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Hey guys,
I'm prepping to run the Citadel of Flame for my home group. I was wondering if anyone could help me better visualize the archetecture in the first foyer of the citadel. I'm having trouble picturing the dimensions of the stairs that lead up to the sauna area. I understand the stairs circle a fire pit and lead upwards-- its how they interact with the cieling/form a new room that I cannot picture so well.
Thanks for your help with this.
Jeremy
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I picture the room with a vaulted or cathedral style ceiling, but with a tapering tower that extends upwards. At the top is a small room, perhaps an old observatory. The issue I see is whether or not the center of the spiral stairs is open or surrounds a central shaft that funnels the super-heated air into the room.
If the former, I think you need to describe how the ambient temperature continues to increase as the players ascend the stairs. This could give them a hint of the potential hazard.
If the latter, the stairway needn't be any hotter than the rest of the environment, although the cylinder should be hot (small amount of damage?) to the touch. 'Course in this version, it is hard to justify Gali Sinquil being able to watch the PC's at the door and possible trigger the trap.
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I picture the room with a vaulted or cathedral style ceiling, but with a tapering tower that extends upwards. At the top is a small room, perhaps an old observatory. The issue I see is whether or not the center of the spiral stairs is open or surrounds a central shaft that funnels the super-heated air into the room.
If the former, I think you need to describe how the ambient temperature continues to increase as the players ascend the stairs. This could give them a hint of the potential hazard.
If the latter, the stairway needn't be any hotter than the rest of the environment, although the cylinder should be hot (small amount of damage?) to the touch. 'Course in this version, it is hard to justify Gali Sinquil being able to watch the PC's at the door and possible trigger the trap.
So, the open stairwell ascends beyond the vaulted cieling into the interior of a tower where a door is located. The door opens into a room that would be situated within the vaulted ceiling? I suppose that all makes sense. I'll be curious to hear the way others imagined the structure. For whatever reason, I'm just struggling with the geometry in my head.
J
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I think the hardest part to visualize is how Gali can see the door upstairs through a small hole in the wall that overlooks the entry. Perhaps he has a skylight of sorts in the ceiling of the hidden room with line of sight to windows near the door? Luckily, my players have never tried to analyze the geometry ;-)
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I think the hardest part to visualize is how Gali can see the door upstairs through a small hole in the wall that overlooks the entry. Perhaps he has a skylight of sorts in the ceiling of the hidden room with line of sight to windows near the door? Luckily, my players have never tried to analyze the geometry ;-)
We did analyze the geometry, which is why I think my group was less than enthused with that encounter.
I will jump in here with my author hat! My apologies the architecture isn't clear; it is often difficult to describe unusual features that are "fantastical" and so don't occur in the real world, but I should have done a better job here.
The basic idea is that the sauna is in a minaret and turret extending above the roof, but the turret has a "belly" that protrudes into the room itself (from the ceiling). A fragile-looking metal staircase spirals up, around the (open) column of smoke, and ends by wrapping around the belly, with a door on the far side (from the entry door, so it faces Gali's vantage point).
It definitely makes sense that PCs would feel more and more heat as they ascended the stairs!
As for Gali, he can look through not only the eyes of the carving but its open mouth, which I meant to be large enough to see the door - I wanted to take advantage of the fact that looking through a densely-packed grate (i.e., the ornate mouth) that is right next to you is much easier than looking through such a grate when you are far away. The ceiling isn't actually all that high - after all, open/close is a close range spell. At least, it seemed reasonable at the time.
Personally, I don't see any reason to have Gali trigger the trap from range anyway. He's a sufficient challenge on his own and if the players can avoid tripping the trap, then they should reap the reward, not be blasted from afar. Smells of unnecessary vindictiveness to me.
My apologies again, it is not meant to be vindictive but to turn a potentially "boring" (at least for my play style) one-shot door trap into an interesting challenge. I think of it as part of Gali's initial illusion drawing the PCs up the stairs...if they do not take precautions following those, they will pay a price for it. But I can see that others would view the sequence differently.
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My apologies again, it is not meant to be vindictive but to turn a potentially "boring" (at least for my play style) one-shot door trap into an interesting challenge. I think of it as part of Gali's initial illusion drawing the PCs up the stairs...if they do not take precautions following those, they will pay a price for it. But I can see that others would view the sequence differently.
