well, this one was an unexpected near TPK, brought about by a number of factors:
1) The party's healer, a druid, has decided that he can't play any more, so his character vanished at the start of the adventure, leaving them with a monk, knight, warmage, rogue, and ranger.
2) The warmage got snagged by flycatcher earlier in the adventure and imprisoned in the plane of shadow. (he talked / bought his way out of it after a few hours)
3) The party was arguing with their rogue about things, so they weren't paying too much attention...
4) Absolutly NO ONE in the party had basic dungeoneering equipment (besides rope). no torches, nothing really serious in the way of lighting. Nothing really REALLY useful like pitons or climbing gear.
And they got caught in the flushing tube trap near allustan's prison. To make matters worse, the monk blows swim check after swim check, getting washed down the blood falls, leaving the knight, ranger, and rogue up at the top.
The three remaining attempt to continue exploring, and find their way into the kolyraut room... The doors slam shut and the inevitable starts vampiric touching the knight to death.
the rogue manages to find and use/disable the porticullis release lever - and the ranger decides to run straight into the Ice golem room. needless to say, she died very quickly. the knight gave her life trying to keep the kolyraut occupied, and the rogue ran like hell and finally decided to dive right over the blood falls...
meanwhile, the warmage (who's already got five negative levels from the urn trap earlier) talks his way free of the shadow spider (sans several magical items) and tries to follow the party. He manages to set off the exact same trap and get washed into the river. He has no problems swimming to the ledge near the waterfall... and walks right into the inevitable room. One zap of an nasty little ray and now the warmage has taken eight negative levels and is running scared - he jumps right over the edge as the inevitable chases him out of the tomb.
The Monk and rogue have made it all the way down to the star chamber alive (slow fall and tumble and a fair bit of luck) to be greeted by a very bemused Moreto. the warmage made it down, battered and bloody and barely concious.
And that's where we called it for the night. The Two deaths will be replaced by a sorcerer and a cleric, but i'm just wracking my brains as to how to introduce the two new characters. I'm also trying to figure out why moreto wouldn't just coup de gras the remainder of the party as soon as they rest.
Here's one idea for introducing new characters in the middle of an adventure (it's not great, but it works): have the surviving PCs find an "amazingly lifelife statue" - i.e., another adventurer that's been somehow turned to stone (basilisk? cockatrice?). Then plant a few "stone to flesh" potions in an easy to find treasue location. To make things interesting, you can come up with a way of randomly determining how long each of the new PCs has been "frozen" - 2 years or 200? (or 2000?). Also, the "statue" could have been taken as treasure by someone else at some point and moved around, so you don't have to assume they were exploring the exact same dungeon when they got "stoned". They may wake up miles from where they last remember being. You can also use this trick to introduce a strange race or class.
If you use this - let me know how it works!
Maybe one can play Allustan for a while?
I like that idea DMR.
BTW, I replaced the red river...with lava.
Perhaps Leadership is worth considering :/
Moreto had to come from somewhere...You could use this opportunity to allow characters to play level adjusted races such as Drow, Duergar, Grimlock, or other underdark races. Besides this, my understanding of the underdark is the whole swiss cheese theory. It would be easy to have a group of PCs tracking Moreto for whatever reason through the underdark, possibly even saving the still alive PCs from the depridations of the ghoul. They might even know a way through the underdark back to the surface. It might be neat to have the final scene of the module be the PCs immerging from the ground on the Fields of Pesh, glowing with the spirits that used to fight there...
BTW, I replaced the red river...with lava.
OMG! How did they manage to traverse it!? Sure, the fly spell is practically requisite for that navigation to the bottom, but for Icosiol's Tomb, I thought the doors were behind a waterfall. I may have superimposed that idea myself, but wow! That was a gutsy move!
If I recall correctly (it's been a while since I read the module), Moreto is looking for some sort of way to gain power on the surface world. I think he would be more inclined to use his clear upper hand to bargain with the party for information, treasure, and perhaps favors on the surface world.
I think it would be very interesting if the party is coerced into striking an uncomfortable deal that allows Moreto access to the surface and several advantages. Moreto can then exit stage left to pursue his agenda. The new PCs could show up shortly after Moreto leaves - I like the idea that they've been tracking him for some reason, or maybe they are fleeing from something Moreto stirred up down in the Underdark. Of course, Moreto will show up later, and whatever deal the party struck with him should make their lives much, much more difficult.
Well, two weeks later and we get the followup.
Bedraggled and injured, the PCs met up at the bottom of the falls.
After some amusing conversation with Moreto, they decided to try to navigate their way out of the underdark... or so they tried to bluff. They decided to go try to kill moreto (all of them having failed their spot checks to notice the two hidden Mohrgs). Big mistake.
The warmage, who was, as you'll recall, already in possession of 8 negative levels from earlier in the dungeon, decided that this would be the best course of action. the fight was... short. The Mohrgs rolled a 20 on their initative, and moreto rolled an 18. The pcs... didn't get to go first.
