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I have fixed errors in scenarios and uploaded the fixes in the past and shall continue to do so when I have time (and am a little mystified to hear folks so adamantly saying that we don't fix errors when I clearly have in the past). I now know there's an error in this and I'll add it to my list of things I need to fix. I wish I could get to them every single time someone brings them up, but beyond quickly posting a fix, I can't generally get to them right away.
Thanks for the reply Joshua.
It seemed like I kicked up a honet's nest. I was just surprised, and how confusing theis scenario was, at the beginning of the adventure. I read and reread it and it drove me crazy. I played this one fresh straight downloaded and into the game. That is my surprise.
I look forward to the fix and as Doug Doug and other suggested, I can certainly work around it but I was surprised.
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I'll be running this module next week - how have other GM's handled Waman after the initial ambush?
Does Waman try to stay with the PC's, maintaining the facade of being legit? Do the PC's usually try to tie him up? Does he simply vanish after not being useful to the plot?
In the Venture Captain's briefing he tells the PCs that he will deal with Waman, so Waman is not supposed to travel with them. The PCs do briefly meet Waman when they report to the Pathfinder Society safe house to pick up the other relics they'll be escorting. It is important that the PCs don't tip off Waman that they're onto him, although there aren't instructions for the GM if the players foul this up. Waman gives the PCs a travel itinerary and a map taking them through the jungle, where his allies lie in wait anticipating their unsuspecting "prey".
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I ran this at tier 1-2 yesterday at the Seattle Mob Game Day.
Party Composition:
Human rogue 1
Human rogue 1
Half-elf witch 1
Human cleric 1
Elf wizard 1
Yep...not a fighter among them...
Things went fairly well. I managed NOT to have Waman travel with the party...though it wasn't initially clear if he was to go with the party or not. I finally figured out that if he gave them an itinerary, he probably wouldn't be traveling with them.
We had a lot of fun roleplaying with the Thakur's men they even got to have personalities given that one of them wanted to be upfront with the party and one wanted to keep up the subterfuge. I had Phalgun, the guard who could be persuaded to join the party be the one advocating for honesty. The party had fun convincing the Thakur's men to join in the deception. Their plan went pretty well, though the party member who was carrying the fake wayfinder specifically put it in his pack which he then pretty much dropped in front of an incoming bandit. The bandit took the pack and ran -- which totally panicked the party. They managed to stop the bandit as well as let a bandit "steal" the case containing the Scepter of the Arclords.
I also include three bearers who hauled packs containing other semi-worthless artifacts and un-named magical items. These guys confounded the party as they spoke nothing but Vudrani and fled as soon as the bandits showed up.
The whole "we don't speak Vudrani" became an ongoing issue for the party. Fortunately they managed to convinced Phalgun to accompany them to the bandit lair and he spoke both common and Vudrani. Convincing Phalgun wasn't difficult as the party would otherwise have had no fighters.
There was a lot of good opportunities to role play in the module. A decided rarity among PFS modules in general. Refreshing and enjoyable.
The party pretty much over planned the assault on the monastery and managed to engage the monks in the inner section while trying to avoid getting tent-pegged by the archers outside. I nearly killed the witch and one of the rogues in this combination of encounters. The bandits were much harder to kill than the monks, who were a surprise but not very deadly.
The fight in the workshop was cramped. The prisoners hid under the benches while the party overwhelmed the monk and one of the bandits. The second bandit chose to surrender.
Due to time constraints the fighting dummy was deactivated -- we didn't have anyone in the party in the Taldor faction, so it didn't matter too much.
The party swarmed into Zamir's chambers and caught him by surprise. He attempted to strike them down with the Scepter of the Arclords. The party continued to act like it was a very valuable item by disarming Zamir of the scepter. They caused fear on the tiger and grappled Zamir pretty handily. And that was that. The interesting part was trying to convince Phalgun (the Thakur's man) that they should leave Zamir alive rather than turn him over to the Thakur's justice. Wisdom prevailed and they earned the favor of the Thakur rather than keep Zamir in place as a Pathfinder agent.
