Empire of Bones (GM Reference)


Dead Suns

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Boarding the ship with a program in place from an NPC that let us do it, with no forshadowing, felt like more than a little bit of a dues ex machina or butt pull. It really could have been more of a skill challenge that sets up how hard the incoming fights are, with the PCs providing the direction and initiative rather than the NPC having the ready made solution there.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Question about the Corpsefolk Marines from the first part: they are CR7, but have the HP for a CR8 creature (126 vs 105 for CR7) is this an error, or an intentional bump in health?


I think the CR 8 array is 125 for a combatant? I didn't notice so I ran it as written. It didn't make much of a difference for my group.

Scarab Sages Starfinder Design Lead

The Diehard Bard wrote:
Question about the Corpsefolk Marines from the first part: they are CR7, but have the HP for a CR8 creature (126 vs 105 for CR7) is this an error, or an intentional bump in health?

Intentional. They have the Extra Hit Points ability (AA 142), but since that just gives them 20% more HP, there's no need to list it anywhere.


Noven wrote:
My group came up with the awesome idea to disguise their ship using the IFF codes from the last Kish transport that serviced the station. They then rolled awesome computer, engineer and physical science rolls to board the Stellar Degenerator, manage to steer it into one of the stars. Singe they had a command over the Kish language, kept rolling good skill checks, I saw no need for them to be railroaded into a really bah idea to Han Solo the Empire of Bones. With a team of four and no GM prodding there was just no reason to assume this was the best course of action. Good thing it was in campaign mode SFS because making them do the boarding action seems pretty silly. There needs to be a better compelling reason to board the ship.

I love this. My group got railroaded into the dumb slog through the Empire of Bones and I honestly can't wait for the AP to be over at this point. It is such predictable Paizo module design and not being allowed to perform creative acts to overcome anything is making it worse. We wasted an entire night brainstorming and working out details only to just find out it isn't want the module needed for us to win.

We essentially just decided to walk into every obvious trap and fight through since it just wastes time and resources to do otherwise.


Serovox doesn't have any used batteries for his explosive blasts. I figured I would give him a few so he could use that spell. For those of you who have run this, have you been giving him a bag of batteries, or do people mostly ignore that spell component?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

So I solved the group resource issue by having Temple Found in Book 4 be full of UPBs, and told the group to craft on the way to Book 5. I'm also planning on there being a lot of loot in Book 5's Armory and on the cultists!

I think that riding the stellar degenerator sounds like a more epic way to go, frankly. But I'll wing it and go with what my players decide. I like the idea that the encounters and maps in Book 6 could take place either inside the Stellar Degenerator or inside the Corpsefleet vessel.

Hmm


Styrofoam wrote:
Serovox doesn't have any used batteries for his explosive blasts. I figured I would give him a few so he could use that spell. For those of you who have run this, have you been giving him a bag of batteries, or do people mostly ignore that spell component?

Entirely ignored it. It was the last major fight so I just went to town. Though frankly, I don't remember it coming up that much.


Styrofoam wrote:

Serovox doesn't have any used batteries for his explosive blasts. I figured I would give him a few so he could use that spell. For those of you who have run this, have you been giving him a bag of batteries, or do people mostly ignore that spell component?

Styrofoam

Completely ignored the component- didn't really get to use AoEs much with how the fight went down. The biggest scare for my players was the Wall of Force.

The Solarian rushed in when Serovox followed her right after in initiative order. Serovox separated the Solarian from the group with Wall of Force and went one-on-one in melee.

I used the Gatecrasher to harry the Mystic so she couldn't Dispel Magic for a few rounds. Thanks to the dice gods the party got an great scene of their Solarian getting her arm lopped off from Serovox's critical hit.


My group just finished the AP and the last battle was super easy as our soldier attacked Serovox three times and got two critical hits, leaving them almost dead and burning. Just after this, our solarion charged and misses, but Serovox tried to get away from him and provoked an AdO (the solarion had all the step up feat line) and died before doing anything!
The gatecrasher tanked four whole turns after it, until the technomancer used grease and it fell.
The batlle was so good that the players loved how they finished the invasion Just as they planned.


rixu wrote:

Well, we finished the AP few weeks ago and everyone really enjoyed it. In the last book there were a few things that the players didn't enjoy, including the final Boss fight. I'll write our experiences so others may prepare for them better than I had :)

