Hiya all
just wondered, in the first encounter with a Child of Sehan (The Horrible Plant Thing), hat did everyone have the Child of Sehan do on each option in the confusion spell? Some are obvious, but others, like the 'Attack the Caster' options, are not so obvious.
Cheers
Chris
Hiya all
just wondered, in the first encounter with a Child of Sehan (The Horrible Plant Thing), hat did everyone have the Child of Sehan do on each option in the confusion spell? Some are obvious, but others, like the 'Attack the Caster' options, are not so obvious.
Cheers
Chris
Oh come now, every group has a 'caster' of some sort, right? ;)
All jokes aside I would personally suggest one of the following options.
1. Go with the joke have it attack the nearest party spell caster.
2. Just have it be confused.
3. Reroll, until you get a useable result.
4. Have it do whatever seems best for the story. Call it DM's choice. As outlined in another htread (Lichloved's Exag campaign journal I think) the confusion spell is just an easy approximator for actual real-life confusion. The spell is only really meant for (or at least covers) combat situations anyhow.
-Matt
Youl could also simply have it swing at the air or pound on its own head in frustration as if trying to rattle some unwanted thing out of its head. In fact, I may have actually done that during playtesting.
Hmm, 2 of the authors right here...as good a time to ask this as any.
As DM's how do you handle the "Confusion" result of "Flee away from caster at top possible speed."? Since the duration of the spell is of course 1 round/level, that effect only lasts 1 round. Let's say you've fled X feet that round, and then roll again next round...but what if you've exceeded the range of the spell while fleeing? Spell broken? If you rush back to the fight, it's as if you made your save when in reality you failed it. A bit hard to adjudicate what to do in that circumstance.
Btw, not to be a kiss-ass, but I loved the whole Sehan arc. I'm hoping Pathfinder some day can accomodate similar 3-adventure arcs. And it didn't hurt that it was based in Exag, a cool city in my beloved Greyhawk. And that you used Yak Folk, who I have fond memories from Al-Qadim in 2nd edition. I'll stop there. Ok, one more thing. That Brass Golem in the Dread Pagoda was a b***h to fight, between that high AC and that +3 Greataxe of Wounding, and 3 attacks/round...you get the picture you sadists, you :)
BenS, if you're running an encounter with a Child of Sehan that isn't an actual combat encounter, I would simply run a kind of montage of insane behavioral patterns that either leads into combat (such as the thing suddenly charging straight at a random PC) or leads away from it (have the thing make its way out of the city away from the PCs in kind of a herky-jerky fashion).
To sit there rolling dice over and over when there isn't any kind of combat going on is tedious and not really that fun. However, if you want to give the players a round by round description of what's going on by the book, make a bunch of rolls with a list of the results before the game and just sum up what the creature does based on them. In the case of a "flee from caster" result, just have the Child of Sehan double move in a random direction (use the Missing with a Thrown Weapon diagram on pg. 158 of the PHB). BTW, it's the effects of a confusion spell, but not an actual spell, so there's no ranges or anything to factor in. It just behaves similarly is all.
If the brass golem kicked your PCs' asses... blame Matt (GGG)!
Thanks, Steve. I did miss the point about the Confusion-effect (not spell per se) from the Child of Sehan. My bad. My question was more in a combat situation, but I'll bring it up sometime in a different forum/thread.
Thanks for ratting out Matt on the Brass Golem! Heh heh. It just worked out that the party wasn't the best equipped to fight a tough construct. An inherent party weakness, not the fault of the adventure. Though I did think that final Sehan abomination was a bit tough as written for 10th level characters, who already had to make it through the Pagoda gauntlet. Of course, the party was only 9th level, but hey, who's counting :) Good times.
Thanks, Steve. I did miss the point about the Confusion-effect (not spell per se) from the Child of Sehan. My bad. My question was more in a combat situation, but I'll bring it up sometime in a different forum/thread.
Are we talking the "calming gaze" that the child generates or the fact that the creature is itself "confused"? I don't have my books nearby, but I thought that confusion (the spell) had an initial casting range and then once it hit the target ranges didn't come into play. A Child of Sehan that is confused because it is undergoing its initial transformation and is involved in combat and gets the "run away from caster" result probably runs toward the nearest and largest source of Sehan - strength in numbers and all that. Like Steve said it's like the confusion spell, but not exactly.
If we are talking about "calming gaze," it works like a standard gaze attack. Once a target is affected by it, it continues until something breaks the effect (like being torn in half by the child) or the duration ends.
I'm not sure that answers anything, but it sure as heck sounds official don't you think?
Thanks for ratting out Matt on the Brass Golem! Heh heh. It just worked out that the party wasn't the best equipped to fight a tough construct. An inherent party weakness, not the fault of the adventure.
I took the golem directly from MMII. I'm happy to say they all come with that ax. As for design, I try to squeeze in as many different challenges as possible in an adventure. Constructs, undead, abberations, genies, monstrous humanoids, elementals, etc.... It keeps people on their toes and makes the game more exciting I think. I did try to make all the monster choices reasonable to the setting and main antagonists -the yak folk. So you find lots of creatures from the elemental planes in their service. The brass golem itself was just a natural fit for the room with all the yak-like Budas. The fact it can track down escapees just made it too perfect to pass on.
Though I did think that final Sehan abomination was a bit tough as written for 10th level characters, who already had to make it through the Pagoda gauntlet. Of course, the party was only 9th level, but hey, who's counting :) Good times.
Originally the Abomination (like the standard Children of Sehan) was based off of an advanced (in this case Huge) shambling mound with the half-far spawn template. It was meant to be tough. The current version is about as tough as mine though it's smaller, and has much better armor. As the abomination was in some ways the capstone monster of the trilogy it had to be big and bad and scary as all hell, and since it was the end game of a mini campaign there's nothing wrong in my opinion with killing off the party in grand style. Also the abomination had to be able to seriously threaten the pagoda if it needed to. The fact that it can blink in and out of existance, turn invisible and make people stupid with but a touch is just a bonus. ;)
Glad to hear you had fun running it,
Matt
I just apply the line 'A confused character who can’t carry out the indicated action does nothing but babble incoherently.' if necessary.
Matt, thanks for the feedback and insights. Very much appreciated.
I'll apologize again for not being clear w/ my "Confusion" question. I was no longer thinking of the Child of Sehan, but a general question I had w/ how the spell works in one instance (when the affected entity runs away for a round...and potentially exceeds the range of the spell). Another poster just gave me his take on that, and it's a good one to consider, so I will. Thanks to all.
