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I got to the shadow room in Sixfold Trials last night, and I can honestly say this was one of the most frustrating encounters I've run.
Why is it that an encounter with a significantly lower number of "lesser shadows" finds its way into the higher leveled What Lies in Dust, while an encounter with a significantly greater number of regular shadows makes it into the lower leveled Sixfold Trials?
In preparation for this encounter the first thing I did was drop the shadows down to lesser shadows (the reasons why can be found in this link) and I still had a near TPK in that stairwell.
Combine the extraordinary tough encounter (a quick spawning speed plus up to six at a time?) with a solution that virtually requires a high strength (who's heard of a mirror with hardness 10 and 30 HP anyway?) and not only were players getting really frustrated, but I was too. The incorporeal nature alone made the group barely able to take one down at a time before they were dealing with the next two. This could have been a really fantastically cool encounter, but instead it felt like something out of a "grinder" tournament style module. Fair warning to any other GMs considering running this encounter, you may wish to tone it down, significantly. Had I had the chance to do it over there would be ONE mirror that spawns ONE lesser shadow every 30 seconds (5 rounds) up to the maximum of six shadows).
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I agree this was a very tough encounter. No magic weapons except for the one spell prepared by the cleric. My group also had two deaths resulting from it. Luckily they figured out that the Shadows would not come after them if they backtracked out of the stairwell. Through experimentation they got through the area while avoiding the Shadows. They never found the secret room with the mirrors.
I must agree that the encounter is very tough for a group with only two magic weapons and minor area spells.
Cave!
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My players found the mirrors before the shadows even showed up! Unfortunately, the monk & barbarian (the bard and the ranged-based paladin didn't stand a chance) could only get past the hardness on a maximized roll, and then they'd only do 1 damage.
I changed one of the mirrors to bring out lesser shadows, while regular came out of the other mirror. This became obvious to them. After realizing they wouldn't be able to break the mirrors they ran. They never went back that way, but they did leave two shadows waiting.
This encounter was tough for them, even with the lesser shadows added.
I feel bad, because they did everything right. In a way they deserve the xp - although they didn't chose high damage weapons. They didn't have too much of a problem with the magic weapons. The monk's weapon was magic, and the paladin used a cure light wand.
My group found the door and was inspecting it before the first shadows attacked. I used cure spells on one while the sorceror and the wizard took the other. After breaking down the door, we just cast magic on the mirror until it broke. People are saying there were two, so I think our GM missed that. Nonetheless, really not at all difficult. Right after we took the strength damage I just used lesser restoration to bring it back.
It is a bit telling though that our cavalier just stood there and watched the fight since he had no way to affect it. Definitely a fight that melee will always lose and magic will always win.
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My group found the door and was inspecting it before the first shadows attacked. I used cure spells on one while the sorceror and the wizard took the other. After breaking down the door, we just cast magic on the mirror until it broke. People are saying there were two, so I think our GM missed that. Nonetheless, really not at all difficult. Right after we took the strength damage I just used lesser restoration to bring it back.
It is a bit telling though that our cavalier just stood there and watched the fight since he had no way to affect it. Definitely a fight that melee will always lose and magic will always win.
I question how groups are finding the door within the 24 seconds before the first two shadows arrive (as two of you have indicated). My group is usually pretty cautious and after entering the room took at least that just getting a sense of the room. Making your way up a flight of stairs while checking for traps, doors, what the heck is going on with the infinite pit, waving at yourself, etc. just didn't make a hasty entrance possible. Furthermore, if you're searching for secret doors, it's going to take you a bare minimum of 10 rounds to be searching for the door if you're searching the walls (that's if you assumed that the shadow door was only half a flight of stairs up).
I'm also curious how your magic brought the mirror down without the GM seriously adjusting the mirror. All elemental effects are halved before applying hardness, and the thing had a hardness 10. You're level 4 (at least you are if you're using the module's defaults) and no elemental effects short of shatter is going to pump out that kind of damage.
For those of you who are saying the encounter is easy (and I'm somebody who ran it saying that it was downright impossible as written), how seriously were you adjusting it?
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I question how groups are finding the door within the 24 seconds before the first two shadows arrive (as two of you have indicated). My group is usually pretty cautious and after entering the room took at least that just getting a sense of the room. Making your way up a flight of stairs while checking for traps, doors, what the heck is going on with the infinite pit, waving at yourself, etc. just didn't make a hasty entrance possible. Furthermore, if you're searching for secret doors, it's going to take you a bare minimum of 10 rounds to be searching for the door if you're searching the walls (that's if you assumed that the shadow door was only half a flight of stairs up).