The players took the see invisible -spell ampoules which the boss dispelled. They had one left so basically the only one able to see the boss was their soldier. After killing the other creatures only two creatures were playing actively: the soldier, who was soaking around 75% of bosses damage with his Energy Resistance, who was shooting Serovox, and Serovox attacking him with Explosive blasts. Others were taking ready actions and trying to pinpoint Sevorox every time they attacked. This took ages since Sevorox could be invisible for 26 rounds (used 2 greater invisibilities) and got boring and repetitive quickly. Even a shirren can't see Serovox since they fly and there is no atmosphere so no vibrations to detect. Only reason Sevorox was killed in the end was because of lucky crit that took them under 40 HP which, according to tactics, made him get down and the team melee solarian hit him for around 100 damage.

After this they looted Serovox and found the Electroencephalon Command Key. I allowed a mysticism roll with DC40 which they made and realized what the item was. Instead of destroying it they threw Sevorox in Null Space Chamber and secured the key. After getting back to Absolom Station they gave the NSC and the Key to Ambassador Nor who was extremely happy about it.

The spaceship battle felt quite dull also, since the other ships barely got through EoBs shields and EoB did triple crits on pretty much every shot, disabling them in few rounds. With the +10 to rolls they pretty much hit automatically.

One noticable thing was also the fact they did not get any credits when getting back to the station. Maybe it was left for the GM to figure out but since they brought Serovox in I had a good reason to give them 50k from Eoxians, and also gave some...

My party handled the boarding of the EoB pretty easily, and the Envoy's Bluff checks to get by the patrolling ships was a point of hilarity for our table. They came upon the idea of sneaking in on their own pretty quickly, with no encouragement. It's interesting to hear how the sevorox fight went for other parties, though I suspect mine will have an easier time off it. Mainly because the Empath Mystic will have emotionsight by then, and the likelihood of Sevorox passing the DC 40 something check to actively suppress his emotions is unlikely. We do Hangar Country this Saturday.


I was reminded today that characters with necrografts count as undead for the purpose of effects that target undead.

I'll just leave this here:
Undead Mastery (Su) As a standard action, a necrovite can cause one undead creature within 50 feet to fall under its control as per control undead (Will DC 21 negates). This control is permanent for unintelligent undead; an undead creature with an Intelligence score can attempt an additional saving throw each day to break free. A creature that successfully saves cannot be affected again by the necrovite’s undead mastery for 24 hours. A necrovite can control a group of undead whose total CR is no greater than twice its CR (26 for the typical necrovite).


True, but you get a bonus of 4 minus the number of necrografts you have to that save. It's hard to guess what level my soldier would be fighting a Necrovite for the first time, but I'd conservatively guess that I'd be somewhere between a +13 to a +16 on that save.

Not terrible odds for fighting basically a techno-lich. Not awesome, either, but you pay the price if you want that Black Heart.


In the context of this AP volume, you're supposed to be level 12. That's a base of +8 with anywhere from +1-+5 from Wis (probably +2 or +3), probably +0-+3 from a ring, and anywhere from +0-+2 from feats. I think +10-+16 is more accurate for that level, with average probably being around +12 for Soldiers/Solarians. Assuming you have just the one necrograft, that's still like a 15-30% chance of failure. Failure from your weapon solarian pretty much means they're killing (or at least disabling) a party member (or two). The 13th level weapon solarian in the game I'm running only had a +8 and the two soldiers in the group were at +10 and +12, respectively.

Unfortunately, noone in my home group installed any necrografts back when they had the opportunity in book 3, but it would have been nice if they had.


I think I will change the whole Malakar thing, because I really don't like that arc of her wanting to be captain herself and the PCs just stumble upon her computer viruses.

In Ruined Clouds I added two players to the group, a bad moment, on such a remote world, but hey, have to work with what I have. So Gevalarsk Nor sent them to support the group after analyzing the data he got from Hebiza Eskolar..back in Adventure 1. They got some basic info about the Empire of Bones and Admiral Serovox, and they have the objective to kill him.

They also know, that on board the EoB there is another double agent, and that will be Malakar. So she will cover the PCs approach through the hangar and provide them with the viruses, and then leave the ship.


hmmmm......What about death affinity and Undead Mastery?


