When my players found their first Sihedron Medalllion and identified it, there was some general ooh-ing and aah-ing, but they decided to give it to the wizard who was a little apprehensive about wearing something an evil villain wore that harkened back to an age they knew nothing about. Consequently, he didn't immediately put it on. The next session he still hadn't. I was a little sad, as that meant they were missing out on a some flavor and knowledge going forward, but I generally wrote it off because they hung on to the medallion.
They've got 3 of them now, though, and still no one will touch them. I couldn't believe I'd failed so miserably to stress the advantage of a free action false life spell to my (new) players. It had been so long since they were part of play (and because one player lamented that she didn't know where the story was going)-while doing a WBL check for my own edification, I looked up the price of a Sihedron Medallion and read the description. I was online because I was on lunch at work; not reading my book. And there it was:
So ware, new GMs. Print out or write or type up the description of what Sihedron Medallions do, because if you let them look it up, they'll get some spoiler material. Just sayin.
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I was concerned about this exact thing in my RotRL campaign, so I made extra sure to give my players the info on Sihedron Medallions so they wouldn't look it up.
It's really unfortunate that the scrying information was included in the item description.
With that said, players need to remember to keep player knowledge and character knowledge separate. They may know about the scrying, but their characters shouldn't.
-Skeld
Inspired by another poster on the boards, I treated that last effect as a curse - something which can only be identified by a much better skill check than the one needed to identify the item's basic effects.
And once the parties (I'm running two different groups through the AP at the moment) identified the basic effects of the first one and later found identical items, they didn't bother to look further than the original description. :)
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Also beware that the full description is listed in the Runelords Hero Lab content; all of my players saw it before I realized it was there.
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Also beware that the full description is listed in the Runelords Hero Lab content; all of my players saw it before I realized it was there.
Bingo!
Same thing happened to me, though only the wizard player discovered it and pointed it out to me back when they first got one at the end of Book 1. I told him his character didn't know that and he played accordingly, wearing the medallion pretty much through the entire AP.
Until just before they were getting to Xin Shalast when he had an "Oh crap!" moment and discovered the write up in Hero Lab again. He seemed to have forgotten. It seemed reasonable for a 16th level wizard to be able to figure it out, getting nearer to the Xin Shalast, etc. The group hastily took their medallions and put them in a bag of holding (only the wizard had been actually wearing one.) They haven't figured it out yet, but I'm having Karzoug's forces start a search for them - he knew they were close to the city and now can't scry on them. They don't know about the Occluding Field yet either...
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Yeah, that is really unfortunate. I think somebody else here on the boards described the same thing happening in his group a while ago.
I have one player who's using HL, so I called it the Star Medaillon in my game and treat its "secondary effects" like Bellona did and none will be the wiser *evilGMgrin*
Ruyan.
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Inspired by another poster on the boards, I treated that last effect as a curse - something which can only be identified by a much better skill check than the one needed to identify the item's basic effects.
And once the parties (I'm running two different groups through the AP at the moment) identified the basic effects of the first one and later found identical items, they didn't bother to look further than the original description. :)
Yeah, that is really unfortunate. I think somebody else here on the boards described the same thing happening in his group a while ago.
I have one player who's using HL, so I called it the Star Medaillon in my game and treat its "secondary effects" like Bellona did and none will be the wiser *evilGMgrin*
Ruyan.
Same here - I caught it after I printed it out the party's character sheets from the party the first time and quickly yanked them back. I just created a custom item in HL to remind the players they have them, and filled in the benefits but not the scrying.
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I've been calling them "Heptagram Amulets" to prevent those type of shenanigans.
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In my "Champions of Old Korvosa" semi-homebrew campaign, I introduced Sihedron medalions again. This time, I was ahead of it: I wrote a custom HeroLab package that included my campaign traits, plus a few magic items and custom spells, and I handed that package out to all of my players who used HeroLab.
One of the items in the package was a replacement of the standard Sihedron medallion that was identical other than removing that line about Runelords being able to scry on them...
I should do that (the craft magic item thing). Though only one PC has one of the medallions and wore it all this time. The kicker is she never used its False Life ability - she was running a Sorceress who had that spell and then Greater False Life.
Interestingly enough, the player pointed out that description to me. I told her she'd not know about that effect and she, being an excellent roleplayer, acted as if she didn't know the abilities.
One of my other players looks up stuff online all the time so I started renaming foes so he'd not get info on them. I also let them know I modify everything they face so it'll be a greater threat (rolled stats - effectively a 40 point build, so I add +3 to every stat of every monster to compensate).
When we eventually get to Hell's Rebels they are going with 25-point builds which I can compensate for with +1 to every stat for the monsters. It's far easier to compensate for that however.