3 - Sun Divers (GM Reference)

[Hmm]

This is a spoiler-filled resource thread for GMs running the Dawn of Flame Adventure Path, specifically for the third adventure, "Sun Divers."

★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★

All GM Threads in this series:

1 - Fire Starters
2 - Soldiers of Brass
3 - Sun Divers
4 - The Blind City
5 - Solar Strike
6 - Assault on the Crucible

[Nefreet]

The Photonic Anomaly's "Quantum Movement" had my group laughing in tears tonight. Before combat it was "heading straight for them", and yet in combat it always moved in the worst possible direction.

We will forever refer to it as a "Solar Roomba".

[jayyyc]

I'm curious to hear how other GMs ran the alien in "Event 1: A Situation of Some Gravity" (SD 5 - 6).

To prepare for this encounter, I reread the Pact Worlds entry on the khizar (PW 212), but this time with more attention to the details of the species since I would have to bring one to life as part of the gaming session. I noticed that they "have no eyes or visual senses, other than the ability to perceive the presence or absence of light. Khizars have blindsense (vibration) and blindsight (life), each with a range of 30 feet".

This, in turn, required me to reread the Core Rulebook descriptions of blindsense and blindsight (CRB 262 - 3).

My conclusion is that these aliens are literally unable to perceive or interact with the world outside of a 30 foot radius. Inside that radius, they seem to be quite disadvantaged, too; their blindsense only provides 'imprecise' non-visual input and their blindsight does not provide enough contrast to distinguish colours or read text.

If you've run this encounter (or have playing experience with this species), how do you handle the world beyond their 30 foot range?

[Kishmo]

Yeah, khizars aren't great vs anything 30+ ft away. There was a thread about it a while ago, and the general consensus was that since they have no senses more than 30 ft away, they can't really target anything that far out. Within 30 ft, at least, their blindsight counts as a "precise" sense vs anything living, at least?
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42hgq?Can-characters-without-sight-be-effectiv e

[Phillip Goettsch]

So tonight, my party of six was wiped out and utterly destroyed by the Photonic Anomaly. I did a quick skill challenge allowing them to crash land on Noma to keep the story moving forward, but I am concerned that I might have missed something.

The Sun Diver was not in the best of shape when they encountered the "Solar Roomba" (32 of 50 Hull Points), having endured 3 days of solar travel (they rolled 2 4's and a 1) and 6 rounds without power during the Diver Down event (9 points here).

During the encounter, the anomaly ate through their shields every round. Of course they were so very concerned that they should balance the shields each round that the shields became weaker and weaker and the 10d6 particle beam just started punching through the hull. After 5 rounds, the hull points were in the negatives and I began the hand waving...

I described the anomaly disabling their shields after the starship was no longer able to fight and then simply leaving. Since they cannot affect repairs to the ship while in the solar atmosphere, the ship would continue to take damage (without shields) and drift on its last course. This basically ends the campaign as the group burns up after a few days.

I'm curious what others have or would have done in this situation.

[Pantshandshake]

PC’s don’t get to win every time. Everyone died? Well, roll up some new characters and we restart somewhere, or play a different AP.

Maybe, without telling the players, start a one-shot homebrew adventure that leads to the rescue of the original characters. Maybe.

[Garretmander]

Pantshandshake wrote:

PC’s don’t get to win every time. Everyone died? Well, roll up some new characters and we restart somewhere, or play a different AP.

Maybe, without telling the players, start a one-shot homebrew adventure that leads to the rescue of the original characters. Maybe.

As unfortunate as it is, it is also something I've always enjoyed about Paizo APs. The Players can fail, they can all die. It lends an extra level of danger to play that really sucks in the players.

[MeridiaCreative]

Anyone here notice that the base Sun Diver is over its PCU capacity? I think it has the shields costed as if they were 120s instead of 240s. Current PCU cost is 193, power core only has 175.

Also, I think you did great by having them crash land on Noma. This means that they have a very desperate situation trying to get the ship repaired. It'll cost them quite a bit to get enough siccatite to put the thing back together, which is kinda fine. They didn't make poor decisions, so there's no good reason to TPK them. They had some bad luck, which is always a danger, and now it costs them to remedy the bad luck. It happens.

