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I spent around 8,900 gold summoning and compelling a Planar Companion (a Kolyarut named Zero One) who was Plane Shifted to the Negative Energy Plane in the second round of combat against the Herald of Lissala.
I'll have to remember the mission name "Balls Deep Hail Mary!" Seems like it might add some extra luck...
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I gm'ed and played this one
When I ran it
Spoiler:We had 6 and were playing high tier. I can't remember exact classes/levels but I know we had a ranger 11 and a paladin 10 who did a LOT of the work.
First encounter we have some int drain which while painful wasn't a big deal on our already idiot ranger.They had a very high level wizard which identified every single part of each and every rune upon seeing them. They completed all 7 runes well within the time limit.
The lashmistress was fairly easy except that a nat 1 caused a debuff spell to stick for the krune encounter.
Krune teleports out of his chamber and observes summoned monsters, and crazy stuff poised to kill him. The party makes no illusion that they want to rip his head off by screaming "FOR FREEDOM!" He leaves back into the lash mistresses room and wall of stones most of the party off. He then pops a large earth elemental which is unable to hit the only party member near him (The ranger with MCvsE) so it road blocks the party. After the ranger gets a full attack and does upward of 150 damage krune decides it's a terrible idea to stand next to him and teleports into the hallway. Krune drops black tentacles into the exit and hallway so they have to go through it while he dumps his summon list. What comes next left me with a moment of "Whut" that you can only get as a GM.
The party decides once it sees the tentacles in the hall to go THROUGH THE WALL and says "OH YEA". They do over 300 points of damage to the wall in a single turn and krune (along with me) just had his jaw on the ground. Krune did manage to get a maximized empowered summon monster 7 (recalled) for furies who spammed arrows and unholy blight. Spell reflection triggered on litany of righteousness which let them know it was going on. He used hostile juxtaposition on one of the devils while waiting for the party to reach him and defied a few full attacks but inevitably fell to the ever advancing DPR machines of the ranger and paladin.
I was playing my 9th-level wood oracle in this one. The character's a dedicated archer but ended up doing zero damage the whole scenario.
We made the various skill checks to get through the door and ID all the runes, mostly due to the efforts of the shaman and the arcane trickster, and disabled them all. We took out the cultist fight fairly quickly (I think I did some damage here, so maybe not zero for the whole scenario...). I'd spent a bunch of third level spells (for example, summoning aurochs to trample over the runes that could only be damaged by summoned creatures), so I didn't get to do the broad-spectrum communal resist energy castings I was hoping to use. So I summoned a canarylantern archon into the mist surrounding the coffin to see what would happen.
Krune pops up behind us, sees we're hostile (I had a scroll in hand for one thing). He drops this zig-zag wall of stone that cordons off everyone away from him except the ranger, then summons a big mass of earth elementals that couldn't get to the ranger because of the magic circle against evil. (I bought 4 scrolls of that and used them on different party members before the fight.) He then teleports into the hallway, blocking the entrance with black tentacles.
We break into where the ranger was - the paladin and the adamantine-hammer-wielding cleric of Torag could break the walls of stone fairly easily but had to get through several layers. We then clear out the elementals, and I then have to point at to the cleric (tongues curse, and he doesn't speak Celestial) and pantomime hitting the outer wall. The ranger with fly and freedom of movement goes out the main entrance through the tentacles, and the rest go out through the hole into the outer hallway, finding Krune and a bunch of erynies.
Fighting happens. Furies do their thing, shooting arrows and spells from outside the circles. I make two attempts to stick dimensional anchor from scrolls on Krune. First one he somehow switches with one of the devils (and it didn't beat her spell resistance so he could keep doing it.) Second one gets dispelled apparently by a contingency. Ranger manages to get one full round of attacks on Krune, doing huge damage. Paladin kills a bunch of summoned minions. Shaman is notably able to cast haste like 4 times which was good because we keep getting hit with slow. I never get close enough to Krune to use the nuclear option.
Krune teleports back into the room with the coffin. We pursue, he catches a lot of us in another black tentacles. The ranger gets to him, does some more damage. Krune, apparently out of uses of his teleport ability, tries to back up and cast something and then dies to an unexpected Step Up and Strike from the ranger.