These forums are a great resource for dealing with situations I hadn't thought of. I like the idea of the Corpse Fleet maps being translated to the Stellar Degenerator if the party decides to go that route, but I've consolidated ideas from this forum into a collection of reasons to try a takeover of the Empire of Bones:

Reasons to go onto the Empire of Bones
Give the PCs a DC 20 mysticism/engineering check to learn that big Eoxian ships use a lot of automation via mindless undead, and a DC 25 culture check (circumstance bonuses: +5 if theme is Mercenary, +5 if class is Soldier) to learn that the Heart's Decay (the sister ship to the Empire of Bones) was lost to a small group of Vesk commandos in the Silent War when they took Heart’s Decay’s bridge and turned its guns on its own fleet.

The party finds the planted tracking device on the Sunrise Maiden, inside the port landing gear bay. It is Aballonian in design but has been reprogrammed to use Corpse Fleet signal protocols. Upon examination it’s found to include an encrypted comm module. Hebiza Eskolar makes contact with a video call (if the players don't remember her from book 1, give them a perception check to recognize her). She quickly says “Ambassador Nor sends his regards. I have very little time, so let me send you a hint rather than prolong this call.” An icon of a tombstone appears in the received documents window of the comm unit. Opening it reveals:

Hebiza wrote:
When I found out first Lieutenant Renzar was tasked with planting a tracker on your ship, I hid this comm module inside. If you can get to the security post computer near hangar bay 27, you should use as many emergency security keys as you can find to hack the security computer. Find Malakar’s notes. I’ve installed a virus called Wraith 2.0, and if you can add your likeness to its stealth file, it will give you an advantage to evade the security robots and cameras. I should like to stay onboard the Empire of Bones to shepherd our plans–even if it means my demise–but I have my orders, so I will not be around to aid you further.

This hint is intended to make boarding the Empire of Bones feel less suicidal, but the Wraith 2.0 effects are worded vaguely to keep some mystery about what exactly it does. Unbeknownst to Malakar, Captain Hebiza Eskolar was an agent for Nor, and together they injected the Project Tombstone viruses into the Empire of Bones computer network. Hebiza has orders to depart the EoB soon after sending this message (perhaps to appear again in the player's future endeavors outside the Dead Suns adventure path). The tombstone icon for this message matches the Project Tombstone icon and was an additional hint sent by Hebiza.

Reasons not to go to the Stellar Degenerator
An energy "membrane" surrounds the Stellar Degenerator as it emerges from its demiplane, a side-effect of the gate opening, The long dormant Degenerator itself is giving off very low energy signals. The enveloping energy field is fading as the Degenerator emerges but its levels are initially intense. You observe a Pale Butcher Scout (medium explorer) swoop close to the emerging tip of the Degenerator, maybe performing a close scan--too close, the moment it skims the glittering energy membrane it erupts into a shower of glowing white powder. Your calculations indicate the field will dissipate to safer levels in about 6 hours when the Degenerator is 90% out of the demiplane gate.

The Stellar Degenerator, if scanned, reveals hundreds of docking portals. A few are very large docking bays, well guarded by gun turrets, but the rest are many small one-way escape/egress portals, nearly all vacant, their pods having been used. Clamshell guard doors are fused shut to prevent infiltration of the small portals after use. This suggests that the degenerator needed a surprisingly large crew to operate.

It’s ancient, alien and dormant, could be very iffy to get it working anytime this week. Plus, you know that the Kishalee can become undead too. Assuming the players ran into Abneth in the previous book.


I don't think I'd give the stellar degenerator any sort of special anti-boarding field. I'd rather just leave the encounters as a hidden railroad (same encounters regardless of where the PCs go).

Though... I didn't follow my own advice. I had the PCs and the corpse fleet boarders race for control of the degenerator. Through a series of bad decisions and deciding to just not rest at all, they ended up fighting just about every encounter in this book back to back over the course of ~15 rounds. (minus the ellicoths and cybernetic golems, those were supposed to be part of the degenerator's own defenses, but... things happened instead)

Surprisingly they came out on top. Mostly because the baddies were looking to disengage, not stand and fight, and the technomancer kept finding them nicely packed in a 20' radius.

The boss(es) nearly got them with Serovox separating the party with a wall of force. The soldier went down to the gatecrasher, but the mystic had cure IV, so they just played whack a mole until the gatecrasher went down.

The solarian, down to half their hitpoints, played hide and seek with serrovox using their ludicrous move speed and the cover in the area they were fighting, while the CON heavy technomancer tanked serrovox's spells and threw some area effects back in turn. I did let the gray's phase ability work against area attacks, which was a factor in how well that worked.

