carborundum's page

Much thread necromancy later...

My players just had their Grigori encounter and were initially flabbergasted by an encounter they couldn't just stab and burn into submission.

After a good ten minutes of verbal drubbing they started to give as good as they got, and the old debating tricks surfaced. Once they'd got him on the back foot (and won some rolls) they arrested him, got some info then banished him minus his gear (court costs) and his right hand.

I think he'll be back, but whether as bad guy or art exhibit - I'm not sure. Tartuk has also escaped, so there's always a possibilty of a League of Super Villains :-D

Thanks folks, then I'll just use it as a one-shot variant bag of tricks. It'll die in a round but the first look on their faces will be worth it :)

Hi folks,
Back dm-ing PF1 after a long break and boy have I forgotten a lot.

I'd like an npc to have a cockatrice in their pocket à la bag of tricks and throw this at the party to distract them. I thought there was a spell that did this but all I can think of is shrink item. I want it to be an item and not have my bad guy be, say, a summoner.

Am I missing something obvious?

Cheers!

Thank you for that, kadance! I started at the start and it was dead link after dead link. I'd almost lost hope - thanks for leaving it online and many thanks to dark_scarab for the original work!

Never heard back from customer service, April has almost gone and we're looking at September. I've started running it in PF1e and don't know if I want this any more anyway.
My players were all going to buy 2e for this, too. We're rather disappointed, but there were so many great ideas in the forum for 1e that it started off great!

Latest update is HERE and according to a reply to a previous update the target is April '22.

I just discovered I never got round to completing my pledge and it's closed now. Mailed CustServ. Fingers crossed - we're due to finish a campaign in the Spring so this would be awesome.

Other question - my party made Vetra-Kali swear that he would "serve Asmodeus faithfully for the next 666 weeks".

What to do with that encounter...? VK's replacement/ heir?

Question for those of you who've been here already. My party is currently fighting the statues at the front of Nythoggyr's Cairn. (Their usual plan of infiltration is "Frontal Assault")

On their arrival they fought a pile of Earth Elementals, and halfway through this fight two party members decided to fly past the statues (no idea why) and woke them up too. They've almost finished the battle now, and I'm wondering what the rest of the Cairn will be doing.

Would other opponents be moving to the entrance to pick off survivors? What about Nythoggyr himself - he'll have heard the battle and be preparing for combat - but would he fly to the entrance? Out the roof and round to the front door?

Would the pudding be sliming its way to the tunnel, maybe the banshees too?

The vampire in my 3.5 party is a Hexblade with 2 levels in Rogue - so Cha boosts his curse and saves to ridiculous levels. Combined with the Mettle ability he's almost impossible to nail with any attack that allows a save.

@carborundum

So how did your players do against Eiramanthus?

Many months later - time for a quick summary!

Let's see, they got rid of Setia then banished Shakti with a dispel good! Blew through the SR and she fluffed the save. Caused some strife as that spell is now called "dispel loot" :-)

A few people thought Chargammon's price was also killing all the consorts and were now worried they'd failed. The rest figured he'd be more than happy with the death of the chirpy do-gooder Eiramanthus. Off to the garden, which was beautiful... and held a treant chatting to a some sort of dryad.

The casters dropped a cloudkill on them, and some sort of icy mist that killed lots of flowers, cute little fairies and grass, while the rogue/ bomber firebombed the biggest tree. Some undead went to chop at the other trees near the entrance - basically "let's see how riled we can make the treefolk."

Imagine their surprise when the treant turned out to be a very pissed off dragon. He caught a few in a reverse gravity and closed to administer punishment, while Sakura shot the monk with a finger of death before disappearing. No sense wasting time. Unfortunately she immediately got tagged with a glitterdust from a lucky guess, so that was annoying.

She spent some time chasing the cleric but with sheltered vitality and stone body her aging trick did nothing. Eiramanthus tagged some udead withhis breath, but the party members all saved, and the ones he targeted all had evasion... bummer. The cleric dropped a wave of green slime on Sakura's tree, and then the vampire and monk professionally dismantled her, twig by twig.

Eiramanthus pulled out his last resort - antimagic field - and got a few good hits in before being critted from behind by Helbrand, followed by a critical sneak attack in the front. That was that.

A few rounds later the gargoyles arrived but they didn't last long either. The party solved the riddle, entered the tower, opened the chess board and had fun with the hoard. After that it was be polite to the browsing stranger, get healed by the harm trap and chat with Dessiter before heading off to murder the King. And Brigit. And lots of knights.

