My Bard Broke the Mirrored Moon

[PhoenixSunrise]

Alright, so I'm actually fairly impressed by the ingenuity here, but the Bard in my party took Shadow Walk as a 5th level spell and according to our interpretation of the spell and the adventure parameters, the group can pretty much travel to any point on the provided map within the 8 hours duration of the spell with relative ease. Aside from throwing in random encounters on the shadow plane just to trip them up, any suggestions on how to run the rest of the scenario?

Or is this just one to chalk up to "high five the players, report it on the survey, and move on?"

[pauljathome]

PhoenixSunrise wrote:

Alright, so I'm actually fairly impressed by the ingenuity here, but the Bard in my party took Shadow Walk as a 5th level spell and according to our interpretation of the spell and the adventure parameters, the group can pretty much travel to any point on the provided map within the 8 hours duration of the spell with relative ease. Aside from throwing in random encounters on the shadow plane just to trip them up, any suggestions on how to run the rest of the scenario?

Or is this just one to chalk up to "high five the players, report it on the survey, and move on?"

Thats not as big an advantage as you think.

Assuming that the players buy horses and nobody has expeditious perception (the skill feat that lets you search hexes in half the time) the lions share of the time is spent in searching hexes and NOT travelling between them. So you go from 1/3 day (or 2/3 day when off the river) + 1-2 days to 1-2 days per hex. Its an advantage but not an overwhelming one.

With horses and a bit of luck my group basically did as much searching as necessary in a little over a month (the key was making the occassional crit to find clues to the interesting hexes)

[PhoenixSunrise]

pauljathome wrote:

Thats not as big an advantage as you think.

Assuming that the players buy horses and nobody has expeditious perception (the skill feat that lets you search hexes in half the time) the lions share of the time is spent in searching hexes and NOT travelling between them. So you go from 1/3 day (or 2/3 day when off the river) + 1-2 days to 1-2 days per hex. Its an advantage but not an overwhelming one.

With horses and a bit of luck my group basically did as much searching as necessary in a little over a month (the key was making the occassional crit to find clues to the interesting hexes)

I get that the majority of the time is taken up searching but it doesn't change the fact that your horses travel 3.5 mph (3 hexes per day) while my players (whose slowest member has a speed 25, or 2.5 mph) now travel 50 mph (4.2 hexes per hour). Translation: what would take a party on horseback traveling along the river unimpeded 5 days to get between L and J, my party is doing in under 4 hours. The only time they're stopping to rest is when he's out of spell slot, which usually coincides with a chance to search an area.

[Mad Beetle]

It´s not a problem, they are just using their resources.
This just means that they finish quickly.

[pauljathome]

PhoenixSunrise wrote:

Translation: what would take a party on horseback traveling along the river unimpeded 5 days to get between L and J, my party is doing in under 4 hours. The only time they're stopping to rest is when he's out of spell slot, which usually coincides with a chance to search an area.

Sure, they get a small advantage. They can search 6 hexes in 6 - 12 days, my group took 8-14 days. When going straight (as my group did when they knew where to go from a critical) you won't lose the day.

So, what took my group 30 days would take your group something a bit over 20 days.

But my group (essentially only with horses) completed the exploration with 30 days to spare! And all that really matters is having a few days to spare.

[Elleth]

I mean, how are they exploring the physical hexes while in the shadow plane? It's closer to popping up at distant points on the map by repeatedly casting it.

In the off chance you aren't aware btw, Shadow Walk is an Uncommon spell.

[Laik]

It's no big deal, we played using shadow walk. Travel faster, still need a lot of time to actually search he hexes.

[PhoenixSunrise]

Ok, thanks for the feedback, all! I was just making sure we hadn't missed something in the rules that made this unworkable. They're not searching while in the shadow plane and that's still where they were taking the most time.

What they've pulled off so far is acquiring all potential points at I, M, and L, which gives them more than the baseline Research/Allies to trigger the Mercs and also 7 Treasure. They're back at E and ready to start day 17, but that's only because the first 5 days of travel was done normally.

