Just finished this book, thought I'd share my thoughts:
Miaknian Mun's lab, I ran mostly as-is. It was pretty much a cakewalk, though that might have been more due to my PCs using better tactics than their usual. (It's a party of 6, but pretty unoptimized and disorganized, so I mostly run the books as-is.) The main change I made were having the only hostile hollow one be the one in the skin-room with Twain, since she needed a flank-buddy and fighting a single rogue-type monster is not particularly interesting. The dark young successfully creeped out the party by staying hidden and using SLAs, though once it revealed itself it got smacked down pretty easy.
The Mysterium is where I made the most changes. Most important was putting the building under a sort-of dimensional lock. Each level was isolated, preventing scrying and teleportion magic in and out, but not stopping such effects within the levels themselves. I mostly didn't give it a proper dimensional lock just so that the hounds of tindalos could do their thing. Everyone assumed that Lowls would be trapped in the soul by this effect.
I also made the Mysterium stewards very worried about their reputation since they aren't doing so well financially, and a scandal could destroy the organization. This is why Thyrr was willing to trust a bunch of random adventurers, rather than finding more official help. Thyrr asked each PC in turn to swear on what they hold most dear that they would: a) not reveal what they learned about the mysterium for a year and a day, b) place funeral shrouds enchanted to provide gentle repose on each slain steward they find, and c) not loot the library wholesale, though they had permission to take anything that might be useful.
Other than that, the main change was making some mysterium denizens more talkative. Mun in particular was pretty easy to talk down, and quite cooperative once rescued. He was also clearly unstable, and had alchemically smoked and preserved the corpse of another mysterium guest for food. Still, he was harmless-seeming enough that the party didn't make any attempt to restrain him, and he actually slipped away once the wards were removed.
The soulbound shells got a change, too. Since they're supposed to house fully sentient spirits of former mysterium elders, it didn't make much sense for them to suicide against the party one at a time whenever they messed up a puzzle box. Instead, they were aware that something was horribly wrong in the soul, and wanted to make sure that whoever opened the door was capable enough to deal with it. Being Nethysians, that meant the pcs would either have to prove their knowledge or their power. Meaning on the first failed check, they would use one spell against the party, (cloudkill). The second failed check, two of them would cast spells (dominate person and black tentacles.) The third failure would be three spells (three disintegrates at different targets) and then three spells for any further failures. When a PC complained this was just weakening them for the upcoming fight, they snapped back "If a simple cloudkill weakens you so bad, then you have no business opening that seal!"
The Keeper himself had a whole speech prepared, and one that I was pretty proud of. The PCs entered the soul to find him absentmindedly hacking at his arm with his flaming sword, then using his SLA to heal the wound. While they considered jumping him while he was distracted, he looked up and addressed them.
Spoiler:
"Nine hundred seventy four years and 6 months. That's how long I've stood in this room, watching mortals tamper with knowledge they'd be better off without. Time passes no faster for my kind than it does for yours, but for all those years, I was content. I knew that when the time came, I would be here to destroy these books, destroy that book before it could do real harm. I knew what that fool count was planning the moment I laid eyes on him, and I knew what he meant to do when he slinked back into the Soul alone. So I used my powers to blank out the necronomicon, but it did nothing! I brought up the wards, and he portalled out as if they were nothing!
Nine hundred seventy four years of waiting, just to fail. And now your world is doomed."
When the party mentions something about going after Lowls, he nods solemnly. "Yes, perhaps it is not to late. I saw where the portal led: Okeno, the slaver's city. But first...this place and everyone in it is tainted by the Blot. Everyone here must be purged. The stewards outside, as well. Maybe...maybe the whole neighborhood to be safe. Then I will go after Lowls, and stop any further spread of corruption."
"You have my gratitude for releasing me, and my apologies for how shamefully inadequate your reward must be. But you must die, for the safety of the world. Please do not resist."
Okeno was mostly as written. For the Hyena princess, I used the stats of the First Advisor from the Villians codex, giving her some magical defenses, divinations, and an escape spell to deal with shenanigans. I also restatted Biting Lash and her minions, filling the fort with guns, and making Kisetz more focused on her death attack and hide in plain sight ability. It still wasn't a very secure fort for dealing with high level PCs, but at least they couldn't just fly out of reach and rain death with impunity. Biting lash even killed an overconfident PC with her fancy pepperbox rifle.
