How have most of you guys handled the Laori/Sial NPC. I can’t say I am looking forward to playing two additional NPCs through the whole adventure that is for sure.
The group had quite liked the interactions with Laori earlier in the AP and was aware enough of her personality that I didn't need to focus on her that much. Sial was a bit of a challenge because I wanted him to act superior but to not be completely hated.
I tried to be in character with each of them, but sometimes I forgot or didn't get a chance to really get the personalities across, so between sessions I'd send a message to my group going "shoot! I forgot to act out / specify Laori and Sial's reactions / personalities during fights. After the first time filling the group in they started to occasionally make comments about what the NPCs were doing / how they were reacting because they had a good enough feel for them so it worked as a good reminder to me t highlight them a little and also let me know that the players had an idea of what each of them were like.
Usually in my games, people have had a pre-existing reason (ie. romantic interest, redemption, she was just misguided, etc.) to want to redeem Laori for her at least happy nature while Sial can be just viewed as remorseless. The reality is that they are both remorseless, but Laori just doesn't realize that others don't view her faith in nearly the same light as she does, but Sial does. Sial understands and expects pain and can even go so far as try and convince the party that undergoing minor rituals (such as bloodletting at the dungeon's entrance, or flagellating oneself to cross the passwall at the top of the tower) is utterly necessary, and that they are weak for having reservations about it. Laori on the otherhand would present it as simply "wouldn't it be fun?" and get away with her sadistic nature.
Obviously, you want to keep both of them alive for Ildervok, so you should play up that both of them have useful information about Scarwall at varying and sometimes overlapping (and conflicting) places, to keep them from being offed by the party too easily. And, even if they were to hate each other, they wouldn't risk the mission by killing one another and should discourage the party from doing so.
As for running combat, Laori's a bit of a battle cleric, so unless you can pawn her off to another party member as a cohort, you'll be spending a bit of effort to run her. Sial on the other hand (if you use remaster stats) is a bit more of an overwatch caster, not needing to do much himself unless an opportunity presents itself, while his Kyton eidolon is just a melee monster.
You could of course mention that only one of them actually goes into castle excursions at a time, with either Sial or Laori staying back to watch the Bonehouse, if you think you're players might be tagging out of the castle often enough to get plenty of work in edge wise from Sial/Laori's suggestions. That lets you not have as much headache while still having a bit of a gossip element while one is with the party and the other isn't, and still have group exchanges between Laori and Sial.
I will say that in my most recent run in with Scarwall, the party had a player drop whose character and Laori as their cohort we kept in the game. The PC was picked up by another player with Trinia as a cohort, and the player also had summoned The Spirit of Adoration which he was running, giving him 4 characters to micromanage throughout the majority of Scarwall. I was already running Sial and just took back over Laori, and while I would say it went mostly fine, I did notice the added stress on both the overburdened player and myself.
I would not mind I think if we were playing at the table, but we are still playing “online” ie web cam and drawn maps with miniatures and I can feel how much busier it is for me already.
Good suggestions as well people, thank you. I will relegate myself to play the NPC’s to make sure their story is told properly. The group right now is at the shoanti camp waiting to leave for castle scarwall.
In your games, who did the chained spirit anchor to after losing one of the original anchors?
My group came in and defeated Castothrane, than went over to Nihil and fought and defeated her.before retreating for a day. I was thinking to have him chain Ukwar next but I was curious to see which direction other groups went...
I had it go for Gorstav first, as in the original printing, he has 10 Cha, so he can still surprise them with a sudden new chained spirit when they come to confront him if the party rests more than once.
Beyond that, if the party is really taking forever, you can go for the warhounds, a roaming dread wraith, Prelate Areluth, or any of the other many many enemies they threw in the remake that I cut out anyway and don't know off hand.
I never thought of Gorstav, I like the idea of having him back as an emergency piece of low hanging fruit for the chained spirit to snag easily.
I went with Ukwar because she is in the wing and really there is no reason for the party to go to the wing previously. They changed the chained spirit now, so he cannot chain “incorps”, prevents the danse macabre from being snagged which is probably good. It also cannot chain more than once a week. I doubt my group will take longer than a week.
