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My players chose to kill Zernebeth rather than deal with her.

How would you have this affect the rest of the game?

Is it just me, or is the final fight of this book vs Elacinda AND 2 elder earth elementals extremely deadly?

It's a DC 28 Fortitude save or die. You have to make it every round. Being a ghost Elacinda is at half damage at best to most things and then there's 2 heavy hitters. This seems like a TPK in the making to me.

Thanks for the ideas guys

Reading through what book 4 says about it, there's a lot fluff but very little crunch.

What shops are there? What is the difference between the various markets that the party would actually be affected by?

What is there to DO?

My party is just getting into book 5 and I've read through it, but one thing that's not clear to me is who knows what?

Zaidow is being controlled by Unity. Does the rest of the Technic League know about Unity? Which ones? What do they know?

I don't know if Book 6 gets into this or not.

As written,the only real clue to check the hospice comes at the end of the party and only if they keep the boss alive AND get her to talk.

I'd like to sprinkle more clues throughout the AP but maybe with the key piece missing until they complete that mission.

Anyone have any experience doing something like that?

So for reasons, my players never killed Hellion in Lord's of Rust. They never even fought him.

So now fast forward to book 4, Hellion is still at full power he has learned that the neurocam is in the Scar of the Spider and has beaten the party there.

I'm looking for some ideas on what to do with him. Since this adventure is missing an Iron God villain, I feel like Hellion could be a great stand in. Anyone have any cool ideas?

I'm going through Book 2 now, and all the encounters seem weak compared to my players. I let them have 20 point buy, but I did the same in Ironfang and Iron Gods and both of those games were lethal af at this same point.

Yep, agreed on all fronts. I ran book 4 last year for my players (we took a break afterward to play a different AP). Book 4 runs 100% entirely on theme and atmosphere rather than a proper plot. As you say, "Search this giant place until you find the MacGuffin" does not make for riveting adventuring.

I did end up making a few tweaks when I ran it, but was wary about wandering too far off into homebrew territory. Here's what I did:

At the end of book 3, I changed the hook to "X years ago, Casandalee uploaded her consciousness to a new body and fled to a place she didn't think either Xoud or Unity would follow - the Scar. She may still be hiding out there." and then had a lot of the longer-lived characters in the Scar actually remember and talk about her. This gave the PCs more reason to hold back from attacking and instead chat where possible (particularly with the mad druid, the android community, and our favorite four-armed alien pal).

I scattered a bunch of minor hints and clues across the Scar that pointed to Casandalee having crossed the Dominion while she was here. I also hyped up how strong the Dominion was to give PCs more of a reason to level up and gather more advantages before going to the Hive.

I added more dead Technic League agents with explicit references to "Unity's Orders" and a couple of other references to Book 5.

Across the four books to that point, I'd tried to establish a clearer picture of the threat of Unity via the Technic League. Basically I had the Technic League going around being really oppressive, and made sure to emphasize that they weren't always this way. Unfortunately, even with this emphasis, the driving force forwards is a bit weak.

In retrospect, I'd actually make the first 4 books way more "Against the Technic League", with Casandalee actually having secret info about the League rather than about Unity. The League is the far more active oppressive force in the AP as written, with there being some juicy moments possible in Books 1 and 3...

I don't have book 5 yet. Can you tell me more about these hints and references?

Question, and I'm sorry if this has been answered earlier in this thread, what is the information that Casandalee has about Unity that makes chasing her for 2 books worthwhile?

They don't mention it at the end of book 4, but thst's when the party finds her so they'll ASK and I don't have book 5 yet to get that answer.

I've been running Iron Gods for years now, and I generally like the story. But AS WRITTEN book 4 seems really odd to me.

For one thing the DRIVING plot hook is one sentence at the end of book 3. It's very "Sorry, Mario, the princess is in another castle.". I think that will deject my players a little bit.

On top of that, it gives no details. It's just the neurocam is in the Scar. Go there and just search the entire thing until you get lucky enough to happen upon it. I someone told me "I hid something. It's in Brooklyn. Just go search all of Brooklyn until you find it", I'd be pretty peeved.

