Waldo's page

I'm getting ready to run this, but I'm a little dubious about it.

There are really four separate, only loosely connected adventures here, right?

1) The attack by the assassins

2) The "whodunit" quest to find the sender of the assassins

3) The fight(s) at the Temple of Wee Jas, and

4) The dungeon crawl

Oh, and the half-dragon, who can be thrown in anywhere.

It seems a little... disjointed. Like a collection of encounters strung together, rather than a single adventure. The fights look good and challenging, but could easily be separated from each other, and the dungeon crawl is really completely unrelated.

Have others found this to be true? And does anyone have any suggestions on how best to run this?

thanks in advance,

Waldo

I like the Herald idea a lot. Thank you!

Thanks also for the link to the resource page. Good stuff. Having just finished Smoking Eye, I'm moving on to Soul Pillars, so those assassin writeups will come in very handy.

Let's spread that link around -- I'd love to see more people getting involved.

cheers,

Waldo

Sign of the Smoking Eye (variant template)

At all times, you gain the following attributes:

-- +1 to all saving throws. Occipitus is subtly watching out for you.

-- +1 to all attack rolls.

-- +1 caster level for all spells and spell-like abilities.

-- Evil spells affect you as if you were evil, not good. Thus, an Unholy Blight won't hurt you.

-- Lie in State: If you die, after 1 minute your body disappears and reappears dead but intact in the Skull's eye socket in Occipitus.

-- Appearance: Your right eye is replaced with a magical flame that gives no heat and does not burn the surrounding flesh. When your eye is open, it gives illumination as a candle. Your vision is unaffected -- you can see through the eye normally. The eye also gives off wisps of bitter smoke, which will make you easier to track by scent.

When you are in Occipitus:

-- Call Plasms: once per hour, you can call 1d3 plasms (see below). You can control them as a move-equivalent action. Note that if you are not in the Skull, it will take 10 rounds for the plasms to descend from the sky.

-- Terror of the Smoking Eye: You have +8 to Bluff or Intimidate any chaotic or evil inhabitant of Occipitus. The creature must see that you bear the Sign.

-- Planar Awareness: You are instantly aware of major events on the plane. Major events would include (for example) a balor Planeshifting onto the plane, a party of high level adventurers destroying the Cathedral of Feathers, or someone casting a Wish or Miracle spell.

-- Spell resistance equal to 10 + 1/2 your level + your Cha modifier.

-- Damage resistance 5/Good.

-- You may be able to command the surviving servants of Adimarchus (such as the Mummy Lord proctors), if you can find them.

When you are in the Skull:

-- Vision of the Smoking Eye: you can see and hear anywhere in Occipitus, like Clairvoyance/Clairaudience with unlimited range and duration. You can move your vision to anyplace in the plane. If you designate a location (i.e., the Cathedral of Feathers) you see and hear everything and everyone there, no saving throw. If you designate a creature, ("I want to see the fallen angel Saureya"), then the creature gets a Will save, DC 10 + 1/2 your level + your Cha modifier.

-- Voice of the Smoking Eye: you can communicate telepathically with any creature on Occipitus that you are aware of. The creature may choose whether to respond.

-- Call of the Smoking Eye: you can call any inhabitant of Occipitus to you. "Inhabitant" is defined as any creature on the plane that has spent at least a week on the plane. Unwilling creatures get a Will save. You do not control the creature, and called creatures may not have a friendly attitude.

-- Planar Step: From the Skull, you can Teleport without error to anywhere in Occipitus, or Planeshift to anywhere in the multiverse. These abilities are one-way, and do not help you return to the Skull.

-- Immortality: While in the Skull, you do not age.

-- Morphic potential: You have the potential to change the landscape and nature of Occipitus. This power will increase if you are more powerful (higher level).

-- Once per year, you can cast a Wish. There is no xp cost; Occipitus itself grants you this power.

Plasms: plasms are mindless creatures of flame and evil. Treat them as Large (20' x 10') constructs. They have a fly speed of 30' (perfect), always moving on initiative 0. They don't attack, but simply move into squares like a swarm. Plasms inflict 8d6 of flame damage and 8d6 of evil damage every round. They can be destroyed by doing either 30 points of cold damage or 30 points of Holy damage. If left uncontrolled, a plasm will move towards any living thing within 120 feet. If there is no living thing within range, the plasm will rise back into Occipitus' sky.