This was a fun adventure to GM. It was well written and had some interesting role-playing bits. While generally if an adventure takes the PCs to Jalmery I would have assumed it to be filled with all sorts of interesting Indian-mythos based critters...it wasn't. I played up the exotic locale, but it really could have been set anywhere. The party was justifiably scared that they would encounter a were-tiger or rakshasa though (but meta-gamed that at 1st level they probably wouldn't be encountering such).
CJ
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I ran Assault for what must have been the sixth or seventh time this Sunday. We had a 7 player table, two of them adolescents. I repeated “Let [the bandits] steal the scepter” three times in the briefing. The PCs arrived at the waypoint and some of them saw the agents of the Thakur had weapons concealed on them. Naturally they thought the agents were the bandits. Further interaction raised the party’s suspicions when the quality of the “merchant’s” goods was very low and the boxes and crates were filled mostly with straw. A couple of the PCs tried to annoy the agents into starting something, but the agents didn’t bite. Dusk comes and the agents try to conceal their weapons under their bedrolls, which is spotted by the party. When the attack came from outside the camp it was perfect confusion, but no one was really on the same page. Only two of the players had an idea what needed to happen, but the rest of the party were intent on cutting down the bandits. The party repelled the attackers who melted into the jungle after leaving their dead behind. The Thakur’s agents gave chase but came back empty-handed. They then identified themselves to the party and I resolved some faction missions (with a win for Qadira and a loss for Andoran).
The party blew the goal of the ambush, but I decided to have pity on them and I said one of the bandits had stabilized. The PCs tied him up and revived him. The Thakur’s agents wanted to interrogate him using torture, but the kindly oracle of life persuaded them she could get the information through diplomacy. After the agents had backed off she made a deal with the bandit that he would be released in exchange for taking the scepter to Zamir and arranging for negotiations. She cut the bandit’s bonds, handed him the scepter and instructed him to make a break for it. All the Thakur’s agents saw was some of the PCs aiding a captured bandit to escape. They ran up to the oracle screaming “What have you done? Why did you let him go?!” The oracle tried to explain but the agents had heard enough—they pronounced the PCs were under arrest for assisting the bandits. Some of the players protested they couldn’t be held responsible for the actions of a couple PCs. I reminded them they weren’t in the United States, they were foreigners in Jalmeray. They refused to surrender and the agents drew weapons, which triggered initiative. I would have let the PCs explain their actions if they had surrendered, but by defying the government agents they had lost that opportunity.
Obviously the fight did not go well for the agents of the Thakur. They scored early by dropping a nearly defenseless sorceress who had been helping the oracle question the captive. After two agents had fallen the survivors decided to parley. On their turn I had then step over the unconscious sorceress and ready to coup de grace while shouting “Parley!” I described them reverse their swords and point the blades at the sorceress’s vitals. The next player up was the oracle, who reached over and cured the sorceress back to consciousness. My readied action was set to go off if the agents were attacked, not if the target was helped, so I let it pass. The next player (one of the adolescents) ignored the chance to parley and attacked the agents, which set off their readied actions. The freshly revived sorceress was stabbed back into unconsciousness (but not coup de grace’d at least). The party fell upon the agents and the last one standing fled into the jungle and would have escaped but for a nat 20 parting crossbow shot that took him to zero HP. Now negotiating from a position of strength, the PCs sought to smooth things over. The agent, who had no reason to trust the PCs at this point, agreed that his government could understand why the PCs had acted so. He told them all could be pardoned if they bring the head of Zamir to the Thakur in Niswan. The players seemed relieved by this forgiving offer, until one of them thought it through and said “I sense motive”, which triggered a bunch of motive sensing. Of course, the agent had no plan to pardon the PCs. If they would have come to the Thakur’s palace they would have been thrown into the dungeons, head or no head.
At this point the players reached a grim conclusion. They couldn’t let the Thakur’s agents live. The prisoner was executed and the campsite was ransacked to appear as if the agents had all been overcome and murdered by Zamir’s bandits. I figured the players were having fun so why punish them any further. Sure they may have committed an evil act, but they saw it as self-preservation. What a mess though! All because they never had a plan for how to allow the bandits to steal the scepter.
