Venture-Agent, Minnesota
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It was also a challenge to draw. I am not looking forward to drawing this twice, since I am running it again in two weeks and thus will need to erase it after my first game. Mats work best if you clean them regularly.
Sigh.
The adventure itself looks like fun. I love how they adapted it for characters with evil companions and gods.
Hmm
|
|
It looks fun to run, and I'm doing so later today. But that custom map feels like someone creating the scenario just really hates GM or doesn't appreciate the time it can take to draw these things out.
I will honestly probably just make it up and do rough estimates for appearance, and ignore the difficult terrain for switching branches aspect for the sake of not spending an hour drawing this thing.
|
|
Going to run it tonight.
I like the flavour of it the setting is truly novel, but really concerned about the party feeling unfairly railroaded.
-You have no choice but to do the ritual
-There's no player option to explore or even consider risks or question if to go ahead / do anything to mitigate them
-Even if you ace the preparation and pass every check, you fail
-Your failure causes a nasty mess
-NPCs give you quite a lot of grief for causing said mess
|
|
Having it run it, my players enjoyed it and I think I sold all the themes well. I'm a little disappointed no one in the party seemed interested in the boon to change your deity, but I plan to apply it to a character of my own because I think it's a cool flavor.
I agree a bit with Julian, but mostly that the second half of the plot assumes no matter how well you do you screw up the ritual. Especially since the smart thing to have done was not cast the ritual in the middle of Heaven or the library, but you never get the chance to suggest Kitarlo take you back to the lodge before dealing with it, which seems a lot smarter.
I do like the ending, and again my group had a lot of fun with it.
Things worked out rather well thematically, which helped:
-The kill shots to end the bubbles were both crits I could play up,
-They only had one social character for the trial, so seeing them scrape by every check was a lot of fun, especially when the final check was by the negative charisma brawler who hit the DC right on the money with all the bonuses.
-The research specialist bard discovering that this was not the library he's used to was priceless, and the players had fun with it all as well.
So, I was dubious a bit to start, but it was fun overall. The forest map still sucks though and I just winged drawing it for my own sanity.
|
|
Turned out that the sense of being forced to screw up then get blamed for it wasn't too bad for the party but they did comment my playing the NPC that berates them as very pompous helped a lot.
What they did feel was that for supposedly being somewhere as unusual a plane they found it a bit mundane. If running it again I would definitely play up the exotic and unusual when giving descriptions and be sure to stress differences to being on Glolarian.
|
|
Ran this on Sunday, and it was a fun time. Had two paladins, and quite a bit of lawful and good in the party in general, which I think might have helped the group be okay with the more railroad-y aspects of the adventure. When Kitarlo and Zepho told them what they ought to be doing, they were happy enough to trotting off and do it.
The combats were a little bit cream-puff for the party. I actually had to warn them that they might kill Laktharis too quickly (archer paladin shot him with a pie on an arrow.) But they didn't have anything resembling trouble coming up with creative ways to humiliate him. The puppets (high tier) might have taken longer to clean up, but it was 100% clear they were going to crush that combat from minute one. It was fun anyway, because the point was not overwhelming combat prowess but creative humiliation of a bossy demon puppet.
Then the group tracked down the babau in the forest. Rather to my astonishment, they actually succeeded all three check conditions, despite no one having good survival and there being some very clanky people in the party. But only two fails on the stealth, and a lot of assists and some lucky rolls got them through both the survival checks.
So they surprised the babau and pretty much ate his lunch before he was aware combat was beginning.
They managed to get the honey for Valais with similar ease.
Then they came to the final trial. Since they cleaned up on EVERY SINGLE OTHER THING they did, pretty much all of the checks were made at between +17 to +13 as the bonuses stacked up. Not too shockingly, they didn't fail (though I think they used a reroll.)
All in all, it was a fun adventure, though I finished in about three and a half hours, maybe a little less. I usually tend to run long rather than short, so I suggest that any GM with time on their hands should feel free to make a real meal of the RP segments (which is most of it.)
