I will probably be running the encounter with Embril in Shatterhorn next session.
This seems like a very unusual encounter, with the potential to be very frustrating for the players.
Does anyone have any advice or comments on how to run it effectively?
thanks!
Frankly, I'd suggest altering it almost completely. Even if all she's doing is tossing around death spells or trying to stab people with a special dagger that sucks their soul out, at least they'll feel more involved / less annoyed.
Not entirely sure what I'm going to change myself there.
I too believe that the whole 'take one PC out with a magic jar climax' is kind of lame. I would be very partial to seeing Embril duke it out with the PCs considering the fact that she is one of the most powerful Cagewrights, and thus a primary antagonist.
If you could have Embril be a boss fight for a group of extremely high level PCs, what kind of tactics would she use? How will the battlefield look like?
I'm going to have the fight take place in a room full of bodies held in stasis. Everytime the PCs take her out, she possesses the body of one of the bodies and continues the fight (Kind of like the whole Agent Smith thing in the Matrix). Another scenario could be that she fights the PC in a strange room filled with clones of herself. These clones would be a couple levels lower than the real Embril, but the danger is that they will be having to fight multiple adversaries with the same skills, abilities, etc.
Not entirely sure what I'm going to change myself there.
My current thought is something like:
She's jarred into other people (preferably not the PCs, maybe some hostages), casting spells from them, primarily some sort of life draining effect. The life she's draining is giving her real form extra temp hp, and if she kills anyone, then she claims their soul for Nerull this way.
If she claims a soul, she performs a short ritual committing the soul that can't be disrupted unless her temp hp are gone through, at a minimum (Allowing her to hopefully last a round or two against focus fire. Probably with some kind of 'may sacrifice 100 temp hp to automatically make a save' or something similar for getting past save or dies at that point.
So, kinda two stages... one as puppets while selfbuffing herself that the party has to figure out what to do about, the other actually against her but with someone's soul on the line potentially.
And, even if the soul does get sacrificed appropriately, it's still recoverable for the party, as written.
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My plans are a little different. I like the idea of Embril trying to use the jar to free Adimarchus. However, instead of her just kidnapping someone, then failing to get Nerull's help and getting driven insane when she shows up on Carceri, I think it would be more interesting to have her go after the Smoking Eye PC's soul. Then, when she gets to Carceri, she can actually succeed in freeing him. This would require some more work on the part of the DM, as Adimarchus and Embril would probably then be encountered on Occipitus instead of Carceri (though I'd like to have the PCs arrive at Skullrot just in time to see Adimarchus freed).
I was planning on having Shebeleth escape the end of "Thirteen Cages" to make for a good boss fight, but I think the clones of Embril work just as well as the real one makes her getaway.
Yeah I can picture it now:
The real Embril is preparing a plane shift spell to make her getaway. Flanking both sides of the room are six tubes filled with a greenish liquid. Inside each of the tubes is a clone of Embril. All of a sudden, the clones' eyes flutter open and they break out of the tubes to engage the party as the real Embril escapes.
Now that would be a pretty sweet boss-fight for the Shatterhorn Adventure. :)
I'm getting rid of the Strike on Shatterhorn adventure entirely and only keeping two of the Cagewrights found within.
One of the two happens to be Embril but I have placed her in a Kopru Necropolis in the Haunted Village lake. Instead of mid jarring a character she has resurrected a powerful Spellweaver to assist her in travelling into the Realm of Dreams to destroy Adimarchus' insanity and release his Inner Demon.
The players will need to follow her into the Realm and defeat her admidst the nightmares to rescue Nidrama and stop her from destroying Adimarchus entirely.
Just my take
Good Luck with the final couple of adventures and let us know how you go.
Delvesdeep
As a side note -I've reduced the size of the Cagewrights in an attempt to make each encounter with them more meaningful/a climax and not just another fight to 13 - 6 Aprrentices and 6 Master plus Dry'yrd as leader. If you are interested in what I have done have a look on theRPGenius site and look for the document called 'Alternative Adimarchus and Cgaewrights'.
