4-20 Words of the Ancients *Spoilers*

[Tristan Windseeker]

Figured I would get this thread started.

I had a question about the "Conjuration among the Thousand Columns" section. Would these restrictions also apply to either:
1) Spell-like abilities such as a summoner's Summon Monster spell-like ability?
2) Supernatural abilities like a summoner's "Maker's Call" or eidolon itself?
I was thinking it would apply to the first, and not to the second, but I just wanted to get a clarification.

Second, I had a question about the briefing itself. Shiela seems to imply that the goal is to get the words to access Krune's domain; is her goal (or at least the goal she'll share with the PCs) to get inside his domain and kill him before he wakes?

Just FYI, here in San Diego we've been suspicious of Sheila since the beginning of the year...this scenario does not do anything to soothe our fears.

[CRobledo]

As it happens, the author of this scenario frequents these boards :) He may chime in later, but:

My answer to your first question is that it does apply to #1 but not #2. Actually, Spell-like abilities are explicitly called out in the blurb:

Quote:

Desgard’s Thousand Columns channels and stores sloth magic, and casting conjuration spells or spell-like abilities can tap into this magic in unpredictable ways.

On your second question, I guess time will tell. I got more of the vibe that the society needs the refuge tokens and the key words to make sure he is NOT awakened. But you never know, I guess.

[Mark Moreland]

It would apply to spell-like abilities, but not supernatural abilities.

As to the second question, the Pathfinder Society (and by extension Sheila Heidmarch) wants to ensure that they possess the refuge tokens rather allowing for the possibility of the cult of Lissala getting them.

[ChesterCopperpot]

I put my notes for the creatures in this up in the Shared Prep folder, in case anyone is looking for them.

Looking forward to running it tomorrow!

[Seraphimpunk]

Where is said shared-prep folder? I was just going to compile the stats tonight before running tomorrow night.

[bdk86]

GM TIP: Making the Puzzle Work, pg. 14 wrote:

"This should advance the in-game timeline by 1 hour, affecting any ongoing spells and effects on the PCs, and add to Zonaladin's growing suspicion that the PCs may be up to something other than they indicated."

Emphasis mine.

The above box says that taking the full hour of trial and error to solve the puzzle increases Zonaladin's suspicion, but it does not say if this causes them to accrue a Suspicion Point or not. It's not listed in the "Other Sources of Suspicion" box on page 20, so by RAW it doesn't. It just seems like based on the text above, it should.

[Seraphimpunk]

is the Imentish protean Heal effect part of the runelord's binding ? does it happen any time they revert to their natural form?

also, was Glybweote intended to have a belt of giant strength +2 or something? her Androsphinx strength is 26, when typical Imentish is Str 24, and ability scores aren't supposed to change when using Change Shape. Or is this another unmentioned part of the binding (that these Proteans gain +2 strength when polymorphed?)

ps. my own gathered resource document for this scenario: link

I corrected the minor Str score adjustment on the Imentish, and included the stat effects from Level Drain on the dragons, and provided a 4 player version, and 5+ player version.

[Seraphimpunk]

and if the party decides to rest inside the spire for some reason (say for 8 hours or a day) Zonaladin would probably have recovered from most of the effects right? (except the Bestow Curse if applicable)

he couldn't raise himself, so presumably the negative level comes from an Enervation ( return after a max 15 hours ).

the Fatigue/Exhaustion comes from Waves of (same) ( side bar mentions a saving throw. btw, no save allowed. I presume they mean the cultists cast the appropriate spell to make him Fatigued/Exhausted as appropriate ).

and does Align Weapon scrolls really pre-determine the alignment? its not chosen at the time of casting? I can't think of when I've seen an Oil of Align weapon specify its alignment.

[Caderyn]

Align Weapon and Resist Energy Potions and scrolls (and other spells with similar effects) all must be created with the chosen type at creation, only the spell version is flexible

Potions: "Potions are like spells cast upon the imbiber. The character taking the potion doesn't get to make any decisions about the effect—the caster who brewed the potion has already done so. The drinker of a potion is both the effective target and the caster of the effect (though the potion indicates the caster level, the drinker still controls the effect)."