Just about to start Book four. I really like the atmosphere and such, this is one of the books I was most looking forward to when I checked out the AP (the others being In Search of Sanity and Dreams of the Yellow King), though I'm going to have to change more than a few encounters to make them not be uninteresting pushovers for my very unoptimized party of six.
The Snarl in particular feels like it needs changes. As is, the party is probably going to miss half the encounters there, simply because they'll reach the Star Stelae, do what they came to do, then leave. I suppose I could just make a point of the ritual attracting the locals whenever they perform it, giving them more motivation to secure the area before attuning the stela.
The Saffron Prince is going to become an advanced glabrezu, which is a shame because that means I can't use his cool portrait. But doing so makes him a slightly more interesting fight, and also gives the players an actual reason to go along with his absurd demands: He has a wish to grant, after all.
I'm tempted to have all three main outsiders team up against the party during their sudden yet inevitable betrayal. (assuming Eshimal doesn't get what he wants otherwise, which I'd say is 50/50) It might be a bit too hard, but together they make a decent team, with Saffron as a frontline goon, Aeptilinu spamming psychic crush, and Eshimal playing support with summons, darkness, etc. I'd probably just play them as baseline versions of their creature types in that case.
Weiralai and Kakishari both need rebuilds, and are going to be working as a team. (I'm thinking Warpriest and Antipaladin respectively, with maybe some seeded cannon fodder) Weiralai has shown up a few times in my campaign, and I think she's a bit too interesting to waste trying to solo the party with a bad melee cleric build.
I'm somewhat worried about them skipping over most of the wasteland encounters. They've been using shadow walk to fast-travel, and will likely do something similar again. I'm mainly thinking of having the map directions be vague and unclear: "Head towards the face shaped mesa 5 miles away," "Follow the girtablilu trail markers for 10 miles," etc. This way the could still cut down on a lot of travel time if they spammed travel spells, but it gives me a few chances to fit in encounters with the giants, Amrivast, etc. How did other people deal with this? Did you just let them skip the wilderness stuff?
Having just finished Book four, and being about to move onto book 5, here's my thoughts:
1) I had the Mad Prophet tell the PCs most of the info on Xhamen-Dor, particularly the way his mind-virus spreads. He made a big point of mentioning that he was dooming them with this information.
Kaklatath would likely know even more, particularly that XD is essentially a bioweapon used by Hastur to consume worlds, though she's not going to be too familiar with the current specifics of the infection (which is mentioned to have evolved over the years.
2) I think the idea is that the PCs became infested when they first heard the name Xhamen-Dor, though by the book it seems like that knowledge only gives you a 1% per year chance of becoming seeded.
3) Yeah, Kaklatath is a pretty good source of backstory. Book five gives her a bunch of exposition to exposit when the party finds the necronomicon, but I don't really see why she wouldn't share most of it when first meeting the PCs.
@Ekaj: I didn't go through with the whole Jinmenju fight, though I did have it use it's mind control powers to try and force the party to eat it's head-fruits. When the party started to get hostile towards the tree, the Mad Poet came out of his hut with an irritable "Don't mess with my tree."
Aside from the "being compelled to eat poison" stuff, the fight doesn't seem that interesting or dangerous, and there's a decent chance the party would make a point of healing their damage during the conversation.
As for the duplicates, they were decently challenging. The real party is definitely stronger, but dupes downed one of my PCs, and were only robbed of the killshot due to a quick response and a good roll. One way to give the nightmare clones an advantage is to let them walk on the surface of the pond, while the PC's wade through knee deep water.
Probably too late of a response to be useful, but I've got this fight coming up too. I'm planning on the nightmare clones to not just be their old memories, but their entire previous personalities trying to "take back" their bodies. The personalities are all the sort of people that the current PC's would hate, and all have a reason to chase Lowls. (for example, the rigidly LG monk is an arrogant thug who wants revenge, the self-centered oracle is a Hasturite fanatic who wants to take Lowls' place, etc.)