Right now they defeated two of the anchors, than met the chained spirit and fought it twice. Killing it the first time in two rounds, they then searched the room and had it pop back up a minute later. This time they didn’t have the spells they tossed at it the first time and it started to drain my charisma heavy reliant party.
They have almost been surgical in missing treasure in this adventure as well. Which is preventing them from immediate teleporting back to sell and re out their stuff.
Yeah, the week limit was there from the beginning, but if they teleport away and really want to do some shopping/crafting, it could take the necessary weeks to sell/buy some of their most valuable items (like the treasures from Kazavon's hoard in Nihil's room). But I've also never had a group want to take that long even without knowing that the chain spirits can be reclaimed. Just keep in mind that they have to be outside of the castle grounds (I usually just make that be outside the moat) before they are outside of the dimensional anchor effect.
I don't know if you had Trinia being brought along (cohort or otherwise), but just so the party didn't miss the gold in Kazavon's room, I had her see the bed (even though its terrible and ratty) and just have her collapse on it in exhaustion, thinking it was the closest thing to comfort that would exist in the haunted castle, but she just lands on a slab of almost completely solid metal, padded only by rotten cloth.
My group assaulted Nihil, than went up and fought the banshee right away. They completely bypassed going into the tower. This is what I mean, they have almost been surgical on missing treasure. They missed all the stuff at the beginning by shooting up to the top right away as well.
Thanks for the reminder, I’ve been mysterious about the anchor, they can’t leave but they can move around slightly with it on. I also hit them with fatigue while they are away if they fail a saving throw. No Trina, they barely wanted Sial and Laori.
Ah, another change that I never noticed, Nihil is *in* the tower in the original, so you don't miss the treasure unless your entire party is actually blind.
Nope she is still in the tower, but the tower is open at the top so the group started casting spells into the tower at her. She answered in kind by engaging them on the top with her barbed devils. After the fight, they had a serious ass kicking and they wanted nothing more to do with it that day.
Ah, so they fought through the bone devils to snipe down at her. Well, maybe if they can deal with the dragon, they'll put two and two together and search for his hoard in the kennels (where the poem tells you he'll be).
They keep talking about him, but I think they are scared to go “into” those areas, they seem to really want to stay close to the exit...especially with the d anchor effect.
I guess they could fly but I really want to imagine the party being more scared of a dragon that can't fly in its lair, so they jump off the tower and into the moat where they proceed to get mauled by the aquatic worm.
They went in, last game and totally decimated belshalom in a matter of two rounds. Having been completely rested and stocked on spells they circled him so fast and used summoned monsters that he stood no chance. It was sort of a shame, here he is arguably one of the most powerful BBEG and he is chumped rapidly.
Level 14 with og laori and sial.
Idk, he's ok if he can have mobility advantage (lost by being in his lair), or can get his blinding breath off, but even that has a low save compared to some frontliner Fort saves by level 13-15.
Let him in the courtyard and the party doesn't have good flying and he can scare the party back into the castle (plenty of cover for them). Gives them plenty of opportunities to try again if they can manage to fall back.
Yeah mobility would play a huge role in his superiority. In the stables, the group fanned out so no more than two people in the cone. So instead he focused melee attacks on the fighter and missed in a truly spectacular way with all but one wing buffet, that I rolled minimum damage for.
My group is getting near the end of book 4, so soon I'll need to introduce the hook to get them into Book 5, and Castle Scarwall. The problem I'm having is that I'm not a huge fan of the "get the magic sword to defeat the big bad" plot, especially because it's a little reminiscent of Chapter 5 of RotRL that we played a few years ago. I definitely want to keep Scarwall, and I don't even mind Serithtial existing as a useful discovery, but I'm trying to think of a different, more original reason they need to go to Scarwall. Any ideas?
Perhaps just don't mention the sword but the Shoanti history with Mandravious and defeating Kazavon, thus the fangs, and that the party must venture there in order to discover what can stop Ileosa now that she is infused with Kazavon?