Then they took over the stellar degenerator. I BS'd some stats for supercolossal ship (this was before we had rules for such). I gave it a special attack that the science officer could use to drain a sun, and while draining the sun, redirect the beam to hit anything in the front arc every other turn. Then I dropped the pawn tokens for every corpse fleet ship that came with the dead suns pawn box and ran a massive starship combat.

I underestimated the damage a 'destroy a ship every other turn' (the empire of bones lasted two rounds in the beam) could do to such a fleet, and overestimated the degenerator's hit points (it had no shields) and how well the party could operate it's other weapons.

The party ended up triumphant in a badly damaged stellar degenerator surrounded by the wreckage of a fleet, in a system that's slowly falling apart after they badly drained one of the suns. I left that party trying to find a way to get the degenerator to FTL since it's built in version would more likely destroy it than work.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I mean, there is very basic reason why I don't think boarding Stellar Degenerator would be "good" idea as the game presents it. It would be COOL idea yeah and its unexpected you never get to visit it, but:

Its expensive super weapon that takes while to charge. It presumably doesn't have "self destruct button" so while you could probably rig it to explo- actually you probably couldn't because its advanced super science beyond even pact worlds. But yeah, its nature means you can't really use it to shoot at Empire of Bones either because "how would you both charge it and hit the big cannon at single target that would obviously notice weapon being charged".

But yeah, its bit of missed opportunity for stellar degenerator never being boarded, but I think Empire of Bones is cool on its own way and while plan is unintuitive, I wouldn't say its "dumb". I think the ap would have just needed something like Gevanor Nor contacting players to give them intel on ship or something like that to make it feel less like "we don't know what we are doing so we are just bumbling around" xD

Anyhoo, I would like to also point out that as written, the ap has really good point about why not destroying degenerator is a bad ending: Everything said in it IS something that would very likely happen as results of players not destroying it


Garretmander wrote:

I don't think I'd give the stellar degenerator any sort of special anti-boarding field. I'd rather just leave the encounters as a hidden railroad (same encounters regardless of where the PCs go).

If they really want to go to the Degenerator, I'll let them take that hidden railroad. By analyzing the energy signature of the Corpse Fleet ship that exploded on the gate membrane field around the Degenerator, they can roll an engineering or computer check to adjust their shields to the phase of the field. Then they can fly through it and see if they got it right, or suffer some minor consequences for not rolling high enough on their skill checks.

Thanks for the adventure summary for your group. It's always interesting to hear how someone else holds it together when the party goes off the planned path.


CorvusMask wrote:

I mean, there is very basic reason why I don't think boarding Stellar Degenerator would be "good" idea as the game presents it. It would be COOL idea yeah and its unexpected you never get to visit it, ...

But yeah, its bit of missed opportunity for stellar degenerator never being boarded, but I think Empire of Bones is cool on its own way and while plan is unintuitive, I wouldn't say its "dumb". I think the ap would have just needed something like Gevanor Nor contacting players to give them intel on ship or something like that to make it feel less like "we don't know what we are doing so we are just bumbling around" xD

Yeah, there is a lot of potentially interesting territory to explore on the Stellar Degenerator, DS5 The Thirteenth Gate, page 37, mentions the superweapon is over 100,000 feet long, or about 19 miles! The time needed to get it working for what the players might want to do just doesn't fit with the urgency laid out in this adventure path. I do feel like maybe they can activate some minor function, like a super tractor beam that would pull in the Empire of Bones into a catastrophic collision as if they had been on the EoB and piloted it into the Degenerator. I would say the Degenerator would have a few escape pods left so that avenue of getting out works as originally planned.

I also felt like the Kish Foundry in DS4 The Ruined Clouds had a lot of potential. When the party looked through the west door, that area was not detailed and left as an exercise to the GM to flesh out. I just told them is was a desolate factory floor as far as they could see, with a few Acrochors slithering toward them (an encounter they didn't particulary enjoy earlier). So they shut the door and proceeded with the main path of the adventure.

Quote:


Anyhoo, I would like to also point out that as written, the ap has really good point about why not destroying degenerator is a bad ending: Everything said in it IS something that would very likely happen as results of players not destroying it

I was impressed with the write-up at the end of the adventure path, giving some good ideas of what a GM could do next if the players want to continue adventuring with their characters. They included a "What if the Stellar Degenerator Survives?" for concerns to think about in that scenario. Other than the Corpse Fleet knowing about it, with the help of Gevalarsk Nor, maybe it can be kept secret a little while longer, but not indefinitely. At some point Twinned Echo (the atrocite in the supplemental info at the back of the book) will organize the Cult of the Devourer to again pursue the superweapon.


