The Final Wish (GM Reference)

[Akumamajin]

Sekket wrote:

Please keep us updated ! I'm sure it will be a great source of inspiration for me, since I'm just a book behind your group ! :)

We wrapped up the campaign last Tuesday and had a lot of fun looking back. I rebuild Ravhul as a Bloodrager with the abyssal bloodline and the Bloodrider Archetype. He ended up with some sick 42ish Str and a spirited/diving charge of 4d6+2d6 unholy+100 something damage... It was enough to poo but the fear of some random crit into my players.

The fun thing was that they had entered the stables of Ravhul while sneaking around his hideout and base in Xotanis grave and even intimated his Efreeti stableboy into bot sounding the alarm... But they didn't think that the monstrous, burning and smoke-belching Nightmare would ne a factor later and really bemoaned that decision when Ravhul 1st round flew into the air, summoned his Nightmare next to him and then enlarged both of them to huge size.

For extra effect, the Caustic Blood Bloodrager spell (as a fire variant) was somewhat annoyingly funny, too. All players had at the very least a 20fire resist ring, but that damage of the Caustic Blood was still high enough to be something like a very high dot on everyone.

I will post a more detailed write up tomorrow, but we ended the campaign here. I told my players that I had a short extra last ark planned if they wanted, but everyone really wanted to end the campaign after the death of Ravhul and the prevented resurrection of Xotani. I then told them what I had planned and they applauded my idea, but still were happy that it was finally over. Not to sound too negative here, everyone had a blast. But that campaign had started in 2009 and we had a big 4-5 years hiatus in the middle. It was the biggest thing in DnD/Pathfinder that anyone of my players had every played and finished and everyone felt accomplished, but it was about time to lay the "Legacy of Fire" into the realm of history.

[Akumamajin]

Hello people,

so now I'm home at my desktop and not fiddling with my phone, so I can give you a nice wrap-up post for my campaign.

After my players killed the grossly overpowers and wishinfused Davashuum, with his dying breath he held up the bone key, coughed up some blood and smirked.

"You will need this one here, in order to open the gates to Xotanis grave. But you shall never optain it, for so Javhul has wished before." and with that, the Bone Key turned to sand, irrevocably lost.

That's when Zastoran showed up, riding the flying city featured in the "Crucible of Chaos" adventure. In my game, Nex was one of the four Magelords ruling over that fabled city, and when his fellow Magelords where corrupted by the Other Gods and turned to chtulhic worship, he stole the chunk of chaos, that made the city fly, and turned it into his own private demiplane, Kakishon, and escaped, leaving the city to fall.

Zastoran retraced the players steps when they disappeared, found the (now cleared) city and via stargazing and divination magic, learned that it was his destiny to build a device that would use his lifeforce to power the cities core and let it fly once more ...

So, when all hope was lost, Zastoran showed up with the flying city, flew over the Efreeti army camped around the House of the Beast and crashlanded the city, flattening a good chunk of the army and cracking open a path into Xotanis grave.

My players descended down into the magma caverns below Pale Mountain, and I more or less free formed the dungeon down there. They encountered the Xotanis Tears trap, which I played up as Xotanis real eye, reforming with the 999s wish, and also a Gatehouse Fortress made up of living brass and garisoned by some Efretti Janissaries and Fire Giants. They also found Ravhuls stables here, and some magnificent flame and smoke-belching Nightmares, but no one wanted to approach them and they bullied/intimidated the young efreeti stable boy into running away. Not dealing with the horse would later bite them, but I had secretly hoped for this.

They then entered the Abyssal Embassy, were a female Glabrezu (Keeper of Secrets for the win) was chilling out and listening to screams that a "Slave Organ" produced to the artful playing of a Vrok. It was all an illusion, and played more for fun (and I heavily hinted at the possibility of this being a social encounter), but my players stomped everyone in the room in a surprise sneak attack thing in one round. Oh well, suite yourselfs.

The next room was the big, big lava lake cavern, that was a buzzing hive of activity. Whole units of Efreets where stationed here, and at the shores of the lake the Fire Giants where toiling at the anvils, churning out weapons for Ravhuls army. The Cleric of Asmodeus used his Veil ability, and the party traversed the cavern mostly unmolested. They could see a ginormous ripcage supporting the caverns ceiling and knew that this was Xotanis remains.

The final confrontation before the big boss was with Rajali in the crystal cave (a giant geode). The party had a little talk with her, a fight ensued and some Crystal Golems sprung up from the walls, joining the fight. I rolled her up as an Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil from the old 3.5 splat books, as some guy in the forums recommended, and it was a lot of fun ... well, at least for me. It was a short, but brutal fight, with lots of damage and a barbarian that charged through all walls and got severely neutered in the process. Everyone agreed that the party would have died, if Rajali hadn't tried to slow them down here, but joined Ravhul in the final confrontation, but thats a classic high fantasy trope .. or epic storytelling trope in general :D

Last, but not least, the party emerged at the high plateau, overlooking the lave lake. Here, Xotanis heart was beating aggitated, with each heartbeat pumping out a stream of lava, that feed the lake below. Ravhul had a handful of Janissary and Fire Giant bodyguards here, AND the resurrected Cadaver King, now a gruesome Elite Morgh and, to much laughter, 12 lvl 5 Gnoll Rangers.

