For starters, I'm going to let Any Evil-aligned character potentially use the Oculus. Secondly, it still attempts to get anyone who picks it up - even if they aren't Evil - to put it in (and pull out an eye to do so), but it'll be inactive until their alignment actually shifts. (Granted, the most likely one in my party to want to keep the thing is already CE so....).
Mechanically, a newly-removed eye would give a small penalty on Perception checks and ranged attacks (due to loss of depth perception). Some time in training or replacing it with the Oculus negates the penalties.
The only one of our party who serious handled it was the NG Sorcerer. I made the initial will check for 'wanting to pluck her eye out and take the oculus' quite low - and she made it easily - BUT she knew what the score was. Next time she held the oculus I made the will save harder and told her the feeling of wanting to pluck her eye out was stronger than before.
As she reported that back to the party, they promptly told her to wrap it up and put it away - and DON'T TOUCH IT AGAIN!
they had a magic war hammer, they had a cleric capable of casting Holy Weapon and they paid a blind man a lot of money to smash the oculus for them.
So I have them extra XP for RPing their alignments properly. Mind you, it would have been difficult to justify anything else when one of the party is a Cleric of Iomedae :)
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I'm 99% certain the CE Magus in my group will try to keep the Oculus.
The CN Rogue is Fey to the core and probably won't touch it with a ten-foot pole; the TN Samurai and Barbarian/Cavalier probably won't care as it's clearly a "wizard toy", and the LG Oracle will probably be very "AUGH" about it, regardless of what they decide to do, unless the group is universally "okay let's get this thing smashed".
I like - thanks for the feedback... :)
YW
CE Magus,CN Rogue, TN Samurai and Barbarian/Cavalier, LG OracleWhoa! Interesting/hard group you got there - mind you, lots of well roleplayed conflict can be fun at times...
It has been a blast =) And the players are all really good-natured and get along well OOCly about it.
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I just discovered what I suspect is another editing change in Varnhold Vanishing which makes the connection between the Oculus Focus room (W19) and the Oculus Chamber (W25) make much more sense. In the process, I figured out the mystery of the pointless secret door between W16 and W18.
The secret door on the map between W16 and W18 is useless as shown. There's standard unlocked doors that connect those two rooms (via W17), but the description of the secret door is in room W18, which the PCs will always enter later. So the GM who doesn't remember it when they're searching W16 has to make it only discoverable from one side.
In addition, it's a ridiculously hard door to open. DC 38 strength checks are beyond the capability of almost any 10th level party. You would need a +18 to your roll (raw 46 strength) to even have a possibility of opening it. Even when you factor in a crowbar (+2), and three people aiding another (+6), you still need +10 from strength and other bonuses - and all the "easy" bonuses (guidance, Inspire Competence, etc) don't apply to ability checks.
Turning to picking the lock instead of breaking it down, you need a DC 40. At 10th level, the rogue can easily have a +19 mod (10 ranks, +3 class, +6 dex), if they had been bothering to put ranks in, since it's such a useless skill in this AP. Even with that, it's still only barely possible (although good Take-20 fodder). Dispelling the arcane lock with knock isn't an option, because the lock is "excellent", which would require a DC 35 or 40 caster level check to bypass (depending on whether excellent is between good and amazing or is equivalent to amazing).
Aside from the almost unopenable door, the description references it as being "behind the statue". Since the statue's on the north wall, it's clear the S on the map should be shifted to the right two squares, so it's actually on the door into W18.
The room itself has a bunch of carvings pointing to the east wall, and transports people to W25. It's a nice ways away from the fight so it makes a good retreat center, but there's no explanation for why it's connected to W25, or has all the carvings. This is the room that the oculus of Abaddon is clearly linked to.
This is a very evil room, but with nothing special about it except the eye theme. The oculus of Abaddon was found here, but it has no actual connection to the room.
If you look at the stairs leading up from W23 and down from W24, they're on the wrong sides of the room to connect up directly. There are only two options for linking them: Either there's another turn and a half of stairs which aren't shown, or one of the maps should be rotated so that the top of W23 connects to the bottom of W24.
If you simply rotate the "Top floor" map 180 degrees, as would be the case if the compass rose was rotated to have E on top, then everything lines up really well. When you place the stairs such that the landing in W24 corresponds to the wall at the top of the stairs in W23, then the oculus chamber is in a line almost directly east of the oculus focus... which had the eye painted on the east wall. In addition, the little trail of a hallway that currently goes NE from Vordakai's chamber points directly at the inaccessible pool that's connected to the tar pits in W20. That would imply that the water from the two pools flows out in that direction, down, and eventually into the tar pits, which makes perfect sense. It also matches the description of the pool in W26, which has the water flowing out of it (although the direction is still wrong). Finally, it puts the whole upper level directly above the hallway between W20 and W22, although there's no particular benefit to that.
