This is a spoiler-filled resource thread for GMs running the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path, specifically for the sixth adventure, "Midwives to Death."
Starstone hype
Starstone hypeYeah, so long as the PCs are doing their job, the Whispering Tyrant doesn't even get close to the Starstone. THIS TIME. :-)
Note that his motivation isn't just to take the test and become a god. He hates Aroden and wants to destroy what Aroden built along the way. This arrogance makes him less efficient at his tasks, and ultimately provides the PCs the opening to thwart him.
Interesting. I figured this last story would take place on or around Kortos. But this does explain why the Isle of Terror is on the map. Heh.. in our homebrew world, Razmiran is gone, replaced by a Iomedean crusader state. I wonder if I can move the climatic battle to there... *laughs menacingly*
Well, dang it.. now I need a really high quality map of the Isle of Kortos... *runs off to create one*
Those central mountains are hiiigh! Need to find an earth analogue :P
|
I'm so glad the party gets to fight TB in the end, especially after all the upset-on-the-internet pontificating last year about Aranzi stealing the party's thunder. Yeah the fight is "Get a APL+8 fight to 150/700 health" rather than "Beat CR 26 fight", but its still a nice capstone to 1E for the players to send TB back to his Phylactery perhaps for the first time since Aroden slew his mortal form.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Since some peeps seem to have Book 6 now, I think it’s story time for me :)
So during this past PaizoCon I had the pleasure of picking the brains of Lyz Liddell (resident expert on Arazni now that Crystal doesn’t exclusively work for Paizo anymore [someone correct me if I’m wrong]) and our dear Ron Lundeen. I managed to learn about a few key pieces of information about the AP that hadn’t yet been released: the ending (PCs get themselves nuked), the Frustration Points of Book 6 (or whatever they’re called in the final product; I’m waiting for the PDF to release so I don't know for sure), and something that struck fear into my heart and ecstasy to my sadistic-GM side when I first heard it: Reach mythic disintegrate (might’ve also been Empowered? It’s been a few months, cut me some slack)!
During some downtime at the multi-table special I approached John Compton (AKA the author of Book 6) and I inquired about the Tyrant’s disintegrate shenanigans (something along the lines of “Why would you do such a horrible yet glorious thing?!”) and his response was quite possibly the highlight of that weekend for me:
Well, yeah. He’s the f*cking Whispering Tyrant!
Alright, slightly-off-topic story time over.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Oh yeah, when frustration hits 4, i think, he finds the party and drops a reach empowered mythic disintegrate at one of them from (basically) a quarter of a mile away.
Also, his entrance into the final battle is similarly epic. Ripping apart the terrain to basically kill an army's worth of mooks before gating in a genocide daemon.
Organized Play Lead Developer
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Whispering Tyrant may be a self-centered necromancer who abuses his minions and doesn’t handle failure well...but in the end he also has mythic 9th-level spellcasting, little care for restraint, and no moral compass.
I look forward to hearing about the looks on players’ faces when their cavalier’s reduced to ash.
[Though at that level, even this is a modest setback)
Let’s run the numbers, shall we?!
Assuming TB is going balls-to-the-wall with that disintegrate (expending a mythic power for wild arcana and another for the augmented effect and using nothing else but the equipment he has on him [I’m making an assumption based on what others have said about his stat block]): the maximum range would be a grand total of 1,280 feet away (just over the length of four football fields!) for what is essentially 90d6 damage and 1d6 Con damage (not exactly mathematically accurate to Empower Spell, but close enough), and he does that twice! Sure, he can just fire a single ray that instantly disintegrates, but with an average damage of 315 + 1 per HD of the creature hit (from the average of 3 Con damage) per ray, he’s pretty much already instantly disintegrating them if they fail their DC 29 Fortitude, so he might as well get the biggest bang for his buck and just do it again! And even on a successful save that’s still an average of 33 damage and 1 Con damage per ray—a tenth of what it was, sure, but not an insignificant amount of damage!
Yes, a relatively minor setback for high-level PCs, but a setback with a huge reality check of “this guy ain’t f*cking around!”
|
Organized Play Lead Developer
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sure, he can just fire a single ray that instantly disintegrates, but with an average damage of 315 + 1 per HD of the creature hit (from the average of 3 Con damage) per ray, he’s pretty much already instantly disintegrating them if they fail their DC 29 Fortitude, so he might as well get the biggest bang for his buck and just do it again! And even on a successful save that’s still an average of 33 damage and 1 Con damage per ray—a tenth of what it was, sure, but not an insignificant amount of damage!
