What if the party allies with Ezer?

[Trench]

My players. Always zigging when I expect zagging.

So in the adventure, it says that Ezer will attack if the PC's don't give him the Eye. So what if they do? In fact, what if they essentially let him buff himself with spells and assume an attack from another direction while they try to get him to talk? Just how desperate is Ezer in covering his tracks?

Just looking for fun brainstorm ideas.

[Akumamajin]

Trench wrote:

My players. Always zigging when I expect zagging.

So in the adventure, it says that Ezer will attack if the PC's don't give him the Eye. So what if they do? In fact, what if they essentially let him buff himself with spells and assume an attack from another direction while they try to get him to talk? Just how desperate is Ezer in covering his tracks?

Just looking for fun brainstorm ideas.

Hey there, trench ... I recon that you are long past this point, eh? As a matter of fact, me and my players are nearing the end of the campaign with full speed and are halfway through the last book, so I consider myself kind of an Legacy of Fire expert at this point.

If you somehow still happen to need any advice, just shoot. Considering how I handled Ezer, I have already detailed this in some other posts here. For one, I didn't like his betrayal, as it feeled cheap and not well thought through, especially from his POV. There are this group of powerful adventurers that just followed your lead and helped you escape a transdimensional prison AND might be your best bet to escape the Efreeti Sultans wrath, so why would you behave like donkey and attack them the minute that you are free, instead of trying to decive them?

And from a gaming design POV its also bad, as it punishes the player for playing along for an entire adventure .. maybe they could have escaped by other means or tried other clever solutions, but they followed your breadcrumbs and played the adventure like you intended ... and then they get backsteped in a cheap way.

So I scrapped the betrayal angel and made Ezer useful to the players , beyond having an artifact level scrying device with him as loot.
I explained that, as the former summoner and binder of Jhavhul, he knew Jhavhuls true name, and by this he would prove invaluable in stunning/weakening/debuffing the BBEG in the inevitable final confrontation.

So, after they rescue him, he falls in with their lot, when the dragon shows up and demand them turning Ezer over ... Ezer quickly explains that he can prove super useful with his knowledge of Jhavhuls Truename, if they would just slay that BBEDragon over there.

Worked like a charm and my players felt that they accomplished something in the City of Brass Palace, instead of wasting time, so a win-win situation for me.

[Sekket]

My players are about to reach the top of Bayt al-Bazan, and I face the same problem.
- Why would the PCs free Ezer, instead of simply handing over the Impossible Eye to the Vizier?
- If they free him, why would Ezer attack them, knowing that he would still be stuck in the palace? He would have a much better chance of escaping, for example, by cutting a deal with them, having them returning the Eye and lifting the curse for everyone.
I found a solution to the second problem : Ezer has a plan to escape even if the PCs don't want to ally with him. He plans to kill them and become a lich, using the Eye as a phylactery. This would grant him control over the artifact, allowing him to lift the curse.

Still, I very much fear that smart PCs would never let Ezer out at all. They simply have no incentive to do so.

[Akumamajin]

Sekket wrote:

My players are about to reach the top of Bayt al-Bazan, and I face the same problem.

- Why would the PCs free Ezer, instead of simply handing over the Impossible Eye to the Vizier?
- If they free him, why would Ezer attack them, knowing that he would still be stuck in the palace? He would have a much better chance of escaping, for example, by cutting a deal with them, having them returning the Eye and lifting the curse for everyone.
I found a solution to the second problem : Ezer has a plan to escape even if the PCs don't want to ally with him. He plans to kill them and become a lich, using the Eye as a phylactery. This would grant him control over the artifact, allowing him to lift the curse.

Still, I very much fear that smart PCs would never let Ezer out at all. They simply have no incentive to do so.

So, as I said, I went with the "knows Ravhuls Truename" angel, and it worked super well. In the final confrontation with Ravhul, I gave him a whooping 10 Mythic Levels of defender and just gave him a metric ton of DR ... Every round that Ezer was alive, we would utter a bit more of Ravhuls truename and restore him to his true self, instead of his grossly wishwarped form, that was just a singel wish away from bonding with Xotani. Mechanically speaking, Ravhuls DR would go down each time he did this, up to a minimum of 3 Mythic Levels (the baseline for most of my players, at that point).

This is, of course, massively deviating from the adventure as written, but it worked super well and was in line with the story and everything. I later told my players how that encounter would have gone down RAW and they all agreed that it was much more fun this way.