|
*Varnhold Vanishing Spoilers Ahead*
Hey all! Here's the deal: I gave my PCs a limited-time-only resting room at the beginning of vordakai's tomb, which has now been expended. They've cleared out most of the dungeon except the prison and its guardians and the final series of encounters starting in the feasthall, which I intend to run as one ongoing battle.
It seems as though they intend to rest before the final battle, but that presents a problem for me: since Kingmaker has so many 15-minute adventuring days, I wanted this dungeon to really put them up against the wall in terms of resource management - I want the Paladin to actually run out of Lay on Hands and maybe force them to use some of their back-up scrolls, for example.
So, how can I/should I disturb their rest? This will be the first time in the campaign their rest has been disturbed. I'm thinking some Soul Eaters might attack them in the night, thus disturbing the rest of the party and giving them only 3/4s of their resources for the next day (Channels, Lay on Hands, etc.; 1 less spell per level for casters). I might also replace some cyclops zombies they killed on their first run through the dungeon. Thoughts?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Certainly any and/or all of that is fair game. However, Vordekai is a lich. We know that Vordekai has been observing the party through his familiar (has the party dealt with that yet?) More to the point, I would argue its safe to assume that Vordekai has means with which to observe his tomb (regardless of whether the AP as written says so). Why not just have Vordekai come and say "Hello"?
He casts invisibility and teleports in. Or deals with any wards/protections the PCs have erected. If they don't have any protection up, then he just pops in and starts on the unconscious PCs first (they're asleep, so they'll be pretty easy pickings). Keep in mind too, that the "armored" party members are likely either sleeping without their armor, or are going to wake up fatigued? (I believe that's the rule, but can't recall for sure). Also, their buffs will almost certainly be down by that point. Make sure that the PCs take the required actions to draw/pick up weapons, etc.
I don't often attack my PCs in their sleep, but at the same time, if they are silly enough to take a nap in known enemy territory, they are kind of asking for it.
|
|
Oh yes, they've run into Horagnamon and his lovely little "Will save or be fascinated" bird song several times in the past. In fact, I'm planning on having Vordakai transform him into an Advanced Leukodaemon for the final stage of the boss battle.
A scry and fry wouldn't be out of the question, though I hate to spoil the tension of seeing him for the first time (I derped and let slip he was a lich already). If I was playing "Vordakai vs. sleeping party" straight he would probably kill them all, too. Hmm, but perhaps he can send a lovely swarm their way to disturb their slumber... Haha, I can imagine them fending off Soul Eaters and swarms only to come outside and see Horagnamon laughing (cawing) at them.
Ooh, or new idea - maybe Horagnamon can get them sleepwalking... :3
Wow, so your party knows that they are in the "lair" of a lich and yet still wants to take a nap? This totally reminds me of an Order of the Stick strip where the first level party is getting ready to enter the dungeon of the lich. They debate whether or not they should because the lich is clearly too powerful for them. They reason though that the lich will be at the bottom of the dungeon and so, by the time they get there, they will have leveled up enough to fight him. They then open the front door to find the lich standing there.
To be fair, it really does kind of depend on just how "mean"/ruthless you want to be. Certainly Kingmaker is well set up for the 15 minute adventuring day style of campaigning, so there is a bit of an understanding if the party doesn't quite realize how precarious their position is. Part of this depends too on how experienced the players (not the characters) are. As a long time GM, I can certainly understand wanting to give the party a bit of an out knowing what a tpk can do to the overall storyline.
|
In our Kingmaker game, Vordekai did something to charm/dominate (I'm not the DM so I don't know the specifics) on of the PC keeping watch while we were sleeping. We ended up having a fight where we burned a bunch of resources trying to subdue, but not kill, one of our own party.
It kind of reinforced that we were dealing with an intelligent villain since he knew not to beat on the synthesist summoners ridiculous armor class but go for the will save and make us try to hit our own maxed out tanky character.
Besides what has been suggested you could have everyone who tries to sleep make a will save and those who fail can't rest because they have bad nightmares about vordekai trying to enter their minds.
Depending on how much they fail they could wake up screaming, rousing the ones who made their save.
If you don't want Vordakai to just fry the PCs, then have him send a collection of minions -- rationale, he doesn't quite know yet what they can do, so the minions are intended to provoke the PCs into revealing their best stuff so Vordakai, like any well-prepared wizard, can shift his spell prep around to clobber them.
A few dread cyclops zombies, a couple of soul eaters, maybe one or two other summoned monsters, all loaded up with buff spells -- make them tough to attack (so the PCs will have to expend resources to take them out), and obviously set up with defenses against anything the PCs have used a lot of lately (like when Vordakai or his familiar would be watching.)
Alternately: send one soul eater with improved invisibility cast on it against the PCs -- orders are just to kill the sentry and come back home. So the rest of the PCs wake to find up their sentry is dead and his soul is missing... would be good for spreading terror.
Bonus points if the soul eater drags the body away so that Vordakai can animate it and use it against the PCs. Double bonus points if Vordakai sets an enchantment all over the tomb so that whomever dies in it automatically animates immediately ;)