You can still give Zellara's speech/poem, hinting at something beneath the castle, just don't mention that the sword is the key, and let them discover its nature as a sentient artifact on their own.
So Scarwall is basically Ye Olde Macguffin Fetch quest, with the Macguffin being at the bottom of a scary dungeon. The fact that said macguffin is a sword also plays into it being very similar to RotRL.
Boiled down to its most basic elements, Skeletons of Scarwall is "complete this dungeon so you can fight the BBEG on equal ground by removing the immortality roadblock she has (that prevented you from just killing her in her sleep several AP books ago)".
That's all completing Scarwall really needs to provide to the plot, so we can easily twist the details to fit into . . . whatever mold we want really, while keeping everything else (the dungeon itself, the need to go there, next steps into Book Six, etc.) the same. Here's a couple spitball ideas:
Scarwall as an Obstacle:
You can play it mostly straight as-written in the AP, with Scarwall just being basically an obstacle in their way to get to the macguffin. You can keep the sword in-place as written, or you can change the objective to some sort of well of power, where once exposed to it and upon claiming it for themselves one player or even all of the players get the equivalent of Serathiel, a weapon that can effectively hurt Ileosa. The problem with the reward being a weapon, however, is that no matter how you tweak things it's still going to smack of the weapons from Book 5 of RotRL. So maybe it shouldn't be a weapon at all, but rather some sort of secret knowledge, a hidden weakness to Kazavon's power that Mandravius learned himself and exploited to kill the dragon the first time around, and that the players can now in turn use against Ileosa. There's plenty of real-world myths and legends to draw from involving an otherwise immortal character having one vulnerability - Baldur and mistletoe, Superman and Kryptonite or a singular vulnerable spot on their body - Achilles and his heel, Siegfried and the spot on his back that he missed with the dragon blood. Then simply change Ileosa's Regeneration/Serathiel ability (and Serathiel Vulnerability) to X, whatever you want to make that to be. It should probably be something special that wouldn't normally come up like Fire/Acid/Silver, which are common DR/Regeneration by-passers, but you could theoretically make it one of those (maybe something rarer like Adamantite or Noqual?) if you want to stick to materials mentioned in the rule books. And of course, you can provide weapon(s) made out of those materials at the end to make it convenient for the party to be equipped now (i.e. instead of a holy artifact sword, Serathiel just turns out to be a weird sword made out of oak wood).
Scarwall as a Crucible:
The point of Scarwall is not to get to the end and get the macguffin, but rather the other stereotype of it being about the "journey". This is a crucible, a challenging trial that the party is forced to undergo in order to either become strong enough to face Ileosa, or prove that they are strong enough and thus worthy of doing so. Maybe the regenerating power that Ileosa possesses is just a trick, a reality-warping power that Kazavon possessed which convinced everyone afraid of him that he was invincible, and so he was. By going through all of Scarwall, the party follows in Mandravius's footsteps, and likewise comes to see the lie for what it is, and thus Kazavon's "invincibility" that Ileosa stole is broken for them, and they are able to injure her normally, to everyone's great surprise (sans the party who understand the "trick"). Conversely, it could be a trial set up by the gods/Serathiel itself to find someone worthy of wielding it - by fighting through Scarwall, the party has proven themselves strong enough to wield the sword, and therefore are now ready to face Ileosa.
Scarwall as a Shield Generator:
Flip the script on its head - the party doesn't need Scarwall crushed, Ileosa needs Scarwall intact in order to remain immortal. At the bottom of Scarwall is a well of power that Kazavon found and exploited to gain his immortality, and despite Mandraivus defeating Kazavon that well of power was never turned fully off. Ileosa was able to tap back into that well of power via the Crown of Fangs, and now is thus immortal for as long as the power remains. But by venturing down through the terrors of Scarwall, the party is able to deactivate that well of power once and for all, and as a result Ileosa once again becomes mortal. Then it's just a matter of hacking through all of her guards in order to actually stab her to death to complete the victory. And hey, maybe there's some a cool sword in Scarwall that the party finds that will be useful! You could even lampshade the original plot by making everyone think they need the sword, when all that's required is shutting off the well (which is what Mandraivus managed all those years ago just before killing Kazavon with his fancy sword, but everybody forgot that part of the legend and conflated it to being due to his sword instead).
