The Thirteenth Gate (GM reference)

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

The purpose of this thread is to clarify questions arising in this adventure.

This thread is a GM Reference thread for Part 5 of the Dead Suns Adventure Path. Links for the individual threads for each part are as follows:

Incident at Absalom Station (Part 1)
Temple of the Twelve (Part 2)
Splintered Worlds (Part 3)
The Ruined Clouds (Part 4)
The Thirteenth Gate (Part 5)
Empire of Bones (Part 6)

[Paris Crenshaw]

Thanks for starting these, Rysky!

[Paris Crenshaw]

Hey, Folks!

I put together shipsheets for the ships used in the campaign. I'll add pages to it when parts 5 and 6 come out, as well. The stats and DCs for some of the offensive actions on the enemy ships' sheets are based on fighting the Sunrise Maiden as she is presented in the first book.

Dead Suns Shipsheets.PDF

Enjoy!

[Commodore_RB]

We just finished playing chapter one, very fun space combat there. First time we've felt close to dying in spaceships; a combination of being level 8 (because we're a party of 5) and the brutal action economy advantage of 3v1 meant that we got smacked for half our hitpoints in the first round (thankfully crits hit us in ignorable sectors). As players we loved the challenge but our poor GM was sweating bullets tracking twelve different shield quadrants over three ships plus all the checks. He basically ignored engineering, captain, and/or sensors actions from the destroyer until the end there, which might well have saved us.

Is there a recommended "Unchained" method anyone has for baking in the large-crew actions in a sprawling combat like this? I'd like to grab this encounter myself for what I'm running, but the same system that lets 4-6 players all be involved running a single ship also is murder on the GM for involved multiship combats. We spoke about it afterwards and figured you could work out the % chance of hitting the action DCs of engineering and captaincy and just bake in a "regeneration rate" for shields and a base +2 for an encouraged shot or maneuver per round. It's not as granular but nicely approximates the boost a destroyer gets for the big crew. We'd definitely recommend it for someone running the combat against a well-built tier 9 player ship, wouldn't want to deprive anyone else the thrill of that near-death experience.

[pithica42]

Yeah, one thing I would like to see if they do a "Ship Book" (hint hint) is Fleet management rules for DM's that simplify all the stuff the DM has to do on their end of the table in ship combat.

[kaid]

Ya the system makes total sense for one ship but it must get pretty fiddly for DM's handling multi ship squadrons just a lot of stuff going on to track.

[Commodore_RB]

Agreed, but let's not make this a system redesign thread. It is a thrilling encounter, definitely do want those extra ships for the challenge. Just think it might be wise to assume maybe one action each time Auto exceeding for the non Gunner / pilot positions.

[Demon Knight1434]

on page 57 of this path i found the creature jubsnuth and was looking at its swallow whole abilty ...to understand its abilty i pulled up the alien archive page 156 to 157

its eac and kac are listed
EAC 20 KAC 22 ...while outside the body

once inside its
EAC 22 KAC 20 hp i get being 36

now on the alien archive it says

"The interior of a creature with swllow whole has the same EAC as its exterior and a KAC equal to that of its exterior - 4" im ..confused as to what happen.

is the creatures eac and kac higher then the book shows and im just not seeing it?

[Jason Keeley]

Demon Knight1434 wrote:

on page 57 of this path i found the creature jubsnuth and was looking at its swallow whole abilty ...to understand its abilty i pulled up the alien archive page 156 to 157

its eac and kac are listed
EAC 20 KAC 22 ...while outside the body

once inside its
EAC 22 KAC 20 hp i get being 36

now on the alien archive it says

"The interior of a creature with swllow whole has the same EAC as its exterior and a KAC equal to that of its exterior - 4" im ..confused as to what happen.

is the creatures eac and kac higher then the book shows and im just not seeing it?

Yeah, that's probably a goof. Interior Armor Class should be EAC 20 and KAC 18.

[Vardoo]

I've not run the book yet but a preliminary read has me confused by the story's conclusion. I'm struggling to imagine it.

The AI (forgive me I don't have the book Infront of me right now for its name) says that it needs to spread it's consciousness out to the other gates in order to create a supernova where all the suns all pulled in on one another...

How does that open the plane to the degenerator?

How does that affect the players who are presumably on one of the planets orbiting these suns?

Perhaps I'm not understanding something but it seems abit odd to me. Any ideas?

