Hello everyone,
First, sorry for my english.
Second, MY PLAYERS GET OUT OF THIS POST!!!!
...
Well, my Carrion Crown game is about to end. I think we will have 4 more games before the great ending.
Well, I change a lot of things but here is how it should end.
In the ruins of Adorak,at the feet of the Gallowspire, my four heroic pcs and there allies, paladins from Lastwall, werewolves from Shudderwood, Luvik's Caliphas's vampires, the army of Ustalav lead by Aduard 3, will fight Worshipers of the whispering way, Marrowgarth the ravener, the orcs from Belkzen,thousands of zombies and skelletons, vampires lead by Mallyas, and Warforgeds from Eberron.
Okay, I know it will be something huge and maybe it is too big ...
My questions is: How would you play it?
How can I make it Epic without doing all the fights for my pcs? (too many fights kill the fight)
I want my pcs to feel the power of Marrowgarth, the fear that surround Mallyas, the scream of thousands of lost souls in the hands of the WW.
I want them to fear that they can loose the war...
But I don't know how to make it.
Just telling the stories of battles? I think it won't work.
Let them do the beginning of each fight?
How will you do it?
Thx for your help.
Sstrad.
This should probably go in the Carrion Crown subforum (since it contains spoilers for the AP).
maybe you are right, but I can't do it.
If sommeone can help to make the change ??
thx :)
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You might want to pull the mass combat rules from Ultimate Campaign.
Has Tar-Baphon been freed? Did Adivion already drink the elixir? What woke up Malyas already?
Make it clear that your allies' armies are outnumbered and outgunned.
Maybe give the PCs a macguffin that they could use to break the endless storm around Adorak, allowing the light of day, and perhaps Pharasma's wrath, to devastate the undead horde like mundane armies never could. Obviously, such a macguffin must be used at the Pinnacle!
Raven's Head, perhaps changed in some way by the battle of Renchurch, seems like a quick choice for such a macguffin. The intentional sacrifice of the holy relic, to bring Pharasma's wrath against the undead to Gallowspire? A spiraling wave of white fire, beginning at the Pinnacle and working its way down, igniting the unworthy dead like grease-soaked rags.
Perhaps the entire goal of the allied armies to push open a path to Gallowspire so that the PCs can start climbing it to confront Adivion.
And once they're far enough in, have the Whispering Way break through the allied forces to begin pursuing the PCs up the tower. No turning back at that point; the only hope to push to the top, and win.
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Give the party specific goals that will affect the outcome but let the larger battle play out in the background. The enemy has breached the south wall, they have to defend it until reinforcements arrive, then they have to rescue the Priests from the burning temple so they can tend to the wounded, then they have to defeat a particularly powerful NPC, etc. Play up the chaos of the battle in the background with the occasional random battle with the enemy grunts but don't focus on minor conflicts.
Check out Red Hand of Doom for some ideas.
I wrote this stuff a while back in the Adivion thread about really bringing the finale to life. I'll try to see if I can find where I posted the "friendly haunts" segment of the climax that we took out in development, but was meant to offset the tremendous waxing and waning of powers Adivion got after drinking the elixir, which, as the post explains, were originally substantially greater. In something this epic, though, PCS might not need the help even with an augmented Adivion!
I'd be very interested in seeing the friendly haunt mechanic. I plan to utilize all the goodies given in the previous boards to really ramp up the final encounter. We're about 2 sessions away to Adivion, and I can't wait :).
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Ok, so this is the undeveloped, unpublished (and therefore unofficial) content from my turnover's original finale. I believe I've posted this before with Wes' permission at the time, so I don't believe re-posting is any sort of breach of freelancer fealty.
Two ideas here. Adivion was meant to totally kick the crap out of the PCs for a few rounds--he's just been infused with the soul of the Whispering Tyrant, after all. While he's in super-max mode, the haunts are there to sort of keep the PCs alive as a get-out-of-jail-free card as they [presumably] get kicked around for some cinematic flavor. But just when the PCs think all is lost, Adivion's form starts to crumble under the weight of so much power, and he kinda reverts to a still-powerful but more CR-appropriate villain, and the PCs again have a chance of laying him low. This is also the ending that left the door open for a fragment of Tar-Baphon's escaped soul to slither off to do bad things. Have fun with that. So here you go:
The Ebb & Flow of the Tyrant's Grace
Adivion's plan may very well have worked if he had been successful in transforming Count Galdana's body to host the return of the Whispering Tyrant rather than his own. With a lich formula not created for him and no phylactery to contain his soul, Adivion has made a gross miscalculation, opening his body and mind to Tar-Baphon's slumbering soul, but finding that his mortal body is unprepared to contain the Tyrant's overwhelming presence.
