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Honestly, I don't think players need "Its now personal" reason for fighting Karzoug. But if you go down that route... Well, first, problem with Runegiants is that 1) They are stationed at mountains surrounding Xin Shalast, how the heck they would get from there to Sandpoint in time to attack and get out? 2) Runegiants are so powerful that they would destroy Sandpoint completely, no survivors left.
Besides, at that point, attacks on Sandpoint are kind of redudant. I mean, they've been attacked by goblins, by stone giants, had bit of sinkhole problem... If you are going to have city attacked again and destroyed without input from players, I'd as player feel bummed and it would feel like what I did before didn't matter because city got destroyed anyway
Second thing that bothers me is that Ironbriar being recruited by Karzoug doesn't really make sense when you think about it, guy is serial killer cultist who is partly in that for money <_< By time he gets chance to escape, he is going to get out of country really fast and set shop up somewhere else where nobody knows who he is. It would make more sense to use one of Karzoug's liutenants at Xin-Shalast to lead the attack.
Instead of Sandpoint being burned again, you could have that ice devil(whose name I can't remember) show up to assasinate Brodert right when they are about to find out information and teleport out or something after taunting them and trying to destroy his books so players would find Brodest's clue from scraps that survived. He seems type of person to do that type of stuff and it would feel much more personal to see Brodert die in front of them. Or perhaps have Kaleb responsible for it, he is such a easy to hate guy for what he did to that angel and he is Karzoug's apprentice who wants to prove himself to his master after his previous failures.
Anyway, yeah, if you are going to have someone lead the attack, I'd reccomend using one of Karzoug's minion at Xin-Shalast so that players have more reason to hate them than them just being sub bosses at final dungeon. Ironbriar is more fit for "Players one day visit one random town and find out he set up butcher shop there, but is in fact butchering townsfolk and selling the meat" type of creepy "We shouldn't have let him go" type of stuff.
There are only 34 Rune Giants in all of Xin Shalast, and they are pretty busy keeping the growing giant army perpetually dominated.
My players are feeling a bit like your players are. They see that Karzoug is the BBEG and that he must be stopped, but have no personal reasons to hate him. It's more of a job thing, "someone's got to do it".
To add to that, Karzoug is (in my opinion) just a big bag of evil without any real personality besides being powerful. I gave him my best Darth Sidious voice when he spoke to my players (hey, maybe that's the reason they don't care so much :) ) but I haven't been able to find anything else to make him stand out, unfortunately. It's all "Arhg, I'm so powerful, and evil, and you're maggots, and I'm so powerfully evilly powerful". Yeah yeah.
So making it personal is what I intend to do, and hopefully that will rile up my players enough that going to Xin-Shalast won't feel like a commute to them. The medium must be quite mindless though, so they can see Karzoug directly being behind it, and not one of his flunkies.
It will be an attack on Sandpoint, but it will go directly after the PC's this time. I was thinking of a Runegiant, since they are cool, but that won't feel like it's Karzoug himself that is directly destroying things the PCs cherish.
So I think I will skip the part in Runeforge where the statue animates, and instead have Thistletop rise from the waves. Karzoug, fed up with 'those pesky kids always ruining his plans', activates one of his old sentinels. It rises from the gulf, puts on its Thistletop head and marches on Sandpoint. It will destroy most of the house the PC's built on Chopper's Island, and smash and destroy a couple of the PC's favourite locals - just when the PC's come teleporting back from Runeforge. I will save the Runeforge golem's speech for the sentinel, adding that he's got "legions of sentinels, just like this one" and hopefully make my PC's feel that this scrawny old wizard dude now has got it coming, and the sooner the better.
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Why do they need to feel it's personal?
He's a villain who ruled part of the world 10,000 years ago and is coming back. They have evidence of how bad things were back then.
But hey. You want to make it personal? When the PCs are leaving the Runeforge, have them appear in Thassilon, 10,000 years ago, stripped of all their magic and equipment. They are being hunted, people who help them escape are slaughtered, and they see basically how the old Varisians were slaves that were treated quite poorly.
Just another attack on Sandpoint? That's old. It's worn out. At this point, the party has spent a significant part of the adventure away from Sandpoint. Nuking the starter village doesn't do much.
No. Making it personal means driving home to the players themselves that things are truly horrible 10,000 years ago... and this is what Karzoug will return to the world.