And I'm not thrilled with the format of Book 4 either. It's just go to area->explore area->kill everything in area->loot->Go to next area. There's only a handful of NPCs and they don't really give you quests or anything to break up the above pattern. There's no towns. There's no shops. The roleplay for most sessions is just going to come down to players interacting with each other.

And my last pet peeve is absentee villains, which Unity absolutely is. Unity doesn't DO anything. It doesn't attack the party. It doesn't kill anyone. It doesn't even know they exist. The reason to fight it is because it's EEEEvil, but what does that mean for the party? It's apparently been around for centuries with no noticeable effect. I just wish Unity was more active of a bad guy in this story.

I know I can change some of these things, and I think I'll have to. But I buy APs to avoid having to homebrew too much. Sigh. So does anyone sort of feel the same way? Did anyone make any changes that they thought served them well?

Is food a problem at this point? Can't Novvi bring in enough food every week to feed 30-forty people for 7 days or so? The party can definitely afford it.

RAW you can play piano every day of your life. You can play it day and night. But you won't get even a little bit better at it, until you kill something.

A party member gets hit with the Suffocation spell and begins dying. Desperate to save them, the Wizard casts Flesh to Stone to retard the effect.

What does the wizard find when they cast Stone to Flesh the next day after preparing spells?

Did the party member continue to suffocate anyway and die?
Did the spell duration end so they're fine?
Does the spell simply resume and they are suffocating from where they last left off?

Doors? Why would you enter through a door? It's obvious the enemies are going to expect you to go through the door so they're defenses will be assuming that. Blast through the wall so you're on the other side of those makeshift barricades!

You make life complicated for your GM, don't you?

slade867 wrote:

By this logic, how come every dungeon crawl doesn't devolve into a fight at the beginning? Fights are really loud and would be clearly audible through a door. People seeing fights would raise an alarm.

You should be fighting every combatant inside of a dungeon, including the boss, all at once, within the first 5 minutes

This depends entirely on the occupants of the compound.

Are they thieves? Maybe some thieves run down to attack the players. Other thieves go try to steal from the coffers.

Are the Evil? Maybe some of them are taking advantage of the chaos to kill rivals or further their own plans.

Are they dumb? Maybe they are just not able to mount an effective resistance.

Are they scared? Maybe some run away.

Are they lazy? Maybe some just figure that someone else will make the PCs go away.

Do the enemies have perfect information? Let's say that there is an attack the perimeter of a military encampment. Does literally every single soldier turn and bee line it to the this point? No. This is not effective. Those in the immediate vicinity will raise alarm that there is an attack. Some will rush to their aid. Others will leave to spread the information and begin to organize a response. The enemies likely aren't even sure how many people are attacking them when the word first spreads. Do they have back up? Yeah, 4 people just kicked down the door and started murdering people. This, obviously, caught you off guard. What else don't you know about? Did someone sneak in? What are they after? How many areas hold valuable resources? Are they trying to release a prisoner? Are they trying to steal money? Are they trying to stop a ritual? Are they trying to steal a valuable object? Are they trying to reach a treasure first? Maybe they're just crazy?

Depending on the specifics, I think that an organized and cohesive group would set up a center of operations (if necessary) and begin securing their structure. This requires man power. If 4 people just started...

Maybe some do all of that early stuff you talked about but you'd still end up fighting most of the dungeon. Do you have a motivation for each of the grunts such that you know which would take these side actions? Are you only talking about the named NPCs?

Just looked at an actual AP I'm running with an enemy camp. The camp is an oval but let's call it roughly 100ft by 100ft. There are 14 characters inside the gates. Every single one of them is a combatant. There are no cooks or maids or the like.

Of those 11 are stated as "fight to the death". The others aren't going to run away because what would their own people do to them if they ran from a fight? Unless they happen to be the last ones left, in which case the party still would have to deal with them for several rounds.

I think most people would deal with the problem at hand. There's 4 guys murdering people so that's what has to be immediately dealt with as quickly as possible. Splitting your force to deal with a "possible" side incursion from some possible alternate location doesn't make sense.

Me and my crew would all go and we would all kill the people I can see, then we'll spread out and look for more.