Perhaps Serathiel is a being rather than a sword, An emissary from iomadae that mandravious became possessive over. She tells the PC’s what they need to do to enchant their items in order to hurt the queen. Or even about a ritual they need to partake of in order to hurt and finally kill her.
In that case I would give them a holy sword or whatever and leave it at that.
Why not both? Servant of Sword Lady is actual intelligent sword capable of making other swords. /s
Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I think Inspectre's "Scarwall as a shield generator" is along the lines of what I was thinking. Something about how the existence of the curse spiritually fuels the queen's invulnerability as long as she wears the crown, but if the curse is broken, she becomes vulnerable. (and finding Serithtial is a nice bonus if it happens, but not 100% necessary). I'll have to re-jig a bit of backstory and some metaphysics, but I don't think my players will notice any discrepancies.
Maybe you could make it have to do with Kleestad's reawakening? Him responding to the resurfacing of Kazavon's spirit in Ileosa. And as a result, the curse of his own suffering for his betrayal to the faith of Zon-Kuthon is that anything that threatens Ileosa gets redirected to him?
I like that idea Awsomeness, almost rather than regeneration she has a constant shield other effect with kleestad.
Hardly a necromancy when the most recent post was 2 days ago and people are still playing the AP. But generally if you have the books in PDF format, you should be able to select the maps themselves and copy paste them out into a file to save/edit them for whatever purposes you need.
So my group fought Zev the demilich today. All I can say is wow, I totally expected at least one player death and they cake walked him. Two rounds he was dead from rising up and only got off one devour the soul on the Sorc who passed his save and had death ward on. It was very anticlimactic and I’m of the impression now the rest of the adventure is going to be very easy for them.
You should have probably began with Zev activiating his whirlwind, as it prevents people from targeting him unless they get within 5ft, and even then they get punished with damage every turn. He's also in a chapel so he probably could have flown out of range of any melee's without sacrificing too much of his area of effect.
But a party with a lot of melee heavy hitters (or a paladin) can power through his DR since they will be hitting almost every attack. Did they actually destroy him though, or is he still an anchor until they properly take his skull to anywhere they might have hallowed within Scarwall and then the requisite spells? If not, he will regenerate and they will have to fight him again.
They just dropped him, not destroyed. He only managed one action before they completely obliterated him. It went two handed weapon critical, 9 die channel, three hits from the swashbuckler for minimal damage and then an orb of light from the sorc. They tried to talk to him at first as he was rising up
I was curious how I was going to play it. My guess is he would stop being an anchor until he is captured again by the chained spirit. But Ukwar who was also captured by the CS earlier, is not destroyed so I deemed she stays chained to the spirit until she is permanently defeated. The DL is back in 7days, and the CS can chain another person in one day. So I imagine it will be Gorstav.
Gorstav is a good one, and one of my favorite tactics with him is to have him bullrush one of the party members through the window in his room and like 70 feet down onto the spiked rooftops.
There are no windows that I see in E11 though.I like the idea, my group is going to shred Gorstav.
There are no windows in E11 though, only an arrow slit.
It looks like an arrow slit, but keep in mind these are 10ft squares, so that opening is like 3+ft wide, perfect width to shove even a medium PC through.
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Sorry for the double post, my group would jump all over me citing the halfling being stuck in the other part of the castle. Sadly, I think poor Gorstav will not fair well against this group
They can't complain about the halfling being stuck alone if he shoves them all through the window... ;)
I’m talking about B14. Where the phantasm occurs to the first PC who enters. For some reason they remember this very well.cannot remember why they are here without coaching but remember that phantasm…
1) One of the adventurer was going to jump out the arrow slit but then two of the group started saying the arrow slits were too small because remember the halfling.