This peculiar situation plays out over several rounds of combat. At first, Adivion can feel the Tyrant's power coursing through his veins, and indeed his powers reflect this surge, peaking for the first few rounds and perhaps seeming too much for the PCs to overcome. After this, the influx of necrotic energies overloads his body, and Adivion's disembodied soul—increasingly taken over by the Tyrant's spirit—begins lashing out, his own body crumbling over the combined weight of the desiccating transformation to lichdom and the might of a powerful spirit vying for control.
You can handle this flux in a very cinematic way, giving PCs clues as to the struggles for control going on in Adivion's body and soul, though they may very well dispatch of the fiend well before this struggle reaches its full climax. You may adjust the frequency of these changes on a round-by-round basis as you gauge your PCs' efforts to defeat this abomination, perhaps escalating events each round if PCs seem to be having too easy—or even too rough—of a time overcoming Adivion. The following flavor and effects occur outside and independently of Adivion's normal actions for the round:
Round 1-2: Adivion's eye smolder with red pinpoints of light as his skin withers and cracks. His shadow takes animate form and gains density as it clambers over his shoulders like a corpse clawing away from the grave. Treat all of Adivion's spells as empowered as though using the Empower Spell feat with no change in spell level.
Round 3-4: Adivion's physical decay continues as the shadowy form hovering above him takes on more substance and independent action, gaining a withered humanoid shape that superimposes over the magus' body. Treat all spells cast by Adivion as maximized as though using the Maximize Spell feat with no change in spell level.
Round 5-6: Adivion's body takes on the familiar withdrawn, parched appearance of a lich. The disembodied, shadowy soul takes on a frightening aspect of a similarly lich-like creature sheathed in iron armor and a bladed helm with massive curving horns. Spells cast by Adivion remain maximized, and he gains the benefits of a haste spell.
Round 7-8: Adivion's eyes widen as the Tyrant usurps his disembodied soul, which remains incorporeal and attached to the forsaken lich, but gains the distinctive form recalling the Whispering Tyrant's appearance from legend, and seems to act with more independence. Adivion's flesh begins cracking further and crumbling off in sloughs, revealing rotten, yellow bone beneath. Spells remain maximized, but Adivion loses the benefits of haste, and he gains the confused condition.
Round 9-10: Adivion's form is now little more than a crumbling skeleton encased in armor, his flesh littering the battleground around him. His disembodied soul has now taken on the black, shadowy form of the Whispering Tyrant, the red pinpoints of light that previously peered from Adivion's eyes now firmly glowing from the incorporeal form of Tar-Baphon. Spells cast by Adivion are empowered, but he gains the staggered condition.
Death of Adivion: Despite the timing of Adivion's demise, his disembodied soul lingers, carrying with it the spark of the Whispering Tyrant's soul drawn forth from Gallowspire. A round after the fatal blow that crumbles Adivion's body to dust, the infected remains of the disembodied soul animate as a greater shadow. This now-independent creature may maliciously attack PCs in revenge for their interference, or it may try to flee downward through the sarcophagus to preserve the freed essence of Tar-Baphon. If it escapes, this seed may prosper and grow in some dark place in the world, germinating like a malignant growth that may yet threaten Golarion with the Whispering Tyrant's resurrection if not sought out and destroyed.
The Wardens of Tar-Baphon
Adivion, the skeletal legions, and slumbering undead servants are not the only entities awakened by the possibility of the Whispering Tyrant's resurrection. Centuries ago, here atop Gallowspire's bladed roof, the most powerful warriors and wizards of that distant age struggled to imprison the lich-king, finally succeeding when the Tyrant attempted to summon the heart of General Addrissant into his hand, only to find a shard of the shield of Aroden pulsating there instead. Shrouded in holy fire, the Tyrant was tossed down the steps of his tower, and powerful seals created and dispersed to assure he stayed there.