[pithica42]

My understanding is that it's doing two things.

Thing 1: Opening the gate so that your players can go in and get the stellar degenerator out of the demiplane and into real space.

Thing 2: Spreading its consciousness out to all the control planets, so that when your players get the degenerator out, it can set off a chain reaction of supernova to destroy it. (with the PC's maybe getting away in the nick of time)

The two things aren't directly tied to one another. It doesn't have to spread itself to open the plane (I don't think).

[Jason Keeley]

Sorry if this ended up a bit confusing!

Due to several microprocessors failing across the system, Osteth the AI has to split her consciousness into several bits in order to PREVENT a massive multi-supernova, which would destroy the entire system (and anyone in it, including the PCs) and the portal to the Stellar Degenerator would remain closed. A lose-lose situation, to be sure.

With her death, Osteth is able to get the portal open, leaving the PCs to figure out a way to capture or destroy the Stellar Degenerator... the basis for the final adventure, of course!

I hope that helps.

[pithica42]

Wow, I was really wrong. Thank you for the correction, Mr Keeley.

[GreyYeti]

During event 3 there is a good chance the party will get 25,000 credits in cash. That is nice, but the way the end of the book sounds i don't see any way the party is able to spend that money unless i am missing something. I don't think that the corpse fleet will be nice enough to wait 6d6 days for the party to travel to Absalom Station and back.
Right now i am thinking about changing that into 25k UPBs so they can at least use it for crafting. But maybe i am missing something here.

[sebastokrator]

With the Corpse Fleet only a few hours away the group might not necessarily have the time to craft anything either, especially if they need to race to do something before the enemy arrives.

I think at this point we're kind of stuck waiting until Book 6 to see what sort of opportunities for crafting or shopping are provided.

[Adam Mulder-1]

My recommendation would be to seed in some of the gear the players are looking to upgrade among the treasure found. You could swap out the 25000 credits with a weapon or set of armor of level 11 or so.

[jozh]

The jubsnuth (p. 57) appears to lack a Space/Reach entry. I assume Space: 15 ft. because it is huge, but what should its Reach be?

[Jason Keeley]

jozh wrote:

The jubsnuth (p. 57) appears to lack a Space/Reach entry. I assume Space: 15 ft. because it is huge, but what should its Reach be?

Oops! I would give it a reach of 10 feet, since it uses bites to attack.

[ratcatbo]

Quick question if everything was destroyed including the gate how would one get to the wepon? Wouldn't the threat be solved?

[Jason Keeley]

ratcatbo wrote:

Quick question if everything was destroyed including the gate how would one get to the wepon? Wouldn't the threat be solved?

The Stellar Degenerator would still be hanging out in its demiplane and then someone could eventually figure out a way to get into that demiplane using magic and whatnot. It probably wouldn't happen in the PCs' lifetimes, but that's just pushing the threat down the road for a future generation.

[Telok]

Yeah. Our first response to the place was 'blow up a planet'. Followed shortly by 'crash a captured starship into a control/power building' and 'they hacked a path through the jungle with hand tools when their ships have plasma weapons and we're supposed to believe these guys are competent enough to blow up the universe?'

[MaxPower86]

Hi. First time GMing an adventure path, and my players (2 independent groups) and I are loving it. Great job with the world building, it's really fun.

Quick question: if the whole incident between the Kish and the Sivvs happened millennia ago, i.e. before the Gap, how come Osteth remembers it? Shouldn't this historical record be wiped from his memory when the Gap happened? Or at least be a corrupted piece of information.

[Commodore_RB]

Simon Blackburn wrote:

Quick question: if the whole incident between the Kish and the Sivvs happened millennia ago, i.e. before the Gap, how come Osteth remembers it? Shouldn't this historical record be wiped from his memory when the Gap happened? Or at least be a corrupted piece of information.

The Gap is just that, a gap. Nothing is remembered within that time period, but information and memories from before the Gap are intact; it's explicitly called out as something rather disorienting for long-lived elves and dragons.

Great penultimate book. We're done and waiting for Empire of Bones now, rabble rabble (actually, we'd be on hiatus a bit anyway as our GM is getting married). The only dismaying bit was our lack of ability to buy anything with the vast number of credits we scooped up. Given the good armor and weapon loot our loadout is okay but scrapping gear for 10% UPBs barely got us back into ammo and retraining modules that were needed. My wife's Mystic is particularly dismayed not to be able to buy a few shiny level 4 spell gems. I'd suggest since these cultists were out here on the edge of creation trying to bring about the end of all things, maybe instead of all the cash they'd be massing up their Legos?