Thus the creator determines the effect at the time of creation, the drinker is considered the caster only in the circumstance that the spell is dismissible

[CRobledo]

Seraph is not on crack. That is the case with potions, but not scrolls. Scrolls are chosen at the casting time. My guess is it was a potion at some point, and it was changed to a scroll in development.

But oils of align weapon do need to have the alignment "baked in"

[Seraphimpunk]

well. i am on crack. but that's a different matter.

[bdk86]

Seraphimpunk wrote:

is the Imentish protean Heal effect part of the runelord's binding ? does it happen any time they revert to their natural form?

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/protean wrote:

Change Shape (Su): A protean’s form is not fixed. Once per day as a standard action, a protean may change shape into any Small, Medium, or Large animal, elemental, giant, humanoid, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, ooze, plant, or vermin. A protean can resume its true form as a free action, and when it does so, it gains the effects of a heal spell (CL equal to the protean’s HD).

Emphasis mine. The Paizo SRD fails to break down Protean traits for some reason.

Pathfinder SRD wrote:

Change Shape (Su) A creature with this special quality has the ability to assume the appearance of a specific creature or type of creature (usually a humanoid), but retains most of its own physical qualities. A creature cannot change shape to a form more than one size category smaller or larger than its original form. This ability functions as a polymorph spell, the type of which is listed in the creature's description, but the creature does not adjust its ability scores (although it gains any other abilities of the creature it mimics).

The SRD listing for Imentesh Proteans designates Greater Polymorph. In the case of an Androsphinx, this means Beast Shape IV for a Large Magical Beast.

Pathfinder SRD, Beast Shape IV wrote:

Large magical beast: If the form you take is that of a Large magical beast, you gain a +6 size bonus to your Strength, a -2 penalty on your Dexterity, a +2 size bonus to your Constitution, and a +6 natural armor bonus.

So Glybweote is actually being nerfed and not RAW. She should have 30 STR (Base 24+6), DEX 15 (Base 17-2), CON 20 (Base 18+2), melee attack +23 (2d6+10 claw), (Strength Increase), AC 18 (New Dex +2, NA +6, -1 Size), Reflex +6 (New DEX), Fort +13, hp 136 (13d10+65 due to CON bump), CMB +24 (+28 Grapple), CMD 37 (41 Trip) and so forth.

If I had to venture a guess, either the Polymorph was applied incorrectly or we're viewing a compromise stat block because Beast Shape IV likely assumes the caster is a medium humanoid in terms of the stat bumps it gives. The size between forms is the same (Large) so the size change tables don't give much insight.

And yes. It occurred to me that our scaly friend will be at mostly full strength if the party chooses to rest before exiting. This is most likely to happen if they believe the Dragon is still out there and potentially hostile, so they wish to be prepared (A2 ended with hostilities and the Dragon fled). And I'm perfectly fine punishing a party who botched the first discussion that badly(released a ton of outsiders, etc.) We were warned our choices have consequences this season.

[Mark Moreland]

Since an imentesh protean is already a Large creature, when it polymorphs into another Large creature, its stats are reverted to "Medium size" and then upscaled back to Large as per the spell.

[bdk86]

Ah! That makes much more sense. So it gets a -4 STR/+2 DEX/-2 CON on the shift down to medium and then a +6 STR, -2 DEX, and +2 CON adjustment for Beast Shape IV. Meaning a net +2 STR for being in Sphinx form (and the different natural armor bonus).

[Seraphimpunk]

Except that change shape says the ability scores remain unchanged, but the creature still gains what they would based on the spell emulated. Hence she gets pounce, rake, roar and matural armor as beast shape 4, but her stats should remain unchanged.

For monsters i think this was implimented in Change Shape to avoid having to adjust to the base size and then re-apply size bonuses to stats.

[Seraphimpunk]

Ps. Does the boon require an atonement for the free evil tattoo ?
And can you chose to accept the boon for free with gm credit

[David_Bross]

Does not accepting the boon (as an entire party) really decrease wealth earned by almost half?

[Hyren]

I was actually about to post a similar question. My players were quite puzzled by the wording on that gold reward.

Spoiler:

Verbatim:

If at least one PC accepts the inking sphere's boon, reward each subtier thus:
Subtier 7-8
X
Subtier 10-11
X

This makes very little sense. Why only reward players when someone accept an evil effect? Isn't that contradictory to the Pathfinder Society goals?

