Our GM has been telling us twice per session that he's playing Renchurch as detailed in the book, adding nothing. We believe him, but it's been really deadly so far. He assures us there's a lot left to go, and some encounters are specifically designed to drain our resources. He's even let it slip that at some point we'll be facing a werewolf lich; no idea why he'd give us that information.
Anyway, I'm curious about a couple of things regarding the potential XP in our near future:
1a) Is there any prospect of getting XP off the Tyrant's Whispers? GM told us they reset after one minute and can only be permanently destroyed by freeing Tar-Baphon. We're told the Whispers are worth a lot of XP, but the high XP reward seems excessive for suppressing a haunt for only one minute, and yet we're never going to try to shut them down permanently, given the required condition.
1b) If we are supposed to get XP from shutting down the Whispers for a mere minute, how do we even do that? There's no visible target, it's just voices coming from all around. Sending positive energy into the open air feels like attacking the darkness with a magic missile.
2) Ignoring all appearances of the Whispers, what's the remaining XP total for the first level of the Cathedral and its grounds? I don't want any idea of what's waiting for us, only the total XP still available to us, given what we've already faced:
We have had no encounters on the grounds and haven't examined any of the exterior buildings; we snuck around the back of the Cathedral and entered through a hole in a side wall.
Inside the Cathedral we've already dealt with:
* 1 athach,
* 1 barbed devil (we think he came down from the belfry, be we didn't enter the belfry)
* 16 corpulent ghouls (three separate groups incl. one that came in from the cloister area),
* 1 meladaemon,
* 1 haunt (taxidermied heads),
* 4 spectres
We also encountered 1 vampire with the spectres, and didn't defeat it. Count that vampire as still available.
We'd initially bypassed the exterior buildings to conserve resources, but we're now thinking that the more areas we skip, the more chance we have to miss some vital piece of information or pick up an item that will help us later on; we had to retreat outside the walls at the end of our last session anyway, so we're thinking of checking out some of the places we skipped the first time.
Thanks in advance.
Contributor
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Ah, Renchurch. My party is almost done with the place. Good times. ^_^
Your GM is telling it like it is; Renchurch is a deadly grind, and time is of the essence. In addition, I recommend keeping your comings and goings to a minimum... depending on how thoroughly he's read the section.
1a) I dunno. I haven't given any out yet.
1b) Much like all haunts, you indeed must attack the darkness (but with positive energy).
2) I couldn't say for sure without doing math. Why do you want to know, though? This still seems like quite a spoiler.
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Let's see... I ran the Cathedral last year so I'm a little rusty.
1a. I was very lenient with the whispers haunt. I think if you are able to destroy it you might get xp for it but the thing has a lot of hp and it would be a big expenditure of resources. If I were in a group I would try and evade it however possible... if that's possible.
1b. As Kalindlara said application of copious amounts of holy water, haunt siphons, lay on hands, and channel energy. Anything else that does positive damage... A heal spell maybe? Not sure how haunts react to those.
2.) Also a bit of a spoiler. I will say... a lot. The bulk of the xp for completing Renchurch remains.
The best advice I can provide for surviving it is liberal application of death ward (my players made a wand of it and nearly ran out by the end of the adventure) and protection from evil might not hurt.
Good luck, in my opinion it's a much more difficult area than what's ahead afterwards.
I recommend keeping your comings and goings to a minimum... depending on how thoroughly he's read the section.
Say no more; that sounds like it's skirting perilously close to spoiler territory. (FWIW, this is his first time GM's a Pathfinder AP and he has missed reading stuff before.)
1a) I dunno. I haven't given any out yet.
1b) Much like all haunts, you indeed must attack the darkness (but with positive energy).
Hear whispering voices, channel until we don't hear them any more? That sounds like a horrible waste of channeling, given that so far the whispers have done no more than dispel an invisibility sphere we had going. (GM has strongly hinted they can do much worse, but I don't know what we can do about it.) Got to be a better way than using up valuable dice worth of positive energy on a target we can't, er, target.
2) I couldn't say for sure without doing math. Why do you want to know, though? This still seems like quite a spoiler.
Yes, I was hoping some kind soul would do the math. :)
It's part simple curiosity, part metagaming to determine if we're likely to be able to level up again before getting to the Really Bad Stuff...whatever that is apart from that werewolf lich.
1a. I was very lenient with the whispers haunt. I think if you are able to destroy it you might get xp for it but the thing has a lot of hp and it would be a big expenditure of resources. If I were in a group I would try and evade it however possible... if that's possible.
1b. As Kalindlara said application of copious amounts of holy water, haunt siphons, lay on hands, and channel energy. Anything else that does positive damage... A heal spell maybe? Not sure how haunts react to those.
Destroying it isn't currently in the cards; we don't even know how to attack it since it just comes from everywhere around us. Holy water and haunt siphons have to be thrown at something. Heal has a range of Touch, so I don't know how Kalindlara's group was smacking elusive haunts with it. Evading it...it pops up invisibly at unpredictable intervals. Hard to evade what you can't anticipate.
2.) The bulk of the xp for completing Renchurch remains.
Wasn't asking about completing Renchurch, only about completing the ground level and grounds, but thanks. We're expecting one or two levels below the current one.
The best advice I can provide for surviving it is liberal application of death ward (my players made a wand of it and nearly ran out by the end of the adventure) and protection from evil might not hurt.
We don't have such a wand, and it would take three weeks for us to make one at minimal (7th level) effectiveness. We'll do the best we can with the resources we have. I didn't mean to solicit advice on how best to survive the Whispers, only on how PCs are meant to attack things with no definite location; and whether doing the necessary damage to shut the Whispers down for one minute was supposed to earn us the apparently large XP associated with it, or if hat XP reward comes only from the haunt's complete and permanent destruction (which for us is an unattainable goal.)
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Contributor
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Did your GM not inform you how a haunt works? You can touch it if you're in its manifesting area; otherwise, cure spells wouldn't work either.
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I gave my PCs the XP for suppressing the Whispers repeatedly - for each new instance of it in Renchurch.
Huh, did you not do Haunting of Harrowstone?
Attacking the air around you is exactly how haunts work.
Basically, a haunt blankets an area. You can't miss it anymore than you could miss fog, but you need magic or something special to meaningfully interact with it.
Occult Adventures Updates to Haunt Rules
Also, there's a monster on the exterior grounds your GM either missed or actually omitted (unless you just happened to not go where it resides).
This monster happens to be one of the deadliest things at Renchuch, and you'll probably be glad to skip it. =P
Huh, did you not do Haunting of Harrowstone?
Attacking the air around you is exactly how haunts work.
We did Harrowstone, feels like 100 years ago (we rotate GMs and games, and there's been a long break after each Carrion Crown book), and I thought I remembered having visible targets to throw siphons at.
Thanks for the links, I'll review those rules.
Also, there's a monster on the exterior grounds your GM either missed or actually omitted (unless you just happened to not go where it resides).
Since we avoided the cemetery, pond and all the exterior buildings on our way in, I imagine there are several monsters out there that the GM neither missed nor omitted.
We'll pretend we don't know about the killer trees, and probably have no reason to use the front door in any case, since we'd entered via a damaged wall originally, but...
There's a certain incentive to completely clear the grounds, not just take on the minimum number of creatures needed to get to Count Whatshisname and rescue him: one of our PCs is a Pharasmin Cleric and she's Not Happy with a former Pharasmin cathedral having been desecrated and used in this way.