7-27 Beyond Azlant Ridge GM thread [SPOILERS]


GM Discussion

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The Exchange 5/5

How much does Slitherbane cost a PC?

3,815 gp?
Or
94,515 gp?

Sovereign Court 4/5 *

The cost is mentioned in the 3-4 Subtier.
After that, you can upgrade the item little by little to arrive at the 90k-or-so value.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

That 4-player adjustment is almost irrelevant.

Just ran a 4 PC party, Sorcerer4/Oracle1, Barbarian7, Gunslinger5, and Bard7. They handled most of the scenario fine, but missed the significance of the fountain. The only thing that saved them from a TPK is the Bard having bought a scroll of Freedom of Movement and using it when the final encounter started. The attack penalty on the tails made it miss him a few times as he moved back and forth placing the disks. The other three got grappled and constricted to death before he could finish.

Definitely recommend a different adjustment for 4 players.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha

The two characters that drank from the fountain this weekend were both lower level casters that kept out of reach. >_<

Of course the two skalds, the fighter, and the flying cleric were grappled to unconsciousness.

Scarab Sages 4/5

I ran this over the weekend as well. I made a couple of mistakes that confused things at the end, but it was a party of 6 with two animal companions, so after the first party member got grappled (fortunately the 7th level Cavalier, and not one of the 3rd level characters), they sent the animal companions in to be grappled and take up the other two tails. After that, it was just a matter of figuring out the puzzle before one of the three was killed, which they succeeded at.

I can definitely see it going wrong, though. Only one of them drank from the fountain, and the Cavalier was a Halfling and unlikely to ever escape. Thhey were lucky enough to have a large enough group to overwhelm the end with pure numbers. I think a more appropriate 4 player adjustment would be to have the monolith damage/remove one of the creature's tails to cut down on its action economy.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

I think as a GM you can't go far enough dropping hints that the fountain is a Good Thing; most players will think that the reason the archeologists are acting weird is because there was something in the water.

So really emphasize the murals of a cyclops drinking from the fountain, going all Popeye, and wrestling snake creatures.

And since we're in the dark on the mechanics to identify what the fountain does, I'd lean towards making it easy to at least establish that this is the "nice" kind of Abjuration, not the nasty (explosive runes) kind. I figure if people can pass a DC 15 Spellcraft or Arcana check, that should be enough to tell them it's benign, even though you don't reveal its exact function.

In addition, when I ran the Xacarba, I applied a -5 for secondary natural weapon to its grapple checks. That means it drops to a +32 grapple (+30 on 4-player mode). A character who gets the +30 bonus from the fountain on top of his own CMD (approximately 12-25?) should be quite safe from the grabs.

I disagree that the 4-player mode doesn't do anything. Sickened reduces the damage from 1d8+4 to 1d8+2, both on the hit and the constrict. That's a drop of 25% in expected damage per hit. And the chance to hit also decreases; AC varies wildly between PCs at the low tier, but it isn't all that strange to get an AC in the 20-25 range. With an AC of say, 25 (Dex +3, Mutagen +4, armor +4, Shield extract +4 for example), an alchemist normaly has a 30% chance of getting hit, but Sickened reduces that to 20%. That cuts the chance of getting hit by a third. If this alchemist is also curious and sampled the fountain, he should have little trouble in this encounter because he's probably got a CMD of about 18/48 going against the Xacarba.

My point is that for a tanky PC the encounter is quite doable, and he really notices a difference from the adjustment. But it does hinge rather heavily on that fountain.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I acknowledged that the adjustment was not useless. But it almost is.

Liberty's Edge 5/5 5/55/55/5

Rode the avatar of gorum into battle.

Dropped in the very body of my enemy when the teleport happened.

Couldn't be happier.

*shredshredhredshredshred*

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Any thoughts on what to do when the barbarian begins helping the golem break through the door with an adamantine hammer?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Any thoughts on what to do when the barbarian begins helping the golem break through the door with an adamantine hammer?

Absolutely nothing.

Given that the Xacarba can deal more than 20 damage a hit, it'd be logical to assume the door/walls of the prison have hardness greater than 20, making the adamantine worthless.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Then how does the golem get through?

5/5 *****

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Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Then how does the golem get through?

The power of plot-tomium.

4/5 *

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber
Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Then how does the golem get through?

It can't be bargained with.