I also did spend a while making a point of the packs of lantern archons floating by overhead and occasionally drifting down to do things like examine (actually NG) dhampir phlebotomist (who was pretty hilarious.)
My final analysis is that this is a fun scenario with good flavor for players with a strong connection to heaven. If the characters are the sort who are inclined to follow the rules and the railroading, it'll work nicely. If not, well, it could get a lot trickier if they try and disguise Valais or the like.
|
I'm trying out new print drivers and the contrast on this custom map is so low, my first print run printed all of the spaces between branches as just as black as the tree trunks! Argh.
Yeah, that map has all sorts of problems. I was not terribly thrilled with it. I get how maps built from map packs don't always have the grid line up, but how does one even manage that on a single map of this nature? I would think the grid would be the last thing you drop on the map, and it should be all in one piece. Clearly I'm missing some part of the process here... at least there aren't secret doors that have been flattened into the map, or transparent image layers placed on top of the map that force us into awkward workarounds we can't even talk about on the forums to get to the core maps. So there's that.
Operational question on the ritual--I'm making some handouts for the ritual component and realized something. I don't usually share DCs (and probably won't here) but the players won't have any frame of reference for how much gold to sacrifice to the charity mortification. Are we expected to tell them straight up, or should we make them guess?
(I plan on telling them, but it would be nice to have some idea of what was intended there for my handouts.)
|
|
Having played at the table TOZ ran as a fresh character (prepping for a convention in a couple of weeks and needed to play it through to get a feel for it), I can't help but emphasize that point about 'reasonable sacrifice'.
Perhaps even having Kitarlo make a comment about "Are you really sure that's going to help?" (He is an azata, after all, so he'd be less inclined to put himself out like that.)
Also may indicate to players that someone knowledgeable in the higher planes (ie, K: Religion and K: Planes) may be handy to have for this adventure, as we were... significantly hampered by no one having those skill.
Not *cripplingly* so, but it did make the scenario a bit more difficult and no small share of more tense.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So I am considering during the Laktharis encounter of emphasizing to the players that they are playing for children, who have notoriously short attention spans, and if things get too 'boring' the kids will 'tune out'.
Does that sound like a reasonable way of conveying the message that they need to try different things without giving all away? Thoughts?
|
So I am considering during the Laktharis encounter of emphasizing to the players that they are playing for children, who have notoriously short attention spans, and if things get too 'boring' the kids will 'tune out'.Does that sound like a reasonable way of conveying the message that they need to try different things without giving all away? Thoughts?
in the group I played this in, we had a thrown weapon specialist - and another player with a bunch of pies. Yeah... I think you can picture it from there.
It was glorious that the thrower (named "Chuck" by the way) only got one crit in the entire game. In this encounter, a thrown chocolate pie to the Laktharis, just before the party bull-rushed/tripped him into the reflecting pool - ending the fight.
|
Does that sound like a reasonable way of conveying the message that they need to try different things without giving all away? Thoughts?
I just outright told players that they could make checks to embarrass the demon and weaken it. It still led to a creative discussion of what a good ruler should do with knowledge(nobility) by one player and a playacting of it by another PC.
|
|
Ran this a couple of weeks ago and forgot to post here.
In addition to the prep that Hilary helpfully provided, I also came up with a chart for the books on a huge sheet of paper, with nine stages charted out. After each hour I would mark an 'x' for the books that were acquired, and a 'o' for the ones that hadn't been acquired in that hour.
I'd have the character minis on the books they were trying for, which really helped the team see what they were doing and who was where, etc.
It helped visualize what books were which, and since they got the books within four hours(and got Kitarlo's book on the 5th), I was able to use some of the remaining boxes to chart what mortification the characters were doing.
I did strongly emphasize an appropriate sacrifice at the T1-2 subtier, and still had a party member dump 150 gold on it (they were L4). At that point I simply washed my hands and called it good, then nearly did a spit-take when someone else did the money sacrifice and dumped 25 gold -- fortunately, I am an experienced GM so it didn't erupt.