[Jason Keeley]

Commodore_RB wrote:

Simon Blackburn wrote:

Quick question: if the whole incident between the Kish and the Sivvs happened millennia ago, i.e. before the Gap, how come Osteth remembers it? Shouldn't this historical record be wiped from his memory when the Gap happened? Or at least be a corrupted piece of information.

The Gap is just that, a gap. Nothing is remembered within that time period, but information and memories from before the Gap are intact; it's explicitly called out as something rather disorienting for long-lived elves and dragons.

Great penultimate book. We're done and waiting for Empire of Bones now, rabble rabble (actually, we'd be on hiatus a bit anyway as our GM is getting married). The only dismaying bit was our lack of ability to buy anything with the vast number of credits we scooped up. Given the good armor and weapon loot our loadout is okay but scrapping gear for 10% UPBs barely got us back into ammo and retraining modules that were needed. My wife's Mystic is particularly dismayed not to be able to buy a few shiny level 4 spell gems. I'd suggest since these cultists were out here on the edge of creation trying to bring about the end of all things, maybe instead of all the cash they'd be massing up their Legos?

I believe someone else suggested that same thing upthread. It will probably be best for your players if you convert those credsticks to UPBs!

[Commodore_RB]

In other news, that final map is pretty huge and open (pawn on it for scale). The initial fight emerging from the elevator pulls just about everything: D4, D5, D6, and D7. That was awesome. Pity the map was too big for the table but we were smart and printed in sections.

[Onathrin]

My players got to the jubsnuth tonight and that encounter did not go at all like I anticipated.

It emerged into the clearing. I described it's slathering, it's gnashing teeth in both mouths.

Then before I could call for initiative to be rolled, the xenoseeker mystic in the party declared she was casting charm monster on it....

and of course, it failed the saving throw, even with the threatened bonus.

She befriended it, made some amazing rolls on Survival to communicate with it and got it to follow her.

She named it Jubjub.

I had it lick her friendly like... so they lead it into the next encounter with the atrocite.

The atrocite centered his opening spell (cosmic eddy) on the jubsnuth. it failed it's save and so i had it panic and trample in a random direction... which ended up running right over the poor mystic. While the rest of the party engaged the atrocite, the mystic attempted to calm the jubsnuth down and did so successfully. She then tried to coax it to attack the atrocite by luring it towards the strocite by casting Wisp Ally... and that succeeded as well.

Needless to say, that poor atrocite became a meal of the Jubsnuth thanks to swallow whole.

We were laughing pretty hard at that.

[Jesta]

sebastokrator wrote:

With the Corpse Fleet only a few hours away the group might not necessarily have the time to craft anything either, especially if they need to race to do something before the enemy arrives.

I think at this point we're kind of stuck waiting until Book 6 to see what sort of opportunities for crafting or shopping are provided.

A bit late but I'd seriously suggest DM's add in an Anvil of Torag or for the designer to do so. At the end of the AP PC's have gone 4 levels not being able to make higher level gear.

[Paris Crenshaw]

I finally got around to updating these. The shipsheets below include every ship involved in combat presented throughout the AP. The DCs are calculated based on the premise that the PCs' ship's tier will be equivalent to the APL recommended at that part of the campaign.

Dead Suns Shipsheets (DS 1-6).PDF

There are lots of numbers to juggle, here, so I may have made some errors. Please let me know if you find any mistakes.

Thanks!

[Brother Willi]

Onathrin wrote:

My players got to the jubsnuth tonight and that encounter did not go at all like I anticipated.

It emerged into the clearing. I described it's slathering, it's gnashing teeth in both mouths.

Then before I could call for initiative to be rolled, the xenoseeker mystic in the party declared she was casting charm monster on it....

and of course, it failed the saving throw, even with the threatened bonus.

She befriended it, made some amazing rolls on Survival to communicate with it and got it to follow her.

She named it Jubjub.

I had it lick her friendly like... so they lead it into the next encounter with the atrocite.

The atrocite centered his opening spell (cosmic eddy) on the jubsnuth. it failed it's save and so i had it panic and trample in a random direction... which ended up running right over the poor mystic. While the rest of the party engaged the atrocite, the mystic attempted to calm the jubsnuth down and did so successfully. She then tried to coax it to attack the atrocite by luring it towards the strocite by casting Wisp Ally... and that succeeded as well.

