So, the Waking Rune scenario contains one of the most complicated creatures ever presented in any module. As such I thought it would be useful to have a thread to discuss what he is capable of doing.
As such this thread WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!. I will spoiler block my first posts but don't expect any other posts to necessarily do so. As such if you are planning to play the module then I strongly recommend not reading this thread.
To help break down his abilities I am going to separate them out into different sections covering defence, movement, control and offence. I will also add a section on playing in hard mode.
Defence:
Defensive stats:
OK, what sort of defences does Krune have? Well his base defences are considerable. An AC of 33 and Fort. Ref and Will of 17, 16 and 22 respectively. Getting stuff to stick on him is not easy. However note that these numbers fall significantly if his runes are deactivated. Alacrity, Armour and Defence combined give him +15AC and +5 on saves. If these are all deactivated then his stats change as follows:
High Tier: AC 25, Fort 12, Ref 11, Will 17
Low Tier: AC 18, Fort 14, Ref 13, Will 19
On Health: Krune starts with 293 HP. Each Rune of Life disabled reduces that by 40 at the lower tier or 20 at the higher. The Runes indicate that they also reduce his fast healing by 1 but he doesn't seem to have fast healing.
On initiative: Krunes initiative is listed as +4, this is incorrect. It should be +8 due to the effect of the Rune of Alacrity. If the Rune is disabled it goes down to +6 or 4 depending on sub tier.
On immunities: Its important to note that Krune is immune to poison and also has a Ring of Freedom of Movement. That means no grappling, hold, paralysis etc and that he is immune to his own Cloudkill and Stinking Cloud. Freedom of Movement is a rather badly worded spell which is open to a lot of interpretation about what exactly magic which impedes movement means. Hold Person, Entangle or Ash Storm are likely to count but what about Dazing and Stunning effects or the speed reduction from being blinded. You will need to decide just what FoM covers before running this module.
Other equipment and spells
Krune also has a Ring of Spell Turning. This is a powerful item which can reflect 9 levels of single target spells back at the attacker. Its great against people trying to target his low Fortitude with things like Baleful Polymorph. However, it is a command activated item which requires a standard action to use and should probably be avoided unless you have bogged down the party.
Krune has remarkably few personal defensive spells and again probably cant afford the actions to use them in the early part of the encounter. However his tactics suggest that he will teleport about so if he gets the time then consider using them. In particular Shield, Protection from Energy and Stoneskin can all help. Globe of Invulnerability could cause caster heavy parties fits although it is a stationary effect.
Finally he has a Contingency set to Dispel any effect which would impede him from teleporting. This is another of those loosely worded, open to interpretation effects. It would clearly count something like Dimensional Anchor but again what about things like stun or daze.
mobility:
Krune's tactics indicate that he is more than happy to teleport about to gain a tactical advantage. He has lots of ways to do so. Firstly note that the entire sanctum is actually very small, about 300' by 150' total.
As a specialisat Conjurer Krune has access to Dimensional Steps. Its a spell like ability but with a concentration modifier of 27 he will auto succeed the defensive casting check. He can shift 510' per day and from his starting position its only about 25' to move to the starting room to give himself time to set up.
However, if he runs out of that as an option he also has 2 Dimension Doors, a Quickened Dimension Door and Greater Teleport available. In the lower tier he loses the latter if 6 runes are disabled and quickened DD if all runes are disabled.
Overall Krune can pretty much be wherever he wants to be in the Sanctum although his tactics say that he only does so if he is feeling overwhelmed.
Control:
Krune's tactics suggest that he starts off with summons and control spells to get a tactical advantage before moving to direct offence. What does he have available?
Battlefield control
Wall of Stone: Available as both quickened and normal. At CL17 his walls are 4 inches thick. This may be lower if Runes have been disabled. With one 5'square per caster level he can manage a 10' high wall across his entire starting area. The wall would have a hardness of 8 and 60 hp. If he relocated to A3 he can block the corridor to A4 with a 32 inch thick wall 10 feet high which would have 460HP to give himself much more time. Note that he loses quickened Wall of Stone after disabling 2/3 runes.