Anyone who dies in the fight winds up with multiple personality disorder as the two minds battle it out in the psyche. Once they've dealt with the madness, the memories will be fully integrated. I'm going give my players freedom as to how the two sets of memories wind up merging, though I assume they'll lean towards keeping the personality of the character they've been playing for the last few months.
I don't have the sheet with Captian Argrup, though he was a Fighter 1/Transmuter 5/Eldritch Knight 4 (I added a level because we have a 6 person party.) Built mostly as a greatsword fighter, plus combat casting. Buffs included heroism, Stoneskin, False life, mage armor, fly, and bull's strength (maybe one or two others). When the fight started, he opened with greater invisibility on the first round, haste for himself and his crew on the second, then attacked. He'd make full attacks or use vital strike to hit and move depending on how safe he felt.
Glower's sheet I still have. She's 1 level higher than in the book, due to me having 6 players, and like the default Glower, she has slightly better gear than WBL says (presumably to make up for the lack of loot elsewhere). She starts with heroism active, but doesn't cast any other spells before combat, for fear of giving away her position. She has the same militia trackers as default, who hold actions to interrupt spellcasters. In combat, she uses a swift action to change her bane if necessary, then hammers one target until they go down. If she doesn't need the swift action, she uses target of opportunity to take an extra attack when a militia tracker fires. She doesn't finish downed opponents, since a wounded enemy slows down the others (plus, she'd rather see them all face the guillotine).
Keep in mind, Glower will likely drop one PC per round if they let her keep shooting. A mid-level party should have plenty of ways to stop her from shooting them, and the boat is within sprinting distance (I had it about 100 ft away). But there's definite potential for things to go REAL bad.
Glower (Active Effects: Heroism, Judgements, Bane)
Inquisitor (Norgorber) 10
59 HP, Init +6, Move Speed 30 ft.
Str 14, Con 10, Dex 18, Int 12, Wis 14, Cha 8
AC 22, Touch 14, FF 18, Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +12
Feats: Point blank shot, Precise shot, Rapid shot, deadly aim, Toughness, manyshot, enfilading fire, target of opportunity
Important skills: Acrobatics +17, Stealth +17, Perception +15, Sense Motive +20
Special: Judgements (Justice + Destruction: +3 attack, +4 damage), Bane 10 rds (+2 attack, +2d6+2 damage), cunning initiative, Stern gaze, Solo tactics, Conversion Inquisition (1/ day swaying word, DC 17 Will save or dominated for 1 min/level).
Attacks: +1 Dispelling longbow, Deadly Aim: +17 (1d8+2d6+13)
Or full attack +17/+17/+12 (1d8+2d6+9, first attack hits twice.)
I'd probably just let them do it their way. The middle portion isn't a big part of the plot anyways, aside from providing backstory that can be mostly explained by talking to cultist NPCs. I'd be tempted to punish them a bit for leaving enemies at their rear, by having them run into an ambush or booby trap from the cultists or ratlings while backtracking through a "cleared" area. Preferably while beat up, out of spells, and looking forwards to a chance to rest.
After all, the rats are going to get hungry eventually, and the cultists aren't going to sit around in the records room forever.
Having nearly wrapped up book 3, I figured I'd share some thoughts I had, and changes I made. Other people's stories on this forum have been very helpful for my own planning, so I figure I might as well try to pay it forwards.
I'm running this campaign with six players, who are relatively un-optimized. A lot of the tougher fights I leave as is, though I occasionally increase the number of opponents, or add an extra level or advanced template if I feel a fight is going to be too easy. It's a pretty interesting balance: Two inflexible LG characters, (a monk and a paladin), two shady CN necromancers (an oracle and a wizard,) and two CG characters that try to smooth things over (a rogue and a barbarian.) So I get to see a full spectrum of character reactions to any situation.
-Starting off the adventure, it's probably a good idea to give your players less information about Lowl's activities than the book does by default. The players should know that he's headed to Cassomir, and that his final destination is Neruvazin, but should have a lot of obvious holes in their knowledge to encourage dream exploration. In my game, the rogue argued pretty persuasively that retracing Lowls' dreams was dangerous and unnecessary, and I basically had to flat-out tell them that the book would be pretty short if they didn't do them. They took it well, but I still wish I didn't have to railroad them like that.
