Extinction curse is out in week so maybe just play that and come back to this in future?
With how you need to have portal keys and the Citade ran its major work to get it to work story wise.
Double Post!!
How has the party fared with the Kintargo encounters?
I am seeing this being another character death or two ran as is.
By the time the party hits the tower they are by my calculations going to be fairly depleted as far as spells and such.
How did you parties do??
It is a typo. I just treated it as his CR which I believe is 10 or 11. It should maybe be even higher but if you use his ability where he does the great club strike plus kick this enemy can really decimate the party regardless.
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By the way, I wanted to make sure I mentioned that I noticed the callback to Council of Thieves in Mialari Docur's backstory.
I just wanted to say that the interconnection of the APs is one of my favorite things about these books and I love, love, love it when I can make these little connections. My group has played almost every AP and our group historian and I love it when these details come up.
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On the convenience of the gate and Scarlet Triad being in the same place: why not have Heuberk Thropp come through the gate? It does make sense that the Triad would try to locate and lock down the gates, and you could have them have seized control of Cypress Point to this end. Changes you would need to make:
1) Either give Thropp Eclipse or give the Triad their own keys. I actually think it is fine that the elves had two of the gates, given their sacred mission and history revolves around them. But making multiple keys makes the Triad feel more threatening and gives you some back up options in case the PC carrying a key falls into a volcano or something.
2) Move the gate closer to town or even in town. If it is too remote the Triad would never draw attention to it by attacking the town. But if it is close enough to be discovered the Triad could be forced to seize control of the town to keep word from spreading. Maybe it is in a cellar and burning down the town is the best way to hide it?
3) Put the Slaver Patrol encounter next to the gate. No reason they couldn't store slaves there if it is a defensible position.
4) If the party keeps Alsetta's ring under surveillance, you can have Heuberk capture whatever NPC was on guard duty for additional leverage. (Nooooo! Not Warble!)
Double Post!!
How has the party fared with the Kintargo encounters?
I am seeing this being another character death or two ran as is.
By the time the party hits the tower they are by my calculations going to be fairly depleted as far as spells and such.
How did you parties do??
I didn't walk away with the impression the party would be hitting the tower the same day, though I could see why they would do so. Still, once they've dealt with all the active Triad attacks, the Triad doesn't have a reason to know they are coming if they wait a day, as far as I can tell. I mean trailing the sneaks leaves the possibility that the sneaks get a room at an inn until they feel they aren't being tailed anymore.
I'm more worried about the quarry being a TPK, because there doesn't seem to be much stopping the various rooms from joining various encounters. Seems like people should come running as soon as the Shadow Giant starts throwing boulders, and J3 and J4 are close enough to to each other to hear a fight break out in the next room. (J4 also probably isn't wearing their armor, given they are sleeping, so maybe that delays them?)
I wish this book had notes on reinforcements as thorough as the mine in book 2.
We had a TPK last night in the coffeehouse in the final battle with Rakshasas. Starting from the Warehouse with the golem and going to the Ice Devil battle then to the coffeehouse really stretched the party thin, I couldnt imagine adding the tower on top of that which the adventure makes seem should all happen in a day.
Part of the rewards in Cypress indicate 5 silver ingots and 4 mithral chunks. Is there a monetary value for those?I dont have my book with me but the short answer is yes. In the corebook in special material...that might not be the correct name. Each material type has chunks and ingots with their gp value.
Here it is. Silver ingots are 100 gp each, and mithral chunks are 50.
BTW, were Lacunafex a big thing in Hell's Rebels? I know from wiki that Mialari was arcane trickster in PF 1e, but I don't remember if she is major npc from Hell's Rebels or not.
Otherwise she doesn't have much of an explicit role besides being an allied team against Barzillai. If I recall correctly she was supposed to have a greater role initially but it was cut from the adventure, though it's been quite some time so I might be remembering that wrong.
Nevertheless, Lady Docur does have ties to Kintargo's history, having been a rival to the Gray Spiders who were the main criminal group in the city for a while.
Page 52 for the drain phylactery of the lich it has the ability being used as a reaction but pretty sure this should be be free action ability.
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Laslunn needs to stay by the sluice lever for her 'insurance' to actually be effective, so she's unlikely to leave that room for any reason short of the place collapsing around her.
The Rakshasa, meanwhile, is lazy, cares nothing for human lives, and is kinda high. So the degree to which he notices or cares about the poisoners dying is debatable. He's also got a bit of a trap set up for intruders in his room, which he might think gives him enough of an edge to be worth sticking to said room. If he does anything, I'd expect him to join Laslunn in the sluice room and back her up, rather than heading for the poisoners.
