I was just going through this adventure in preparation for my players when I noticed a few things. I was wondering if they were genuine mistakes or just slipped by...
First of all, if the pcs accept the solar's offer to transport them via wish to the location of the portal, they are pretty much hosed. Not only are they dropped in a cavern that is capable of draining them of Constitution every round of physical contact, they are also pretty much in range of every symbol traps (since they're transported to the centre of the cavern, and the range of the symbols is 60 feet).
This is just nitpicking but I was wondering why Huersefful has Improved Spell Capacity when he has no metamagic feats to take advantage of with Improved Spell Capacity? Also, why would Huersefful have Spell Worm as an epic spell? That spell does take 1 full minute to cast. I doubt he will have opportunity to cast that particular epic spell in combat. Both are easy enough to fix. I altered Huersefful to have at least 1 metamagic feat and replaced Spell Worm with Ruin.
For Voursuol, all she has to do is just let loose with her blasphemy spell-like ability and the pcs are dead if they are in range. It is an evocation spell, with the sonic descriptor. So unless they are immune to it, they are automatically dead since Voursuol's effect caster level when she uses her spell-like abilities is 43rd and that is at least 10 levels higher than the recommended 30th level pcs. No save, to boot (the banishment effect is the only one that allows a save but it is irrelevant in the Hourglass).
There are a few other things that caught my eye but they are easily ignored or altered.
I will be running this adventure with the Pathfinder beta RPG primarily to see how it handles the higher levels.
Anybody else ran this adventure (whether it be D&D 3.5 or otherwise)? If so, how did your players' pcs fare?
Cheers!
CB
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I ran it (3.5), my players loved it and they all survived. there were a couple of times where it came really close (the cavern and the dragon are the 2 examples that stad out the most, but i think they had difficulty in that room with the two...i think they were monks or vampires or something...vampire monks?) the actual fight with Eravatius was a joke though. not sure if i just ran him wrong or something, but they barely sweated. In all though it was one of my favorite adventures to run and one of their favorite ones to play. it also got me thinking with portals...and tesseracts. my players rue the day i was inspired to use tesseracts.
as for advice, and my memory is shot so you're going to have to try and figure out what i mean, but right after the room with the dragon there's a room with some powerful creature form the ELH. DO NOT let your players lure it into the room with the falling ball of corpses and then fly out and wait for several minutes for it to die. not cool.
(and out of curiosity, where in canada do you hail from? I'm in calgary myself but a montreal native.)
I ran it (3.5), my players loved it and they all survived. there were a couple of times where it came really close (the cavern and the dragon are the 2 examples that stad out the most, but i think they had difficulty in that room with the two...i think they were monks or vampires or something...vampire monks?) the actual fight with Eravatius was a joke though. not sure if i just ran him wrong or something, but they barely sweated. In all though it was one of my favorite adventures to run and one of their favorite ones to play. it also got me thinking with portals...and tesseracts. my players rue the day i was inspired to use tesseracts.
Heh, I couldn't find any vampire monks but there are 4 human monks. The only vampires are Baucojin and Ivirere and neither one are monks. I am wondering if you are referring to maybe the 3 glooms?
Erivatius can be either a pushover or a tough fight, depending on when the party meets him. If they meet him on the very first day they arrive on the Hourglass (unlikely), then he is a tough customer. After all, his divine salient abilities still work in an antimagic zone and his attacks are treated as melee *touch* attacks and they are vorpal. Being immune to criticals does nothing to prevent their heads being lopped off (much like vorpal swords). Erivatius can also deflect and reflect any ranged attacks, including spells, even if he rolls a natural 1 on his Reflex save (unless his rank has been reduced to 0). He is also a mobile attack, using Spring Attack to smack around people.
When my players get to play against Erivatius, I would have him take out the divine spellcasters first, as quickly as possible (since they are generally the healers and support crew). Then Erivatius should deal with the melee types since most spells they can throw at him are easily evaded (Evasion) or reflected back at them. He is unlikely to fail any saves, and he is immune to most spells that doesn't deal hp damage but instead either penalties or negative conditions.
Running deities are difficult since they have a boatload of abilities and defences. Also, you should not hold back your punches. The god may be suicidal but he wants to die to power the Hourglass, not die at the hands of some mortals. So basically, you got to be a mean S.O.B. You deserve to have fun too, ; )
Cheers
CB
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I think it was the vampires i was referring to, not the monks. i don't have the adventure here and i ran it a couple years ago, so i'm understandably hazy. the glooms were tough as well, but seemed to be a fair encounter.
As for eravatius, i think i either held my punches back, or else i got confused by all the abilities and what to do. and i think they encountered him about halfway through, so not at his strongest or at his weakest.
of course it didn't help that the munchkin of the group basically min/maxed everyone their characters.
I think it was the vampires i was referring to, not the monks. i don't have the adventure here and i ran it a couple years ago, so i'm understandably hazy. the glooms were tough as well, but seemed to be a fair encounter.
As for eravatius, i think i either held my punches back, or else i got confused by all the abilities and what to do. and i think they encountered him about halfway through, so not at his strongest or at his weakest.
of course it didn't help that the munchkin of the group basically min/maxed everyone their characters.
Ah, I understand, I have a similar problem with the munchkins in my group. The number of broken combos they have pulled off is just plain absurd. They have found more loop holes than I care to list. On the bright side, thanks to them the next games I run have the necessary feedback to prevent them from abusing the game like crazy.
I've started making some adjustments to the adventure already but the one hurdle I'm stuck on is what to do about the dragon. I am not 100% certain if I should just change that blasphemy spell-like ability to something else or change the template or drop it entirely and just advance her HD. I am also considering doing some changes to Erivatius in terms of changing some of his feats. The Bounding Assault and Rapid Blitz feats from Players' Handbook II are a good fit for Erivatius, running around to strike 3 different targets instead of just one target seems like a very monk-like thing to me.
"Quicksilver Hourglass" was incredible. The glooms fascinated me so much that I plucked them out of the module and made them into hired assassins sent to kill the PCs after they destroyed Vlaakith and set a new ruler on Tunarath's throne.
I had this to say back in April of '06:
I used "Quicksilver Hourglass" as the culminating moment of our epic campaign. That was only about a month ago, in fact. I made several modifications to suit my storyline, of course. The party level was about 27 when they entered the Hourglass (which I simply called "the Nexus").
Be careful with the gargantuan blackstone gigant. With four huge slam attacks and that fort DC 50 to avoid being turned to stone, it could end the entire group in a few rounds. I removed it.
I also removed Erivatius (sp?) and replaced him with the campaign's reoccuring arch-villain (a half-fiend evolved master vampire epic sorcerer/blood magus). I didn't want to mess with the PCs fighting an avatar.
I also did away with the time warp aspect of the Hourglass, but I did enforce the ban on extradimensional spellcasting.
There were some insanely epic moments. Voursol was dev. criticaled by the barbarian (actually an enlarged human barbarian 13/fighter 6/champion of Gwynwarhyf 8 - Exhalted Deeds). Natural 20 to confirm the critical.
It was a great thing to have "Quicksilver Hourglass" on hand. It worked itself into the campaign beautifully. Modifications were simple. I'd like to see another module set for levels 30+. I was fascinated by it, really.