After my party finished off the Most High Ceoptra and her giants, they started investigating the golden sphere. One of the characters (Sorcerer lvl 16) climbed on the platform and then tried walking into air, fell on the globe, and apparently disintegrated, though, in reality, he entered the eye of avarice. Alone.
The rest of the party tried resurrecting him, using a "true resurrection" spell, and when that failed they tried a bunch of stuff until they managed to open a rift to the Eye of Avarice. In total, it took them around 15 minutes to get to the eye of avarice after the sorcerer arrived there.
I would like to give the player a chance to survive those 15 minutes. What would be Karzoug motivations not to kill him on sight?
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Power. Karzoug may have illusion as an opposed school, but he still had plenty of pride. I'm sure he'd love to have another servant, especially with adventurers on his doorstep.
He'd probably start with intimidation, followed by attempts to coerce the sorcerer's loyalty... probably followed by use of wish to make that conversion more thorough. (While enchantment is his other forbidden school, Karzoug has worked with the power of Leng long enough that he should be able to figure something out.)
In addition, you could have his wish be imperfect (due to wishing for more than the spell safely allows, which seems like a properly greedy thing to do). Have his wish be flawed in such a way that the sorcerer has some sort of chance to turn on the Runelord and rejoin his friends, rather than being completely screwed.
If the sorcerer's good at bluffing, as they often are, roleplaying out the scene in the Eye might be a good way to set this up. While Karzoug is extremely unlikely to trust him without some level of magical guarantee, good bluffing might trick the Runelord into making weaker or sloppier wishes.
Thoughts? ^_^
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He's dead Jim.
Would have been better to let the True Resurrection work if they tried it after 3 rounds or so.
Karzoug's motivation to not kill him could be using him as bait/using him for information/using him as a bargaining chip.
Make him helpless with one of the minions standing over him to coup-de-grace him if the PCs don't surrender.
Of course, Karzoug could also kill him and use Flase Resurrection (via wish) to make it look like their ally is still alive and trick the PCs further (though the PC is actually dead in this case).
Karzoug has a 36 Int, it should not be possible for him to be bluffed by even the most awesome Bluff skill check. There is no rational reason for him to spare a pc. They represent the only threat and a serious one at that, to his return. The pc's have thwarted him at every turn, killing his servants - let me guess there are no survivors in the Pinnacle? And otherwise have been a complete pain in the you-know-what. Karzoug has a whole parade of powerful servants and plans to recruit more from the past - he has no need ally with or co-opt any of the pc's.
TwoWolves is correct. Have Karzoug and his minions vaporize the sorceror and retcon the True Resurrection to have worked. I'd have the sorceror play out his last few rounds of life and learn something about Karzoug's defenses etc. It's a strange way to scout the Eye but the pc's might get some value out of it.
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Karzoug has a 36 Int, it should not be possible for him to be bluffed by even the most awesome Bluff skill check.
That's not how bluff works. However, just because the PCs bluff him doesn't mean he reacts the way the PCs want.
Bluff just means that Karzoug believes the PCs are being honest about what they say. I'm not sure it would be a useful tool against him, but it can work regardless of his level of intelligence.
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Karzoug has a whole parade of powerful servants and plans to recruit more from the past - he has no need ally with or co-opt any of the pc's.
You're right, of course. Karzoug already has enough minions to accomplish his goals. Why would he want to have any more of something than he absolutely needs? He really does strike me as the sort who would be satisfied with having enough.
I would say that Karzoug could have probably turned the sorcerer to gold or similar metals and has taken is equip and spread it his other minions (a dragon may benefit of certain things) and is now currently keeping him as a trophy or selling him to some otherworldly being he's able to conjure. He's no idiot and if there is even the slightly chance of a true resurrection being used to deprive him of this victory, he'll not risk it.
But if you wanna be really evil, Karzoug should:
1) have him beaten of a pulp, but somewhat alive
2) use greater possession (new spell) to possess him, and then polymorph the body into a copy of himself
3) wait for the players and have them slay or waste resources on the body of their friend.
Clarox idea is way good, too. Possibly with a soul gem of the character in karzoug hands or levitating just over the Runewell
However, I think the player of the sorcerer should be allowed to actually play this desperate fight. Cause If he does enough damage, the next fight with Karzoug could be easier. He could be allowed a round to strike down one of the giants if he's smart, or even more he could find a way to actually evade the giants and Karzoug in a funny comedy sketch (players can always surprise you ...)
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Kill him (play it out), Karzoug gets his stuff, PCs can resurrect him naked. Player gets to participate but at a substantial disadvantage, as is only fair.
Karzoug has a 36 Int, it should not be possible for him to be bluffed by even the most awesome Bluff skill check.That's not how bluff works. However, just because the PCs bluff him doesn't mean he reacts the way the PCs want.
Bluff just means that Karzoug believes the PCs are being honest about what they say. I'm not sure it would be a useful tool against him, but it can work regardless of his level of intelligence.
How you get to the outcome is less important than the actual outcome. You cannot bluff Hilary Clinton into endorsing Donald Trump. I don't care if you rolled a 20.
I'd encourage the OP to let the sorcerer player play it out. He could go down in a blaze of glory, softening up Karzoug for the others. Or he might come up with a solution we've never imagined, players can be devilishly clever when pushed to it.
One other thought...
The Eye is very small and there are no places to hide. Except for the lava. Does the sorcerer have any resistance or immunity to fire? He could jump into the lava and perhaps hide from Karzoug and his minions.
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Thanks for all the suggestions!
I have planned to let them level up before that final battle, so I decide to allow him to actually level up and gain the new spell slots (I wouldn't allow it with a wizard, but for a sorcerer it just made sense), and the sorcerer chose plane shift as a new spell.
I let him roll initiative, and he won initiative with 19 (the next to act would have been the dragon with 18). He then cast maze on himself, invisibility (he wasn't sure the next spell would work), and plane shift back to the material plane.
He got lucky that Karzoug didn't dispel that maze out from under him. ;)
He did win initiative, so Karzoug was flatfooted.
After the maze was already cast, Karzoug couldn't have dispelled it because it wasn't "there".
Otherwise, my plan was to have Karzoug ready a dispel magic if he won initiative.
Karzoug has a 36 Int, it should not be possible for him to be bluffed by even the most awesome Bluff skill check.That's not how bluff works. However, just because the PCs bluff him doesn't mean he reacts the way the PCs want.
Bluff just means that Karzoug believes the PCs are being honest about what they say. I'm not sure it would be a useful tool against him, but it can work regardless of his level of intelligence.
How you get to the outcome is less important than the actual outcome. You cannot bluff Hilary Clinton into endorsing Donald Trump. I don't care if you rolled a 20.
I'd encourage the OP to let the sorcerer player play it out. He could go down in a blaze of glory, softening up Karzoug for the others. Or he might come up with a solution we've never imagined, players can be devilishly clever when pushed to it.
One other thought...
** spoiler omitted **
Again, that's not how bluff works. Bluff doesn't convince anyone to do anything.
You could convince Hillary that Trump is a better candidate than her, assuming you had a sufficiently high bluff. Even an "impossible" lie is only a -20 penalty to your bluff.
And based on your successful bluff, you could try to use diplomacy to get her to "do the right thing". And that's were situational modifiers come in and Hillary says "I don't care about the right thing, it doesn't matter that Trump is better, I want to be President" (-∞ circumstance modifier to diplomacy).