7-02 Six Seconds to Midnight

[FLite]

Gah, that ran sooo long.

Awesomely, one of the players was an Oracle worshiper of Shyka. He is planning on buying a house in Uringen.

[thistledown]

Ran very long at my table as well. Half the party had to bail after negotiations with Hensbane. After the first few rounds with the quicklings (poison and sneak attack were finished) I called the fight rather than play out another 15 rounds of hit-and-run tactics with tiny damage.

If I could pick, I'd turn the fight on the 3rd floor into an optional encounter. The sack is fun (though lethal) - the gremlins are just annoying. Yes, the secondary success condition is linked to it, but it wouldn't be the only season 7 scenario where you can avoid badness by running late.

[FLite]

I would cut the sack. It is fun, but it doesn't advance the plot at all. And it can be a fun reward for people running early.

[andreww]

James Anderson wrote:

Ran very long at my table as well. Half the party had to bail after negotiations with Hensbane. After the first few rounds with the quicklings (poison and sneak attack were finished) I called the fight rather than play out another 15 rounds of hit-and-run tactics with tiny damage.

The quicklings have sneak attack and continual concealment. They can move in while stealthed, make a single attack with sneak, then move away. As long as they don't go more than 60' they don't even take a penalty on their stealth check.

[thistledown]

Had them spring attacking from far out, and concealment alone doesn't grant sneak attack. Didn't even think about stealth. Oh well, the store was kicking us out anyways.

[andreww]

James Anderson wrote:

Had them spring attacking from far out, and concealment alone doesn't grant sneak attack. Didn't even think about stealth. Oh well, the store was kicking us out anyways.

It doesnt but it allows them to use stealth as they move in.

When I ran it I had a group which should have had a 4 player adjustment but it was left out of the module and we did not have the clarification. Given all of them start invisible they got a suprise round then two of the quicklings beat everyones initiative. 5 sneak attacks before the party even gets to act is pretty brutal, especially when combined with a real problem in getting to grips with them.

It would have been a TPK but I allowed the group to run away on the basis that the Grig was more interested in smashing up the town than beating up some random adventuers.

[roysier]

One of my groups also had to run from the final encounter. I just had one of Quicklings take a ready action and stayed close to the party the other 2 would use the spring attacks, giving them all sneak attacks every round. They took a party member down every other round, the party couldn't keep up with them and eventually used a invisibility wand to turn everyone invisible and ran. Because the game lasted so long I just let the party go instead of having the baddies chase them down.

[Damien_DM]

I ran this for a between-subtier group (4, 5, 5, 6, 6) that played up with the 4 PC adjustment. The game ended up running long, though we were halfway through the final encounter (and well on the way to a TPK) when I called it.

The 4 PC adjustment for Henbane is not nearly enough to reduce the difficulty of that encounter. After a few rounds of attempting to cast defensively, I had her just use judgment to boost AC to 26, and take the attacks of opportunity while she used her bow while in melee with four PCs. They had difficulty hitting her, while she needed very low numbers to hit, even using Deadly Aim.

I messed up slightly on her aura of madness (thought it was aura of chaos for some reason). If I had treated it as written, 4 of the 5 PCs would have failed their saves and been confused for the entire fight, leading to a TPK even faster.

The encounter in the tower with the vegxits and the sack is the one that ran far longer than I expected. The party triggered both encounters by having most of the group go in the front door, while one PC used a rope to go through the 2nd floor window, then (while attempting to speed up via a red portal) ended up teleporting to the 3rd floor and triggering the gremlin encounter. That one also nearly led to PC deaths.

The first encounter with the dragon and gremlins in the town square, though, was not a problem for them. The 4 PC adjustment at high subtier really nerfs that encounter.

I definitely recommend playing down if at all possible when a group is between subtiers on this scenario.

[Yiroep]

Just GMed it 3 times for at a convention this past weekend, 1 at 3-4 subtier and 2 at 6-7 subtier, and I will say that the scenario goes much, much faster at the lower subtier due to less enemies and less HP (obviously the characters were lower level too but the math worked out that the 3-4 was still much shorter). Both of my high tier slots went the full 5 hours whereas we were able to finish low tier in about 3.5 hours.