ThermalCat wrote:
At some point Twinned Echo (the atrocite in the supplemental info at the back of the book) will organize the Cult of the Devourer to again pursue the superweapon.

As I'm currently running an AtAT campaign, I've actually decided that it will be one of those continuing the adventure villains who contacts the old PCs and tells them of a potential mcguffin they can use to give the degenerator FTL. In exchange for said mcguffin once they use it.

I'm still hashing out how that will all shake down of course.

Sovereign Court

Another option is to decide that the Stellar Degenerator takes a big crew to run. The PCs and the Corpse Fleet both board the SD and play some cat and mouse, but it becomes clear that more and more crew is being shuttled from the Empire of Bones to the SD. The players should have some opportunity to just, like, see this from a viewport, or overhear some radio transmissions or such.

At some point the players may come up with the idea to sneak aboud/hijack one of the shuttles moving between the EoB and the SD, and try to take over the partially depopulated EoB.


CorvusMask wrote:

I mean, there is very basic reason why I don't think boarding Stellar Degenerator would be "good" idea as the game presents it. It would be COOL idea yeah and its unexpected you never get to visit it, but:

Its expensive super weapon that takes while to charge. It presumably doesn't have "self destruct button" so while you could probably rig it to explo- actually you probably couldn't because its advanced super science beyond even pact worlds. But yeah, its nature means you can't really use it to shoot at Empire of Bones either because "how would you both charge it and hit the big cannon at single target that would obviously notice weapon being charged".

But yeah, its bit of missed opportunity for stellar degenerator never being boarded, but I think Empire of Bones is cool on its own way and while plan is unintuitive, I wouldn't say its "dumb". I think the ap would have just needed something like Gevanor Nor contacting players to give them intel on ship or something like that to make it feel less like "we don't know what we are doing so we are just bumbling around" xD

Anyhoo, I would like to also point out that as written, the ap has really good point about why not destroying degenerator is a bad ending: Everything said in it IS something that would very likely happen as results of players not destroying it

Why bother rigging it to explode instead of taking a few nukes/antimatter missiles from your ship and placing them in sections that look important?


I've been collecting extra content for Dead Suns where I felt there was a small encounter area missing (often a random encounter doesn't have a map as part of the module).

Go to http://bit.ly/StarfinderShare
then navigate to the folder "Extra Content" and then "Dead Suns"

I just recently added an emergency key (DS6x Emergency key.jpg) to show the players. As well as a potential map they can download with the sensitive areas blanked out from EoB area A2 (DS6-Ax Hangar Country handout.jpg).

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

on sidenote: I do think the encounter with seven cr 7 creatures is good even though they can't really hit PCs reliably or be any real threat to them since it is nice for players to feel powerful at these levels :D However it does show why there is need for troop subtype in starfinder as well

Like besides 8 cr 7 foes being MUCH much easier than "CR 13", they all have enough hp to be really tanky unless gm puts them in one explosive blast circle or players nova with everything :'D So the encounter with them still took about 2 hours(some unlucky dice rolls) despite it being clear they couldn't win(still was fun though)

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I feel like bit correcting myself since two cr 9 baykok 4 cr 7 bone trooper commando encounter was amazing :'D Like baykok are horrifying and they support each other effectively

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So I have misc question I'd like to answer on:

Did I understand map right that Empire of Bones is basically larger than Absalom Station? x'D


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CorvusMask wrote:

So I have misc question I'd like to answer on:

Did I understand map right that Empire of Bones is basically larger than Absalom Station? x'D

I want to say it's about the same length but has much less volume.


Garretmander wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:

So I have misc question I'd like to answer on:

Did I understand map right that Empire of Bones is basically larger than Absalom Station? x'D

I want to say it's about the same length but has much less volume.

My own reading told me that it was similar in size, but much less population on board (so I agree, less volume). The image inside the back cover gives a scale labeled "2 miles". Based on size description of the EoB in the text ("6 miles long", page 3, second to last paragraph), that seemed too big. I changed that scale to "1 mile" before showing it to the players to be more consistent, which makes the ship similar is size to Absolom Station rather than way bigger.

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