[Kolby Sample]

In the notes it says that Zonaladin has no way to remove the negative levels. If the party decides to rest will he recover them from resting himself? Is there anyway to clarify if these negative levels are permanent or temporary (also to help determine what players may need to do to heal them).

[Lazoth]

Seraphimpunk wrote:

Ps. Does the boon require an atonement for the free evil tattoo ?

And can you chose to accept the boon for free with gm credit

Rereading the boon, it isn't an evil act to get the tattoo.

Spoiler:

To get it free in scenario requires you to swear service to Krune. Im not sure if it describes that as an evil act in the scenario descripition

[Seraphimpunk]

The rune lords are evil. Swearing service to an evil overlord, or swearing to do your best to release him..,

They should have included whether getting another brand with the [evil] descriptor , requires a lesser or full atonement, or push the character one step towards evil.

Also, it doesn't make sense to have their treasure rely on accepting the tattoo: they can't sell it at the end of the adventure for gold if they want to.

[Kolby Sample]

When people ran the ooze trap did they hit the ooze with falling damage for the 40ft drop? Just thinking that maybe it slows itself down just enough sticking to the side.

[Caderyn]

The point being though its not our job as the GM to be changing the mod in this case, as its an item specifically written into the mod and there is no clause denoting that it is an evil act to accept it, while I can imply to the players that it is evil before accepting there is no cause for noting an alignment shift.

Much the same is the condition for the gold, it is explicitly spelled out to the GM what the PC's must accomplish so unless they can somehow trigger the "reward creative solutions" clause from the guide you would be required to reduce their gold from that encounter.

I would have hit the ooze for the falling damage when I was running because to do falling damage to the PC's it must not be slowed by its fall, literally its a speed bump at this level not an actual encounter although in our case the rogue disabled it and it wasnt an issue.

My only disapointment was not having time to run the optional encounter as I think it would have been interesting to see what the party was going to do about it.

[John Compton]

It looks like in adding a few plot points in development the rewards condition for the true rune plates changed. In speaking with Mark (lead developer on this one) about this point, we agree that the rewards condition for that room should be recovering the true rune plates, not accepting the tattoo.

I anticipate this will get fixed in the actual pdf file in the future, but for now please use this as an official modification of the adventure.

[Hyren]

Caderyn wrote:

Much the same is the condition for the gold, it is explicitly spelled out to the GM what the PC's must accomplish so unless they can somehow trigger the "reward creative solutions" clause from the guide you would be required to reduce their gold from that encounter.

Sorry, I'm personally not satisfied by your justification for why the PCs should be punished with a loss of almost 3000 gold for not doing something evil. Just because it's written that way doesn't mean it's reasonable or correct. That's how it is with rule books and that's how its going to be with scenarios - occasionally, an errata is necessary. I think this is one of those times. I don't see how that kind of penalty could be anything other than a mistake.

EDIT:

Thank you so much Mr. Compton, I'll make sure my players are compensated correctly.

[Caderyn]

Hyren wrote:

Caderyn wrote:

Much the same is the condition for the gold, it is explicitly spelled out to the GM what the PC's must accomplish so unless they can somehow trigger the "reward creative solutions" clause from the guide you would be required to reduce their gold from that encounter.

Sorry, I'm personally not satisfied by your justification for why the PCs should be punished with a loss of almost 3000 gold for not doing something evil. Just because it's written that way doesn't mean it's reasonable or correct. That's how it is with rule books and that's how its going to be with scenarios - occasionally, an errata is necessary. I think this is one of those times. I don't see how that kind of penalty could be anything other than a mistake.

EDIT:

Thank you so much Mr. Compton, I'll make sure my players are compensated correctly.

Yes I do agree with you that it was not fair the initial way, but the rules are very clear on what is and is not allowed, by being consistent on the way things are interpreted means that the developers can quickly release errata such as what John just did, allowing everyone now to get the full loot for recovering the plates without relying on the GM bending/breaking rules.

When I ran it one player did take the boon so they all got full loot regardless, although in this case after the errata I would contact all players involved and fix their sheets if they had been penalised.

[Kolby Sample]

Had the chance to run this last night, was very dangerous game for 4 players at the high tier, review will be posted later but as I did more prep a couple other things poped into my mind.