L4 player didn't seem angry about it, took it easily in stride.
|
|
I just finished reporting this and finished running it a little over an hour ago.
it was fun. I ended up printing the forest map at work, which I usually don't bother, but there's no way I'd come close to getting that map right.
Table was a high level human paladin playing down, a half-orc monk, human hunter and his dog (based on Shaggy and Scooby-Doo) and a halfling cavalier on a wolf.
Combats were relatively easy, though those skill checks, even with the 4 player adjustment are no joke! I decided on telling them what checks would be needed for finding each book to let them strategize, though because of that, they ended up having no issue finding all the books and Kitarlo's book as well. They even had three hours to spare. (Part of this, the halfling had the Helpful race trait, and they paired off into teams, so the halfling was giving a +4 a number of times)
The ritual itself, I let them discover what each one entailed. The cavalier ended up giving up his riding saddle, and I spun out a tale of him having a vision of it helping a group of halflings fight off a griffon. The hunter gave up his armor! (because he was level 1 and this was his first scenario. Experienced player, new character) They had a vision of it an Tian boy finding it and using it as he escaped from a hobgoblin army camp.
They didn't mind the "railroad" of the ritual failing since stories require twists and turns. It'd be a pretty boring adventure without that twist!
The puppet fight was fun. The monk had Perform (comedy) because the player was basing him off of Jackie Chan and wanted him to do physical humor, so that worked out well. I ended up handwaving and saying, sure there's a chair near the pool of water, why not. The monk also succeded on a grapple check to pull the puppet by the strings, and the Scooby-Doo dog did an acrobatics check to run through the Puppets feet. (His acrobatics check didn't beat the CMD so Laktharis got an AoO, but I rolled a natural 1 on the attack roll, and that made the party laugh, and he did succeed on the DC 16 guideline, so I counted it as a success) One thing, and this is kind of important, the paladin used Detect Evil on Laktharis, and I was kind of at a loss to explain why this remnant of a Demon's Soul didn't detect as evil?
The babau fight was the harder of the two combats for this table. Ammoch got the surprise round. I kept trying to get them to jump down to floor, just out of character. None of them fell for this, but at one point, the cavalier on his wolf failed an acrobatics check to get across the void, and fell. And then he failed the acrobatics to land, so he was falling for a round. I made a big show of rolling damage. I had 1 white d6 and then a handful of green d6s and made a big show of adding them all up and coming to the conclusion of "you and your wolf take six damage. It was only a 1d6".
I had a hard time roleplaying the final trial, just because they ended up nailing the checks. (None of them rolled beneath 13 on the d20, and at this point they had +4 on all the checks for their favor points, so I was fin with just letting it be some die rolls and ending the scenario.)
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
Party I ran for this last Saturday was a complete bust.With the negatives only one PC had a positive Diplomacy and with 23DC in the trial they were never going to make it. Really don't like the fact that PP is based on a roll. They had worked really hard to achieve the aim of healing Valais but with such a low charisma party they didn't have a hope in hell of doing it. Felt really bad for them.
The planar negatives can be a -4 which is significant, but did the party not bring a single person with good Diplomacy? You would think that the adventure blurb would warn people that at least one "civil" PC is going to be needed, Heaven isn't a hobo dungeon after all.
The bonuses for each succesful piece of evidence presented add up quite quickly, if you get a good start even somewhat inept PCs should be able to do it. Unless of course you failed at multiple pieces of the earlier mission. But then it's not really the rolls at the end that are hurting you.
In my run it was the Survival checks that were really difficult for the players, because the planar traits really hurt the trackers.
|
Venture-Agent, Michigan—Detroit
|
Question on the ritual: When we played this, very poor rolls combined with CN (x2) and LN (x2) penalties for our 4-person party led to to some not good results leading up to the ritual. When it came time to do the mortifications, someone suggested we all just bleed and if it's bad, have the cleric channel. We chose this so we wouldn't have to rely on our ice-cold dice. (I don't think we should have known there was no check -- just the damage -- at least for the first phase, but we did. And whether the cleric could actually have channeled during the ritual...)
