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I didn't see a GM thread for Eyes of the Ten Part 3 (Red Revolution), so I made one here. Heavy spoilers below.
I had a question about reactivating the engines on the airship. The scenario lists a DC, and allows Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Engineering), or Use Magic Device checks.
The airship is rapidly losing altitude and will crash in 10 minutes if the PCs are unable to restart the engines. Any PC with Knowledge (engineering), Knowledge (arcana), or Use Magic Device can make a DC 40 check to figure out how to reactivate the artifact that powers the airship.
Generally, for Knowledge checks, the check is a "no action" that cannot be retried:
Action: Usually none. In most cases, a Knowledge check doesn't take an action (but see “Untrained,” below).
Try Again: No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place.
However, Use Magic Device can generally be retried unless the PC both fails and rolls a 1, and generally takes an action:
Action: None. The Use Magic Device check is made as part of the action (if any) required to activate the magic item.
Try Again: Yes, but if you ever roll a natural 1 while attempting to activate an item and you fail, then you can't try to activate that item again for 24 hours.
If a PC decides to use UMD to try and activate the engines, should they be able to retry the check on a failure? How much time should each try take? (I don't know what the timeframe on "activating an airship engine" would be.) It seems that if the normal UMD rules are used, the PCs would get 100 tries to activate the engines with UMD but only 1 try with Knowledge checks.
Should I run the UMD check in the same way as a Knowledge check here (i.e. no action but no retries, you either figure it out or you don't)?
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:)
I agree with your assessment. I did not want the scene to turn into a "roll a 20 before you roll a 1" situation for UMD, but didn't want to penalize the group (and in a way that potentially influences campaign points) if they did not have the appropriate skill modifiers.
Of the group in question, two PCs can cast greater teleport; I'm pretty sure I know what their solution will be...
I'm sure you'll be hearing stories about this group and their journey. :)
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston
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Be prepared if you have a competent team of players who can do things like track and dimension door, who are under the effects of haste/blessing of fervor and fly/air walk (based on the arena fight)… and therefor be able to track people down and skip the whole crashing airship thing with resources that were readily available at the time the scenario was written to skip a week long chase to get the big bad earlier (oh wait, it's really not him…)
Who therefore get screwed out of the one campaign point they may need to hit the big reward at the end of part IV.
Yeah, I'm a bit bitter at the moment at the scenario for this (played parts 2-4 yesterday). My team went the good Pathfinder agent route (get the guy who's your primary objective in the most efficient way possible even with stupid plot restrictions giving him an artificial level force wall during the arena fight) and lost the campaign point for the level boss on the airship because the scenario doesn't let you go back for her, even if it took you less than a minute to deal with the "final fight" instead of a week.
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Be prepared if you have a competent team of players who can do things like track and dimension door, who are under the effects of haste/blessing of fervor and fly/air walk (based on the arena fight)… and therefor be able to track people down and skip the whole crashing airship thing with resources that were readily available at the time the scenario was written to skip a week long chase to get the big bad earlier (oh wait, it's really not him…)
Who therefore get screwed out of the one campaign point they may need to hit the big reward at the end of part IV.
Yeah, I'm a bit bitter at the moment at the scenario for this (played parts 2-4 yesterday). My team went the good Pathfinder agent route (get the guy who's your primary objective in the most efficient way possible even with stupid plot restrictions giving him an artificial level force wall during the arena fight) and lost the campaign point for the level boss on the airship because the scenario doesn't let you go back for her, even if it took you less than a minute to deal with the "final fight" instead of a week.
Based on the airship speeds, you probably would need stronger magic than that to reach the other airship. However, my party's rogue had just gotten Skill Mastery and purchased a metric ton of scrolls, including greater teleport, so he used that to have them skip ahead. They did lose the one point, and they also messed with Skyreach in part 4, but all but one of them still got the highest level of reward, including one PC who really really really really really should not, under any circumstances have been giving that reward (but unfortunately, none of the horrible things the PC did were given a campaign point deduction in the adventure, possibly because they just never anticipated those actions). The only one who failed to get the biggest reward was the 5 Cha barbarian with no Diplomacy (the one who barely succeeded was a 7 Cha inquisitor with no Diplomacy who rolled high that one time...)
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Based on the airship speeds, you probably would need stronger magic than that to reach the other airship. However, my party's rogue had just gotten Skill Mastery and purchased a metric ton of scrolls, including greater teleport, so he used that to have them skip ahead. They did lose the one point, and they also messed with Skyreach in part 4, but all but one of them still got the highest level of reward, including one PC who really really really really really should not, under any circumstances have been giving that reward (but unfortunately, none of the horrible things the PC did were given a campaign point deduction in the adventure, possibly because they just never anticipated those actions). The only one who failed to get the biggest reward was the 5 Cha barbarian with no Diplomacy (the one who barely succeeded was a 7 Cha inquisitor with no Diplomacy who rolled high that one time...)Be prepared if you have a competent team of players who can do things like track and dimension door, who are under the effects of haste/blessing of fervor and fly/air walk (based on the arena fight)… and therefor be able to track people down and skip the whole crashing airship thing with resources that were readily available at the time the scenario was written to skip a week long chase to get the big bad earlier (oh wait, it's really not him…)
Who therefore get screwed out of the one campaign point they may need to hit the big reward at the end of part IV.
Yeah, I'm a bit bitter at the moment at the scenario for this (played parts 2-4 yesterday). My team went the good Pathfinder agent route (get the guy who's your primary objective in the most efficient way possible even with stupid plot restrictions giving him an artificial level force wall during the arena fight) and lost the campaign point for the level boss on the airship because the scenario doesn't let you go back for her, even if it took you less than a minute to deal with the "final fight" instead of a week.
Here's the full trick... Urban Ranger tracks him at full speed through the crowd (cause, Urban Rangers are like that) and can get on board when Adril does - then uses the Status on himself to tell the Travel Domain Cleric it's time to Dim Door on the ship. No chase scene because we're 'Big Danged Heroes' like that.
We're a bit... infamous... for breaking scenarios like that. Usually at MGCady's expense (sorry!)... On the plus side, she got to help us do the breaking this time. (Popcorn, anyone?)