Needless to say, that poor atrocite became a meal of the Jubsnuth thanks to swallow whole.

We were laughing pretty hard at that.

That's a great story! I love emergent play like that.

[Nintendogeek01]

Have I overlooked it or does Sisyrus Coldblood lack an operative specialization and exploits?

[Nintendogeek01]

I apologize if this is a dumb question but I have to ask. Is Abneth, the Kishalee Marooned One, really supposed to be a CR12 encounter? I mean, sure he's an undead but that seems to be oddly strong for a marooned janitor.

[Jason Keeley]

Nintendogeek01 wrote:

Have I overlooked it or does Sisyrus Coldblood lack an operative specialization and exploits?

How about that! She sure doesn't have those things she needs!

I would give her the ghost specialization, which gives her the cloaking field exploit. And I would give her the interfering shot 6th-level exploit, so she can snipe away the PCs' reactions while they fight the cultists.

[Jason Keeley]

Nintendogeek01 wrote:

I apologize if this is a dumb question but I have to ask. Is Abneth, the Kishalee Marooned One, really supposed to be a CR12 encounter? I mean, sure he's an undead but that seems to be oddly strong for a marooned janitor.

He's been undead for thousands of years, that has to count for something! But yes, he is CR 12!

[Xeall]

So the book states when they come out of the drift there is a days travel until they hit the system proper. At which point the fight with the Singularity occurs.

1) if so they have 24 hours to get the stellar degenerator working when the corpse fleet arrive in book 6 and the encounter on the planet where the commandos break in is unlikely to occur unless the party sit around twiddling their thumbs.

2) when the jangly man sends for backup it’s going to take several days minimum to reach someone, then 5d6 days of drift travel for then to turn up. It just doesn’t seem an immediate threat to risk going on board for.

I’ve prelimarily written in an armada of 10 devourer cult ships waiting in the drift 6 hours away from the beacon point. The party have to sneak past (fly casual), but means they are aware of a devastating threat should that comm get off. Of course those 10 ships get devestated by the corpse fleet and are never really a threat.

I have also written out the days worth of travel needed so the fleet turn up immediatly, but kept the “drifting out is impossible”.

Is there any reason I should revert the above changes, or can someone explain why they would be required?

[Xeall]

Further question: does Null-9 not get Resolve points? Can’t see any on her entry. Useful for forcing that -4 for not in the face.

[Dimity]

My players were shopping at Absalom Station before heading out to the gate of the 12 suns. They decided to recruit a bunch of graduate students to come with them for the adventure of a lifetime. The mystic didn't roll too hot on their Diplomacy check, so I thought they'd leave without any recruits, but then the operative decided that he'd try with Intimidate. I was impressed, and he rolled hot, so I gave him 2d6 fearful green grad students (he rolled 8 of them).

This was my favorite part of the adventure so far. Of course, once the inevitable made it on board the Maiden, he immediately killed Craig the Scyphozoan, who was only 3 credits away from graduating. That means that my players have now indirectly caused the deaths of *two* graduate students (since Whaloss was trampled by a Mountain Eel on Castrovel).

That bit of game tales aside, I am wondering what I should do after my players nuke the control building that operates the gate of the 12 suns. I know they are going to try it, and I am going to let them, but I'm not sure where to take the adventure from that point onward.

[gustavo iglesias]

I would make the Gate to malfunction, destroying the pocket dimension and vomiting the Stellar Degenerator back into this reality. Only that now it cannot go back to the pocket dimension, ever.

[Nintendogeek01]

Honestly it sounds like the University should blacklist your PC's by the end of this adventure at best, or call the authorities on them the next time they try...

But that aside, the book at one point notes that the PC's may feel disinclined to pursue the cultists to the second moon, and proposes that the PC's be urged to do so by Osteth warning them that they found out how to open the gate from the second moon. Might seem like an excuse at first glance but on consideration it makes some sense and would also be a good way to continue the adventure if your group decides to just nuke the facility (in which case they're terrible Starfinders for destroying an ancient civilization's remaining structures).

