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I did three and my players killed them quickly. Unless the author pops in I doubt you'll get an "official" answer. I'd use my best judgement on what the players can handle. Remember that once they drop one robot the azers switch sides so I'd probably go with three unless your players can't handle them, but since they only do non-lethal they aren't that tough.
So which special ability is the yaoguia in pt. 1 supposed to have?
I'm going with the default grapple one from the Bestiary.
My party, for whatever reason, do terribly against grappling.
It sort of short-circuits the dungeon crawl, but I try to not penalize the players for creative thinking and not approaching every problem with an axe.
I would say he would make the deal.
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Illaris Zeleshi's statblock lists her rift boots and even says "she flees by using her rift boots" in her tactics entry. But what are rift boots? I can't find them anywhere?
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Per James Jacobs, they were a tech item that was cut during development but accidentally stayed on her character sheet.
Oh I must have missed that post somehow. Thanks!
I'm wondering, how can Xoud actually prepare spells? How does he handle his spellbooks?
I'm wondering, how can Xoud actually prepare spells? How does he handle his spellbooks?
While he still possesses his physical books he may have a spectral echo of them, much like a fighter may have an echo of his sword while the weapon remains with his corpse.
While he still possesses his physical books he may have a spectral echo of them, much like a fighter may have an echo of his sword while the weapon remains with his corpse.
I'm pretty sure he's supposed to use his physical spell books, because the adventire says they are hidden in a certain room, and
If these books are removed from this room, Furkas Xoud can no longer prepare spells, and the ghost does everything in his power to get the books back.
While he still possesses his physical books he may have a spectral echo of them, much like a fighter may have an echo of his sword while the weapon remains with his corpse.I'm pretty sure he's supposed to use his physical spell books, because the adventire says they are hidden in a certain room, and
If these books are removed from this room, Furkas Xoud can no longer prepare spells, and the ghost does everything in his power to get the books back.
Actually that does not contradict what I said earlier.
As long as he possesses his physical books, he may have a spectral echo of them, ...
Otherwise, how does he turn the pages of his book.
If the players remove the books from their current location, he would no longer have possession of them.
This is much like my fighter example. Removing the weapon from the fighter's corpse would also remove the spectral version from the fighter's ghost.
Do ghosts need to study spell books every day...
Do ghosts need to study spell books every day...
Clearly Furkas Xoud does.
Not every day, as long as he does not actually cast the spells.
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My game session yesterday had an unplanned plot twist in the Aurora. The battle with the bionanite cloud wandered noisily into the Android Foundry (A3) after the players deactivated the malfunctioning electric-shocking doorway. Thus, the deformed androids showed up. I decided that Seerath's training included how to handle the bionanite cloud, and so the androids used their concussion grenades on it. This led the party to view them as potential allies. Seerath herself appeared before the deformed androids attacked the intruders.
The party thinks that Seerath is Casandalee.
It is understandable. Both are female androids with blue hair and blue lips. The PCs don't know whether androids live as long as elves or not. Seerath's scars, deformities, and battle-ready attitude could have been acquired in battles against Unity's robots.
Seerath did not attack because the party immediately addressed her as Casandalee and she was curious about that traitor Casandalee that the gearsmen kept demanding. She bluffed (with her +11 to Bluff) mostly by repeating the party's statements back to them, but eventually her lack of knowledge about Unity, Hellion, the Divinity fleet, and the planet Golarion became evident (of course, the real Casandalee would not know about Hellion, either). So now the party thinks she is the regeneration of Casandalee, having lost her memories in her renewal.
Seerath has exploited this to send them against the gearsmen, claiming that she can destroy the bionanite cloud, currently temporarily trapped in a room with the door closed, if she had access to the Nanotech Laboratory.
What other fun can I have with this misunderstanding? The gearsmen's stock phrase, "Lower your weapons and submit the traitor Casandalee, and you shall be spared," does not reveal that they know Casandalee is dead. The PCs missed the video of Furkas Xoud in the Administration Room because they were still battling the bionanite cloud. Eventually, the invisible stalker Sahasho could reveal the truth, if they trust an invisible stalker.
My group just finished this last night(I'm a player, not the DM), but I think we got hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Deus Ex Machina'ed.
Spoilered because I've never posted in a GM reference thread and I'm not sure what the protocol is for this kind of post. Adventure's over, and I would like some answers...
We placed the four nanite cocoons in the door with the four domes, entered, found the android body and Xoud's, battled the big metal monstrosity with the force field, and Xoud shows up to the fight. He closes the door to the room off with a Wall of Force, and casts Cloudkill(for like, the 3rd time this adventure).
