Agreed. Someone with time and organizational skills get to it!
You could foreshadow it by having them disguised and infiltrating as standard ruffians and merchants.
Maybe they were a band of people trying to extort money from a witch, looking for remedy or something else. Have them carry a single hint of the sign that they can use to piece things together later.
As to the CR I think that's up to you. I find it hard to judge.
Yellow is an uncommon colour for most commoners, and all of the yellow everywhere surely will fit the theme and paranoia.
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I think having the players run into some Cultists is not a terrible idea, although it does risk tipping your hand about the cult very early in the plot. In my run of this module, the players didn't figure anything concrete out about the threat in town until after they had already been into Fort Hailcourse. If they keep Cultists alive for interrogation, they might rush for Iris Hill way before they are ready for it.
As to your original question, the characters will likely be at the lower end of the level range for the module when going to the Grotto, but depending on your group, they should still be able to deal with a small group of Cultists, especially if the group is at full charge when they run into them.
Just to confirm:
When Melisenn makes her "though you bear his mark" speech, it's a reference to the fact that the PC's are marked by Hastur, and that is what gives them immunity to the Xhamen Dor mind infection? Or is it Nyarlethotep, (illustrated by them appearing to 'help' the ghouls in the next book?)"
Or is it a reference to them being Lowls's servants? or just something meant to be mysterious/ominous?
I'm pretty sure that it's a reference to the fact that they were marked by Hastur. From what I read about Melisenn, I think she would stop at nothing to eliminate those who might be competition for what she believes is her rightful position.
"We are all worthless before the Unspeakable One! Even if he has marked you, I am the one who will open this world to him."
The characters have in some way been marked by Hastur, or for Hastur. I don't know that it's ever clarified. It comes up again much later towards the end of the AP when another antagonist says that essentially they belong to Hastur and have been marked so.
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We made the decision to use the chained version of those classes, with the exception of the unchained summoner) for NPCs we present in our adventures. There are some exceptions, of course.
Ben is right, too. Rebuild away to tailor the experience to your group. You know what you and they like better than I ever could.
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If they use unchained rogues, that's another source they need to add to their list, and ever since Wrath of the Righteous they've been trying to keep the number of sources they use down. Enough to add a spice, but not so much that the GM has to look up every single little thing.
I usually convert every chained rogue I see in APs to unchained rogues though. Cause for my own games, I don't care about keeping the number of sources down for monsters and NPCs.
EDIT: Dammit! Who puts ninja levels on a flumph?
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Having just wrapped tTT, I figured I'd post something about a character I feel could have been... more. Here are some thoughts on Risi.
My players blitzed through tTT pretty quickly, and as such I didn't get to use Risi as an assassin in town. After a fairly divine rush through Iris Hill (stemming from the party basically entering and then going directly to the Lady Lowls in the attic), they ended up surprising Risi in her resting spot in Lowls' estate. Risi being a survivalist and deciding not to dive headlong into the party, she plays the gambit of confessing to a lesser crime - she broke into the estate and got trapped here by all the animated hedge animals and has been waiting for a way out since.
She followed the PCs slowly, waiting for an opportunity, but she never found one - once they got to Melissen in the basement, she had planned on backing whoever appeared to be coming out on top. With liberal usage of web to clamp down on the flying creatures, that ended up being the PCs. As I allowed one of my players to take leadership (a Sarenrean oracle with a big focus on redemption), I had Risi confess who she actually was and join them as a cohort.
So this had me needing to expand on Risi's character greatly so that she could react properly to this new situation. I started with the fact that she is described as "not desiring life's creature comforts", and being a "hardened woman" and worked from there. Specifically, determining that she had no loyalties to the cult of Hastur, since living with only the bare essentials is pretty antithetical to the tenants of the cultists hanging out around Thrushmoor.
She of course, then, still needed a connection to the cult, so I went a bit stereotypical - made her an orphan. After a decade of living on the streets of Absalom, she was found and adopted by a couple of cultists of Hastur, to basically be used as a tool for their esoteric rituals. But, seeing potential in her sneakiness, the cultists started using her for theft, and eventually assassination.
Bing bang boom, she's in the cult and acquaintances with Melissen, who was growing up with her at around the same time. Risi began branching out since her Hastur cultist "parents" didn't really give her much in the way of food - they never really saw her as a follower of Hastur, and so she was never fully initiated into the cult.
In this case, she was making money from her assassinations outside the cult, and with Melissen calling in a favor for her to escort some cultists over to Thrushmoor, Risi saw this as her chance to exit from Absalom and after performing this favor, leave the whole "cult" business behind. She never really knew that much about Melissen or Lowls' apocalyptic plans, but isn't willing to throw away her life for what she does know about them.
So, I think in the end this could lead to a bit more interesting arc/fight with her - when cornered or found out, she could act as a source of information, a social bluffing encounter, or possibly even be turned - she's definitely not in this for the end of the world, from my perspective.