And finally, while it's not stated explicitly, the presence of a cage in the poisoners room indicates that they may well experiment on human subjects sometimes. It's plausible that screams and similar sounds coming from their room are nothing unusual, at least not over the sound of sloshing water in the sluice room.
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It would have to be book 5. Not sure where best to put her, but one idea is have bumping into her and being recognized a complication during the heist.
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Did anyone have a nice twist why the players should explore dreamgate at all? Is there any link I missed, but I think there is no explaination why the gate the players just unlocked leads by chance to the slavetraders they searched.
I think there are to options this can happen out:
1.) Players check Dreamgate first
2.) Players get in trouble with slavers firstEither way I don't see, how both plots connect.
The party keeps encountering the Scarlet Triad seemingly by coincidence because the Scarlet Triad is monitoring every gate that links to Alseta's Ring. They don't want to attract the attention of their benefactor, so they're trying to do it on the down low. Hence being near all the gates, but not directly at them.
As for why the players should explore it, I mean they have a ring of portals in the basement of their rad fortress. Curiosity alone should be a decent motivator. If you want something more specific, you can have Heuberk Thropp allude to Dreamgate in the party's encounter with him.
Sorry to double post, but I had a some questions about Jaggaki's stat block.
1. Jaggaki's spell DC is 34, while his spell attack modifier is +26. Is this deliberate, or should the two values be more in line with each other?
2. Jaggaki's Bones of the Earth ability describes using a Hand attack at longer range, dealing 4d6 bludgeoning damage instead of 4d8 negative. Does it also apply his Paralyzing Touch? I would assume so given the wording of the ability, but I wanted to make sure of that before running the encounter.
Looking at a lich in the bestiary, they have dc 36 and to hit +26 so jaggaki looks right. I read his bones of stones does the same as the hand strike plus 4d6 bludgeoning damage.
DC 36 with a +26 to hit would make more sense with how spell DC is calculated though: spell attack + 10. If Jaggaki's spell DC and spell attack matched, it would either be the same as a stock lich (DC 36 with a +26 to hit) or 2 lower (DC 34 with a +24 to hit)
A second read of the Bones of Stone ability has made me agree with you that it's 4d6 *additional* bludgeoning damage, so the paralyzing grasp applying would make sense. Thanks!
The spell attack being +2 above the Spell DC, as far as I can tell, looking at the Gamemastery Guide charts. I didn't check literally every level, but it appears that the standard is the Spell Attack being the DC - 8.
The spell attack being +2 above the Spell DC, as far as I can tell, looking at the Gamemastery Guide charts. I didn't check literally every level, but it appears that the standard is the Spell Attack being the DC - 8.
Looking at the tables, you're right. That's completely different from how PCs calculate their spell DCs, but that's not a concern given that NPCs and PCs follow explicitly different rules.
I'd make it clear that it will be much easier to find a buyer once the triad in the area are dealt with. That gives you some time to move treasure around. If they sell it, give them some cash and cut some treasure from the adventure. That way, they get to sell their boat and feel like they got something out of it, and you don't have to worry about over powering them with loot.
It's also worth noting that the price of the boat is entirely at your discretion. Instead of going all the way and saying no one wants the boat, you could have each prospective buyer offer less than the boat is worth. After all, how many people in Kintargo would have the cash on hand to buy a boat?
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Did anyone have a nice twist why the players should explore dreamgate at all? Is there any link I missed, but I think there is no explaination why the gate the players just unlocked leads by chance to the slavetraders they searched.
I think there are to options this can happen out:
1.) Players check Dreamgate first
2.) Players get in trouble with slavers firstEither way I don't see, how both plots connect.
I had the Scarlet Triad guys who show up at the start of Book 3 disguised as Hellknights from the disgraced Order of the Rack from Kintargo-- they told the party that Alak had told them about them. They were lying. They'd found Alak on the road going back to Kintargo after he left Breachill and kidnapped him, torturing him for information.
My PCs really liked Alak (I changed him significantly, making him part of the Silver Ravens as my players completed Hell's Rebels and managed to convince the Hellknights in Kintargo to do a heel-face turn... or maybe a hell-face turn...). So they geared up and decided to go to Kintargo to save him.
They had already connected the Dreamgate to Ravounel, and so in order to save time, they used the key. When they got there they discovered that the Triad had subjugated the fishing town near the gate and the gate itself in order to study its mysteries-- not a raid in progress like the book suggests, but the Triad were in the process of "testing" every person in the town for the nth factor that their boss requires for admittance to their secret club.
That tied everything together nicely for us. Maybe something similar will work for you?