At this point we were over two hours into the scenario and still on Act One, too. Luckily the role-players in the party took over and said “We’re going to talk to Zamir, not kill him”. The PCs approached the keep under a white flag and agreed to take the oracle to Zamir. The oracle laid out terms for Zamir and stated the Society would make him a Venture Captain if he traded sides. The GM rolled a ‘1’ on Zamir’s sense motive and he was sold with a little more diplomacy. It took another hour to wrap up, but the players stuck to the plan this time and kept the adolescents in check. Zamir packed up his operation and sold his slaves to the players. The female to Cheliax, the males to Andoran. Only one faction managed to earn both PA points, and the PCs only got 234 gold for the entire adventure because they only killed the bandits in the beginning. All in all it was an unconventional session so I decided to share it here.
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I GMed this scenario 2 weeks ago and was thoroughly impressed overall.
I did find it funny at the end when Zimar managed to escape (thanks to a timely 'Soften earth and stone' spell) and the PCs just shrugged and said, "Does he still have the scepter? Then we track him down and try again."
Essentially, it's basically impossible for Zamir to escape.
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Lots of spoilers ahead, but given the nature of the thread, I'm not bothering to hide them. You shouldn't be reading this thread if you haven't already played/read the scenario.
I'll be running this adventure tomorrow as my first PFS GMing experience, and I have some questions, the first of which was already answered by this thread.
1. Like three other people in this thread already pointed out, the whole bit of the players knowing in advance where they'll be ambushed isn't explained at all in the adventure. That one left me scratching my head and wondering what's going on, which is the main reason I came and hunted down this thread. And despite Joshua Frost's assurances that this was on his list of things to be corrected, it's been a year and a half since he said that, and my newly purchased copy of the pfd still has that problem. I can work around it using the advice in this thread, but I wanted to point out that it's still a source of ongoing confusion for new GMs to this adventure.
2. The details of the caravan the players are leading aren't spelled out anywhere. From earlier posts in this thread, it's obvious that I wasn't the only one confused by this, since at least one person thought the traitor Waman was supposed to travel with the group. The word "caravan" would imply that there should be more than just 4 guys on foot, but it sorta seems like the PCs should be on their own, without any henchmen. But how are they carrying the crates of "bait"? Wagons? Horses? A brief sentence describing the size and composition of the caravan would have been very helpful. How has everyone else played this?
3. Going back to the idea that the players are supposed to expect to be ambushed on the second night, how has everyone else handled camping on the first night? It seems that if you don't give them a grid map and make them set up camp, then it ruins the suspense, since they really do know exactly where and when they're supposed to be ambushed. I'd prefer to keep them on their toes. ie Let them think they may get ambushed camping the first night, make sure they tell me their marching order while moving along during the day, so they're weary of getting attacked during daylight hours, etc. It just doesn't make sense to me that they should expect to be attacked the 2nd night and not worry at other times.
4. Page 16, in the treasure for the final encounter, it says, "The Pharaoh’s Crook is a +1 morningstar (Tier 1–2) or a +1 merciful morningstar (Tier 4–5)." The +1 merciful morningstar is on the chronicle sheet for tier 4-5, but the +1 morningstar isn't on the tier 1-2 section of the chronicle sheet. Shouldn't it be there? I guess it doesn't matter, since +1 magic weapons are always available anyway, but I've seen enough other "always available" items on chronicle sheets (usually potions and scrolls of 1st level spells) that I just assume they'll always be there if they're in the adventure.
Other than the stuff leading up to the ambush, which should have had more detail and explanation, this seems like a pretty good adventure.
My only other complaint is the Taldor faction mission. I know faction missions shouldn't be automatic successes, but having one that's practically an automatic failure is pretty blatantly unfair. Seriously, how many people playing tier 1-2 are going to be able to even make a roll for knowledge (engineering), let alone hit one with DC 20? Maybe 1 in 100,000 characters will actually have that particular knowledge skill trained at level 1. So your best case scenario is that your group has a bard along, who can make the check untrained and get a +1 from bardic knowledge, with maybe another 1 or 2 added for a decent int. Against DC 20. Good luck with that. And that's IF there's a bard in the group.