Taking 6d4 damage each was easy enough for our level 4-5 PCs and we called it a wrap.
I assumed there would be controls the GM missed to prevent this "easy victory", but maybe that's how it was intended as reading the scenario I'm not seeing any stipulations that:
1. The PCs must each do a different mortification.
2. A PC can do a mortification only once during the ritual. (In fact, the opposite; the scenario specifically says a PC may change mortifications after/before each phase.)
3. Each phase lasts any longer than a single round. (Meaning the bleed damage was really negligible, at least for Tier 4-5.)
Did I miss something or is this a correct interpretation of the mechanics of the ritual?
|
Venture-Agent, Michigan—Detroit
|
That is absolutely a correct interpretation. The wrench is if they don't manage to recover that particular book and do not have access to that mortification ritual. It is also not viable for a low tier party that may not be able to stay conscious through the entire ritual.
Thanks!
|
|
A party that either has:
A. some skill monkeys,
B. has invested heavily in relevant skills (i.e. the paladin with max ranks in Knowledge (religion), or
C. is willing to take some bleed damage
should be okay. It's been a little while since I last ran it, but I don't remember the DCs as being anything concerning to our parties.
|
|
I have to disagree. My high-tier table had issues with the DCs.
The "take bleed damage" option is locked behind what's probably a DC26 Perception check, so that's not anything like guaranteed.
The Religion check that parties would expect coming into this scenario? Hidden behind a DC22 Swim check. Who puts more than one rank into swim? Most PCs would be rolling at +8 at the most, meaning a 14 on the die (and time that could have been spent searching for other books.) If you do get it... well, let's assume a 5th-level paladin with max ranks. OK, sure, they can do it on a 10 if they have an Int bonus. Still an assumption, but not a terrible one. But someone else? Say, the non-Lawful or non-Good party members? They're going to have a bad time with this check - that's the same as the DC to ID a CR11 critter, which doesn't exactly seem right.
Starvation is basically a coin flip. Humility has better odds, but that Charisma damage will cause them issues in the final trial. Weakness is like Humility, but the save type is more likely to be attempted by melee characters who don't think they have any use for Charisma (until the trial.)
The ritual isn't as punishing as the final trial, though. You know, the one where the Cha-dumped CN fighter will try making a DC23 Diplomacy check. Even doing everything right, the last three questions were made by PCs that had maybe a 35% chance of passing.
Sorry to hear you had a bad time with this one, Shaventalz.
I agree that if the party is made up of a lot of neutral PCs, they'll have a hard time--but I'm not sure that should really be a surprise to anyone. Even the title seems to telegraph the theme? So I could see most PC's seeing a -2 penalty, but it shouldn't be hard to avoid a -4 penalty.
Regarding the DCs, the highest in 4-5 would be a DC 24 Perception check. (Not counting those penalties.) At 6 hours in the library, with a 6-person group, the party could pretty easily send someone out to find each of the tomes and figure out "where it lives"--i.e. what the type of check is to successfully grab it. Even if nobody gets the book the first time around, hour 2 could and probably should easily see 1/3 the party successfully retrieve their books. After that, with members of the party freed up to aid another, help or magic should normally be sufficient to acquire most if not all of the texts before the timer runs out. I mean, even a rogue with no other applicable skills should have a good chance at escape artist-ing their way to the book that allows the "pay gold to bypass this challenge" mortification.
The real trouble happens if everyone goes after the same book and fails; but even that should only lose the party an hour before they figure out that's a bad idea.
At high subtier, it's also reasonable to assume that Heaven-appropriate characters that couldn't contribute early (say, clerics and paladins, with low int and few skill points) might have other ways to contribute. Level 4 clerics and paladins should have access to lesser restoration to recover ability score damage, or positive energy channeling to heal after the bleed mortification. Even a paladin who's traded away channel can usually contribute with ridiculous Paladin saves and make DCs for the humility or weakness mortifications.