Black Tentacles: Everyone loves these and Krune comes with a normal and quickened version. At his caster level they have a CMB of 22, lower if runes have been disabled due to the CL reduction. As a 20' radius spread this will hit almost his entire starting room and Krune is immune to them due to Freedom of Movement. He loses the quickened version on 4/7 runes being disabled.
He has a number of other area control at lower levels but those two are probably the big ones. He can drop things like Solid Fog, Sleet Storm and Stinking Cloud which he is immune to however his Summons wont be and they can also mess with his ability to target people. He does have a couple of quickened control spells, notably Glitterdust and Grease but whether these can compete with his quickened summons is debateable. If he has lost those summons due to rune deactivation then they are definitely worth looking at.
Finally don't forget to consider the Spear. It's an intelligent magical item and can cast Slow 3/day which is great for dispelling the party's Haste.
Offence:
As might be expected Krune has access to a large range of offensive spells, largely summons but with a few other forms of attack.
First a note on Summon Monster. It's casting time is 1 round so don't try to use the normal ones if you haven't already pinned the group down or managed to relocate. He has a number of quickened summons which is probably what he should start off using. Using a 1 round casting time spell when your enemies can act freely is just asking to be forced to make near impossible concentration checks, even with a modifier of 27. The concentration check to cast when hit is 10+level of spell+damage dealt.
Summoning options
Quickened summon monster IV and Vx2
Normal Summon Monster VII, VI, Vx2, IVx2
Empowered Summon Monster VI
Disabling 1 rune gets rid of a quickened SM V, 3/5 the quickened SM IV, 4/7 the second quickened SM V and in the lower tier only disabling 6 gets rid of SM VII.
Note that Krune has Augment Summoning so all of his summons gain +2str/con. This adds:
+2hit/damage, maybe more damage for 2 handed weapons/natural attacks
+2 Fort save
+2HP/hit dice
+2 CMB/CMD
Remember also that he can summon more monsters from a lower level list. You can get 1 monster from the list, 1d3 from 1 level lower or 1d4+1 from 2 levels lower. I have generally skipped huge sized summons as the area is unlikely to support them. Some summons to consider include:
Summon Monster VII:
Bone Devil: Seal the group in with at will Wall of Ice
1d3 Succubi: Maximise it with the Rod and force lots of Will saves every round
Vrock: Multiple natural attacks and immune to poison
Summon Monster VI:
Succubus: Dominate Person and Charm Monster are powerful abilities with decent DC's.
Shadow Demon: Incorporeal with touch attacks and at will Fear.
Lillend Azata: If he has lots of summons out adding a level 7 Bard for +2/2 to all of his summons isn't a bad idea. She also has some cure spells if he needs healing and has teleported away. As a good creature she also wont be hedged out by Protection from Evil.
Fiendish Dire Tiger: able to smite good for an extra 14 damage on all of its 5 natural attacks
Summon Monster V:
Dire Lion: Pouncing smiting multi-attackers.
Bralani Azata: Another useful good creature to get around PFE. Comes with some healing and some ranged attacks, including multiple Lightning Bolts. Using SMVII with a maximise from the rod would get you 5 of these each unleashing 6d6 lightning bolts for 2 rounds. 30d6 per round is likely to make a dent somewhere although energy resistance will ruin your day.
Babau: At will dispel magic might be useful for getting rid of buffs.
Summon Monster IV:
Hound Archons aren't bad and are another good aligned creature.
1d3 Lantern Archons, spam touch attacks from annoying balls of light.
1d3 Dretch: Force the PC's to make multiple saves through mass Stinking Cloud which Krune is immune to.
Other offensive spells:
Horrid Wilting: this is potentially the biggest swing spell in his arsenal. 17d6 damage, DC 28 save for half. With the rod he can both maximise and empower this for 102+8d6 damage. These numbers are likely to be lower as he loses caster level but its a big hit. His tactics suggest he waits to use direct offence until he has summoned so you may want to use the rod on other effects. In the lower tier he loses this on 6 runes being disabled.
