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Our general comment during part 1 was "Pay up, and remember that the Aspis are a bunch of jerks who show up and take your stuff. You probably shouldn't do business with us ever again. If I had the Aspis knocking down my door, I might even lead a revolt!"I really played this up with one group: all the NPCs kept seeing the PCs' actions in the best possible light and promising to spread the good name of the Aspis Consortium all over the city. E.g., the rescued husband at the Fishbowl: "You guys are the Aspis Consortium? Huh, never heard of them before, but you guys saved me and my daughters from certain death, so I'll tell everyone I know how great the Aspis Consortium is. Thanks, Aspis Consortium, you're real heroes!!" Delightfully frustrating for them.
One of the players at my table thought of the effects of saving the daughters and the father while in the guise of Aspis. As the NPC father I had to get down on my knees and beg for the lives of myself and my daughters not to be sold into slavery by the party. Fun times!
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even w/ a detect magic up, and finding the trap. 2/6 of a low tier party was turned to stone. If 3 or 4 get turned to stone, the party is screwed into a TPK: the basilisk blood from one basilisk is only enough to revert 1d3 creatures.
petrification for what could be a party of 1st level characters is insane.
who the hell puts a glyph in a low tier game? why not just a mechanical sliding door so low levels can even find the trap and have a chance to disable it ? answer: they want whole parties coming down the corridor to be petrified wholesale.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I really played this up with one group: all the NPCs kept seeing the PCs' actions in the best possible light and promising to spread the good name of the Aspis Consortium all over the city. E.g., the rescued husband at the Fishbowl: "You guys are the Aspis Consortium? Huh, never heard of them before, but you guys saved me and my daughters from certain death, so I'll tell everyone I know how great the Aspis Consortium is. Thanks, Aspis Consortium, you're real heroes!!" Delightfully frustrating for them.
I loved this part! We fortunately had a group of neutral PC's, so we all looked at each other with uncomfortable looks on our faces until someone growled at one of the daughters and scared her. Then we mentioned that we were hoping he had a reward for us, since the Aspis don't care about saving people, and that things would have worked out better if maybe some Pathfinders had come along instead.
Walking that line is exactly what made this scenario fun. Thanks again!
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I had a 1-2 party that defeated the basilisk despite 3/5 statues.
The final account was a bard 1/cavalier 1 attacking it with his eyes closed while an inquisitor stood behind him with her eyes closed tapping him with her wand. I decided the basilisk probably didn't know any better but to keep attacking the thing that was hurting him.
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Ran this last night for a party of six -- two level one pregens, three level ones, and a level two.
We ultimately had two petrified (it would have been more, but the alchemist his save at least three times), and though they killed the basilisk, there was only enough blood to restore one person. So they restored the actual PC, and left the pregen a statue.
Then the rogue got insta-pasted (not dead, thankfully) by the golem, and the gunslinger followed shortly thereafter. Had the alchemist not had five acid flasks, I doubt they would have made it out alive.
It went well in the end, but there are many ways it could have easily gone much, much worse.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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I ran this at subtier 1-2 last night for a group of 3 players + 1 pregen. The basilisk won initiative and turned the monk to stone before she could act. The ranger put some hurt on it taking it below half health with one volley, but Valeros then rolled a natural one vs. the gaze and was petrified. Round two the basilisk made the strength check to bust out of the cage and over the next two rounds chased the ranger down taking her to -1 HP causing the last player, a witch, to run. The basilisk then had a snack of the ranger.
We all learned just how deadly a basilisk can be.
That's an interesting approach. Sadly, there are no tactics for this encounter, but I didn't have the basilisk try to get out of the cage. My logic was that if the basilisk could break out, it would have done so already.
I really wish that they would print tactics, even for monsters who are found in the bestiary.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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I ran this at subtier 1-2 last night for a group of 3 players + 1 pregen. The basilisk won initiative and turned the monk to stone before she could act. The ranger put some hurt on it taking it below half health with one volley, but Valeros then rolled a natural one vs. the gaze and was petrified. Round two the basilisk made the strength check to bust out of the cage and over the next two rounds chased the ranger down taking her to -1 HP causing the last player, a witch, to run. The basilisk then had a snack of the ranger.
We all learned just how deadly a basilisk can be.
That's an interesting approach. Sadly, there are no tactics for this encounter, but I didn't have the basilisk try to get out of the cage. My logic was that if the basilisk could break out, it would have done so already.
I really wish that they would print tactics, even for monsters who are found in the bestiary.
The tactics are in the scenario.