Now, in these dire moments of necessity, the spirits of those brave heroes who gave up their lives to create the seals return to lend aid to a new generation of saviors. When you deem it appropriate during this final combat after Adivion has consumed the Carrion Crown elixir, you may choose to have these 8 spirits appear on the perimeter of the rooftop, each hovering between the massive blades that crown the spire, beckoning wounded PCs or those otherwise in need of aid to draw nearer to receive a boon. PCs moving adjacent to one of these 8 haunts triggers their boon as a free action, but the haunts cannot grant a boon more than once per round.
THE WARDENS
LG persistent haunt (Beneficial wardens granting boons in a 5-ft. radius)
Caster Level 15th
Notice Perception DC 10 (to see manifest form of wizard warden)
hp 67 (harmed by channeled negative energy); Trigger proximity
Effect When triggered, these beneficial haunts grant a boon to characters combating anyone seeking to release the Whispering Tyrant. There are 8 stoic ghosts, and as a group they can produce any of the following effects only once, and no more than one per round: blessing of fervor, break enchantment, breath of life, greater heroism, haste, heal, mass cure critical wounds, and restoration. Once an effect has been used, one of the spectral wardens vanishes.
Thank you Brandon for sharing! I will definitely be applying some of these also as I get a feel for how the battle goes. I also like the idea of a piece of Tar-Baphon escaping. I do plan to take my party past Book 6 and on to level 20 and that would be a great addition to foreshadow future events.
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I attempted to create a slightly more "epic" feel to the end of this module, since the players and their characters had essentially been run ragged by the pacing of this particular adventure path. It doesn't leave you a lot of time or room to breathe as you are constantly in pursuit of Adivion's minions until you uncover the scope of his machinations.
I do believe part of this (a special haunt) I borrowed from something Brandon Hodge posted in another thread. So hats off to him if I remember that correctly.
The first time I started to introduce a more epic feel was in what happened to Illmarsh. At the climax of that adventure, everyone in Illmarsh saw ShubNiggurath rise out of the water like a gigantic Godzilla-esque creature, growing larger and more horrible with each passing moment. Meanwhile, the PCs in the lair at the bottom of the lake were only exposed to glimpses of the horror - giant tentacled goat legs, hateful angry eyes pressing against the glass dome and threatening to break it, etc. When they got back to the surface, Illmarsh was beyond decimated. Though there was no structural damage, the people had all gone mad and either murdered one another or killed themselves in grief and terror. Those who remained were hopelessly touched, and others just wandered into the swamp.
By the time the PCs reached Caliphas, word had already reached the capital city about what had happened in Illmarsh. Priests and health workers were en route to the bayside village to help the people. The newspapers were claiming it to have been some kind of toxic swamp gas that had been trapped under the area for ages, burst out, and caused a collective hallucination. Others blamed the influence of evil magicians or, somewhat correctly/incorrectly, the Whispering Way (because so many people were dead.)
The insane asylum in Caliphas itself was filling up with people from Illmarsh during the events of Book 5. This figured in somewhat at what happened at the climax of this book. In the midst of Book 5, the PCs stayed in a prominent hotel overlooking the gardens. After helping out with the local Eye, they receiving an invitation to a masquerade ball at the manor of Countess Caliphvaso, who figures in somewhat in the module (the Countess who has been extending her lifespan with the Sun Orchard Elixir found at the vineyard chapel).
After defeating the sisters in their vineyard on behalf of Luvick, the PCs returned to the sewers under Caliphas to find Luvick and the rest of the vampires of the Caliphas Company preparing for war. Previous "house guards" were now in martial dress, and a series of coffins filled with handfuls of earth were being prepared for some kind of mass transportation. The PCs had already gotten Luvick "in the loop" on the Whispering Way's efforts and what they believed their intent to be (to resurrect the Whispering Tyrant). Luvick explained that his ancient nemesis Malyas had awakened from the Tyrant's stirring and was preparing an army of vampires to join the forces the Whispering Way were no doubt building. Luvick said he was taking his forces to "Malyas' distant lair" to encounter him, a battle he claimed "had been a long time coming". Although all of that effectively happened "off-screen" during Book 6, it still gave the PCs the feel that something epic was occurring.