It can't be reasoned with.
It doesn't feel pity.
Or remorse.
Or fear.
And it absolutely will not stop.
Ever.
Until the [redacted] is dead.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Well, something to keep in mind. I might not have killed 3/4ths of the party if I had ruled that the dwarf pounding on the door from the moment they got to the ruin didn't speed up the countdown.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

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I think it's reasonable to rule the wall has a higher hardness than 20 - it took the Xacarba 9000 years to make a crack in it. So adamantine isn't going to do much good.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Then neither should the golem.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Then neither should the golem.

The hardness is such that the golem does 1 hp of damage on a max damage hit? Where does that put the hardness.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Since it's measured in plotomium, I figured the hardness was irrelevant.

Sovereign Court 2/5 Venture-Lieutenant, Alaska—Anchorage

This was incredible tough. I played on the lower tier.

As I have not read the scenario I can't vouch for the how it was written.

Earlier The mass suggestion really bogged down the game, half the party was effected and we just argued about putting the runes in the crack in the wall.

The pool was only mentioned in passing so none of the party used it.

The GM had each Tail use its Vital Strike on each attack as he said they acted as independent creatures. That was ton of damage, luckily we had two party members who could channel.

The party survived but only due to the Xacarba rolling 1's twice. We had one player run past it, not get hit/grabbed to throwing runes to the other side and one player placing them in their slots.

Not an overly enjoyable fight from this players prospective.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

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I think one of the most important lessons for writers to take away from this scenario is:

Never Split The Stat Block

There's been a lot of table variation on how to supplement the "impeded Xacarba" statblock with information from the main monster, such as:


  • What is it's CMB/CMD? Do the tails take penalties for being secondary weapons?
  • Do each of the tails get a separate pool of feats? Do they all get Combat Reflexes?
  • What does acting as an independent creature mean anyway? Can they really all use Vital Strike?
  • Does this thing have the grappled condition?

It would have been much, much better to have a complete "tail" statblock that precisely describes what the tail can do, instead of this halfway thing.

5/5 5/55/55/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

A thousand times that.

I know white space is nails on a blackboard for a visual layout perspective but having the fights or even the monster on two different pages detracts from game play as you're either flipping back and forth or don't see the note at the bottom that winds up on the next page detailing why it DOESN"t outright kill the party.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Then how does the golem get through?

By dealing enough damage to overcome hardness?

The golem has a slam which deals 4d12 + 27 (as demonstrated in Before the dawn II), as compared to the Xacarba's 3d8 + 9.

Given that the Xacarba hasn't escaped, we can infer the wall has a hardness greater than (3)(8) + 9 = 33.

Max damage for the golem is (4)(12) + 27 = 75, much greater than the required hardness of the wall.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

The damage given for the monolith is 4d8+18 in Beyond Azlant Ridge, in case anyone is confused. Run with that number, not the 4d12+27.

5/5 *****

The creature present in Beyond is the same as that in Rescue, it just uses a different stat block.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha

All that hammering on the walls really wears down the ol' slammers.

4/5 ***

In the 6-7 tier, the haunt triggers every round. Given it's based on proximity, does that mean it goes off every round as long as someone is in that room?

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha

Yes, that is how it reads. It's tough to deal with.

Dark Archive 1/5

Only one person drank the water at our table (we thought it caused the weird acting of the archeologists). In battle he was also the guy using the flail, so we attributed the flail with the +30 to grapple, not the water. Everyone was dropped except for me (who was blind from the haunt) and the other guy in the prison room throwing the disks out to me. The only reason he even made it back there was the DM rolling a 1 on the grapple. Eventually I tried every combination possible to put them in, while 3 downed characters eventually stabilized and 1 bled to death. Being blind might have been the only thing that saved us as it kept me in the back row as far from the monster as possible. I couldn't cure or stabilize anyone because I couldn't see them. One guy was in the prison room when it closed (he couldn't get out as he only had a handful of hit points left). The GM said the monolith won the fight in the prison and we could eventually get him out. I did not think this was a very fair mod. Also I couldn't figure out why it had 15' reach but couldn't get me in the back (luckily the GM gave that to us), but I wasn't going to complain.

Grand Lodge 2/5

Scenario wrote:

The proper order is the light warding disc first,

followed by the darkness warding disc, the daylight
warding disc, and then the faerie fire warding disc.
Slotting in a warding disc requires careful placement
in the panel; even if the PC can reach the panel 8 feet
from the floor (such as being boosted up by an ally or
borrowing the scaffolding from area C1), a full-round
action is required to put a disc in place. If the pieces are
placed in the wrong order, nothing happens;

Does this mean you have to put them in in order (Moon, then Void, then Sun, then Stars) or just that they have to be in the correct slots? Or do the slots not matter, just the timing?