Six Seconds to Midnight:

The beginning part with the traps and sick animals was kind of cool. I am a fan of skill challenge type of stuff (and am glad to see more of it in the later seasons. That being said, there are a LOT of skill checks in the clock tower the first time you go there. The roleplay with the pixie and the skill checks eat up a lot of time.

In both subtiers, the first battle is a joke save for the faerie dragons. Usually the rest of the monsters don't even last a round or two and do almost nothing.

The bag never got to do anything in the high tiers for both of my games (died too quickly), but was able to grab someone in the low tier and do much damage, but then promptly died. The players thought this was hilarious.

Gremlins tearing up things were not a problem at all, even with the party being split in one of my games.

The puzzle got mixed responses. One of the high tier tables I ran actually really liked the puzzle, the other high tier table didn't mind it, and the low tier table pretty much hated it. I personally wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't in a scenario that already can run long and if it wasn't so tied to rewards the players receive.

All of my tables were able to talk down Henbane, so they got the quickling encounter. The quicklings are a menace at the high tier. Low tier can be rough too but the high tier especially is brutal. They can be brutal on parties that don't use proper anti-quickling tactics (like readying actions constantly).

Definitely had a harder time challenging the 3-4 subtier party than the 6-7 subtier parties.

Overall, I liked the scenario as it has an interesting story and interesting encounters, although I would warn anyone against trying to schedule it in a 4 hour slot.

[Mark L. Crowell]

Just played this and came here to see just how the heck we were supposed to deal with this. We had to call it at 7 HOURS of play, and we didn't get to the last fight, we couldn't even get past the puzzle with 4 players. (admittedly one of them died to the bag and so couldn't really contribute to the puzzle.... ). This one seemed both amazingly rough, and amazingly complex. Due to party composition, we barely ended up playing up with 4 player adjustment.

Starting from the top, we had a pretty decently rounded group, and we made the heal checks with the travelers pretty easily... but no one had disable device, (though we had tons of survival and perception which apparently wouldn't work for this?) so we apparently made it to town with almost no time left before the big event. Everyone was confused since we all thought we would have a day or so at least to get ready/ask around. So we basically rushed to the tower after talking with the mayors... talk to the pixie and the event starts.

details of our ignomious failure:

So the first fight happens,Then we take about 3 aoes on the surprise round from the invisible foes... backed up by the same greater invisible foes debuffing and aoeing again right away, taking down the fighter before anyone could actually act. Follow this up by a large number of rounds of creatures flying at 60-80 feet up raining down arrows with occasional aoes. The first fight was absolutely brutal and nearly destroyed us. and eventually ended up being almost an hour and a half of us being attacked by foes that could fly and/or greater invis, running away whenever we got close, and raining down spells and arrows before they finally got bored and tried melee (where most of them died.) and we still had to spend 20ish minutes chasing down the greater invisible gloom dragons before they would stop glooming/aoeing us due to finally getting enough together to glitterdust them.

So now we finally get to enter the tower! or at least try... while several of the party are able to climb up to the window, I am outside attempting to break the door down to get in(can't make the climb check and thought it would be faster.) they get in easily enough, and the bard wants to come down to help open the door... only there is apparently a horizontal wall of force blocking movement up and down the tower? The bard is then grabbed by a bag in the surprise round, and constricted.... combat starts, people try to rush over, the door finally gives way.... and the bard gets constricted to death on the bags next turn before anyone can really do anything about it. the bag then dies easily enough.... but the stairways are still blocked so no one can go up or down save through random portals.

The pixie passes us a diagram which says alternate on it, and we attempt to use the portals.... which leads to a massive amount of trial and error, and one person in heavy armor in the gears with a penalty to acrobatics.... slowly dieing. No one can go down to help because there are forcefields separating every layer of the tower. so we start trying to track the portals we went through to find a way to him... and end up split up all over the tower. The thing that threw us off the most, was some portals going up one time, and other locations on the floor another time. We never did manage to solve the situation, and were forced to jump into the gears to make our way down and out of the place after almost 3 hours(actual time spent) of "i move here, where does this portal go this time?" The clues only served to confuse us more since they seemed to refer to one set of answers.... that didn't work or make sense in the puzzle we were presented. we even tried stringing ropes outside the tower from the higher floors only to find that wouldn't work to bypass the annoying portals or planes of force separating the levels.