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We kicked off Book 3 last night! I already posted this in the "Cult of Cinders" thread, but for our game it didn't make sense to me that the Ekujae were withholding Eclipse the whole time. In addition, Voz got away in Book 1 and I had been looking for a way to bring her back in. So here is how I kicked off the book...
Heuberk Thropp was in Cypress Point and used Eclipse to transport to Breachill with a couple of Sneaks days before the PCs arrive from the Mwangi Expanse. I had the waystations only work to the destinations, not back (my thinking here is that the elves were creating "waiting rooms" to get you ready for the new location only -- also explains why Renali, Malarunk, etc. didn't encounter the vision of Dahak coming through Huntergate), so he has no idea about the night hags. He spent his days taking stock of the situation in Breachill, including liaising with Voz, killing Calmont in his cell, and capturing the haberdasher Winthrop Finney (the NPC my players have a stronger relationship with over the wainwright).
Thropp lures the PCs to the Pickled Ear (the PCs have a tense relationship with Roxie, so she's easily paid off to go on a holiday in the country), where he questions them about what happened to Voz, what they know about Alseta's Ring, if they've found any other keys, who they've told, etc. Once he has this info, he invites Voz (now 9th level) from the back room in to spring his trap. It's Thropp, both Sneaks, Voz, and 3 custom undead minions (7th level) in a big barfight free-for-all.
After the battle, the PCs now have Eclipse (the Ekujae told them what the keys were for each elf gate) and know the Scarlet Triad are on the other side of Dreamgate. This also helps me with why they're hanging out in and terrorizing Cypress Point, which others on this thread have wondered about. They also know that the Triad is a threat to Breachill, so there is even more incentive to get off into Dreamgate.
Anyway, super fun intro to the book and am excited to see how the rest of Book 3 goes!
my 1st grp (got 2 running through it, 1st is further ahead) just about to do laslun fight. they have a very stealthy rogue with invis from cloak and foil senses so can scout pretty much everything. the rogue scouted ahead and guessed about the sluice trap without actually spotting it from the room description, then they went to deal with the snipers (didn't know about em but just went down that corridor 1st) and they were dealt with pretty easily, as the snipers aren't great in melee (despite having capability for huge crits due to sneak attack and fatal). they then went to fight the giant and released the slaves afterwards, so the sluice is basically gonna be useless now, laslun might activate the trap anyway, not knowing that they've released the slaves (as she can't see em). so the fight will likely be easier with no hazard to deal with too and they might do the aforementioned stone wall tactic possibly though might just ignore the hazard knowing it's not gonna do anything but make the quarry wet!
It'll def be interesting to see how my 2nd grp do (they're in B2 Ch3 atm)
The final trap at the end of this module is set up for failure. I allowed the rogue to disable it with two one-action disables rather than two two action disable per sluice. I don't see how the PCs can get the trap before Laslunn sets it off, much less fight her and her bodyguards off with enough time for 6 (with all critical successes) to 12 rounds of disable checks while fighting through Laslunn and locating the trap.
Even allowing the single action disable attempts led to 10 feet and 4 inches of water filling up the pits. The rogue barely made it with the Champion and crew keeping Laslunn occupied. If I had used the Disable rules as written, the rogue wouldn't have come close to saving the trapped slaves.
I highly recommend DMs allow 1 action disable checks to close sluices. That will at least give the PCs a fighting chance to save the prisoners before they drown while fighting Laslunn and company.
RIP My players... They reached Laslunn and her Interlocutor and the entire party wiped... it was a close fight, but the Interlocutor does so much damage, and they were a little light on consumables from the Jaggaki fight a few rooms before.
So Laslunn has managed to escape, and all the slaves drowned... taking suggestions on how to handle that going forward...
They had to fight Laslun and crew after Jaggaki with no rest? That is rough. My party probably would have wiped too.
They had to fight Laslun and crew after Jaggaki with no rest? That is rough. My party probably would have wiped too.RIP My players... They reached Laslunn and her Interlocutor and the entire party wiped... it was a close fight, but the Interlocutor does so much damage, and they were a little light on consumables from the Jaggaki fight a few rooms before.
So Laslunn has managed to escape, and all the slaves drowned... taking suggestions on how to handle that going forward...
Same. My party managed to be Jaggaki with no casualties, but came incredibly close. Jaggaki died to persistent damage right after dropping the Champion and Barbarian to Dying 2 (3 for the Champ).
Laslunn and pal + trap: My party has 1 rogue for handling traps, and kinda the backup is the giant instinct barbarian with an adamantine weapon. They certainly would have failed in stopping the trap if the barbarian hadn't been able to "break" most of the sluice gates. It's also helpful to let the party have some idea of how much water is gushing out - slowing the flow in the early rounds buys a lot more rounds of combat. If they go to the trap late, they're in bad shape.
