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Is it just me or is the phase spider an easy TPK or a walk in the park, depending on the rules you're using?
If the party got most of the loot from before they should have some fire power (+2 keen longsword, anyone?), so that's okay.
Admittedly I forgot the spider had reach at the beginning of the fight, so I gave her 20 HP extra, but still...
Every group should figure out pretty quickly that they have to ready their actions against this enemy and also that the spider can attack from wherever she want, whenever she want.
If the spider is clever it appears one square away from the group to attack, using its reach. This leaves two possibilites:
1) You declare the underground as undergrowth. The characters are therefore unable to use 5-foot-steps. Spider appears, bites a character, spider disappears. Nobody but ranged characters can attack.
2) You do not declare the underground ad undergrowth. The characters will pile up on the spider and with clever positioning 3 melee characters + every ranged character can smash the spider.
So...my fight is over, but what am I missing?
The spider can definitely take out the party. It depends on how much you want it to hurt. If it is taking its sweet time, it will only attack every turn or two, snagging a hit against a weak member of the party and disappearing before the players can get to it. If you go full "protecting the nest" tilt though, it can be beaten to death with little effort. Also, if you have any ranged characters or if the spell casters have some control spells, it will be a decently quick fight.
Yeah, a decent ranged character can end that fight quickly. My poor phase spider was up against a L4 sorcerer with scorching ray AND an alchemist, so it got blown to bits pretty quickly.
I can't remember if I treated the swamp as difficult terrain. I should have, but I don't remember whether I did.
My party grouped up around the wizard and bard. The monk and the inquisitor had enlarge person cast upon them and readied attacks. The wizard, druid, and bard readied ranged attacks. The spider got a few hits in but was taken down relatively quickly with only almost killing one character.
I'm going to adjust the ending of the module. I'm having the Beast show up to help the PCs without being controlled by the Bondslave Thrall. I'm going to have the Aberrant Promethean use the Stormcaller to heal itself and create a hazard for the PCs while fighting it. I felt the mechanics of the Bondslave Thrall and Stormcaller to be clunky and limiting. Not everyone has the skill to make it to the top, especially while fighting the Aberrant Promethean.
Anyone else have any experience having The Beast voluntarily assist the party? How many rounds of combat should you allow before The Beast shows up? How long can the average party last?
My party would have killed the Promethean as written without any assistance, but I significantly buffed the thing (including giving it double max HP).
Some GMs have had their party kill the Promethean in a single round; some GMs have had half their party die during the fight. It can vary wildly depending on party make-up and sheer dumb luck.
It may also make a huge difference if your PCs found the set of goat figurines, because two of those figures are pretty damn powerful at this level - one summons a horned nightmare and the other provides a +5 longsword, which will cut right through the Promethean's DR.
I had the Beast already dead in the Promethean's room (he'd gone a day or so ahead of the party - something was clearly wrong and he decided not to wait for them), and the party needed to overload the Thrall to resurrect the Beast mid-battle
If your PCs have hit it off well with the Beast, having the Beast arrive at the fight on his own to help should be pretty cool. I encourage making the Beast pretty over the top - have him Kool-Aid Man right through the tower's wall, or maybe leaping off the nearby cliff face right onto the tower, and then leaping down at the Promethean, etc., to join the fray.
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My players took out the Promethean without help. The problem is that the AP can do a lot of damage and really ruin the day of whomever he targets. Had combat gone on one more round, the druid would have died. I don't think it is practical to have a long drawn out fight. The players didn't even know about the rooftop device until it was all over and done with.
If I did it again, I'd let the players go through the tower and onto the roof. When they reached the top, a loud bell would chime and they'd see the AP moving towards them outside the house. They could watch it fight with the air elemental, jump the rope bridge, etc. Maybe it would cause the entire alchemy tower to collapse and then come leaping out of the dust cloud. Something awesome and cinematic.
They'd have maybe 8-10 turns to prepare by closing the adamantine doors/shutters between levels, setting traps with various materials, and figuring out the bondslave thrall. I'd either have the Beast up there nearly dead and giving them a hint, or maybe Caromarc raving about chalk drawings.
The fight itself is either a murder-fest or a push-over and this would make things more interesting for the players. I wish I had these ideas before I do a scene.
