My group has nearly finished the HoHR and will soon be entering the The Champion's Belt. After re-reading the adventure in an attempt to polish off some the finer points of the plot, I have a few questions concerning the adventure's continuity. If youve already ran this section of the adventure path let me know how this went for you, or how you plan to approach these problems when you come across them.
1. Raknian decides to assisinate the players for their destruction of the Ebon Triad cell (they may know something about his dealings with cultists) and because they apparently murdered his friend Theldrick. Seeing that he purchased the Apostolic Scrolls ties him to the whole Kyuss/Age of Worms thing, but it doesnt show the players why he wanted to assasinate them, and Im sure my players will want to know ALL about that. Am I missing something?
2. There are a couple of doors leading from the understructure into Raknian's home. My players will naturally want to explore that area as well, assuming that their will be more clues/villians/treasure beyond those doors. How did you deal with the problem of nudging the players away from breaking and entering into Raknian's home?
3. Im sure that my party will go scouting the understructure at night, and in doing so, will eventually defeat Zahol. Then, theirs the Ulgurstasta. Once its released from its slumber, the script states the creature is unable to escape room 32. It has a 20ft reach, but the hallway leading to room 28 is 25ft long, which means it can use of any of its melee attacks against the party. It can use its breath weapon once, and then continue with its tendril attack which has a 40ft reach. All of the archers in the party have magic ranged weapons, so its not impervious to their attacks. Ultimately it would be a short fight if my party trades blows with it in this manner. This means the Ulgurstasta would want to bust into the arena floor to improve its fighting chances. What happens then? That would probably alert any guards that werent complete morons (ultimately disqualifying the players from the last round of the games), and make things a little akward as the arena staff inspects to see where this gaping whole came from the next morning. All in all, the adventure would take a horribly akward twist if this fight goes ahead as written. Suggestions?
Our campaign's in Eberron, so the Free City Arena is actually the Hollow Tower in Hareth's Folly, per conversion notes.
The party in my campaign chose to:
-Search Sharn's sewers for a way into the understructure.
-Kill Bozal, the priest.
-Let the Wiz roll a 30 on his Spellcraft to deduce how to shut down the sphere to see what was in it.
-Kill the Urlgustasta.
All two days prior to the Tournament Dinner.
I can personally vouch they have never read any of the Dungeons in the AoWAP, yet they chose IMHO the easiest way to finish this module.
To answer your last question: I had the Apostle break up through into the arena as well. I didn't quite get the description of the 'portal' with the carvings of Kyuss' face on it, so I just left it as a stone wall. Granted it was probably a door, but oh well. Once the Apostle made it up to the Arena floor, it started eating all the workers setting up for the dinner, and began turning them into undead. The PCs flew, climbed and jumped up to the Arena and joined the fight. After they killed it I ended the adventure that night.
When we get back, they'll be standing over the slaughtered Apostle. The Watch hired as extra Tournament security will show up, and start harrassing the players (as they're paid to do) until an agent of the Citadel with members of the Blackened Book show up. They take everyone in for questioning...typical interrogations with Zone of Truth...exonerate the players...and the whole thing gets put into the Sharn Inquisitive by the next day.
Of course, Loris ir'Raknian is stunned, deflated, and in deeeeeep trouble. He's got enough favors that he's not arrested outright, but he's being investigated really heavily. The players are allowed to fight in the tourny, as public support for them i extremely high, and Raknian wants another chance to kill them legally; accidental death to Madtooth the Hungry. The players fight in the tourny...on the last day, Raknian disappears, likely to show up as an undead later on.
To answer your first two questions: let them break into his house. If they make it in successfully (via stealth or butchery) they can find notes and letters between Theldrick and Raknian, possibly even a journal of Raknian's that talks about his old Ebon Triad days, even hinting at how to get down to the understructure very easily.
Include at least one "our love shall have to remain hidden" letter for maximum impact. ;)
1. Raknian decides to assisinate the players for their destruction of the Ebon Triad cell (they may know something about his dealings with cultists) and because they apparently murdered his friend Theldrick. Seeing that he purchased the Apostolic Scrolls ties him to the whole Kyuss/Age of Worms thing, but it doesnt show the players why he wanted to assasinate them, and Im sure my players will want to know ALL about that. Am I missing something?
My party accepted the fact that Raknian was out to get them for the destruction of the Ebon Triad - so I didn't really have a problem with that.
2. There are a couple of doors leading from the understructure into Raknian's home. My players will naturally want to explore that area as well, assuming that their will be more clues/villians/treasure beyond those doors. How did you deal with the problem of nudging the players away from breaking and entering into Raknian's home?
Yeah, I had some trouble with this, also with the 'plug' that leads to the ghoul area (and area that I had not populated). As for the doors to the palace I just placed some guards there - the party is not supposed to be snooping around so this caused them to give the doors a wide berth. As for the plug I eventually had to say that they would never get it dislodged, otherwise we would have been there all night. I would totally delete any mention of the plug if you don't plan on having the party explore the ghoul tomb.
3. Im sure that my party will go scouting the understructure at night, and in doing so, will eventually defeat Zahol. Then, theirs the Ulgurstasta. Once its released from its slumber, the script states the creature is unable to escape room 32. It has a 20ft reach, but the hallway leading to room 28 is 25ft long, which means it can use of any of its melee attacks against the party. It can use its breath weapon once, and then continue with its tendril attack which has a 40ft reach. All of the archers in the party have magic ranged weapons, so its not impervious to their attacks. Ultimately it would be a short fight if my party trades blows with it in this manner. This means the Ulgurstasta would want to bust into the arena floor to improve its fighting chances. What happens then? That would probably alert any guards that...
Well releasing it from it's slumber is not a sure thing - and remember the party cannot see what is beyond the hallway, there's a stone plug, and it's inside the forcefield protecting the Apostle of Kyuss. My party just wasn't able to get through the forcefield, so that took care of that problem for me (no dedicated wizard in the group, and no Rod of Cancellation). The Apostle won't awaken after the death of Bozah until after it's hit point total has dropped to its regular amount - which would take many days, it won't awaken until well after the games are finished. I had the beast come up while the games were on - it was fun.
Interestingly enough, two weeks ago the suddenly fan-favorite team controlled by the PCs, the Dirty Faced Killers, handled most of my extra-added material (extra arena fights) with relative ease. They were scheduled to fight the next day, but were unceremoniously murdered by Pitch Blade in the Titan’s Ceonoby.
Fortunately I had a side-plot working, and will be able to slide the characters in to the plot because of the murder, otherwise I would have had the players roll up new characters and say they were an unnamed team that had advanced in the games thus far.
But now the problem is Loris has accomplished his task to get rid of the troublesome PCs. Now he is focused on Auric and the prophecy. My PCs will probably be in a similar situation: they have defeated Bozal, but will be unable (and unknowingly) to deal with you-know-what. Hopefully the fight with Bozal will be easy for the PCs, because I will need him to release the forcefield, and this means that the you-know-what will be at its strongest. I’ll simply allow Bozal to release the field mentally as a dying free action if need be, likely with a smirk on his face…