Meanwhile, half the group's still in the tentacles and low on HP. Cleric's out of channels. Paladin steps in, uses his last one, bringing me back to consciousness. I then pull out the aforementioned nuclear option, managing to pop out of my wrist sheath and use a scroll of antimagic field, keeping the tentacles from killing me and two other PCs.
All in all a fun time. The fight with Krune was enjoyably intense. Think I spent more on consumables than I made from the scenario but that's fine.
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It then proceeded to Plane Shift My character to the Plane of Fire, with no way of coming back. And that was the first attack it made against me.
I spent a bunch of Gold and Prestige to bring my character back. But the fact was: I did NOTHING THE ENTIRE SCENARIO! I got hit by Plane Shift within the first 15 minutes; Game over for me.
My only reaction to that is "WHY IS THAT EVEN THERE!?!?!?! This game is supposed to be fun! Dying to a failed DC 28 Will Save in the first 15 minutes of a scenario is NOT FUN!"
The remainder of the party proceeds to try to solve puzzles and disable runes, I have to sit there and watch.
Last boss TPKs everyone with overpowered BS that I don't think any PC, no matter how optimized, is capable of surviving. Especially after the initial Geas-es affecting two of the remaining four party members.
I was scheduled to play a second scenario that same day, and I almost didn't want to play again.
Now, you can just shrug and say "High-level play", but that's a friggin' cop-out; a poor attempt at defending this utter-BS scenario.
[/sore-loser-rant]
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You're really misremembering things. Her description states she fights to the death and her tactics are left up to the GM, beyond that she favors staying at range and focuses down outsiders so she can eat them.** spoiler omitted **It's been a while since I've looked at it but I am certain her description says at least these two things. 1) she doesn't really feel like fighting the party and more importantly 2) she doesn't believe the party is capable of defeating krune even if they get past her.
I don't know what occurred in your game and why the gm used such tactics and I am sorry for the scenario to turn out so sour for you.
Yes, which is exactly why...
He was grasping at straws and counting the squares for movement, desperately homing in on my Human Fighter/Bard, instead of following the tactics and "Focusing on Outsiders".
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This is the most dangerous society adventure and I expect fully half of groups to TPK and nearly 2/3rds of groups to have deaths.
The only thing I think should change about this adventure in any way is it should have a bonekeep style warning sheet.
I'm not sure it's the most dangerous (simply because it's 7-11; there are some 1-5 scenarios which are really deadlier - Citadel of Flame comes to mind), but in the hands of a clever GM, it can be very nasty indeed.
I don't think I would run a pick-up group through it: I'm very confident that I'd TPK such a table. When it comes up eventually at a game day, and I elect to GM it, I'll request that the table (we pre-muster everything in Atlanta via forums) coordinate resources and talk strategy (buffing, who does what, and so on) via PM or email (or whatever) prior to play.
When I played it, I had signed up for it about 6 weeks in advance, and I sent a PM to all the other registered players saying "hey, what's up"; by the time we sat down to play, we had thorough knowledge of each other's characters, we'd coordinated consumable purchases (like, ahem, Goz masks for everyone), and we had a primary strategy, a secondary strategy for when that was countered, and a tertiary strategy for when THAT was countered... so, a strategy onion. Of course, we had pre-determined that we would run hard mode (well, I may have just declared it so, and everyone agreed!)
That's the kind of deep prep I'd recommend to a table planning on a hard mode run.
It's an event!
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I sympathize, but in PFS, you're kind of bound by RAW.Unless a GM has full control of a game and abilities to modify on a whim, Goz mask+eversmoking bottle, makes 95% of games easy, even ones with hardmode.If you're trying this exploit on me and I have access to a villain with wish, you'd better believe I'm wishing the bottle (if not the person holding it) to the middle of Golarion's sun. :P
Wish is a hell of a spell, man. You'd be hard pressed to say that with the insane reality bending power of 'Whatever the GM thinks is okay goes' would invalidate teleporting an object you can't see.
Wish could also utterly cancel the bottle trick in about fifteen other ways simply by duplicating a spell.
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I spent a bunch of Gold and Prestige to bring my character back. But the fact was: I did NOTHING THE ENTIRE SCENARIO! I got hit by Plane Shift within the first 15 minutes; Game over for me.
