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Hey gang,
I have a question to pose to the collective here:
What to do with Nezzarin the Kyuss Knight at the entry of the Ziggurat of Kyuss?
It seems to me that any reasonable party of 13-14th level PCs can easily mow through the Knight by just using the Fly spell to go over the obsidian ring and then, while flying and after spotting the undead menace and his evicerator beetles, just hammer on them unmercilessly until dead (again).
I though about taking this option out by having a permanent Earth Bind spell active on the grounds inside the obsidian ring. What think you?
Otherwise, if I were Nezzarin and I saw the PC's flying over the ring, I'd high-tail it inside and call out the Eladrin, Archons and others. The problem with this is that playing the monster "smart" makes the encounter WAY challenging if not murderous.
Any ideas?
I recommend hiding the Knights in both encounters of the Spire to maximize their melee effectiveness. Nezzarin patrols the areas outside the ziggaraut, but also area 1,2, and 3 IIRC (don't have map out, but every room but side rooms basically on top floor) Both times I've ran it, I've had the Nezzarin readying a full attack against whoever opens the first doorway into the place, with the beetles immerging from the main room with the hole (3 I believe). I find it hard to believe that in the Amedio Jungle, in the company of Beholders, Demodands, Yuan-Ti and worse Nezzarin and crew would just be waltzing about. You're right about the flight thing too; most PCs will already be flying to circumvent the Obsidian Ring since the ground itself turns with worms. AS written, Nezzarin and the Beetles have no way to combat ranged Aerial opponents, which is a shame as it's a cool encounter. I think it builds better tension to let them explore as they wish while outside, all amidst the faint hiss of the worms, and then hit them hard the very second they enter the spire. If your group is a bunch of power gamers and you really want to be mean with Kelvos, you can legally have him completely buffed if they fight Nezzarin in the halls as well. I don't recommend this unless you either want to give them the fight of their lives or a TPK. Then again, he only has about 65 hit points before buffs, and he could always roll a 1...
Furthermore, I believe no encounter in the module is meant to be linked at all. The monsters, with the exception of the knights, aren't really supposed to leave their rooms unless disturbed. Certainly if your PCs open every door at once, then they deserve what's coming to them. Warn them about the deadliness and shortness of the modules. In my opinion, Spire of Long Shadows is up there with Tomb of Horrors as far as difficulty, except that its not the traps that will kill you but the monsters. I would only allow prerequisite Knowledge checks on the minions within unless the PCs have actually read the apostolic scrolls.
I have a real problem with tSoLS as written. It has a lot of potential, but ultimately it's just, "open door, kill monster, get vision" over and over.
In the game I'm running, I decided to really play up the haunted nature of the place: while the surrounding jungle is teaming with life, and noisy (bugs buzzing, birds chirping, etc.) the ruins of the city are devoid of life, and eerily silent. Strange shadows are seen out of the corner of your eye - but when you go to investigate, there's nothing there, etc.
I made the PCs make tons of spot checks, just to make them paranoid.
When they finally venture into the ziggurat, Nazzarin appears as a ghostly apparation, and tells them he served Kyuss in life, and now serves him eternally in death. The ruins are his curse, and his tomb. He says he knows why they've come: to learn more about Kyuss (they aren't the first). He warns them that they may not like what they discover and begs them to turn back.
From that point on, he basically leads them on a tour. After each major encounter, he appears, says a few cryptic things, and maybe helps fill in some of the gaps, so the visions make more sense.
Ultimately, he secretly wants them to succeed in breaking the circle, because that will allow him (and the other 3 knights) to escape back into the world again! This will make the final battle with Kyuss and Lashanna harder, because they'll have 4 Kyuss knights helping them.
It also makes the PCs think they've screwed up, even when they've succeeded (I like creating moral quandries). So Nazarrin became more of a role-playing encounter in my game - no combat at all. The PCs actually felt sorry for the guy (I imagined him something like Lord Soth, from DragonLance). And I get to use him and his buddies again later (kind of like the Ring Wraiths in Lord of the Rings).
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Thank you both for your replies, but there is a precendent to having the Eladrin/Archons/undead work with the Kyuss Knight in the write-up to area 3 it is said
"..if they make too much noise here, they'll attract the attention of the guardians who dwell in areas 4 and 5. These guardians do not emerge to confront the PCs unless they are commanded to do so by Nezzarin, but do take time to prepare for combat."