-The ritual itself is pretty hard for a level seven party to pull off, and there's a few ways to make it easier that are easy to miss. First, the Pnakotic Manuscripts found in Melisenn's throne room, which give a +4 to knowledge checks related to conjuration. Both my players and I forgot about this for a few sessions, and it made a pretty big difference. I also let them convince the scholars to help, though it took some in-character persuasion, and they charged pretty exorbitant rates.
-The encounters on the Sellen river all work pretty well, adding local color to the countries the party sails by, and breaking up the routine of research and ritual. Fighting the Tribute Taker is good practice for the later fight against the Bloodwind, though a little boringly straightforwards. I re-statted the captain as an eldritch knight. He openly cast a bunch of buff spells on himself as he ship approached, including stoneskin and fly, and opened the fight with greater invisibility. As the melee characters boarded his ship to fight the crew, he flew over to the other ship to attack the spellcasters who held back.
-For the Hanspur-worshipping druids that ambush the ship, I gave them all crocodile companions, which started out casually sunning themselves near the wreck. This helped a bit with the druid's story of being trapped on the wreck, and also gave them another way to be discovered, since a perceptive player might notice that there's exactly as many crocodiles as there are "stranded sailors". During the fight, one of the druids managed to knock the party oracle overboard, leading to a tense moment as the crocs swarmed and grappled her until the barbarian dived in for the rescue.
-Glower was a lot of fun, after I changed her build to something other than a pile of steaming garbage. My version of glower was a dedicated archer inquisitor, and I introduced her as a somewhat reasonable hardass, who responded to finding proof of necromancy with "Fortunately for you, I am NOT the town guard. All I care about is traitors." Later, the path to the senator's hideout took them through a rocky pass, and on the way back to their ship Glower started sniping at them. From concealment, 250 ft away across a steep, rocky hill (I.E. Difficult terrain.) After a warning shot, she called out from her concealed position, offering the party amnesty and a 5000 gp reward if they turned over the senator in the next 5 seconds. The party eventually broke line of sight with a darkness spell and escaped with relatively few injuries, only for Glower to race ahead of them on horseback, and start firing on the ship from a cliffside a few hours later. After the party escaped AGAIN, hitting her with a stinking cloud and sailing off, she drank her potion of fly and kept chasing them. Since she couldn't full attack while flying, her absurd ranged damage dropped to something more manageable, and the party dropped her with their own ranged attacks.
-The whole Glower situation was made even more complicated by the fact that the Senator WAS technically a traitor in my game. He'd been colluding with the Taldor government, on the logic that their influence might be able to bring some much needed stability to Galt. Not that he mentioned that willingly, but my party is pretty liberal with Zone of Truth spells these days. Some members of the party felt a bit conflicted about killing what could be considered a cop who was after a legitimate criminal.
-As for the dreams themselves, they're obviously the highlight of the book. The Caravanserai is a good introduction to the danger of the Dreamworld, and the Yellow King himself is a good intro to the Dreamworld's strangeness. As has been mentioned in this thread, the shopkeeper and the ooze are both absolute beasts. I lowered the danger somewhat by making it so the shopkeeper couldn't affect anyone outside the shop itself (and hinting heavily about that fact), and by ruling that the oozes damage reduction didn't apply to attacks from people it had swallowed, letting the barbarian tear it apart from the inside. Between that advantage and the penalties it took from squeezing into the hallway, the party was able to win without any fatalities. Still, it was a couple of absolutely brutal fights, and was particularly demoralizing to the party rogue, who couldn't sneak attack either of them.
-The first dream-quest the party went on was the Hag Ambassador. I was a little worried about the party just IMMEDIATELY attacking, which turned out to be well-founded. The party's plan going in was basically "find out if she has her hearthstone on her, then ambush her." After all, she's a soul-stealing monster, why play nice? So I gave her two ogre mage bodyguards, meaning the fight would be very difficult, but not impossible with a good ambush. If they caught the assassin as ordered, I'd have one oni leave to haul her off to jail while the party talked to the ambassador. Making a deal with the assassin, which they suggested even before the assassin did, they were able to have the assassin distract both guards while they lured the ambassador to the back room and murdered her.
-Next up, the Viscount's Ring. This one didn't need many changes, other than giving Arvin a specific rival with a specific scam for the party to pull off. In this case, a paunchy used-car-salesman type with a shipment of "Juggling Geese" to unload. (The latest fad!)