Thanks for the response!
My group had a couple issues with that module, but there were several reasons why. First was the layout, which the GM despised, then there were the encounters that felt forced upon the characters with no ability to retaliate. This was the triggering event towards those feelings, at least for my group.
Basically, what we saw it as is an unbeatable trap. The group goes up, doesn't see the trap, and the trap explodes. The group goes up, takes some time to search, sees a trap, discusses what they want to do, tries to disarm the trap, and the trap explodes anyway. That doesn't do a lot to empower the party, and really put a damper on the fight because at that point we felt the module had a hearty "screw you" built into it.
Now there were some parts of that module which were fun and well designed. That was not one of them.
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I will jump in here with my author hat! My apologies the architecture isn't clear; it is often difficult to describe unusual features that are "fantastical" and so don't occur in the real world, but I should have done a better job here.
The basic idea is that the sauna is in a minaret and turret extending above the roof, but the turret has a "belly" that protrudes into the room itself (from the ceiling). A fragile-looking metal staircase spirals up, around the (open) column of smoke, and ends by wrapping around the belly, with a door on the far side (from the entry door, so it faces Gali's vantage point).
It definitely makes sense that PCs would feel more and more heat as they ascended the stairs!
As for Gali, he can look through not only the eyes of the carving but its open mouth, which I meant to be large enough to see the door - I wanted to take advantage of the fact that looking through a densely-packed grate (i.e., the ornate mouth) that is right next to you is much easier than looking through such a grate when you are far away. The ceiling isn't actually all that high - after all, open/close is a close range spell. At least, it seemed reasonable at the time.
Personally, I don't see any reason to have Gali trigger the trap from range anyway. He's a sufficient challenge on his own and if the players can avoid tripping the trap, then they should reap the reward, not be blasted from afar. Smells of unnecessary vindictiveness to me.My apologies again, it is not meant to be vindictive but to turn a potentially "boring" (at least for my play style) one-shot door trap into an interesting challenge. I think of it as part of Gali's initial illusion drawing the PCs up the stairs...if they do not take precautions following those, they will pay a price for it. But I can see that others would view the sequence differently.
This was really helpful Steven. Thanks a ton for chiming in. I also appreciate you including an encounter with a trap-- there seem to be so few of those. I think the way I will play it is give the party a chance to see the trap, if the rogue sees it and chooses to not open the door (he gave up trap-finding to take acrobatic class feature per the APG) since he cannot disarm it, I may have Gali spring the trap and afford the players a chance to sense his presence.
I guess that brings up another more general question that is directly relevant to this encounter. Can a rogue who gave up the trap-finding class feature still find magical traps? When he does find them does he recognize them as magical and thus beyond the scope of his disabling ability?
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I guess that brings up another more general question that is directly relevant to this encounter. Can a rogue who gave up the trap-finding class feature still find magical traps? When he does find them does he recognize them as magical and thus beyond the scope of his disabling ability?
I have always ruled no. The ability is called Trapfinding after all, and without it, there should be a corresponding inability to "find traps." Without it, a rogue is like any other character. They can locate mundane traps, but not magical ones.
I think the issue is that the RAW only covers using Disable Device against magical traps, Perception never really goes into detail for locating traps. I have always thought without knowledge of how a trap works (i.e. Disable Device), you cannot locate them. Of course, that does not seem to be supported by RAW, and could likely spur an argument at the gaming table.
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I guess that brings up another more general question that is directly relevant to this encounter. Can a rogue who gave up the trap-finding class feature still find magical traps? When he does find them does he recognize them as magical and thus beyond the scope of his disabling ability?I have always ruled no. The ability is called Trapfinding after all, and without it, there should be a corresponding inability to "find traps." Without it, a rogue is like any other character. They can locate mundane traps, but not magical ones.
I think the issue is that the RAW only covers using Disable Device against magical traps, Perception never really goes into detail for locating traps. I have always thought without knowledge of how a trap works (i.e. Disable Device), you cannot locate them. Of course, that does not seem to be supported by RAW, and could likely spur an argument at the gaming table.
Your ruling makes sense to me. So he can find and disable mundane traps, but magical trap finding may be beyond him.
