Warning: Spoilers will follow....
The party consists of Toshiro a Tien "samurai" Paladin (warrior of the holy light), Bhrenit an elf Spirit Ranger archer from the Mwangi, Erzbet a cat-like female Tiefling rogue from the shackles, dubbed "kitten" by the groups paladin and Ewan a young Cleric of Desna.
So my party has had a fairly easy time at the island except for the horrible diseases and poisons they have encountered and the fungi infested island. They have finally gotten to the sunken temple and performed the ritual.
So my party enters the sunken temple and straight up moves right to the temple after dealing with the various traps and monsters on the way there without to much hassle. The paladin suffered a nasty critical from a javelin from one of the serpentfolk skeletons in the Sanctum, and they didn't like getting caught in the trap in the cleansing shrine, although they didn't take to much damage there. Other than that the trip to the temple area was pretty straightforward as the rogue managed to discover and disable all of the pit traps and the soul-bound dolls in the sunken chamber went down fairly easily.
Due to my party's uncanny ability to wade through most of the encounters on the island I had beefed up the last showdown with Yarzoth quite a bit, changing the human skeletons to serpentfolk skeletons (Ruling that Yarzoth was able to control them by attuning to the altar) and adding an unhallow effect to the altar (also granting all evil creatures in the temple the benefits of an aid spell). I also ruled that all the undead in the temple would automatically be destroyed when the altar was destroyed.
The battle was truly epic with the rogue constantly going down due to massive damage from Yarzoth and the skeletons. I allowed the pc's to notice that there might be some sort of evil magic attuned to the altar (as are common in evil temples) by rolling a Knowledge religion check, and the paladin decided to use a hero point and his only smite evil for the day to try to destroy the altar as the skeletons was tearing them down real quick while Yarzoth got her defenses up. We use the hero point rules from the APG, so the Samurai asked if he could spend a hero point to smite the altar using his only daily use of his smite evil ability. Since the party was in really bad shape and the effects of the altar and skeletons was really tearing the party to pieces I allowed the altar to shatter from the smite in one fell blow, so now the unhallow and the aid effect connected to it was gone and the skeletons destroyed. Now they only had Yarzoth to deal with.
Being devoid of her skeletal minions Yarzoth decided to try to dominate the paladin who luckily succeeded in his will save. Then the pc's had a really long streak of bad rolling allowing Yarzoth to poison both the cleric and the rogue and downing the rogue once more. As the party finally managed to reduce her to below 15 hit points with the rogue and cleric having almost no strength left and the paladin severely wounded, Yarzoth decided that she would try to flee by using the gaseous form ability gained from the statue of Zura (I ruled that it counted as a spell like ability), but she was cornered and threatened on all sides so she had to roll a concentration check to be able to do so and luckily she failed. In her last round of actions Yarzoth yet again failed her concentration check to heal herself with a cure moderate wounds spell, and the archer finally managed to put her down with a lucky shot.
After this they all used the gaseous form ability from the statue and rested in the secret x shaped room above the temple. The day after they encountered the gibbering mouther as they were exploring the remaining rooms of the temple, but it was aptly put down by an aberration slaying arrow the pc's had found earlier in the nest of the red mountain devil.
When they returned to camp the pc's, and the remaining npc's (everyone except poor Ishiro who had been ritualistically murdered by the cannibals earlier) finally manage to repair the lighthouse and a few days later they were rescued by the Red Gull. We had some excellent roleplaying aboard the ship, including a stalking of the groups female tiefling rogue by the Red Gull's Tien cook, and a brief romantic moment between Aerys and the groups cleric. We are all really looking forward to the next part and I would like to thank Paizo for yet another amazing adventure path installment.
Looking forward to running this after I finish the current LoF campaign that I'm running.
You said your party didn't have too many hassles with encounter until the big one with Yarzoth, was this due to luck, good tactics or did you feel the encounters could be beefed up a bit?
Looking forward to running this after I finish the current LoF campaign that I'm running.
You said your party didn't have too many hassles with encounter until the big one with Yarzoth, was this due to luck, good tactics or did you feel the encounters could be beefed up a bit?
The party is heavy on fighting power and at lower levels against foes with mostly low hp and ac they easily cut them down. I have a concern about the groups lack of arcane magic at higher levels though.
Mortagon, what is the Red Gull? Is that a ship of your own creation? I didn't see it mentioned in the AP.
Good stuff, by the way. I like your changes to the final confrontation with Yarzoth.
p. 54 under Escaping the Shiv.
