So my party is about to start the Test of the Smoking Eye.
So they Plane Shift to Occipitus, and are about to start their overland hike.
First check: Party movement rate = 15.
Oh crap.
Second check: Distance to be covered...100+ miles.
Double crap.
Percentile dice start flying, and I have about two weeks of overland journey pseudo-random encounters plotted out.
I've substituted for variety, I've tweaked the encounter lists to add time, direction, distance, and motivation to the combattants.
Then I start reviewing tactics.
Oh triple-uber crap.
Hezrou. Spell-Like Ability: Blasphemy 3/day.
Specifically:
"Furthermore, if you are on your home plane when you cast this spell, nonevil extraplanar creatures (the whole party) within the area are instantly banished back to their home planes...This effect takes place regardness of whether the creatures hear the blasphemy. The banishment effect allows a Will save (at a -4 penalty) to negate."
Ok folks...is "home plane" in this case referring to The Abyss (in which case, every Hezrou can and will send most, if not all, of the party home) or to Occipitus specifically (which it seems that nobody is really "from", and so the Hezrous in question aren't on their "home plane" and aren't going to be mass-banishing the PCs).
This is particularly ugly, since some of the PCs aren't from the same prime as others (see campaign background in the Spelljammer thread below).
The three things that come to mind all involve a little DM intervention.
1. Decide that the Hezrous isn't on his home plane.
2. He has already used the ability 3 times that day.
3. Roll again on the encounter table.
I don't think I'm adding anything you haven't thought of, but it is your decision after all. Consider it for the sake of the adventure. I haven't read TotSE yet, but I imagine it'd be very hard to adapt the adventure to the party being sent back to the PMP, or even to different planes.
Let us know how it turned out.
Bulette
Home Plane refers to "the Abyss" when dealing with Demons.
I came across the same situation when I ran the adventure. Think of it this way, though: if I were a hungry, rampaging hezrou, I'd prefer to kill my prey so that I could eat it instead of banishing it where I couldn't get it. I would have the hezrou either save the blasphemy as a last resort to escape certain death, or just simply not use it at all. Or, if it's easier, replace it with a different encounter.
I think it's a great tactic for the hezrou if he's losing the fight. Powerful demons who start losing a fight will do anything to save their skin. It's a good roleplaying device too because it utilizes a threat that most adventurers never encounter and gives them a chance to work together. I don't know about most groups, but when it comes to combat my group is more like barely controlled chaos with everyone doing their own thing and fighting something like the hezrou gave them a chance to work more as a team. After the first hezrou banishing the two fighters, my group devised party tactics to use the next few times they fought hezrous.
Remember that Kaurophon can scry and use his lesser amulet of the planes once a day, so if half of the party is banished, they can easily find each other. Of course, if your party has members who don't all hail from the same home plane you might have a little more trouble getting them back together again.
In another thread I spoke of a certain dwarf PC in my party. Because of a flaw his movement rate is half normal, so his movement is 10. Because of the spell weavers elixer that gives +8 str, -4 wis the dwarf, who had one level of cleric, couldn't cast his domain spell longstrider, or his scrolls of the same spell, to increase his movement rate. Their first encounter was the hezrou who banished them back.
It was very frusterating for the players. Remember though that much of the plane is open where there is a chance to avoid encounters. I've never really seen my group back down, hide or run until realizing that this demon could make their journey impossible to complete.
I agree overall with the 'last resort' tactic, after all demons love the flesh of mortals, and also love having them as captives. There were a few times however that I rerolled rather than deal with the drama of having the party try to hide before having to return to start.
Here's what I plan to do (it's a rationalization, there's no justification in the rules): Because of the fragment of Celestia existing in Occipitus, Occipitus is not a "true" Abyssal plane, and therefore the Hezrou's aren't native. Therefore the banishment part of Blasphemy doesn't function.
I plan to make a few creatures native to Occipitus, including Adimarchus and the corrupted angel (I forget his name). Oh, and anyone who acquires the smoking eye template.
Steve