Test of the Smoking Eye - Sacrifice and Kaurophon questions

[DM_Zlorf]

Hi,
My players are currently battling Kaurophon in the skull on Occipitus, and things arn't going to well for them.

Kaurophon pretty much turned on them after hearing whats needs to be done at the last test. Even though he was understrength before the battle, because he used alot of his spells to help the party to get here, he still did plenty of damage with cones of cold, fireballs while using greater invis and flying.

The party has retreated, 3 runing down the stairs and 2 dimension dooring to the Nexus room.

I have some questions regarding this part of the adventure:

The SCAP HC says that Kaurophon get a +4 Caster level bonus because of the Nexus, im guessing he has to touch the Nexus at some stage to get the benefit, especially since the main fight is in the eye socket, anyone know how long this lasts for?

Also the players are still not sure if they need to sacrifice someone (ie ally) or self-sacrifice. I think they plan to sacrifice someone else in the party who is willing to be sacrificed. Which begs the question, should the person sacrificing get the smoking eye or the person who thinks they are being sacrificed by someone else, but happy to be sacrificed get the smoking eye?...confused :)

Also Kaurophon from memory has a errata - DC for his Fireball states 18, but it should be 19 , Spell focus evocation hasn't been calculated, ie 10+SP(3)+Chr(+5)+SF(evo)=19.

Kauro's plan, now that the party is retreating is to Dimension door into the black flames of the Nexus and fight from their, getting the 4d8 healing benefits etc and attack with the few spells he has left. If could be a total player kill if the party arn't careful!

The party is also fairly injured before fighting Kauro, the main fighter lost 27Hp's before the battle due to the Clay Golem, and no-one in the party can heal him. The party monk, has 3 neg levels because he tried to punch the Lich through the Nexus.

Issues with the whole Smoking Eye thing and just a warning to other DM's, their isnt enough reason for the players to trust someone like Kauro, the dying words of Alex "to trust the smoking eye" dont really mean much. DM's really need to drop more clues on what the smoking eye is and how it may help the PC defeat someone who they know nothing about at this stage of the adventure. I constantly got this question from my players "Why are we here again?". I take some of the blame because, i tend to only read a few chapter at a time and havent read the whole SCAP HC..i blame the kids :).

Cheers
Zlorf

[john figura]

As a DM, i was asked constantly as well "Why are we on Occipitus?" Luckily they remembered alec's last words after the fight with the glabrezu...so being that party is mostly LG, they trudged forward like good little automotons....lol

Kaurophan was kickin som serious butt! some pc's were knocked out of fight and the last 2 (barbarian and fighter) were still trying to figure out what "sacrifice" was needed. in the end, they barely got rid of kauro and the gnome fighter asked the barbarian to pick him up and throw him into the fire.
It worked...now the pc's have to deal with having a 3' tall fighter with goofy lookin eye with smoke pouring out of it......which brings up other thing.....one of the pc's said they were afraid to sleep in same room with him( you know...smoke inhalation or something...LOL!!)

[Padan Slade]

I don't have the book here with me, but I thought that the lich only got the healing bonus from the nexus because he was undead and it was negative energy damage- the other functions would work for Kaurophon normally, but he'd still take the damage. Could be wrong though.

[MrVergee]

Padan is right, though the nexus gives +4 caster levels and the ability to cast unholy blight once a day, it also deals 4d8 points of negative damage, which helas undead but damages Kaurophon. However, if he risks the nexus for one round, he would get the caster level bonus for one hour. It would be suicide for him to stay inside the black-flamed fire.

[Michael Cyr]

DM_Zlorf wrote:

Also the players are still not sure if they need to sacrifice someone (ie ally) or self-sacrifice. I think they plan to sacrifice someone else in the party who is willing to be sacrificed. Which begs the question, should the person sacrificing get the smoking eye or the person who thinks they are being sacrificed by someone else, but happy to be sacrificed get the smoking eye?...confused :)

As far as this goes, I would say that if player A "sacrifices" player B, and player B is willing, then effectively player B is sacrificing himself, and I would treat it as such.

[DM_Zlorf]

Hi, Thanks for the reply.
As it worked out, Kauro never got to use the nexus, only for the +4 Caster level. Because the SCAP HC sorted said he get the benefit from the Nexus, I didnt even think about the negitives (ie 4d8 damage) until you guys mentioned it.
In the end the good guys won and no one got killed. :)

Cheers
Zlorf

Michael Cyr wrote:

DM_Zlorf wrote:

Also the players are still not sure if they need to sacrifice someone (ie ally) or self-sacrifice. I think they plan to sacrifice someone else in the party who is willing to be sacrificed. Which begs the question, should the person sacrificing get the smoking eye or the person who thinks they are being sacrificed by someone else, but happy to be sacrificed get the smoking eye?...confused :)

As far as this goes, I would say that if player A "sacrifices" player B, and player B is willing, then effectively player B is sacrificing himself, and I would treat it as such.

[samstephenson500]

One of my players managed to sacrifice Kaurophon last night. The entire party was close to buying it. In addition, Kaurophon was near death and needed to roll a 2 on his concentration check to DDoor out of the flames (lots of house ruling was going on to make the whole mess streamlined). I told them this to build suspense and they were all shouting at me telling me the "oneness" I was destined for. There is always a lot of ritual involved in this sort of important roll. I called for silence and stetched out my hand to let the die drop after an inordinate amount of shaking. What followed was one of the loudest "gamergasms" I've heard at the table recently. They wanted to take a photo of the playing mat with K's mini shown in the fire and the "1" pointing up as it lay.
I was never so happy to fumble. :)