Yes, a relatively minor setback for high-level PCs, but a setback with a huge reality check of “this guy ain’t f*cking around!”
You’ll have the best sense of what’s a good fit for your own group.
That said, I generally recommend against sniping at multiple PCs with disintegrate in this way. Doing it once is a shocking power play, after which the Whispering Tyrant can blip away to more important matters. After all, blasting one PC and assuming that solves the “problem” is a very dismissive yet powerful move, after which the lich has better things to waste spell slots on.
If he sticks around to do it again, you’ve set up a few troublesome dynamics. First, the PCs are more likely to teleport to confront him because now this feels like a Real Combat (and not a swift backhand made of magic). Second, his blasting multiple PCs shows a certain level of vexation that would give the PCs a sense of cruel satisfaction, and even if the Whispering Tyrant doesn’t have a perfect grasp of military tactics, he’s really familiar with how to be a jerk. And to that end, going for overkill on one big strike seems more in line with his approach.
My party is going to have between 2-4 mythic levels each by the time they fight the WT.
I'm buffing the WT, and kicking up all the combats a LOT in book 6. I mean, it's the last 1e AP, the WT and a war on the Isle of Kortos.
At the end of Book 4, I had the WT wipe the floor with two mythic characters (Arazni and a retire mythic paladin PC turned NPC). I didn't even have to tweak it much.
It's going to be fun.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sure, he can just fire a single ray that instantly disintegrates, but with an average damage of 315 + 1 per HD of the creature hit (from the average of 3 Con damage) per ray, he’s pretty much already instantly disintegrating them if they fail their DC 29 Fortitude, so he might as well get the biggest bang for his buck and just do it again! And even on a successful save that’s still an average of 33 damage and 1 Con damage per ray—a tenth of what it was, sure, but not an insignificant amount of damage!
Yes, a relatively minor setback for high-level PCs, but a setback with a huge reality check of “this guy ain’t f*cking around!”
You’ll have the best sense of what’s a good fit for your own group.
That said, I generally recommend against sniping at multiple PCs with disintegrate in this way. Doing it once is a shocking power play, after which the Whispering Tyrant can blip away to more important matters. After all, blasting one PC and assuming that solves the “problem” is a very dismissive yet powerful move, after which the lich has better things to waste spell slots on.
If he sticks around to do it again, you’ve set up a few troublesome dynamics. First, the PCs are more likely to teleport to confront him because now this feels like a Real Combat (and not a swift backhand made of magic). Second, his blasting multiple PCs shows a certain level of vexation that would give the PCs a sense of cruel satisfaction, and even if the Whispering Tyrant doesn’t have a perfect grasp of military tactics, he’s really familiar with how to be a jerk. And to that end, going for overkill on one big strike seems more in line with his approach.
Fair enough. I was just doing the number crunch for if the Tyrant was actually trying. Not knowing much about the exact mechanics (especially the threshold of “Screw it! Nukin’ ‘em!”) but this seems like around the time that he’d be going “Oh would you look at that, the insects are accomplishing something. Let’s give them a taste of a twelfth of my [mythic] power.” It’s at that point that the PCs are even a slight blip on his radar, enough for him to take a few seconds out of his busy schedule of, you know, becoming a literal god to have a bit of sadistic fun.
I’m just imagining the case where he rolls a nat 1 on the attack roll to hit with the ray and accidentally opening up a freaking crater right next to the PCs and just thinking “Crap! I missed! Ah well, what’s one 8th level spell? Time to get back to being a genocidal overlord!”
Let’s run the numbers, shall we?!
Those numbers are quite high. However, I think Tar would be utterly unable to properly use this spell from the distance, since it requires a ranged touch attack, and you get a -1 penalty for any 30 ft range increment. From max range the penalties would be so high that he would probably never hit his intended target. The WW may be a dreadful wizard, but he's not archer. I can easily image him, high in the sky, riding on Naraga, trying to aim at the pcs and frustratingly missing them, dusting away nearby palaces.
By all accounts, to make this work, he should be at minimum at 150 ft from the Pc, and even then quicken cast a true strike should be advised.