They've just landed on Chargammon's island and met some knights. They weren't happy to see them, and spent an infernal crevasse and a blasphemy to clear them up. I need a few ideas, so I'll post in Book 5 :-)

Me too, popped by just to look

With a heavy heart, and very heavy shelves (150+ adventures, 30-odd hardbacks and another 200+ campaign settings and modules) I am resigned to the fact that I will never play a tenth of what I have. I love being a charter subscriber, but no-one in my group can invest in another system in the foreseeable future. The virus has devastated our own incomes, so I'm afraid I must cancel my AP subscription.
I'll buy pdfs when I can, postage to Europe is not getting any cheaper either.

Thank you for all the wonderful products, from Shackled City onwards!

Ouch!

They've not got an actual teleporting wizard, just a (3.5) dread necromancer, so travel is always an issue. Via their organisation they've arranged for an unscrupulous Cap'n and his crew to ship them and a pile of undead to the dragon isle. Lured with money then terrorized not to change their mind, basically. A bit handwavy but I wanted to get to the island - we only play for a few hours every two weeks.

So, they encountered Setia and her elemental chum at sea, killed it and scared her off (literally, with a fear aura). The vampire then flew over the island and spotted the pier and buildings/ clearing. The group still have a few hours to go to get the ship close to shore. They've sent four zombie drakes, with a graveling piloting one of them, to secure the pier, and messaged the fiendish hippogriffs to come to the island.

Now, I reckon Setia will have arrived back on the island and spread the word of a hostile boatload heading this way. What do you suppose Eriamanthus and the consorts and other defenders will do? Stay together for a few days and increase patrols?

Thanks folks, that calmed them down a bit. The necromancer can teleport via undead and between graveling familiars, his own high skill ranks in sailing and carpentry, and the undead lieutenant spell decided this would be a good way to use the downtime. Also, the module just said the bugbears hate the water and sank everything, without mentioning first offloading cargo or whatever. I'd not described anything in more detali as I hadn't expected them to hit on this idea at all!

We've since moved on to my next situation...

Thanks for clearing that up. Yikes, though, it seems very high!
Saves went up by two? You mean the monster's saves, or the players? I'm off to start reading the Archive :)

Thank you! This has got me interested after all - they look better than in the Playtest!

By the way, I think the Vrock DCs should be 23 like in the playtest - which would easily look like 28. Maybe not - anyone got an actual Bestiary? It's just 28 seems high for that level.

Thanks, that's pretty much my first reaction too but I was struggling to put it into words :-)

Context - the bugbears trashed a pile of ships in the harbour of Daveryn. The party have decided they can dredge them up, commandeer the cargo, sell it and then sell the ships. Who's going to stop them? They're murder machines.

Basically that attitude.

Hi folks,

I'm trailing behind at the minute, sorry. Would you mind splitting this up and just doing 142 first? If you can retry the other three in about three or four weeks I should have the funds for them then.

Sorry for the trouble, folks!

Fingers crossed :-)

Wakey-wakey, fellow GMs! Can I have some more advice please?

My party has decided to use their undead ettins, hill giants and ogres to drag/push the scuttled ships to shore and salvage the cargo. Phase two is to set the organisation to organizing repairs.

I don't even know where to begin - timescale, realistic costs/profits...I'm baffled. Anyone like to take a stab at this?

Ara Mathra also tried twice to plane shift the vampire hexblade off to heaven, but he saved twice :-)

In the ten or so rounds of combat over two nights the amount of magic reached record levels:

Firestorm, repulsion, greater teleport, mass resist energy, greater invisibility, quickened mirror image, heal, harm, three cloudkills, black tentacles, spirit wall, two holy words, two greater dispels, two banishments, dispel good, panacea, mislead, stone body, two offensive plane shifts, true seeing, spectral hand, forbiddance, (3.5) undead torch, spectral hand, and some sort of sonic damage on a weapon.

I probably missed some!

Did I ever mention how my party finished off Ara Mathra? I'd given him 5 greater stained glass golems as (meat) shields, and bumped his SLAs with Greater Invisibility and Firestorm. Did he already have Quickened Mirror Image and Blade Barrier? If not, them too.

Anyhow, after a lengthy battle he ended up on one side of the blade barrier, menacing the party cleric when the necromancer cast harm, and delivered it by throwing his graveling familiar through the blade barrier, followed by a critical touch attack!

240 damage!

Even after his save, Ara Mathra was on 1 hp, so he necromancer commanded his minotaur skeleton to hack him down. Which it did, by reaching through the blade barrier!

Awesome finish, and thoroughly wicked.

Ouch, the bilewretch is nasty. It's a long time since I read STAP, but levels 8 and 10 seem low for COBI?

Obviously, summoned outsiders just go poof and I suppose native outsiders stick around. The called and gated ones are the problem, and now they're gone for real.