Since we're breaking in new level 1 characters in our group tomorrow, I'm not sure what factions everyone's new characters will be, so I'm really hoping nobody will be Taldor. I normally wouldn't want to give hints as a GM, but if we do have someone stuck with that mission tomorrow, I may stop them before they smash the statue and ask exactly how they intend to pick out the important pieces. If they don't have a good answer, maybe that will lead them towards bringing the entire statue back whole instead, which I would let them do to complete the mission. Assuming they have a wagon to carry it in (see question 2, above).
4. Page 16, in the treasure for the final encounter, it says, "The Pharaoh’s Crook is a +1 morningstar (Tier 1–2) or a +1 merciful morningstar (Tier 4–5)." The +1 merciful morningstar is on the chronicle sheet for tier 4-5, but the +1 morningstar isn't on the tier 1-2 section of the chronicle sheet. Shouldn't it be there? I guess it doesn't matter, since +1 magic weapons are always available anyway, but I've seen enough other "always available" items on chronicle sheets (usually potions and scrolls of 1st level spells) that I just assume they'll always be there if they're in the adventure.
My understanding is that always available stuff is generally not listed on chronicles, notwithstanding several examples to the contrary.
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Going back to the idea that the players are supposed to expect to be ambushed on the second night, how has everyone else handled camping on the first night?
What I have started to do to keep from player's meta-gaming the encounters is not to use the grid/map until the encounter actually starts. That way, they will not get to respond to the grid that has suddenly appeared under their feet. Run it "old school" and just use descriptive story-telling until the battlemap becomes necessary (i.e. once initiative is rolled).
Assuming the ambush starts at night after they have set up camp, the characters can be where ever they want to be. Most of the time, that will be somewhat huddled around the campfire. Perhaps 1-2 PC's could be on watch and since they would be wandering the area, can be randomly placed on the map. If you want to, roll a d8 and consult the scatter chart for direction and maybe a d4 or d6 for how many squares away from the campfire they are at the time of the encounter. Feel free to get some details from the players, but largely their "routine" encampment activities would be prevalent. Just be fair about it.
Taldor mission
Like any mission, I give the players the opportunity to justify using an alternate method for completing their assignment. I don't have a problem with the trained-only skill with a DC20 as long as GM's are flexible and let players try to think outside the box. If GM's are automatons, following strictly to the script, then the issue is with the GM, not with the scenario.
You might try Craft(sculptures) or perhaps Stonemasonry. Either can be attempted untrained.
Bringing the entire statue out might be an option, but a human-sized marble statue will likely weigh in excess of 500lb. Might prove problematic to get it out intact.
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I ran this adventure yesterday, and we had a good time with it. It didn't go as I expected in a few different ways.
Much to my surprise, we actually did have someone with knowledge (engineering) trained. I didn't know anything about gunslingers, so I didn't realize that would be a key skill for them. And the guy with the Taldor mission was a bard. So we actually had two people making those checks for a few of the statue related things they had to do for their faction missions, although they really didn't succeed, given their low levels and the high DCs.
The guy with the Taldor mission had the same reaction I did to having to smash the statue and pick out the useful bits. Why not just bring it back intact? It's wood, so it wouldn't be as heavy as a marble statue, so the whole group could carry it together. And I gave them a couple of pack horses to use as part of their "caravan", since I wasn't sure how big the caravan should be.
I know others have stated that you can avoid a lot of the fights with diplomacy, but that apparently isn't our group's style. They fought their way through the whole thing. One of them actually tried to talk to Zamir at the end, but another person decided to just attack, so the conversation ended before they could talk him into joining them.
Because they were fighting so constantly, there were two very scary parts, when I was seriously afraid that I was going to end up killing the party. Not how you want to start out on your first time as a GM for PFS.
The first was when the party cleric got hit by a crit from one of the archer in the monastery courtyard. She went down to -7, and that's when the group realized they didn't have any other healing between them (almost all 1st levels). It was a newbie player, and I was really afraid that dying in her first adventure might scare her off the game. I was seriously tempted to modify the adventure slightly to let them find a cure potion, but then I noticed that the monks in the next encounter actually did have cure light potions on them. So that worked itself out when they killed those monks and fed the cleric the potions.