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I read it as in the correct slots.

4/5 *

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber
Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
I read it as in the correct slots.

Yes, that's how I read (and ran) it too.

Grand Lodge 2/5

That's what I thought reading it, but the gm that ran it said they had to be placed in order too. Oh well, no one died so no harm no foul.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5 RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

I interpreted it as requiring the disks to be placed in order. "The proper order is...".

5/5 5/55/55/5

Pretty ssure tjat means from left to right

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

If they have to place them from left to right in sequence, that's going to add even more time to successful completion if the party makes a mistake, as it will take four full round actions to remove all of the discs before starting over again.

4/5 *

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber
Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
If they have to place them from left to right in sequence, that's going to add even more time to successful completion if the party makes a mistake, as it will take four full round actions to remove all of the discs before starting over again.

Especially considering the party doesn't have the one they would need to start with in that case until the monolith breaks the doors to the prison.

Grand Lodge 2/5

I just noticed that the Xacarba has improved vital strike... does it use it or?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Hartnell von Durr wrote:
I just noticed that the Xacarba has improved vital strike... does it use it or?

It can, if somehow, you haven't killed enough PCs already.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

It hinges on how you interpret the "separate creature" idea of the tails. I suspect the idea was to consider them separate grapplers - that if one of the tails is grappling, the other two can still do stuff.

I think what was not meant is that the Xacarba's feats multiply - that each tail gets Combat Reflexes many AoOs per turn for example, and that a PC committing a provocation is attacked by three tails. Nor that each tail starts Vital Striking separately.

The whole idea of the encounter is that what you're fighting is less dangerous than the original monster, not that the tails themselves become more dangerous because the head is distracted.

So if I wanted it to use Vital Strike, that would mean only one tail attacks that turn.

1/5

Linda Zayas-Palmer wrote:

A little more on the xacarba's location and abilities:

The circles on the map both ended up somewhere between huge and gargantuan in size, and I didn't catch that in my final review. The xacarba's intended location after he switches places with the golem at the outset of their fight is every square that has at least part of the circle labeled M in it. That way, with his 15 foot reach, he does not threaten the entrance or the back wall where the PCs need to place the disks.

Hi all! I'm running this in a few hours time. For a 4 man group. I've read this thread and the thread on the product (with Iammars very thorough breakdown of the encounter).

After thinking about this a lot and re-reading Linda's statement above, I'm thinking that for that to be true, the Xacarba must be squeezing to fit in the doorway (if it only has 15 fooet reach, and the back row is unreachable by it). That should give the creature a further -4 to AC and to hit (and CMB) making it a little easier to deal with. I know it's not exactly written like that, but it seems like a fair interpretation of the rules.

What do you guys think?

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I'd say use the stats as written and say that they included the squeezing penalties. And be ready to admit that they're more made up for the sub-tier than actually based on the full stat block.

Allowing the safe buffer at the back gives the PCs a little leeway. It allowed the bard at my table to heal himself between trips to grab more discs. Sadly, it could do nothing for his three grappled companions, who were squeezed to death in the meantime. (The bard had brought a scroll of freedom of movement. Supposedly to protect from black tentacles he had run across in the previous scenario. I didn't press him too hard about that.)

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

I mostly agree with Steven. I wouldn't modify any of the "impeded" statblock.

However, when you're referring to the main stat block to get it's grapple CMB, remember that the tails are secondary weapons so they get a -5 to hit.

Also, try not to make the fountain look sinister. Emphasize "abjuration is here to protect people", not "they're all acting weird because they drank the kool aid". It can help to describe the mosaics being all about cyclopses fighting snakes and winning.

1/5

Thank you both :)

Grand Lodge 4/5

Has anyone noticed that the out-of-subtier gold is very wrong?

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

Yup. Linda Zayas-Palmer confirmed the correct gold here.

Grand Lodge 4/5 *

This is still a crazy scenario. I've played it once, sat around to watch the end of it one other time, and just GMed it once. This scenario is one where you are very likely to come out of it with a war story. My three stories are these, replete with spoilers:

Spoiler:

Story one, playing:

Running as level 4 druid in a 6-7 tier with six players. We figured out a good chunk of it pretty well: got the flail and both disks, found the mask, used it to clear the wizard's blindness...and he unfortunately failed the save, so when we hit the medusa, I got petrified with no way to cure me. Only half the party drank the water, unfortunately. The wizard who looked in through the crack in the wall made his save, so we got some idea of what to expect in there without having anyone suggested.

