Help altering Erylium encounter please

[Anharat]

My cousin has expressed interest in our game, and she will jump in this Saturday. However, my regular group will start the Erylium encounter this Saturday, and they are all level 2. They really need a healer something awful, so I was leaning toward giving her a cleric.

So, I was thinking, maybe this cleric was captured by Nualia at some point. And maybe this Lamashtu wouldn't accept this cleric as a sacrifice for some reason. So perhaps they try to twist her into a lieutenant for Nualia.

And now this cleric is in Lamashtu's cathedral with Erylium, so the group will need to fight both Erylium and the cleric.

I was thinking maybe 3 levels of cleric of Lamashtu and 1 level of inquisitor or anti-paladin granted by Lamashtu?

I'm really not sure how to balance this out, I'm still quite new.

Anyway, I think when the cleric starts to bleed out I will have some kind of divine intervention to stabilize and protect her, cuz I have some pretty ruthless players and I don't want my cousin's first impression of the game to be a negative one. And once the encounter is over the cleric will lose the 1 level of inquisitor or anti-paladin, and become a level 3 cleric of whatever.

Any suggestions would help.

[Tinalles]

Hrm. I don't know that I'd give anyone an evil minion for a first character. Definitely consult with your cousin to see if that's something she'd like before doing it.

And here's an alternative background:

The PC is a good-aligned healer who overheard the fight between Tsuto and his father in the Glassworks and tried to jump in and help. Things went badly, and the PC got taken prisoner and hauled down to the catacombs. The PLAN is to offer the PC to Lamashtu as a sacrifice. But that has to wait until the next time Nualia is in town, because Erylium wants her to officiate.

Meanwhile, the cleric has been chained in one of those little closets at the side of Erylium's area which doesn't actually have anything in it. Once the fight breaks out, the PC can bang on the door and shout for help (have your cousin do the shouting so it's clear out-of-character that it's another player, not a tricksy minion).

Neither Tsuto nor Erylium is stupid enough to let a captive remain armed and armored. So make sure that your cousin's cleric has the spell Instant Armor prepped, and hope one of the other PCs has a spare weapon - at least a dagger or something.

You can also dump the original gear in the other closet so that your cousin's PC can pick it up after the fight.

As for builds -- work with your cousin on that, but I'd suggest

- the feat Selective Channeling, so that the PC can avoid healing Eryllium with channeled energy while still healing everyone else.

- the Birthmark trait so that the PC doesn't need a divine focus to cast spells.

Spend some time with her and talk through the process of building a character. It'll take a while, but it's worth it. If she's helped build it, she'll feel a much greater sense of ownership.

Also, avoid multi-classing for now. A new player has a TON of unfamiliar rules to absorb. Multi-classing will just complicate things for her by adding even more unfamiliar rules.

You might consider giving her an Oracle with the Life mystery (and channel energy revelation) instead of a standard cleric, simply because Oracles are spontaneous casters. A caster who prepares spells, like a cleric, is more complex to run because you have to keep picking your spells every morning. Whereas a spontaneous caster has a set spell list, and only has to pick them once per level, whereupon she'll have a whole level to figure out how those spells work before she has to add more to the mix.

Hope this helps.

[Anharat]

Wow, yeah that is so much more creative and less complex. I think you're right about the oracle, I'm sure I can sell it to her.

Thanks

[EvilMinion]

Take it a few steps further, have it that Erylium and her sinspawn cohorts have been forcefeeding the poor cleric waters of Lamashtu (from the previous room) hoping to convert/transform her into an evil minion of some sort... but thus far, she's been making her Fortitude saves...

It only generates one dose a day, so it'd not be too outlandish to think she's managed to resist a time or two (especially if the 3-armed goblin guy has been trying to get his drinks in too).
Will give her some useful information to impart to the rest of the party once the fight is over...

You could even have had her subjected to the Minor Runewell once as an experiment...

Perhaps say she was captured with another person... and she was thrown in the runewell... and the rage that overcame her caused her to kill the other person... or if you'd rather, the other person was pushed in, and tried to kill her, forcing her to defend herself.

Either way, it then gives the players some insights into the Runewell as well and focuses some background of your cousin's cleric well into the rest of the story.

[Kalshane]

I second Tinalles' advice. Antagonist-turned-party-member can be difficult to pull off and is definitely not something you want to mess with for a first-time player.

Making her an Oracle would also remove the need for a Divine Focus. Just make sure she knows some spells that don't require other components and she can be ready to help out as soon as the PCs release her. (Plus having her gear in the other closet gets her up to full speed as soon as the fight is over.]

Prd wrote:

Oracles do not need to provide a divine focus to cast spells that list divine focus (DF) as part of the components.

[jahvul]

Scrap all of that, have the player make a normal character who joins with the pcs in town. Problem solved.

[Mudfoot]

For a start, if you need a healer, don't make it an evil cleric. They can't spontaneously heal and can't heal by channelling. About all they can do us cast prepared spells and spam wands.