Acid Fog: 2d6 acid damage per round is not worth the standard action necessary to cast this spell. Maybe if he is porting off somewhere else and has sealed the PC's in but he would be better off using...
Empowered Cloudkill: Big enough to fill almost his entire room. Widened with the Rod and it will cover all of his room and room A4. Krune is immune to it but his summons may well not be so be careful. He loses access to this in the lower tier only on loss of 5 runes but also has a normal Cloudkill memorised.
hard mode:
Hard Mode introduces some extra complications. Krune doesn't expend his spells from runes being destroyed so he will have access to everything. He loses a quickened SM V and replaces it with SM IX. Unless he teleports away to prepare this is a trap. If he does get to make use of it then a Ghaele Azata or Trumpet Archon will give him a level 13/14 Cleric who can cast heal on him. If he wants offence then the Nalfeshnee gets at will Feeblemind and the Glabrezu gets at will Reverse Gravity.
He also gets Wish and the components to use it. If he gets to cast this then its pretty much game over for the group. Hard mode players need to lock him down with status effects very hard from the absolute get go if he is played anywhere near his actual potential.
Can the thread title just be switched to the title of the scenario and "GM Prep," please? There is no reason to spoil the bad guy for everyone who stumbles across the title for this scenario.
Can the thread title just be switched to the title of the scenario and "GM Prep," please? There is no reason to spoil the bad guy for everyone who stumbles across the title for this scenario.
Done although anyone who has played any of the higher tier season 4 scenarios will know who it is and they are mentioned in the adventure briefing at the start.
Can the thread title just be switched to the title of the scenario and "GM Prep," please? There is no reason to spoil the bad guy for everyone who stumbles across the title for this scenario.
Done although anyone who has played any of the higher tier season 4 scenarios will know who it is and they are mentioned in the adventure briefing at the start.
I don't disagree, and it is in the GM section, so spoiler tags in the body aren't necessary, either. But the title of the thread will show up on the main page when it gets into the "recent posts" section, and some players like to maintain ignorance as long as possible.
Comments on andreww's thoughts:
You can't widen cloudkill as it is not an area spell. Acid fog is more useful that you give it credit for as it also acts as solid fog, helping to turn the tide of action economy by tying up PCs.
On Eric Brittain's notes:
The rod cannot be used to quicken. As horrid wilting is one of his most powerful offensive spells, his tactics also dictate he saves it for later in the fight.
The longer this fight lasts the better it will go for Krune. Split the party, wear them down. Use his mobility!
To start, if the party is split between the two parts of his area (left where he wakes up and the right side where they fought Vandiana) he can use wall of stone to completely block off the two areas. From there he can drop a quickened summon into the area and slip away leaving them occupied while he enacts plans against the other PCs. Alternately, quickened summon into the other side before using wall of stone to keep them busy while he kills those in his area.
Remember that his rod can do many wonderful things. A widened acid fog (or black tentacles or both) will cover almost all of the central area. Wall of stone to block off the hallway and the party is stuck somewhere they really do not want to be. Then when they can't move worth a darn (4 times movement, 8 if they are slowed from the spear) and have no way out, drop that cloudkill (regular one first to whittle down their fort saves). Later, drop another widened acid fog followed by a maximized version of his empowered cloudkill if he has it. Save the horrid wilting until their Con (max HP and Fort saves) is in the gutter.
Don't use the rod to empower cloudkill - it's a waste. As andreww notes, you may want to use it to maximize a summon spell to get a guaranteed 3 or 5 (1d4+1) lower level creatures though.
The spear can be using telekinesis to grapple, bull rush, or just toss PCs to keep them in black tentacles, cloudkill, etc.
Whenever Krune is in trouble jump away for a couple rounds to heal, buff, and summon more. Keep that spell turning up as much as possible.
Buffs:
* spell turning - very powerful. Use this at the first decent opportunity. Make sure to cast it off his spell list if he is unthreatened, leaving his ring uses for use in combat.