2) when the Baykok were firing on them in the courtyard they started citing the small size of the arrow slits because remember the halfling…
Yet they cannot figure out the chained spirit is anchoring to new people…
Well the session today panned out as well as I thought for poor Gorstav.
The group is a little lost, they know there is another anchor still but cannot figure it out. They also refuse to cast any form of divination spell to discern what is going on. Meanwhile the Fext( who is the anchor)keeps assaulting them and they keep throwing the body in the water.
They asked today, ok…what are we missing, without hints. I said a whole tower, you stepped into it for one round then left and never came back. So they flew over to it, landed on the roof. Killed the spectres and came across Gorstav, who crited the cleric the first round for some decent damage…then never acted again. And like that Gorstav was a smear. The Nessian hell hounds did not fair much better honestly and we stopped it there for the night.
The big takeaway is they know the sword is under the castle from the curse of the worm haunt and they think they can only get into the star tower by killing the chained ghost.
Well, it's a good idea to clear the castle first, but they don't need to at least if they find the secret entrances first. You might eventually want to give them a(nother) religion check to identify how to kill the fext tho.
Yup I think that it is a good idea, they keep missing the secret doors in the star tower…barely.
I’m hoping they take the olive branch of hints in the form of Lisbeth giving them info that will be coming up next game (unless they decided to pull an about face and go the other way, which they have a tendency to do haha)
I think this is the longest they have spent on one of the modules so far.
Yeah, it's just dungeon slog in the remaster. While the original let you take more or less as much time as you need to get the spookiness of the castle that you want across, while also punishing players that split-up or ran away instead of holding their ground with the incidental random encounters, but in the remaster, running away to a random door just means *another major encounter*. I always recommend running original printing with remaster stats (and if you're running xp rewards, fudge it with rewards for purging the castle giving the missing xp).
I have the original copy but have never read it actually. Think I will sit down and have a read though, little late to do it over now.
They were scared originally then they just kept retreating, getting whatever they needed in the process. I let them do it twice before I thought, this is ruining the adventure because they are not scared at all. I had to break my rule of not messing with the adventure and “lock” the group into the castle. So now they have the pressure of never escaping if they don’t figure this out.
To be fair, if they don't know of the secret entrance, and they aren't willing to risk the party flying, and they can't dispell the unhallow long enough to teleport out, then their only way to unlock the doors normally is to clear to the gatehouse and defeat the creatures that would close it and keep it closed behind them. You also can create a hallowed space within the castle to make sure you aren't attacked by wandering encounters in the night and so you have a place to clear the demilich and mummy lord.
Does the Banshee confuse anyone else? She's the main line of aerial defense. She also has sunlight powerlessness and is in a tiny room at the top of the castle surrounded by nothing but the outside. Are people really invading the haunted castle at night? My players refuse to enter except during daylight.
I guess, if nothing else, she can wail to alert some of the other potential defenders (gargoyles, maybe the dragon?, etc.) that intruders are coming.
For what it's worth, my players explored the castle during the daytime and nighttime (though they were over-confident, and the banshee did end up killing one of the PCs and forcing the others to flee inside quickly).
Does the Banshee confuse anyone else? She's the main line of aerial defense. She also has sunlight powerlessness and is in a tiny room at the top of the castle surrounded by nothing but the outside. Are people really invading the haunted castle at night? My players refuse to enter except during daylight.
Keep in mind the general aura of dread. Sunlight doesn't reach castle Scarwall because of massive clouds constantly overhead, though if they manage to escape the binding effect and get outside of the castle grounds and over its moat, they would be safe from it. They changed the art in the remaster, and while the new art still shows how bleak the skyline is, the old version of the art for the bridge to the castle is even darker and more apparent how no undead that doesn't stray wildly afield would ever have to worry about sunlight powerlessness or destruction.
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... they have buffed with Life's Grace, a Death Ward-like spell that also protects against ability damage/drain from undead attacks ...
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I did a search for the aforementioned Life's Grace spell and could not find it.
Can someone tell me in which book it can be found, please? Or is it 3PP or something from 3.x?