When we got to the confrontation, the xacarba grappled three people right off the bat, which meant the musket master unloaded a hasted full round action right off the bat with her weapon aligned. Then bolt-ace gunslinger unloaded his full round action and the GM actually started writing down the damage, because it was over a hundred in a round. The xacarba immediately dropped the people it was holding and went to grab at the gunslingers, but one of them had drunk, and smeared alchemical grease on himself. So he avoided grappling, though he took a lot of damage. He dropped, but we (or I should say 'they' because I was still a statue) managed to outright kill the xacarba in three rounds of frenzied action without ever really optimizing our spacing from the beastie (or possibly the GM didn't quite realize there was a "safe zone" -- in any case, we never figured it out.) We didn't really bother with the two shiny disks because we were hammering the giant snake something fierce. I had to spend some prestige to turn back, but we got through it.

Story two, observing:

I played my own scenario that evening, so I only watched the final fight. It was interesting to watch it run -- they had clearly not drunk the water, though no one was blind or stone. Having not drunk the water, they were deeply unlikely to ever escape a grab. Someone went to casting defensively almost right away when the first spell redirect happened and the GMed at them and generously told them, "That was a very smart move." And lo, it was working. However, it was still kicking their butts hither and yon (also in the high tier.)

Eventually, they cheesed their way through the scenario. The fey blooded kitsune sorcerer used a combination of abilities that I don't think ought to work they did: the laughing touch bloodline ability got attached to a message spell (which, as written, does not allow either SR or a save, and does not have 'harmless' in its descriptor) by means of what I think was a robe. This 'no save, no SR, do nothing for a round' strikes me as Not As Intended, and I'm not sure exactly what the magic item he used was, but...I also don't know of a rule it violated. Then, when the xacarba redirected it, he used a metamagic rod of bouncing to rebound it back AGAIN. Which was clever, but I think very much not what it was supposed to do. (Unless it targeted a character who'd already been affected once, and would therefore be immune...) In any case, this managed to make a spell-like ability effect it, causing it drop all the people it held and giving them an incredibly precious round of free activity. I believe they managed to make a second round of it not doing anything happen by similar means, and that was enough to swing the combat in their favor.

I'm not sure how the players felt after that one, but I wouldn't have blamed them for feeling frustrated at the level of cheese required to get them out alive. On the other hand, maybe the GM just decided to be nice to avoid a TPK.

Story three, running:

This went fairly well, wrapped in about four and a half hours. I abstracted the first fight: told them to go around them table and tell me what they'd do for two rounds around the charau-ka, and then told them consequences. Alchemist threw two bombs, killed two monkey swarms. Paladins killed some apes. Wizard threw a web. Brawler wrestled an ape into submission. Magus protected civilians. Rogue flanked and sliced and diced. Given that we had a tight time slot, and totally ran over, I wasn't going to waste their time with more than minor resource usage, and a group of seven, even mostly at level 5 and in the 6-7, wasn't likely to have difficulty there.

I rolled the survival checks, and promptly forgot to apply the increased DCs to any of the actual poison anyone took. Not sure it would have made any difference, but this group took 2 fails, which certainly could have.

The first real encounter was the hydra and emperor cobra. The wizard's main schtick was throwing glitterdust, so he promptly hit the hydra, which failed the save, and thereafter had a terrible time. The alchemist made the knowledge (arcana) to recognize it as a pyrohydra and blasted the blind beastie with cold. It got one good round of attacks, and did a fair chunk of damage to one of the paladins, before the paladins got to go and crushed it, while the brawler held of the snake. The snake tried to run, provoked attacks of opportunity and died, though it made lots of saves against the wizard.

Inside, they found the archaeologists and figured out they were acting funny, spotted the non-charmed archaeologist quickly and won her trust. They didn't try to interfere with the golem. They did have the brawler go blind to the haunt and retreated.

Suggestion for GMs: Visual aids.

I drew unsophisticated pictures for the binding room and the fountain. There's a world of difference between describing the slots beneath the words and having them able to see the words Moon, Void, Sun and Stars lined up above the slots. I also drew the fountain, and handed them notecards face down which read either "You need to pee" or "You feel thirsty" as a broad hint that this wasn't supposed to be skipped past. I was a little worried I'd overdone it when the paladin drank from his own waterskin, but I think that fountain is more or less essential. I also had note cards prepared to hand people if they looked into the crack to see the xacarba, but no one actually wanted to do that.