My group is a 20 point build group of five characters. I don't think the Aberrant Promethean will be a pushover for them. The 10/adamantine DR, magic immunity, and the grappling/constrict will be a real problem. I could see how a fighter or rogue heavy group might do well against the Promethean. I have a paladin, magus, and monk as major damage dealers. Paladin can't use his Smite since the Promethean isn't evil. Magus's spells won't worh the AP. Monk can't punch through its DR.
I hope they can last four rounds. Might have to have The Beast show up early if they get beat up too badly.
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I have a quick question about the whole exchange with Vorkstag and Grine. Two of the characters ended up going to the factory and bluntly asking Grine about the fire at the Sanctuary. He let them in and then he and Vorkstag jumped them.
They managed to win the fight because the druid spammed summons and had about five or six ants flying around flanking them.
Vorkstag went down below twenty and drank his potion to escape. Grine died.
The two party members tried to escape and were killed by the flesh golem hound.
Anyway my question is what should I have Vorkstag do now?
My first thought was for him to leg it and destroy all the evidence but I really want the party to have a chance for that evidence as well as Vorkstag's loot. So, options...
1.) Run for it. Those two characters ruined it for everyone else. The Beast will likely be found guilty and A LOT of xp opportunities are lost.
2.) Vorkstag has had a vested interest to watch the player characters since they started investigating. He knows where they have been staying so he will skin one of the dead PC's and go to meet with a couple of the still living PC's who are there and tell them to come quickly and help investigate the extremely suspicious chemical factory.
He gets them there and then jumps them along with the two juju zombies and the remaining mongrelmen in the relative safety of the chemical vats with the flesh golem hound standing guard outside.
The only problem with this option is that its very dangerous and reckless for him if he is recognized and my players might think I'm being too heavy handed.
A friend suggested having the two replacement characters come in and be involved so it lowers the mortality.
3.) Hole up and wait at the chymickal factory for the entire pc group to come looking for their friends. This makes absolutely no sense tactically.
What would my fellow GM's do? Is there an option here that I'm not seeing?
Thanks for any help.
[Edit: Also a quick unrelated note if your PC's take horses to Hergstag make sure to have the wraithspawn slurp them all for temporary hitpoints or to heal when they dismount to search houses. :) ]
I like option two. If you can successfully convince the party the PC has returned, that would be great. Let the PC run his character miraculously recovered. Then at a key time, you take over. Total mind blowing turn of events.
Does anybody know if the following rule has been implemented in this adventure; When sold used, weapons and armor go at half price.
This means PC's get half of the base price of any weapons and armor they find.
Does anybody know if the following rule has been implemented in this adventure; When sold used, weapons and armor go at half price.
This means PC's get half of the base price of any weapons and armor they find.
That's the standard for 3.X and Pathfinder, so yes.
It's entirely DM's discretion if you want to give people more than that (for example, the PCs could potentially get more selling historical items to the University).
Does anybody know if the following rule has been implemented in this adventure; When sold used, weapons and armor go at half price.
This means PC's get half of the base price of any weapons and armor they find.
That's the standard for 3.X and Pathfinder, so yes.
It's entirely DM's discretion if you want to give people more than that (for example, the PCs could potentially get more selling historical items to the University).
Hmmm. Do you know if that's merely a unwritten house rule, or if it's official? That's the way I always played it.
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Selling TreasureIn general, a character can sell something for half its listed price, including weapons, armor, gear, and magic items. This also includes character-created items.
Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself.
Tybid - I'd say have him burn the place down and run for it. You can provide the party with the XP for going there and discovering the fact that they did figure out a bunch of stuff... or give them XP a different way.
Another option is have Vorkstag lay traps in the Works and skip town. The traps can be worth the xp they would get for killing him and they can still find all the stuff elsewhere (though I imagine he'd probably destroy the zombie pool room and any written records/skin cabinet). Then have him be one of the random guests at the Lodge in book 3.
I gotta question, would one of the PC's, a paladin in this case, having a adamantine greataxe imbalance the encounters toward the PCs, and if so, would it be a good idea to make the adventure more difficult?
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Well, adamantine raises the price by 3000 gp - if your party is somewhat under AWL, this won't throw off too much. Additionally, you don't really fight constructs with hardness THAT often, so "avoid most hardness" isn't that much of a deal.
Essentially you give him a weapon to avoid something that rarely comes up (in TOTB at least) and costs 3000 gp.
