I am running the Chamber of Antiquities as a side-trek dungeon for my SCAP by making the book of dead names contain background for Adimarchus, Grazz't, and Nabathoroton.
I made the chamber leap around the multiverse randomly once a week, so it's no longer part of Maure castle, having disappeared some 300 years ago. It "happened" to appear in the hills outside Sasserine and noone had returned back from it, so the party went exploring.
The party consisists of:
5 15th level PCs and 1 with the smoking eye. Their classes are paladin, rouge/shadowdancer/fighter, cleric/contemplative, barbarian, wizard/archmage, and ranger/fighter.
First, they went shopping in Sasserine. They made the logical leap that anything that was guarding such a place had to either live a really long time or be immortal or a construct. The ranger bought a bunch of construct and undead bane as well as evil outsider (favored enemy) which he's been forgetting to buy at every oppurtunity. They also bought some scrolls of raise dead and deathward.
They approached 1 and looking around the room (and towards the M's to the east and west) activated the traps. Within three rounds, the ranger, paladin, and wizard go insane. The rest of the party subdues them while the rouge moves quickly to disable the traps. The cleric had to rest two days before all 3 greater restorations could be cast (they left the paladin for last) so after the second day, they decided to do some exploring.
The wizard stayed at the bottom of the stairs (outside of the map) and scouted the room with prying eyes a few times to get a gist of where the M traps were. The rouge then entered the room with the cleric. The cleric cast an antimagic field on himself and kept the rouge within 10 feet as he disabled the traps just in case one were to activate. They disarmed the trap at the south end of the dais and then moved to the southeast bookstacks.
The rouge entered the stacks and the mettallic doors began to close. Thinking quickly he tumbled out of the room(I had him make a reflex save and he rolled a 20). Just then, the cleric turned to see the Juggernaut spring to life. The juggernaut trampled the rouge and cleric who immediatly began withdrawing but not before taking a fair amount of breath weapons (slow, fire, and ice). The barbarian ran up the stairs into the room and helped evacuate them by throwing them down the stairs. Bruised, the party rested again so that they could restore sanity to their paladin.
The next day, the party cast a fair amount of buffs before entering the chamber including fire, ice, acid, electricity resistance 30, fly, haste, and deathward. The barbarian had greater heroism.
They moved in and initiative was rolled. The party barbarian was first in and did a fair chunk of damage (he had a very magic, construct bane adamantine great axe). The paladin approached but his sword was wholly ineffective. The rest of the party moved into position along the balcony while the rouge and cleric hung back.
the party rouge attempted to disarm the M traps that were around the room but failed early on and was affected by fear.
The juggernaut captured the barbarian in a forcecage and tried toasting and freezing him to little avail. It succesfuly dispelled the greater heroism. Over the course of the battle, the force cage was disintegrated by the cleric and wizard and greater heroism was cast again but again promptly dispelled.
This tactic was repeated adnauseum by the juggernaut as the barbarian was really the only one that could hurt it. The party ranger's construct bane arrows were not adamantine and were thus slightly less effective. The battle lasted 7 rounds and did not have a single death although everyone in the party had been slowed, poisoned, buffs dispelled, or forcecaged.
All in all, the juggernaut easily could have killed the party were it not for the energy resistances and the teamwork of the cleric and wizard with well timed disintegrates.
The party continued searching the chamber after resting. They disintegated the door to the chaos room which gave me one of those "oh s$^#" moments, until I read about the antimagic field. That could have been BAAAAD. They sent the barbarian in after checking the room with the old mirror on a ten foot pole trick. They found the room cool and trippy.
They searched some of the treasury rooms and greedily lapped up the robe of spellwarding and the shoes of farstriding. They then ventured into the room of changes. Some of them had the acuity to don the protective armor but some did not.
The party all entered the room and all made their saves the first round...except for the barbarian who rolled a 1. I rolled the percentile dice...elemental change...rolled the d6...OWCH...Odd number.
The party barbarian (nigh indistructuble mind you, believe me I tried) exploded in a ball of electricity. The party collectively crapped their pants, grabbed his body and ran. They ran all the way back to Sasserine and got him reincarnated. The character had previously been a goliath, then was reincarnated as a halfling so he felt it would befit his character more to be reincarnated again. and he rolled half-orc. Boy was he happy!
The party then set into the room with the skullreaver who they quickly dispatched due to the rangers favored enemy (outsider) and the clerics domains (law).
That's where we left it! I can't wait to get back to it in two weeks. The players are challenged by this module while still having a good time. Great stuff!
not sure if goliaths are giants or humanoids, but in any case, i allowed it the first time, so I allowed it the second time.