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Not that any of the above is necessary to run the encounters (except for clarifying the secret door), but it connects everything together pretty well, and it's something that could easily have been changed during editing where the significance wasn't realized at the time.
Nice find =D I'll be sure to make that edit when I get to V's tomb. My group's just about to start the chapter.
So my group just burned down the Tannery.
My group is just about to enter Vordakai's tomb, and I realized there's one big question regarding the people of Varnhold. Xamanthe could have swam (though I'd love to see a horse cross 80 feet of water at 120 ft its deepest). Gundarson originaly had his folding boat, but then left it behind when Vordakai summoned the town.
Vordakai has Dimension Door, but no other transportation spell listed. Sooo how do the dread cyclop zombies cross 120ft deep water (ok, they walk on the bottom as they don't have to breathe?), and how do 40-100 towns people (elderly and children) make that swim? The text says they were summoned to a hillock at the edge of town, true, but it does not say Vordakai left his tomb to capture them all in the soul jars. Plus tracks lead up to the Valley of the Dead.
Any thoughts? Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything.
The text says they were summoned to a hillock at the edge of town, true, but it does not say Vordakai left his tomb to capture them all in the soul jars.
I think it's safe to assume he did, since he needed to use the oculus of Abaddon to call them out. It seems a bit ridiculous to me to think otherwise.
I presumed he had zombies to carry the soul jars, and it's their tracks the group can follow, and they just walked through the water to carry the jars back to his lair.
Granted in my game I got rid of the tracks, I didn't want to give my players a "go here" sign that they'd find irresistible to just follow.
Special Attacks: A lich gains the two special attacks described below. Save DCs are equal to 10 + 1/2 lich's HD + lich's Cha modifier unless otherwise noted
Emphasis mine.
Seems to be the easiest/laziest explanation. Otherwise: since you're the GM change it to suit your needs.Ruyan.
Might also just be a typo - 2 is right below 5 on a keypad.
hmmmm. I think there's a problem with the OP: any of the link I click on lead me on a "You have made too many requests for the same page too quickly.Please wait a minute before trying again.", even if I waited something like 2 hours. Something broken?
The threads are old and the links use an old format which is no longer valid. The forum software has been updated several times since they were posted. The links no longer function as a result.
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Checkmate?
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Vordekai (popping off the king's head): oh c'mon! is this all there is!"
"meh, i'll make it work, Bring me the Pickling Jars!
A question about Dread Zombies and their Command Zombies ability: it says they can command all normal zombies unless they are compelled by something else. What is considered a compulsion in this case? Is a zombie made by a necromancer with animate undead immune to this ability? Because… almost every zombie is made with animate undead.
The text says they were summoned to a hillock at the edge of town, true, but it does not say Vordakai left his tomb to capture them all in the soul jars.I think it's safe to assume he did, since he needed to use the oculus of Abaddon to call them out. It seems a bit ridiculous to me to think otherwise.
I presumed he had zombies to carry the soul jars, and it's their tracks the group can follow, and they just walked through the water to carry the jars back to his lair.
I know this is a bit of a late reply, but I happened to just read a passage in the book that covered this detail. On page 51, it mentions an empty portable hole can be found in the room and that it was how Vordakai transported his collection of soul jars to Varnhold.
Derp! Completely missed that. Didn't even give it to my PCs as loot, I didn't notice it that badly. =/ Oh well!
A question about Dread Zombies and their Command Zombies ability: it says they can command all normal zombies unless they are compelled by something else. What is considered a compulsion in this case? Is a zombie made by a necromancer with animate undead immune to this ability? Because… almost every zombie is made with animate undead.
Command Zombies clarified in the new Advanced Bestiary.
Should the Great Cyclops on p. 84 have the (Giant) subtype?I am guessing so, since the "Cyclops" on p. 52 of the "Bestiary" has the subtype.
I noticed this old question. I think zombies lose their type and subtype.
1) The map shows the road going from Varnhold all the way to Nivakta's Crossing in Brevoy, so three hexes of roads.