As we never made the final combat, I certainly cant comment on that, and when the gm showed us how the puzzle was supposed to be solved... not a single one of us could figure out how we were supposed to actually DO the puzzle if the portals were the only way up or down the tower... nor could any of us figure out how the 'clues' were actually supposed to help.

All in all, not an enjoyable scenario for most of us, a near tpk in the first fight... actual death in the second before anyone could really act, and a very narrowly avoided death(the GM threw us a bone here I think instead of autokilling the person).... in the PUZZLE, And the worst part is, for most of the scenario it was just a lot of feeling like no matter what we did, it didn't really matter, especially during the puzzle. I unfortunately cannot comment on the finale of the event, though the combat probably could have been handled decently with the team we had left.... we just couldn't make it there.

[TriOmegaZero]

Sounds like the GM ran the force field wrong. The field only separates the 4th and 5th levels. Not being able to use the stairs makes the puzzle impossible to solve.

[FLite]

Umm.... What ever it is you played, it wasn't this scenario... Was the GM running it cold?

Mark L. Crowell wrote:

Just played this and came here to see just how the heck we were supposed to deal with this. We had to call it at 7 HOURS of play, and we didn't get to the last fight, we couldn't even get past the puzzle with 4 players. (admittedly one of them died to the bag and so couldn't really contribute to the puzzle.... ). This one seemed both amazingly rough, and amazingly complex. Due to party composition, we barely ended up playing up with 4 player adjustment.

That was your GM's first mistake. We had two tables of this. Normally when we have two tables, we run one high, one low. We took one look at the scenario, and the fact that our high table was going to be just barely qualify, and shifted people around to run two low tables.

Mark L. Crowell wrote:

... but no one had disable device, (though we had tons of survival and perception which apparently wouldn't work for this?)

Well, perception would find the trap, but the mission is to *remove* the traps. So yeah, you needed disable device.

That said, after two hours he hustles you off to town, so all you can lose is two of the 5 1/4 hours you have before the clock goes.

Mark L. Crowell wrote:

First battle spoiler

Spoiler:

You were facing (four player adjustment, high tier)

4 normal vexgits who are busy smashing stuff and do not engage the party.

2 normal vexgits who are guarding them and who run if you deal 6 damage to them and who have no ranged attacks.

2 twigjacks, that have no ranged attacks, except for a 15 foot cone AoE, and no invisibility, (but they do have an obscenely high stealth.)

1 greater invisible gloom dragon, who is focusing on debuff, and who runs away if the vexgits and twigjacks are defeated or flee.

Since the Vexgits are not using stealth, they are wrecking stuff, I am not sure where the surprise round came from. (If they were using stealth, some of you should have easily beaten their +9 and gotten to act in the surprise round)

Never mind where all those arrows were coming from...

Mark L. Crowell wrote:

Second battle spoiler

Spoiler:

The horizontal field of force is only at the top level. Talk to your VL about getting the bard's death retconned at least. (If not the whole scenario, sheesh.

Mark L. Crowell wrote:

puzzle spoiler

Spoiler:

Where to begin...

The portals that change level are fixed, and are marked on the map.

The horizontal force field is at the top of the tower.

Even if the horizontal force field had been there, the ropes to get between windows is brilliant and should totally have worked.

If you try trial and error, your future selves send you back clues to solve the puzzle.

(I actually ran this one wrong and almost cheated my players out of a success condition, because I missed the bit about "skip any clues the players have figured out on their own.") They figured out pretty much everything but the final clue before the first clue got handed out...

It seems like nothing you did mattered because as far as I can tell, the GM was altering the scenario to stop each thing you tried.

