pebepe's page

An (un)fortunate accident with the Apostle happened in my game too.
Basicly, my players were starving for cash. They treated arena-games mainly as a way for raising additional cash - previously i was trying to balance their slight cheeseness with smaller-than-advices wealth. They decided that first they win the game, and then they conduct research on what's going on, even thou they were hinted that after winning the game there might not be able to return inside.

As a result:
- The Apostle appeared in the midst of a finale - it was a real surprise for them. Sure, since the beggining of the fight with Auric there were omnious signs appearing on a specific initiative count (ground shaking, heavy pounding, etc). So they WERE expecting something, but not SUCH a thing.
- about the same time they noticed their contact (Eglios) getting stabbed in the back (he was in the main viewing booth, together with Raknian & company - the company including a previously unknown thiefling (Bozal) - and some other prominent Waterdhavian figures who acted as a background)
- in the panic/chaos, they fired some random potshots at the big U while gathering around mage, and then left Auric&co to fight the Apostle - they themselves teleported to the main viewing booth to rescue Eglios
- Eglios rescued himself (panicked teleport while on single-digit hit points), they tried to fight the bad guys, and were forced to flee in panic in round 2 (well placed blade barrier can do wonders on low levels - courtesy of Bozal), teleporting out with no casualties, several groupmembers on the verge of collapse, and nothing really achieved. Before escape they saw Auric getting swallowed, and his pet mage getting slaughtered. Or the other way around.
- they teleported to Eglios' mansion, where they started licking their wounds. One guy who was closest to windows made a spot check, and noticed an unusual mushroom cloud appearing above a quarter of the city, originating roughly in the place where arena was.
- more havoc, more fleeing, whole city turned to the undead chaos. Together with Eglios they went to Khelben Blackstaff who was organizing the defense (including a defense perimeter around the city).
- after some heavy scolding, they were sent on their own way for a time, with obligation to report on each day to check if they're needed. Always with some teleport ready for action. They went to pursue their other goals (return trip to Daggerford or something), but were called back soon after.
- The source of the plague was identified. The power of the slaughter strengthened the Apostle beyond imagination. What's needed to destroy it is an epic ritual (that Khelben will provide), but there is a need for brave adventurers to creep to the Apostle and target his location for the ritual's target - they received a targetting device (a bazooka-sized laser-like gizmo) and were given instruction to get to the arena, signal Khelben when they have Apostle in the view, and have the Apostle him targetted for 1 minute - otherwise the bomb might be off target).
- Then it turned to an urban undead survival game for some time. Finally, after fight with Bozal while attempting to maintain the target, and after getting hit by the Apostle with a CON-draining breathe, they succeeded - an asteroid fell from the sky, killing Apostle and almost causing a TPK (they were caught in the first wave of damage, then managed to gather up their unconsious ones and teleport away before the second wave hit them in the next round)

All in all - a blast for everyone. We're now in the Into the Wormcrawl Fissure adventure, and the Waterdeep is still in deep ruin, with 80% of its population MIA. However, it is being rebuilt, and there's an inbound flow of new citizens.

In my run of it (finished this week), i simplified KotR greatly.

- vault doors were hidden - they appeared to the world as a result of ending Library of Last Resort - it was a great puzzle to Giants too, to suddenly notice giant doors appearing in the wall of their cellar, and their sorcerer went crazy to attempt to open it

- only the king knew about the vault being there at all

- there were no keys at all - doors had biometric scanners, aimed at druids of the storm order or anyone who did help with original hiding of the phylactery (our original heroes, yay). Alternatively, a set of UMD checks could do it, with risk of death to evil chars attempting UMD and failing

- giants were slightly buffed up - the invitation party consisted of stone giant/warhulk6/hulking hurler3 and 3 stone giants/wahulk4/hhurler3, throwing around rocks weighting 1ton+. Inside the citadel, there were 40+ giants stationed. The hydra room was also changed slightly - its occupant had a couple of frenzied beserker levels (enough for deathless frenzy and for inducing frenzy in its pet hydra). Hydra had three feats swapped - for lengthening its breath, addint 2 to its save DC, and for making it clinging.