Let’s run the numbers, shall we?!Those numbers are quite high. However, I think Tar would be utterly unable to properly use this spell from the distance, since it requires a ranged touch attack, and you get a -1 penalty for any 30 ft range increment. From max range the penalties would be so high that he would probably never hit his intended target. The WW may be a dreadful wizard, but he's not archer. I can easily image him, high in the sky, riding on Naraga, trying to aim at the pcs and frustratingly missing them, dusting away nearby palaces.
By all accounts, to make this work, he should be at minimum at 150 ft from the Pc, and even then quicken cast a true strike should be advised.
Can you please cite that rule? I've never heard of it.
|
|
Can you please cite that rule? I've never heard of it.Let’s run the numbers, shall we?!Those numbers are quite high. However, I think Tar would be utterly unable to properly use this spell from the distance, since it requires a ranged touch attack, and you get a -1 penalty for any 30 ft range increment. From max range the penalties would be so high that he would probably never hit his intended target. The WW may be a dreadful wizard, but he's not archer. I can easily image him, high in the sky, riding on Naraga, trying to aim at the pcs and frustratingly missing them, dusting away nearby palaces.
By all accounts, to make this work, he should be at minimum at 150 ft from the Pc, and even then quicken cast a true strike should be advised.
Yeah there's nothing in the "Range" or "Effect>Ray" portions of the Magic chapter which give a penalty for distance. Spell Range is the only range increment that it would have, and that is either "Its close enough to work" or "too far, sorry".
Yeah there's nothing in the "Range" or "Effect>Ray" portions of the Magic chapter which give a penalty for distance. Spell Range is the only range increment that it would have, and that is either "Its close enough to work" or "too far, sorry".
Duly noted. I found that any ranged touch attack had a 30ft range, unless noted otherwise, and then a -2 penalty for every range increment, but i could be wrong.
Unfortunately, like any lich, somehow the WW got superhuman perception, so he could well aim any ranged spell. Nevertheless, to remain on topic, should the WW try to cast a disintegrate spell or any ranged spell while being another character's reach, this action would cause 2 different attack of opportunity. The first one by the act of casting, the other one by the ranged attack itself.
Yeah there's nothing in the "Range" or "Effect>Ray" portions of the Magic chapter which give a penalty for distance. Spell Range is the only range increment that it would have, and that is either "Its close enough to work" or "too far, sorry".Duly noted. I found that any ranged touch attack had a 30ft range, unless noted otherwise, and then a -2 penalty for every range increment, but i could be wrong.
Unfortunately, like any lich, somehow the WW got superhuman perception, so he could well aim any ranged spell. Nevertheless, to remain on topic, should the WW try to cast a disintegrate spell or any ranged spell while being another character's reach, this action would cause 2 different attack of opportunity. The first one by the act of casting, the other one by the ranged attack itself.
I'm pretty sure that despite having multiple reasons for provoking attacks with the action, you can only provoke one A00 for any given action. I think the game assumes that Casting the spell and throwing the ray are part of the same (Standard) action, and thus only provoke once.
I'm pretty sure that despite having multiple reasons for provoking attacks with the action, you can only provoke one A00 for any given action. I think the game assumes that Casting the spell and throwing the ray are part of the same (Standard) action, and thus only provoke once."In the same round that you cast the spell, you may also touch (or attempt to touch) as a free action."
Casting a spell is an action that provokes, and the spell provides you with the ability to make a ranged attack, which also provokes. They are two different actions, even if one is a free action.
Just checked the FAQ. You are correct. Good to know.
Okay, since some people already have their PDFs (and I can't buy the PDF since it's locked until the 1st of August, which kinda rubs me up the wrong way...), can someone tell me Tar-Baphon's destiny ?
I am hyped at the idea of making my players fight Tar-Baphon in the flesh (after what happened at the end of Carrion Crown), but one of my players told me that he is supposed to still be alive in PF2, just in another continent.
If that's the case, I would be really disappointed... I feel like the AP intends on the PCs sacrificing themselves for basically nothing. I was hyped about the final fight against one of Golarion's most powerful entities, but the different comments I see here and there have me worried.
Similar situation to Almarane’s (don’t have the PDF yet), but is it explained why the Radiant Fire is stopped by destroying the shard in his hand? Like, yeah, the fragment in his hand blows up, but why can’t he just use another fragment shard for the exact same purpose?