The Smoking Eye template is a cool idea, but in practice it's not so fantastic. +1 to saves and attacks, nice... but then you have one eye replaced by a flame (which has /got/ to affect people's reactions to you), and then there's the "lie in state" effect. Better be quick with that Raise Dead, cleric!

It's not that it's bad -- it isn't -- it's just that it's not very... dramatic.

So I came up with a variant. The idea here was to tempt the PC to stay and (try to) rule Occipitus. So the variant is identical to the official template, except that it gives a bunch of powerful abilities to you... /if/ you stay in Occipitus and, especially, the Skull. IOW, take up Adimarchus' crown in full and not just in name.

Waldo

Or have the PCs rescue /one/ of the youths, but be forced to watch as the bugbear flees with the other. "My brother! Nooooo!"

Nothing like a job half-finished to pique PC interest IME.

Waldo

Well, that was interesting.

The lich killed the fire giant with a Harm spell. So, no hope there. In the course of that battle, the lich summoned an acheirai, which drove one NPC cohort insane for three hours. The party slapped manacles on the cohort and proceeded. That made two prisoners... they still had the halfling rogue (the one I added to the rakshasa encounter) tied up and hanging off the dwarf's back.

So the party goes to the eye chamber, and I have Kaurophon go invisible, in the context of "anyone buffing"? This slips past the PCs; great. In a couple of rounds he upgrades this to Improved Invisibility, silently cast (I gave him Silent Spell as his 12th level feat). So far so good, and Kaurophon starts Silently casting all his buffs.

To my amazement, as soon as the mummy announces the test, the cleric PC tries to throw himself into the fire! The other PCs restrain him, but the dwarf announces that "if he doesn't, I will!" Daaamn... guess those subtle clues I planted weren't as subtle as I thought!

So, distraction time: the invisible, flying rakshasa, who has been waiting here for hours, swoops down, grabs the helpless bound halfling, and prepares to sacrifice him. A round of mayhem, as PCs attack unsuccessfully -- the rak's spell resistance and DR are too high.

Then, the chaotic good barbarian's player announces that he's changing alignment! His character grabs the manacled cohort and flings him in! Occipitus shakes as the barbarian gets the Sign. A moment later the rak throws the halfing in and joins him in joint rulership.

Their reign is brief. The party cuts loose on their treacherous comrade with everything, while Kaurophon attacks the rakshasa with alternating Disintegrates and Cones of Cold. Three rounds later, the barbarian is dead, and Kaurophon has gotten lucky with a CoC and dropped the rak frozen to the chamber floor.

Then Kaurophon starts going after the halfling PC cleric with Telekinesis, to grab him and throw him in. Several more rounds of wackiness ensue; it's a Will save to resist TK used that way, so the cleric only needed a 4 or so, but every round was wild suspense as the PCs frantically tried to find the invisible enemy.

Kaurophon finally cut loose with another Cone, which dropped another PC to negative points. NOW the human cleric, in desperation, threw himself into the fire. Yes! Smoking Eye PC.

But it still looked like they were going to get toasted, as an angry Kaurophon was about to finish them off. Two PCs and the surviving NPC Planeshifted away, leaving the Smoking Eye PC to face Kaurophon alone.

At the end I bent the scenario rules, because the PC came up with something clever.

"I'm ruler of Occipitus now?"

"Yes, but like I said, you're not powerful enough to do much with it. The template just gives you some minor bonuses."

"Well, what about servants? Did Adimarchus have any? Might they obey me?"

"Um... yes, they might, but most died in the final battle. And the rest were chaotic evil, so now they're scattered all over the place. You could give orders to one of them, and maybe it would obey, but you'd have to find one first."

"Oh, that's easy." [in game] "Hey! Mummy! Kill that guy for me!"

I allowed it on an opposed Cha check... which the player won!

So, the mummy lord fought Kaurophon to a standstill, and he Planeshifted away screaming in rage and swearing revenge.