- the kajiu carrion crawler was still present - at the bottom of the canyon, among corpses of fallen dragons and giants. So when/if one of my players drops down, there's an additional fun with corpse retrieval.

- i made the phylacterium slightly more dangerous - first player to touch it passed his will saves, and i made the non-worded hint that it's a save-or-die situation. This, combined with the fact that i elected to apply SR of the phylacterium to all attempts to teleport with it, greatly increased the level of paranoia related to this item. Oh, and when it got destroyed, it exploded in a cloud of save-or-loose-2d6wis.

- also - the phylacterium - you should decide how should it react to disintegrate. Personaly i thought it'd be kind of cheap to be able to destroy it in one shot with a passed SR - thank gods the Wizard rolled '1' on the hit with his only disintegrate.

How it went:

- my players, after teleportation into ruins and gathering basic information on its layout from captured bugbear, decided to teleport blindly into king's cave, past cave-in. They got it straight into the great hall. Full of dead giant bodies, and one Fang wyrm, enhanced with large-and-in-charge, improved trip, spellcasting harrier, combat reflexes and awaken spell resistance feats (and with proper, draconomicon-induced, length of tail - tail reach 45')

- after surviving (very narrowly) the enraged wyrm, they chit-chatted with head of the dead king, broken his will, and learned of the vault localization.

- giant invitation party was on the hostile side, but stopped its attacks when blue dragon key attacked. After seeing dragons get slaughytered by players, giant captain went inside for advice, and then invited our heroes inside.

- inside there was a charisma feast (diplomacy/bluff/sense motive), resulting in giant leader allowing access to the citadel basements, and warning them not to wander into some parts of the citadel (hydra room among others - too bad my super-curious player was absent this time - he would certainly want to check what's inside that room).

- the marilith encounter was surprisingly refreshing

- V.T. room - in the battle of charms, PCs made a deal with VT - he will let them try to open the vault, and in exchange he can pick everything he want except for the phylacterium.

- gates itself - no ghost there, rather a sudden flashback (end of Library of Last Restort data cartridge). Also, a piece of Rod of Seven Parts was used to seal the vault doors (3/day revivify)

- inside - a heroic fight of epic proportions, with PCs + Raams on one side, Brazz on the other side, and maddened VT shooting randomly (and doing good damage to both sides). One NPC party member down.

- still in the initiative order - 3 rounds of various attempts at destroying the phylacterium or teleport with it, with sounds of incoming giants from one side and clear view of charging horde of dragons from the other side. Finally they used the spell to turn items into glass, and were able to smash the phylacterium. Wizard got down to 4 WIS, enough for him to understand what the rest of the party wants (and they wanted to teleport away NOW).

2 sessions for this all, plus fight with scouting fiendish green dragon.

Oh, when fiddling with Spire please do consider using this masterpiece of sickening creation:
Gratuitous Gore.

That's one of those rare occasions when you can put in something like that and do not fear for getting hit with a book over your head. At least no stronger than you'd normally be. :-D

PC Race/Class: Human Cleric 6 / Morninglord of Lathander 2
Adventure: Hall of Harsh Reflections
Location of Death: On way back from illithid lair
Catalyst: shooting into grapple + grappler supreme

Other Party Members:
Dwarf Warblade 7 (wielding the cursed sword of berserking, not aware of its curse)
Halfling Rogue 3/Swashbuckler 4
Halfling Sharpshooter 2/Cleric 4
Human Wizard 8
Human Warlock 7

The entrance to the illithid lair was located in the ancient part of the lower level of Waterdeep severs, and required some wandering around to find. On the way back the leading cleric botched his survival check to find the right path, and managed to lead the party into a huge room, with underroof opening leading to the behir lair.