I think there are worse things you could do to imbalance the game. And about making encounters more difficult: Just try it out. The easiest way to do it is by raising the HP (and other hings) a little bit and when you see your group won't make it, just let the additional HP "vanish" (for example, they fight something with 50 HP. You decide it now has 70 HP and it's attack, armor class and damage are raised by +2 each. This, however, makes the fight more difficult than you expected - so you just decide to let the HP drop back to 50). While this might be considered "cheating" in some groups which would rather die a fight than winning it unfairly, other groups like the idea.
Or you just use Hero Points so if things go horribly wrong your group can just use these to rebalance things.
EDIT: Okay, you have to fight some golems in TotB. There, the great axe might prove valuable - however, 2 of the golems have a DR of 5/adamantine (and really, while losing 5 points of damage always sucks, it's not really that much of an issue at that level anymore) and one has a DR of 10/adamantine (which most clever groups would avoid by using one of those weapon oils or just stay out of it's way, considering it's the Promethean).
Really, I think only the last one could be too easy with the great axe, but still...IMO not totally overpowered. When in doubt, the Promethean can always disarm the paladin (CMB +25) when he really pisses him off...
hmmm. Since I think the players have been finding encounters far too easy for a horror game, I think a change is in order.
I noted that the encounters always feature avg hp for the baddies. What say I increase them to max possible, aka double their hp? From what I understand, all this really does is prolong the combat somewhat, but doesn't change the outcome, and doesn't increase the CR.
That phase spider encounter had them sweating a bit, since I operated it like a sensible animal, and would appear just long enough to bite and poison someone, giving the poison time to do its work. Then I had it disappear. I also managed to get them to split the party in half.. which made things much easier to nail them. Got the Cleric but good.
As a side note, I honestly think animals should have higher Intelligence ratings. I would think 3 or 4 to be perfectly reasonable for some, like chimpanzees, dolphins, even dogs.
A lot of GMs will max out HP and/or apply the Advanced template to all creatures in a fight as a quick-and-dirty way to make combat more challenging. It will also cause resource consumption to increase.
Another fun thing is to make it impossible for players to rest by ensuring a heavy time crunch or providing no safe resting place for them.
During the Trial, the players will need to investigate quickly and with little downtime OR split the party in order to investigate tomorrow's part while defending today's part. Just track the hours and remember that shops will probably close around sun down and most people don't like being approached at 2 am to give testimony to a bunch of random guys.
Combatively speaking, so far I am unimpressed with the tactical layout. As for gathering evidence and making deductions, then getting xp for it, THAT I like.
I just worry that the treasure haul won't be keeping up with the xp.
Splitting up the party flies against conventional wisdom, the kind that was reinforced by the phase spider fight in the beginning.
Still, it does seem like a wise idea, however if the gathering evidence half of the party ends up in a fight they're hosed. I only have 4 players!
My party crushed the Aberrant Promethean. Ninja (Knife Master) didn't have any trouble ripping through his DR to damage him. Displacement spell made the Paladin and Magus hard to hit. They burned away the webbing with Alchemist Fire. I thought this was going to be a tough battle, but not so much.
Saltmarsh, please use punctuation. It's really hard to tell when one sentence is over and another begins without it.
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That sounds about right. The main wraith is supposed to swoop down while you are in conflict with one of the spawn. It depends on the DM though.
My players took mostly constitution damage and just kept hitting themselves with the wand of lesser restoration and potions between fights. Of course they didn't kill all the spawn.
I had the main wraith swoop in on the third or fourth spawn and attack them.
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Quick question for people much more versed in the rules than I.
I am considering replacing an encounter in Count Caromarc's museum with a creature that has a specialized connection to one of my player's backgrounds. She is a rogue/shadowdancer former member of a varisian caravan and she has been having dreams relevant to the group's quest throughout this part of the adventure.
Unfortunately, her uncle who was both her inspiration for becoming a shadowdancer and her mentor disobeyed orders from her mother and joined the whispering way to gather info and protect her. He was found out, and they killed him.
I am looking for an undead creature to represent him. I considered a shadow with rogue levels or perhaps a wraith. I also considered teaming him up with a whispering way cultist left behind to stop them.
To be honest my group is six people and some of them are min/maxers so sometimes I find it hard to challenge them so something a little more powerful than their sixth level would work.
Any suggestions?