In reguards to the imentesh protean's and the stats given for the sphinx shape. Should it not also include the spell resistance, dr and elemetal resistance/immune in this form? Change shape functions as polymorph but calls out that the creature "retains most of it's own physical qualities".

Also after a further review of change shape as a whole I agree with seraphimpunk that the stats were not calculated correctly on how the beast shape spell cast by a large creature would work. I think Mark is incorrect in restarting the stats as if the creature were medium creature when it goes from a large form to another large form.

I would have loved more time to run this game, I think 7 hours is how long it go in an enviroment with no time restriction.

[Lady Ophelia]

So.. This adventure = Awesome. And the scenic vista art in that adventure? More like that please! Thanks!

But that puzzle? Confusing. It took me forever to figure it out and I'm the GM. Perhaps a short version for the GM in case party members get super lost and confused in the future would be great. Like a they must go through these doors in order to get in kind of deal. I know you touched that a bit in the side box, but a sample answer can help the poor GM who is also just as lost and confused as the players. ;D

Otherwise, great adventure, great job Master Compton.

[Caderyn]

Its a very simple puzzle (there is only 1 level you can exit from and only 1 door that works on that level, so pretty much the path does not matter its just up to you to track the floor they are on and which door they are looking at) my players figured it out in about 90 seconds after hearing the puzzle and the numbers on the floors that they were on. (fortunately the only PC who noticed the scrying didnt mention it to anyone else)

[Dave the Barbarian]

I ran this for the first time last night. We played the 10-11 sub-tier but the group barely qualified for it so it was a struggle. If we would have had time for the optional encounter or the end encounter went different, this would have been a TPK. It was a good story and fun to GM. Didn't really care for the puzzle, but with a few clues they seemed to get through it quickly without too much heartburn. This game would take at least 6 hours to run completely.

[Jeffrey Stop]

I have a couple questions about the mod:

Osirion Faction Mission:

Am I understanding it correctly that if the party finds and disables the trap, Osirion PCs cannot get their faction mission? (I understand that there is a Perception check to notice the smell of fruit, giving an indication that what the Osirions seek is in the area.)

C3:

There is this text regarding a way for the PCs to determine that the plates in this area are false:
Finally, the plates are easily bent with a DC 17 Strength check, indicating that they are not adamantine.

While I see several references in the mod about the true plates being adamantine, I don't see any way for the PCs to know that. Sheila's remark about them ("durable, well-crafted, and roughly parchment-sized tablets") gives no indication that the PCs are looking for adamantine.

I'm guessing that instead of "adamantine", "durable" was meant. In my mind, the fact that the plates are made of iron means they're durable -- I certainly didn't think to test that piece when I played this mod. Also, this seems to be a strange test: The PCs are sent to recover something, then as a test try to damage it?

[grandpoobah]

I need to run this at a CON over the holiday weekend, so I’ve got some questions and comments on PFS420 Words of the Ancients:

Overall, I think it’s a good idea for an adventure, but the various “Gotchas” in it are likely to leave a sour experience on the players.

details:

Faction Missions:
Many of the faction missions seem unreasonably hard, counter to the mission goals, or indirectly counter to the mission goals. Are faction missions supposed to succeed? I feel like less than 50% of players would succeed at their respective missions.

Specifics:
Andor: While not explicitly counter to the mission, summoning the creatures (and not telling them to hide from the dragon) raises the parties Suspicion level. This is arguably a small penalty, but many players don’t like to unwittingly hurt the mission. Secondly, the DC 25 Planes check is rather high, but I suppose a player could convince another player (of any faction) to make the check (someone at Tier 7-11 better be good at Kn:Planes)

Cheliax: This mission is very over the top. Bad mouthing an obviously powerful dragon is usually a bad idea. Doing it with all your allies around you (and potentially messing up the primary mission) is doubly so. Are Faction missions supposed to test Pathfinder loyalty to the COOPERATE part of the directive? This seems poorly structured – unless the intent was to force Player-Player (or PC-PC) conflict, which is ALWAYS a bad idea in organized play. Non-Cheliax PCs are not going to like it when they are forced into a fight with a dragon (a fight that is easily avoided).