Okay, since some people already have their PDFs (and I can't buy the PDF since it's locked until the 1st of August, which kinda rubs me up the wrong way...), can someone tell me Tar-Baphon's destiny ?
I am hyped at the idea of making my players fight Tar-Baphon in the flesh (after what happened at the end of Carrion Crown), but one of my players told me that he is supposed to still be alive in PF2, just in another continent.
If that's the case, I would be really disappointed... I feel like the AP intends on the PCs sacrificing themselves for basically nothing. I was hyped about the final fight against one of Golarion's most powerful entities, but the different comments I see here and there have me worried.
The PCs antagonize him into using the Radiant Fire, but because of the obol trickery they did, it causes a feedback loop which blows up the shield fragment in Tar-Baphon's hand which destroys the Radiant Fire and the Lich's body. He will regenerate next to his phylactery in 1d10 days.
His evil scheme has been stopped. People's lives were saved and he is bereft of some of his most powerful gear (presuming it survived the explosion and his surviving minions don't grab it themselves). His army needs to be rebuilt.
As victories go...its not a win for him in any way aside from no longer being imprisoned in the Gallowspire. (Which is a victory, to be sure.)
... Yeah, I'll try to change that. It's an idea which will probably find its public, but it's not my cup of tea. In my opinion, Tar-Baphon is so powerful and unchallenged - even more now that Aroden and Arazni are AWOL and Iomedae being a deity can't interact with the mortal world - that he doesn't really need the Radiant Fire. It was really useful to destroy Gibet, but now that he is free, he just needs time to snowball his army, like a good old zombi appocalypse...
Oh well, it will be a good excuse to create a scenario where the characters wander in a strange Nightmarish-Purgatory-like world to destroy Tar-Baphon's soul once and for all.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You know, it seems there may be a logical flaw in all this. If the radiant fire sends Tar Baphon back to his phylactery and he reforms there and his phylactery isn't in Gallowspire, then why couldn't he have killed himself at any time in the past and escaped his prison then?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You know, it seems there may be a logical flaw in all this. If the radiant fire sends Tar Baphon back to his phylactery and he reforms there and his phylactery isn't in Gallowspire, then why couldn't he have killed himself at any time in the past and escaped his prison then?
That...is a very good question...
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Going on some paths based on the other data we've had in the AP and in the past.
Basic Assumptions:
The Obol ties the soul to the body.
Living PC's die, their body reforms at their soul, as a lich does at its phylactery, bc the Obol went with their soul. They're living again but with new bodies.
TB has the only other non-PC compatible Obol, the other shards are just explosives.
When TB got wrecked by Arnisant's heart, his newfound Obol tied his soul and body together, just like the PCs.
Canon has been retconned / fine tuned from the Shattered Shield destroying him, to forcing him to flee into Gallowspire.
TB experimented with killing his body via positive energy to discover the resonance with the rest of the Shattered Shield, leading to Radiant Fire.
My Conclusions:
The Shattered Shield in his hand keeping him from regenerating at his phylactery is establishing canon that his previously unknown phylactery (formerly assumed to be in or *completely* Gallowspire) is not there (now assumed on Isle of Dread, likely Wizard-King's Pit).
Since TB is undead, his body and soul were already tethered together. Adding the additional pincushion between them results in the Obol regenerating him on-site. Some other easy handwavium can be attributed to the Great Seal binding everything (corporeal, incorporeal, souls, planar travel, mundane mining) located beyond it from getting out.
He did try to kill himself ages ago to regenerate properly, but the Obol was blocking that. This leads him down the path of experimentation that led to the resonance and Radiant Fire.
Now that the Obol he had obliterated him (and the party), and the Great Seal isn't preventing any soul movement, his soul can travel back to its box on the Isle of Dread and regenerate back into his mythic lich self.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You know, it seems there may be a logical flaw in all this. If the radiant fire sends Tar Baphon back to his phylactery and he reforms there and his phylactery isn't in Gallowspire, then why couldn't he have killed himself at any time in the past and escaped his prison then?That...is a very good question...
Isn't it though? The main problem being that if his phylactery was in Gallowspire, then it had to be very deep in Gallowspire to avoid the Radiant Fire blast above it. And even then, it would be problematic.. would you, as a lich, risk your phylactery?
Regardless, you now know *exactly* where the phylactery is - moreover, the WT is relatively defenseless. The goal at that point is to not capture or subdue the WT, it's to destroy the rest of Gallowspire before the WT can reform.