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Totenmaske. It can look like whoever's flesh it has last consumed last and is quite horrible with its special abilities. The have great mental stats justifying all sorts of horrifying shenanigans for the DM to use and they are CR 7, making it sort of up your alley. In fact, I used one to have a false Caromarc interact with my party, but you could easily swap this out for the PC's uncle. Just be sure to give it a potion of Non-detection if you want any role-playing to last, especially if your party has paladins or inquisitors.
Don't know if the book suggested this or not, but did anyone hook the Beast up with the Crooked Kin? He'd probably fit right in and they could use the protector.
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My group went to Vorkstag and Grine's on the third night because the Sanctuary takes so little time and it allowed them to both investigate the tools found in the first part and directly investigate the items they found at the Sanctuary.
I don't see much chance of a group going on the second night. Hergstag is pretty far from Lepidstadt and those wraiths really slow things down.
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I run two groups and in the second group I have a guy who is playing a very intense / very entitled Inquisitor of Desna. When they got to Morast last week he failed his diplomacy check and the barbarian failed his intimidate check to get the information from the village elder.
The barbarian's method of intimidation? Full on slapping the guy until he gave up the information. Before he went unconscious from being slapped over and over again he called the town guards.
When the town guards told them to get lost and stop hurting people (in less than nice terms) the Inquisitor used blistering invective. I rolled 10 for damage and all of them burst into flames.
I allowed the inquisitor to use a card to back things up a couple of rounds but now they have to find an alternate way to get the information.
I've already worked it out though. :)
How do you guys run time? As in how long travel times, combat etc add up? I know that rolling a Diplomacy check is supposed to take 1d4 hours as per the adventure, but that doesn't cover much.
How did you guys run the encounters in Herkgstag? You know, the ones involving a bunch of wraith spawn?
There isn't much in the way of court trial clues involved in the town, other than knowing that one of them didn't have any sort of break in, and the Beast probably wasn't involved in any of them aside from bringing a dead girl back to the village.
Right now, I am thinking of evening things out by allowing the players to know that they are going to fight incorporeal beasties, and thus plan out their spell selection. This is because I noted that they are simply underequipped for their level, not even ONE magic weapon in the bunch yet.
If by the end of the adventure that the characters don't have enough, I plan on holding an audit of one of them. If Like I surmise, they might not have enough and will need to be compensated the difference according to WbL.
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Right now, I am thinking of evening things out by allowing the players to know that they are going to fight incorporeal beasties, and thus plan out their spell selection. This is because I noted that they are simply underequipped for their level, not even ONE magic weapon in the bunch yet.
HOW? Apart from the possiblity to cast Magic Weapon (which should be just a crutch, of course) there were numerous weapons they could find:
Magic arrows (with or without ghost touch), the Lopper's Hand Axe, a magic heavy mace where the Lopper was fought, a magic dagger in the water at the Splatter Man's chamber and of course the keen longsword +1 (which in and of itself almost pushes one character well above WbL). Oh, and of course the magic dagger the crooked kin might've given them (although I swapped that around a bit and gave them potions - some of them magical, some of them just superstition. The dagger was found at the phase spider's nest.)Really, if they haven't found A SINGLE ONE of those they need to pay more attention. They can't expect that everything they desire is lying on the table when they enter a chamber with loot.
They sold all of that so as to save up to enchant their chosen weapons.
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In this case...I would let my group suffer at least a little bit for such a dumb decision. That's like saying "You know what? I got this nice car, but I will sell it so I can buy an even better one somewhere in the future. Until then, I will just walk everywhere."
And this comparison is a bad one because cars lose value when driven, unlike magic weapons.
Purely their own fault. Maybe send them a nightly vision or something, but if they didn't realize from Harrowstone alone that you should pack something against incorporeal creatures - well...
I suppose you could weaken the wraiths a little bit, or something alike.
But it's not something I would do. I won't actively kill my players, but this falls under the "Own fault"-rule.
They sold all of that so as to save up to enchant their chosen weapons.
Ouch. Assuming you want to save them from their own stupid, you might have them spot an arcane weaponsmith’s workshop near the courthouse, thereby pointing out to them that they can buy +1 weapons in Lepidstadt with little effort.
Maybe I will let them each go into hock (negative gp) to get their weapons enchanted. The paladin just paid off his debt, after trying to get a mithril breastplate (he's got a high dexterity and wants mithril full plate someday).
I never said they were brilliant. They just don't argue with me when I finally speak up about stupid decisions.
Yeah, I told them that ghost touch weapons would be a great idea, but they don't have the moolah (8k!) for that.