[FLite]

Slight alteration. (I didn't notice you were a VL.) In that case, either talk to your VC about reversing the bard's death, if not the whole scenario, or do it your self (not sure if you are allowed to do that since you were a player.)

[andreww]

Your GM also did the gears completely wrong if he had someone trapped in them for multiple rounds.

[Mark L. Crowell]

It sounds like we basically played hard mode without planning too, we got to town with less then 30 minutes left we were told, because no one had disable... so I guess we should have had more time to actually investigate instead of rush towards the event. In the first fight, I don't know what happened, but almost everything in that fight was flying, most of which had arrows and didn't come even slightly close until the end. So I don't know what to say about that other than it burned a LOT of table time just trying to survive the onslaught without being able to retaliate. As for the force fields, well if they weren't supposed to be there, there might have been a chance at us figuring out the puzzle... on the other hand I suppose I feel a little less stupid knowing that it actually wasn't possible to solve the way it was presented to our group. We all chipped in to raise the bard, So not sure If we want to jump through hoops to try to retcon a scenario or a death, hate second guessing like that since we cleared it. as for someone in the gears for multiple rounds... yeah the fighter was trapped in them for ages unable to make any of the checks before getting out through sheer desperation and luck, scared the rest of us out of messing with the gears considering how hard the check dc was.

As for the gm running it cold, I don't think it was cold, but he freely admitted he didn't realize how complicated or how much prep this one would take when he picked It to prep, so probably not quite enough time to prepare it if it has this much crazy stuff in it.

[Amanda Plageman]

Ok, so we're agreed that there's a missing red portal on the Town Square map. Cool. But unless I've missed a post somewhere, where are we supposed to stick that 10th red portal? Does it matter? Do we just stick it anywhere that looks empty?

[andreww]

Amanda Plageman wrote:

Ok, so we're agreed that there's a missing red portal on the Town Square map. Cool. But unless I've missed a post somewhere, where are we supposed to stick that 10th red portal? Does it matter? Do we just stick it anywhere that looks empty?

I just left it off when I ran it. My group were too frightened to experiment with the ones outside in any event.

[pauljathome]

andreww wrote:

Amanda Plageman wrote:

Ok, so we're agreed that there's a missing red portal on the Town Square map. Cool. But unless I've missed a post somewhere, where are we supposed to stick that 10th red portal? Does it matter? Do we just stick it anywhere that looks empty?

I just left it off when I ran it. My group were too frightened to experiment with the ones outside in any event.

I prefer "wise, cautious, experienced" to frightened, thank you very much :-)

[Linda Zayas-Palmer]

Amanda Plageman wrote:

Ok, so we're agreed that there's a missing red portal on the Town Square map. Cool. But unless I've missed a post somewhere, where are we supposed to stick that 10th red portal? Does it matter? Do we just stick it anywhere that looks empty?

You can place the tenth portal wherever you want.

If you'd prefer to have a specific square: find the second blue portal from the top of the map. Place the red portal 30 feet to the east of that blue portal.

[FLite]

OOoo... Neat!

The Scenario got updated with corrections.

I like the clarification on the puzzle. I'm not entirely sure what the clarification on the Embeth section is, though if it the sentances I think it is, I approve, but wish it could have gone further.

I haven't looked at the rest, but apparently the chronicle sheet items now have the correct prices.

I have at least 12 people locally who have the pre-update chronicle sheets. How should that be handled?

[Linda Zayas-Palmer]

Technically, the correct procedure would be to reissue Chronicle sheets. In practice, however, the incorrectly priced items are scrolls of 2nd through 3rd level spells from the Core Rulebook, which PCs are very likely to have enough fame to be able to buy anyway.

[Muser]

When I ran this, Henbane wiped the floor with the party. One full attack and the archer was dead. 4 rounds later all but one character were down. While that straggler ran away, I had Henbane ignore the bodies and gather the rest of the essence.

About a minute later, the final one tried to ambush her near the broken stairs. Ouch. By then I was so tired of bodies hitting the floor that I just had Henbane take a few stray shots after the sorry ambusher instead of being her crazy fey self and carving the bodies into clockwork or something.