* foresight
* true seeing
* stoneskin
* protection from energy - save this until the party does some elemental damage
* shield
Remember that his concentration check will likely be lowered due to his caster level decreasing from disabled runes. Keep the party occupied with summoned creatures to ensure he is free to do as he wishes and doesn't have to cast defensively much.
Hard mode uses for wish:
* bring Kurshu the Undying back to life - the spear may try to insist on this if he runs across the body
* antilife shell could stop a melee heavy group in their tracks
* heal his entire party if he has several summons out.
* wall of lava if you need additional battlefield control spells. The spear can then try to bull rush someone through it, causing them to take 20d6 fire damage, followed by 10d6 for 1d3 rounds after.
* power word stun once the party has taken some damage to take the biggest threat out of the fight
* dominate person. The cleric might have a good will save, but it's still a DC 29. Dominate a martial character and the cleric fixes them. Dominate the cleric and the PCs are in serious trouble.
* heal if things are going really poorly
You can't widen cloudkill as it is not an area spell. Acid fog is more useful that you give it credit for as it also acts as solid fog, helping to turn the tide of action economy by tying up PCs.
I still don't rate Acid Fog at all. That's just half movement, which is likely to be around 30 as most groups facing this should have Haste running asap. You are still better off casting a normal Black Tentacles as that is also half movement due to difficult terrain and mass grappling.
Quote:
The longer this fight lasts the better it will go for Krune. Split the party, wear them down. Use his mobility!
Very very much this. His dimensional steps easily allows him to move between his starting are and A1/2. Drop a wall of stone at the exit from A3 and you delay the group lots. That gives him time to use his normal summons which he will need as one of the first things he loses from Rune deactivation is the quickened ones.
Quote:
Don't use the rod to empower cloudkill - it's a waste. As andreww notes, you may want to use it to maximize a summon spell to get a guaranteed 3 or 5 (1d4+1) lower level creatures though.
Empower on it is iffy, maximise on Cloudkill however and that's a lot of Con damage and it may also outright kill any of the groups summons. Communal Delay Poison will however ruin your day.../sadface
On wish: keep in mind that as a thassilonian conjurer his opposition schools of evocation and illusion are prohibited schools. From Inner Sea Magic: "A Thassilonian wizard can never prepare a spell that is in one of his prohibited schools - he treats these spells as if they were not on the wizard spell list." This affects what levels of spells he can use wish for by my reasoning.
The scenario never mentions his spellbook. As such, PCs won't be able to scribe spells that he has after defeating him. Was this intentional?
* bring Kurshu the Undying back to life - the spear may try to insist on this if he runs across the body
This is just evil especially as she comes back fully restored with a single negative level. Not sure any party could face both of them together.
Of course you could just use the Wish to duplicate a Dazing Firesnake at DC29 which is likely to remove anyone who isn't a paladin, monk or rogue for 5 rounds. Technically he is barred from Evocations but wish is Universal so he can probably do it.
On wish: keep in mind that as a thassilonian conjurer his opposition schools of evocation and illusion are prohibited schools. From Inner Sea Magic: "A Thassilonian wizard can never prepare a spell that is in one of his prohibited schools - he treats these spells as if they were not on the wizard spell list." This affects what levels of spells he can use wish for by my reasoning.
I am not so sure it does. Wish says you can duplicate any Wizard spell, not any Wizard spell that exists on your particular version of the list. I would be inclined to allow it. Not that you really need to as it will still have a huge impact.
Quote:
The scenario never mentions his spellbook. As such, PCs won't be able to scribe spells that he has after defeating him. Was this intentional?
This seems to be a fairly common occurrence and an annoyance for PFS Wizards.
You can't widen cloudkill as it is not an area spell. Acid fog is more useful that you give it credit for as it also acts as solid fog, helping to turn the tide of action economy by tying up PCs.
I still don't rate Acid Fog at all. That's just half movement, which is likely to be around 30 as most groups facing this should have Haste running asap. You are still better off casting a normal Black Tentacles as that is also half movement due to difficult terrain and mass grappling.
Bah. I was wrong on acid fog as it is an effect spell, not an area spell so widen doesn't work on it. Widened black tentacles it is then.