Creatures: Two grumpy basilisks squat in the pen (in Subtier 1–2, one of the basilisks is off elsewhere under Zincher’s Arena, hunting). The basilisks gaze at anyone they can detect. If foes retreat, the basilisks attempt to burst out of their pen and pursue them.The witch and ranger had moved back around the corner toward the entrance, so the basilisk pursued.
Oh, I see. I forgot about that bit, since it didn't come up when I ran it. Sorry about that!
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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I'd just like to add my voice to those saying that "Save or Die" encounters are not the best thing to run into in a subtier 1-2 adventure.
I've seen it justified as acceptable because, after all, it's not all that hard to roll up another 1st-level character, and you haven't lost much. Just remember that isn't always the case!
I played this last week (at a table with mostly 1st-level characters, several of whom were fairly new to PFS, or even to RPGs in general). We made it through relatively unscathed (although the slam attack did put my character down into the negatives; fortunately the most experienced character was able to get me up again using infernal healing). I would have been more than a little annoyed to lose this character, though, even if he only came in with one scenario under his belt - he was built using the racial boon I got at a convention earlier this year, and those are a whole lot harder to replace!
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Since it is never specifically shown on the map one suggestion I can offer to reduce the party instant kill of the Basilisk encounter is that since the gaze attack is 30 feet put the creatures in the interior cage so that the max range would only effect the PC's next to the Illusion wall and gives the players a "safe" spot & gives the creatures 3 doors they need to break down to chase.
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Wow.
After playing this scenario over the weekend, then reading this thread, I'm seriously tempted to buy the scenario just to see what's actually in it. What we played clearly wasn't what was written in the scenario.
Given my only other experience with the same GM, this doesn't surprise me, though. I definitely won't be playing with that GM ever again.
Edit: I should add that we did get to do the role playing bits at the beginning, trying to pretend to be Aspis agents, which was fun. I was playing my semi-crazed pathological liar gnome sorcerer, so I was the "leader" and the bluffs were easy for me.
It was just the combats and everything about raiding the cult's lair that were very different from what's being described here.
Feel free to PM me any questions, I've GM'd it so I could tell you if what you experienced was what was written.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Wow.
After playing this scenario over the weekend, then reading this thread, I'm seriously tempted to buy the scenario just to see what's actually in it. What we played clearly wasn't what was written in the scenario.
Given my only other experience with the same GM, this doesn't surprise me, though. I definitely won't be playing with that GM ever again.
Edit: I should add that we did get to do the role playing bits at the beginning, trying to pretend to be Aspis agents, which was fun. I was playing my semi-crazed pathological liar gnome sorcerer, so I was the "leader" and the bluffs were easy for me.
It was just the combats and everything about raiding the cult's lair that were very different from what's being described here.
There are some differences in the monster load between sub-tiers.
Attention anyone who wants to cheat, you can know exactly what enemies are in this scenario by reading CRobledo's post.
Help yourself to some knowledge.
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Attention anyone who wants to cheat, you can know exactly what enemies are in this scenario by reading CRobledo's post.
Help yourself to some knowledge.
This forum is for GM discussions...lots of spoilers to be had for all sorts of scenarios. You don't even have to spoiler such items here, but CRobledo did anyway.
There are spoilers and then there are spoilers. No reason there can't be a limit to spoilers.
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Also keep in mind, anyone who wants to cheat can just buy the scenario and know where everything is hidden and what creatures to prepare to face. Of course, reading the GM Discussion list is less expensive... CRobledo did not do anything inappropriate by posting that info. If players are reading the GM Discussion lists before they play the scenario, then they are cheating themselves of a lot of fun. There's nothing that we can do about that.
Also keep in mind, anyone who wants to cheat can just buy the scenario and know where everything is hidden and what creatures to prepare to face. Of course, reading the GM Discussion list is less expensive...
Agreed.
/edit Oh. You edited your post after I posted. IC.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Macon Bacon, Esq.:
In the GM Discussion threads, there are no limits to spoilers. Particularly when the thread title warns "**SPOILERS**", there are no limits to spoilers. Particularly when a user puts things under a spoiler tag, there are no limits to spoilers.
This is the backstage place we discuss aspects of the scenario, like whether the PCs should know about basilisk blood, or how they might fight the stone guardian in the Riddleport streets if it pursues the party outside the temple.
Lists of opponents, or lists of maps, is an assist to the GMs that was once a regular feature of these threads. I appreciate CRobledo's restoration of that tradition.
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Thanks for that, CRobledo.