Soul dolls EASY? DUDE! Only the luck of the roll saved Toshirou from instant death, with the dolls doing 25 per hit, a total of 50 hp vs his 34hp and con12. Had I rolled on saves like I did on attacks that entire dungeon, I would have been sooo dead.
Saves were the ONLY good rolls I made too. Jesus H Christ, I must have attacked 30 times or so in that dungeon, and hit on... what... 4? And on average, I needed somewhere between a 7 and 11. Was ridiculous bad rolling. Used up all our X/day abilities; turning, domain powers, lay on hands, smites, my last hero point to break the altar (which was the only thing that kept it from being a blatant TPK, since the skeletons were absurdly strong, dealing almost the same damage as I did with my 2handed power attack, only 3 times per round, with a better to-hit modifier, judging from the sheer amount of AC25+ hits we suffered.)
Cleric AND rogue down to 0 strength due to poisons and critical hit effects, me barely standing, and the smug ranger standing in the back after spamming roughly 40 arrows at the serpent-skank.
Sure, we hit lv5 somewhat prematurely, but even then I kinda feel cheated for XP compared to how insanely hard it was due to the ridiculously bad dice-rolling.
I will say this though: I think James made the AP slightly easier in terms of monster AC, their to-hit and whatnot due to the fact that you have NO option to upgrade your gear throughout the first part. Also, we are 3 attack-oriented characters, meaning we have a higher offensive output compared to a more balanced group. We still have crap lv1 starting gear, with the exception of a single usable level-appropriate item per player in form of an amulet of natural armor+1 for me, a +1 dagger for the rogue, a buckler +1 for the cleric, and an Efficient Quiver and a MW Str+3 bow for the ranger. The arrow of aberration-slaying came in handy though, against the giant gibbering mouther, who died in a glorious one-shot, which was the LEAST karma could do for us after all that downright impossibly bad rolling, and the GM's standard array of 4d10+10 natural 20s. (Seriously, that d20 is downright silly. So even if I had level-appropriate AC, I guess it wouldn't really matter >_> )
Oh yeah, as if the dice-gods wanted to rub it in our faces: There WERE two critical hits in our favor; one from the rogue at str3 before she was down and out, for 2 damage, and one from the cleric at str4 for another 2 damage. Double natural 20 never tasted so bitter ;_;
Now that we are getting to Eleder, we are gonna hit the shops so hard.
Soul dolls EASY? DUDE! Only the luck of the roll saved Toshirou from instant death, with the dolls doing 25 per hit, a total of 50 hp vs his 34hp and con12. Had I rolled on saves like I did on attacks that entire dungeon, I would have been sooo dead.
Saves were the ONLY good rolls I made too. Jesus H Christ, I must have attacked 30 times or so in that dungeon, and hit on... what... 4? And on average, I needed somewhere between a 7 and 11. Was ridiculous bad rolling. Used up all our X/day abilities; turning, domain powers, lay on hands, smites, my last hero point to break the altar (which was the only thing that kept it from being a blatant TPK, since the skeletons were absurdly strong, dealing almost the same damage as I did with my 2handed power attack, only 3 times per round, with a better to-hit modifier, judging from the sheer amount of AC25+ hits we suffered.)
Cleric AND rogue down to 0 strength due to poisons and critical hit effects, me barely standing, and the smug ranger standing in the back after spamming roughly 40 arrows at the serpent-skank.
Sure, we hit lv5 somewhat prematurely, but even then I kinda feel cheated for XP compared to how insanely hard it was due to the ridiculously bad dice-rolling.
I will say this though: I think James made the AP slightly easier in terms of monster AC, their to-hit and whatnot due to the fact that you have NO option to upgrade your gear throughout the first part. Also, we are 3 attack-oriented characters, meaning we have a higher offensive output compared to a more balanced group. We still have crap lv1 starting gear, with the exception of a single usable level-appropriate item per player in form of an amulet of natural armor+1 for me, a +1 dagger for the rogue, a buckler +1 for the cleric, and an Efficient Quiver and a MW Str+3 bow for the ranger. The arrow of aberration-slaying came in handy though, against the giant gibbering mouther, who died in a glorious one-shot, which was the LEAST karma could do for us after all that downright impossibly bad...
Yeah, you made some seriously bad attack rolls, and my DM die can be outright evil at times (although I usually roll crap on them when I use them as a player). After the soul dolls initial attacks they were dispatched rather quickly as far as I recall, although I agree they hit you hard with their initial attacks.