One thing I will note is that Krune actually struggles to do a lot of damage. He basically has one direct damaging spell in Horrid Wilting which his tactics wait to have him use. As such he is highly dependant on getting his summons out to be effective. He only has 3 quickened summons and can lose all of them if the Runes are disabled.
Casting normal summon monster spells at the group is like committing suicide. He must tie them up to allow him the time to complete the casts. As such if he has lost his quickened spells his first round should be something along the lines of:
Quickened Glitterdust as many as he can
Some form of control effect, Black Tentacles, Stinking Cloud, Wall of Stone etc
Dimensional Steps out of sight so he can start summoning on round 2.
You can't widen cloudkill as it is not an area spell. Acid fog is more useful that you give it credit for as it also acts as solid fog, helping to turn the tide of action economy by tying up PCs.
I still don't rate Acid Fog at all. That's just half movement, which is likely to be around 30 as most groups facing this should have Haste running asap. You are still better off casting a normal Black Tentacles as that is also half movement due to difficult terrain and mass grappling.
Bah. I was wrong on acid fog as it is an effect spell, not an area spell so widen doesn't work on it. Widened black tentacles it is then.
Widen says it affects bursts, emanations and spreads. Cloudkill and Acid Fog are spreads.
Widen says it affects bursts, emanations and spreads. Cloudkill and Acid Fog are spreads.
Oops. Widened maximized cloudkill on a widened black tentacles? yikes
andreww wrote:
Quickened Glitterdust as many as he can
Some form of control effect, Black Tentacles, Stinking Cloud, Wall of Stone etc
Dimensional Steps out of sight so he can start summoning on round 2.
Dimensional steps takes a standard action, so can can't quite do all that in one round. This makes placing a phase door somewhere convenient important for his mobility.
Dimensional steps takes a standard action, so can can't quite do all that in one round. This makes placing a phase door somewhere convenient important for his mobility.
So it is. I was confusing it with the Teleportation sub school shift power which is a swift action. That does significantly cut down on his offensive power.
Perhaps folks should focus on tactics taken if all runes dropped, none dropped, and hard mode. It seems that many of the tactics listed above won't work if all runes dropped.
So the point of this adventure is simple: kill everyone with tactics. Got it.
Meanwhile, is Shivok available? He had some really sweet stickers for the event that ended up on my Chronicle sheet at PaizoCon.. I am looking for the template so I can add them to my fellow players chronicle sheet when I run it in a few weeks. :D
So the point of this adventure is simple: kill everyone with tactics. Got it.
Not really. It is actually quite difficult for Krune to kill anyone as the majority of his damage is bound up in his ability to summon. If he retains his quickened summons they are still only level 4 and 5 which isn't creating anything to stop people for terribly long.
If you want Krune to actually be able to do very much at all you have to batter the group with status effects. Some combination of Slow, Stinking Cloud, Black Tentacles and Wall of Stone is basically essential or he wont ever get a summon off.
Disabling 1 rune gets rid of quickened SMV. 2/3 deals with quickened Wall of Stone. 3/5 gets quickened SM IV and 4/7 gets rid of the last SMV. Of the Runes only Life is really tricky to remove.
The Horrid Wilting is the big exception.
On the runes issue the difficulty is that he loses access to stuff depending on the number deactivated. I'm not particularly looking to add an extra 5-7 sections on his state at each level but if people want to do so please go ahead.
Perhaps folks should focus on tactics taken if all runes dropped, none dropped, and hard mode. It seems that many of the tactics listed above won't work if all runes dropped.
If all of his Runes are dropped then he is in real trouble. In the higher tier he can still drop a widened black tentacles and the quickened DDoor to A1 and start summoning. In lower tier he will have lost quickened DDoor and quickened Tentacles so probably looking at quickened glitterdust and black tentacles followed by relocating the next turn with dimensional steps and then starting to summon.
Im not seeing a problem with Krune wishing for all his runes to be up and all powers list due to their shutoff returned. Thats worth 75k of diamond dust. Or heck I wish all allies in my sanctum returned to life.