-The Enchanted Wood was the first quest to "kill" a party member. Instead of charging into melee, the Tikbalang was perfectly happy to sit in the trees 40 ft up and hurl quills down at the party. The party reacted in a bunch of different ways: The wizard took cover and started firing back, the monk used his 10-ft vertical leap to jump from branch to branch, the barbarian found a long route without much climbing, etc. The Oracle, having just gained the ability to fly, flew up ahead of everyone else and attacked. A few bad rolls later, the monk caught up just in time to watch her broken body tumble to the forest floor below. She woke up deathly afraid of heights. The rest of the adventure went smoothly. I decided Nestor was a dreamer like the PCs, though his quarry had passed into the dream world for real.
-The Ghoul Royalty dream was likewise straightforwards. I made the gug a savant, turning invisible when it heard the party coming and using transmute rock to mud to slow everyone down, but the fight still went surprisingly smoothly, considering how hard gugs hit. The ghouls went down even easier, due to the party necromancers. Incidentally, a gug skeleton is just within the ability of a lvl 8 oracle to animate, and hits almost as hard as a living gug.
-For the Captain's Tricorne, I replaced Vadrack with Weirelai as the captain, since she has a personal connection with the party, and plays a role in later events. Also, the party caught the Bloodwind by surprise, basically cornering them in a bay and forcing the fight. This played out almost identically to the fight with the Tribute Taker: The melee fighters boarded the enemy ship while the wizard softened them up with a stinking cloud. Meanwhile the captain (invisible) and the wraith (moving through the hull belowdecks) snuck over to attack the casters. While she fought, Weirelai berated the party. "What's even to point of this? Neither of us can die here!" When the Oracle ordered her undead gug to grab the tricorn, Weirelai smiled. "Oh, you want my hat?" She asked, moving to cut it in half. This provoked and AoO from the gug, which followed orders, grabbing the hat and holding it out of reach. The mercenaries are very sturdy for cannon fodder, and all survived to see their boss killed, though three of them had been fully disarmed by the monk, (which was no small achievement, since they entered the fight with 5 weapons each.)
-The Last Night of Sarnath was predictably intense. After some initial partying, with the party pretty much immediately breaking up to socialize and enjoy themselves, the Ib shades showed up. They did a surprising amount of damage before being put down, as did the will'o'wisps. The paladin was their main target, and went down before Bokrug even showed up. As Bokrug advanced, I had more and more weather effects hit the city and the party: First a wave of water, knocking loose the stairs behind them, then lightning strikes across the city, one of which hit a party member, then massive hailstones, doing minor damage to everyone and turning the ground to difficult terrain. After that is was another wave, threating to wash them over the edge of the wall (the paladin, who nobody bothered to revive, fell to his death 40 ft below and woke up paranoid), then even more lightning. Then, Bokrug was at the wall. By then, most of the party had woken up, with only the wizard and the barbarian left. Horrid withering killed the wizard, but the Barbarian survived long enough to futilely swing an axe at the great old one for bragging rights. She'll regret that.
Alternatively, have some of the denizens of area C start making trouble, to encourage the players to clear it out. Ratch and the Ratlings could attack the shelter while the PCs were away, or attack the PCs while they walk past the library, then scamper away.
I personally love command. It's limited to enemies that understand you, but otherwise it's a pretty versatile control spell. Some favorite uses are commanding an enemy to approach while it's fighting one of your allies so that it provokes AoO's from both your buddy and you (with your longspear), or readying an action to make a charging enemy fall on it's face right before it reaches you.
Murderous command is a less versatile, but often funnier version, that doesn't require you to speak your enemy's language.
And of course, spells like protection from evil and shield of faith are always useful. Who doesn't like extra AC?
If you're summoning (mostly just useful for a flank at low levels, and the short duration hurts), I'd suggest SM1 over SMM. Tiny animals have no reach, so they can't flank and they provoke AoO's when they attack. An eagle can actually do noticeable (if unspectacular) damage on a full attack.
Name: Bitey the Goblin
Race: Goblin
Classes/levels: Magus 5 (I think)
Adventure: Trial of the Beast
Location: The Karb Isle Sanctuary
Catalyst: Swarmed by Ghasts.
