RPG system and add 4 to the difficulty if using such cards for the roll? Similar to not being proficient or using the wrong damage type.

This may be a really basic thing, but I just discovered 3+ ranks in Acrobatics boosts your (dodge) AC when Fighting Defensively and using Total Defense.

The FLGS where we play most often will, apparently, be getting an introductory or demo version of the product. Can anyone tell me what this consists of?

This thread at BoardGameGeek may have an answer for you:

It can't climb and is cube-shaped. Find steps, walk up them and... yeah that's about it. Cube defeated.

It can't climb? It's got Strength 10, so a Climb bonus of +0. Admittedly I don't see it climbing a rope or even a rough wall, but regular stairs?

steps through a circular hole

Wouldn't it squeeze through, though? If we're talking about a hole in the ground, I'd accept that it serves as a trap.

If you want to make the cube harder (...)

Oh dear no :) I'm actually trying to help the players come up with a solution!

Trip them and stab them in the back.

The players you mean? Sure, that'd solve my issue :p

Hello!

My (low level) party is about to face a Gelatinous Cube and, as the GM, I would like to know good tactics against such a foe. Reading its stats, I don't find it many weaknesses apart from being slow and easy to hit (but do you even *want* to get close to that thing?)

Why a Cube for such a party, you ask? Well, it's in a certain oldie-but-goodie module from Paizo ;)

Context: I'm GMing the module for a friend who's playing a 4 PCs team (a fighter, a rogue, a druid and an oracle), they're 2nd level. They have gone through Hollow's Last Hope previously.

First question is a bit general: the characters have already gone through quite a bit of the dungeon (1st level) and have taken a beating (especially with the lizards, strangely enough). It was becoming obvious to me that the group wouldn't survive without resting with all that's left to do and the player also felt that way so I allowed an 8 hours rest and reassured him that I wouldn't be mean about it when it comes to the story.
I wanted to ask for advice before but now it's happened. I'm still curious to know if others would have done that differently: not allow rest without story consequences (time is of the essence after all)? Add healing items on the fly as treasure to help the characters?
Or is there something else that my player and myself are missing that could have helped the survivability of the group?

The next question is specific: the group has finally encountered the "ghost". I tried to play it out as suggested: mysteriously eerie. Because of context (one recent fight was against the Wraith), the player is seriously scared of hard to hit / magical monsters. "Yet another ghost" is obviously not a good thing. So we've had quite a bit of running about, trying to lose the ghostie, to no avail (it's slow, but not *that* slow).

He finally decided to wait and attack the thing. But when the bolt got stuck in midair and dissolved... well... let's say there was even more running after that :). He also tried some Create Water on it which I described as splashing all around with water rolling around a wobbly cubic shape. I thought this would be enough to let the cat out of the bag, but nope! (I also mentioned the shimmering light and the hissing -- more or less read the description from the module)

So now, the group is back up outside, in the open court of the monastery, and they've spotted the armor in one of the hallways (I figured it would follow, and blindsight means it can't really lose them unless they really go far away).

All this is done and I can't quite retcon this. That said, I'm eager for advice on how I could have possibly dealt with this in a better way. Since this is a one-on-one game, should I be much more active in dropping hints as a GM?

Of note: I was ready to have two PCs find out about the creature's true nature (they made their pre-emptive Perception/Dungeoneering checks), but that's *just* when he decided to flee. Felt like I had missed my cue and could not find a new one :/

Frankly, the biggest problem is that instead of a memorable encounter, this turned out to be a very boring one so far. I can't blame the player since he's had reasons to be scared... but eh.

How I'm seeing this possibly develop: if the player actually decides to lure out the armor in the court, I'll fully describe what it truly is. It should be obvious in daylight and without walls surrounding most of its sides.

Since I'm not a terribly experimented player either (I mostly GM), I wouldn't mind tips on defeating a Cube. If needed, I could use that to drop hints to the player.

Thanks for any help!