2) Kiravoy Bridge (Hex I) has been developed as Farmlands. The section on 'Annexing Varnhold' claims that Varnhold had established a fair amount of farmland, but that's the only hex specifically described as containing Farms already. Feel free to add farms to other hexes if you like, but apparently Maegar Varn was an entirely incompetent lord who claimed lots of land, left it undeveloped, and spent a lot of his monthly income on upkeep rather than new buildings/improvements.
Hellboy, Italian version doesn't have the road on the map, but if you look for an image of nomen heights map on internet you may find many of them.
I think I messed up....
So here's my current situation:
1. My groups Kingdom DC is only 25ish, so they still have very few hexes.
2. I ended up sending them the letter from Jamandi to send them to Varnhold.
2. This took place approximately 1 year after RRR
3. They took the road East from Oleg's and then south from Nivakta's down to to Varnhold itself.
4. They spent 2 days there clearing it out then headed east to find the centaurs
5. 2 more days of wandering around before they were captured by a centaur hunting party and brought to the village
6. One character died shortly after leaving the village, so he got an "on loan" centaur to play until they can raise him.
7. The group then made their way to Vordakai's Tomb and are literally knocking at the final door.
So what I think I messed up on..
1. I've completely ignored all of the quests on the inside of the front/back covers as I thought they were given out by the survivors. After reading over them again, it appears I was wrong. So how should I go about handing them out BEFORE they trek all the way back to their capital to get ambushed by quests to send them BACK to nomen heights.
2. The module seems to instill a sense that there's no rush to save the villagers, but there's been nothing to tell them to take their time to explore, so I feel they're going to lose out on a lot of xp when they finish and just run back to their kingdom to plan the next month's budget.
3. After a very rocky start, they've had very little incentive to EXPAND their kingdom and instead are turtling to save up BP to build more buildings in their capital. How do I force them to expand quickly? (Though I've thought that varnhold will tell them that they'll join their kingdom only once it's big enough)
1. I've completely ignored all of the quests on the inside of the front/back covers as I thought they were given out by the survivors. After reading over them again, it appears I was wrong. So how should I go about handing them out BEFORE they trek all the way back to their capital to get ambushed by quests to send them BACK to nomen heights.
Feel free to make the quests come from the survivors, so your players get ambushed with the quests when they escort them back to Varnhold, before they return to the Greenbelt. You could change the exact details of the quests to make it about helping them rebuild their shattered community.
You might also want to look at Dudemeister's changes to VV, specifically the stuff with building trust with the centaurs. These can give you alternative reasons for the same quests in the Nomen Heights. Given the point your players are up to, they don't need to win the centaur's trust to learn about Vordakai, but there's still the original territorial issue that Varnhold was having with the centaurs, so you could make it that trust points are all about achieving a peaceful settlement with the centaurs.
3. After a very rocky start, they've had very little incentive to EXPAND their kingdom and instead are turtling to save up BP to build more buildings in their capital. How do I force them to expand quickly?
Redcelt (I think it was) has a nice way to encourage players to think about expanding their territory: have other factions start claiming landmarks on the map if the players don't.
It's one thing to know that there's (say) the ruined Temple of the Elk that they can claim whenever they get around to it, and another to discover that some roaming paladins of Erastil have arrived in town and are asking questions and making no secret that they intend to claim the place when they find it. If the players' realm hasn't claimed the hex containing the temple, well, it's obviously just a wilderness location that's open for all takers.
Same goes for other locations of significance - the ruined fort, the gold mine, Tatzlford, the Sootscale caverns.
IMC I dropped an ancient crater south of the Shrike river that the players believe might have Starmetal under it (they went to the effort of buying bridge-repairing materials out of their own pocket and organising the ex-bandits they'd captured to rebuild Nettle's Crossing before we'd even got to the kingdom building portion of the game, so I felt there should be some interesting reward for them to find in that south-east corner of their original chartered area). You could easily use something similar to make a random location suddenly more valuable - one of the nice things about falling stars is that they can drop out of the sky at any time, and tend to be pretty obvious when they do :)
(Though I've thought that varnhold will tell them that they'll join their kingdom only once it's big enough)
There's also the fact that the claimed hexes must be contiguous, so just by RAW they can't add the Varnhold hexes to their realm unless they've claimed at least a row of connecting hexes leading east.
Also, once they do add Varnhold's hexes to their barony, their consumption will shoot up quite a bit and they might have to scramble to build more farms to offset it.
Damn - sorry about that. That's what I get for manually typing the "quote" markup rather than using the reply link.
stuff...
more stuff...
even more stuff...