Anyway, maybe some GMs could make use of this if they want to flesh out Risi a bit more for their own campaigns - she struck me as an interesting character, and as a recurring villain seemed a bit less than an actual character throughout tTT (not that this isn't understandable, the other NPCs were definitely more important to flesh out in the end).
You know your players, so maybe this warning is not needed. But make sure your player is ok with his feat being used like this. This is not a normal cohort
The answers are in your quotes:
The party... [was] ambushed by Risi once during the Nemira Lowls (ghost) encounter...
... + some leftovers from fort Hailcourse...
...Knowing my players, I doubt they will set up a guard...
...and giving them the gritty 'hardmode' game that I told them it would be.
So the way I'm reading this is:
(1) The players know you're playing 'hardmode',(2) the players know that they left behind enemies in Hailcourse and that there's an assassin after them,
(3) and in spite of (1) and (2), they're NOT going to set up a guard at all?
I call well-deserved coup de grace.
I run very-low-deathcount APs, and I'd do the coup de grace in this situation. Not setting up a watch is inexcusable.
My party already had a wizard never sleeping since start of AP using keep watch. He's going to add the magus to the never sleeping ranks because the magus contracted a bad case of night terrors. And they can't get that fixed at this point of time.
I've found that killing characters in their sleep is never good.
They just don't like it. And you either end up ret-coning it 5 minutes later, or they get resentful.
I agree that if they are not running a watch at this point they are almost asking for it, but my inclination would be to give the targeted PC a shot regardless of how sleathy Risi's roll would be. (some fluke if need be.......loud noise, familiar acting funny, etc).
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You could always run Risi attempting to paralyze with her death attack rather than kill, and taking the PCs underneath Iris Hill in order to sacrifice them, giving them a few chances to make a daring escape! Why waste spilled blood on not charging up the Stelae, after all...
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You could always run Risi attempting to paralyze with her death attack rather than kill, and taking the PCs underneath Iris Hill in order to sacrifice them, giving them a few chances to make a daring escape! Why waste spilled blood on not charging up the Stelae, after all...
They do have a good set of hit dice and have been touched by a Great Old One as well so they may be MacGuffin's for the villain if kept alive...
Seems legit.
Other reason could be a family murder or some other horrific event - maybe it is linked to one of the players charakters past?
I was wondering this too. Wasn't quite sure where the river came into the lake relative to Thrushmoor.
Contributor
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It seems logical to me that the river is just off the left-hand edge of the map of Thrushmoor. Since the map is aligned with North to the top, the town couldn't very well face onto the river. Additionally, with the western edge of town closest to the mouth of the river, it explains why all the piers are on the island where most traffic would pass by. It would also be a nice feature of Iris Hill that it has a view overlooking both the lake and the river.
That makes sense, thanks Shaun
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What would be the rules for time and money needed to rebuild the Asylum to its former glory or at least bring it back to a reasonable enough state so that it can be used as something different?
A whole new campaign unto itself? If you want guidelines, though, try Ultimate Campaign - it has rules for running large-scale organisations or governments.
After this campain, the PC´s will be at charakter level 16 or 17. Teleportation should not be a big deal by then.
The town is a minor concern compared with the world - there's always a bigger threat to take care of.
But, the AP itself is not concerned much with what happens in it's wake - if you want to develop it, go right ahead, it's a green field.
I think of it more as a muddy, brown field ;)
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So i have a great group of players. they generally let the story go and they don't mind "bumps" when the rules require modifications.
And then Clymes Prett happened....
The problem that was pointed out is you can't use corrupting touch with Spring Attack. Spring Attack is a full round action and corrupting touch is a special attack, which requires a standard action. So you can't combine the two.
We house ruled it and moved on, but a spring attacking ghost that can fade into the walls doing 7d6 with a touch attack will kill people.
How did anyone else handle this encounter?
So i have a great group of players. they generally let the story go and they don't mind "bumps" when the rules require modifications.
And then Clymes Prett happened....
The problem that was pointed out is you can't use corrupting touch with Spring Attack. Spring Attack is a full round action and corrupting touch is a special attack, which requires a standard action. So you can't combine the two.
We house ruled it and moved on, but a spring attacking ghost that can fade into the walls doing 7d6 with a touch attack will kill people.
How did anyone else handle this encounter?
Lots of prefacing to make it clear that:
(a) There was a ghost in the room, and(b) He couldn't leave the room.
Even then, a ghost against a group of low-level PCs is a hard enough fight without playing the Spring Attack angle, so I didn't.
Just because something's written in the AP doesn't mean I follow it. I adapted it to my group.
If I'd played it as-written with him just popping out and in again, meaning they all had to suck up the damage and wait with declared actions to hit him, they would have just left, and it would have detracted from the story. I'd rather give them a fair fight and let them get the story aspect of things.