Smoking Eye -- changes?

[Waldo]

Hi everyone,

I'm running TotSE right now, out of the original Dungeon magazine. (That was a great issue... it had another excellent adventure, "Mellorn Hospitality". And Evard too!)

Couple of questions.

1) There's an obvious cut in the Dungeon version. After the PCs get through the Plain of Cysts, they get teleported to the second mummy. The text for this says something like, "It's another mummy. And this time, he's not alone..." But when you read the rest of the description, he /is/ alone... all that happens is, he pats them on the back and sends them to the Skull.

Furthermore, the EL for this encounter is given as EL *15*, which is too high for the mummy.

It looks as if the author originally put something else there, but it got cut. (We know a lot of stuff was cut from the Dungeon versions for space reasons.) Does anyone know what was originally here?

2) Are there any major changes to TotSE in the hardcover? Just curious...

thanks in advance,

Waldo

[Sean Mahoney]

In the HC there is no mention of him not being alone. They are simply transported at that point and a message is delivered. The EL remains at 15 because it is a Mummy Lord (CR 15).

At this point I haven't had a chance to reread all of the adventures. My party is in Jzadirune right now so I am rereading that carefully, and then of course I would like to forshadow as much as I can for Drakthar's way if I can... at this point (since I have already started and people have their backgrounds in place) the best I think I am going to be able to do is mention someone going to or having gone to the baths and perhaps have some associates of my fighter who is in the watch mention that they are having to clean up the annoying graffiti.

Sean Mahoney

[Waldo]

Sean Mahoney wrote:

In the HC there is no mention of him not being alone. They are simply transported at that point and a message is delivered. The EL remains at 15 because it is a Mummy Lord (CR 15).

Ah, right. [Thumps head] My bad.

Okay, well, has anyone had a chance to read and compare the HC chapter on TotSE? It's no big deal, but I am curious. That adventure has a lot of room for expansion, and I was wondering if the warped mind of David Noonan had come up with anything else.

Oh, and! One other question. The Nexus of Evil in the skull (the lich encounter, where he keeps summoning things)... is the Nexus itself 5' across, or 10' across? The text doesn't say, and map of the skull is a little unclear: the scale is 15' per square for some reason, and the nexus is just a little black blotch.

Eyeballing, it looks about 10', which seems reasonable; it means the lich can be attacked in melee without entering the flames, but can't be flanked (and can often avoid full attacks with a 5' step).

(Hm. If you wanted to make this encounter even tougher, expanding the nexus to 15' would do nicely. No melee attacks unless you have a reach weapon, or are willing to eat 2d4 negative levels. Ouch.)

Waldo