Hey guys, I am currently running the entire Falcons Hollow line and have been reading each book cover to cover. Right now we are just beginning with the lost children in the first stages of D1 crown of the kobold king.
I really enjoy Droskars crucible as a dungeon, and enjoy the consistency of dungeon ecology presented in all of the printed material. However, ive hit a bit of a snag. On the first floor of the crucible, there is a pretty iconic enemy. A ghostly possessed suit of armor that haunts the hallways, that in reality is an adimantine full plate set trapped inside of a gelatinous cube. I absolutely LOVE this enemy, and cant wait to run it, but heres my issue. The location of the cube is in the hallways marked area 4, and this is the MAIN hallways leading from the entrance of the dungeon, to the area the kobolds have claimed. There is no way to avoid the slime by taking another hallways without having access the a hidden passage that the Kobold have yet to discover. I cant seem to understand how the Kobold are avoiding the slime and still exploring the dungeon, and exiting to the surface to obtain supplies.
A gelatinous cube has a speed of 15 feet, thats a full 30 feet a round if it chooses not to attack and simply chase its prey. It had blightsight 60 feet, and due to the size of the dungeon it can really detect a lot from its location in area 4, paticularly the battle raging in area 12 were the first of the children can be found. I cant find a reason for the cube to be located in area 4, and not have chosed the kobold all the way down to area 2, or even made its way after the gouls hold up in area 15.
If anyone has ideas or suggestions, i would REALLY appreciate it.
I am not sure if this works with a Gelatinous Cube, but kobolds taste terrible, according to their Player's Guide. There could also be side tunnels that the kobolds use, but are hard to find and very cramped.
I have strongly considered a side tunnel, but the extremely tight fit it would need to be doesn't allow them to transport supplies. I've also considered them barricading certain areas, but outside of locking the cube down, i cant find a solid spot to set up a wall that the cube woudent just sit there and wait.
You could just give the gelatinous cube a larger area to roam. The kobolds could then just hide somewhere and wait until the 'ghost' has passed.
The truth is, naturally, that the majestic cube is busy calibrating its karyoplastic metarrhectic enzyme coordination. It takes a little time. Also, it is so sad to see such a beautiful creature in such pain. Adamantine armours take a lot of focus and fine tuning to dissolve.
I've always treated blindsight as non-visual sight, so you couldn't use blindsight to "see" through walls or other obstacles.
Agreed. Kobolds putting a few rooms between themselves and the gelatinous cube should cut off that blindsight. However, if we wish to be super-nerdy, we can actually see what the rules intend here. This is because Pathfinder actually changed this rule when they copied it from D&D 3.5, which reveals some decision-making on behalf of Paizo staff. In D&D 3.5, blindsight contains this phrase: "must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object." That phrase was removed for the Pathfinder text about blindsight. That means that for Pathfinder, they deliberately want blindsight to not need line of effect, and thus it can work through walls.
So the question becomes, are you running this module using the original D&D 3.5 rules it was written for, or are you updating everything to use Pathfinder rules? Depending upon the answer, your gelatinous cube should be either more or less deadly.
Personally, I'd always run it the way D&D 3.5 intended, because the module author clearly expected that kobolds could maneuver around this thing by closing doors and waiting for it to pass, or similar ideas.
You could just give the gelatinous cube a larger area to roam. The kobolds could then just hide somewhere and wait until the 'ghost' has passed.
Yep. In fact, my post-it note stuck in the module suggests exactly that idea. In room 3, there are supposed to be shocker lizards. However, just like the title of this topic, I found the dungeon ecology to be a little... weird. Like, too many different monsters all living right next to each other and somehow not eating each other. So my note for room three says: "No shocker lizards. Add kobold corpse with hand-drawn map of dungeon and small markings around area 4. These markings depict the kobold trying to map out the gelatinous cube's movements, though the PCs may not realize that."
Thanks guys. These helped me clear up some issues. I do like the removal of shocker lizards, they make little sense.