Almah was here, as well as her husband, the Asmodean Clerics former PC, whom he retired, both held at swords end and forced to utter the titular Final Wish. Some heroic bantering enused, treads were made, swords were drawn and initiative was rolled, you know the deal ^^

As written earlier, I rebuild Ravhul as a truly badass Bloodrager.

I gave him some OP stats and in his bloodrage, at lvl 20 and with a belt of physical perfection +6 he ended up with
Str 44, Con 36, Dex 24, Int 14, Wis 18, Cha 18 and some 40AC when reckless abandoning.

He had a +5 unholy flaming burst keen scimitar and a +3 impact lance and the whole Spirited charge feat tree. His aöö buffed lance attack was something like +39 (12d8+2d6unholy+130), and with mounted blade he could make two charge attacks (maybe I cheated here? Im not totally sure) against two adjacent targets at -5 ...

The first round he flew into the air and summoned his BBEMount, the aforementioned Nightmare (I used the Warbull as a template) and with some rage powers, the Mount would get a free overrun attempt and knocked down PCs would provoke AoO. Nice.

So the fight was a big battle royale. The Swashbuckler and Barbarian quickly moped up the Fire Giants, Gnolls and the Cadaver King, while our Rogue shadowstepped next to Ravhul and fullattacked the Mount, using Ravhul as a flanking partner via Unwitting Ally ... sounded a bit cheesy, but also fun, so I allowed it.

Ravhuld made two passes over the battlefield, nearly killing Ezer and dishing out some damage on the barbarian in turn. When the rogue next round nearly killed his mount, Ravhul full-attacked him with his Scimitar and murdered him. The cleric gave the Barbarian some Air Walking ability, who pounced in return, and then traded blows via Come and Get me ... this got the Barbarian killed and Ravhul within 20HP of Dying. Then Ravhul charged the Swashbuckler and NEARLY killed him, but left him alive by the skein of his teeth. This left the Asmodean Cleric in the Position of possibly ending both, Javhuls treat and the Sarenrean Swachbuckler, with one fell Quickened Channel Negative Energy and normal Channel Negative Energy and he took a minute or two, comtemplating this :D I really liked this approach and already thought about describing how he obliterated the two, while behind him gates to Avernus opened and all kind of devils poured in and Asmodeus claimed Xotanis heart for his unfathomable plans ...

But in the end, he just obliterated Javhul ^^ So thats how our 10 years campaign ended: two players dead or dying, one on the brink of death and the cleric pretty happy.

In the aftermath it was decided to convert the House of the Beast into a pilgrimage place for Sarenrae worshippers, with Nafeshti essentially reversing the 1000 Wishes of Ravhul, and the Cleric of Asmodeus got a permission to build a temple in Kelmerane. Both, the Cleric and the Rogue, then denounced their temporal membership of Templers of the Four winds, leaving only the swashbuckler loyal to Nafeshti and acting as her bodyguard for the upcoming years.

[Akumamajin]

So, we will now take a small hiatus from Pathfinder and Adventure Paths, but I am already comtemplating which one to tackle next? I think that Reign of Winter would be an interesting foil to Legacy of Fire, and some of my players seconded this.

This was the first AP that I successfully finished with that group of players, and I added a ton of stuff and side adventures to the thing. While lots of the added stuff was fun, it also bloated up the whole thing, and I think I would refrain of that much tinkering in the future.

While I think its essential to tweak a few thinks (and maybe even bigger chunks) to make an AP work for you and your group, the appeal of an AP is that you got an epic adventure with a given theme that you can finish in a reasonable time frame and maybe explore a slew of different characters and different styles of adventure. To keeping it slim helps an AP, in the end.

[Larsen]

For mission Four: The Temple of Sarenrae

I find the DC 20 check of the 4 min battle with the minions very low. At level 13, with 20 in their main ability (not too hard with magic items), the PCs can only fail on a 1...

Am I missing something ?
Did some of you played it differently ?

[Carteeg_Struve]

We just finished our run of the campaign, and I was very happy with the finale. I figured I'd toss in the events here to help others idea-farm.

One tweak I made going into the final fight was that I didn't want the encounter with Jhavhul to simply be a case of them walking in and he attacks as a big angry bad guy (at least off the bat).

I did have a few things that occurred as side-effects due to the players' actions, and I love doing that the adjust things.