A wizard with wish is scary as hell. I cant see many things pcs could do status wise to effect this guy with his gear and potential buffs.
Also since his spear is innately intelligent it should be chucking slows out on its own every round it isnt dancing on a clothy spellcaster.
The reason I bring up the weapon is that so far people I have talked to overlook the fact that the weapon can dance and or cast spells on Krunes turn due to it being intelligent. So if you get someone unconcious next to Krune the spear will kill them without using one of his actions. Aka spear coup de grace using its actions not Krunes. Hurray intelligent weapons
Ps. The spear has telekinesis. It can grapple with a bonus of 17 Krunes lvl + his int mod of 10 so the spear grapples telekinticky at +28 so you can keep the nasty fighter or cleric or wizard effectively tied up should your weapon not wish to attack physically. RAWR KRUNE
Im not seeing a problem with Krune wishing for all his runes to be up and all powers list due to their shutoff returned. Thats worth 75k of diamond dust
That is definitely a potentially powerful effect although on hard mode he doesn't lose access to any spells due to shutoff and in the higher tier you only get the effect of four runes shut off if you disable all of them.
Wish is obviously so powerful and flexible that its difficult to see any party beating this on hard mode that isn't able to prevent him from taking actions from round 1 if he is played in accordance with his 31 Int. With freedom of movement available to him that looks like a very dicey prospect.
Teleporting to the sun isnt logical or fair. Telekinis on the first person to close on Krune to grapple followed by a quickened wall of stone to seperate the party from victim one before summoning is much better.
On top of that smacking the grappled player with the spear using Krunes own attack option doesn't break its concentration. >.>
Also use his rune disruption. Its fun!
I think you would need interplanetary teleport for that plan, which is 9th level and fails without a safe landing zone. Also the teleported comes too...
I think you would need interplanetary teleport for that plan, which is 9th level and fails without a safe landing zone. Also the teleported comes too...
PRD wish wrote:
Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
So my bad. Drop them in the negative energy plane.
I never said it was fair at all. NOTE: I have no plan to do this to my players. It was a theoretical discussion between me and some other GMs.
So my bad. Drop them in the negative energy plane.
I never said it was fair at all. NOTE: I have no plan to do this to my players. It was a theoretical discussion between me and some other GMs.
No reason why you shouldn't. One of the play reports had one of the characters plane shifted to Hell in the first encounter which is pretty brutal. After all this is the season ender and you are facing a RuneLord one of the most dangerous beings around. Choosing to play on hard mode means you are willing to take the risk.
I think you would need interplanetary teleport for that plan, which is 9th level and fails without a safe landing zone. Also the teleported comes too...
PRD wish wrote:
Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
So my bad. Drop them in the negative energy plane.
I never said it was fair at all. NOTE: I have no plan to do this to my players. It was a theoretical discussion between me and some other GMs.
Oh nice, I missed that line on the wish entry. DC 29 will save or be never seem from again to the whole party is pretty rough. The danger of teleporting everybody to someplace like the negative energy plane is they may be able to teleport back together via plane shift or some other powerful magic.
Oh nice, I missed that line on the wish entry. DC 29 will save or be never seem from again to the whole party is pretty rough. The danger of teleporting everybody to someplace like the negative energy plane is they may be able to teleport back together via plane shift or some other powerful magic.
They might although Plane Shift lands them 5d100 miles away from their intended destination which could be very messy given where the adventure is set.
Less messy than slowly withering away in the negative material plane sure but still messy.
Hmm, would it be unreasonable to say the Wish allowed Krune to use all of his prepared summons as a standard action for that one encounter?
I suppose my acid test for that is would you allow a player to make such a Wish and have it work as intended? I probably would, its not much different than nabbing a single class feature (Summoner/Druid archetype standard action summons) which feels well within the bounds of a Wish.
Considering how powerful Krune is I would feel uncomfortable giving him anything not off the standard wish list. Also I don't think I'd be entirely comfortable dying or killing a table via a nonstandard wish.
So I ran this at Michicon yesterday, and some thoughts.