Between Book 5 and Book 6, the PCs attended the Countess' masquerade ball. Suspecting she might know something about the Whispering Way's antics in Caliphas, and intending to use their knowledge of her real age as leverage, the PCs had a motivation to attend. They got a chance to dance with some of the locals in a contest to see who won fabulous prizes, to schmooze with some NPCs and build a better relationship with them. One of the PCs, a noblewoman, had been invited by the Countess herself dut to her status. The rest were on Count Galdana's "guest list", since he was invited to. They were waiting for him to arrive.
Unbeknownst to them, Adivion had been in Caliphas to collect Galdana while the PCs were otherwise occupied. Knowing about their pursuit of him and his plans through his scrying (and his strange intellectual love affair with the party's wizard for whom he had been leaving correspondences explaining his intent, expressing his gratitude for their vigilance proving to him that he is on the correct path to creating a better world for everyone, and offering them a valued place of undeath in a new world under the peace of undeath), Adivion made a rare gambit to try to slow the PCs down by having them put in jail.
Adivion, through his arrangements with the sisters and the nosferatu, knew of the Countesses' desire to prolong her life. So he gave her that opportunity by effectively turning her into a variant mummy I designed for the encounter. So when Countess Caliphvaso arrived in the ballroom, descending the stairs, she was in her canary yellow dress and wearing a heavy veil. She was accompanied by a non-descript gentlemen in a tuxedo and a death's head mask, which was pretty boring and stereotypical. At first the PCs assumed the escort was just that...an escort.
But then the wizard's player started thinking.
"Hey, wait a second...could that be..would he...?"
That's when the man in the death's head mask looked directly at the wizard, and there was an eerie connection there. It was, of course, Adivion. He took a free action to drop a crystalline glass (a strange modified looking haunt siphon) and then cast dimension door to get out of the ballroom altogether. Adivion is not a direct confrontational wizard until he has no choice otherwise at the end of the campaign.
The modified haunt siphon had haunts trapped in them that it then set free. It also had something else: a kidnapped Lorrimor daughter, coated in a coccoon of ectoplasm so that she would count as a "haunt" and be able to be stuck inside of a haunt siphon. This haunt siphon didn't just translate the haunts into negative energy when broken, it trapped and unleashes a haunt when broken. (Yes, I took the liberty of making up a bunch of details, including the fact that if you cover someone with enough ectoplasm and create the right magical item with Craft Wondrous Item, the item will count the person as a "haunt" and entrap them inside).
Adivion returned to the Lorrimor home in Ravengro and wooed her. He informed her that he had been a former student of her father (a truth, in fact), and that he could help her get in touch with the spirit of her father by using her spirit planchette to communicate with him. In truth, he used the Lorrimor daughter and her planchette to ritually resummon the angry vespers (the Harrowstone Five!). He did some invented rite where he makes Kendra Lorrimor a vessel for the departed ghost of the Warden's wife and then uses her connection to the Harrowstone Five to bring them back, angrier than ever before.
This I think was my variation of Hodge's plan to improve the original encounter, only I threw the Haunting of the Five at the party at a higher level. When the jar was broken, it exploded into mist and they saw a spectral Kendra rise into the air, superimposed against a spectral image of the Warden's wife. They were chained around the wrists and ankles, and one also around the neck, so 5 chains altogether.
Each round, I rolled a d4 to represent the number of letters in the name "Kendra Lorrimore" were spelled in blood in numerous places in the ballroom. Their previous experience taught them that letting it spell out her name completely would be bad for her. When the name was spelled, Kendra would be dead for good. Fortunately, it never got to that.
The party-goers were pretty much demolished by multiple manifestations of the Harrowstone Five. The party had to face them again, and I just kinda beefed up the sort of things they did before to make them a unique challenge for the new CR. No point in getting into the details on that, you can make them up yourself. Each Harrowstone ghost that was slain broken one of the chains binding Kendra, and when the last was broken, the party was left in the ballroom of the Countess' manor, with the Countess herself deceased along with a whole bunch of other partygoers.