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I guess that brings up another more general question that is directly relevant to this encounter. Can a rogue who gave up the trap-finding class feature still find magical traps? When he does find them does he recognize them as magical and thus beyond the scope of his disabling ability?
This is really important to note. "Trapfinding" is what grants a character the ability to detect magical traps and therefore should you not have the skill, you cannot find magical traps, only non-magical ones (just as anybody with a sufficiently high perception can do).
Your group leads to one of my biggest complaints about this whole thing. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't encounter. "No trap here" (Open Door, KABOOM!) or "It's a Trap" (Start disarming the trap, bad-guy sets off trap, KABOOM!). We actually lost a character in one good damage roll on this encounter with a failed save (-12 damage from full health, instant death), and it's one of our biggest reasons overall our group pretty much hated this module.
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This is really important to note. "Trapfinding" is what grants a character the ability to detect magical traps and therefore should you not have the skill, you cannot find magical traps, only non-magical ones (just as anybody with a sufficiently high perception can do).
Actually, and this is why I think issues could arise, the RAW states,
"A Rogue can use Disable Device to disarm magic traps." [emphasis mine]It says nothing about locating said traps. I think we all know what the RAI is, but that doesn't stop arguments from rules-lawyering.
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I guess that brings up another more general question that is directly relevant to this encounter. Can a rogue who gave up the trap-finding class feature still find magical traps? When he does find them does he recognize them as magical and thus beyond the scope of his disabling ability?This is really important to note. "Trapfinding" is what grants a character the ability to detect magical traps and therefore should you not have the skill, you cannot find magical traps, only non-magical ones (just as anybody with a sufficiently high perception can do).
Your group leads to one of my biggest complaints about this whole thing. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't encounter. "No trap here" (Open Door, KABOOM!) or "It's a Trap" (Start disarming the trap, bad-guy sets off trap, KABOOM!). We actually lost a character in one good damage roll on this encounter with a failed save (-12 damage from full health, instant death), and it's one of our biggest reasons overall our group pretty much hated this module.
I'm actually okay with magical traps existing in PFS modules. I hear the rogue class getting a lot of grief for being ineffective. The trap-finding feature becomes more important if traps actually exist.
So is the consensus that trap finding is required to both DETECT and DISARM magical traps or simply disarm them?
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I'm actually okay with magical traps existing in PFS modules. I hear the rogue class getting a lot of grief for being ineffective. The trap-finding feature becomes more important if traps actually exist.
I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying. I'm good with magical traps too, and it does make the rogue feel worthwhile to have a trap only they can disarm. The problem is that this encounter kind of neuters the rogue's ability to do so. Rather that letting the rogue disarm the trap and feel all cool for "saving" the party, once they start spending time trying to disarm the thing, the trap goes off anyway once the bad-guy feels that the group isn't going to trigger by him setting it off. That's the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario I was talking about, which I really don't like.
So is the consensus that trap finding is required to both DETECT and DISARM magical traps or simply disarm them?
After seeing TwilightKnight's reasoning, I'm inclined to agree with him an say that you need "Trapfinding" in order to find AND disarm magical traps. If you think about it for a second, if you can't see the trap, how are you going to disarm it?
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I'm actually okay with magical traps existing in PFS modules. I hear the rogue class getting a lot of grief for being ineffective. The trap-finding feature becomes more important if traps actually exist.I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying. I'm good with magical traps too, and it does make the rogue feel worthwhile to have a trap only they can disarm. The problem is that this encounter kind of neuters the rogue's ability to do so. Rather that letting the rogue disarm the trap and feel all cool for "saving" the party, once they start spending time trying to disarm the thing, the trap goes off anyway once the bad-guy feels that the group isn't going to trigger by him setting it off. That's the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario I was talking about, which I really don't like.
So is the consensus that trap finding is required to both DETECT and DISARM magical traps or simply disarm them?After seeing TwilightKnight's reasoning, I'm inclined to agree with him an say that you need "Trapfinding" in order to find AND disarm magical traps. If you think about it for a second, if you can't see the trap, how are you going to disarm it?
I see what you mean. I figure I'll avoid having the guy trigger the trap. At that point it doesnt seem much like a trap and more like an additional attack option for the sorcerer.