This is even a tactic in real life and in media. "I'll attack the front while you sneak in from the back". This works because it is understood that when you attack the front, people focus on the front.

By this logic, how come every dungeon crawl doesn't devolve into a fight at the beginning? Fights are really loud and would be clearly audible through a door. People seeing fights would raise an alarm.

You should be fighting every combatant inside of a dungeon, including the boss, all at once, within the first 5 minutes

Zone of Truth would be a no, it seems.

Although it's a pretty useless spell if the caster can't tell.

slade867 wrote:

Party just cleared the bottom part of the Troglodyte cave.

Found the Stone puzzle door and are now gonna focus like lasers on that.

No one speaks Aklo
No one speaks Dwarven.
No one speaks Gnome.
No one knows Linguistics.

The book is very sparse on details on what EXACTLY is in section L3. As one PC pointed out, they don't even know how many pictures are part of the combo lock.

How would you guys handle it? I don't want to lock them out of something they're so interested in, but they lack the resources to ever get in there barring some fiat.

Has anyone ever talked about the fact that the cave is dark 24/7? The refugees are going to need to be burning wood all day just to see. Seems like that would be an issue?

Does anyone have Knowledge (Planes)? I'd give them a knowledge check with a DC of 19 or 24 to identify what a Xiomorn is and what a simple biography of their life is. Thereby giving them the combination.

Or is there any spellcasters? Some spells could help.

There are but it's Sorcerer and a Oracle who know no language spells.

I thought the biography was of the Derro not the Xiomorn, so why would that help? If it is of the Xiomorn, why rock, then bar, then crying face? Is it all random or is there more?

Party just cleared the bottom part of the Troglodyte cave.

Found the Stone puzzle door and are now gonna focus like lasers on that.

No one speaks Aklo
No one speaks Dwarven.
No one speaks Gnome.
No one knows Linguistics.

The book is very sparse on details on what EXACTLY is in section L3. As one PC pointed out, they don't even know how many pictures are part of the combo lock.

How would you guys handle it? I don't want to lock them out of something they're so interested in, but they lack the resources to ever get in there barring some fiat.

Has anyone ever talked about the fact that the cave is dark 24/7? The refugees are going to need to be burning wood all day just to see. Seems like that would be an issue?

Can't find anything that fits what you need exactly:

Missive stone - Pass whispered messages with the paired stone (must be within 3 miles).

Communique Rings - Pass whispered messages with the paired ring (must be within 1 mile).

Shell of Sending - 1/day message of 25 words or less, no range limit.

None of those are even close. How weird is it that this doesn't seem to exist in Pathfinder?

I'd like a phone. Just a way for 2 characters to instantly contact each other and speak no matter distance. In a world with people who turn into dragons and the ability to see anyone, anywhere, I feel like this should be possible. Is it?

Bonus points if it's in the form of something that anyone can use, i.e. two Fighters could use it to talk to each other.

there's other villages which were hit by the Invasion.

There's outlying farms which are full of people who are running from the Ironfang.

There are people in the woods.

There are people coming to Phaendar - there's a bridge to town after all.

Lots of ways to bring in new PCs.

Are you just saying there's other villages or are they stated?

Aren't the roads blocked, which would not only keep PCs in but others out?

You build this right, you can wreck shop.

Re reading, I see they do get some of that stuff later, but isn't it odd they don't get elemental damage until 20th level?

Got a player building an Elemental Ally and looking at the elemental eidolon, I had some questions.

They don't do any elemental damage? They're not immune to their own element? Or critical hits? What do they get?

I've got 2 new players coming in. I had a character die.

So I've got 3 new characters coming in during Book 1 during the scout the forest section.

The Phaendar NPCs are all known and none of these new characters are from that pool.

Does anybody have a good way to keep logically bring in new characters? Not just these 3 but in the future as well if necessary. Have they really just "been in the forest" this whole time? I was hoping for something more clever.

Make it so that you have to declare your real action as clearly intended.

You guys would really do that?

Player: "I use my power to block the bad guy from doing what he really wants to do."

GM: "Then he'll just choose to do something he doesn't want to do and purposefully fail!"