Osirion: I believe another poster asked about this, but how exactly is this item recovered? Is the perception check enough (after killing the gelatinous cube)? What if the trap is bypassed? My intent is to have everyone make the Perception check anyway – non Osirion PCs would need an additional Knowledge Nature check (DC 15?) to identify it, unless the Osirioni PC instructed his allies in advance of his mission (to seek help). Fortunately, a highly communicative and teamwork oriented Osirioni PC should be able to get help from his allies (who again won’t be happy when he drops a gelatinous cube into the group to complete his mission).

Taldor: The DC for this mission is high – and uses a narrow set of skills that only exist on the same PC archetype (arcane caster). Other casters are unlikely to be this good at these skills. It pretty much says “80% of Taldor PCs will fail the faction mission in this adventure, oh well”:

Area B1 (the Hounds of TIndalos)
I have some issues with the mechanics in the encounter.
The hounds of tindalos are supposed to be air walking and hiding (invisible) fifteen up in a fog cloud of their own making (and their +18 stealth without invisibility).
Particularly resourceful PCs might detect them quickly (a paladin looks up with detect evil, someone with See Invisibility and a high perception, or the ability to ignore the fog cloud, or Blindsight).
The module has the hounds use “divination” powers and greater scrying to keep an eye on the PCs. Greater scrying is a horrible idea. It’s only a DC 20 Will save (and if they make the save they now something is up) – and even if it succeeds, it is only a DC 27 perception check (something most Tier 7-11 PCs can do) to notice the scrying sensor.
Would it be better for them to rely on at-will castings of Locate Creature and just watching the PCs in rooms B1-B3?

The Puzzle in area B3:
I’m a math person and I don’t understand how people are supposed to solve this. The riddle is nice, and the numbers are great – but my experience with puzzles is maybe one player in five actually cares (and even then, if it is the kind of puzzle they are not good at, they get frustrated). I’m tempted to simply breeze past it (There’s no obvious penalty to them brute forcing their way to solving it, other than the generic cost of time spent – the PCs don’t know about the Suspicion mechanic). Also, skipping the encounter seems to disenfranchise the Lantern Lodge players (for as long as they still exist).

Optional Encounter:
I’d like to run it, but I see this adventure running long – and this encounter will not be any faster (especially at tier 10-11 if the PCs have no way to deal with incorporeal quickly). It is likely to be a long, confusing fight (pun intended).

[TetsujinOni]

At tier 10-11 if the PCs do not have a way to deal with incorporeal quickly, they should fail the mission.

If they bypass the trap, autofail the osirion faction mission. Expected faction completion rate is 75%.

The faction missions are designed to be a test of several aspects. Choosing to complete them ahead of the goals of the society is putting your faction ahead of the society.

The fact that a bunch of the faction missions make it harder to do the main mission is a good thing, IMO: making people decide NOT to do their faction missions for the good of the team is a mechanics that should have been implemented long since (One of my favorite things about Wonders in the Weave 2 is the Cheliax says no. My Andoran assassin said that Colson could go pound sand for this mission after the conversation with the dragon. We had no suspicion problems at that point....)

DCs on missions on 7-11 SHOULD be high.

Run tactics as written, reward PCs who have actually invested in sufficient paranoia for their tier. It's another 'competence check' encounter.

[thegreatplant]

You can always remind players that they can choose to complete their season missions rather than the listed missions. The Andoran characters at my table took that route.

[TetsujinOni]

thegreatplant wrote:

You can always remind players that they can choose to complete their season missions rather than the listed missions. The Andoran characters at my table took that route.

My Andoran PC believes his season mission is to make sure that Krune can never wake up... but that he needs to do whatever it takes to get in reach to make sure of that.

And being down 1 prestige because he's getting cranky and told Major Maldriss off seems to fit his growing.... unreliability.

[Mat Black]

just ran this earlier this afternoon, and had a blast. however, while running through this, we ran into some major problems with the

Spoiler:

protean encounter and the polymorph rule interactions

. I posted the situation (the information there contains some information that is rather generic there, but could be spoilers when you read it after this thread) to the general rules forum here, but thought I'd cross post the link in case anyone here wants to add their thoughts and doesn't come across it there.

[Mergy]

I really enjoyed running this. The dragon is an amazing encounter, whether it's Diplomacy or combat (although I suppose I will have to wait for a less silver-tongued group for combat), and the Hounds are ridiculously deadly at high sub-tier. One death, although she was raised shortly after the fight. It's also interesting to note that as a result of a basilisk encounter, all of my PCs with Improved Precise Shot were sporting smoked goggles, and saved easily against the Ripping Gaze.