Thanks for the advice guys. I'll be making some changes to the additional quests in VV to better present them to the players. As a side note, how do players typically handle the monthly decisions when out adventuring? My group has done all the planning every month on the 10th in a council meeting. However they just entered Vordakai's tomb on the 11th. Traveling on foot, it would've taken them 2 weeks to get to town and back, which I think is rather silly for just a council meeting. I had to handwave them to level 9 inside the dungeon so they JUST picked up teleport, but can't even get the entire group yet with one casting.
As a side note, how do players typically handle the monthly decisions when out adventuring? My group has done all the planning every month on the 10th in a council meeting. However they just entered Vordakai's tomb on the 11th. Traveling on foot, it would've taken them 2 weeks to get to town and back, which I think is rather silly for just a council meeting. I had to handwave them to level 9 inside the dungeon so they JUST picked up teleport, but can't even get the entire group yet with one casting.
On foot? Why don't they have horses?
Either way, that's one reason to expand your territory: you can build roads & highways to facilitate the back & forth travel.
Well.... the paladin just crit Vordaki on a spirited charge while smiting on the first round......
So i Was wondering, how comes Agai has a +11 modifier on his crossbow damage in giant form? And what about the +5 in small form? I can make my mind only up +3 (specialised weapon and +1 magic weapon)
So i Was wondering, how comes Agai has a +11 modifier on his crossbow damage in giant form? And what about the +5 in small form? I can make my mind only up +3 (specialised weapon and +1 magic weapon)
Looks like his numbers are slightly jacked. His BAB is wrong - should be 7, not 8 - and his melee damage is as if he's wielding a 1-handed weapon instead of a 2-hander. So I'm guessing he went through some revisions and wasn't updated correctly. The xbow damage is probably a copy-n-paste error - damage for both weapons is +5 in normal form and +11 in large form.
His attack stats should be:
normal form:
greatclub:
to-hit: 7 (BAB) + 1 (size) + 2 (strength) + 1 (masterwork) + 1 (focus) + 1 (weapon training) = +13 (not 14)
damage: 3 (strength x 1.5) + 2 (specialization) + 1 (weapon training) = +6 (not 5)
xbow:
to-hit: 7 (BAB) + 1 (size) + 3 (dexterity) + 1 (magic) + 1 (focus) = +13* (not 14)
damage: 1 (magic) + 2 (specialization) = +3 (not 5)
* he can only get 1 xbow attack a round, not two.
large form:
greatclub:
to-hit: 7 (BAB) - 1 (size) + 8 (strength) + 1 (masterwork) + 1 (focus) + 1 (weapon training) = +17 (not 18)
damage: 12 (strength x 1.5) + 2 (specialization) + 1 (weapon training) = +15 (not 11)
xbow:
to-hit: 7 (BAB) - 1 (size) + 2 (dexterity) + 1 (magic) + 1 (focus) = +10* (not 11)
damage: 1 (magic) + 2 (specialization) = +3 (not 11)
* he can only get 1 xbow attack a round, not two.
Also, the BAB difference means that Power Attack should be -2/+4, not -3/+6. Not that they do you the favor of telling you what the PA numbers should be.
Ah! Thank you! For the specifics!
But spriggans do have a +3 in their BAB section in the bestiary two..so i guess Agai's is actually +8?
Or is there a mistake in the bestiary too?
Ah! Thank you! For the specifics!
But spriggans do have a +3 in their BAB section in the bestiary two..so i guess Agai's is actually +8?
Or is there a mistake in the bestiary too?
Hmm, never mind, I was wrong. The BAB is correct. I was thrown off because the Spriggans in VV are taken from the Tome of Horrors Revised, where they are apparently humanoids, and I was looking at the Spriggans in Tome of Horrors Complete, where they are fey.
So the to-hit numbers are correct, aside from the heavy x-bow not giving a second shot. It's just the damage numbers that are off.
Thanks Spatula!
Yesterday my players finished the exploration of Varnhold (funny how 2 murders of crows can be a pain in the a** for 3 level 8 players). They entered the fort via the underwater passage, wich lead to them allarming the spriggans by opening one of the holes in the ceiling (how i love the baroness being a fey sorceress and playing it all childish-curiously)
And thus making them being spotted by the guards on the upper floor.
A fireball and a lightning bolt later the fort begun to carch fire and our heroes decided that it would have been wise to escape the way they came (after slaughtering three spriggans who followed standard tactics after hearong the alarm being sounded).