I'm also curious how your magic brought the mirror down without the GM seriously adjusting the mirror. All elemental effects are halved before applying hardness, and the thing had a hardness 10. You're level 4 (at least you are if you're using the module's defaults) and no elemental effects short of shatter is going to pump out that kind of damage.
For those of you who are saying the encounter is easy (and I'm somebody who ran it saying that it was downright impossible as written), how seriously were you adjusting it?
I was wondering the same thing myself when I read that. The stairwell is disorienting in and of itself once entered and couple that with getting lucky and targeting that particular wall for a secret door search, I don't see how it could be found within four rounds. And I'm not sure why characters would be searching the stairwell for secret doors unless it's one of those party's that searches every inch of a dungeon (I guess there's a possibility one of the PCs was a race that get's a perception check near a secret door and that tipped'em off, it's not an easy chack though).
My players never found the secret door. They just thought the shadows incorporal ability allowed them to emerge from the walls. They never put 2 and 2 together that the Shadows were coming from the exact same area each time.
I found this was the toughest fight in the Knot for my players. The rest of the encounters seemed easy by comparison. The key in defeating the shadow for my players was the cleric with Channel Positive energy. The mirrors did last long once the fighter with the great axe got chopping on them.
The biggest problem though was the shadows reducing the strength of the fighter but there was enough restoration potion and wand going around to keep them going.
Still it was good fight.
My group found the door and was inspecting it before the first shadows attacked. I used cure spells on one while the sorceror and the wizard took the other. After breaking down the door, we just cast magic on the mirror until it broke. People are saying there were two, so I think our GM missed that. Nonetheless, really not at all difficult. Right after we took the strength damage I just used lesser restoration to bring it back.
It is a bit telling though that our cavalier just stood there and watched the fight since he had no way to affect it. Definitely a fight that melee will always lose and magic will always win.
I question how groups are finding the door within the 24 seconds before the first two shadows arrive (as two of you have indicated). My group is usually pretty cautious and after entering the room took at least that just getting a sense of the room. Making your way up a flight of stairs while checking for traps, doors, what the heck is going on with the infinite pit, waving at yourself, etc. just didn't make a hasty entrance possible. Furthermore, if you're searching for secret doors, it's going to take you a bare minimum of 10 rounds to be searching for the door if you're searching the walls (that's if you assumed that the shadow door was only half a flight of stairs up).
I'm also curious how your magic brought the mirror down without the GM seriously adjusting the mirror. All elemental effects are halved before applying hardness, and the thing had a hardness 10. You're level 4 (at least you are if you're using the module's defaults) and no elemental effects short of shatter is going to pump out that kind of damage.
For those of you who are saying the encounter is easy (and I'm somebody who ran it saying that it was downright impossible as written), how seriously were you adjusting it?
I guess we run with a little house rule where magic damage is always halved by objects but hardness doesn't apply.
I'd never read up on hardness, but now that I think about it, it really doesn't make sense that three CL 5th max-damage lightning bolts or fireballs can't knock a hole in a wooden wall, whereas any lucky strength roll could plow through it no problem.
Also, elf. Our group is still in the transition from 3.5e to PF for some people, so I didn't really think twice when the DM had the elf roll perception for the secret door.
So, I guess for us it really wasn't as easy as I thought... we just messed up a lot!
I ran the encounter completely as is and we surprisingly had no deaths in the party. However, they never found the room with the mirror(s?) and in fact faced six shadows before they decided to just run up the stairwell passage into the prison. They were forced to utilize their highest AC character (Monk) as the target while everyone else fled into the jail. I agree that this encounter is impossibly deadly if your group straight up tries to just fight it. I think it would be impossible for anyone to deactivate the mirror before having to fight at least two pairs, and the DC on the secret door and break DC on the mirror is so high, you can't possibly accomplish it in a couple of rounds.
I basically utilized this encounter as a way to hedge my PCs into the rest of the dungeon (and Sian) instead of being able to retreat. There's no way there going back through that room a second time.