Most everything for the group I ran it for started to run downhill from Kurshu on.
I reduced a barbarian to 1 int, and no one had restoration to fix him, so they all agree to let the ranger handle animal on the barbarian to get him to attack things, shortly after Kurshu died. 8(
My thoughts here were, at higher tier, limited wish into a improved invisibility, and then a second limited wish for a globe of invulnerability. Then go wade in, because invis purge, and glitter dust does nothing to you.
Runes.
This is where my party really at the end of the day, killed themselves. They were unable to identify the rune for what it was, and ended up skipping the deactivation of any other potential rune, even though I asked them repeatedly if they wanted to go check out everything else around the area. Instead they headed to the Lashmistress and skipped everything else.
Lashmistress encounter.
The black blades were nasty, and very effective, the blur potions really made them much much harder to kill, with them power attacking they were doing 2d6+21, along with a haste from the lashmistress to keep pressure up. I also did not have them pull their attacks to another creature at this tier, two of them sandwiched someone, and that person got all six attacks, whether or not they dropped.
This also was mixed in with a confusion cast, which affected the 1 int barbarian's handler, who then had the barbarian attack nearest creature which happened to be the parties arcane trickster. By the end of this encounter, one person was dead dead. The other two had been saved by the cleric casting breath of life back to back, first one the barbarian, then on the parties ninja.
As the party spent about a minute recuperating, I just started whistling, because well Krune had woken up and was just stretching after a long nap, and well there was bloodshed all over the alter area, and there were people who had all kind's of brand's and equipment. So I let them recover fully, because I'm Krune, and I had no idea who they were, but while they were doing this, I still and silent casted foresight, because well - I'm Krune.
So we parley'd, and I told them to basically come worship Lassila, Anyway, long story short, foresight tells me they're about to attack combat starts, I win initiative, and proceed to telekensis the cleric, then for the heck of it, drop the quickened black tentacles (widened) and an acid fog.
No one was able to break out, and so I just decided the next round, to blow the last charges in my rod, and maximized empowered a horrid wilting, and that was all she wrote, and thanks for playing.
All in all, a great module, unfortunately the group was tpk'd, but them's the falls of the dice.
Globe of Invulnerability is stationary so unless the group obligingly stay next to you its a nono.
I am surprised the Lashmistress encounter caused any real problems. She has so little HP that a single full attack from a reasonably competent character is likely to kill her.
Andreww, the globe of invulnerability was something I was thinking about doing, all I did was improved invisibility, but it was shut down by stupid scroll of glitterdust. 8(
Also yes, Kurshu can and does likes to eat her some aasimars / tieflings.
Also, you'd be surprised what happens when two people fail a confusion save right off the bat what sort of hell goes down.
Interesting to see it from the other side. Our GM definitely didn't follow the tactics as written for Krune and I am happy he didn't. Krune would have been a total pushover if he had spent time with cloudkills, BT's, and evil summons. Our GM jumped straight to the maximized empowered horrid wilting, followed by a slow from the sword, and a quickened dim door away. Even so, he was hit for close to 100 hp of damage in before he got out of the room.
Sin of Asmodeus wrote:
Im not seeing a problem with Krune wishing for all his runes to be up and all powers list due to their shutoff returned. Thats worth 75k of diamond dust. Or heck I wish all allies in my sanctum returned to life.
Aren't these well beyond a single wish?
Reactivating runes - That kind of thing is not on the list and is in fact way beyond anything on the list. Your asking wish to undo an hour of work done by the PC's. The only thing listed that is close to that is the ability to use wish to undo 1 roll in the past round. You asking to undo a lot more rolls than that and done further in the past. Your also reactivating a minimum of 7 spells and wish can only duplicate 1 spell per casting. You can't make a wish do the work of 7 wishes.
Bringing back to life everyone - Once again way beyond the scope of a single wish. You can resurrect 1 ally, not everyone. That would require 5 wishes, 125,000 gp in diamond dust, a lot of time (have to go touch every resurrected ally), and not running into the PC's. If you do go this route, Kurshu is a good choice as The Lashmistress is kind of a pushover.
