If you're playing Rise of the Runelords as a PC, do not read any further.
Last weekend, my PCs faced the dreaded Freezemaw, and poor Thomar once again met a gruesome death. It's no big deal, once they scrape up some of Thomar from the rocks and use their scroll of True Resurrection on him he'll come back kicking. Poor guy, he's died four times since we started this adventure, yet somehow he keeps coming back. Overall, it was a fun encounter, with my PCs having had no idea how to hit him through the blizzard (50' radius is enormous) and only one party member capable of flight. They got him down to exactly 100HP and of course he took off to heal up and fight another day. He'll follow them into the Runeforge and ambush them somewhere there when it is most inconvenient for the party, naturally.
So my PCs are at the stone circle. I fully expect them to solve that puzzle in a few minutes and make their way into Runeforge.
My concern is that Runeforge is huge and there's no telling which section my PCs will explore first, which sections they'll visit, and if they'll even hit all of them. I'm pretty sure they haven't the faintest (they don't have great system mastery and aren't great at following plot points) idea of what to expect. Usually I get out the pawns and draw out maps for every encounter I expect to reach during a session, but in this case I have no idea which section(s) they will explore.
Does anyone have any tips on prepping for this massive dungeon, any gotchas that they wish they had known about before hand, or any other general advice for Runeforge? I fully expect the exploration of this dungeon to last several sessions, and I've read through the SotS general GM reference thread but wondering if there is anything that other GMs did or used for this dungeon to make it a little more convenient to run.
I'll also take any suggestions on how to make this a memorable dungeon for my party. Some of my players played 3.5 in the past but I don't think any have ever played past the standard E6 heroic levels of gameplay, and certainly not at high level 13/14/15 Pathfinder. This is their first high level dungeon, and I want to impress upon them the epic dangers of such a place.
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1. Remember to tally up the total sin/virtue points they've been accruing throughout the campaign so far. Particularly sinful characters receive bonuses in the wing associated with their sin, and receive penalties in the opposed schools' wings.
2. Don't try to map the whole thing. Run with no map (or just small quick corridors, not to scale) until battle seems particularly imminent. If I remember correctly, sloth, gluttony, greed, pride and wrath are the most likely to devolve into straight combat. Sloth and gluttony are the most complicated to draw I think, but the others are fairly easy to draw quickly.
3. Play up the ancient arcane repository bit a lot. Try to make each wing feel like a unique focus, the pinnacle of the respective form of magic. You have the military wrath wing, gluttony's crypt, gold plated halls of greed, a hall of mirrors for pride, etc.
4. Depending on your groups speed expect to tackle 1-3 wings each session.
5. Be careful when you decide to spring the dragon on them. Certain encounters can be pretty tough already, and throwing a dragon (that they had trouble with) into the mix can quickly lead to a TPK. Having the dragon attack after they deal with the trap in the envy wing might be good, since if they fail the trap their buffs will be down, but the trap may go off again and strip the dragon during the fight. Alternatively, attacking when they're coming out of the greed wing may be nice, since the dragon would benefit from the wing's sin attunement.
6. Particularly hard encounters that they may be surprised by:
- The lich in the gluttony wing (stone shape to spawn shadows is a nasty trick)
- The mirrors (2!) of opposition in pride (my party had to fight 2 duplicates of themselves, forcing them to flee and plan a new attack).
- Greed's trap and mithral mage can be tricky and show off some of the flashier high level magics.
7. Don't forget the story bits! It's easy to get bogged down in the dungeon crawly portion, but remember that the creatures here have minds of their own. Especially the wizard simulacra in pride and the succubus in lust, some of the creatures may be more inclined to talk with the PCs than to fight them.
If you're playing Rise of the Runelords as a PC, do not read any further.
