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I love the descriptions, dialogue, characters, and ambience of this scenario.
That said, area B2: The Defense Matrix leaves me utterly baffled.
The problems I'm having are as follows:
1) How many defense turrets are there? We are only told 'several', but we kind of need to know the exact number. I'm inclined to say there are three, because that's how many targets the things can hit simultaneously, but maybe the author intended for there to be 4 of them and each can attack three targets.
2) Where in the area are they? For that matter, are they wall, floor, or ceiling mounted? If not floor, how high are they? That is important, given the other trap in the area.
3) The Disable DCs have two difficulties, the glaucite wall mounting and the Technologist feat. The glaucite increases the DD DCs by 5, but is this included within the trap descriptions already, or should those DCs be raised by 5? Can whacking the mountings with adamantine get rid of this penalty? As far as the Technologist feat penalty, should that apply to any check related to tech throughout the scenario, or just those two traps?
4) The gravity trap...cool but...wow. This thing is immensely problematic. The ceilings and walls curve, so it is hard to tell how far a PC will fall in many (all, really) locations. Also, some walls have holes in them. If a PC falls out, is gravity normal out there? Are there acrobatics checks to negate the first d6 of falling damage allowed? If a wall between sections of B2 becomes the new relative floor, it is possible that PCs hit the curves of the curved inner walls of the room. Can they stand on these curves? Can they climb the glaucite walls? What is the DC? How much damage does a PC take if, say, someone in front of them suddenly becomes 'above' them as they both fall? Does the dogpiled PC take more damage when they hit the floor? As these traps behave somewhat like creatures (attacking or switching gravity every round), what is their initiative? It is also my understanding that Disabling a Device takes 1 minute at least, so is gravity switching and are shots firing 10 times as someone tries to disable the traps?
The scenario as a whole is great. Section B2 is a snakes nest of mechanical nonsense. If it weren't PFS, I'd just skip the whole thing, or write my own traps. I'm halfway considering it now, despite the rather clear rules violation that would entail. I'd like a better option.
Hi, I'm Anthony, and I wrote Returned to Sky.
Thank you, Le Petite Mort, for both directing my attention to this and the feedback. I'm happy to hear that you and others are pleased with the adventure overall. That being said I can see how B2 might present some difficulties to GMs running it. So I hope I can clear up some of the confusion.
1) How many defense turrets are there? We are only told 'several', but we kind of need to know the exact number. I'm inclined to say there are three, because that's how many targets the things can hit simultaneously, but maybe the author intended for there to be 4 of them and each can attack three targets.2) Where in the area are they? For that matter, are they wall, floor, or ceiling mounted? If not floor, how high are they? That is important, given the other trap in the area.
The ceilings themselves are detailed on page 15, halfway down the right column. They're curved, 10ft high from the wall to 20ft high in the center.
That being said I actually don't think that the exact number and location of the turrets is important to the mechanics of the encounter. This is an area trap after all, a triggered event and not a combat. The turrets aren't enemies that need killing (although that's certainly one way to deal with them). A lot of what goes into the mechanics of Trap Encounters is really just a series of d20 roll vs. Trap DC's. It's up to a collaboration between the players and the GM to narrate that out.
But that's just my GMing philosophy :D
To help simplify things (and because this is PFS), there are three turrets total, one located in the center of each room of area B2. The turret system as a whole can fire at up to three targets per round. So if the PCs are all in one room, the turret in that room will fire three times. But if the PCs are spread through out all three rooms, then it's up to the GM which turrets but there will never be more than 3 shots total. So that means that the PCs can render a room "safe" by destroying the turret in that room but the remaining turrets will still be able to shoot.
3) The Disable DCs have two difficulties, the glaucite wall mounting and the Technologist feat. The glaucite increases the DD DCs by 5, but is this included within the trap descriptions already, or should those DCs be raised by 5? Can whacking the mountings with adamantine get rid of this penalty? As far as the Technologist feat penalty, should that apply to any check related to tech throughout the scenario, or just those two traps?
