keeping the desert-exploration on-track [books 3 & 4]

[Erik Freund]

Reading through the desert exploration (2nd half book 3, 1st half book 4), I'm a little concerned, and looking for insight.

The net output from Tephu is "Chisisek might know something; his tomb is in the Parched Dunes." If there's anything more than that, let me know, but I think that's all you have to start the hex-crawl with. It's not even clear which direction to go, or for how far. (Meaning, PCs could wander far off the map.)

Within the hex-crawl, I see only two ways of figuring out where Chisisek's tomb is. First at the salt lakes, if you find the petrified adventurers and restore them to flesh (which the module says would be a cruelty due to erosion), then one of them can tell you about the tomb. Second is when traversing the hex the tomb is in, the party is entitled to both a Perception as well as a Survival check (DC 20, both) in order to find it. Since many of the hexes are empty, if the PCs find yet-another-empty-hex (due to failing this check), they are likely to think nothing of it, and just move on.

This seems failure-prone. As a solution, I guess I'd have the party get attacked by cultists, and then let them get interrogated or have it slip. (Which is tricky given the established use of troth.) I'd prefer to leave bread-crumbs and make the hex-crawling itself meaningful. Any ideas of nifty sign-posts to lead the way?

Furthermore, once the party gets to the ravine that Chisisek is in, they only need to go as far as to rescue the trapped sphinx, at which point she can tell us "I'm sorry Mario, the architect's body is in another castle". There's no need to crawl the rest of the ravine or clear out the nearby pyramid. Since the sphinx knows the desert well, and has an aligned MO, I see no reason why the sphinx would not become a GMPC for the entirety of book 4.

Is there a reason to finish book 3 after the sphinx is freed? Is there a way to prevent the sphinx from becoming a GMPC in book 4? Is there a way to make book 4 more than just "ask the sphinx to fly aerial reconnaissance until she sees the sightless sphinx, then beeline straight there"?

Also, I get that cultists cannot be captured/interrogated in the traditional fashion because of the troth, but what is to stop the PCs from casting Charm/Dominate (or traditional double-agent intrigue) in order to bypass all of book 3 (library + hexcrawl) and half of book 4 and jump straight to the sightless sphinx?

[Caderyn]

1. Failing a DC20 Perception check at level 9 is pretty hard for the parties trapfinder who should be sporting at least enough perception to pass it on a take 10 (which when you are wandering around a hex for half a day would be the default assumption) otherwise the party would already be dead from all the DC30+ traps earlier in the book.

2. The cultists at the pyramid still need to be destroyed the Sphinx would not leave the place unguarded with enemies still around, so either the PC's help the Sphinx clear the area or she gets herself killed trying and the cultists catch up to the PC's as they progress into book 4

3. The Sphinx "can" offer to help the PC's but that does not mean she would do suicidal things like flying off alone to scout out the cult (if she did she would almost certainly get captured/killed by the maftets before finding anything interesting)

4. Charm would not help as they would immolate themselves the instant they become conscious again, Dominate spells would need to be cast while the person is unconscious as the instant they become conscious they would take the immediate action to explode. Also lesser cultists likely know very little about what is going on so you would need to capture one of the higher up's most of which have good will saves, and are likely to be killed by the PC's due to the risk of them escaping.

[Cthulhudrew]

I'd probably be tempted to run the two books more or less concurrently (which would likely require either moving some of the encounters to fit the players' levels, or rejiggering their CRS, but keeping the "major" encounters in the same locations).

As to the difficulties inherent in having the PCs get where they need to be, I had some of the same concerns, and think that some of your suggestions sound very good.