Well, my group of six players have just delved into the begining of "Into the Wormcrawl Fissure". Upon exploring the Fissure, I had Balakarde's ghost contact one of the PCs as it suggests. They wisely decided to pursue him after an hour debate on whether they should just teleport into the Writhing Sanctum, and so Windwalked straight to the EarthCancer Gorge...
Beautifully designed, Mr Jacobs.
As they approached the entrance to the cave, I specifically asked the lead PC if they were just going to Windwalk straight to where the "urge" lead them, Balakarde's spirit. While innately suspicious, since Library of Last Resort they have been using Windwalk to blow past any randomness I want to throw at them or even guardians, and so decided to cruise straight towards Balakarde, straight towards the back of the Apostle Cave... which had all of them (moving 60mph as vapor) suddenly passing over one of the Deathtraps. (DM grins with evil)This not only dispelled half of the WW'd PCs, but killed two ouright with the immediate Finger of Death. (Yeah, I upped the Deathtrap to do multiple targets...only fair when you're running six players with four cohorts) They stood practically face to face with the Apostle, who was practically surprised by their sudden appearance. He spent three rounds trying to escape only to get smoked by Mass Heal/cure light combo. The real terror of the caves were the Mindkiller Scorpions. Very few PCs can consistently hit a 40 AC, and the Mindkilling Aura took two PCs down before they were hit by the mass heal. My players rolled extraordiarily well against them, as everyone passed the DC 32 confusion poison by sheer luck. as well as the Mindkiller Aura. I took away two centipedes and added eight Eviscerator Beetles, making the whole battle almost like that scene in the new 'King Kong' where they fall in the canyon of bugs... More than a few PCs got hit by the high DC chitter, though in melee the beetles and the centipedes were largely ineffectual against the buffed fighter-types. Nonetheless, my players thought they might all die, especially at end of second round when there were two dead cohorts (by death effects, no revivify), two PCs unable to cast spells, and the main Cleric unable to act because of chittering...
MVP goes to the horrific Mindkiller Scorpions.
Yeah, that encounter is sure to be looked back on as a classic in years to come. I had the earthcancer centipedes attack first; the PC wizard wisely readied an action to cast "death to undeath" if any more bugs appeared, so that when the two scorpions came crawling up, he blasted them. Of course, the other PCs were cursing him out in the meantime ("Hey, can we get some help against these million-HD centipedes, please? TPK on the way! Help!"), but they (narrowly) managed to hold them off, and when the scorpions appeared and were immediately destroyed, everyone cheered. Great stuff.
I should've done something similar with the centipedes/scorpions. I ran it as printed and the monsters never even got close to the PCs. Seemed a bit anticlimactic.
I should've done something similar with the centipedes/scorpions. I ran it as printed and the monsters never even got close to the PCs. Seemed a bit anticlimactic.
Pretty much the same here- the monsters got close, but they never did anything. (Pretty much everyone in my party had amazingly high ACs, and were immune to poison and had spell resistance and damage reduction and such, so all in all, nobody was really in any danger.)