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Based on some comments here, I read the Jorgenfist section of Pathfinder #4 carefully, and realized it was not going to work for my group as written. My player is very much into strategic planning--he wants to know what the watch structure is, what's the best time to attack, etc.--and the material presented will fall apart if given that much attention.
For anyone who may have similar players, I offer some suggested changes:
(1) Add a barracks room to the Feasting Hall (A12). By day there are 4 giants sleeping here (relief for the tower watchers) and 2 giants working with the animals nearby. By night there are 6 giants sleeping here (2 animal tenders and 4 tower watchers).
(2) Add 4 giants to level B to serve as Galenmir's henchmen and response team. At any given time, two are awake in B4 and two are asleep in B10. If there is an alert, Galenmir collects these and responds. If there is a crisis outside the Black Tower, he takes them plus one or more dire bears. (This covers ogre squabbles, guests arriving, etc.)
(3) At night, the two giants from B9 are asleep in B10. The cook is asleep in B5. Galenmir is asleep in B3. The ogres and dwarves, being slaves, sleep in their workrooms. Conna sometimes sleeps in B5 but also tends to creep around at night, spying and tending her shrine.
This gives you enough giants that they can move around and show some life: exercising the animals, carrying food to other parts of the complex, hanging around and chatting, etc. I strongly recommend doing this as the complex is very static as presented.
(4) The lamias and dragons need to sleep, too. I don't think they are disciplined enough to stand watches, so I assume that all four are awake around dawn and dusk and asleep at midday and midnight.
(5) The runeslave needs to sleep, too; he's a living creature. Add another one and have them bunk down in C2 by turns.
(6) Work out how Mokmurian avoids the trap in C2 (dimension door?) and how he might get victims to the Cauldron without being tagged by it. Or give him a way to bypass it. (There is no way he just walks through--a 1 in 6 chance of being shrunk?! I can't see him tolerating that, he's touchy about his height already.)
(7) Work out how the Cauldron can be destroyed. I decided that 100 points cold damage followed immediately by a blow from an adamantine weapon would do it. (My PCs had forewarning and asked about this at Windsong Abbey....) It's almost sure to come up as the thing is too big to steal--though my PCs, who have a serious Thing about Thassilonian artifacts, are going to steal it anyway.
This has all added a lot of giants, so I'd consider deleting the scanderig (it doesn't seem to fit anyway), and possibly the redcaps and/or trolls. (Why are there trolls here anyway? I'd think the giants would be offended.)
(8) The undead are wasted guarding an empty room, but if they are moved in with the Cauldron the EL is probably too high. I'd consider deleting the stone golem and just moving the undead in with the Cauldron. The golen is too stupid to be a good guard here--Mokmurian must know that disloyal giants are a possibility, so a guard that ignores all giants is a poor choice. Or, if your PCs can handle it, put both of them in with the Cauldron. The Headless Lord's head is so cool! This critter deserves a better role than standing around in an empty room.
(9) It's worth knowing that when the module says that giants are mostly immune to the harpies, it lies. So the people inside must have a means of communicating with the people outside, similar to Cinderma's fires, that doesn't require anyone to approach the gates too closely. The PCs may well require you to figure this out, and it's easier to do it in advance. I used bullhorns.
(10) The harpies shouldn't be there 24/7 either. At most, have 2 awake by day and 1 by night, or vice versa. The poor things will lose their voices if they have to sing all day and all night.
(11) You may need to know what tribe the inside giants come from. I said that they were giantish renegades and exiles, and thus unusually loyal to Mokmurian because they had no homes to return to. It's going to be an important point in our game, since the PCs understand what those Sihedron marks imply and mean to avoid killing giants as much as possible.
All this is a big fuss, and only worthwhile if your players are interested in the internal workings of Jorgenfist; but if they are, it may help. For my own group I think the adventure as written would have been a bust--my player gets very disengaged if things don't make sense and give him some hooks for tactical planning.