Last time I saw a boss this powerful - and I didn't even use any of her buffs 'sides bane - was the Golemworks Incident and we all know how that ended.

Some restraint Paizo, please.

[FLite]

If you follow her tactics and use her buffs in the order they specify, you don't get a chance to bane until like round three.

[Muser]

Yeah, her swift actions are in use pretty majorly. I wish that had helped.

[TriOmegaZero]

Round three was when we lost our rogue to a bane full-attack, then took her out.

[andreww]

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:

Round three was when we lost our rogue to a bane full-attack, then took her out.

My group avoided fighting her then got cut to pieces by the quicklings.

[TriOmegaZero]

We were too tired after the puzzle to even try more than a token effort at diplomacy. I actually had the same problem when I ran it.

Henbane is just too fanatical to give players the idea that she will even consider compromise.

[Hrothdane]

It depends on how you play her.

Going off the cue of her dialogue with the quicklings, I had her talking with constant shifting of tenses, making references to multiple timelines that she is concurrent in, responding to alternate timeline versions of the PCs in a different part of the room, and generally acting distracted. She was still insistent about how she needs to destroy the tower and take the evidence, but the party approached her more like "this lady is crazy and confused so we just need to talk carefully" than "this lady is a fanatic who won't listen so we should kill her."

As a side note for RPing her, my idea is that she's concurrent in 4 timelines (including the one the PCs are in), one for each clock face. When she uses her Aura of Madness and confuses people, she just makes them see all the same things she does.

[FLite]

As I mentioned above

We had a Oracle of Shyka and a face rogue who can't seem to role diplomacy checks below 30.

The conversation was epic, although several of the younger players at the table were just watching eyes glazed over trying to follow the shifting sand of tenses and the branching metaphors. (The time oracle saw time as an ever flowing river, Henbane saw it as a tree, they both were speaking in very heavy metaphors.)

[Wei Ji the Learner]

Character I played this with had also played Sky Key Solution, and felt *horrifically* guilty for the mess in that scenario, and would have probably argued AGAINST using the Sky Key if that option were available.

Spoiler:

So when the party ran into Henbane, his first action was to put away his blade (but not his shield) and tell her "Whoa.. whoa... you're looking at messed up time-stuff, we are too. Our organization made a mistake and we're trying to fix it, but we have to learn what and how stuff is broken to mend it. Do you think we could work together on this, perhaps?" We were so brain-dead from the puzzle that the idea of a combat with her was the last thing on our minds when she agreed. And then, WTF, quicklings? Three rounds of not getting to act isn't very fun for anyone. Thankfully, the rest of the party broke that up...

[Muser]

I'm actually glad that it wasn't quicklings for us. Those encounters can take hours. We just fought against a single one in Reign of Winter and it took freakin' 40 minutes.

[TheFlyingPhoton]

I'm running this tonight, and it's going to come up (knowing my players), so what is a fey circle? Is there any extra background or details on such a thing in any Paizo source? I keep getting Magic Circle Against X spells when I google.
The scenario implies it's a fey-specific shrine, I guess? Combined with the old "ancient Native American burial ground" hence building something on top of it being a problem.

[FLite]

TheFlyingPhoton wrote:

I'm running this tonight, and it's going to come up (knowing my players), so what is a fey circle? Is there any extra background or details on such a thing in any Paizo source? I keep getting Magic Circle Against X spells when I google.

The scenario implies it's a fey-specific shrine, I guess? Combined with the old "ancient Native American burial ground" hence building something on top of it being a problem.

I think it is essentially a fey stone henge

Also they not only built a time based magical device in the middle of a fey stone henge dedicated to the fey lord of time, they took the most important stone in the circle, broke it into pieces, and used it as part of the building.

Basically they installed a flux capacitor on a Tardis, and then put the whole thing on a train going 88 miles an hour. We are lucky they only broke the town, not the planet.

[Rogue Eidolon]

FLite wrote:

TheFlyingPhoton wrote:

I'm running this tonight, and it's going to come up (knowing my players), so what is a fey circle? Is there any extra background or details on such a thing in any Paizo source? I keep getting Magic Circle Against X spells when I google.