If they decided to fly the ship past Noma to see what else they could find, that would be worth TPK. If they decided to try to ram the anomaly instead of using weapons or escaping, that would be worth TPK. If a bunch of protocites eat them when they get out of the ship, that's probably worth a TPK. I dunno, I think you did the right thing.

[Kishmo]

My group is approaching Noma's Core, and after prepping to run that area, I'm left wondering: what happened on Noma, anyways? It feels like there's enough clues here to be able to figure out a story or some neat setting lore, but I can't seem to make all the pieces fit together.

Some facts:
- all sorts of hints suggest Noma was founded by the First Ones; or at least that they seeded it with Protocites. Some possibility also exists that whatever the original purpose or function of Noma was, it was deviated from that course in the past, by some other party.

- from the Welcoming Column in area B4, we know there's only ever been three visitors to Noma. The most recent are the PCs, of course, and before them Sulphrax & co. No details on the first visitor, but we later find out it was long, long, ago.

- In C3, canny PCs can learn that an "ancient visitor" turned some walls to goo, seeking to hide something in the Core.

- In C4, PCs using the restorative slabs can gain the knowledge that the Ancient Visitor also used the slabs in the distant past.

- In C6, PCs who use one of the "knowledge crystals" has visions of, amongst other things, "a colossal being of stellar plasma and incomprehensible geometry that gives the nebulous impression of multiple orbs of flesh and tentacles." Lovely :D Is this the Eshtayiv, or a Great Old One / Outer God?

- In C8, PCs can learn that there's a "key" hidden in the room, which turns out to be a Key to Ezorod. PCs granted visions also recognize that this room was of great important, but was altered in the distant past - presumably, by the Ancient Visitor.

- And, of course, the Noma Mummy, holding the horacalcum tablet that is a Key. PCs find the mummy familiar, but also "wrong and unnerving." The mysterious Eshtayiv's Voice, from the Continuing the Campaign bit in book 6, suggests it's physiologically similar to the Noma Mummy, but not quite - the Mummy has 8 arms and 1 head, whereas the Voice seems to have 6 arms and two heads (although who knows how much of that is a throwback to some extant species vs the Voice just being...some freaky, not-Undead, all-consuming, light monster.)

So...what does all of this mean? The mostly likely scenario, given all of the clues, is that at Noma predates Ezorod, and that after Ezorod's founding, agents of the Outer Gods stopped by Noma. These 'ancient visitors' explored the Core, possibly tampered with Noma's central functions/purpose, and presumably hid the horacalcum tablet in C8.

Does anyone have any guesses or theories beyond all this? Anyone particularly versed in Pathfinder lore may be able to extrapolate more, too. There's all sorts of questions left unanswered: is the Noma Mummy a First One, or is it one of the Ancient Visitors, or somehow related to the Eshtayiv, or the Outer Gods, or something else? What changes did the Ancient Visitors make to Noma, if any? Why would anyone hide a Key to a nearby solar oubliette in Noma, anyways?

I'm left trying to figure out if this is one of those things where there's clues and puzzles but no "one right answer" (like The Gap, or where Golarion is, or Aroden's death, etc) or is this one of those bits of hidden setting lore where people with enough context can piece something together?

[MeridiaCreative]

I like your explanation for the whole thing and don't really have anything to add, plot-wise. It's what I'm gonna use if my players ever bother asking about the connection between Ezorod and Noma. It's pretty unlikely given that they're mostly concerned with not getting burned to death by the flaming undead that ignore fire resistance (right at the level most PCs get access to resistance too, very frustrating for my PCs).

The description of the being in C6 is pretty close to the descriptions of shoggoths generally and Yog-Sothoth more specifically. In fact, that's what I went with in my game. Yog-Sothoth, being an Outer God, sent agents to Noma after trapping the Eshtayiv.