I know that sometimes parties' skills just don't line up with what the scenario asks of them, but the stacks section provide a ton of retries and the obvious good-fit classes that would have trouble with the skill checks all have other ways to contribute. All in all I don't think the difficulty's out of line with any other skill-heavy scenario.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
On the play-through we had two tengu hunters, a tengu swashbuckler, and a half-elf druid with an aquatic theme. (Low Tier)
We had some difficulty at points, but were able to just barely pull it off.
On running my table had an inquisitor of Arshea (CG), a warpriest of Ragathiel(LG), a dwarven cleric of Torag(LG), and a TN hunter. The table struggled a bit with the DCs, but were able to pick off some of the easier books then move to aid others in subsequent hours -- they only needed five hours to get all the books (including Kitarlo's).
My recommendation to help with GM sanity and help players 'visualize' the books is to write up a chart big enough to have a field for each of the books, and then have hour columns next to it. Each of the fields should be big enough to hold a few minis or tokens to represent the player characters.
At that point, having your players put their token on the book they're going for, and moving them 'forward' on the book if they haven't gotten it helps chart out where the party needs to focus and speeds up the process without trivializing it.
|
|
The party barely made it (2 successes, the first and last players being the only successes). Luckily their survival and nature skills earned them favor points. If they were at subtier 4-5 they would have failed horribly, even if the PCs were level 4-5 as well.
But at subtier 1-2, it was a good time.
|
|
I run this scenario about fifteen hours ago and
I want to say a couple of things about this scenario. Firstly, my expectations were quite high as I was a fan of this story arc. But, when I started to read this one, I got disappointed on several points. I don't understand what were they thinking when they made this tier 1-5. Ambrus Valsin arranged a team to
My players played a fighter, an oracle, a bard, and a shifter. They simply cannot show any resistance against
I don't know whether this is the final part of Traitor's Lodge story arc, but if it is, its a
|
|
AMMOCH CR 3
Variant babau (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 57)
CE Medium outsider (chaotic, demon, evil, extraplanar)
Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +12
DEFENSE
AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 14 (+1 Dex, +4 natural)
hp 34 (4d10+12)
Fort +7, Ref +2, Will +4
Defensive Abilities protective slime; DR 5/cold iron or good;
Immune electricity, poison; Resist acid 5, cold 5, fire 5
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee longspear +6 (1d8+3/×3), bite +1 (1d6+1) or
bite +6 (1d6+2), 2 claws +6 (1d4+2)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with longspear)
Special Attacks sneak attack +1d6
TACTICS
During Combat When possible, Ammoch tries to flank with his
boilborn minion to make use of his sneak attack ability.
Morale Ammoch fights to the death.
STATISTICS
Str 15, Dex 13, Con 16, Int 14, Wis 13, Cha 16
Base Atk +4; CMB +6; CMD 17
Feats Improved Initiative, Iron Will
Skills Acrobatics +8, Climb +9, Disable Device +8, Escape
Artist +8, Perception +12, Sense Motive +8, Sleight of
Hand +8, Stealth +12; Racial Modifiers
+4 Perception, +4 Stealth
Languages Abyssal, Celestial,
Draconic; telepathy 100 ft.
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Protective Slime (Su) A layer of
acidic slime coats a babau’s
skin. Any creature that strikes
a babau with a natural attack or
unarmed strike takes 1d6 points of
acid damage from this slime if it fails a DC 15
Reflex save or the weapon takes 1d6 points of acid damage;
if the damage penetrates the weapon’s hardness, the
weapon gains the broken condition. Ammunition
that strikes a babau is automatically destroyed
after it inflicts its damage.
Is this the stat block that you used, Razzle, or the one from the Bestiary?
|
|
Of course I used this one.. That wasn't my first GM experience. If I had used the standard one, combat wouldn't last 1.5 hours. They would be dead in 1 minute.
The point I want to highlight since yesterday is this scenario should be tier 5-9. Its quite ruthless to make level 1 PCs to fight againts a babau, even she is a CR 3 one.
GMs who care about PCs should think twice or be sure that party is an ideal one.
|
|
All I’ll say is when I ran this the party easily rolled over the combats, they weren’t even a challenge and never looked like that when I prepped.