I think, in theory, that they could probably assault the Moonmere at the beginning of the next session and be fine completely ignoring the rest of the map entirely if they really wanted to. Just wanted to be certain that was considered "working as intended" to potentially finish by day 22.

[Lyee]

Considering the high search DC, it probably takes 1.5 days per hex, and something like a 15% chance at a hint on a wrong hex guess.

If they guess 3 wrong hexes for each right hex, that means 6 days per objective if you skip travel time. If, for example, going Gnomes->Dead Culstist->Rocs->Cylops->Dryad->Serpent->Dragon->Moonmere, that would take 48 days with that math. Probably a fair bit less with better hex guessing (guessing the end of the rivers and middle of the lake).

So even ignoring all travel time from the start, I think a 'full explore' would take around 35 days? My group completed it in 46, but no lake or dragon encounter, and all travel done on foot.

Did you make it extra obvious which hexes should be explored? Did your players guess well? These can have a big impact.

[PhoenixSunrise]

The NPC's explanation made it clear to search at the sources/ends of the tributaries, so they started with those and guessed well enough to go south first. After a few false starts and random, unhelpful searching in hexes that had nothing to do with the objectives, the players got smarter and traveled directly to the Dragon first, which they scouted well enough for me to inform them they saw her leave once each day, travel due west, and return looking rather pleased with herself. Shadow walk to the Moonmere, and scouted well enough.

A decently lucky guess based on that narrowed down the search for the cyclopes, which they convinced to join the alliance if they took down the dragon. Shadow walk back to the dragon, dropped her and had barely scratched the Fire Giant, who gladly joined the alliance in exchange for not being slaughtered. Return to the cyclopes.

In total, 7 TP, 3 AP, 2 RP, and with Shadow Walk so far, the potential to still have both RP left when returning to the Moonmere is still on the table if they go there immediately.

[DM Livgin]

Do bards have any class features that give them access to uncommon spells?

A bard is my group did this, and neither of us noticed the uncommon part. I'm not going to take away their fun now toy but I want to know if this wasn't intended (It is easy enough to handwave that they are lvl 9, of course they picked up some uncommon stuff along the way).

[Thebazilly]

As has already been noted, I'd allow the Bard to use the spell. It still takes time to search the hexes.

My party did something somewhat similar... the Sorceress used Prying Eye and Read Omens constantly to scout the area and ask questions about the hexes nearby. I allowed Prying Eye to give an automatic success on the Survival/Perception check for searching a hex, so it still took a day to explore. Read Omens ended up just being a way to tell if there was nothing in the adjacent hexes.

[Tamago]

Our group has a sorcerer who had Shadow Walk was well. It ended up being a big relief. The party could actually spend their time exploring, rather than just getting from point A to point B. Made the adventure much more enjoyable.

[DM Livgin]

I used a DC2 flat check to see if they had a hard to evade encounter on the shadow plane (which they then failed on the third check, GM lesson; don't put checks in the game that you aren't willing to see the group fail).

Did your groups do anything to reflect the hazardous nature of the shadow plane?

In my encounter they spotted a nightmare and rider coming over the horizon, gaining on them quickly: giving them the option to leave the plane immediately, or buff for a fight. Of course they choose to stay and fight...

[PhoenixSunrise]

DM Livgin wrote:

I used a DC2 flat check to see if they had a hard to evade encounter on the shadow plane (which they then failed on the third check, GM lesson; don't put checks in the game that you aren't willing to see the group fail).

Did your groups do anything to reflect the hazardous nature of the shadow plane?

In my encounter they spotted a nightmare and rider coming over the horizon, gaining on them quickly: giving them the option to leave the plane immediately, or buff for a fight. Of course they choose to stay and fight...

Yeah, I was considering this option but didn't want to throw in too much to tip the play test out of balance. Still might, just to keep them on their toes.