[Kurashiu]

I'm having some difficulty determining the exchange rate of the Vestrani Gaming Complex chips. There's no ratio mentioned unless it is after the initial stake value of the chips. Is it 1 credit = 1 chip to purchase chips and 4 chips after meeting the initial investment = 1 credit?

Any thoughts?

[Kishmo]

The cost to buy more chips is always 1:1 when purchasing chips; it's only when you're cashing out that it gets tricky. The key to the whole system is keeping track of two things for each casino tab: current value and stake value.

However many credits you turn into chips becomes your stake value (and don't forget the 10% processing fee to buy chips, lol.) The tricky part to remember is that this stake value doesn't change, no matter how many chips you end up winning later. Casino winnings increase your current value, but not your stake value.

When you're cashing out, you have to split your casino chips into two groups: bits <= your Stake Value, and bits > your stake value. The first bit <= Stake Value cash out at 1 chip = 1 credit. The second bit > Stake Value cash out at 4 chips = 1 credit.

So, for example, let's say Trogdar the Burninator buys 1000 chips for 1100 credits (it's higher because of that 10% processing fee.) Trogdar's casino tab has a current value of 1000 and a stake value of 1000. Then, Trogdor hits a lucky streak and ends up winning 600 credits at the meteo-roulette tables. his casino tab has a current value of 1600, but still stake value of only 1000.

If Trogdor cashes out, he'd split that 1600 into two groups: the first bit of 1000 up to the stake value, and then the second bit of 600, in excess of the stake value. First bit cashes out 1:1, so 1000 chips = 1000 credits back. Second bit is 4:1, so 600 chips / 4 = 150 credits back. So Trogdor walks out of the casino with a cool 1150 credits.

And, just to further complicate things: you can buy more stake, and combine chips, if you want. So, like, when Trogdor has 1600 on his casino tab, he could buy another 500 credits: that'd up his current value to 2100 (1600 + 500) and his stake value to 1500 (1000 + 500.)

It's a complicated system, where your winnings are sort of capped by how much you start off with, but I can see why they did it - otherwise PCs with the right mix of skills would just spend months in the casino clearing out the place, and then waltz through the rest of the AP being able to afford level 20 weapons :D

[Garretmander]

Kishmo wrote:

It's a complicated system, where your winnings are sort of capped by how much you start off with, but I can see why they did it - otherwise PCs with the right mix of skills would just spend months in the casino clearing out the place, and then waltz through the rest of the AP being able to afford level 20 weapons :D

On the one hand, that does neatly solve a problem.

On the other hand, I'd cap the tier players can buy here to APL+1 and then let them go to town, or run out of credits as they wish.

[Kurashiu]

Kishmo wrote:

The cost to buy more chips is always 1:1 when purchasing chips; it's only when you're cashing out that it gets tricky. The key to the whole system is keeping track of two things for each casino tab: current value and stake value.

However many credits you turn into chips becomes your stake value (and don't forget the 10% processing fee to buy chips, lol.) The tricky part to remember is that this stake value doesn't change, no matter how many chips you end up winning later. Casino winnings increase your current value, but not your stake value.

When you're cashing out, you have to split your casino chips into two groups: bits <= your Stake Value, and bits > your stake value. The first bit <= Stake Value cash out at 1 chip = 1 credit. The second bit > Stake Value cash out at 4 chips = 1 credit.

So, for example, let's say Trogdar the Burninator buys 1000 chips for 1100 credits (it's higher because of that 10% processing fee.) Trogdar's casino tab has a current value of 1000 and a stake value of 1000. Then, Trogdor hits a lucky streak and ends up winning 600 credits at the meteo-roulette tables. his casino tab has a current value of 1600, but still stake value of only 1000.

If Trogdor cashes out, he'd split that 1600 into two groups: the first bit of 1000 up to the stake value, and then the second bit of 600, in excess of the stake value. First bit cashes out 1:1, so 1000 chips = 1000 credits back. Second bit is 4:1, so 600 chips / 4 = 150 credits back. So Trogdor walks out of the casino with a cool 1150 credits.

And, just to further complicate things: you can buy more stake, and combine chips, if you want. So, like, when Trogdor has 1600 on his casino tab, he could buy another 500 credits: that'd up his current value to 2100 (1600 + 500) and his stake value to 1500 (1000 + 500.)