The final fight against Zamir and the tiger went badly and almost ended in disaster, mostly because of the tiger's 3 attacks and high AC. Two of the four party members hit negative HP at least once during the fight, but the cleric did a good job getting them back on their feet. Barbarian rage helped, too - when you have 0 HP and start raging, you gain enough extra HP to get back into the fight. I guess the fact that it was such a tough fight kept it exciting, but I think we were all nervous for a while that one or more of them would end up dead.
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Glad it worked out for you, Fromper.
Disclaimer: I'm biased on this scenario, for obvious reasons.
I've actually killed characters in more runnings of this scenario than any others - specifically due to the archer crits.
Sorry that I'm chiming in too late for your session, but when I run it, the "caravan" is just the PCs and some pack horses. I handwave the journey and give away that the described campsite is a likely ambush site, based on the history of attacks (but mostly to get the PCs into the action ASAP).
People tend to complain about some of the Faction Missions for this one, but I like that some obscure skills are used. If Perception, Diplomacy, and Intimidate (as examples of "must-have" skills) are all that get used for Faction Missions, it takes a lot away from the skill-based classes like rogues and bards. Also, not every Prestige Point should be easily gained.
That said, I don't think the awards are as difficult to get as many think.
The "hard" mission is a common skill (Diplomacy) with a DC 19/20, depending on sub-tier. There is also a lot of GM leeway on conditional modifiers.
The other mission is mostly a DC 20 Diplomacy check, as you can take 20 on the Perception and the Linguistics is not needed. Lots of room for circumstance modifiers on the Dip check.
The head is only 2 DC 15 checks, both of which can have Take 20 used on them. The only problem is if the group has nobody trained in Disable Device.
The other is more difficult, as it is a fairly high DC, and depends on the party having settled the scenario diplomatically.
The statue requires a DC 20 Knowledge check, but at the low sub-tier the statue is portable. Also, Knowledge (Engineering) is actually taken fairly frequently: it is the only Knowledge which is a class skill for fighters.
Summary: I think Andoran & Osirion will almost always get 2 Fame, Cheliax will usually get 2 Fame, and Taldor & Qadira will be about 50/50 to get 2 Fame. Considering the goal is to average around 1.5 Fame per scenario, that's not really that nasty.
IM(biased)O
Just watch out for the archers :)
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Yeah, the faction missions didn't go as I expected at all. We didn't have an Andoran.
I knew Cheliax would be the easy one, but it worked itself out even easier than I expected. While the group was focused on healing the cleric, after fighting the monks and before going downstairs, the Cheliax person remembered that she should go check the front gate, so she was able to wander off alone. The initial diplomatic attempt went poorly, but after it was all over, she tried again while freeing the woman, and got it done.
For Osirion, I can see why people complain that they don't realize they need to put the Crook back together. Our newbie player didn't realize it, either, so I kinda gave her that one (through the voice of the tied up Zamir). Actually, getting the head off the statue was the bigger issue. Nobody had disable device, so I let them try knowledge (engineering) instead, which both guys who had it failed. In the end, they came up with a creative way to wreck the statue while protecting the head, so I let them get away with it.
When they almost killed Zamir, I thought the Qadiran guy would fail. The earlier mission was actually amusing in how he got it done. The gunslinger showed off his gun and impressed the agents with Qadiran ingenuity, after using it on the bandits. After the fight with Zamir, they tied him up and healed him instead of letting him bleed out, at which point the topic of the tapestry was raised, and Zamir was very agreeable at that point. I'm not sure if that really should have counted, but he did negotiate for it, even if the previous violence had given him a position of power in the negotiation.
And the Taldor mission went better than I expected. The statue was carried out whole, and the group actually came up with the idea of drawing the other statues on their own without any hints, which kinda surprised me, so that went better than expected.
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Spoiler:Also, Knowledge (Engineering) is actually taken fairly frequently: it is the only Knowledge which is a class skill for fighters.