Player: "What? That completely negates what I was trying to use this for. What's the point of this ability anymore?"

GM: "There IS NO POINT to this ability anymore. Mwahahahahahaha!"

Well the GM can say whatever they like. They are the final word in their own game. I was looking for something more concrete.

Maybe "ground" is everything so if they stand on a rock or even on a rug on the dirt, tremorsense is defeated. Maybe so long as they are touching something that is touching something that is touching something that is touching the ground tremorsense is effective. I don't know. That's why I'm asking.

Why would that be confusing unless the whole house vibrates?

Say a creature with Tremorsense 60ft. is standing in a house 50ft. wide and 30ft. up (3 floors). What can the creature sense?

Only people on the first floor or everybody in the house? Does the material of the house matter?

What I personally dislike is that Atonement is that a spell that a Paladin can never cast herself, and that Absolution (the "Atonement if you've been mind controlled") is a level 4 spell, so they can cast it at 13th level at the earliest.)

If we're going to have Paladins falling all over the place for minor things, there should be a penance available commensurate to the transgression. Confessing "I threw a dart across a river in anger, it was poisoned and I did not know" and being forgiven probably should not require tracking down a 10th level cleric.

I agree with you. I'd never have a Paladin fall for this.

So, according some people's interpretation of the rules, a mind-controlled paladin who deceives an evil rival of the villain under whose spell he fell would lose his powers immediatly, but a mind-controlled paladin who murders every inhabitant of the local orphanage wouldn't.

A good deity is not going to empower you while you use said power to kill orphans.

We are leaving paladin territory here and entering Christian theology, but you can't commit a sin accidentally. It is only a sin if you commit it knowingly and willingly and thus you don't need to ask forgiveness if not both conditions are met.

Where in the Bible does it say that?

Regardless if the Roguish Gnome taught the Paladin that "Praise Asmodeus" was actually "Hello, how are you?" in Gnome as a joke, I'd let it slide the first time they said it. Eventually, it would compound and they'd fall due to stupidity.

Also, strictly by the rules, blaspheming your god won't make you fall so clearly YMMV.

The mind controlled Paladin should still need an Atonement or something before they get their powers back. No automatically getting them back as soon as control ends.

If you accidentally commit a sin, do you not need to ask forgiveness for it? Of course you do.

I strongly disagree that the "Additionally" is separate from the preceding sentence, but I'm fighting, really hard, to resist literally arguing semantics.

How is that a contradiction? It's an "and" not an "or".

A mind controlled Paladin isn't falling because of they're actions, they're falling because Sarenrae isn't going to let you Dine Weapon Flaming onto your sword so you can burn orphans while you cut them to pieces.

Deities would, very logically, stop granting you their favor while you commit evil acts.

But your climb speed would improve.

lemeres basically answered it. How to do those stories of normal people summoning something beyond them like idiots.

In order to sell their soul or make a request how do normal NPCs and Outsiders get together? Is there a phone number to call or something?

I've always wondered, can you choose to only send others with Teleport or do you have to come too?

I'm sorry. I meant able to cast 6th level spells, not caster level 6th.

and then after some time retrieve them from that location without having to go themselves?

I'd prefer something said character could reasonably have so 20th level Greater Teleport scrolls, for instance, are out.

bump

They're weaker than regular Wights after all, but can still level drain so I feel like they should have XP value in an encounter.

I wanted to avoid having everyone shut their eyes or look away as I change floors.

So I've got a series of paper maps for a dungeon. I'm looking for a good way to hide the rooms from the players until they walk in that is easy to undo and won't tear the maps.

Ideas?

Not caring about the poor is more Neutral. Trying to help them would be good. Trying to hurt them would be evil.

Suppose someone with True Seeing saw and invisible person or a polymorphed person. Would they know everyone else sees that person differently? Or would they only perceive the truth and fail to notice the illusion?

Oh look, It's this thread again.

The search tool is your friend, OP.

That topic ended in no definitive answer. I think it's ok to have a fresh topic THREE YEARS LATER and avoid necroposting.

I agree with that idea, but I need to be able to "prove" that I can, not that there's no rule that says I can't.