It's a complicated system, where your winnings are sort of capped by how much you start off with, but I can see why they did it - otherwise PCs with the right mix of skills would just spend months in the...

Thanks. It's definitely complicated but I get it now.

[Cellion]

The first half of Sun Divers has been really frustrating to GM. The characters just learned about Noma and have been given a lead to what should be a cool place somewhere within the sun, but the adventure leads them instead to filler encounters (cool ones, but not important to the story), days of waiting in a casino, and fighting more of the same thugs from the previous two books. Gauging reactions from my players so far, they're eager to short circuit this part, and I'm currently in the midst of working out how to do that.

While I do so, some commentary on the adventure from parts we've played and parts we haven't gotten to yet:

The living hologram ambush in the lobby is a huge risk for the GM to spring. From a player point of view, they just got attacked by someone in a very public place, putting them on edge to trust no one. It can easily stifle any desire to wait for days in the Casino, and make the PCs less likely to play along with Taza later.

There's just not enough info provided if the PCs take a proactive approach to finding Lu. The book offers no one they can question, no Gather Information DCs, no leads. There's a completely luck-based chance to encounter her that asks PCs to spend days in the casino. (And thinking as a player, why would I ever just settle down and gamble for days on end on the chance of finding Lu?) This leaves any investigation entirely up to the GM to adlib. The easy way out is to just have Taza contact them early, but it seems railroady to have the solution to their problem deliver itself on a silver platter.

Why does the Vestrani cartel accept their own chips to pay off Lu's debts? The chips have no value to the Vestrani, given that they can create as much fake currency as they like. Just struck me as really weird.

I like the various games provided. There's a lot of neat rules and ways for PCs to sway things in their favor. But there's little reason to engage. Its both difficult to build up to 50k chips via gambling and totally unnecessary. Taza offers more than enough chips in a single task to pay off Lu's debt with even a mediocre social roll to negotiate. Beyond gaining a little bit of extra spending money, PCs don't have anything pushing them toward the games. And considering that they have a deep sun location to get to, spending hours or days gambling may be extra unappealing.

[Blue Eyed Devil]

So one of the struggles I had when setting up book 3 was how much my PCs love to engage with setting (I know, it's a great problem for a GM to have) and how that would interact with the layout of Noma. So I elected to treat the hex grid almost like Kingmaker, applying the notable locations to specific hexes, and playing up how much the DCI wants "survey data." That lead me to the unfortunate conclusion that at just one location per hex, there weren't nearly enough locations to support a sustained expedition.

I want to run this with borderline survival mechanics - the PCs will be on the ground for several days while they hunt for the core, which will put them into repeated conflict with reclaimers, stealing their polyfluid to survive, and their search should take them through a variety of hexes before they find the core, so I wanted every hex to have some established material. Luckily I had several China Mieville and Larry Niven novels, as well as Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' handy, so I got cracking on filling in the gaps. If anyone wants to use my map of Noma, sorted by hex coordinates that (mostly) correspond to their artistic depictions on the map, here it is. I'd love some feedback as well.

Here's my Noma.

[Cellion]

@Blue Eyed Devil: That's a super cool imagining of Noma! I was surprised when the book presented Noma as a hex grid and then didn't actually say what was in the hexes. While I probably won't be focusing on survival mechanics for my own game, the descriptions are fantastic and I'm definitely going to be cribbing them.

[AFlashInTime]

@Blue Eyed Devil: This is fantastic. We're just starting book 3 - definitely stealing! Thank you!

[Balthesar]

So something isnt making sense to me about the Sun Diver. The Vestrani paid Lu to build it, and presumably havent made back their investment after one trip. But then she goes into debt at the casino, though arguably is already in debt from the ship.
But then the cartel, who went through the trouble to secretly paying to fund the ship, doesnt realize its value? They dont really make Lu pay back much of her debt, and then you get to have the ship?
Is there some later plot thread? Things just dont add up, and it seems like its best to just ignore the detail that the Vestrani secretly paid for the ship to be built.