We ran another marathon session on sunday. The party cleared out the rest of the rooms besides the secret doors behind the pentagram. The party barbarian almost fell (again) to the hellcat while the wizard with permanant see invisibility was flabbergasted. After a few rounds of the barbarian being mauled (to the negatives: he was dragged out and saved by well timed cure mods. from the cleric and the rouge) the cleric made a knowledge planes check to identify the bright light equation as a probable Hellcat. An area greater dispel magics on the chandelier and the party had enough shadowy illumination to quell the beast.
The party was uberconfused by the spellchisel room. They tried a few things, but gave up in the end. Did anyone's party make any headway? Is there a way to dispel an antimagic field or is this a puzzle with no solution. Just as well, I didn't want to give them the spell chisel anyway.
The dragonmasters of lynn asked the party to leave the room when they entered and the party almost complied, but stalled too long so the dragonmasters attacked. They weren't too effective as combatants, though they were kind of fun and alien (jumping from platform to platform in full plate?cool!)The party wizard tried to use mass hold monster or some such and was surprised when the dragonmasters laughed at him.
The room with the rakshasas and furniture and wraiths was a bit tedious for the PCs, but they still had fun and survived. They figured out after destroying the first statue that they all probably had wraiths in them, so they tried to avoid damaging the constructs. I advanced three of the rakshasas so that they were effectively 9th level and that made it a little more interesting. One of them would cast Evards which then would buy the other two advanced ones a chance to cast their buffs while the remaining three (lesser) rakshasas cast haste lightning bolt, etc. The uber rakshasas unleashed spectral hands that held touch of idiocy, as well as rays of enfeeblement. This coupled with the dread wraiths con drain damaged many of the party members, including the party wizard AND paladin (who after being dropped to negative 1 and back up to his max hp of 1, got the h377 out there.) The paladin did manage to give a deathward to the cleric and the barbarian though, so they effectively defeated most of the wraiths themselves.
The party found the robe of transmutation and identified it, but the wizard wants to keep the ruby robe of spellwarding and they're going to sell it. O_o I was surprised by this but you know, players perogative. They'll certainly have no trouble finding a buyer in Sasserine.
Arodnap was a weird experience. The party dispatched the outsiders and the wizard made a knowledge check to see if he had ever heard of Arodnap and rolled a twenty. I gave him a fair amount of the background (cleric for Wee Jas, dimension in a box, she's the guardian) and through the evidence in the room, they figured that they should probably take the rock off of the sarcophogus. Arodnap thanked them, and said she would take care of the outsiders, but as the party hadn't yet discovered the chute trap or the other end of the dungeon, they couldn't offer any reasonable alternatives. Some good RP, but it'll have to wait for next time.
The cleric and the wizard slept in the restorative pool for 4 hours, made their saves, and the cleric restored everyone. The party then approached the pentagram hallway. They found the note detailing the process for deactivating the trap. The rouge and the ranger approached picked up some of the residue and rubbed it on the north globes, activating the trap. The orb made its spot against everyone except the wiz and the cleric (rolled two consecutive 1s) and the remaining party members disappeared into the trap. This is where we left the session. Fun Stuff!
We finished up this module in the first week of January. The rest of the rooms were explored and didn't pose too much of a problem, although of particular note:
The barbarian went into Zomph's menagarie by himself and faced a horrid umberhulk mano a mano. They traded blows of 50+ a round back and forth. The barbarian won, but barely. Meanwhile, the rest of the party followed him in and faced two...not as much of a challenge for them, but still fun.
The party spanked the three invisible nalfashnee thanks to a glitterdust followed by a prismatic spray (man the archmage loves this spell!) which turned one to stone. My party severly favors evil outsiders (paladin, rangers primary favored enemy, almost everyone has holy weapons, oh yeah and alakast (SCAP).
The party were wary of the gold and black dragon statues and especially the Naga. They took the black and gold statues and the gold one went to the paladin's church while the black one was sold.
The water elemental was dispatched relatively quickly by the slaying arrows (used by the ranged ranger) but the party totally misdiagnosed the waterfalls. The ranger stuck his hand in the "clear" one and lost it! The expression on his face was hillarious! One regeneration spell was all it took (after some rest) and he was back in the game.
The dragon heads also were great to roleplay, as the party attempted to keep them all entertained and happy as they giggled maniacly and spun around the room.
Over all, a very fun module. My party especially liked facing the Juggernaut and I found Arodnap to be a good (albeit unexpected) role playing oppurtunity for the right party.
I simply used the Chamber of Antiquities as a side quest (Using the Codex of Dead Names as a source of information on demonic politics
>>>>>>>SPOILERS>>>>>>>>>> ;>
such as Nabathoroton's gang politics, and information that led to the discovery that the remaining Cagewrights were hanging out in Shatterhorn.
I'm thinking about buying the Maure castle module (online) based on my players reactions and running a different party through it. I also can't wait for the next installment!
Very interesting recap - thanks for sharing.