DM Warning...(spoilers)....Be very leary of the Library Room in the SOLS

[Twinsun]

This is not so much of a rant as a warning to fellow DM's who like myself did not run the numbers of this room before the PC's encountered it. This room is set up for a TPK if its done as it "should" be done considering the critters abilities. Of import these are not mindless undead, quite the opposite.

There are three Swords of Kyuss and a Worm Caller in this room.

First three rounds of combat should roll out like this:
Swords of Kyuss unleash their Invocation of the Worm.
Now for my party this would have been the end, the were not spread out and all pretty much right at the doors when the combat started. The Swords would have ran up to the door stopped 5 feet from the closest individual and set off the bang.
This works out as follow, 20-foot radius (8 square diameter sphere likely to get your ENTIRE party in with all three blasts the first round.) 14d6 (average 3.5 points) = 49 points of damage (DC 22 saves for half, most of my group has about a 50% chance of making this). So each member of your party is going to take somewhere between 147 points of damage and 73 points of damage (minus evasion).
Worm Caller empowered slashing darkness, one target takes 5d8 *1.5, ranged touch at +11 to hit, high percentage of hitting. So average works out to 33 points of damage.

So on the open round party eats between 147 (180 if slashing darkness) and 73 (106 if slashing darkness) too all members (except for the slashing darkness.

That first round would have killed nearly every player in my group, for certain the Wizard, and the rogue if he failled 2 saving throws, the cleric would have been to single digits if he made all three saves, and the fighters would have had to have made 2 saves to still be standing.

My group also was unable in 1 round to put down more then one of the Swords of Kyuss, so next round repeat above *2/3 for the total damages.

Game Over.

To correct for this prior to the encounter I removed the Invocation of the Worm from the Swords of Kyuss and just made them straight melee. (normal average damage for them is 34 points per hit, so if the crit (19-20, two attacks per round) 68). And had the Worm Caller using Mass Inflict Moderate Wounds from the rear. This still worked out to be a dangerous fight, killing the ranger/rogue, driving the wizard and one of the Two fighters to unconcious before the party finished them off (I have a party of 6 players.)

I am interested to hear how this room played out for other DM's that have gotten to this point please :)

[Bocklin]

There was another thread on this somewhere...

In a nutshell: good preparation is of the essence. Each of the characters should have a Death Ward in place when they attack the temple. If they took the time to "clairvoyance" or "commune" beforehand they already know that they are going for an undead-fest.

If it looks like they have not prepared well you can have Manzorian giving them some tips (more or less, according to how good intentioned you feel on that day).

Finally, Rogues and Monks will have an easier time (thanks Evasion).

With Death Wards in place, the only thing this ability does is healing the other undead in the room. Which is quite annoying in itself...

Bocklin

[ZDM]

Good calls, Bocklin.
Good Prep on the players part is a must.
My group has 20+ year veteran players and they spend a good deal of time digging through the rules, items, etc. That said, everyone spent 25K on a +5 cloak of resistance. Best buy in the book. They invested in a wands of Deathward and freedom of movement, Staff of Healing, and all sorts of buffing spells (remember kids - Protection from evil prevents domination). Most bought rings of evasion.
In short they may spend several thousand gold pieces worth of resources every room!
So, for a group on the ball this room was still tough, but no deaths. They do complain about this particular encounter quite a lot, but I figure if they live then end of discussion!

It boils down to looking at what your players can handle. Here is an idea that may help, depending on your groups style: I like to get everyone to hand me a wish-list of stuff they want and swap treasure out of the adventure for stuff on their lists. It frees up some cash for them to afford to be buffed before each room since they don’t loose 1/2 the value on selling items they don’t need.

[YuKyDave]

I mean Death Ward is a 4th level spell, so the cleric should have had access to it since 7th level, and they can write a scroll of it for 350 gp and 28 expts.

[Twinsun]

I guess the thing that surprised me most about it is your running on the assumption that before a party opens a door to any room they are buffing to full with buff that have a duration of 1 min/ level.

Now I suspect you are correct about the scrying or commune ahead of time. However my group of 6 has 4 players with more then 20 years of experience apiece as well but they dont tend to use such spells in general. Part of that is because for years (prior to this adventure path) I ran a relatively low magic campaign, that tended to top out at levels 12-14. The campaign style is what most likely is causing them fits which is something I need to deal with in and of itself.

As I said in my original post however, This was not a rant point out module flaws, its was pointing out a very dangerous encounter to fellow DM's to be aware of. Like I said in my case I just removed the blast effect from the swords and it worked fine for my guys.

[FRED ALLINSON]

good point
never played this encounter but the whole idea is to have fun and challenge the players and not kill them all off if the point is to kill them all off just tell them the world was hit by a astriod and alll are dead so lets drink the beer and go home

[Cardinal_Malik]

one of my players has creature compas:undead on his weapon and knew that there was undead present as they approached the door. The Cleric (who has been facing undead all campaign) casts neg energy protection on the party, and they bust in the room. I used the exact formula stated at the top of this thread, but the pc's with imp. evasion and neg. energy protection avoided damage and used up spells and resources. Now, the encounter ended up going ten to twelve rounds and lasted nearly two hours as the swords kept healing themselves, but the group finally brought them down with minimum damage to theirselves, but they were all spell exhausted. I think as written it works great, if it waxes your group, they will learn from this mistake. I still remember a favorite character that stuck his head in the green devil head in Tomb of Horrors. Did I learn from that one? You betcha!

[Terraneaux]

My party opened that door with only the cleric having a death ward up; it got dispelled off of her and then we got bombarded by those negative energy balls. We backed up (we were all flying; it's a party of an eldritch knight, an arcane trickster, a wizard, and a cleric) and spread out to minise the effects of their blast but me (the eldritch knight) and the wizard outright died from those blasts.

We picked up a wand of death ward in cauldron and went back; we've been doing okay. It's been kind of slow because we took the time to exterminate all of the worms with ball lightnings in the lower level.

What I think might have been a better idea would have been to have an earlier encounter with just one of those guys to give the party a better idea of what to expect.

[Golbez57]

Terraneaux wrote:

What I think might have been a better idea would have been to have an earlier encounter with just one of those guys to give the party a better idea of what to expect.

Good call. I'll be using one in an earlier encounter area to give them a heads-up, so that they can make a tactical retreat as necessary when they see the group of them.

Forewarned is forearmed, in the case of cautions players, also known as "players most likely to survive the Age of Worms."