If the PC attempting the Disable Device doesn't have the Technologist feat, she take a -5 penalty to their attempt. By the rules, a check that requires the Technologist feat cannot be attempted by someone without it. This encounter is an exception because it would be rather harsh otherwise.
Also because defeating a turret is not unlike defeating a magically automated crossbow. That being said, savvy players will remember that they were given a copy of A Thread of Silver by Venture Captain Smine at the end of the briefing which can grant the benefits of the Technologist feat for the duration of a single check.
4) The gravity trap...cool but...wow. This thing is immensely problematic. The ceilings and walls curve, so it is hard to tell how far a PC will fall in many (all, really) locations. Also, some walls have holes in them. If a PC falls out, is gravity normal out there? Are there acrobatics checks to negate the first d6 of falling damage allowed? If a wall between sections of B2 becomes the new relative floor, it is possible that PCs hit the curves of the curved inner walls of the room. Can they stand on these curves? Can they climb the glaucite walls? What is the DC? How much damage does a PC take if, say, someone in front of them suddenly becomes 'above' them as they both fall? Does the dogpiled PC take more damage when they hit the floor? As these traps behave somewhat like creatures (attacking or switching gravity every round), what is their initiative? It is also my understanding that Disabling a Device a Device takes 1 minute at least, so is gravity switching and are shots firing 10 times as someone tries to disable the traps?
If a PC is standing adjacent to a wall and fall towards the ceiling, that's a 10ft drop. If they're not adjacent to a wall, it's 20ft. If they "fall" out a hole and outside of area B2, then yes, normal gravity takes effect. Yes they can stand on curvature of the walls but the glaucite walls themselves are smooth and featureless, so no, they cannot be climbed unless the PCs get creative. Spider-Climb, driving a weapon into the wall to create an anchor point, and so on. I'd probably make the DC anywhere from 25 to 30 based on what you think they've done to make climbing a smooth surface a more feasible possibility.
Damage for falling is 1d6 per 10ft. So based on the map a PC should never really be taking more than 7d6 falling damage in a single round. The encounter can be bad enough so I wouldn't add additional damage for PCs dog piling one another. Although you should certainly narrate to your players how uncomfortable, awkward, and painful it is.
You can treat the traps as having Initiative-Better-than-the-PCs. Because unless the PCs notice them, they're not going to have anything to react to otherwise. Give any PCs who succeeded at the Perception check to notice the traps an opportunity to do something, and then trigger the traps and have the remaining PCs roll for Initiative normally. The traps trigger again at the beginning of each round.
Disabling a complex device takes 2d4 rounds (PRD). So yeah. The PCs will be eating lasers and drinking vertigo while this happens. I'd rule that being tossed around by gravity would interrupt progress but not reset the Disable back to zero. I should also note that the PCs might have looted scrolls of Levitate and/or Fly earlier in the adventure which might help them with the gravitational variance.
Hope this helps, Le Petite Mort. Good luck with running it for your group!
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Hi, I'm Anthony, and I wrote Returned to Sky.
Thank you, Le Petite Mort, for both directing my attention to this and the feedback. I'm happy to hear that you and others are pleased with the adventure overall. That being said I can see how B2 might present some difficulties to GMs running it. So I hope I can clear up some of the confusion.
** spoiler omitted **...
1) How many defense turrets are there? We are only told 'several', but we kind of need to know the exact number. I'm inclined to say there are three, because that's how many targets the things can hit simultaneously, but maybe the author intended for there to be 4 of them and each can attack three targets.2) Where in the area are they? For that matter, are they wall, floor, or ceiling mounted? If not floor, how high are they? That is important, given the other trap in the area.
Thank you Anthony, that all helped enormously. The main reason placement was important for the turrets is that they have a 'whack it til it dies' solution available. If they are in a corner of the floor, that would be meaningfully different from center of the ceiling. Again, thank you.
Anthony, for future reference the GM Discussion forum is considered to have a spoiler warning aura, so you do not need to use spoiler tags if you do not want to. :)
Thanks for the reassurance, TOZ. I figured my answer was going to get wordy so I spoiler text'd because of length as well as content.