You could also have them emerge from the Runeforge to find it's been 50 years, Karzoug won, and they are being hunted when they emerge... and they have to find a way to go back in time to stop him - it would be a variation on the theme. You could even have Karzoug taunt them when they make the Runeforged Weapons - tell them "time moves differently in the Runeforge. While you have been dallying in there, I've freed myself. My armies have retaken Thassilon. I have killed five of the other Runelords and the last will soon fall... leaving me to reconquer the entire world."
(Or for that matter, they emerge and find the Bad End of Karzoug being freed without stopping the Leng entities from bringing back the Great Old One... and have to find Karzoug and have him send them back in time to keep him from being freed so that the world is not devoured by something that makes Cthulhu look tame.)
Just another attack on Sandpoint? That's old. It's worn out. At this point, the party has spent a significant part of the adventure away from Sandpoint. Nuking the starter village doesn't do much.
Yes, you have a good point there. They've already defended Standpoint once. Doing it once more, except against a bigger baddie, would feel trite.
You could also have them emerge from the Runeforge to find it's been 50 years, Karzoug won, and they are being hunted when they emerge... and they have to find a way to go back in time to stop him - it would be a variation on the theme. You could even have Karzoug taunt them when they make the Runeforged Weapons - tell them "time moves differently in the Runeforge. While you have been dallying in there, I've freed myself. My armies have retaken Thassilon. I have killed five of the other Runelords and the last will soon fall... leaving me to reconquer the entire world."
This is a great idea. But instead of 50 years, I'll make it 5. Their loved ones are dead or enslaved. Sandpoint's a husk, with a stone monolith outside bearing the inscription "Behold the fate of those that defy The Claimer". The sky is a strange purple, blue dragons soar high above, and thunderous rune giants patrol the land. Very Terminator:ish :) I just have to think of a non-cheezy way for them to get "back from the future", as it were. Can't be too deus ex machina. And I don't want to redo all of chapter 6, so they need to get back. Maybe I'll have a haggard Shalelu hide out in the ruins of their mansion, telling them that Varisia's last hope is in the enslaved city of Magnimar - a scroll to send them back. Anyway, thanks Tangent!
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Really though, problem with that 50 years idea is that you either have to ignore Mhar(who is really cool lose condition), or do a bait and switch and change big bad to cr 27 great old one that has no info about it whatsoever xD "You thought this was campaign about ancient wizards? Too bad, its cthulhu time!"
Yes, you have a good point there. They've already defended Standpoint once. Doing it once more, except against a bigger baddie, would feel trite.
Just another attack on Sandpoint? That's old. It's worn out. At this point, the party has spent a significant part of the adventure away from Sandpoint. Nuking the starter village doesn't do much.
...Yeah, I know my english is bad, but I said the exact same thing xP
Anyway, you both didn't seem to notice that he said players already created runeforged weapons and fought against the statue and THEN decided to explore rest of the place <_< So your ideas for statue encounter don't really apply anymore for OP
Anyhoo, if you want to do that future timeline thing and them get back in the past, how about them defeating Karzoug and using Leng Device to somehow transfer themselves back to present and ruining Karzoug's plans in progress?(I mean, if the device can bring his ancient army to present, wouldn't do much rewriting to allow it to do it otherway xD) Them finding random time travel scoll would be pretty unlikely since no wizard in present day can do actual time travel magic as far as I know
Really though, problem with that 50 years idea is that you either have to ignore Mhar(who is really cool lose condition), or do a bait and switch and change big bad to cr 27 great old one that has no info about it whatsoever xD "You thought this was campaign about ancient wizards? Too bad, its cthulhu time!"
No switch. Karzoug is the BBEG, regardless of his "cartoon-villainess" it would feel cheap to just replace him in the last act. The Leng baddies have a different agenda in my campaign - to incorporate Varisia into their nightmare realm. So no Mhar - that story line feels very much like just repeating the main one. "There's this insanely powerful old Runelord awakening! He'll destroy us all if given the chance! OK he's dealt with. Phew! Oh wait, there's ANOTHER insanely powerful old evil awakening as well!" Nah. Karzoug's the enemy, warts and all, and after he's stopped we'll go play Hell's Rebels.
...Yeah, I know my english is bad, but I said the exact same thing xPAnyway, you both didn't seem to notice that he said players already created runeforged weapons and fought against the statue and THEN decided to explore rest of the place <_< So your ideas for statue encounter don't really apply anymore for OP
Sorry, I just quoted Tangent101 because his post was further down - you're both pointing at a similar base problem. And your English is not worse than mine! :) I'm also sorry that I kind of hijacked JamesHuds post - I got a bit carried away there, hehe.