Last weekend, my PCs faced the dreaded Freezemaw, and poor Thomar once again met a gruesome death. It's no big deal, once they scrape up some of Thomar from the rocks and use their scroll of True Resurrection on him he'll come back kicking. Poor guy, he's died four times since we started this adventure, yet somehow he keeps coming back. Overall, it was a fun encounter, with my PCs having had no idea how to hit him through the blizzard (50' radius is enormous) and only one party member capable of flight. They got him down to exactly 100HP and of course he took off to heal up and fight another day. He'll follow them into the Runeforge and ambush them somewhere there when it is most inconvenient for the party, naturally.
So my PCs are at the stone circle. I fully expect them to solve that puzzle in a few minutes and make their way into Runeforge.
My concern is that Runeforge is huge and there's no telling which section my PCs will explore first, which sections they'll visit, and if they'll even hit all of them. I'm pretty sure they haven't the faintest (they don't have great system mastery and aren't great at following plot points) idea of what to expect. Usually I get out the pawns and draw out maps for every encounter I expect to reach during a session, but in this case I have no idea which section(s) they will explore.
Does anyone have any tips on prepping for this massive dungeon, any gotchas that they wish they had known about before hand, or any other general advice for Runeforge? I fully expect the exploration of this dungeon to last several sessions, and I've read through the SotS general GM reference thread but wondering if there is anything that other GMs did or used for this dungeon to make it a little more convenient to run.
I'll also take any suggestions on how to make this a memorable dungeon for my party. Some of my players played 3.5 in the past but I don't think any have ever played past the...
My goal as a DM with Runeforge was to allow an open environment where the group could explore, and to create a mood unique to each wing. So I found organization and detailed early prep work was the key for me. It is indeed a big place, with a lot going on. At its heart it is about 4 - 8 mini-sessions. I feel it is best to be prepared for anything, so I just decided to prep it in one go. In the end, Runeforge took much longer for my group to clear then I expected, and was far more deadly. Yet, my group said it was by far one of their favorite sections of the adventure path, so the extra prep work I think paid off.
- My group uses digital maps via a TV on the table. So for mapping I had every map prepped ahead of time. This allowed me to focus on the story and combats.
- I made color coded quick cheat sheets for reference, corresponding sins, spell school, appearance of the statue and the items needed to collect and then color coded my maps for each area. This allowed me to handle transition from wing to wing. I further printed out a cheat sheet of each map for myself and marked an overview of the NPC's, traps, area effects and scenarios. I feel this helped a lot, as if they made a lot of noise they may attract others. (I wanted the timeless struggle of politics between the wings to evident).
- With so many key mobs, I made quality quick cheat sheets on each key NPC. It helped quickly run their strategies (i.e.: round by round what the best case scenario of what the Monster/boss would do, including free actions, move actions, including spell effects etc.). I found this sped up my re-review before each session, and helped me speed up my actions in combat drastically. As I simply didn't want to forget a key skill between prep sessions. It took a little extra time in first prep, but I recouped the time spent later.
- To set the moods, I used environmental music, http://www.ambient-mixer.com/s/runelords has some ROTRL user created content, and it's also free to make your own. I did my best to role play the sins in the NPC's. I further used a Voice change program on my Smartphone, and created any monologues that the section required, saved them and instead of reading the monologue played the recording (i.e.: the Magic Mouth of Envy.)
- With so many deaths, issues with diamond dust components started to cause some issues. I increased the diamonds as loot slightly.
- I felt any chance to add role play in Runeforge is a good thing, anything to break up the hack and slash. Sould be easy, as most of the NPC's in Runeforge together for up to 10,000 years, they will be starved for information and a little conversation if they can get it. If the group does not understand some of the key plot points of the adventure, use this as a time to drive the plot home via multiple NPC's, Books found, letters etc.
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I really need to write up what I did for Runeforge and post it one of these days.
The mirrors of opposition can be a real bugger.
My group did what they needed to do to create runeforged weapons vs. transmutation before they entered the hall of Greed. That made greed much easier that it could have been.
Play up the various factions. Have some of them willing to cut deals with the heros and so on. That makes for a fun addition
-Skeld