Mary
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Mary, let me just say right up from that you are the woman, a Goddess! And if i wasn't already taken i would be beating down the path to your door. :)
That being said:
1) Do dragons really need to sleep? Especially dragons that have ben so abused like the reds in Jorgenfist. Of course, only one sleeps at a time, and dragon wake with no disorientation (at least they do IMC).
2) Hasn't the scanderig been "reprogrammed" by Mokmurian to obey him?
3) the "shrinking" room can be fixed with a passkey/code/password.
4) I don't think the harpies sing 24/7. Instead when they are alert and they spot the PCs (or any intruders) then they sing and fly into deal with the invaders.
(4a) How many DMs have bards that sings for hours at a time? Do you have them make Con checks? perform checks? Anything to keep singing?
5) I can't recall if the cauldron is an artifact (minor or major), but if it isn't, can't you just use the hardness/hit points of cold iron to determine when its destroyed?
In any case, like I said, you are a goddess for working this out and posting it. Thanks!!
As both a player who always wants to investigate the organization and timeline and a DM who runs for some of those players, I add my praises to your work. Thanks for something that is very helpful.
2) Hasn't the scanderig been "reprogrammed" by Mokmurian to obey him?
It can make sense, it just doesn't please me. The monster is a dwarf-foe, a mythic haunter of rich mines. Having it here with no particular rationale, just "a monster Mokmurian happened to catch", doesn't appeal to me. A mythic haunter of giants would be better, if I could think of one.
(4a) How many DMs have bards that sings for hours at a time? Do you have them make Con checks? perform checks? Anything to keep singing?
I can sing for about three hours (did so Dec. 26) and I'm not trained. Lots of Africans go all day at celebrations. So I don't worry about this in the game--if the centaur bard wants to sing all day, I reckon she can.
I'm actually more bothered by "sing for 6 seconds, stop, start again 2 minutes later, sing for 12 seconds, stop" which seems like a rather poor performance!
5) I can't recall if the cauldron is an artifact (minor or major), but if it isn't, can't you just use the hardness/hit points of cold iron to determine when its destroyed?
"Minor artifact", it says.
My expectations for how this would run have just been wildly upset by the giants making three DC24 Will saves in a row versus the PCs. I'll post a report when the bleeding's all over....
Mary
Here's what happened in our game.
The PCs, using a previous alliance with one of Barl's bodyguards, managed to talk to the stone giants in the camps outside and strike a deal. I played the stone giants as deeply uncomfortable with Mokmurian's creation of runeslaves; and I had Mokmurian holding elders from each tribe as security. The giants said, rescue our elders and we'll rebel.
The PCs and giants, working together, feebleminded the uncooperative leaders of two of the tribes as well as a few spies of Mokmurian's, and then sent them "to commune with the spirits" far from camp. As hoped, this attracted attention from Jorgenfist, which sent Galenmir, two giants and two bears to see what was going on. The PCs and allied giants easily ambushed and beat this force. Now they had a ticking clock as Mokmurian was bound to notice (though I rolled a very long time lapse before he did--he must've been busy with research or something).
The PCs got in touch with Conna (via sending and similar spells) and prepared their rescue. They found it harder than they'd hoped as the elder from the Maidens was not imprisoned with the others, but hanging out with the lamias (they'd charmed her). The PCs got in via the narrow tunnels, carefully widening them as they went (silence was put to heavy use here), and knocked out the sleeping giants in B10, the trolls, and fought and killed the two runeslaves. They located the elders, heard the bad news, and went back up to fight the lamias and dragons (more silence). They got a bit charred, and had a nasty argument with the elder after they'd "rescued" her, settled by charm monster from the beguiler. Everyone escaped back through the narrow tunnels.
The elders rallied their tribes, with a bit of an argument about who was in charge: ended up with Conna as chief and the PCs' ally as warleader. The news that Mokmurian had murdered his wife really helped sway the Maidens. Faced with a united stone giant force, the lesser giants and ogres broke and ran.
The giants then stormed Jorgenfist directly while the PCs went back in through the tunnels (leaving an allied NPC druid to help with the harpies). The giants had been pulled out of the upper levels to respond to reports of trouble in the camps; the PCs fought the Headless Lord and his zombies, as well as one giant who was heading down to report to Mokmurian. Of course, Mokmurian saw this fight and started to prepare. The PCs then went up through the pit and contributed to the fight aboveground. The allied giants killed the jotunblood, harpies and rocs; the PCs had to deal with the mammoths and half a dozen giants.