Once one drank, they all drank, which was good. (And the brawler peed in the corner.) They found and identified the mask, which was great. They got through the medusa attack without anyone turning to stone. They actually killed one amphibaenas, pinned the other, and got the medusa to hit her morale condition and surrender, since she couldn't run. (The nagaji paladin was also totally digging on her, which was hilarious.) They spotted the spell on her and threw some dust off the orb on her -- I can't see why that wouldn't break the spell, so it didn't, and she gave them the hint to go back to the haunt and find the other disk, which I gave them in part to save some time.

We did have one player go blind in the haunt, which was how they tried the orb for the first time. I realized the haunt was chaotic evil so...if blindness is possible to dispel, why wouldn't dispel chaos do so? And so, I let it do so. (If there's a reason it shouldn't have worked, let me know, I'm curious.)

Finally, they were in the binding chamber in very good time. They made a knowledge engineering to have very good knowledge of when it would break, and let them made an intelligence check for me to give them a hint that they really ought to get the scaffolding to prepared to put the disks in. (Amusingly, the dumb-as-rocks paladins both got 18's.)

Combat was predictably a massive mess. The wizard opens up with glitterdust! ...on himself. Cue the poor wizard being blind the whole rest of the combat. He tried a protection from evil on himself, which the xacarba directed to the golem...which is immune to magic. (He was, fortunately, quite good natured about it.) The brawler went running for the disks. He took damage, but it couldn't grapple his excellent CMD. A paladin and the magus wound up grappled, but the xacarba elected to leave one tail free for AoOs, because it is a highly intelligent creature. Alchemist threw bombs, which weren't super effected. The grappled paladin was rather upset, until I made clear that "Oh, no, the water bonus isn't just to CMD; it's also to CMB to break the grapple!" He felt a lot better at that point. The magus took constrict, but then managed to get free. The free paladin was smiting away. The rogue was stabbing, and just barely passing DR.

At this point, the brawler got dropped as he tried to bring the daylight stone back. The magus got free and bolted into the prison, and pushed the faerie fire stone back OUT through crack in the wall (which I thought was quite clever.) The rogue ran out, hopped on a dog mount, and went to go get it. The two paladins did their damnedest to smite it from both sides, as the alchemist tried invisibility as he ran in to try and get the daylight stone. He took damage, but I rolled 2's to hit him twice, and he escaped with rather less damage than I would have guessed. The paladins could keep running lay on hands every turn, or they would have been super dead, and kept dealing delicious smite damage. They finally managed to outright down while the alchemist (a wayang, definitely good they had the scaffolding) was up and ready to insert the stone, and the rogue was about a turn away from being up there to do the same.

Had I really wanted to wipe them, I could have concentrated fire on those paladins more. The xacarba is smart, but full of rage, bloodlust and overconfidence. If I had dropped one of the paladins, which I probably could have done by allocating attacks a little differently, it would have wildly decreased the damage it was taking, and then let it concentrate more on other threats.

This scenario has the potential to go wrong in a truly epic fashion. It has possibility of really frustrating players and GMs both. I was really glad I wasn't running the four player version, which I thought I might have to for a while. I think it is unusually prone to player and GM error, and this is an encounter for which ALL the stops are out.

BUT.

What it tries to do is absolutely fantastic. This scenario pushes players' limits. It's the kind that you tell stories about, whether they're triumphal stories or horror stories, or both. You can come out of it and say, "Hey, my level 3-7 character probably just saved hundreds if not thousands of lives in the Mwangi Expanse." And you'll have the battle scars to prove it. If you GM it, your players will fling something unexpected at you, because by the fourth round of combat with final boss they will try absolutely anything. It's not that common in PFS that you get that epic feel of desperation. It can frustrate players who aren't expecting it, so it's not a bad idea to give players a heads up before they go into. And try to get a good sized group.

TL;DR: Fun, but treacherous. PREP WELL. And more than most scenarios, I think this is one where a GM should not be afraid to make a few meta-gamey hints.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
zook1shoe wrote:
It doesn't have to just tail slap on its turn, it's got a +37 grapple and effective CMD of 68! For a 3-7 game, that's terrifying!

Do we have a confirmed CMD for the thing? Because I am seeing a 49 before penalties for flat footed and grappled.

Edit: Ah, and Runic Scales. So the xacarba has to roll low to lose the grapple, escape is impossible.

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