The scenario implies it's a fey-specific shrine, I guess? Combined with the old "ancient Native American burial ground" hence building something on top of it being a problem.

I think it is essentially a fey stone henge

Also they not only built a time based magical device in the middle of a fey stone henge dedicated to the fey lord of time, they took the most important stone in the circle, broke it into pieces, and used it as part of the building.

Basically they installed a flux capacitor on a Tardis, and then put the whole thing on a train going 88 miles an hour. We are lucky they only broke the town, not the planet.

That's a hilarious metaphor, and it seems pretty apt to me. There's a reason the fey call her "Reckless Rhona."

[Wei Ji the Learner]

"WE NEED ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGGITY WATTS!"

*coughs*

[FLite]

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

"WE NEED ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGGITY WATTS!"

*coughs*

You have a Tardis. I assumed the 1.21 GW was trivial. :)

It is probably harder *not* to have 1.21 GW

[Muser]

Off-topic: My soldier just tazed an alien in XCOM(the new one) and yelled "oh yeah, 1.22 gigawatts!". I couldn't stop laughing. I think I'm getting old...

[Wei Ji the Learner]

FLite wrote:

You have a Tardis. I assumed the 1.21 GW was trivial. :)

It is probably harder *not* to have 1.21 GW

You got confused. We're not talking Gigawatts. We're talking giggity watts. Entirely different measure. It involves a 'religious conference' between followers of Arshea, Calistria, Zon-Kuthon, and others who may fall into that sort of thing...

*coughs* May have a condition.

[Matthew Morris]

I studied the thing for two weeks and couldn't make the puzzle work (I was GMing). So far we've had two groups of pretty danged intelligent people get furstrated with the puzzle, and neither got past it to get mauled by the inquisitor or the quickling mob.

The faerie dragons with their wands of death devastated the party alone. "Use the wands when they think the party will win." Well, half the twig blights incapacitated by colour spray, 2 of the three archers in melee. Yeah that seems to fit. So 8d6 fire from improved invisibility for everyone! I backed off after it went back to 'doesn't look likely they'd win the fight'. Fortunately the remaining party members focused on killing the ground targets instead of the portable gun platforms, so they could run away. So 323 GP earned, 1 PP (because I was generous) and a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.

I won't touch this scenario again with a 10' pole, and it and Bronze house have really soured me on season 7. 7-01 was ok, but I don't want to think too much about what would happen with the 'glass cannon' monsters if the party has crappy will saves.

[FLite]

simple answer to the puzzle.

You must pass through the portals between floors in numerical order. So 4,6,6,8,8,12 and you must alternate colors. So since 4 is blue, you must do 4(b), 6(r), 6(b), 8(r), 8(b), 12(r) (If you include stairs in the answer, starting on the first floor, s(1->2), 4(b), 6(r), s(2->3), 6(b), 8(r), s(3->4), 8(b), 12(r) )

since they are supposed to get the clues if they start getting stuck, the puzzle should spin pretty fast. I think I wound up giving out a clue every 3-5 minutes.

The final clue was: I’m beginning to think we need to ascend in
order based on the number of vertical lines, starting by
taking the blue portal on the second floor. But there’s no
time; the portals are fading. Come on, I know you can get
it this time!

They should get that after ~20 minutes at most, and that should give them the solution. (And if it doesn't I would explain it to the players, since it is more likely a player reading comprehension issue than a PC issue.)

Honestly, it should not be *possible* to get stuck on the puzzle the way the scenario is written.

Haven't GMed bronze house, but have played it. We had a really good party composition, and pretty much walked right through it. (Though I accidentally killed one of the people we were supposed to arrest. Oops. My bloatmage really needs to get a merciful metamagic rod one of these days.)

[Fromper]

I agree with FLite that the final "clue" (and I use the term loosely) should give the solution to the players, and the GM should just give them the solution (call for intelligence checks or something) if they still can't get it after that.