EDIT: Maybe Miracle could do these things as it is more open ended when you invoke the "Powerful Request" clause. Definitely can do #2.
Only if you limit yourself to the safe stuff list. Wish allows you to ask for anything subject to GM judgment.
Quote:
You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment, at the GM's discretion.)
If you do go this route, Kurshu is a good choice as The Lashmistress is kind of a pushover.
The Lashmistress isn't just a pushover, she is utterly terrible. If your major ally is an old version Mystic Theurge you know you are in trouble. I sort of assume she is there as some easy encounter to lull the players into a false sense of security.
Yes...but then you as a GM have to screw yourself over. GM's don't get to just ignore the "undesireable fullfillment" clause of that quote because you want to shock and awe players. I also think that squeezing 5-7 wishes out of one is well beyond that clause.
An example would be Krune asks for ALL of his Runes back up. That's a LOT of spell energy to come up with. More than a typical wish can push, so the wish borrows from Krune's prepared spells to fund the energy. Krune begin's to loose all of his high level slots.
General question: Are spells like Wish and Miracle exempt from the PFS rule that options must be stated in the book and "GM approval" options are not allowed?
Krune cannot stand up to being attacked very much. If you've taken his runes down he does not have nearly enough defenses to stand up to even a single full round from the party. Here's some tips/anecdotes:
I played cat and mouse with Krune with him telephoning around and summoning various nasty things like maximized summon monster 9 for 3 elder earth elementals.
One of the things I realized reading Krune is that he only has 2 swift escape methods, quickened d-door and quickened wall of stone, with the wall of stone being a little iffy.
So I think one of the keys to his mobility is to set up a good phase door which will allow Krune to effectively teleport as a 5ft step when adjacent to the door. This allows him to use a standard, a swift, the spear and teleport away all at the same time.
When the party started guessing where he'd go, not realizing that was the only place he could go, he cast a sleetstorm in that room. The party wizard responded with an echolocation and went after him. He of course stepped back through the phase door and summoned a few more critters.
Next time he stepped back into the sleet storm room he put up a wall of stone in the doorway. This bought him time to get spell turning up (which later reflected a feeblemind).
By this time the last of the elementals had gone down and so Krune moved through the phase door, found 3 members of the party and wished them into the sun. To his surprise they all succeeded on the DC 29 will save to not be incinerated so he quickened a d-door to go back into hiding.
If it had not been for the life bubble, my initial plan was to start with the slow/empowered cloudkill, followed by a quickened silenced door, figuring getting the PCs to waste even a single round in the empowered cloud kill would be a success and important in getting the elementals/maxamized & Empowered Horrid Wilting to get them later.
I don't think I would have realized how awesome phase door was if VC Alex Greenshields hadn't been so brutal on us with it at PaizoCon.
Because Planar binding is not a done deal. You called in a 18HD monster and now your going to negotiate with it in front of all the PC's? Also, you won't have a binding circle or any other protections. Good outsiders are not likely to help and evil outsiders are likely to see him as a snack.
Wishing people into the sun is probably the most brutally effective tactic. Just sending them to another planes leaves the possibility they might come back.
If you don't want to be that vicious other options include:
Heal - not a bad choice if he has taken a bunch of damage
Spell Resistance: SR of 12+CL which doesn't affect your own spells is decent.
Prismatic Wall to really separate the group if Walls of Stone aren't doing it.
Another Horrid Wilting because one wasn't enough.
An extra Phase Door for more movement shenanigans
Mordenkainens Magnificent Mansion: retreat into it, summons lots of minions, come out all guns blazing
Anti Life Shell to screw over melee characters
Yesterday a group did this module and two different characters were hit with Krunes rune corruption ability. One of the guys lost the ioun stone and the random feat he lost was a prerequisite for 4 other feats, the question is, is this a permanent loss? can he get a remove curse to restore the initial feat? Once restored is the ioun stone still functional? Another player had the stat boost and lost that, is the penalty permenant? if he gets a remove curse does he get the boon back? These did not seem to be addressed past the end of the module.