The gate 1 facility may be the main control center to open the whole thing, but a massive machine like that would likely have redundancies and fail-safes built in so as to avoid being unable to operate the gate even if the main controlling facility is lost. Besides, destroying the facility wouldn't destroy the entirety of the machinery built into the moon itself. I sincerely doubt they can blow up a whole moon. With Gate 1's facility largely being toast in your scenario that leaves them to start looking into the other moons whose facilities are built into said moons, thus safe from nuking (unless they want to try blowing it up while inside the moon, which strikes me as potentially suicidal, so that's on them).

Now with the Gate 2 facility intact but Gate 1's facility out of commission you will want to consider how to re-distribute the encounters, if at all.

[Xeall]

New question: shades on page 29 have a reference of page 58. These are the CR8 versions of the shades not the CR5 ones found on page 9.

The previous time you encounter the shades again on page 23 it does send you to page 9.

Just want to make sure it’s a typo and I should still use the weaker CR5 versions

[Tolaam]

I have a question about Atrocite spells. He has a once a week plane shift that doesn't specify Self Only. So according to this and the spell description I can theoreticaly send a PC to another plane with DC 24 (20+8 charisma+6lvl spell). It's a pretty high chance that a PC will fail and end up dead.

[Xenocrat]

It will provoke an attack of opportunity, have to hit the touch attack, and then gives a save. It’s fine.

[Tolaam]

Yes, but it means death to a PC with a very high probability. I doubt a 24 will save is something an operative or a soldier can beat, unless they are very lucky. Should I consider changing the spell to something else of lvl6 with a lot of damage, but with less certain death factors, or not use it at all.
Did anyone else use it in his/her campaign?

[Xenocrat]

Its not a high probability when it decides to use it. At once per week it’s meant to be used for its own transportation, and risking an attempt to use it offensively isn’t wise.

[huscarl105]

I want to make the fight with Null-9 an epic fight to conclude the module. I don't think as written a CR10 Envoy/Soldier can do that, especially cornered and tethered as she is at the start of the encounter and its as likely as not that my party of 5 PC with above average equipment may not let any allies get back to her. The only thing I'm set on keeping is name and Race. I've done a few boss plus enough mooks to preserve the boss fights, i want something different. How can I create a very old android that single-handedly can give my party a very tough fight, hopefully without making her level 18+, or undead as that is for the next book. PC are level 10. I have thought of giving her a self destruct, so the pcs don't get all of her stuff - there will be a vary large load of UBPs (they already have an anvil of the maker) as an end of book reward, so they won't be getting shortchanged.

[Pogiforce]

GreyYeti wrote:

I don't think that the corpse fleet will be nice enough to wait 6d6 days for the party to travel to Absalom Station and back.

Right now i am thinking about changing that into 25k UPBs so they can at least use it for crafting. But maybe i am missing something here.

My group and I have noticed that after book 2, maybe book 3, the campaign is constantly hitting you with urgency. No time to stop, no time to restock and upgrade, need to keep going, gotta beat the devourer cult, gotta beat the corpse fleet. By the time the PCs reach book five the clear and present danger of those two groups and the distance from the pact worlds the party finds themselves makes going back to buy new gear impractical, if not for the travel to Absalom, then for the travel back out to the thirteen gates.

One work around I used is that the book says at GM discretion, you can use some other material in place of UPBs, so what I've done is allowed loot items found to be salvaged into UPBs. But there are two rules I've put in place.

1. UPBS gained from salvage must be used to craft items of the same type. If you've salvaged steel plates or energy dampeners from a suit of armor, you're not going to be able to use that to, say, craft a medicinal. A dismantled gun may not have many parts to make a Doshko. Etc.

2. Given that salvage is parts that have a preset configuration and intended purpose, only a little bit of it is universally useful. The UPBs gained for crafting from salvage is equal to the sale value of the item in question, aka 10% of retail value.

Thinking of instating a third rule where technological items salvaged produces an equal amount of technological scrap, up to 1 bulk. This gives technomancers who want to try junk spells a go. There's also some nice roleplay flavor in a technomancer with s bulk's worth of ill fitting steel plates and discordant energy dampeners from scrapped armor casting junk armor with it, the various parts forming a crude shell of protection.

[Pogiforce]

Dimity wrote:

My players were shopping at Absalom Station before heading out to the gate of the 12 suns. They decided to recruit a bunch of graduate students to come with them for the adventure of a lifetime. The mystic didn't roll too hot on their Diplomacy check, so I thought they'd leave without any recruits, but then the operative decided that he'd try with Intimidate. I was impressed, and he rolled hot, so I gave him 2d6 fearful green grad students (he rolled 8 of them).