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I ran the encounter completely as is and we surprisingly had no deaths in the party. However, they never found the room with the mirror(s?) and in fact faced six shadows before they decided to just run up the stairwell passage into the prison. They were forced to utilize their highest AC character (Monk) as the target while everyone else fled into the jail. I agree that this encounter is impossibly deadly if your group straight up tries to just fight it. I think it would be impossible for anyone to deactivate the mirror before having to fight at least two pairs, and the DC on the secret door and break DC on the mirror is so high, you can't possibly accomplish it in a couple of rounds.
I basically utilized this encounter as a way to hedge my PCs into the rest of the dungeon (and Sian) instead of being able to retreat. There's no way there going back through that room a second time.
agreed: my party found the shadows inconvenient at first, and put the 1st couple down with Cure spells and Magic Missile (sorcerer & wizard in the party). When they kept spawning, they retreated and found the shadows did not pursue.
From then, it was a "lets run really fast and hope we don't get dead" moment, a la zombie movies. All in all, a good, if rather tough encounter. For the record, my group never found the mirror room either, simply running back through when the party went back through.
If the party does not change their standard tactics in this encounter (move 10', search, move 10', search) they will likely all die horribly.
-t
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My group had a very hard time in this encounter as well. At that point, they only had one magical weapon for the entire group, plus the monk's ki strike. They actually had to retreat after taking strength damage, and come back another time, with a few scrolls of "Magic Weapon". Note however that there was no cleric in our group, which surely made things harder.
The second time, they knew exactly where to find the secret door, since they had seen Shadows coming out of that spot in the wall.
After successfully finding and opening the secret door, and slaying 4 waves of 2 shadows, they began striking the mirrors. At that point, I decided to make it trivial for them to break the mirrors. Like another poster mentioned, having hardness 10 on a MIRROR seems way too sadistic, especially to inflict on a group of poor little level 4's who've likely just been massively strength drained.
Another thing that's especially hard about this encounter is that it's so early in the dungeon, so chances are high that some PC's will have to do the entire dungeon with strength penalties.
So in my game, the PC's did the dungeon in 3 different tries. It was kind of weird, since the entire goal of attending the Cornucopia was that this was a "once in a lifetime", or almost, chance to slip into the mayor's manor. But my group did this on two more occasions... Hehe... And this is made even more difficult in Council of Thieves compared to any other campaign, because in Westcrown, it's so dangerous to go around at night... But since they had no choice, the dungeon being so difficult, I made it easy for them to do so.
Also, they had arranged for Fiosa (Halfling cleric-wannabe from the Children of Westcrown) to be hired as a servant at Aberian's Folly to take over Sian's job. That way, they had an insider to help them to sneak inside.
I have a Rule -1 at my table: don't frustrate the players. It's one thing to kill them, but this encounter as designed is annoying at best. It's all about being lucky enough to just happen to have the right equipment/spells available and just happen to find the solution before you're killed and just happen to manage to enact the solution. It's a situation without information or clues. Mindless.
So, knowing my players would absolutely hate this encounter, I brought the shadows down in intensity and reduced the spawn to one per four rounds. I'm sure the players were still annoyed but at least they weren't rolling new characters AND annoyed.
It's cool, yes. Richard did cool very well. It's just... annoying.
My group just finished this section of the Asmodean Knot, and one thing I noticed after reading through the encounter afterward (being married to the DM has its privileges) was something to help possibly explain the hardness of the mirror is listed on page 44: "Two mirrors of weird black metal hang on the opposite walls of this trapezoidal room. Strange shadowy figures writhe in the mirrors, and they do not seem to reflect light as much as absorb it." Remembering that the mirrors are described as made of metal not glass, the hardness seems appropriate.
Our party made out of this encounter fairly well. The rogue being our one near death, though on the road to recovery, the main fighter (my Paladin) was the key to destroying the mirrors. Lesser restoration + Power Attack + two-handed weapon FTW. We discovered that the shadows would not leave the room rather early, so being able to use that bit of info it made the remaining encounter easier for us.
As for this point:
I guess we run with a little house rule where magic damage is always halved by objects but hardness doesn't apply.
My group has always used the Neverwinter Nights effect of magic and hardness. If a spell is directed at an object, it ignores the hardness of the item. Though, for instance, an item caught in the area of a fireball has its hardness applied normally.
All in all, I enjoyed this encounter as a player. It made for a good game. :)
I was glad this encounter was in there as a player it was a threat to all players lives and I like rooms like that in the Adventure Path
The rogue skillbox of my group identified the shadows and simply ran through the room and out the other side, the rest of the party followed suit. I have decided that there are no more shadows in the books, I decided that while DMing infernal syndrome. Now anytime the book tells me there are shadows in an area I swap them out with similar themed creatures.