We won't go into the Lore Warden Fighter archetype and knowledges as class skills. ;)
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*casts thread resurrection*
Okay, prepping to run this again tomorrow. Despite having run this at least a half dozen times prior, I just discovered a strange stat block omission.
Zamir's bandits (tier 4-5) are third level rangers which should grant them a favored terrain, but is not listed. I assume it would be forest as that is the local environment. Not a huge benefit for NPC's, but if that is correct, they can travel though the forest without leaving any tracks and thus cannot be tracked.
So, why wouldn't they do this and save Zamir another 1st level spell slot for magic fang to use on Zumra, or perhaps longstrider to help him escape? He wouldn't need to use pass without trace.
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I ran this today.
The overall flavor of the scenario is great but that damned Taldan mission really soured things for the group. One of my players felt cheated that the Knowledge (Engineering) check was the only sanctioned way of doing the mission. I did let them try different things with it but in the end it was taking too long (and too much attention away from other concern in the scenario) and they decided to smash it to pieces as per the Baron's instructions.
It's specifically that wording that gets me. If the Baron needs a functional piece from the statue to learn how it operates then why say "smash" in the faction handout? Seems to me that most players would take him literally.
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I ran this today.
The overall flavor of the scenario is great but that damned Taldan mission really soured things for the group. One of my players felt cheated that the Knowledge (Engineering) check was the only sanctioned way of doing the mission.
I agree with this. That was my very first PFS module and learning that I couldn't accomplish the mission because I didn't have Knowledge - Engineering, much less couldn't make a DC 25 check at 1st level was a sour start to the campaign. (They may have lowered the difficulty because it wasn't 25 when I ran it a few weeks ago - I would have played it in 2010).
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As I said earlier in the thread, when I ran this a few months ago, both myself and the Taldor PC had the same though when it came to the statue - bring it back whole and let the Baron figure it out instead of smashing it. I gave him full credit for that, once the other members of the group agreed to help him carry it to their pack horses.
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Had 3 tables of sub-tier 1-2 and table of 3-4 tonight.
The party I GMed had a Bard 1, Cleric 2, Fighter 2 and a Wizard/Monk 2--so a nice, well-rounded party.
They finished this just a bit over 2 hours from opening speech to chronicle sheets. I finished before every other table, so I don't have any info on how their sessions played out :(
The players were a smart party who both embraced the RP aspects (and just killed on diplomacy rolls) and managed to handle the combat well as a group.
The party repeated and clarified VC Mihir's directives so they were all on the same page. Both they and I had fun with their interaction with Waman.
ACT 1
While initially suspicious of the The Thakur's men, the party played it cool and the bard won the Thankur's men over with oratorical performances and diplomacy to the point one of the agents revealed their mission--right as the bandits attacked. Hilarity ensues as the party runs indirect interference for the bandits so they can escape with the fake staff (the monk even 'tripped' as he ran after them to help block off any chase by the Thakur's men).
ACT 2
The PCs parley with the archers (actually waking the sleeping one up to chat peacefully with him) and eventually get escorted down to the Workshop. The hot streak of diplomacy came to an end and a melee breaks out involving the bandit and the monk in the workshop, 2 monks "statues" coming down from upstairs and, at the tail end, Zamir and the tiger (I skipped activating the training dummy as combining 4 encounters would have been too much).
The tiger got off one attack on the bard and had the bard grappled before being colorsprayed by the wizard/monk. Zamir wasted a turn on trying to activate the fake staff (to everyone's amusement) and then the whole party put away their weapons, backed off and laid the PFS spiel on Zamir...nailing both the diplomatic role play and the diplomacy roll play. Zamir was turned after promises of fame, respect and restitution.
WRAP UP
Because I described the PCs caravan as a small wagon and a couple of pack mules, I let the Osirion and Taldan factions transport their respective statues away to complete their faction missions. Cheliax wrapped up their mission while everyone was wrestling with their statues.
IN CLOSING
Even though the session was short (a little over 2 hours), the players were happy as they got to really RP and affect events to move the story forward as well as two interesting combats (throwing a combat to the bandits and having everything go to hell in the workshop). It was a great mix and the perfect balance for this 4-person party.