The alternative is that the phylactery can be moved away from Gallowspire, in which case, the original question is relevant. Why didn't he physically move it beforehand and avoid all the trouble?
Honestly, I see an ending where the PCs tweak the obols in their bodies so that one PC could be at Gallowspire and have that place go up a second time. The average party is going to realize that if the phylactery is still intact, then this is all for naught. A really good party will likely deduce where said phylactery ought to be.
(Edited to add below)
I took a long walk and thought about how to resolve this. the simplest solution is that the seal acted to prevent physical, magical and planar movement outside of its influence. At least that's my impression from the "Dungeons of Golarion" book.
The phylactery would likely be stored deep in that area. And with the detonation of the Radiant Fire, the phylactery could at last be moved. It would need to as even though the radiant fire didn't destroy the phylactery, it would have likely weakened the structural integrity of all the dungeons, making collapse and burial a distinct possibility. So the WT would have wanted to move his phylactery ASAP afterwards.
|
|
There is no mention at all of his phylactery in the AP. Dead Roads p.75 makes it clear that he wasn't destroyed when defeated in the Shining Crusade ("While not destroyed, the lich fled into the tunnels...), but beyond that its all left to conjecture. I'm still hedging on his obol and the great seal being the reasons he could never regenerate, and that his phylactery is on the Isle of Terror, where his PF2 base is.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Another possibility to keep in mind is his hubris. He very well may have been too arrogant to allow himself to be destroyed, since that would mean he'd lost.
Or it could be he was afraid that the seal might prevent him from reviving himself.
There are a lot of possibilities, in the end.
After some wiki browsing, the only reference that I've found to TB's phylactery's location is a reference that it was "allegedly hidden by Urgathoa so no one, not even the gods, could locate or find a way to destroy it." If this is the case, it's probably not on the Material Plane, or at least not on Golarion. (Maybe it's on Apophis...) It will probably take him a while to get his bearings and get back on track with world domination, since he'll be reforming in uncertain environs with limited equipment (Any potential equipment stored here probably faded to dust millenia ago.) and hindered spell capacity from having come out of a crazy fight with some unexpectedly powerful upstarts.
Then again... considering some of the dynamics between TB and Urgathoa's Handmaiden in book 6, Urgathoa might send an emissary to collect the phylactery from the place only she knows about and relocate it somewhere more...contained, to teach TB a bit about humility, since his plans were to become an ubergod, (by draining the Starstone entirely, not merely completing the test) possibly more powerful than most if not all other gods. This could mean he winds up disappearing from Golarion for a few centuries/millenia. Just a thought.
After some wiki browsing, the only reference that I've found to TB's phylactery's location is a reference that it was "allegedly hidden by Urgathoa so no one, not even the gods, could locate or find a way to destroy it." If this is the case, it's probably not on the Material Plane, or at least not on Golarion. (Maybe it's on Apophis...) It will probably take him a while to get his bearings and get back on track with world domination, since he'll be reforming in uncertain environs with limited equipment (Any potential equipment stored here probably faded to dust millenia ago.) and hindered spell capacity from having come out of a crazy fight with some unexpectedly powerful upstarts.
Then again... considering some of the dynamics between TB and Urgathoa's Handmaiden in book 6, Urgathoa might send an emissary to collect the phylactery from the place only she knows about and relocate it somewhere more...contained, to teach TB a bit about humility, since his plans were to become an ubergod, (by draining the Starstone entirely, not merely completing the test) possibly more powerful than most if not all other gods. This could mean he winds up disappearing from Golarion for a few centuries/millenia. Just a thought.
You gave me an idea... It would be fun if Urgathoa "mistakenly" teleported the PCs with Tarry back to his phylactery...
My party is going to have between 2-4 mythic levels each by the time they fight the WT.
I'm buffing the WT, and kicking up all the combats a LOT in book 6. I mean, it's the last 1e AP, the WT and a war on the Isle of Kortos.
At the end of Book 4, I had the WT wipe the floor with two mythic characters (Arazni and a retire mythic paladin PC turned NPC). I didn't even have to tweak it much.
It's going to be fun.