The Gory Details:
Spoiler:
Bitey, somewhat overconfident in his high AC and damage, volunteered to be first into the hole leading to the cellar of the wrecked hospital. Following a poor perception check, initiative and Fort save, he found himself paralyzed without ever taking a turn. Still somewhat leery of risks after losing three members by sticking around in a losing fight, the party simply huddled around the entrance without venturing in to risk their own hides (though Tanji sacrificed yet another bear in an attempt to help) and watched as the ravenous undead tore out their companion's throat.
Name: Bitey the Goblin
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Magus 6
Adventure: Trial of the Beast
Location: Judge Daramid's living room.
Catalyst: Vorkstag's revenge.
The Gory Details:
Spoiler:
The party was in town restocking on supplies before venturing back into the Scloss when an urchin handed them a note informing them that the Judge wanted to see them. After being let into Daramid's home by the maid and introduced to a waiting paladin, they set about drinking tea and making small talk while waiting for the Judge to arrive. Of course, the tea was full of lich dust, the paladin was an antipaladin of the whispering way, and Vorkstag had stolen the maid's skin after failing to kill Judge Daramid. The pair of assassins, due to some AMAZINGLY one-sided dice rolls, managed to kill Bitey before he could take his turn (again) and made their escape with his corpse.
And, just for fun:
Name: Bear, Bear-bear, Bear-bear-bear, Bear-bear-bear-bear, Bear-bear-bear-bear-bear, and Tiger.
Race: Bears and Tigers
Classes: Animal Companions
Catalysts: Gurtis Vorch, The Splatter Man, Ghasts, Trolls, falling off a bridge, and the Aberrant Promethean.
The Gory Details: Tanji Thanadora; a sociopathic Dwarven druid, does not take good care of her pets.
After enjoying reading through everyone else's deaths, I figure it's time to add some from my own campaign.
Name: Fridjwilma
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Ranger2/ Rogue 1
Adventure: Haunting of Harrowstone
Location: The Nevermore
Catalyst: Bad Luck
Name: Nilrem the Well Endowed
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Sorcerer 3
Adventure: Haunting of Harrowstone
Location: The Nevermore
Catalyst: Bad Timing
Name: Sir George
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Paladin 3
Adventure: The Haunting of Harrowstone
Location: The Nevermore
Catalyst: Bad Choices
The Gory Details:
Spoiler:
The party, consisting of the three deceased and the dwarven druid Tanji (The fifth member of the party, a cleric of Pharasma, couldn't make it that day) had cleared out the top two levels of Harrowstone, and were on track to finish off the dungeon. Fridjwilma, an archer, had made the unfortunate mistake in using the Lopper's axe as a backup weapon, and found the axe perpetually winding up in her hands whenever she tried to draw her bow (and during conversation with the locals, and of course while she slept, as it made it's nightly attempts to slit her throat.) Instead of trying to banish the lopper immediately and remove the curse, the party decided to clear out the "trash" first before facing the larger threats.
They banished the Marauder, found the Warden's corpse, and dealt with the ooze lurking in the secret passage. Despite being low on resources, they decided to only heal some of their damage before heading on. Into the Nevermore, which they mistook for the Oubliette. They took more damage from the collapsing wall before the Splatter Man appeared, summoning monsters and spraying magic missiles everywhere.
Nilrim started firing magic missiles back, doing reasonable damage, while George set about slowly making his way through the rubble with the apparent intent of using his lay on hands offensively. Tanji and Fridj, meanwhile, noticing the dead wizard's reluctance to fire at the holder of his spellbook, spent a baffling amount of time tossing it back and forth and flipping through the pages pointlessly before finally ramming a spear through it.
Nilrim went down first, the victim of a swarm of summons and his own atrocious AC. He was followed by George, who never came close to reaching his opponent, Fridj, who who died without ever having a chance to fire her ghost touch arrows, and the second of what would be Tanji's many dead animal companions. It was only at that point that Tanji considered retreat, fleeing back through the secret tunnel and towards town.
It was a surprising near TPK, as a party that had been pretty smart through the rest of the adventure (and hadn't been afraid to run away from bad situations before,) just broke down in a complicated situation.