The leading cleric was cherry picked from the floor by an awakened monstrocity.

Since only the enlarged warblade was able to reach the serpent with his melee weapon, the rest of the party decided to start shooting into grapple, on the basis that without taking that chance their cleric is as good as dead. Unfortunately, both rogue and warlock managed to hit the constricted cleric (twice, plus failed save on sickening blast).

Warblade managed to hit a full-PowerAttack critical hit on behir, only to fail a will save a second later and succumb to the sword curse (berserk+kill_nearest).

In the midst of inter-party fight that ensued the unfortunate cleric left this world in order to join his divine patron in the everbright meadows of afterlife.

The behir did not maange to digest him properly, as he promptly died to a wall of fire damage 0.1s later.

P.S. I so hoped for some obituaries from the zerker-sword fight. Unfortunately the warblade ate some high damage subdual hits from his camarades, and only managed to reduce party mage to 30% of his hit points in a single full-PA raging strike.

I did not run that encounter yet, but if i remember correctly using the breath weapon depletes the necrolitic acid resources. And no necrolitic acid resources = no way to transform the champion into a champion juice = no apocalypse. So it seems like the breath is there only to serve as an icing on the cake after the catastrophe happens.

Or am i mistaken?

I have a question regarding the psion (telepath 3) version of Zyrxog - is the mind blast DC (22) calculated correctly? The DC is charisma based, so it should be Cha bonus (5) plus 1/2 HD (0.5*(8+3)=5), which gives the DC of 20. Am i right in my calculations? Or are psion levels not cut in half for calculation of mind blast DC?

The biggest disappointment for me in current campaign was the grand finale of Three Faces of Evil adventure in AoW. After a prolongued battle with The Faceless One's minions, the party was graced with the presence of TFO himself... who went down before he had a chance to really do anything. The Ebon Aspect lasted for precisely the same amount of time.

My players said that they were almost feeling sorry for afterwards, with the way my jaw dropped.

Fortunately the rest of the big fights so far provided more challenge.

Let's see, EaBK highlights...

* the party spent some time wandering marshes (low survival, no track), generating three random encounters from slightly enhanced FR table. Each one included some close calls:

- giant constrictor snake was killed while running away with a -1Hp halfling rogue snatched in its jaws
- an advanced bloodsilk spider ( found here ) brought party scout down to -8
- a night ambush by an annis hag managed to seriously scare the only cleric in the party - he finished the fight prone at 2 hit points with close to none healing power left.

* the lizardman lair went very smoothly, with nothing really posing a threat and Red Eye (FR Shukak) going down like a mosquito. The big surprise came from the egg chamber. Its guardian was young black dragon (daughter of Ilthane that replaced kobolds), who in her last living spasm destroyed the egg. And as a result of lizardman eggs getting infected with worms there was a neat little swarm of kyuss spawnlings - stats based on this thread. Depleted resources combined with the surprise effect - two party members had almost bite it from the con loss (lucky rolls on con damage saved them).

* and of course lots of death and carnage during "night of the living dead" session in the keep itself - used an idea from these forums to roleplay garrison soldiers tackling on the manace of a single Spawn. Was a great blast and another great surprise for my players.

Try the lovely "Death Throes" spell. So Bozal can leave a nasty surprise for the almost-victorious party.

I have just put my players through a Cle9 on their way to the illithid lair in HoHR*, and the Death Throes spell was a nasty nasty surprise. After a prolongued battle (blacklight for the win!) the exploding opponent left 3 party members in a near-death state - they would die if the dice did not roll below average. Oh, and please do consider giving this spell a save for half damage - i certainly did so.

*a chapel of Shar as a random "high search low survival" encounter in Waterdeep sewers - and for some reason there was some friction between our partys Morninglord of Lathander and the chapelkeeper - Nighcloak of Shar.