The nearly tragic thing is that they actually unlocked the gates for the prisoners in the middle before the fight, but left them there because the prisoners were described as docile and lethargic. The party thought they'd be safer there than waiting outside of the quarry.
Still, it was a rough fight, the debuff from synesthesia was key (even on success), but the party won without dying or any prisoners drowning. The Interlocutor could have dropped party members with focused targeting, but I had him trying to stack bleed on as many PCs as possible, which spread the damage around. Laslunn was less of a factor, but part of that was that she provoked AoOs from the reach barbarian.
My party fought Jaggaki *after* Laslunn, fully healed except from some taken from the undead bears on the way in (the bard, the only caster was low on spells, but it didn't really matter).
Jaggaki's crew nearly wiped the 5-person party. The only bludgeoning damage party member got petrified, the rogue dropped, the bard got dropped after 1 round (although lingering composition with dirge of doom was incredibly clutch while he was lying unconscious on the ground), the ranger was at 15 hit points, and the barbarian at something like 40ish (which was about 20%). A couple of rolls at the end were missed by one (bad guys) or crit by one (barbarian), all from dirge of doom. This was the closest to TPK in the campaign so far, I think.
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I've gotten in the habit to see if I can add the extra monsters in the back of each book into the adventure without it feeling forced.
Book 3's only "extra" is the rusalka, which seems like it's there to emphasize the wilds of the Ravounel countryside. So last night my group had a session that started with the 3-day ride from Cypress Point to Kintargo with Halleka. Great, role-play heavy session that helped deal with some tensions in the party and interact with Halleka (I made Nidalese folks have German accents, which was also fun for me).
At one point the cleric wants to cast Detect Alignment on Halleka to find out if he's evil, but doesn't want him to notice. So he says he's waiting until Halleka needs to pee and gets off the wagon with his back turned. Served up perfectly, the rusalka beckons Halleka into the woods from a nearby river, and its call ends up snaring two other party members. The rusalka ended up realizing it was overmatched and the fighter had a cold-iron bastard sword, so it dove into the river and disappeared.
Super fun, flavorful encounter that really hit home the setting.
I'm sorry - it looks like something similar was asked earlier in the thread but I couldn't find a complete answer: Does my group's Champion's Liberating Step apply against all of the NPC's that have efficient capture? Reading up on manacles, they impose a movement penalty/manipulate penalty, but it doesn't actually say it makes anyone Restrained or Immobilized unless they're attached to a stationary object. And if it DOES give them a free Escape check (or they spend actions doing it on their own) - is it just one check against average manacle's thievery DC of 17? If that's the case, it's way simpler to do that than the 2 thievery checks required.
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The Escape Action does not allow escaping from manacles by default, and thus neither does Liberating Step.
Allowing people to somehow get out of manacles without Thievery is totally reasonable, but it's a GM call, would not necessarily use the Escape action, and would not necessarily be at the same DC as picking the lock.
Personally, I'd use the Force Open action at a DC between 20 and 30, or the Squeeze Exploration Tactic at about the same DC, player's choice depending on skills and how much time they have. Those are pretty much just me being a generous GM, though. By the rules, getting out of manacles involves Thievery checks or a key, with no other real options.
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That sounds reasonable - thank you!
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On Page 8, it shows that the Scarlet Triad Sneak has a Nimble Dodge reaction. The way it is written, it is different from the Rogue's Nimble Dodge. The trigger for the Sneak's Nimble Dodge is that the Sneak is hit by an attack that the Sneak can see. The Rogue's Nimble Dodge trigger is that the Rogue is targeted by an attack that the Rogue can see. My question is: the Nimble Dodge supposed to be more powerful for the Sneak, or are they supposed to be the same? If they are supposed to be the same, does anyone know which one is correct? Thanks!
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On Page 8, it shows that the Scarlet Triad Sneak has a Nimble Dodge reaction. The way it is written, it is different from the Rogue's Nimble Dodge. The trigger for the Sneak's Nimble Dodge is that the Sneak is hit by an attack that the Sneak can see. The Rogue's Nimble Dodge trigger is that the Rogue is targeted by an attack that the Rogue can see. My question is: the Nimble Dodge supposed to be more powerful for the Sneak, or are they supposed to be the same? If they are supposed to be the same, does anyone know which one is correct? Thanks!
This is probably an error, though it's not certain. The version the Scarlet Triad Sneak has is also on the Drow Rogue in the Bestiary, but not on the other creatures in the Bestiary with Nimble Dodge. It's probably an old iteration of the mechanic.
But it could be an intentional difference, though in that case I'd expect it to get a different name.