The proteans don't really have enough room to fight at high sub-tier, and eventually I was just sending warpwaves at the PCs (and ended up turning one of my proteans to stone doing so).

The optional encounter will never be run in a four hour slot. The scenario runs too long and I have too much fun with the dragon Diplomacy.

[The Human Diversion]

Dave the Barbarian wrote:

I ran this for the first time last night. We played the 10-11 sub-tier but the group barely qualified for it so it was a struggle. If we would have had time for the optional encounter or the end encounter went different, this would have been a TPK. It was a good story and fun to GM. Didn't really care for the puzzle, but with a few clues they seemed to get through it quickly without too much heartburn. This game would take at least 6 hours to run completely.

I had almost the exact same experience.

details about combats:

First encounter the party had a bit of trouble as only 1 player was good aligned, 3 detected as evil and had Lissalan/runelord tattoos on them, and the Chelaxian immediately tried to shame/intimidate Zonaladin. If it weren't for the fact that they had already healed him, they may very well have struggled to get past him

In the second encounter, the druid/wizard/mystic theurge was "alone" for a moment and get absolutely splattered by the hounds, dropped in 1 round. If it weren't for the ranger having his #1 favored enemy as evil outsider, I would venture to say at least the theurge would have died.

The party completely fell for the protean "sphinx" guise and went down the wrong path, but the rogue easily defeated the really unique trap. This was when things went really bad - they come back out into the main chamber, the protean sees that they're going to venture down to the runes and roars - 4 of 6 fail their save, I roll "9" on 2d6 and no one in the party at all has any way of removing fear. The proteans dropped the party "tank" - the ranger's animal companion, and had most every down to below 1/4 hit points. Only a crit (which is hard considering their "amorphous anatomy") saved them from a TPK.

Had to skip the optional encounter, as you said, this game could easily occupy 6 hours.

I more or less hand-waved the 2nd encounter with Zonaladin because the game store we were at was closing. Based on the fact the entire party but 1 accepted the tattoo, were carrying the runes, and had arrived with a former cultist, I would say he would have attacked if we had time, and based on the party's remaining resources would probably have been a TPK.

All that being said, probably the most fun I've had running a PFS adventure

[BigNorseWolf]

Dammit, forgot i had smoked goggles to give a party member.

Run tactics as written, reward PCs who have actually invested in sufficient paranoia for their tier. It's another 'competence check' encounter.

-Well, thats where I can see a problem with the Osirion faction mission. If you're competent, you see the trap, you disarm the trap, you don't get the faction mission, yes? It punishes competence.

[Benrislove]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Dammit, forgot i had smoked goggles to give a party member.

Run tactics as written, reward PCs who have actually invested in sufficient paranoia for their tier. It's another 'competence check' encounter.

-Well, thats where I can see a problem with the Osirion faction mission. If you're competent, you see the trap, you disarm the trap, you don't get the faction mission, yes? It punishes competence.

Yeah this one really bothered me as well, thankfully my party didn't actively say we were looking for traps, so the trap got triggered and I got my faction mission, but when I ran it on Saturday.... party easily disabled the trap and no faction mission...

[Mergy]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Dammit, forgot i had smoked goggles to give a party member.

Run tactics as written, reward PCs who have actually invested in sufficient paranoia for their tier. It's another 'competence check' encounter.

-Well, thats where I can see a problem with the Osirion faction mission. If you're competent, you see the trap, you disarm the trap, you don't get the faction mission, yes? It punishes competence.

Finding a trap doesn't mean just letting it be disabled and forgetting about it. If I find and disable a trap, I do want to know what it would have done.

[BigNorseWolf]

Adam Mogyorodi wrote:

Finding a trap doesn't mean just letting it be disabled and forgetting about it. If I find and disable a trap, I do want to know what it would have done.

which may or may not come with seeing it/disabling it, at the dm's discretion.

[Parody]

One thing I had to correct for my group while they puzzled the major puzzle was

Spoiler:

36 has 9 factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 36. I just told them to treat it as a number with 8.

They spent a bunch of time going through and doing the math for the entire puzzle, then keyed on trying to find a path through the factors of 100 (a century). I offered to give hints, but they wanted to keep going on their own. Then I messed it up because I was tired, but that wasn't the party's fault.