That doesn't solve the fact that your players just wasted 20+ minutes of their lives on a truly crappy, frustrating puzzle that even puzzle enthusiasts won't enjoy. The so called "clues" don't make any sense or actually lead to the solution. The hints from the future eventually tell you the solution outright, but there's still no rhyme or reason as to how you might figure out that solution without those future hints, and no logical reason to explain how the PC's future selves could have come to those conclusions.

[FLite]

Well, remember that you skip any clue that the party has spread worked out for themselves. I actually didn't do that because I missed it. If I had, the party would have solved the thing in five minutes.

Maybe it is just that I grew up on a steady diet of games magazine and those puzzle books for kids, but I read the words on the back of the sheet, and basically had the puzzle figured out, except that I thought it was s,4(b), 6(r), s, s, 8(b), 12(r). Which I still maintain is an alternate solution that fulfills the clues.

[FLite]

My players would have actually solved it faster than that, but I wrote progress at the top of the sheet, and alternate at the bottom. As a result, they thought there were two separate solutions. One that would reunite the town (progress) and one that would separate it forever (alternate)

[Matthew Morris]

All I can say is even with the additional clue (I was literally about to hit print when I got the e-mail) none of us could make sense of it. I'm glad you guys can.

[Muser]

My players didn't get the fact that you need to start not from the bottom but from the second floor. I understood the puzzle, but only because I had all the information in front of me.

Been digesting the scenario and I think I'll go with 2,5/5. The milieu is freaking awesome, the opponents are interesting and the scenario is super varied, but damn it's tough going and not just the combat side!

[TOZ]

Apparently, I think like a fey.

[MisterSlanky]

My experiences with the puzzle were about on-par for what's being reported.

As soon as they got the note, they immediately started going the math route. The moment they did so, everything fell apart, and I would say that's one of the critical flaws to the puzzle, you start heading down the wrong rabbit hole, and you'll never come out.

I wound up leaving for a quick drink and by the time I came back I could tell they were forever lost on trying to figure out the puzzle. Not even the "easy" clue put them back on track. At that point, we were running short, and I could tell frustration was setting in, so I just handwaved the whole thing for them.

I hate, hate, loathe, and despise puzzles like this in scenarios. There needs to be a method of mechanical solution or crap like this happens. I've seen it at tables with kids, I've seen it at tables with really smart people, and I've seen it at tables that are so hungover they can barely figure out how to add their attack roll to a d20. The one thing though that was unforgivable is that the puzzle absolutely halted the scenario mid-action and the pace never picked back up again. It was the wrong puzzle, and the wrong spot.

I have to agree with Matthew, I won't run this again. It wasn't Darkest Vengeance hateworthy due to some other interesting mechanics, but it certainly is down near the bottom.

[MisterSlanky]

FLite wrote:

My players would have actually solved it faster than that, but I wrote progress at the top of the sheet, and alternate at the bottom. As a result, they thought there were two separate solutions. One that would reunite the town (progress) and one that would separate it forever (alternate)

That, THAT would have made the entire scenario significantly more awesome.

Pick once choice and mark box A that the city divides. Pick the other and the city joins and you mark box B. If this puzzle had been after the "final fight", I would have actually enjoyed it. Make them decide the fate, or if they can't, they wind up picking the option out of accident.

I still say the pace break was the real issue.

[FLite]

I don't know if I succeeded, but I tried to keep things moving all through the puzzle. Mark down time for everything they do. Point out that the clock is groaning, maybe have the portals get a little smaller, etc. Keep them aware of time running out around them all through the puzzle and it shouldn't be too much of a pace break.

I mean, this is *literally* a ticking clock scenario.

[Fromper]

FLite wrote:

I don't know if I succeeded, but I tried to keep things moving all through the puzzle. Mark down time for everything they do. Point out that the clock is groaning, maybe have the portals get a little smaller, etc. Keep them aware of time running out around them all through the puzzle and it shouldn't be too much of a pace break.

I mean, this is *literally* a ticking clock scenario.

You really think that repeatedly telling players "You're not banging your head against the wall fast enough" will make the wall hurt their heads less?