They had rescued the dwarves on the way out and set them to watching the pit. The dwarves screamed and ran; the PCs started looking uneasily toward the pit; and out came a fully prepped Mokmurian with three Hounds before him. The PCs looked alarmed. He cast a quickened haste; then they looked really, really alarmed. And we had to stop the session at that point!
I think it will be a close fight and very bloody. I hope Mokmurian will kill more giants and less PCs, but the current setup on the board looks tough for the PCs. They plan, I think, blade barrier to keep the Hounds in (uh-uh) and dedicating a PC caster with Improved Dispel to keeping Mokmurian from casting (that might work well). They are really going to have to pull out all the stops.
We do not have fly, teleport, dimension door, levitate, etc. The PCs are rather thoroughly stuck, though one could shapeshift to a bird and fly away if she had to. The centaur is faster than anything in the fight and might be able to pick up the halflings and gallop off. Mokmurian currently doesn't know who's with him and who's against him among the giants, but when he figures it out, he'll expend some of his anger against treacherous giants. How dare they!
A fun detail from this fight: two of the PCs are halflings with some rogue abilities. They worked together to disarm the shrinking trap, and rolled low. So all adventure long they've been Tiny, and they're actually getting a kick out of it. So sneaky! So small! They fit in the same square! Of course they no longer threaten, and do about d2 damage.... Their giant allies kept offering to put them in a handy pocket, they look too small to be out on their own.
It's a bigger fight than I really like to run (I've been abstracting a lot of what the allied giants do, but now that Mokmurian's here, that will have to stop) but it's pretty interesting and colorful. I just hope it's not a TPK. Mokmurian is not a CR15 by any stretch of the imagination. (He'd be CR14 as a human...does anyone really think that 14 HD of stone giant only adds 1?!) I wonder if I should have cut him down.
Mary
They won it. Pretty easily, too. You never can tell.
Blade barrier forced Mokmurian to retreat into the pit and killed two of the Hounds; the third mauled a PC before it went down under combined attacks. Mokmurian quickly saw that the battle was against him. He turned into a bird to make his escape (we don't have teleport etc. and have greatly limited polymorph) after using the limited wish to recover some of the blade-barrier damage. Unfortunately, being touchy about his size he chose to turn into an eagle. Eagles are average fliers, so getting out of the pit took just a little too long. The PC with true seeing spotted him, and everyone contributed their long-range spells. Mot of them fizzled. Just as he was about to fly over the outer wall and escape, a dispel magic finally took out the polymorph. Thud. (I thought he would get away--they looked like they'd used everything they had.)
Cornered, he put up a very nasty fight, nearly killed one PC, hurt all of them, and then failed a feeblemind save (the PCs' last feeblemind). At that point Karzoug saw that he was no longer an asset.
I changed Karzoug's speech; ranting villains are a bit trite. I had him say, instead, "You have defeated my champion: you have earned the power to which he aspired. Seek me in Xin-Shalast and it shall be yours. As for my failed servant, I claim his life for the Runewells...now."
The PCs are now looking uneasily at each other, wondering if anyone among them could actually be tempted by Karzoug. There is an obvious candidate.... The giantish leader is also making noises about wanting to keep Mokmurian's army together and maybe go looking for Xin-Shalast to loot it, and suddenly they don't trust him either. And they still have to destroy the Cauldron before someone decides he can use it.
I didn't think I'd like this module as much as I did. I had to change it a lot, but the basic structure worked.
Mary
One oops:
Mokmurian doesn't get shrunk by the reducing trap because it's _reduce person_ and he is a giant. A simple solution indeed.
One of the PCs isn't a "person" either (she's a centaur) so the player picked up on this right away. It's a continual thorn in the player's flesh that there is no spell to shrink a centaur. Since she is Large and the rest of the party is mostly Small, it comes up a lot.
Mary