Through the large windows of the ballroom, the party could see strange greenish-purple clouds boiling in from the north at a dramatic rate. They ran outside and saw that some of the masqueraders had escaped and were wandering around wondering what was happening. They started to point at the party members as ones who rushed the Countess before all hell broke loose, and then it became clear that local law enforcement was getting involved.
In other words, the rumor in Caliphas was that the party might have been responsible for what happened at the Countess' manor, or at the very least slow them down by having them hauled in and interrogated about what happened.
Bothered that Galdana had never shown up, Aubren Chalest led them to Galdana's townhouse in Caliphas. As they ran, they saw the storms rolling in...
If you check the details of Book 6, you'll notice the supernatural weather that affects those areas around Gallowspire.
In order to make a more epic feel, I had that storm expand as far south as Caliphas in the transition between the books, with it gradually expanding to the rest of the country (later, PCs teleported to Lepidstadt and even Ravengro and either were under the terrible cloud cover or were subject to random storm effects themselves.)
As the PCs ran through Caliphas towards Galdana's townhouse, the supernatural storm broke free and started striking buildings and homes with bolts of vicious negative energy/lightning bolts. People ran into their homes and shuttered them, but acidic rain started killing plants, hurting people, and otherwise causing slow attrition and structural damage.
Galdana, of course, was nowhere to be found. His townhouse was ransacked and there was blatant evidence he'd been kidnapped. They of course immediately suspected Adivion, who had fled, and the assumption was correct.
The other things I did to make it seem more epic were in Book 6. Since it took them days to get through the Whispering Way hideout, they had to Rope Trick themselves into special resting places, but have someone intermittently do some scouting. Their scouts uncovered signs that a lot of activity was happening there with "troops" of undead apparently moving in and out of the hideout (mostly out). One night they heard the Varisian slaves that were taken earlier in the module being brought in, but since they were resting there wasn't anything they could to do to save them. In the encounter with the Uragathoan Fly, scads of kidnapped Varisians from that caravan were being dropped into the Fly from an unsteady walkway constructed above, and so that combat became a balance of the PCs trying to kill the undead and save as many of the Varisians as they could.
They did rescue Galdana at the end of that part, and he volunteered to escort the Varisians they rescued to safety. Unfortunately unbeknownst to the party, he ran afoul of the undead army the Whispering Way was mounting, troops to lend to the Whispering Tyrant for his inevitable rebirth and takeover of the country, and was captured and expedited back into Adivion's clutches.
When the party reached Gallowspire, Adorak was surrounded by an entrenched army of undead and mercenary forces (hags and monstrous humanoids gathered from around the mountains, for example), all waiting for Adivion to complete his work, for the Whispering Tyrant to be reborn, and for a new era to begin. The party had to sneak through these enemy lines to get into Adorak (trying to fight, they knew, would have been suicide).
The last bit of epicness came in the final confrontation. Instead of Adivion drinking the elixir and going through the transformation prior to the PCs' arrival, he was holding a weakened and worthless Galdana hostage on the top floor of Gallowspire, a readied action poised to dump the elixir down the Count's throat. They all knew that would be "game over".
Earlier, the PCs had revealed to Galdana how he figured into the Carrion Crown ritual. He gave them permission "to do what was necessary" in case it came down to it. In other words, he prepared writs of exoneration for them in case they had to kill him to stop Adivion and were accused of his murder. In addition, the wizard had used linguistics to uncover details about Adivion's personality from his letters: that although he professed to appreciate a "limelight" position, coming up with the Carrion Crown elixir but not being the vessel himself, that secretly he was desirous of immortality himself. Only he knew better than to make himself a full-on lich or "sell himself out completely" to the Whispering Way.
They had the option to try to kill Galdana as the elixir was imparted (which would have worked quickly enough to stop it from taking effect), or something else they invented. The wizard got smart and talked Adivion into drinking it himself instead of giving it to Galdana and becoming a forgotten piece of history, the orchestrator no one would ever give any credit to.