We're boned. Nobody has a means of getting through the Wall of Force. With only a few rounds left til our CON is gone and we're dead, one of the player's remember they have a few potions of Gaseous Form and ask if there's a means for gas to escape. DM says yes. Player only has enough castings to get all of us out but one(me, I decide to stay let the party live).
All of a sudden, DM has Furkas Xoud just let out a yell and disappear. Wall of Force gone, Cloudkill gone, all the lights in the tower go out. He says we "enacted a series of forces that effectively put Xoud to rest..." So basically, we figure out a possible solution to the Cloudkill/Wall trap, and the DM just hands us victory.
Is this how it's written? Does Furkas Xoud just up and fade away after 6 rounds? It really seems like the DM pulled a Deus Ex Machina on us. Which if so, sorely disappoints me; we're all veteran players, we don't need hand-holding.
Yup, the GM got cold feet at the last moment.
You probably hit all the triggers for putting him down permanently, but yes, you've still got to take him out.
Unless I missed something, but I doubt I missed THAT. :-)
Yup, the GM got cold feet at the last moment.
You probably hit all the triggers for putting him down permanently, but yes, you've still got to take him out.
Unless I missed something, but I doubt I missed THAT. :-)
Thanks for the info. Man, that's really disappointing. We're all decades-plus RPG veterans, and our characters are 9th level. There are 6 of us PC's. I even openly stated that this was pretty much on us, since we're this far along, and get trapped by a single wall. That's on us for not being better prepared.
I'm a story addict. I'll gladly sacrifice my character for the good of the story. Heck, it worked out that way in the game, til the DM got cold feet. Worst part is, we found a solution, and the DM STILL robbed us of our chance for success.
Anyway, thanks again. I don't want to clutter up this thread with too much more. I might start a new thread(with no spoilers) over in Gamer Talk.
Yup, the GM got cold feet at the last moment.
Or the GM chickened out to avoid the embarrassment of killing a character with a trap that Furkas Xoud could no longer pull off. Xoud has Cloudkill and Wall of Force prepared in his two 5th-level spell slots. And he could cast Cloudkill a second time via arcane bond. But he cannot manage a third Cloudkill.
One of the requirements to put Xoud to rest is to turn off the smoke furnace. That explains the power going out. Did you do so? Another is to remove a certain amount of treasure from the tower, which could have happened when the other party members escaped. The problem is that Cloudkill and Wall of Force would endure past Xoud's destruction.
A good retcon would be that Xoud could not manage a third Cloudkill but he bluffed the spell by casting Solid Fog or Fog Cloud, both which he had prepared, and casting Irradiate in the fog to mimic the Con damage from the Cloudkill. Then when the other party members left with enough treasure to sever Xoud's emotional ties to his treasure, he could not finish his bluff. Your character lived because it was not a real Cloudkill.
Or you could point out that Cloudkill moves at 10 feet per round, so it would open a space on one side where your character could stand safely.
I had mentioned last week about my Iron Gods party mistaking Seerath in the Aurora for a renewal of Casandalee. Here is how the adventure continued.
Seerath tagged long as the party went to confront the gearsman. Later she had to make the excuse that she did not attack them because her zero pistol had only one charge left. By the way, earlier in this thread, Naal pointed out that Seerath cannot make her assassin's death attack with her zero pistol, because death attack is a melee attack, so I gave Seerath Improved Unarmed Strike.
The party had found a white lock coder as random treasure in Scrapwall and had used it to code a white access card for everyone identifying them as a Divinity repair crew. They used these fake IDs to bluff the first gearsmen. That gearsman requested, "Highest priority for repairs: re-establish communications with Unity." It left to talk to its leader, the augmented gearsman in room A11, about where communications equipment would be located in the Aurora.
The party decided that with one gearsman temporarily gone, they should attack the other two. The magus cast Haste and Heart of Metal (adamantine) while the other party members stalled the next gearsman by presenting their IDs. Then they cut through the two gearsmen like a hot knife through butter. For example, the magus cast Shocking Grasp, Spellstriked with his keen rapier that dealt electricity damage due to blackblade Energy Attunement, and confirmed a critical hit to deal 45 electricity damage that was effectively 90 electricity damage due to the gearsman's vulnerabilities.
Seerah blinked at the one-round battle and exclaimed, "How did you move so fast?!" She suspected exotic pharmaceuticals. "And you used swords and gunpowder muzzleloaders agains robots?" The gunslinger/rogue replied, "They worked."