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I ran this one just this past weekend. Fortunately, I did not have any Silver Crusade of Exchange members at the table. Are people dropping any hints to players of those factions that there is something of interest for them in the encounter with Brissa? The Liberty's Edge mission is more direct.
We did surprisingly well for a group with 2 ninjas, a Druid, and a negative energy melee oracle. I'm glad one of the ninjas invested in UMD.
I do just have to say, if ever there's a scenario where the 4 player adjustment makes a difference, this is it. Getting rid of the only two robots in the first encounter plus all the adjustments to the final boss was huge for us. We struggled enough just to take the Magus and Sorcerer down. I can't imagine if they'd had backup with hardness.
This was a fun one. Probably my favorite of the technology scenarios so far (though I haven't played Technic Siege or Trial by Machine). I did appreciate that they compensated for not having the Technologist feat. I'll have to give it a read soon and decide if I want to run it.
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Our Silver Crusade member was not happy as it seemed he wasn't given a fair chance to complete his faction mission.
Yeah it's not as obvious as a lot of faction missions that they have something to do in town.
As a GM I was going to insert an encounter with a crusader who had been overcharged for things to the point of destitution, just to hammer home the idea that the Silver Crusade character had to do something about it.
I didn't end up having to since the party went directly to Brissa, and the Andoran character proceeded to pretty much fulfil the conditions for both the Exchange and Silver Crusade characters in his attempt to win the Abadaran Priestess's favor and letter of introduction to Ingret. He was posing as a merchant to keep anyone from knowing they were Pathfinders and it just flowed from there.
I had to chuckle when he prompted the Exchange character to talk to her too saying that "your faction probably wants to make friends with her" I let the Exchange player chat a bit, and confirmed that he supported the decisions that the Andoran character had already made in negotiating with her.
Silver Crusade has actually had a bit of a rough go of it this past season with missions that aren't really that obvious. I know I missed out on the one in Slave Masters Mirror since we didn't spend much time chatting with the slaves once we had freed them.
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You know, I actually okay with some harder faction missions, that aren't immediately clear. When I ran this four times at Gencon, I let my players know that there was faction content for the three factions, but it would be up to them to sniff it out, and that was usually enough to encourage those that cared about it to try. Man, the LEdge members had a rough time though, those slaves do down pretty easy as collateral damage in a 7-11, out of five runs (4 GMing, 1 playing) I have only seen the LEdge pull their mission off once.
Also, concerning the LEdge faction mission, the bit in the note about the wayward eagle completely threw my player's off their game, and they wanted to try and figure out who the wayward eagle was. My understanding was that the LEdge PC's and/or Colson Maldriss were the wayward eagles, since they were still fighting the good fight even though they weren't technically directly affiliated with Andoran anymore. How close / far off is that?
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Somewhat unclear, but I'd say yes. Myrmidon robots originate in the Inner Sea Bestiary, which says the following about force fields:
Force Fields: A force field sheathes a robot in a thin layer
of shimmering energy that grants a number ofbonus hit
points that varies according to the robot (typically 5 x the
robot's CR). All damage dealt to a robot with an active
force field is reduced from these hit points first. As long
as the force field is active, the robot is immune to critical
hits. A force field has fast healing equal to the robot's CR,
but once its hit points are reduced to o, the force field
shuts down and does not reactivate for 24 hours .
To me that reads that while the field is up, hits are against the field first, and only when the field goes down do you start hitting the robot.
I'd assume that the field doesn't have hardness, isn't vulnerable to electricity, and can't be critically hit.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Running this today, trying to decide if it is too evil to kite the PCs, then lure them back upstairs, pound them with missiles as the bottleneck on the stairs, and then lire them back into B2 if they have not disabled the traps...
That did not end well...
Low tier.
They actually did disable the traps, but they had no reach, one (looted) scroll of fly, One archer (with no iteratives?), and were unable or unwilling to disperse enough to give him multiple targets, and had nothing that would slow his movement. After the third missile, they fled, and I decided that since he was ordering them to leave, if they left he would not attack people fleeing. (Or it would have been a TPK.)