Nice long post from a players viewpoint.
I would suggest GM'ing, then take your bad experiences and flip it. Learn from it.
I do not think anyone would care if you stopped playing PFS.
I think tables of players would care if you became a great GM.
Personally I find it extremely bad form to kill or remove a person from a scenario in the first encounter. But, I have usually allowing the person to get raised after the encounter. This is not the case for this scenario.
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95% of a scenario and if it being fun is up to the GM.
This specific scenario really lets the GM, turn up the difficulty.
Unfortunately it is up to the GM to make it a difficult but not a 100% murder fest. I have ran it 2x with around a 75% PC Kill rate. I know one group had a blast and the other really disliked it.
One group, (liked it) killed Krune. The other hated it, they ran.
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I sympathize, but in PFS, you're kind of bound by RAW.Unless a GM has full control of a game and abilities to modify on a whim, Goz mask+eversmoking bottle, makes 95% of games easy, even ones with hardmode.If you're trying this exploit on me and I have access to a villain with wish, you'd better believe I'm wishing the bottle (if not the person holding it) to the middle of Golarion's sun. :PWish is a hell of a spell, man. You'd be hard pressed to say that with the insane reality bending power of 'Whatever the GM thinks is okay goes' would invalidate teleporting an object you can't see.
Wish could also utterly cancel the bottle trick in about fifteen other ways simply by duplicating a spell.
Also in David's group. Carlos got dice fubar'd when he rolled 1's on our Inquisitor's Variant channeling save vs. Daze so he couldn't get the wish cast to get rid of the bottle. Even still I believe we got him with an Anchor (we had 3 or 4 at the table) and I had Bit the Hand on his Bebilith who was blocking his escape. Once the archer with adamantine arrows started firing away, it didn't take long.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I know it has the most deaths of any PFS adventure for sure.I'd like to see your data on this, because I'd actually hazard a guess that something like The Dalsine Affair has more.
Pffft, gamers don't need data in order to know something. Knowing is something that comes from passion and conviction; I know it!
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I spent a bunch of Gold and Prestige to bring my character back. But the fact was: I did NOTHING THE ENTIRE SCENARIO! I got hit by Plane Shift within the first 15 minutes; Game over for me.Nice long post from a players viewpoint.
I would suggest GM'ing, then take your bad experiences and flip it. Learn from it.
I do not think anyone would care if you stopped playing PFS.
I think tables of players would care if you became a great GM.
Personally I find it extremely bad form to kill or remove a person from a scenario in the first encounter. But, I have usually allowing the person to get raised after the encounter. This is not the case for this scenario.
Oh, I meant, I just didn't want to play again that day. ^.^
It was horribly demoralizing how it all happened.
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Agreed, since The Dalsine Affair is likely to have two or three times as many tables run compared to The Waking Rune.I know it has the most deaths of any PFS adventure for sure.I'd like to see your data on this, because I'd actually hazard a guess that something like The Dalsine Affair has more.
And because of that argument, I wonder if First Steps edges out either.
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I think First Steps isn't quite as dangerous, and those who replay it tend to be able to mitigate the dangers that are there.
It was horribly demoralizing how it all happened.
I think we've all had a few games like that. I know there have been a couple sessions that made me feel like I didn't want to GM anymore.
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I think First Steps isn't quite as dangerous, and those who replay it tend to be able to mitigate the dangers that are there.
It was horribly demoralizing how it all happened.I think we've all had a few games like that. I know there have been a couple sessions that made me feel like I didn't want to GM anymore.
Oh I have been there, I had an existential crisis when I played EoTT Part 1.
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This is definitely one that I would recommend you play with a selected group, especially on hard mode. I played this at Chimaera Con in San Antonio this past April with four other people but I play pfs with three of them on a regular basis. We played normal since I was the only vote for Hard.
I cheated a little in placing a rank in linguistics to get Thassalonian as a language since my fighter just reached lvl 11 (1st scenario at 11). But I feel that we all had an idea of what we were getting into with Krune and our prep made him easy. It was the first encounter that we didn't prep for and why it took longer than the Krune fight.