What was your primer for gaining mythic power? I've been contemplating using mythic for my campaign as well
|
|
What was your primer for gaining mythic power? I've been contemplating using mythic for my campaign as well
I think a good moment of ascension would be once they kill their juju zombie bodies at the end of book 2, the Obol absorbs it, and mythic's them up. Aranzi's last huzzah at the end of book 4 is also a moment that could provide the party some of Aranzi's mythic essence. If you want a third tier, closing the rift to the Plane of Negative Energy in book 5 is a suitably epic moment as well.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What was your primer for gaining mythic power? I've been contemplating using mythic for my campaign as well
The first 'nuke' in RC. Prior to the AP, the PCs find an artifact called the Grace of the Last Azlanti, which I think has some cool synergy with the obols.
Anyway, I write about it (ad nauseam) in this thread.
I feel I have to ask this:
Kwenlyn Gavix? Any relation to Janira Gavix—the recurring PFS NPC?
Question. I've realized ... a solution to the conundrum regarding the Pcs fate, and i've noticed it's not been proposed yet.
Basically, to get a good ending you just need to ...
1) Beat him old stile, dealing enough damage in the same round.
2) Use some effect to specifically target Tar Baphon's hand, and either destroy it or cut it off. Could a called shot be used in such manner?
By my understanding, if Tar gets destroyed, he'll lose all its stuff, including that damned shard in his hand which allows him to free nuke a few cities (5-6?). If Tar gets "disarmed", he cannot channel that power again until he "fixes" his hand.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Question. I've realized ... a solution to the conundrum regarding the Pcs fate, and i've noticed it's not been proposed yet.
Basically, to get a good ending you just need to ...
The AP simply doesn't address what happens if the PC's do this. Given the kind of power an 18th level party can wield, especially when they've made specific preparations for a particular foe, it seems fairly likely this could happen. He may be mythic, but he still only gets one immediate action per round and could be easily overwhelmed by sheer action economy - provided the players have enough power to follow through. A single optimized blast spell or full attack from a martial could easily deal 150 if it hits cleanly.
The AP also doesn't address other obvious courses of action the players might take:
* Use divination magic to find and destroy the remaining 6 shards - this is what I thought book 6 would entail because it seems like the most sensible course of action.
* Spending your one turn prior to perma-death to teleport away.
* Targeted Disjunction on the shard in his hand.
* Anti-magic Field to prevent the activation of the Radiant Fire.
His statblock doesn't list any contingencies declared, but he can cast the spell, so he might have some to protect him from being one shot.
We know what his Contingency is from book 4; it's to teleport away when the Radiant Fire is activated while he's within its area of effect. He already pulled this stunt once on Arazni, no reason he wouldn't have the same Contingency prepped this time around.
|
I mean, you couldn't teleport from perma death because it has to hit you in first place for it to work right?
Otherwise the tyrant could target himself with radiant fire without problem, the radiant fire works by bouncing the magic charge between all the shards starting from shard it left from, so whole idea was to bounce it back to tyrant's shard in his hand to blow himself up. The part that shreds their soul is the radiant fire bouncing from obols right meaning you can't really teleport away from being soul shred if you want the plan to work
Aside from the climax of the book not working, which would ruin the entire AP, so I doubt its an oversight that it isn't prepared.
It doesn't affect the climax at all. The obol feedback destroys the Whispering Tyrant moments before the Radiant Fire actually erupts, preempting his contingency.
meaning you can't really teleport away from being soul shred if you want the plan to work
I would presume that the PC's aren't going along with the plan in that case.
|
Honestly I don't think any teleporting on either side would save anyone. Once the Radiant Fire activates, it's a done deal for all involved, because what destroys both the PCs and the Whispering Tyrant is the resonance between the obols and the Tyrant's own shard, and neither the Tyrant nor the PCs can teleport away from themselves.
Also, gathering the other shards doesn't do anything; they're artifacts, the PCs have no way to destroy them. (It requires a chaotic neutral diety or demigod.) Technically I suppose it's another way to trigger the sacrifice, since if the Tyrant discovered that they'd been stolen and gathered together he'd just nuke that location to get them back, causing the same result. If hidden separately, he's going to scry and fry to get them back. (The artifacts thing is also why the anti-magic field idea won't work, and the disjunction plan relies on a whole lot of chance.)
Also, gathering the other shards doesn't do anything; they're artifacts, the PCs have no way to destroy them.
It's not specified whether the shards are themselves artifacts and still that difficult to destroy, or whether they have a specific means of destruction. As I said, the AP simply doesn't address this possibility.