[Cellion]

Balthesar wrote:

So something isnt making sense to me about the Sun Diver.

Yeah, 100% agreed. The Vestrani cartel's motives make no sense as written.

They funded building the Sun Diver, but are now engaged in underhanded methods to seize it (what was the contract between them and Lu? Its not described anywhere). They seize it over her casino debt, and then give it up before that casino debt is fully paid off? So now they're doubly in the red for no reason? It's not even about them not realizing its value. Its the only leverage they have over Lu. Why would they give it up?

I think the funniest though is that they're willing to accept their own casino's chips as payment. I still can't get over how absurd that is.

The Vestrani don't show up again in the AP, so this isn't setting anything up with them.

How I changed it:

I entirely changed this section to be more of an extraction. The Vestrani didn't pay for any development on the Sun Diver, but are holding Lu hostage over her gambling debts. They recognized her engineering and design skills and are allowing her to work on designing things for the Vestrani to pay her debts off. They also know she has a unique prototype ship hidden somewhere and they want access to it, but she's unwilling to give it up, so they keep increasing her debt to put pressure on her.

The PCs have to infiltrate the Gaming Complex, find Lu, and get her out. I ended up using most of the Gaming Complex areas and encounters during the investigation to find Lu, or during the escape itself.

[Cellion]

Heads up for GMs:

The Polyfluid Ooze (area C3) has some contradictory stuff:

It is listed as a huge creature, but its Space entry is 10ft

Its reach is 10ft, but 15ft with its pseudopod... but pseudopod is its only attack, so 15ft is the only reach it should have.

Personally, I went with it being a huge creature to match the size of the pool on the map and kept the 15ft pseudopod reach.

[Kiniticyst]

What sort of scale do people have in mind for each of Noma's hexes? I couldn't find any reference to it in the book, just wondering how long it would take to travel across a hex.

My party are most likely bringing their cruiser that they have brought onboard the Sundiver ship. The hover car can travel at 75mph and as the crow flies if that makes any impact on how I should scale the city!

[Jhaeman]

Huh, that's a good question! My group just started Chapter 3 so it hasn't been an issue yet, but going through the book, I don't see anything like a scale for the city as a whole or for each hex. It's described as a "large city"; maybe put in on the scale of the other bubble-cities of the Burning Archipelago? I guess it's not really a big deal if the PCs have a vehicle and move quickly through the hexes, as long as you're able to still describe anything of interest. And if they miss some stuff by moving too quickly, it's their fault for being poor explorers :)

Glad to see someone else running this book of the AP. It's been a pretty quiet forum!

[Elro the Onk]

Kiniticyst wrote:

What sort of scale do people have in mind for each of Noma's hexes? I couldn't find any reference to it in the book, just wondering how long it would take to travel across a hex.

My party are most likely bringing their cruiser that they have brought onboard the Sundiver ship. The hover car can travel at 75mph and as the crow flies if that makes any impact on how I should scale the city!

We played through this a while ago, so I can't remember precise details - but my group were nervous about traps/resistance, and really into exploring the city. So I didn't worry too much about precise scale, and went with a nominal time to move between hexes cautiously (30 mins?), with an additional nominal time on first visit to a hex to explore it & find its key contents (1 hr or so?), eyeballed by what felt about right for moving through on foot. I scattered the contents of the gazeteer over the map, winged the exploration of each based on the gazeteer discription, & injected the encounters wherever felt right.

I also hampered comms with their ship (where they had left a couple of NPCs to "hold the fort") with an interference/gravitational field time lag effect [instant comms in the same square, time lag growing with distance squared so there was a couple of minutes delay from one end of Noma to the other] to add to the sense of weirdness/isolation.

Overall effect was it took them about three days to get from one end of Noma to the other with exploring (returning to the ship after day 1 to rest, then "camping out" after day 2), but they could get back in less than a day when they just hustled through. Worked out pretty well.

Noma's odd enough that you can add a thing somewhere along the journey that mucked up the hover car drive (especially if the players aren't being cautious) & require a repair quest/city permissioning thing if you wanted to play up scale/weird tech and have a more exploration feel?