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I appreciate what you are saying Rakshaka and am all but intent on putting Nezzarin in area 1 or 2. There are no ceiling heights listed for that encounter area and so I will arbitrarily assign a 10' ceiling height. If the group gets into area 3 there is a problem; the ceiling there is 30' tall and the whole flying thing is again revisited.
DMR, I liked what you talked about concerning using Nezzarin as a tour guide and would plagarize the crap out of that, but I have a slight problem: a PC Priest of Pelor with a murderous light in his eyes when he sees an undead creature. Add to this the fact that the player is cynnical and jaded to the point that he thinks all NPCs are out to get the group, and doing any of this kind of stuff would be all but pointless. He is like the group's big conspiracy theorist concerning in-game happenings (well no - in life too) .. lol
I think, in the long and the short, I'll blend your collective suggestions and have the outside be really spooky and Nezzarin waiting just inside the door of whichever entrance they go in. I'll be running this Saturday and will check back until then to see if any other good ideas come across.
On a bit of a derailment of the topic, what did the rest of you do with the outer works of Kulth-Mar? I mean there are a wide variety of monsters out there vying (sp?) for the peices of the pie. Bolishwur and Bellaxus are given reasons for being there, but the Yuan-ti are not.
It seems to me that the most logical reason for all of them to be there (with the wild creatures excepted) is to take over the whole and then move on to other plans. Are there any other takes on this? My thinking on this cannot get past the "obvious" reason for being there and add some good twists.
Any ideas on this?
Thanks all!
I had Manzorian teleport the PCs to Sasserine (used the maps, etc. from the Savage Tide AP, since my group will most likely never play it) instead of going straight for Kuluth Mar. I thought it was more logical that he would be familiar with a nearby city, instead of using a painting to focus the spell.
So the PCs still had to find the ruins. They found a local bard (more of a story-teller type than a singer) who knew all the local legends, folk-lore, etc, who offered to serve as a guide through the jungle (for a price). Then they hired several barbarian-type warriors willing to paddle canoes up river for them. While traveling through the jungle, they got ambushed by about a dozen yuan-ti armed with bows, hanging from the trees. The PCs won, but a few yuan-ti fled into the jungle. The PCs feared pursuit, and were on-guard for another ambush, which surprisingly never came. Then, as they approached the valley where Kulath Mar is located, they found an odd totem pole, which yuan-ti bones decorating it. They assumed (correctly) that the yuan-ti had placed it there to warn other yuan-ti that the area was taboo. They didn't follow the PCs because they were too afraid of the place they were going!
This, along with Nazarin's ghost routine, helped make the area seem really creepy and frightening.
I've stated up a beholder, with about a dozen troll followers, living in some of the outlying ruins. He wants the treasures inside the ziggurat but isn't strong enough to take it himself. If he sees the PCs emerge, alive and victorious, he may try to ambush them, especially if he can hit them while they're hurt and weakened.
I'm also planning to have Nezarin (and the other 3 Kyuss knights) flee as soon as Makar is destroyed and the black ring broken. They'll be like, "thanks!, now we can go!" Leaving the PCs to think, "uhh... what did we just do?!"
They'll show up in the end, during the final showdown with Kyuss.
Don't fret about Nezzarin too much. He is an intro monster and, like Rakshaka said, you can just have him in one of the internal rooms when the PCs arrive. Alternately, what I did was justify that Nezzarin and the Beetles were on the other side of the Ziggaurat stalking around and then come in behind the PC's when they enter cutting off an easy escape -- that also prepared me with an encounter if the party split up and went in two groups around either side of the Ziggaurat.
I did not have Nezzrin call out the other monsters on the first level because it seemed to me that both sets had their own reasons for staying where they were and no particular reason for going toe-to-toe at the side of Nezzarin. However, both of the other first floor encounters were ready and waiting with an "open door, get a blast (or blasphemy)" attack based on the noise of their battle with big N.
I try to avoid what my group calls the "Lucky Monkey" syndrome (based on a bar in the Cauldron adventures where our initial battle called out all of the bandits in the ransacked inn to attack us at once (I still miss my monk from that adventure). There is no real reason why any assaulted dungeon would not marshall a real defense to a series of attacks (particulary with the D&D "attack and retreat to sleep" mentality of most parties). This would always create a Lucky Monkey scenario, though, so I settle for a middle ground where all of my monsters with brains know something is coming and they are bunkered down and spelled-up in their rooms by the time the PCs blunder in.
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Well, by this time Nezzarin is long dead (again) and the top part of the Ziggurat has fallen to the machinations of the goody PCs although, not at great cost.