I don't think having something happen in Sandpoint is a bad idea though. Maybe just not an attack on the town itself, since that has been done, and in a great way as well. Sandpoint is the heart of the first few chapters. Just because the later chapters drops this doesn't mean you as a DM has to.
So, as written, it's Brodert that puts the PCs on the right track to find Xin-Shalast. If you still have Ironbriar skulking about, he could have gotten in contact with one of Karzoug's minions, and told him what he knows about the adventurers, and gotten recruited directly. When the PC's go to talk to Brodert, they might hear noise from his house. When they get in, they'll find a disheveled and deranged Ironbriar burning Broderts books and manuscripts in the fireplace. He'll wave a letter at the PC, and shout something like "After I burn this you'll never find the way to Xin-Shalast! Karzoug's promised Norgorber and I a glorious future in his kingdom. Now just give up, sit down and wait for the inevitable day when the Claimer returns!"
Standing by him is a frozen solid Brodert. The ice devil pops in, shattering poor Brodert into a thousand bits as his first attack, and then the new allies proceed to attack the PCs. You could have a fun fight where Ironbriar tries to burn the dwarven letter while the PCs try to stop him, while the Ice Devil stands between.
As for my own campaign, I need to use the AP's set pieces, such as the end fight in the Eye of Avarice, due to time constraints. The days when I could spend days upon days planning an adventure are long gone. Some side questing is fine, but probably a time travel episode, while cool and effective in showing a "what if" scenario, needs to much rewriting and planning. I'll have to think of something else to get my PC's into the groove again.
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Alright, so here's my campaign, just to give you some ideas. I know I have one player who frequents these boards daily, but I trust him not to use OoC knowledge.
During Chapter 5, my party took 116 days of down time to craft. They'd dealt with the sinkhole problem, and decided that a 10k year old magic workshop could wait a few more days. At day 101, Karzoug decided to start sending out scouting parties of giants to probe for weak points in the Storval Plateau, and see if the Storval Stairs was the only way down to lower Varisia. The party was given hints of this throughout downtime, but ignored them.
When the party created the dominate weapons, Karzoug took great note, decided it was time to invade. He sent his apprentice, Khalib, out (decided he'd managed to learn how to leave the occlusion field since he was weaker and needed less time to regain all of his strength) with a larger group of giants, and they set up camp at the Storval Stairs, after taking out the Black Tower (missed the players by hours).
Once situated at the Stairs, the apprentice created a teleportation circle and started bringing in "the army". Quickly, a scouting party became a couple hundred giants, rune giants, and lamia of various types. Once this was done, the apprentice returned to Xin-Shalast.
Currently, Kaer Maga is under siege from the Storval Plateau, but holding since the remanents of the Black Arrows and dwarves from nearby Jagerhoff (?, going on memory here) are keeping the ogres from the nearby forest from attacking the south side.
The Storval Stairs is controlled by the giants, and they have swept down into Varisia. So far, Wolf's Ear, Ravenmore (again ?, due to not having a map in front of me), and Galduria have been destroyed, the last with some effort. Sandpoint is next, and probably won't survive. The Lord-Mayor of Magnimar was deposed in my campaign, and Magnimar is finally putting armies in the field.
The party is in Xin-Shalast, and slowly making their way towards the peaks, but has been distracted by attacking the Storm/Cloud giant military academy on the mountain side. We shall see if they survive. There is still every chance in my campaign that Mhar Massif will erupt and the Elder God will be released. Good times.
I like those additions William. I have something similar planned, although the attacking army in my case has been reinforced with some orc tribes from Belkzen, as well as a few chromatic dragons. One of my characters is from Kaer Maga so the threat to that city makes it personal to her.
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The other bit of information I wanted to post was that when this campaign started, I told the party that what happens in this campaign effects future campaigns. For instance, with the Lord-Mayor deposed, Magnimar will now forever have new rule in the city. The three towns that have been destroyed so far are forever wiped out, unless the people there and/or the PCs decide to rebuild them.
If Sandpoint is destroyed, I will have to find a new way to start the Jade Regent AP. If the giants make it to Magnimar, then the party better hope they can be stopped, otherwise....
If that Elder God is released, I don't know what we will do.
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During Chapter 5, my party took 116 days of down time to craft.
116 days to craft?!? If it's before they entered the Runeforge, they would have been, what, level 12 or 13? What were they crafting, a matched pair of wands of maximized, intensified, CL 12 fireball? Four sets of +5 armor (from scratch) and two Type III bags of holding?