Even this Babau does very little without sneak that is hard to get considering the flank buddies and dr cold iron is easy to beat, either with a cheap cold iron weapon or a half decent melee smacking it.
I’m not certain why your group struggled, but this was a pretty mild scenario in terms of combat and was far more setting and story driven, which my group enjoyed.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
They struggled because they were brand new 0XP characters with less armor to take the reach attacks, less backup equipment from limited gold, and less ability to avoid the defenses of the babau. (That reflex save to avoid lost weapons is not easy for 1st level characters.)
That being said...
The point I want to highlight since yesterday is this scenario should be tier 5-9. Its quite ruthless to make level 1 PCs to fight againts a babau, even she is a CR 3 one.
Then we should also have Shrine of the Sacred Tempest as a 5-9, as I ran a team of 0XP characters through it and nearly killed them all with the final encounter.
|
|
I hear you on the armor, but even with low key armor the babau should only have a 50% chance to hit a front liner.
The slime, though, should only matter for natural attacks. 1d6 can’t bypass the hardness of metal weapons like swords and axes. It had a 1/6 chance of giving any hafted weapon like a spear the broken condition if you fail the save and the GM rolls a 6 on the damage, which the weapon can still be used to attack. And all this is assuming level one with no cold iron.
I thought the fight was fine, maybe undertuned in the high tier due to PC action economy and the backup being easy to avoid slimes.
Maybe the PC dice ran cold for you, I actually struggled to even hurt the party I ran for before it died. I imagine a ranged character could significantly weaken this encounter as well.
|
The slime, though, should only matter for natural attacks. 1d6 can’t bypass the hardness of metal weapons like swords and axes. It had a 1/6 chance of giving any hafted weapon like a spear the broken condition if you fail the save and the GM rolls a 6 on the damage, which the weapon can still be used to attack. And all this is assuming level one with no cold iron.
Well, I decided to hit the babau with my whip, because that was the only weapon I do enough damage with to get through its DR consistency. Thankfully it’s a Dex based character and I made the reflex saves. I did have a cold iron dagger I could have used, but not strength bonus, so 1d6+11-DR after Divine Favor, Sacred Weapon, and the skald handing out Dex was a better option than 1d4+4 overcoming DR. It wouldn’t have been pretty if I’d failed that save, though.
I’m GMing this Saturday. I asked the backup GM because if we have a 2nd table it’s going to be all new walk-ins, and I don’t want to throw this one at them. I think the skills are more of an issue than the babau. A Crowe or Oloch pregen would be able to deal enough damage to take it out fast enough. But being locked into each character making an individual check on a single skill option (Diplomacy) with prestige on the line has a high potential for being a frustrating experience for a new player. Especially if they’ve chosen the wrong pregen. Plus, it’s the culmination of the Valais storyline, and it just feels like that is a weird way to introduce players to Pathfinder society. I think this should have been a higher tier scenario so that characters who knew Valais could participate without having to be exactly 5th level. Plus, it feels like Heaven would have been more epic at 5-9. I did enjoy the story, but a lot of that enjoyment was due to having played the other Valais scenarios.
Once I get a chance to look more closely at all the Skill checks, I may have questions.
|
|
I’ve read through this more thoroughly now. Tracking all of the modifiers on the skill checks is crazy. I hope I get it right. I downloaded the flowchart from pfsprep, which I think will help with the favor points. Keeping track of who gets an alignment penalty or not... I’m just going to have to ask alignments at the beginning and tell them not to adjust their rolls. Otherwise I’m going to be asking every roll if they took the penalty.
|
|
There's something I don't understand and I've only noticed it as my players have gotten to it, so I'd appreciate a quick response.
They've just arrived at the stacks and they need to find 6 books in 9 hours (4 players) and there are some skill checks to go along with each book. But at the bottom of the first column on page 9, it says:
In Subtier 4–5, the books are more difficult to locate, increasing the DCs of all skill checks below by 4. This does not increase the DC of the Intelligence check.
So my question is, What Intelligence Check? I can't find any Intelligence check required. Typo?