Now the PC cleric is set to become an NPC; he'll try to rule Occipitus with the help of Saureya and occasional Planar Allies. The two surviving PCs planeshifted 165 miles away from where they wanted to be, which puts them 50 miles inside the boundaries of my world's big lawful evil empire.

So, it didn't work out as planned -- but the planning helped nonetheless; studying the situation, and the NPC's abilities, in advance let me respond a lot better.

And a fun time was had by all, which is what matters.

Waldo

A little background.

The Rakshasa/fire giant encounter also seemed too weak. So I gave both monsters another level, and added a halfling rog 11 to their party.

Sure enough: the giant got Charm Monster'd on the second round, the rakshasa got nailed with a lucky Flame Strike that got past his spell resistance and took half his hp, and the halfling got grabbed with a Telekinesis. The rakshasa ran, the giant surrendered, and they've been carrying around the wrapped-up halfling ever since.

-- BTW, it's too late now for the hardcover, but: the tactical suggestion about the fire giant using Sunder? Does Not Work. That's because you can't Sunder magical weapons unless you're striking with an equally powerful magic weapon. (Confusingly, this rule is in the DMG, not in the Sunder description.) Since the giant only has a plain greatsword, he's just going to waste attacks against a typical 10th-11th level fighter. Dan Noonan is a brilliant writer, but that single rules slip helped to seriously nerf that encounter for my PCs.

Anyway. So now the party is travelling with the halfling (identified as Chaotic Evil) tied up and chained in the dwarf's backpack, and the fire giant (identified as Lawful Evil) on parole -- he's sworn to work with them in return for a trip home. Meanwhile the rakshasa, invisible, has flitted ahead and is now waiting for them at the plasm geyser.

So I'm going to try this. First the giant will go mad and try bull rushing PCs into the geyser. He's not that tough, so they'll probably take him down. Then the rak will appear, lift the halfling out of the dwarf's backpack (the halfling was part of his party = ally) and try flinging him in.

I'm hoping the confusion will provide sufficient cover for Kaurophon to make his move.

Further complication: I want to give Kaurophon a suitable Bad Guy soliloquy. So he needs to be invisible and Dimension Dooring around for a round or two.

Fingers crossed.

Waldo

I have a party of 5 PCs plus Kaurophon about to face the final encounter in TotSE. And I'm racking my brains trying to think of a way to make this interesting.

The problem: Kaurophon is too wussy. I gave him an extra level, to 12th (so he can now cast Disintegrate 3x/day) but it's still hard to see how he can seriously challenge a well-played 10th-11th level party.

Greater Invisibility? The party clerics always have _True Sight_ ready, and the arcane spellcaster has _glitterdust_. Also, the party barbarian has +12 Listen.

Buffs? The party is well stocked with _dispel magics_.

Combat? It is to laugh. Kaurophon has 75 hp and AC 20. The party tanks will take him down in a round or two. He can't fly, so he can't easily avoid them.

Cone of Cold? 15d6 is nice, but it's only average 52 points of damage. Only two party members have fewer hp than that, and one of them is the rogue.

If Kaurophon buffs up too much in advance -- like, Greater Invisibility -- the rest of the party will be on their guard. If he doesn't, then he gets a surprise round. Then he casts either Cone of Cold or Disintegrate, maybe kills one PC, and then the party swarms him and kills him.

He's got two things going for him: his Disintegrates and the scroll of Mass Suggestion. The Disintegrates don't really make it an interesting fight, though... they just kill PCs with weak Fort saves. Both the party tanks, with 12+ Fort saves and 100+ HP, will laugh at Disintegrate.

The Mass suggestions... the three spellcasters have good-to-great Will saves. The fighters, not; but Suggestion doesn't let Kaurophon just take them over.

I'm choking a little here. Any ideas?

thanks in advance,

Waldo

Hey Kyle,

I love Downer. Didn't care for it so much at first, but it totally grew on me. Now it's definitely one of the things I buy the magazine for.

Back when you had a site (ahem) there were a dozen or so Downer strips there. Being able to read them all at once helped a lot.

I *like* your artwork. Like it in it's own right, and also think it's a great fit for the story. Go you.