Agai made sure the fire propagagated by using standard tactics and thus everybody came out of the fort.
Some minutes later the party ambushed the 12ish spriggans by hiding underwater in the river. I ruled that the spriggan would arrive in waves. The fight begun but the PC clearly got the upper hand until Agai made his appearance by charging the baroness and removing half of her oh so precious hp. Later he attacked the As,odean high priest, seriously thretenig to kill him. Meanwhile the Ranger marshall kept shooting arrows.
After 5-6 rounds of combat (and many lightning bolts later) the fight was over with all Pc still standing (tough some were badly bruised) and poor Agai and the last spriggans were gunned to death by the unforgiving ranged ranger (haha).
Most memorably,a single spriggan (who rolled bad for initiative) was the last to die, after beig abandoned by his pals he ran to keep up with them while from behind him came a rain of arrows. Lastly he was killed with another of his blueish frinds by a lightning bolt from the baroness fingers.
After the massacre the cleric went in what remained of the fort (MV is not,going to be happy about that. But he won't be happy about anything actually..) and managed to recover much of the map.
After all the fighting the PC went up a level and are now level 9. Much to their joy and my amusement (notice we are using fast track and they are 3 players)
Tonight it's game time!
But I feel I should go back to the last session, if not to let myself remember what happened..so why not share?
Last time the players promptly followed the leads to the Nomen camp and were swiftly found and surrounded by a Nomen patrol, some good RP ensued with the high priest asking for help; after that they were brought, unarmed, to the hidden camp ( statted Aecora and gave her the spell wich hides encampments, duid 3).
Talked with Aecora (who managed to hide is disapproval of the asmodean beliefs in the group) and gained infos and a request to find her missing daughter (tough it took them to give the magic bow to her, so that she could loosen up a bit on her xenophobia).
They were lead to the entrance of the cyclops burial ground and were attacked by the undead cyclop. that night the baroness was also attacked by the shadowthingy sent by the BBEG, too bad its DR wa absolutely worthless to a group fully equipped with magic weapons and spells (memorable tent combustion by a very scared-very asleep baroness who used burning hands in her own tent, wich is no more).
On the river side they reasoned on how to cross to the rock pillar and finally remembered about the folding boat.
while navigating (more like letting themselves be brought downstream by the current tough) they were attacked by the wiverns...to absolutely NO EFFECT,apart from a dead-on-turn-one dragon and a very pissed off other dragon..).
This was actually a very combat oriented game, for I want them one level ahead of the suggested, because they're three (actually two of them have cohorts and the third is a ranger sooo...).
Actualy I forgot to mention another encounter, wich is tied to a recurring theme about foreshadowing the final BBEG (shamelessly taken from someone else on this board, thanks btw). it started with a tiny ball like construct (wich they've seen several times already) working at mid air and opening a small portal to the first world...Skriks (3 of them for a CR9 encounter) came out and started trying to make party members levitate to their dead. every-single-PC managed their saving throws,but in the end it was the Monk cohort of the High priest who apparently managed to jump extremely high with a failed acrobatic check to avoid an AOO...hilarity ensued.
My players have finally killed Vordakai.
Now a question, how many days have passed sice the vanishing when the players receive the letter from Restov?
I'm asking because my players would realy like to resurrect Maegar Varn.. I think that it would be at least two weeks so there is no chance of using reanimate dead. Resurrection would work instead, but where could a 13th level cleric be found ?
On an unrelated note they have used the scroll from Varnhold to resurrect Cephal Lorentus, the zombie-wizard, for time spent as undead does not count toward the day limit of the spell...and it ended up being a good thing. In fact it was thanks to him usimg protection from evil that the party cleric (asmodean) could shackle off the control big V had on him (dominate spell)
I actually have a question about the Soul Eater, it seeks out the party arcane caster and would probably try to attack him in the night. With a +30 stealth at night it seems impossible for whichever player on watch to see him coming. The most obviously deadly action for the Soul Eater to take is to just coup-de-grace the arcane caster. How does that work with the on-guard character finding out in the middle or after the coup-de-grace and also with the difficulties of a full round coup-de-grace fitting between the suprise round and 1st round? How would this scenario play out? Would the rules work out in a way to prevent this?
My problems with how that would play out made me think of being lenient and letting the coup-de-grace go through but if it kills the wizard having the Soul Eater do the soul drain automatically so if they kill it within 30 feet he will come back at -1hp. Anyway I want to know the official rules before changing it to my own purposes.