Like I said, I feel like we were playing a completely different scenario than what most of you are describing. We were running a little low on time, so apparently we skipped two fights at the end, but it's not like we had an extremely strict time limit. But even with running out of time, the entire safehouse section of the adventure was so completely glazed over that I didn't realize there was so much detail in the adventure about it.
The bunyip fight took forever because only 3 of us (we had 8 with a pet) made the save vs fear, and the GM rolled double 4s on the 2d4 fear duration for everyone, rather than rolling each individually. Because there were civilians in danger, we didn't just leave and come back when everyone was unfeared, so we had a monk, a healing focused cleric, and my non-damaging controller sorcerer trying to battle them on our own. One of the civilians got eaten, and we finally finished them off 17 rounds later, right after the rest of the party got back. My sorcerer is great in large groups, because he makes his teammates more effective, but he sucks in small parties like this.
With the basilisks, the rest of you are talking about traps, illusions, and cages, which we never saw. It was like "You're heading through the sewer tunnels to the safehouse, and when you turn the corner, there's two big lizards." Luckily, someone made the knowledge check, so we knew what we were up against. Two of us got turned to stone, one guy tanked with his eyes closed, while the rest sniped with ranged weapons from 35+ feet away. The fact that the basilisk gaze and channel healing both have exactly 30 foot range saved our butts. The cleric was able to stay 30 feet behind the tank, which put him 35 from the basilisks, and kept the tank up by channeling every round.
Then we had a very quick role play conversation with the cultists, described how we were going to annoy them on the way out, and that was the adventure. We never actually saw any maps or learned any detail about the cultists or safehouse area, which sounds like it was supposed to be much more detailed than what we ever realized was there.
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Spoiler:The bunyip fight took forever because only 3 of us (we had 8 with a pet) made the save vs fear
I believe your GM made a mistake here, as did I when I ran it. The creature description reads:
The ravenous sea creatures have escaped the pool and are considering how to get at the three people in the lookout post, but they turn hungrily to the PCs as soon as they arrive.
As the PCs are 'food', the bunyips wouldn't want to scare them away. It makes the fight more drawn out (as you experienced), which is not what you need in a timed slot.
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the entire safehouse section of the adventure was so completely glazed over that I didn't realize there was so much detail in the adventure about it.
The temple section covers 7 pages of the scenario, including a half-page map (approx. 30 x 24 in 5 ft. squares), and includes three combat encounters, one of which is optional.
As it happens, I had to cut the optional encounter for time reasons.
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Paz, thanks for the clarification.
So does that mean the bunyips shouldn't have been able to get to the civilian victims to eat them? They were being attacked when we played it, so we stuck around specifically to save them. I was never quite clear on exactly what they were and how the terrain was supposed to affect them.
Macon Bacon, do you really not understand what "GM Discussion" means?
Spoilers show up in a lot of these threads about individual adventures, as people prepping to run them discuss specific parts of the adventure, to get a better idea of how to handle certain things.
Or sometimes, people who have played them and run them already discuss how the adventure went, as I did. Besides giving people a place to talk about their adventures, this can be useful for GMs prepping the adventure to learn from the pros and cons of other people's experiences.
This isn't about providing "cheat" information, and certainly not about providing step by step cheating instructions, as you did. But yes, any player determined to cheat can probably find hints in any of these threads about specific adventures. Why they'd bother, I have no idea.
But yes, any player determined to cheat can probably find hints in any of these threads about specific adventures. Why they'd bother, I have no idea.
Or they could even simply buy the scenario before they play it. This was pointed out to me earlier and put things in perspective for me.
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Paz, the Bunyip encounter is already at a lower CR than stated. Not letting them use their fear ability just wrecks the challenge completely.
That's a fair comment, although I think the challenge depends on the group (especially the no. of PCs). I just don't see why the bunyips would use their fear ability when they want their tasty new snacks to stick around... unless it's after a round or two when it's clear they're about to be clubbed to death.
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There was no tower when I played it, so we arrived just as the bunyips started wandering in the direction of the civilians.
Like I said, playing other sessions with this GM, I'm not surprised that he messed up a lot of details. I'm pretty sure he didn't read the adventures before running them. I won't play with this GM again, and that's not the only reason. Now I'm curious to look at the discussion threads for the other adventures I played with him to see how badly he messed those up.
But I do like this adventure. The RP aspects of pretending to be Aspis agents made for some fun moments, if nothing else. I'd volunteer to run this one, if I get a chance.
Thanks for the responses.