I will say that if the tiger had gotten a full round attack off (or a rake after that grapple), one PC would be dead or near-dead and probably another one would be in serious trouble.
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I ran this today.
The overall flavor of the scenario is great but that damned Taldan mission really soured things for the group. One of my players felt cheated that the Knowledge (Engineering) check was the only sanctioned way of doing the mission. I did let them try different things with it but in the end it was taking too long (and too much attention away from other concern in the scenario) and they decided to smash it to pieces as per the Baron's instructions.
It's specifically that wording that gets me. If the Baron needs a functional piece from the statue to learn how it operates then why say "smash" in the faction handout? Seems to me that most players would take him literally.
I ran this last week, and that Taldan mission got a PC killed.
He failed the knowledge check to know what piece of it to retrieve, so continued fighting it even when he was held together only by his rage HP hoping to destroy it due to the mission's wording. The rest of the party had figured out its programming and were trying to disengage, but he insisted on taking the thing on. It confirmed a crit, knocking him to -20.
RIP Rindar the barbarian, killed by the Baron's poor choice of words.
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Sammy T, it's been a few months since I ran this, but if I remember correctly, Zamir and the tiger aren't supposed to come out and join the fight with the monks. IIRC, the adventure specifically states that if they hear it, they're just supposed to prep for the PCs to get to them, then wait. Combining that many fights could be deadly for a group that didn't do as well as yours. Heck, just Zamir and the tiger alone almost TPKed my group when I ran it.
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Hey Fromper,
I didn't want my AAR to include a full blow-by-blow of all the twists and turns, but long-story-a-little-less-shorter, what happened was:
Archer acting as a guide to takes the PCs downstairs to Zamir.
Diplomacy takes a turn south in the workshop and a fight breaks out with the 2 bandits and monk. The chained wizards cower beneath the tables.
The archer, who was on ok terms with the PCs, panicks when the fight breaks out, bugs out and races to Zamir's room to warn Zamir (closing the door behind himself). Offscreen, Zamir kills lackey for bringing PCs downstairs. Zamir begins prepping and waits per tactics.
Meanwhile, the statue monks from upstairs hear the battle and tromp down to join the melee.
The bard evacuates the crowded close quarters of the workshop for the training room and decides to open Zamir's unlocked door with the Open-Close cantrip (I guess he wanted to keep tabs on the now-deceased archer.).
Door opens. Zamir sends the tiger out. Hilarity ensues.
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I played this scenario a few years ago, and finally decided to get back into the game. so I'm wondering, if I use a Mask of the Tiger's Eye, and my character is a half-orc, does the intimidation bonus stack? unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't cover all of his green skin, and it doesn't cover his mouth, and it doesn't cover his height, or weight, or voice....
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I was wondering about that ... it seemed logical, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere. Is it explicitly stated?
Bonus Types: Usually, a bonus has a type that indicates
how the spell grants the bonus. The important aspect of
bonus types is that two bonuses of the same type don’t generally stack.
With the exception of dodge bonuses,
most circumstance bonuses, and racial bonuses, only the
better bonus of a given type works (see Combining Magical
Effects). The same principle applies to penalties—a
character taking two or more penalties of the same type
applies only the worst one, although most penalties have
no type and thus always stack. Bonuses without a type
always stack, unless they are from the same source.
Page 208. A somewhat obscure rule indeed. Took some searching to find it.
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I was wondering about that ... it seemed logical, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere. Is it explicitly stated?Page 208. A somewhat obscure rule indeed. Took some searching to find it.
Bonus Types: Usually, a bonus has a type that indicates
how the spell grants the bonus. The important aspect of
bonus types is that two bonuses of the same type don’t generally stack.
With the exception of dodge bonuses,
most circumstance bonuses, and racial bonuses, only the
better bonus of a given type works (see Combining Magical
Effects). The same principle applies to penalties—a
character taking two or more penalties of the same type
applies only the worst one, although most penalties have
no type and thus always stack. Bonuses without a type
always stack, unless they are from the same source.
Boo, do not like. on the bright side, it's a definitive 'no, and here's why'. thanks for the help everyone ^_^