The party monk was surrounded and grappled by the two mohrgs, while moreto zapped away at the warmage with his wand of enervation. two rounds later, the monk broke free and ran for it, and the rogue ran for it downriver. The warmage, needing only 3 more negative levels to kill him, was easilly dispatched.
Moreto, for amusement, will be hunting down the party later, but has let them run away for now.
For the moment, the rogue and monk, having retrived a dagger which had Continual Flame cast on it from the warmage's corpse, have decided to move deeper into the underdark in search of a way out. they eventually came to a cavern with several passages.
the first passage they took lead to a cave where....
Here's one idea for introducing new characters in the middle of an adventure (it's not great, but it works): have the surviving PCs find an "amazingly lifelife statue" - i.e., another adventurer that's been somehow turned to stone (basilisk? cockatrice?). Then plant a few "stone to flesh" potions in an easy to find treasue location. To make things interesting, you can come up with a way of randomly determining how long each of the new PCs has been "frozen" - 2 years or 200? (or 2000?). Also, the "statue" could have been taken as treasure by someone else at some point and moved around, so you don't have to assume they were exploring the exact same dungeon when they got "stoned". They may wake up miles from where they last remember being. You can also use this trick to introduce a strange race or class.
If you use this - let me know how it works!
... three lifelike statues, in what appeared to be a hasty camp, were covered in cave dust.
Searching the camp, the party rogue found a neatly labled case containing potions of various types, including 5 salves of stone to flesh.
Voila, introducing the party's new Favored Soul (kord, formerly the knight), the new Sorcerer (some attack, plenty of utility, formerly the ranger), and the new Wizard (a specialist diviner, formerly the warmage).
my plan is to have them head back to the tomb, because the diviner knows from his planar contacts that an important item is located inside.
It was, overall, a short and brutal session, that fizzled while the warmage was making up his new character. We havn't had much party interaction yet, but we'll find out in two weeks.
some thoughts:
The favored soul I crunched out should be a solid healing presence, and, since I liked the idea, I replaced the Raise Dead spell with Cure Mortal Wounds, a spell written out on these boards by James Jacobs. the other spells the FS has are, for the most part, things that either buff the party or keep them going against different status effects. Plus, the FS can get into combat and throw down pretty hard with a Greatsword + Divine power, if she needs to.
She also has plane shift, because you never know when it'll come in handy.
The Sorcerer had to be convinced to take at least one attack spell per spell level, so i'm not sure how happy her player will be in the long run - especially with a wizard in the party. this player's still a noob, though, and (extremely frustratingly) doesn't really spend the time figuring out her character very well.
The Wizard should present some interesting possibilites for the party. He's loaded up on utility spells with very little attack, and he's got evocation as a prohibited school. He's either gonna be very useful or very dead, very quickly. I'm not sure which yet, and it really depends on the way the player decides to roll. He didn't make a very good warmage (he never understood that his fire shield wasn't actually useful compared to a sudden empowered orb of fire), but he's clever and annoying enough to come up with some cool uses for the many kinds of divinations. Hopefully, he'll use them enough to figure out how to keep the party alive when going through the Spire of Long shadows, later on.
For now - the trick is going to be getting the party back into icosial's tomb, actually. they seem to have decided "ok, we've gotten the stuff to allustan, that's all we're here to do, we can go now," is the best plan of action. I swear i've never seen such an uninquisitive party before.
As they now have access to a couple of teleporters and a plane shifter, they won't be stuck in the underdark for long - but if they stay, Moreto will be after them quite quickly, and the Abyssal Basilisk who's taken up residence nearby will be back...
OMG! How did they manage to traverse it!? Sure, the fly spell is practically requisite for that navigation to the bottom, but for Icosiol's Tomb, I thought the doors were behind a waterfall. I may have superimposed that idea myself, but wow! That was a gutsy move!
BTW, I replaced the red river...with lava.
Well, I thought it would make the spillway trap a heck of a lot more interesting ;)
Fortunately for them, they had a rogue/dungeon delver with a +26 Search. There really isn't a trap that he can't find and disarm if he decides to search for one.
Yes, there is a waterfall...of lava...that the PCs had to cross through. The party's spirit shaman burned through a lot of protection from energy spells.
In the end, the lava wasn't nearly as difficult as Augerric.
Well, I thought it would make the spillway trap a heck of a lot more interesting ;)
Fortunately for them, they had a rogue/dungeon delver with a +26 Search. There really isn't a trap that he can't find and disarm if he decides to search for one.
Yes, there is a waterfall...of lava...that the PCs had to cross through. The party's spirit shaman burned through a lot of protection from energy spells.
In the end, the lava wasn't nearly as difficult as Augerric.
Wow! That is really cool. I'm gonna remember that modification to the adventure. And, I'll keep that in mind whenever my players get whiny about obstacles. ;)