Cool - that seems reasonable. Some of my players are very much sticklers for rules in books, as opposed to rulings. After much digging I found something in Complete Divine saying that dead outsiders "evaporate" and their substance rejoins their homeplane.

Now everybody is (if not happy) satisfied :-)

So - my group are messing about in Daveyn and have just beaten up Maul and Clarion. The Necromancer wants to raise one as a Skeleton and then awaken it, or possibly do something funky with create undead.

I didn't thin you could raise outsiders but I can't seem to find anything that says that. Does anyone have any experience with undead angels?

My party sent a scout ahead, who encountered them in a semicircle opposite him. He wasn't a great liar, and detected as evil, so they gave him one chance to leave. He threw a bomb instead, so they attacked. Three flyby fire breaths and three or four lightning bolts made quite an impression, especially as they were now all flying and out of reach.

The party retreated, rested and buffed before coming back. Also before scouting again, which was a waste of some good buffs (the ponies were gone.) They regretted that when they met the Oracle and Master a few hours later :)

Weird, I thought I'd replied a week ago - guess the board farted.

My party has a few fliers, so I described the hedges in the distance as constantly shifting. When they scouted ahead they approached the party from behind, so they decided the trick was to follow a path on foot.

After that I just had two or three large drawings of mazes to drop on the table in various orientations and use for the maze encounters (like the blink dogs and the LN Labyrinth Minotaur that I added Inevitable traits to.)

For the kirin I had a meadow and a collection of My Little Ponys. They kicked ass :D

Hmmm, they're planning on offloading everything via your Mercane and haven't planned on having an army. The bugbears can do their own thing, they have a small organisation of muggers and dodgy merchants and that's it. Where should they have the idea that they need an army, at this stage? I must have missed that, oops!

Next question - after finishing book 3 they have almost 400,000gp of loot. That will be a large jump in effectiveness. Plus - level 7 spells!

Is this as intended?

I like the idea of the Troops. I've also been chatting to one of the players (non-power mad) and reminding them that they're supposed to keep a low profile, blame the bugbears, keep the existence of uber-ninja Asmodeus cells a secret etc. They'll bring it up next week in-character so that might help.

I may also have a quick OOC chat to the players and say that the adventure is somewhere else. If I say this will be a TPK they'll see that as a challenge. Your "say there are no stats" approach, basically.

Hopefully we can get over this craziness quickly.

Well, we finished book three, so it's on to book four we go. My party want to fight the army at the gates of Valtaerna. They reckon four cloudkills, some nasty auras, contagion etc would rout the army. I'm wondering if I can subtly get then to just leave. Any ideas? They've gone power mad! :D

Yeah, almost level 13. One's a vampire Hexblade, one's a dread ghoul Rogue bomber, one's "just" a full cleric. Then a Dread Necromancer and an evil-version of the old Shintao monk PrC. Throw in a buffed minotaur zombie with the Storm Giant's +3 axe, a buffed Owlbear zombie and a few others and that's what I have to contend with :-)

Good thoughts, thanks!
They have great big augmented zombies along, and almost infinite healing when they take the time. (Dread necromancer) So purely from an action economy viewpoint he needed bodyguards/ damage soaks. They lasted three or four rounds, which was nice. Ara Mathra got a holy word off, tried to plane shift someone up to heaven, flew out of melee range, and fired off a dispel. He seems impressive now, and when we stopped he hadn't been touched :)

Sounds rough! Well done to your players :-)

My group has reached Ara Mathra at last, with his five greater stained glass golems :-) I owe you folks an update.

I've been thinking about Dessiter recently - the group didn't trust him the first time, and sent him on his way. Any ideas how he can get into their good books before book 4?

Have a good weekend folks!

For example, you could send in 1 or more "mote archon" made from the "shattered essence" of all the celestials you Pcs have slaughtered, which forms as one last act of defiance against their evil.

That thing is brutal! Three heals? Yikes! I love it, great idea!

Three months - ouch! Halfway now, I guess :)

We've played again and the group have stormed through the catacombs, wiping out ghost paladins left, right and centre. I couldn't see how many there were in total but after they'd taken out twelve or thirteen I got a bit bored :-)

The priests and guards were a mere speedbump, though the harm trap was appreciated by the undead party members. They'll be disappointed when it stops working outside the Cathedral.

The Chalkydri freaked them out once I used a pic of the girl from The Ring, so the cleric used his last dispel good. Nailed the attack, and the spell resistance, and she rolled a 2 on the save so poof!

