I am wondering how to continue my TCB. The players now killed Bozal Zahol and the Alkilith demon and found the secret passage to Loris house. Due to the time they figured that they would have to go back to the Cenoby so they are not missed there (apart from having spent most ressources). In the following night, they want to go back and investigate the secret passage.
I was now wondering what to do in order to:
a: keep them from wasting our play time in Loris house
b: keep them from freeing Ugly (sure they should have their chances, but it would be much sweeter to have a proper final)
I now thought to let them go to the cellar of Raknians house, they get heard by the inhabitants (they don't have any sneaky types)...maybe I will place an alarm spell and/or a trap in the cellar. Then Okoral will come to investigate and I might hint to the players, that they might be disqualified when they get caught. So they hopefully retreat.
On the following day, Loris Raknian will have a wizard cast stone wall on the waste chute (where the PCs entered the complex).
Now I wonder, which guards I should place: should I have Bozal Zahol raised? or should I have him infested with a Kyuss worm, would make for a good shock effect.
Any other suggestions, don't worry my PCs are really tough, they can take a lot.
My players have just begun to explore, having dispatched Pitch Blade last game.
It's not that helpful to you, but in my campaign, we had a player join the game just before this module as a rogue. I had him come in as being hired by Ekaym, and already having explored Raknian's house so that I could just avoid dealing with it at all. My hope is that they're far enough into the Games that they won't have time to figure out how to remove the Ulgurstasta before the final match.
I think that it is entirely appropriate for you to put in a word or two about them being disqualified if they're caught. Sometimes the players don't think of things that the PCs might. Then it's a simple matter of installing some alarms and traps to alert the palace. Or you could take a more direct approach and have Raknian post some guards down there because there are all those gladiators around (and the nosy PCs whom he already mistrusts/hates). As I recall it's a pretty long and straight passageway. Two guards at the far end could easily warn the party off and sound the alarm. This suggestion might not have the flair that a raised or undead Bozal might provide though.
As far as the Ulgurstasta goes... I'm worried about that too. I have a wizard who is too smart for his own good on my hands. I'm worried that he's going to get a 38 or something on his knowledge check as he contemplates the Apostolic Scrolls trying to figure out how to get rid of them. Most of the ways to drop the thing are out of their reach, but a disintigrate spell might not be. I would really like to provide that climactic battle. Any thoughts on how high the DC's for knowledge checks might need to be? It is a really really rare item, after all.
Well, if you really want the finale to go off as written, you can just eliminate disintegration and the combo of turn undead and dispel as options for taking down the sphere. Since the scrolls are in a temporal stasis effect, I ruled that they couldn't be read without taking down the sphere, and my player didn't attempt a knowledge check. I'd say a detect undead spell would tell them that the sphere is made of negative energy, and this information combined with a knowledge (religion) DC 30 would suggest the turn undead/dispel combo as a possibility. Without the knowledge that it is made of negative energy the DC 35. A knowledge arcana DC 30 ought to suggest disintegrate--a good wizard player ought to think of it and try it out without prompting from a knowledge check anyhow, but unless your wizard is 11th level and happens to have the spell (not unlikely as a 1st round pick for 6th level spells) it will involve procuring a scroll. And you can always require a caster level check or give the sphere a saving throw, or give it a high number of hit points and have the spell needing to do more than that or fail.
Anyhow, Eltanin, you've heard how anti-climactic my "climactic battle" turned out to be, so I wouldn't worry too much about preserving the climax.
I'm a little unclear on what the author/editor intended for the ugly to do when the sphere comes down, but I figure the thing would break upward into the stadium, necessitating a helter-skelter sprint through the passages underneath by the PCs, probably alerting guards, and so forth. It seems from these boards, though, that some DMs had the thing break into the room with the altar instead. This, it seems to me, would be an uncomfortably tight squeeze for the creature and would put it at quite a disadvantage in combat.
Well, if you really want the finale to go off as written, you can just eliminate disintegration and the combo of turn undead and dispel as options for taking down the sphere. Since the scrolls are in a temporal stasis effect, I ruled that they couldn't be read without taking down the sphere, and my player didn't attempt a knowledge check. I'd say a detect undead spell would tell them that the sphere is made of negative energy, and this information combined with a knowledge (religion) DC 30 would suggest the turn undead/dispel combo as a possibility. Without the knowledge that it is made of negative energy the DC 35. A knowledge arcana DC 30 ought to suggest disintegrate--a good wizard player ought to think of it and try it out without prompting from a knowledge check anyhow, but unless your wizard is 11th level and happens to have the spell (not unlikely as a 1st round pick for 6th level spells) it will involve procuring a scroll. And you can always require a caster level check or give the sphere a saving throw, or give it a high number of hit points and have the spell needing to do more than that or fail.
Yes, I know that I could just say that the sphere is invulnerable. I've already done a fair amount of railroading, uh, 'streamlining', in this adventure anyway. I'm starting to feel the press of time weighing on me as I move to try to finish the campaign before other events in life intervene. So I completely eliminated anything having to do with the ghoul warren for example. There was no plug, and no warren to explore. However, I don't want to go too far in that direction. Thanks for the knowledge suggestions.
I'm not too worried about the turn undead thing. The cleric is a pretty good undead-bane cleric with both improved and extra turning. However since none of them are 11th level, even a natural 20 on a Dispel Magic (or Greater Dispel) would get them high enough to actually dispel the thing. Maybe that's a good red herring though, to make it seem like they have a chance to disrupt it, but in fact it is out of the players' reach.
As far as the climactic finish, this is one of those things that I'm less concerned with verisimilitude than you are. I think that I'll have Raknian be the one who actually completed the ritual to summon the ulgurstasta. This explains why he can still release it, from the stands, even if Bozal is dead. It also explains why the ulgurstasta is still hasted etc. If they manage to kill the thing quickly and thus the 'climactic' finish is over too quickly, well then that'll be the way it goes. They have yet to face Madtooth and the akilith demon and Pitch Blade gave them a good run for their money, so I think that there will be plenty of edge-of-your seat moments along the way. I guess I just want the final battle to be cinematic, and I'll also hope for climactic.
However, we seem to have drifted a bit from Belfur's original question. Sorry about that Belfur.
Don't worry also notes on the side could be helpful. I am also afraid, that my players will come up with desintegrate and they have an artificer 10 who will be able to make that scroll. The thing I am looking for is a way to dissuade them from trying too hard to destroy the sphere or at least too soon...ok if I am lucky they will try the disintegration first on the scroll itself as they want to read them...in the end they are still afraid that they might release the "thing" from the ritual by desintegrating the big sphere.
You should also remember that they could not use a scroll on the big force field from the altar room as the room is silenced for non-worshippers of Kyuss.