What a bummer, Fromper. Sorry to hear you lost this scenario to an unprepared GM.
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Spoiler:There was no tower when I played it, so we arrived just as the bunyips started wandering in the direction of the civilians.
There's no map of the tower as such as it'll never be a combat location, it's just represented by the bottom of a spiral staircase on the main level. Given the religion that the structure is dedicated to, I envisioned the tower as a stylised crows' nest.
(Not spoilery enough to need spoiler tags)
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I really played this up with one group: all the NPCs kept seeing the PCs' actions in the best possible light and promising to spread the good name of the Aspis Consortium all over the city. E.g., the rescued husband at the Fishbowl: "You guys are the Aspis Consortium? Huh, never heard of them before, but you guys saved me and my daughters from certain death, so I'll tell everyone I know how great the Aspis Consortium is. Thanks, Aspis Consortium, you're real heroes!!" Delightfully frustrating for them.
To be fair, we were just ensuring Pathfinder job security by filling the ranks of cannonfodder of our hated foe!
HAIL, SHADOWTONGUE!
There no limits to spoilers.
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There no limits to spoilers.
useful ones are generally more appropriate... your spoiler is basically a player walk through, which on the GM side, we already have in the scenario :)
that being said ..
Ran this cold at Brewfest the beginning of November ... Now that I've had time to prep this, I think I can make this a bit more deadly... er challenging.
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Has anyone experimented with making props for the three items? I like the idea of actually weighing someone down with a big heavy box with no way of opening it. The bicorne would also be funny.
I thought about making props for the bar -- the furniture and something to represent the glasses ... so they can choose and have the item in front of them .. and then something to represent the other two items.. haven't gotten there yet ...
Developer
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| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've removed a post and some responses to it.
Making spoilered posts specifically aimed toward players is not appropriate. While it remains possible for players to access GM Discussion threads, they serve an important role in the campaign, as they allow GMs to collaborate to improve the play experiences of all participants in the campaign, learning from one another's mistakes, innovations, and suggestions. You are welcome to contribute to the discussion toward that end—including the posting of spoilers—but posting spoilers facetiously or against the spirit of GM Discussions aids no one.
Let's try to keep the discussion on the scenario at hand rather than the practice of including spoilers on the messageboards. Thanks!
In the spirit of cooperation, here are some tips for GMs when you run this scenario.
Tier 1-2:
Outside: Reefclaws -
Safehouse:
Young basilisk
Tieflings + Snake
Stone Guardian Construct - try and refrain from having this thing full attack one person. This will destroy level 1 PCs in a hearbeat.
Tier 4-5:
Outside: Bunyips
Safehouse:
Basilisks - If they flee and run back to the surface after losing a few to the monster, give them a hint to go to a library and research a cure if they don't make their knowledge checks.
Kyton - remember that there is a silver holy symbol in this room should the players have no way to beat this monster's CR.
Ebon Acolytus - remember to prompt your players into making a proper knowledge check while they are squaring off against this monster. Its important to give them every chance of finding out that their PCs cannot be brought back to the world of the living if this guy CDG's them.
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So, has anyone run this for players or PCs who have previously played through the season 2 scenario
The only time I've run this so far has been for a table of players relatively new to PFS, so I didn't have that pleasure.
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Quick question about gaze attacks, as I'm running this one soon.
Does the first gaze check pretty much happen at the beginning of combat, or does it happen during that character's turn? Using this scenario as an example (Using Subtier 1-2 to make it easier):
1. Wall illusion disappears.
2. On their turn, they have to make a fort save, and can choose what they want to do about the gaze attack this turn.
1. Wall illusion disappears.
2. On their turn, they have to make a fort save, but cannot yet choose to avert their eyes because they are not aware there is a gaze attack yet.
1. Wall illusion disappears.
2. Everyone makes a fort save immediately.
3. On their turn, they have to make another fort save.
Which situation is correct? I've had all 3 of these variations when people have GMed for me, so I would like to "do it correctly" when I run it.
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I've run it as Situation 3, unless the PCs somehow managed to figure out that the wall was going to drop before it happened. I treated it as a basilisk gaze surprise round, and didn't give anyone the chance to hide their eyes from the initial blast. When it got to their turn, that's when they got the choice to hide their eyes, etc.
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It's not really a thing they need to turn off though.
Just by being near them and having them stare at you, you're gazed. Since basilisks are immune to their own gaze attack, and they consume petrified creatures, I just have them scanning their environment with gaze up. That, to me, prompts a surprise round, since they were already staring at the wall when it started.