During the final conflict, in the second round of combat, the entire tower of Gallowspire shuddered dramatically, forcing every to save against KD. A PC looked over the side and noticed a gigantic skeletal arm had come out of the ground of Adorak, two hundred feet in length or so, and was gripping the sides of Gallowspire. The next round, another arm grabbed the building and shook it. It was a manifestation of Tar-Baphon himself, the skeletal arms made out of the broken remnants of Adorak: the buildings, the bones in the ground, dirt, everything. They started to see a death's head forming in the ruined buildings, leering up at them from below (I dispensed with the illusory terrain thing which was awkward and unwieldly, and used this challenging environmental tactic instead - as Tar-Baphon grabbed Gallowspire, it forced KDs and Bull Rushes as the building shook violently, threatening to knock people off.)
All in all, those were the things I did to try to give Carrion Crown a more "epic" feel for my players. I'm sure there's a lot more that could be done, but if anything here sparks some ideas for you, great.
Yossarin, that is some pretty great stuff.
The entirety of Adorak animating as some sort of genius loci haunt is something I would've yoinked for my own game, but my party faced down Adivion some months ago now.
Though I do have one question - did the party fail to lay Vesorianna to rest, or did Adivion actually yank the poor lady back out of the afterlife to shove into Kendra?
The latter. She was released because they were defeated, thus I reasoned that such a sympathetic link could be exploited by a magician like Adivion.
Very nice Yos!
Dot
That is amazingly cool Yossarin.
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Where does it say that the Whispering Tyrants phylactery is in Gallowspire with him? I was thinking of having the adventure continue with the group discovering that his phylactery was hidden in place X, but when they find it they also find that its a artifact in its own right, and then they (and I) would have to figure out how to destroy it.
Raven's Head is intended as a replacement phylactery.
Dungeons of Golarian (I may have just gotten the name wrong), IIRC, identifies the Tyrant's current phylactery is a quite possibly indestructible obelisk located at the very heart of the Gallowspire dungeons. So yeah, IIRC the Tyrant's actual phylactery is some sort of artifact in its own right.
Thank you all, for your amazings answers and solutions.
I will add these too my own sauce and let you know at the end of it, how and what my pcs faced.
I expect the last chapter of these amazing campaign on the 14th of july 2013.
Thx again everyone!
Sstrad.
Looking forward to hearing about it!
Do report in, Sstrad!!!
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Right before my birthday, Sstrad! I can't wait to read it!
Note: As I write the following below, I haven't read these books in quite a while so details may vary.
The few changes I've jotted down for changes in Carrion Crown are hinting at AA earlier on as a companion. I intend for him to be a bit sadistic and manipulative. I wanted to cultivate a relationship with him in the first couple of books, and then fake his death and have helpful hints left for the player's by "AA" (ala Pretty Little Liars, don't judge, my wife demands tv time with me). Or something along those lines. Give them the vengeance desire against the Whispering Way, the confusion/hope that their friend may still be alive, a secret informant, and then top it off with an offer: Join Me. Tar-Baphon will need new generals after all. I figure that will help tie the perceived disjointedness of the books together.
Book one will feature Kendra as an NPC with more of a Lara Croft feel. Adivion and Petros will have a Magneto/Xavier bond.
Book two I intend to have the Beast of Lepidstadt available as a leadershipable NPC later on.
Book three will have werewolf lycanthropy as an option. Weather they contract it or a player death occurs and the new player wants to be a Werewolf from the packs.
Book four will hint at something more sinister on the horizon. If they finish the campaign and win, Cthulhu will be making his presence known soon enough.
Book five I'm not entirely sure about. I want to include Strahd von Zarovich somehow. Vampirism will probably not be an option as being undead is actually a handicap against the Whispering Way in my opinion.
Book six will be expanded. Fighting the Whispering Tyrant will be an option. He will be an Advanced Human Lich Necromancer 20/XXX 20 gestault (since Epic doesn't exist, but I want him to be rediculously powerful. And him being a cleric doesn't bode with his all powerful personality). That's if the PC's fail. Adivion will be there to offer the PC's a chance to switch sides. He may even plead with them that this is there destiny. The Tyrants Whispers may even whisper promises of power. If they say no, bad things will happen. The Mirage Arcana however will be gotten rid of. That just seemed annoying. But the Nightwings will definitely play into it. Marrowgarth may be moved to later in the adventure. All kinds of bad. Adivion won't be a Magus though. I could see him being either a straight necromancer or having Aristocrat/Necromancer/Noble Scion levels. I just don't see Adivion as the final boss fight by himself.
Just some ideas.