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I am with Brigg. I got a chronicle after half hour of play with 0 xp or gold and a dead party. The worst experience I have had in my 30+ years of gaming.
I am amazed people can get past the first encounter ( in 1 round!?). I saw a climb check I dare not make inside a stinking cloud and a character death every other round. If I had more experienced players and optimized characters, we may have had a chance. But, as someone else mentioned, no 'bonekeep' style disclaimer in the beginning.
I know i could replay it, or run it, but have better things to do like strip sealer off a floor.
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I have a similar experience in that this was VERY hard. My party managed to get through in high tier but it was very close on many occasions. This is one I would definitely advise you not to play unless you are very familiar with the people your playing with. No PUGS at a convention. Luckily my group had done the entire Cult of Lissala meta plot and were intimately familiar with each and had a SOP.
Ran with a party possessing significant ranged damage and spell capacity, both divine and arcane.
Fight was difficult but not deadly. The gunslinger exploding criticals all over everything probably helped. Krune was not expecting bullets.
-j
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That's pretty much how we dealt with Krune when we faced him. Was a while back, so I don't actually recall the exact party make up, but:
Gunslinger/Inquisitor 5/6
Zen Archer/Sorc 10/1
Druid 11 (w/ Tiger)
Gnome Beastmaster Cavalier 11
Oracle (Hellknight) 11
??
We ended up handling most of the early stuff easily, though it took some thinking to get the runes disabled. Krune, we had a plan for. Munny (my inquislinger) got the drop on initiative after we blew up the gem, and he popped out.
Swift action: Activate Krune-bane on Vera (his musket)
Standard: Ready a vital strike - bane shot on Krune if he casts.
Krune tries to cast Empowered (Maximized?) Cloudkill, but took 30-something damage to the face... and fails his concentration check. Then, the archer opens up, and it was finished by the Cavalier charging (and I believe, critting).
Boom. Dead runelord. No, we weren't playing Hard Mode.
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I suppose to The Waking Rune's defense (Shudders at the mere thought of defending this), I went in with a group of people I did not know well in person. This included one player, The aforementioned Summoner, whom asked the lady that briefed us on our mission if he could feel her chest. (Using much ruder vernacular)
I went into the quest with my at-the-time-level-11.1 Cad/Daredevil, Senel Trolus.
He was optimized to hinder enemies with Dirty Tricks, buff the team's AC, Reflex, and Acrobatics, Heal, and assist with Immediate Action spells. And I had a Lyrakien Azata named Muse as a familiar via Eldritch Heritage. So she was flying around, lending support as well.
Senel and Muse were in no way, shape, or form equipped for direct combat. And unfortunately, due to the party's composition, I wasn't able to lend as much support for what little time I was on the field.
I had no prior knowledge of the scenario before going into it. All I knew was that my regular GM/Venture, the super-awesome Brian Lefebvre, had said to me, "I see you're scheduled to play The Waking Rune. You're gonna die."
I laughed it off, because there were a number of occasions where people said Senel would die in a scenario and he didn't. But yeah, I should have taken more caution or tried to read up on the scenario.
To my defense on the "Laughing off death", I was also told I would die in Vengeance at Sundered Crag, the second game I wound up playing that day. And...
The final boss wound up with his robe over his eyes, his pants down to his ankles, a hard kick to the crotch, and several bludgeoning wounds from Senel's trusty +1 Merciful Sap.
Anyway, I know if I were to GM Waking Rune, I would want to thoroughly read the scenario beforehand and come up with a way that it can be challenging without being...well...my experience.
If I Plane Shift someone, send them somewhere they will survive, then drop them back into the scenario later, saying someone in the other plane sent you back, or something like that. I dunno. Just jogging ideas around.
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Spoiler:He then pops a large earth elemental which is unable to hit the only party member near him (The ranger with MCvsE) so it road blocks the party.
For myself - I played it with my spouse at PaizoCon upon release, run by the esteemed and exquisite Eric Brittain. I'm not sure I'd quite consider that a pickup game, but it was a fairly random group of 4 11's and 2 10's (one of them me). Two Paladins, one ranger, one rogue, one super-healy cleric and my own necromancer bloatmage (+ emerald elixir - turned out smarter than Krune!).