This was my favorite part of the adventure so far. Of course, once the inevitable made it on board the Maiden, he immediately killed Craig the Scyphozoan, who was only 3 credits away from graduating. That means that my players have now indirectly caused the deaths of *two* graduate students (since Whaloss was trampled by a Mountain Eel on Castrovel).

That bit of game tales aside, I am wondering what I should do after my players nuke the control building that operates the gate of the 12 suns. I know they are going to try it, and I am going to let them, but I'm not sure where to take the adventure from that point onward.

The inevitable was a huge issue for my group. The party of 6 had a technomancer, two mechanics, two solarians, and an operative. Less than ideal, I know. When the attrocite arrived they had no envoy to Ace the ridiculously high Diplomacy check, and no mystic to cast remove affliction, so they were forced to fight it. But it became readily apparent that this was a losing battle when they found out they couldn't shut off his regeneration. One of the mechanics decided to heroically sacrifice themselves keeping the Attrocite distracted, while the rest of the party fled to the escape pods. The mechanic that stayed back made sure to punch in the commands to exit the Drift so rescue wouldn't be near impossible. After that the party launched themselves on the escape pods, and the one mechanic died a hero.

The only problem was they were 16 days drift travel out from Absalom. After discussing it with the party, they agreed the same measure to determine how long it took to get there should be used to see how long it takes to be found. The roll said 18 days. Escape pods come with enough food, water, and air to last a week, after which they had to rely on environmental protection for air and their own food stores for sustenance. None of them brought food, and none of them had pressurized lungs or anything to extend their oxygen. After that first week and a couple days most of the party had starved to death, except the operative and the technomancer, both of which didn't need to eat or drink for different reasons. Day 17, the operative ran out of environmental protections and suffocated. The technomancer was the only one to survive until rescue, and only because they were an Android and didn't need to breath.

The technomancer hopped a ride to Absalom station to recruit a new party, and to build a new ship as the sunrise maiden was lost. The new ship they built has linked cannons on a turret, so they're pretty happy with it.

[Garretmander]

That's rough that they couldn't deal with the inevitable, but if they dropped out of the drift, I would have had them scooped up by the Jangly man's crew and re-wrote that section so they have a prison break and steal that ship.

[Pogiforce]

Garretmander wrote:

That's rough that they couldn't deal with the inevitable, but if they dropped out of the drift, I would have had them scooped up by the Jangly man's crew and re-wrote that section so they have a prison break and steal that ship.

I had thought about that, but felt since the inevitable attack was still a day of drift travel away from the thirteen gates, that the jangly man wouldn't have been close enough.

Besides, the party only minded that the encounter was impossible, not that most of their characters died. The fact that this campaign affords you little downtime to upgrade gear means their ship was under tier, their gear an odd mishmash of things they found at best. And then their poor balance in composition, which was due to people entering and leaving the campaign since we started some 8 months ago. They now got to build a brand new ship exactly how they wanted it, and build new characters with at level gear that complimented each other. They're a lot happier with what they have now.

And I intend for them to find the sunrise maiden again, in book six as a ship that the corpse fleet picked up.

The only thing for me was justifying everything being okay to continue as normal when they ended up almost a month late to the party. I decided to play it that the battle with the friendly AI took longer than initially anticipated and that the female ysoki couldn't help screwing around with stuff and making parts of the system malfunction which made the devourer cultists take longer. Her brother would cover for her and that kept her from getting shot out an airlock.

[pithica42]

My group went back to Absalom Station at the end of Book 4 to buy gear and upgrade their ship. As part of the upgrade, they switched out their drift engine for a better one and the entire thing ended up costing them only a single day over what they would have spent going to the Gate system with their normal Signal Basic drift engine.

I also am switching out all the credit rewards for UPBS and telling them to craft their own stuff in the flights between planets in book 5.

This weekend, they managed to pull a train on themselves in the fight with Malice and ended up fighting the entire Devourer Cult cell in the Gate 1 control center. I had to pull punches, but they managed to pull it off pretty epicly.

[GM Nefreet]

Running the first encounter now, and I realized there's no Distraction DC or swarm damage listed for the Inevitable. I figured out the damage using the array table (1d10 + CR + Str), but can't determine how Distraction DCs are calculated.

I went with DC 17 for now. Based on several other swarm examples, the DC seems to be 10 + (CR x 3/4)

Anyone else come up with anything different?