Round the corner, no longer worried about traps, the rogue fell down the pit :-D Then we made it to Father McC. I had him with a summoned Archon which I basically made up. I used the Movanic Deva stats but gave her projected image, flame strike, empowered scorching ray and (3.5) Orb of Sound as SLAs. The real angel was with the Abbot in the next room, but the doorway was now an illusory one-way mirror. As the Abbot cast his buffing spells the party took AGES messing with the image of the angel.

She was standing in the empty room as the party advanced one at a time (for some bizarre reason). They ignored the celestial text and got burnt a little (mass fire resistance). As each came in and attacked the projected image, they (obviously) missed. I happily fake-rolled the "miss chance" dice and their will saves. The first four party members failed the will save and were convinced this was a big scary angel with displacement or blur. No-one could touch her and she darted around blasting them with fire and sound.

Once the Abbot cut loose with a holy word, they knew there was at least one more enemy somewhere. They decided to send one person to break the mirror, and when he stumbled through it (blind) instead of hitting it he got a serious longsword injury. Then came a blade barrier and the party had to stumble away to regroup and get the big guns out. A greater dispel took down the blade barrier, blindness was removed by various means and then the inner sanctum was stormed. The vampire got his hands on the real angel and sucked her backt o her own plane, then the last greater dispel ruined the Abbot's chances. A string of 18, 19, 20's got rid of frightful aspect, true seeing, freedom of movement, holy aura, death ward, divine power, protection from energy and greater spell immunity . He was left with... aid.

10 or 15 seconds later it was all over. Great fun, lots of tactical stuff, and mostly because of the stuff the players thought of themselves due to failed saves at the beginning.

QUESTION
They're planning to rest before going back upstairs, and there isn't really anyone left to stop them. Would Ara Mathra come looking now the ritual has stopped?

Book and adventure arrived today in the Netherlands. Ticket inside listed "(my) order of 27 July". I ordered from Paizo at the end of March so I guess that's when they sent it. About two weeks too late unfortunately.

I'm glad they're here but the buzz has kind of gone.

For the Dutch people: I got it today, so I assume yours will arrive shortly as well.

I got my book from the book depository today (ordered last Saturday) but no sign of the book & advemture from Amazon yet. Who delivered yours so I can guess what times I need to be home? :-|

There's nothing in the PostNL app in any case

I like the idea of the Pact - the DM can choose the allies from a much broader list than the two or three specified in previous editions. This can be nicely tailored to terrain/ mission/ general tricksiness.

Suggestion: Just add a line to the Abyssal/ Infernal pacts that allows the summoning of the contracted allies as an activity taking two or three actions. That's what I'm doing :D

About a third of them are schedule to arrive on August 6 or 7. The other two thirds are scheduled to arrive on September 6 or 7...

Thanks, and yikes! Probability is against me :(

Thanks for all your efforts, Vic!
If you spot any more updates concerning the Netherlands, would you mind sharing?

Also thank you for the store credit!

That makes it even stranger that they messed this release up. There was stock in the UK after all

tldr I'm very annoyed with amazon and feel foolish for excitedly hoping it would arrive a while day or two early. They haven't done the one thing the were supposed to and our first playtest will be a month later now due to holidays etc. (plus no-one wanted to faff around with pdfs).

I'm very impressed, as usual, with Paizo and Vic doing all they can. Thank you! I'd be happy if amazon refunded the shipping costs (more than twice the price of the rulebook since I'm in Europeland) but Paizo's prompt compensation is of course welcome.

Lastly I decided I could go for another book and ordered from the book depository. It was dispatched the same day and will be here tomorrow. Unbelievable that amazon doesn't even seem to have inventory in the UK. They have really dropped the ball on this.

So... you can use a shield for ever by raising it and getting an AC boost. OR - you can decide you're going to get hit anyway and as a desperate measure use the shield as disposable DR. Right?

It's still way too little to make me want to equip one. Seems like it'll be broken in the second round of the first fight of the adventure.

Summoned ones can't summon more - that was also so since at least 3.0. I mean if you bump into an actual demon or devil, on its home turf or called/ gated in - then you knew its friends would not be far off. It was a classic in the old Dungeon APs - "Oh look, a Vrock..."

plop! plop!

"Hey, they're dancing..."

Has that been removed completely? If so, fair enough, just add more to encounters. I'm curious as to why, and still want to check if the CR (level) has been adjusted accordingly. Keep forgetting though.

I'd like them to be able to summon in combat again though.

I just downloaded the bestiary and went straight to my favourite beasties. I see the demons and devils have Abyssal/ Infernal pact and can have allies, but it's a ritual with "Casting: 1 day"

Does this mean no more SLA allies plopping in?

Weird getting shipping notifications but no pdf :-(
Waiting til mine reach the Netherlands...