The gunslinger/rogue opened the door to A11 and the first gearsman had time for one laser pistol shot that missed before it died. Then the gunslinger/rogue opened the door to the Nanotech Lab in mid-battle. The augmented gearsman stated, "Highest priority: Retrieve body of the traitor Casandalee. Repair crew will be spared from their previous hostilities if they do not interfere." Out of curiosity, the party accepted the ceasefire.
The augmented gearsman searched the room, confirmed that body was not there, and asked the so-called repair crew to re-establish communications to Unity. They asked the gearsman why it thought Casandalee's body was in the room, because they thought they knew that the regenerated Casandalee was alive and standing outside the room. It explained that injured and dying Casandalee had locked herself into the room and once it could no longer hear her breathing, it knew she was dead (and no longer had hot-pursuit authority to break down the door to a restricted-access room). Then five years ago, unseen intruders had opened the door, entered the room, and closed the door behind them before the gearsman could reboot itself out of power-conservation standby mode. It had heard conversation in Common from inside the room.
The party discussed among themselves about the invisible intruders. The magus asked rhetorically, "How could they stay invisible so long?" Sahasho, the invisible stalker standing stealthily in the corner all along, could not resist quipping, "I've been doing it all my life." The gearsman reacted to the voice to try to find the intruder in the "advanced scatterlight suit." Sahasho managed a whispered conversation while the gearsman searched other rooms, and the party decided to take out the augmented gearsman. Without the Haste and Heart of Metal spells, the battle took three rounds and the magus was down to 16 hit points.
Seerath decided to make her move when the magus retreated from battle due to injury. But as Seerath counted down three rounds of studying before her assassin's death attack, the magus belatedly cast mirror image on himself. Seerath decided that this apparently-holographic illusion would make the sneak attack too risky and switched her target to the bloodrager NPC, Val Baine (17 years old in this adventure and invited to join the party, rather than 13 years old). She attacked--and discovered that a bloodrager's Uncanny Dodge prevented sneak attack from being flatfooted, which fizzled the death attack. Although Val is my character, I honestly had forgotten about Uncanny Dodge until I saw it on her sheet while checking her Fortitude save. Seerath still made her post-attack battle cry, "Die, alien scum!"
The party attacked Seerath for her betrayal. The strix skald Kirii had a long argument with Seerath during the battle.
KIRII: Casandalee, surrender and we can help you get your memory back.
SEERATH: I am not Casandalee, I am Seerath. You heard the gearsman's description of Casandalee, blue lips and dark blue hair. I have light blue hair. That is like mistaking a human blonde for a human brunette. Now die, alien!
KIRII: I am not an alien. I am a strix. (Numerian people mistaking Kirii for an alien is a running joke in our campaign.)
SEERATH: You said you are from planet Golarion. That makes you an alien.
KIRII: We are on Golarion. That makes you the alien.
SEERATH: We are in orbit around Golarion.
KIRII: No, the Aurora crashed and is buried underground.
SEERATH: I refuse to believe you crazy aliens. You don't make sense. You use weapons like a pirate drama written by a 10-year-old. I must protect Androffan from you."
Seerath ended up unconscious at -5 hit points. Some PCs wanted to finish her off, but the soft-hearted bloodrager Val bound her wounds and tied her up.
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Well, Xoud was interesting.
I swapped out his cantrips very slightly so that he had acid splash, and ruled that he was loathe to use melee, being a haughty old wizard. The fight went from the players bemoaning that they were all going to die, to hope resurfacing as they realized that the spells he was using were getting steadily worse, to everyone realizing why Xoud wasn't using his corrupting touch, and agreeing that the fight was horribly pathetic on both sides.
By the end, the brawler and ranger, each with a heck of a lot of Str damage and Con drain from irradiate, were flailing impotently at the old wizard while he acid splashed them repeatedly, refusing to retreat so long as they had his spellbooks.
The players declared it a victory for d10 hit dice when they ultimately just outlasted him. The fight took 8 hours of real time.
So, my players are due to start the Choking Tower soon, and looking forward to them clearing the Aurora, I definitely want to make use of the option to make the production and nanotech labs functional for crafting purposes. The sidebar notes that the power conduit can power the functional systems in the Aurora for month on 20 charges. Using the option to include the labs in that list, is this meant to supercede the normal requirement that a Production lab eats up 50 charges for a days work and 150 charges for a Nanotech lab?
Artwork question.