I had Nezzarin and his Evicerator beetles inside the main area in the Zigguarat (area 3) ready and waiting for the PCs (I ruled he was outside watching for encroachment as a good guard is supposed to do and, once he spotted them (he has an incredible Spot check btw), he went inside toward whichever door was closest to them (near area 1 IMC) and he then called out for the others to assist in guarding the Ziggurat from heretics and invaders.
My reasoning is that they were all set here to guard and guard they shall. These are all reasonably (to highly) intelligent foes and it seems prudent that they would have a plan should they be assaulted. With this in mind Kelvos and the Angels of the Worm came out of their room and the Wormcaller/Sword of Kyuss team was ready by their door for the noise to start (both of these groups also had great Spot/Listen checks)
My PCs didn't learn from past mistakes and they forgot to buff-up before moving into the stone edifice. Worse, once they got there there was no level of teamwork at play and the end result was the loss of the Pelorite, Radiant Servant and a spitting of the team.
Also know that at this level of play I am holding my player's feet to the fire by enforcing a "Say-it and do-it" rule as well as not glossing over some of the mechanics of spells. Said mechanics issues was directly related to the PCs getting caught (the spellcaster's player forgot that he had to actually touch each of the teleporters and that forming a train would not take everyone with him).
Luckily the group is a pretty good 4th-quarter team and they have since recovered from their maligned ways and recovered their friends (mostly) intact.
FW
P.S. I guess you could say that I pulled a "Lucky Monkey" on them, but that really is the only way intelligent foes would fight don't you think? I just think of how the PCs would do it if they were in the evil guys shoes. Besides, there are ways of defeating even the "Lucky Monky" syndrome. Silence Spells and the Still Spell feat come to mind, just for one example.
Frank,
I think the long way down the central pit to the lower layers protects the players from a full Lucky Monkey but my group of 5 PCs was hard pressed by the three first level encounters when taken one at a time.
The bigger problem comes with the lower level. That lich should be zipping all over the lower level (at least) taking pot shots at the adventurers. I rationalized by giving the lich a plan to offer the party a quest if they could find a way to release him from the city without killing him (something along the lines of creating a new phylactery for him).
How did the rest of the module go?
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I used a kyuss knight template on an 8th-level ranger to make Nezzarin more to my liking. When my players decided to fly to the ziggurat, they were surprised to find Nezzarin shooting at them with uncanny precision from 600 ft. away. Made for a decent fight, but the paladin managed to crit on a smite and dealt 80 points of damage and Nezzarin went down shortly thereafter.
Nezzarin the Watcher
CR 13
hp 224 (16 HD); DR 10/silver
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Male Kyuss knight human ranger 8
CE Medium undead (augmented humanoid)
Init +25; Senses darkvision 60 ft., true seeing; Listen +23, Spot +48
Languages Abyssal, Flan
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AC 27, touch 16, flat-footed 22
(+5 armour, +5 Dex, +6 natural, +1 deflection)
Immune undead traits, cold, electricity, fire (120 points)
Fort +14, Ref +19, Will +14
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Speed 40 ft. (8 squares), base movement 30 ft.
Melee +1 unholy greatsword +28/+23 (2d6+17/19-20) and 2 bites +14 (1d4+11 plus 1d4 intelligence drain)
Ranged +1 unholy composite longbow (Str +6) +14/+14/+9 (1d8+7/x3; 330 ft.)
Base Atk +8; Grp +19
Atk Options favoured enemies (+4 damage vs. elves, +2 vs. humans), Improved Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Point Blank Shot
Special Actions distracting attack (PH2), gifts of Kyuss, intelligence drain
Ranger Spells Prepared (CL 4th)
2nd — cat’s grace*
1st — hawkeye* (SC), longstrider*
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 16th)
At will — detect good
1/day — bull’s strength*, death knell, protection from energy*
*Already cast
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Abilities Str 32, Dex 20, Con —, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 22
SQ dark blessing, martial calling, swift tracker, turn resistance +4, undead traits, unholy toughness, wild empathy +14, woodland stride, worm healing
Feats Endurance, Far Shot, Improved Rapid Shot (CW), Manyshot, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack, Rapid Shot, Track
Skills Concentration +14, Hide +16, Intimidate +14, Jump +21, Knowledge (religion) +8, Move Silently +16, Listen +23, Search +31, Spot +48, Survival +15
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Possessions +2 studded leather, +1 unholy greatsword, +1 unholy composite longbow, cloak of resistance +2, ring of protection +1