Tikael, Squeek. There's just one problem. The text for room B3 specifically notes that the shadows will hunt for players all the way to B5a and B5b. There's nowhere for PCs to hide unless they retreat. Or mind-read Pett and jump for the exit holes.
That's my biggest problem with the setup. Players have a huge pressure to figure out what to do next with the seemingly very dangerous near dead-end and figure it out QUICKLY.
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I used this encounter as a great opportunity to establish the strange dimensionality of this place. I took a couple of liberties and have all of the separate sections of the Asmodean knot floating in a dim shadowy, silver space. Each of the sections dissolved at the edges into a cloud-like shadow. The enormity of the space was awe-inspiring to the players.
As for the encounter, I made sure that my players saw the first shadows "leaking" out of the doorway to the mirror. They immediately knew that that particular door was where they were coming from. I started off slow with 2 shadows every 3 rounds, which gave them the opportunity to reach the door. Then it was a simple matter of them getting the door open, holding off the shadows (the alchemist was particularly effective) and smashing the mirror.
Hehe, to make it even more interesting, I made the mirror a portal to that portion of Hell where all the lost souls float around (AKA Dante's Inferno or the river Styx in Disney's Hercules). When the first players looked into the mirror, they were transfixed (ie. Stunned) so the others had to avert their eyes as they destroyed the mirror. Looking into the mirror was like staring into an infinite void with a swirling whirlpool of lost souls.
Finally, the party does not have a cleric. The witch was particularly interested in the mirror shards, so I am allowing her to use the shards to gain the ability to turn undead (but only one at a time) as a cleric. I also intend to use the shards as a replacement or component for the Grave Candles (ie. You summon the soul close by using the candle, and then you speak through the shard).
I used this encounter as a great opportunity to establish the strange dimensionality of this place. I took a couple of liberties and have all of the separate sections of the Asmodean knot floating in a dim shadowy, silver space. Each of the sections dissolved at the edges into a cloud-like shadow. The enormity of the space was awe-inspiring to the players.
As for the encounter, I made sure that my players saw the first shadows "leaking" out of the doorway to the mirror. They immediately knew that that particular door was where they were coming from. I started off slow with 2 shadows every 3 rounds, which gave them the opportunity to reach the door. Then it was a simple matter of them getting the door open, holding off the shadows (the alchemist was particularly effective) and smashing the mirror.
Hehe, to make it even more interesting, I made the mirror a portal to that portion of Hell where all the lost souls float around (AKA Dante's Inferno or the river Styx in Disney's Hercules). When the first players looked into the mirror, they were transfixed (ie. Stunned) so the others had to avert their eyes as they destroyed the mirror. Looking into the mirror was like staring into an infinite void with a swirling whirlpool of lost souls.
Finally, the party does not have a cleric. The witch was particularly interested in the mirror shards, so I am allowing her to use the shards to gain the ability to turn undead (but only one at a time) as a cleric. I also intend to use the shards as a replacement or component for the Grave Candles (ie. You summon the soul close by using the candle, and then you speak through the shard).
That sounds awesome. You are awesome. Everything about this is awesome, from the witch getting a custom magical item for being inventive to the new mental image you've given me of the Asmodean Knot. Kudos.
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Thanks. One more thing.
Instead of:
I then created a simple mechanic . Just being in the room, inhalingthe mist from the water fall, makes characters take a DC 11 Fort save to avoid losing 1 point of Intelligence each round (returns 1 minute per point as soon as characters reach the bottom of B11). Contact with the water increases that to DC 12 and 1d4 Int damage. Falling into the water (or being dragged in) makes it DC 15, 1d6 dam. Swallowing the water, DC 20, 2d6 dam. A character who reaches 0 Int, forgets everything they know and are as a new-born baby.
The DCs were low enough to give the Drowned Jabe encounter a panicked edged to it. I made sure to be very descriptive of the effect that the presence of the river menant and included a reference to it in the book. Since they regained their intelligence damage in such a short time, it didn't effect the rest of the adventure. The party alchemist took the time to fill up 2 8oz jars of water from the river, I can hardly wait to see what new dastardly potion or bomb he creates with it. He mentioned something about a Touch of Idiocy bomb. Hmmmm