Page 4. Who's the unfortunate brunette in need of a cardiac replacement? Artwork without context is a nit of mine, sorry :)
I think that's supposed to be Cassandalee seeing as the gearsman matches the artwork of the advanced gearsman in A11. I'm going to assume that's not a literal image of how the final confrontation went down, but then, it's implied she was mythic, so maybe she did manage to crawl to A14 and barricade before succumbing to the hole all the way through her chest. That would actually be kind of cool.
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I'm a bit more concerned about how a CR 9 Warden Robot managed to kill 4 hill giants (each CR 7) and drive off 2 others without so much as a scratch in area C.
I'm a bit more concerned about how a CR 9 Warden Robot managed to kill 4 hill giants (each CR 7) and drive off 2 others without so much as a scratch in area C.I figured it was some really unlucky Fortitude saves on the part of the giants.
Have any groups taken over the tower as their base after clearing it? My Guardians of Numeria want it for their headquarters, and I am allowing the military lab to function if they figure out what is powering it. Also one of my players wants his new witch character to have a background quest of searching for an artifact of mass destruction she had a vision of that could destroy Numeria. Any thoughts as to what that could be?
Divinity.
Divinity.
I thought about that, but all he other characters have side things going on and I didn't want to just say that hers is to destroy the end boss. Peter "Astro Baron" Quill (Numerian Scavenger rogue) has become a Force user, Grit (brawler) and Rocco (Spellslinger wizard) want to start a Numerian fluid brewery operation, Gravy (summoner) wants to build and control robots. I want to accommodate Lox's (Hedgewitch) artifact quest with something separate from the main questline. Maybe a technomagic nuke of some kind buried in a ruin? The "Death Star laser" perhaps?
I believe there are doomsday devices in the Technology Guide.
But it sounds like you want something more narrative.
Maybe schematics for a Death Ray from the Technology Guide. :-)
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I believe there are doomsday devices in the Technology Guide.
But it sounds like you want something more narrative.
Maybe schematics for a Death Ray from the Technology Guide. :-)
That's closer to what I'm thinking. Perhaps plans for the Extinction Wave Device in the hands/claws/tentacles of the Dominion?
Have any groups taken over the tower as their base after clearing it?
My group has ambitions of using the Tower as a base; they cleaned it up after cleaning it out, and stopped by again to secure it as best they could on their way to the next Book. It remains to be seen how well that works out.
The illustration on p. 50 shows Nargin Haruvex with a tech pistol of some kind and a cocoon in his chest. The stat block does not include either item. Anyone else notice this?
The illustration on p. 50 shows Nargin Haruvex with a tech pistol of some kind and a cocoon in his chest. The stat block does not include either item. Anyone else notice this?
I think they just spiced it up with some stuff he could potentially steal from the PCs.
My group met Illaris last night and I put together a chase scene for them instead of her just getting away. Feel free to steal.
Ancient history, but I stole this for my last session and my player's were thrilled. Thank you!
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Rod of Gripping smoke- seems awesome, but what the hell? Explain how this can be used please. Hope this is the right place for my post.
Rod of Gripping smoke lets you do cool stuff to creatures you target in smoke. Smoke makes it so you can't target things. Do I have to invest into a Goz mask to use this item effectively? They give you a horn of fog and ever smoking bottle in this book, which should work well with it, IF I COULD TARGET. Argghhh. Help me see the errors of my ways.
..and why is it 'neck' slot?
I think the intent is to be able to 'somehow' target people in the smoke, so I would the user to do just that, and explain it is an additional power of the item.
I also would restrict the knowledge of the creatures' location only for purposes of targeting with the rod, and not for spells or other effects.
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So I need help:
How is worm that walks Nargin Haruvex exactly evil?
I mean, I know that he needs to have been super duper evil to have become worm that walks after his death in first place, but 1) he is lawful evil 2) he is apparently from worldwound aka the CE place 3) he is rather affable if pcs use diplomacy despite apparently hating all life besides himself and being a narcissist.
Text says that if he is freed, he is free to unleash his evil doings back to world, but since text tells nothing about his backstory, I have no context for what kind of evil he will unleash. For all I know, he could be evil because he was killing demons and demonic cultists in over enthusiastic painful methods and performing human experiments on them :P Sure that is evil, but performing evil experiments on demons isn't most horrifying thing for the world
Heck, for all I know, he is super evil only because he is that big of narcissistic, but is too lawful to do much evil. So yeah, I need help here, what evil deeds he has exactly done that he could continue doing on the world if he is released? xD