I wanted to keep the magic jar plot as I thought having a PC captured would be a GREAT emotional lead in for the last game... and it was. To keep the end from being anti-climactic, I grouped up all the cagewrights to be in the last room just before the secret chamber. So, while the group is fighting all of them, they're also making saves each round and have no idea what they're saving against (which also led to the emotional suspense). So the cagewrights were the climactic fight while the PC possession was the emotional lead in to Assylum. Worked like a charm. :)
I wanted to keep the magic jar plot as I thought having a PC captured would be a GREAT emotional lead in for the last game... and it was. To keep the end from being anti-climactic, I grouped up all the cagewrights to be in the last room just before the secret chamber. So, while the group is fighting all of them, they're also making saves each round and have no idea what they're saving against (which also led to the emotional suspense). So the cagewrights were the climactic fight while the PC possession was the emotional lead in to Assylum. Worked like a charm. :)
Besides Embril, did the party know or have heard of any of the Cagewrights before this battle or could they all have just been powerful underlings etc?
Did the magic jar work? What did the player whose character was jared do while the rest of the party hunted them down?
I never liked the Strike of Shatterhorn. It just seems like they writer got to almost the end of the Path and thought -'Gees the party still haven't met the last 5/6 Cagewrights! We better write them up and have them fight them before they get to the conclusion - lets stick them in a dungeon!'
The whole adventure reeks of a dodgy band-aid - a hurried and unimaginative 'quick-fix'.
The secret, IMHO, to discovering if an adventure is worth including ina plot is to ask yourself - if I do not include this adventure will it have an effect on the overall plot. The simple answer with Strike on Shatterhorn is NO!
Take the Embril encounter out and the adventure is a complete waste of time and extremely unclimaxical!
Delvesdeep
I have to agree with Delvesdeep here. I made significant changes to the AP as well. My PCs have just recovered Fetor Abradius' notes from Karran-Kural in Secrets of the Soul Pillars and they are starting to piece together the plot of their enemies (I have given them some minor clues before and I also included a bit more information in Abradius' notes than the adventure suggested).
This session was pretty great actually, as I've always been fond of sessions in which PCs are starting to grasp the plot. I dislike campaigns in which PCs are endlessly gropîng around in the dark, so I avoid making my players go through the same.
Moreover, the PCs have already figured out who nine or ten of the Thirteen are, and they have actually killed three of them already, and confronted two more who got away (one of them being Fetor).
Besides Embril, did the party know or have heard of any of the Cagewrights before this battle...
No, but they weren't trying to figure out who they were ahead of time either. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.
Did the magic jar work? What did the player whose character was jared do while the rest of the party hunted them down?
Yes, it worked. And I understand that what we did won't work for groups that don't have the same type of set up: I have two players, each running 2 PCs, while I'm running an NPC for a total of 5. The player who lost one asked to pull in a replacement PC of comprable level, which I allowed. It also made sense in storyline as I haven't been running SCAP isolated or straight through. There have been other games, with other PCs whose storylines overlap, so it wasn't any stretch for one of them to come in as part of a rescue team. When they find the kidnapped PC, she'll finish it out with 3, not an unusual dynamic for our gaming group.
Take the Embril encounter out and the adventure is a complete waste of time and extremely unclimaxical!
True. And I agree with you that the whole thing could be scrapped with no reprocussions. It's also not the only chapter I feel that way about. It's why I left the magic jar part in and set it up so that it had plenty of opprotunity to work. Otherwise, it felt like we were spinning our wheels simply for the PCs to gain a couple of levels before heading for Carceri and the real goal.
You're right. There are many parts that could be altered to create a better flow for the plot as a whole.
I attempted to change a few things up and add in a few side treks adventures in place for adventures such as Strike on Shatterhorn.
It is only one variation on what could be done and probably irrelevant for your group at this stage of proceedings but if you are interested have a look on theRPGenius.com site for the document Adimarchus and Cagewrightsat http://therpgenius.com/modules.php?name=File_Repository&op=getit&fi le_id=308 and let me know what you think.
In terms of the Cagewrights I have tried to Foreshadow the '13' as much as I could before the players actually encountered them. Otherwise I felt they turn into meaningless battles rather that a climax of the Path the way I felt they should be.
Delvesdeep