At the end of Kakashon, only one of the Proteans was left alive: Magiyawalla. The party had decided to kill both sides, but with Magiyawalla ("Maggy") broken free during the raid against the Shaitan, the group found her later on and made peace with her in order to get themselves out of Kakashon. They ended up leaving with her, Dilix, and her servants. Kakashon was saved, and it joined into the rest of the multiverse as just a small demiplane anybody can go to if they had the knowledge. The scroll was burned away during the escape as usual.

Maggy elected to hold back during most of the fighting going on in Chapter 5, mainly because due to her nature, she wanted to see how things turned out. She was free of Kakashon, but she was now trapped in the mansion. She was a sad depressed protean.

Then the curse on the building was lifted, Dilix and others stayed behind to watch the property since the PCs were able to buy it with the deed and bribe to the Vizier, and the PCs returned to the prime material plane with Maggy.

This is where things shifted a bit.

Now free, she could return to her realm, but I had her sense how "soft" the region around the Pale Mountain was. Due to her nature, she felt how reality was thinning out and during the battle of Kelmarane, she abandoned the group. Eventually, she managed to get an audience with Jhavhul.

Although they were enemies in Kakashon, she realized his wishing was damaging reality. If it was done too much, it was possible the material plane could be unmade here, just like what she wanted in Kakashon, and just like what she wanted for all of reality. So she joined Jhavhul's forces. (Being chaotic, she had no problem with shifting her views.)

Jhavhul got some early incite on the PCs and learned about their personalities: specifically, more of the PCs were not good people. Maggy made a recommendation and he listened.

When the party finally got to the chamber with Jhavhul, it was at 996 wishes done. He purposefully held off torturing one of the captives (Zastoran) to let the PCs have a single wish in return for them leaving. He even offered them his harem (since he had a bigger goal) and said he would no contest the loss of his home in the City of Brass.

This tempted most of the group.

Personally, I enjoyed this more, because it delayed this from just being a fight and done ending. Plus, with wishes being central to the campaign, I wanted to tempt the party with one. Even with the wish not being the final wish, they had less pressure thinking it would be their responsibility if he won. They just knew that regardless of the wish, Jhavhul could still veto it; and Jhavhul even told them he wouldn't corrupt the wish intentionally... as a sign of good will.

As the group was debating, the one good aligned character saw they were going to take the deal. Jarusha (gnome druid) let the others continue to debate, and she stepped back, turned herself into a mouse, and moved a little closer to Jhavhul (remaining far enough away from the lava tentacles).

She reverted back and made a wish that she had all of the items that Zara (another PC in the group) had at the time they were in Rayhan's house, in the quality they were then.

Jhavhul failed he sense motive... badly. He thought Jarusha was just robbing another party member (and others if the items had gone elsewhere in the meantime). He let all of Zara's things that he had at that time (most of which was sold or traded), appear around her. Jhavhul felt the power of the other two wishes go off and bring the count to 998.

While that happened, the rest of the party ran back in to discover what had happened. Immediately Jarusha scrambled through the items and found it.

I had to make a call, and I decided to go for it. Since Kakashon was now connected to the multiverse as a regular demiplane, the Scroll of Kakashon was no longer an artifact level item. It was just a portal.

Zara had the scroll in Rayhan's house most of the time.

Jarusha saw the ashes that were teleported, and she saw the ashes burn backwards into the scroll.

Maggy saw this happen and teleported back to her plane INSTANTLY.

Jhavhul was still relishing in being only one night away from victory and didn't see the scroll until Jarusha activated it.

Jhavhul, the party, and Zastoran (who was invisible and silenced nearby, in case Jhavhul needed to force the wish from him or use as a hostage over the lava) were all sucked into Kakashon.

The party appeared on the beach, near the Wayhouse, right where the party appeared before... plus the corpse of a dragon turtle they killed during their first visit.

All of the buffs Jhavhul had from being in his lair were gone. Jhavhul recognized where he was and screamed. Now the fight began.

After a kick-ass fight Jhavhul got to the point where in the text it said he would plane shift out to escape. However, he thought he was trapped in Kakashon still. He didn't know he could just leave, and so he desperately fought to take down another member (our orc barbarian Knee-Break died and several others were BADLY hurt). However Jarusha was able to jump forward and with a critical hit with Tempest sliced him up the midsection as far as she could reach.

Luckily they were able to rez Knee-Break, go after the big red bull on the island (another massive fight) before dealing with the rest of the finale. The oracle dealt with the pig demon that had initially survived their trip to the endgame. The sorcerer dealt with Xotani's heart, and everyone else went back to the mansion. The party broke up after that, for good and ill; but it was a great ending.

I loved the fact a player was able to completely change the setting of the finale, and the beach setting just felt more open; and as I said, the idea of letting a wish that proves to screws the villain over felt more akin to the tales I've heard... be it Aladdin or Wishmaster. It felt right, and I loved giving the players that ability to have a greater impact, more than just swinging harder and casting attack spells.

Thanks for reading the ramble.