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

You know, my players absolutely loved the Casino, and I had so much more fun with it than Noma. Noma wasn't bad, but the whole casino sequence was a blast, and my party took to the challenges there with absolute zeal. It may have been in part due to my GM style -- I love wacky NPCs and social encounters as a GM -- but that was one of the most memorable sections of the AP for me. I thought Pasini knocked it out of the park!

[Darius Silverbolt]

In the Noma section of the book it has location names and descriptions but no coordinates on the map. I am looking just to make my own key. Anyone else figure something else out.

When it came to the hologram fight, I turned it into a live gambling event. Just before the Party gets their own chips. Force Fields go up at all entrances and around employees and all the screen starts showing off the crowd from other rooms watching the party and the current odds on the party per round are scrolled on the screen as they were the lucky Customer #1313 of the day. I made it a tad harder but non lethal.(party didn't know the non lethal part until they won.

[Kiniticyst]

Am I reading the Portable Grinder from this chapter right?

https://thehiddentruth.info/player/equipment/items/tech?page=Portablegrinde r

The Party can just go to any of the buildings in Noma and grind away at absolutely anything and come away with 1000 credits worth of Polyfluid? 5 minutes of work, 5000 credits and then recharge the battery and off they go again?

They're then using that polyfluid to make barrels, so they can take more polyfluid with them.
It's getting to the point where I have to figure out exactly how many hundreds (thousands?) of bulk that the Sundiver can hold before they decide to finally return to the burning archipelago as millionaires.

[Kohnslaw]

Kiniticyst wrote:

What sort of scale do people have in mind for each of Noma's hexes? I couldn't find any reference to it in the book, just wondering how long it would take to travel across a hex.

My party are most likely bringing their cruiser that they have brought onboard the Sundiver ship. The hover car can travel at 75mph and as the crow flies if that makes any impact on how I should scale the city!

This question has been bugging me in my own prep lately and I think I’ve found an answer! In the Sun-Setting Sector encounter on page 29, it states that the encounter takes place as the PCs approach the center of a sector, and when the encounter starts, the book places them 2400 feet from the sector border. Therefore, if they’re nearish to the center, that makes the sector ~4800 feet across; basically one mile in diameter.

[Tacticslion]

Kohnslaw wrote:

Kiniticyst wrote:

What sort of scale do people have in mind for each of Noma's hexes? I couldn't find any reference to it in the book, just wondering how long it would take to travel across a hex.

My party are most likely bringing their cruiser that they have brought onboard the Sundiver ship. The hover car can travel at 75mph and as the crow flies if that makes any impact on how I should scale the city!

This question has been bugging me in my own prep lately and I think I’ve found an answer! In the Sun-Setting Sector encounter on page 29, it states that the encounter takes place as the PCs approach the center of a sector, and when the encounter starts, the book places them 2400 feet from the sector border. Therefore, if they’re nearish to the center, that makes the sector ~4800 feet across; basically one mile in diameter.

That's a great find! Thank you!

[Tacticslion]

Blue Eyed Devil wrote:

So one of the struggles I had when setting up book 3 was how much my PCs love to engage with setting (I know, it's a great problem for a GM to have) and how that would interact with the layout of Noma. So I elected to treat the hex grid almost like Kingmaker, applying the notable locations to specific hexes, and playing up how much the DCI wants "survey data." That lead me to the unfortunate conclusion that at just one location per hex, there weren't nearly enough locations to support a sustained expedition.

I want to run this with borderline survival mechanics - the PCs will be on the ground for several days while they hunt for the core, which will put them into repeated conflict with reclaimers, stealing their polyfluid to survive, and their search should take them through a variety of hexes before they find the core, so I wanted every hex to have some established material. Luckily I had several China Mieville and Larry Niven novels, as well as Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' handy, so I got cracking on filling in the gaps. If anyone wants to use my map of Noma, sorted by hex coordinates that (mostly) correspond to their artistic depictions on the map, here it is. I'd love some feedback as well.

Here's my Noma.

Fantastically cool! Rock on!