If you have only one crafter in the group, it can take a while. Especially given that you just got a spellbook with a boatload of spells that will take a while to transcribe.
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Ach, right, Big M's spell books. That's a horrifying thought. And a good reminder of this post on another thread, adding up the spells at each level and calculating the number of spellbook pages required.
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Our group has some crafters but where told earlier in campaign there wasn't going to be much using in any real crafting due to campaign time restraints. One of the big issues is spell books and the time needed to get things scribed over but once your spellcraft is high enough you just use the books that you capature as the ability to auto-succeed isn't worht the gold / time to move it to "your" book.
The 118 days was some of the players just going hog wild and campaign be damned. Some players never learn I guess.
Here is an old post on the time spent transcribing spells from Mokmurian's spellbook: spoiler, it's 960 hours. ;)
60 days of nonstop scribing of spells, 16 hours a day. Of course, a straight Wizard would already have 24 of the spells in his spellbook, from the 2 free spells each level. And if the Wizard was human and chose additional spells instead of hit points or skill points, he might have another 10 spells in his book. Given the likely choice of free spells and their levels, he's probably good for 84 hours of spell transcribing... and if he captured spellbooks from other casters he may very well have knocked another 100+ hours of transcribing during the course of the adventure (scribbling into his spellbook from the light of the fire and a light spell after the group has settled down for the night).
Even with those assumptions... we're still looking at a probable 600 hours of transcribing spells. Or basically 38 days. And that assumes he's not a crafter.
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Here is an old post on the time spent transcribing spells from Mokmurian's spellbook: spoiler, it's 960 hours. ;)
60 days of nonstop scribing of spells, 16 hours a day. Of course, a straight Wizard would already have 24 of the spells in his spellbook, from the 2 free spells each level. And if the Wizard was human and chose additional spells instead of hit points or skill points, he might have another 10 spells in his book. Given the likely choice of free spells and their levels, he's probably good for 84 hours of spell transcribing... and if he captured spellbooks from other casters he may very well have knocked another 100+ hours of transcribing during the course of the adventure (scribbling into his spellbook from the light of the fire and a light spell after the group has settled down for the night).
Even with those assumptions... we're still looking at a probable 600 hours of transcribing spells. Or basically 38 days. And that assumes he's not a crafter.
Yeah, that would be a problem. Our wizard has been copying out the spells from captured spell books so far, but considering two of the three have been necromancers, there has been a lot of overlap. When the time comes, I think I'll make it clear that he doesn't have time to copy out more than a few spells per level. Plus, I've been limiting him to 8 hours of transcribing each day, just like the limits on crafting, figuring it's similar, so what would be 38-60 days in your campaign would be closer to the 118 days the group took in William Sinclair's. Our wizard can just toss the spellbooks into the party's bag of holding and carry them around (as Darius suggests, his spellcraft will be high enough to auto-succeed at using them directly). Or he could take them back to Sandpoint and leave them at their HQ (the converted Glassworks) as the foundation of a spell library that he can consult when there is more time or - using teleport - to replace a missing spellbook in case of emergency. He might even pay a follower or hire a minion to copy them over as a spare set.
He is also the party crafter, and I have generally given the group an 8-10 day break every 3-4 levels to allow him to do some crafting, the cleric to scribe some scrolls, and the other characters to undertake some of the downtime activities from Ultimate Campaign. But four months in a big block? Smithers, unleash the Elder God!
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Well, I should have the brains of the group back in play this Wednesday, so we might actually be able to make some headway, especially if they bother to start asking questions and making some Knowledge checks. No one has ever considered that while the rings/medallions are useful in accessing Mhar Massif, they aren't necessary. My group isn't known for thinking outside the very small box that they make for themselves on a regular. They are perilously close to the campaign ending in a bad way, though. As it is, the landscape of Varisia will be forever changed in my campaign world.
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It's a spellcraft DC 15 + Spell level to prepare a spell from a barrowed spell book. Honestly this is the best way to deal with captured spell books as it is just to costly with time and gold to write the spells over.
You can take 10 on these checks rather quickly in the career to even succeed level 9 spells especially if you have the Gloves of Elvenkind.
INT MOD : +4
Class Skill: +3
Gloves: +5
Ranks : +5
Take 10: +10
Total : DC27 and lv 9 spells is DC24
So its it doable to use level 9 spells by do this much earlier than needed.
Don't waste the gold and time scribing them over and if your party has multiple wizards then share your free spells ;-)