-- Mind, I wish someday some artist would explain to me WTF about Moebius. He seems like a Velvet Underground kind of figure ("only 500 people bought the first VU album, but 400 of them immediately started bands of their own"). You love him, Mark Crilley loves him, Espinosa loves him... more artists that I like utterly adore him, but I just don't see why. "Hit Man" is a great comic story? WTF?

But anyway: Downer rocks. Notice how many of the comments seem to fall into the category of "waah, Downer is /hard/, I don't /get/ it". Pfah. Now part of this is your part for trying to tell a complicated multipart story in two pages per month. But kudos to you for trying, and anyhow this has gotten much better since Downer went off on a relatively linear quest adventure.

The rest is people who seem to have been weaned on manga, the later Cerebus phone books, and those John Byrne Fantastic Fours where the FF would take an entire issue to get in the Fantasticar and go off and fight the bad guy. You know... /decompressed/.

Downer is more hypercompressed: something happening in every panel, big changes between panels, you have to pay attention and occasionally engage with the material. I enjoy this a lot. Not everyone does... but many of your critics seem to be the same sorts of people who were saying, waah, Grant Morrison is /hard/, I don't understand, I want the old Justice League back!

So, go Downer. (But get the damn website up, please. It's bush to have no website.)

thx,

Waldo

I agree that rangers and druids are slightly suboptimal, but I don't see it as a huge problem. With a pretty modest amount of work, you can add some between-adventure outdoor encounters, or tweak some of the adventures to be a bit more outdoors-y.

The paladin's mount is a problem in *most* campaigns IME. I view it as a leftover from 1st edition that never got fixed. In fact, IMO of all the 3e core classes, the paladin is crying out most loudly for a makeover. (With the sorceror in second place, but that's another story.)

I mean, with a very little help from the DM, you definitely /could/ play a druid or ranger. Suboptimal but not grossly so.

3/4 of the AP is dungeon crawls... well, dungeon crawls are still the most popular sort of adventure. Yes, I'd have been happier too if they'd thrown in more variety. Still, you can't complain that the dungeons are too alike -- no shortage of creativity, here!

Overall I gave the Dungeon AP a B+ (based on the four chapters I have in hand), and from what I hear of the hardcover, that'll probably rise to an A-. Nothing's perfect, but this is quite good.

Waldo

In the HC there is no mention of him not being alone. They are simply transported at that point and a message is delivered. The EL remains at 15 because it is a Mummy Lord (CR 15).

Ah, right. [Thumps head] My bad.

Okay, well, has anyone had a chance to read and compare the HC chapter on TotSE? It's no big deal, but I am curious. That adventure has a lot of room for expansion, and I was wondering if the warped mind of David Noonan had come up with anything else.

Oh, and! One other question. The Nexus of Evil in the skull (the lich encounter, where he keeps summoning things)... is the Nexus itself 5' across, or 10' across? The text doesn't say, and map of the skull is a little unclear: the scale is 15' per square for some reason, and the nexus is just a little black blotch.

Eyeballing, it looks about 10', which seems reasonable; it means the lich can be attacked in melee without entering the flames, but can't be flanked (and can often avoid full attacks with a 5' step).

(Hm. If you wanted to make this encounter even tougher, expanding the nexus to 15' would do nicely. No melee attacks unless you have a reach weapon, or are willing to eat 2d4 negative levels. Ouch.)

Waldo

Hi everyone,

I'm running TotSE right now, out of the original Dungeon magazine. (That was a great issue... it had another excellent adventure, "Mellorn Hospitality". And Evard too!)

Couple of questions.

1) There's an obvious cut in the Dungeon version. After the PCs get through the Plain of Cysts, they get teleported to the second mummy. The text for this says something like, "It's another mummy. And this time, he's not alone..." But when you read the rest of the description, he /is/ alone... all that happens is, he pats them on the back and sends them to the Skull.

Furthermore, the EL for this encounter is given as EL *15*, which is too high for the mummy.

It looks as if the author originally put something else there, but it got cut. (We know a lot of stuff was cut from the Dungeon versions for space reasons.) Does anyone know what was originally here?

2) Are there any major changes to TotSE in the hardcover? Just curious...

thanks in advance,

Waldo