plot questions about the end of the gencon pfs specials

[cruise]

This is obviously spoilerific.

I was sitting at a table that made it kind of hard to hear the announcers for both (siege of serpents and sky key solution) of the specials. Even with the words on the screen there were a few things I am unclear about

siege of serpents:

Do we have any idea who was leading the aspis attack and why the tower started floating?

Sky key solution:

This one especially confused me.
Did we get the sky key back? Did the meteor hit and the dome saved us or did something else happen? It was really hard to figure out what exactly saved us at the end

our group fought Arodeth and had her seriously on the ropes but then time ran out if that means anything different.

[Stemboy]

Siege of Serpents:

The tower floating is directly as a result of a reaction between the the Hao Jin Tapestry and the Sky Key being brought into close proximity to each other and the damage that the tapestry sustains. Basically, because "magic".

[trollbill]

Sky Key Solution:

I am pretty sure what happened is that the Harbingers released their temporal hold on us and we were able to return to the present safely rather than remain in the past when the StarStone struck. Arodeth sacrificed herself to do this as someone had to remain behind to anchor the temporal anomaly. I am not positive what happened to the Sky Key after that. Our group managed to actually talk Arodeth out of changing the past rather than fighting her.

[Iammars]

Siege of Serpents:

As to who led the aspis attack - sounds like you should play other season 7 scenarios then.

[John Compton]

All three of the above responses cover the points quite well--especially James's advice.

[cruise]

Awesome! thanks guys!

[Akari Sayuri "Tiger Lily"]

trollbill wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Sky Key Solution:

My group talked her down too. We were the level 1 Core table, half of whom this was their character's first session. A fortunate intersection of "screw it, might as well try" and the dice gods favor in granting several sequential 19 and 20s :)

[Talon Stormwarden]

Haha, the table I was playing at went something like this

Spoiler:

After dealing with the Harbingers nonviolently:

My slayer, acting first in the round: "I'll delay, see what the rest of the party wants to do, I'm fine killing her or talking to her."

2nd player to act: "Yeah, I'll delay too, I'm fine talking to her."

Goblin barbarian: "I'll hold too...(player pauses, looks thoughtful, then shakes his head) Nope, can't do it, I charge and leap over the pit. Bite attack!"

[claudekennilol]

That's lame, my GM said that we should just stay in the antechamber and attack the ever-spawning magus npcs because there would be no way we would be able to contend with her. He heavily implied it was only a 10-11 encounter.

[Talon Stormwarden]

What tier did you play? My understanding is that stat blocks for the NPC only existed for tier 7-8 and 10-11. If you played a tier below those your GM may have been doing you a favor. Though if the party wanted to engage her you should have been allowed to do so (again, just my impression from talking with GMs, I have not read the adventure.).

[Stemboy]

Sky Key Solution:

Low tier can engage her, but if they do they have to deal with the Tier 7-8 version, which if they don't approach Diplomaticly is likely to get messy.

[GreyYeti]

7-00:

And they can only engage her diplomaticly if they have resolved at least half of the harbinger anchor encounters peacefully, otherwise she immediately attacks.

[Lyra, Kyra's little sister]

Talon Stormwarden wrote:

Haha, the table I was playing at went something like this

** spoiler omitted **

Ahem, I had a similar experience. Just a word of experience on this subject,

Advice:

I had to threaten my friendly barbarian with no healing to make sure he stood back. He did get to chop down one of the harbringers, but I scolded him and threatened to put silence on him. By the time we got to talk to Arodeth, he lipped off a little, but he remembered what I said from there.

I do hope she gets to meet Aroden and he honors her for her sacrifice. It's always hard to see one with so much faith become misled by interpretation of their holy books.

[claudekennilol]

Nils Janson wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Ok, that makes me feel better. I found it unlikely that the GM I had screwed something up to that extreme.

[TwoWolves]

Amazingly, our group didn't harm any of them (one purely due to time being called and the plot advancing, still, 4/5 ain't bad). AND we had the skill monkeys in place to resolve the final comflict peacefully as well. Not 100% sure who the antagonist was or why they were motivated to act thusly, but I only get to play PFS at GenCon, so a lot of the backstory scenarios passed me by.

[SarNati]

Sky Key Solution:

As has been said a couple times, the finale encounter of the Sky Key Solution is dependent on what has already happened. It is correct that the lowest stat block for the Final encounter was 7-8 (even if you were level 1) and if you dealt with other encounters violently, it would result in her attacking as soon as you entered.

Trying to encourage an encounter to go in a way that would not result in the utter crushing of your players can be sometimes hard in those instances, and I sympathize if you felt railroaded. But at the same time, I'm sure your GM was simply trying to do their best to help the story go in a fun direction. As I said, thats not always easy and I know we try our best.

[cruise]

Sky Key Solution:

I went in with the intent of talking her down, we were even nonviolent to the harbingers. but the gm phrased it in such a way to bring out the competitive spirit in the table, where we were all like "bring it! we can take her!" and i completely forgot about my plan