Search Posts
Hey, thanks for the adventure. I ran it for my players last night, as a break from Whispering Cairn. They had just gotten their spleens handed to them by Filge, killing two party members, so I wanted to give them a break before they headed into the final room. Everyone had a great time!
Had another near-TPK last Tuesday. It was against Filge, of all people. The reason: Bad rolls (nothing worse than casting True Strike and then rolling a 1) and bad tactics (doesn't everyone know that when your fighting a zombie master, you ignore the zombies and go straight for the master?). Soon everyone was unconscious, with some of them bleeding, except for one terrified gnome rogue running despretely to Allustan for help. Filge, out of spells and knowing the calvary is on the way, bolts in the opposite direction. The bleeding party members have to stabilize or die. That was some tense rolling there, let me tell you. Surprisingly, two party members actually stabilized. The other two bleeders, the bard and the barbarian, didn't make it. Well, I had fun, anyway. And I thought it appropriate that on the 10th anniversary of Jerry Garcia's death, the Dead were triumphant.
Every once in a while, you get in a situation where there's the potential of a tpk when it isn't the party's fault.
1) Fudge the die rolls. I hate this, but sometimes it's the only way. That's what the screen's there for. Just don't let the party know. 2) Fudge the enemy stats. Next blow kills the main enemy (he only had 12 hp), the summoned monster disappears a round or two early, whatever. More effective than #2 but still cheating. 3) The Cavalry. At the last moment, the town guard rushes in. Cheesy, but maybe you can pull it off. At high levels, this could be Divine Intervention, which i personally hate, but hey, it's your campaign. Could also be a defector who falls in love with a party member, etc. 4) Fudge the monster tactics. Have the monster just try to capture the party, as suggested earlier. If i was running whispering cairn again and all the players died from the beetle swarm, i would have them all wake up a day later at 0 hp. They wouldn't understand why they were spared - until the eggs started hatching. This is my favorite solution if you can think up something quick enough. If your players are all so jaded that all of these options are too cheezy for them, then: 5) Let the party die. Hey, it's dangerous out there. This ain't Daisies & Dewdrops.
I'm also running AoW with a large party, 8 people. I'm not changing Whispering Cairn at all. I figure they'll be just a level or two behind where a smaller party should be by the time they move on to 3FoE, but that will be ok because there'll be more of them. So far there's been two deaths, one from the swarm and one last week from the Owlbear. I don't know if I would recommend making the Owlbear full strength; at that point, with 8 players, the party will only be second level or so. He was plenty challenging as is.
I just ran my group through the underwater encounters in Whispering Cairn. The session went ok, but in retrospect I could have handled it a little better. My advice to others running the encounter for the first time: 1) Bring a roll of string. Apparently, the whole tie-a-rope-to-the-fighter and have them swim on ahead is a pretty common response. I had a problem with the players (as opposed to the characters) knowing when to pull back unconscious party members. What i should have done was run a string under a door, and then send all the non swimmers into the next room. A knock could indicate when a round has elapsed, since it takes a lot longer than six seconds to role play a round. You could pull the string to simulate the motion of the characters and let the players decide if the character is unconscious or paralyzed or whatever. Remember how long the rope is. Remember if the players wrap the rope around a column. 2) Bring a flashlight. Always more dramatic to turn off the lights when the players get plunged into darkness. 3) Establish how fast the players can pull back a player if they're all tugging. I said 15 feet/round...what to you guys think? 4) (Hardest for me) Be psychologically prepared to kill off a player. This is dangerous stuff, and it's entirely reasonable that a player die. Particularly if they ignored the hints you dropped about buying potions of water breathing from the Benazel the Alchemist. (Scroll of water breathing from Allustan would be better but you wouldn't want to give everything away now would you?). Particularly if they're being used as bait. I hate to do it, but if you follow the rules it's the players killing themselves now, isn't it? Good Luck! Hope this helps other DMs!
Thanks guys. Those rules are reasonable and should work great.
My players are probably going to fight the water elemental in the submerged room in the Whispering Cairn next week, and I want to make sure I'm ready for an underwater encounter. Can a player without water breathing cast a spell with a verbal component underwater? How about bardic abilities? I would rule no, but I can't seem to find a specific rule anywhere. Thanks for your help, Sean Craig
My players activated it... course they were trying to do so. They had tied the statue up with rope and had all readied actions to attack it when it moved. The easy victory helped with moral after getting their butts kicked by wolves, beetles, and a pile of mold.
Wow, those are great ideas, N'Wah. I really like the Faceless One as a villian, he's got the perfect combination of creepy and bad ass. I do like the combat encounters and the villians in TFoE, I'm just gonna stretch 'em out a bit. Maybe involve some more NPCs from Diamond Lake.
My main problem with Three Faces of Evil isn't a lack of motivation, or even the lack of role playing per se; it's the lack of pacing. It's a total slugfest from the moment the elevator hits the temple floor. Whispering Cairn mixed it up nicely. There were puzzles, interesting combat areas, traps, etc. The players left the cairn, fought some battles and interacted with some NPC's, then came back later. There was an actual story there that the players participated in. In contrast, TFoE feels like just an endless horde of monsters thrown at the players until they gain enough experience to move on to the next installment. When my players finish up Whispering Cairn, I think I'll do as another poster suggested and split up TFoE into three separate temples in different locations. In between I'll add some role playing opportunities to connect the different locations and add a break in the tension. I'm also going to thin out the module by removing similar encounters (when you only get one session a week, every encounter has to be memorable). Maybe I'll mix in the Devil Box in between (modified so that the Emporium takes the place of the travelling carnival, of course). I'm also going to have to figure out a way to introduce the Faceless One early on.
If nothing happens to the original lanterns after a reset, couldn't the players just farm the dungeon for lanterns, making 350 gp/week? 'Course, if my players tried that, i might give 'em a couple weeks then have Balabar Smenk move in to claim the cairn, or have the whole tomb collapse in some spectacular fashion as the magic runs out.
Wish i read these posts earlier, I would have been more prepared for the bloodbath my players went through. Even though we had eight players, it was very nearly a TPK situation. The first problem: the party wizard had bronchitis, so no fire spells. The second problem: none of my player had played before, and it was only their second encounter...ever. The cleric went down first, bugs ate him in the first round. Oops. Low level + no healing = bad situation. In their favor, i honestly screwed up the rules for torches. Didn't they used to do 1-6 points of fire damage? Was that in 3.0 or 1st edition? Well, they got some extra damage out of that. Well, I didn't want to kill of the whole party in the second session of gaming (especially since it took everyone an hour or more to roll up their characters). Whenever I'm in a TPK situation and you don't want the party to die you have three options - fudge the rolls, weaken the monsters, or change the monster's intentions. I picked the first option and fudged the damage rolls for the slasher. They barely got out with three unconscious party members and one dead monk. In retrospect, I should have went with the third option and had the party wake up with 0 hp several hours later. They wouldn't know why the beetles had let them live until the eggs started hatching inside of them. Heh. |