As for the rest of the adventure, we all had fun but it was not the best example of the GM running the monsters to their fullest. Ah, well.

[Jiggy]

Played this the other day, and it was pretty fun overall. Had a table of five, with 3 pregens (rogue, fighter, and gunslinger) plus a 7th level druid and my 7th level (at the time) cleric. Obviously, we played the 7-8 subtier.

Reading my Silver Crusade faction mission was a bit startling. "Go diplomacize a dragon!" Uh, yeah, I'll just do that. *gulp*

So I arrived at the mission briefing with a spell slot open at each of 2nd-4th. Upon learning the nature of our mission and that we were expecting conjuration magic, I took 15min to slot a dismissal and a communal resist energy.

We arrive at the site, and see the dragon. Making good use of my Touch of Glory domain power (coupled with some consistently solid die rolls) I manage to succeed at multiple Diplomacy checks (a couple well over 30), both getting my Prestige and gaining access to the tower without combat.

We go in and get ambushed by some kind of hounds. I forget the name, but I rolled a really high Knowledge check and got pretty much everything on them. On the other hand, they started combat by having one of them cast haste and the other two rip us up with four attacks apiece. (I got hit with all four on Round 1, taking me to about 50% HP.)

Long story short, Valeros goes down swinging, the druid's bear goes down after a couple of magic fang'd bites and lots of irrelevant claws, the gunslinger puts through decent damage from the back, and I do what I can with some divine favor'd longsword attacks to draw heat and help Merisiel flank. Everyone lives, but needed quite a bit of patching up. I consider changing my cleric's name from "Thomas the Tiefling Hero" to "Thomas the Lucky SOB" after 17 attacks in a row all miss me. Also, kudos to Merisiel's player for a round 1 tanglefoot bag. Major help, and responsible for a couple of those misses.

Then comes the misty door maze puzzle thing. After observing the numbers on the doors, then seeing the numbers on the next set, we decide it's a number puzzle and we need to gather more data by going through more doors and recording the numbers. Except the first door we go through was the end of the puzzle. As I was the one who walked through first, I was now very seriously considering the aforementioned name change. ;)

Totally nailed the sphinx riddles, but found it suspicious that they both seemed to be framed from a mindset of being on the cultists' side, plus the sphinx suddenly blocks a door when telling us to go through the other one, and sternly refuses to let us see the one that he allegedly was not guarding. Sure enough, decoy room. So we come back out and wreck his face (accidentally got a djinn with summon nature's ally - poor druid) and then determine after the fight that apparently I totally could have dismissed him. Oh well.

We find the real plates, the creepy pedestal thing offers us power (met with a fairly unanimous "EFF THAT"), and we leave.

Except then someone's faction mission apparently involved not leaving well enough alone and pissing off the dragon, initiating combat. Rest of the party says no thanks and runs for the teleporter. Dragon pursues the lone PC, who dives back into the tower and the door maze. Waits for days, while we camp out by the teleporter. Dragon eventually gets bored and leaves, and we all go home.

Success!

[Tim Vincent]

A Copper Dragon guardian got bored after waiting a few days?

Also how did you run from a Dragon? Did you go underground or invisible?

[Jiggy]

Tim Vincent wrote:

A Copper Dragon guardian got bored after waiting a few days?

Something about attention span issues. I haven't read the scenario.

Quote:

Also how did you run from a Dragon?

By him only having a bone to pick with one PC and not being able to follow both that PC and the rest of the party when they took off in different directions.

[Tim Vincent]

Must have been near the end of the slot.

[Mergy]

Tim Vincent wrote:

A Copper Dragon guardian got bored after waiting a few days?

Also how did you run from a Dragon? Did you go underground or invisible?

Certainly not unheard of, especially for this particular dragon.

The mission in question was probably Cheliax, and the failure shouldn't have initiated combat unless you were right on the line anyway.

[BigNorseWolf]

The dragon has... other matters on his mind. I'm surprised he waited that long.

[Kintrik]

Seraphimpunk wrote:

And can you chose to accept the boon for free with gm credit

I am curious about this as well. It isn't listed as a boon on the chronicle, but in the scenario if you take the tattoo you don't have to purchase it. Does that count for GM credit?