| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Interestingly enough, Shattered Star may end early because of Mummy's Mask:
In other words, "screw the rules! You're falling into the chasm because I said so!"
Yet again, "All that planning you put in and all those points you spent to build your character to avoid circumstances like this one? Nope! I'm the GM! I win!"
At that point the entire group agreed that we'll never run another Paizo-produced AP. Whether or not we get through Shattered Star depends on how well Book 4 goes, but yet another group of creatures spamming, "Everyone make multiple saves or you're out of the fight!" does not bode well.
EDIT: I think it's worth pointing out that because of the sheer number of traps, TWO of the PCs multi-classed into a level of rogue and spent feats and skill points to have redundant, reliable trapfinding. So the AP countered by making all the traps impossible to detect because letting PCs have agency isn't OK.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I need to take a closer look at the APs I'm running or in and see if either Reign of Winter or Hell's Rebels pulls similar BS because I've not come across that so far. Outside of an absolutely OP antagonist that TWICE now (in running RoW twice) I hand-waved away by having the Black Rider one-shot kill said NPC to showcase his power rather than have the Black Rider show up as a feeble old man needing help.
That being the Lame Atomie Oracle of Winter in an area with such severe winter weather that you can only see five feet in front of you (but the Atomie can see clearly through), isn't QUITE windy enough to cause it to need Flight checks, and hey, being Lame doesn't matter when you. can. fly. (Seriously. If a player pulled out Hommelstaub as their PC, I'd tell them to try again because no. frigging. way.)
Yeah. Looking back and I half-suspect there's a Power Gamer involved in Paizo's APs because every so often you just run across one NPC or situation where the rules are tossed aside so to ruin the players' fun.
I need to take a closer look at the APs I'm running or in and see if either Reign of Winter or Hell's Rebels pulls similar BS because I've not come across that so far. Outside of an absolutely OP antagonist that TWICE now (in running RoW twice) I hand-waved away by having the Black Rider one-shot kill said NPC to showcase his power rather than have the Black Rider show up as a feeble old man needing help.
That being the Lame Atomie Oracle of Winter in an area with such severe winter weather that you can only see five feet in front of you (but the Atomie can see clearly through), isn't QUITE windy enough to cause it to need Flight checks, and hey, being Lame doesn't matter when you. can. fly. (Seriously. If a player pulled out Hommelstaub as their PC, I'd tell them to try again because no. frigging. way.)
Yeah. Looking back and I half-suspect there's a Power Gamer involved in Paizo's APs because every so often you just run across one NPC or situation where the rules are tossed aside so to ruin the players' fun.
Well, it's not some Mary Sue NPC saving the day. It's an absolute disregard for both agreed-upon rules ("Diplomacy won't work here. The Feather Fall effect of Fly doesn't work here. Trapfinding doesn't work here. Oh, the NPC is allowed to cast Charm Person on you right in front the whole party and no one has a chance of noticing unless you make your save.") and the overall concept of players having fun ("Your trapspotting build doesn't work. Your diplomacy over violence build doesn't work. You failed one of the six saves I threw at you. You're out of the fight. Go make snacks.")
The whole atmosphere at the table has become one of bitterness and mistrust, because the APs are willing to do anything inside the rules or out to remove player agency.
And that makes for some seriously p****d-off players.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Session 30, played 13-Sep-2020
Impus Minor missed this session because of homework. But that's an entirely different tirade for another thread.
The start of this session was my favorite kind of session: Lots and lots of rich roleplay. Percy insisted on shopping in the Alabaster District of Magnimar just so he could get treated like royalty, the Red Sash picked up Moira from Xondra to take her to meet the mysterious Madame Mvashti in Sandpoint, and the party was visited by Bevaluu Zimantiu (hooray for finally having a recurring NPC!) asking the PCs to hurry to the temple and rescue any survivors, or even recently-dead victims. (She included a scroll of Raise Dead and two scrolls of Restoration with the request, making it easy to say, "Yes.") They were also intercepted on their way to Heidmarch villa by Ayamyra, the mistress of the temple of Calistria, who asked them for a sliver of wood from the Calistrian chair at the abbey.
They readily agreed, because who doesn't want chair splinters? (Though I was delighted when they made sure to confirm that the "chair" was an actual physical chair, and not the head of the Calistrian group at the abbey.)
Since Bevaluu indicated that speed was of the essence, they picked up a wand of Gentle Repose (just in case they found bodies to preserve, which Kyllia felt was pretty likely), and had a wizard teleport them to Sandpoint, where they first met with Pilla Linuveshi at the Rusty Dragon and had some incredible food as she told the story of approaching the abbey and seeing it in ruins, as if it had been hit by an earthquake. She'd then found and picked up a redcap's cap (which she showed them), but was attacked by a hill giant and was lucky to escape with her life. She was of the opinion that some powerful person had convinced the redcaps to attack the abbey, since they wouldn't willingly go near so many good holy symbols otherwise. The party thought it was a setup, because what redcap would willingly give up its cap, and since they'd won the fight, why hadn't someone picked it up?
The party pooled their knowledge and recalled that redcaps were nasty little fey that used full-sized scythes and had magical caps that gave them extra damage and fast healing. It took cold iron to properly hurt them, and if you used it on them they'd likely run away, then jump over you and trample you with their iron boots. Hill giants were far more straightforward: Rock-throwing, club-wielding mountains of meat and no brains, vicious as they were stupid. Pilla sketched them a crude map, pointed out that the lighthouse seemed to have survived the onslaught unscathed so they should check there for survivors first, and they said their farewells.
They next visited the house of Madame Mvashti, a truly ancient Varisian who'd traveled with Ameiko to Minkai, then returned to her home in Sandpoint. She was utterly delighted to meet another kitsune, and listened intently to Moira and the Red Sash's issue. She explained that an "arman" occurred when an evil shaman sacrificed an animal and bound its spirit to the soul of a human, forcing the spirits into perpetual battle where sometimes the animal won, and sometimes the person won. Having a child in this state created two intertwined souls, and this was Moira's issue: She had not one soul, but two. And in her quest to be rid of the cat's soul, she'd caused conflict, and the cat's soul was dominant at the moment.
The best solution would be to find a powerful spirit shaman to negotiate between the spirits and help them untangle from each other, but the only shaman she'd heard of powerful enough to perform such a manipulation was a aged-before-his-time shaman named Hans Zweiger, living in Thrushmoor in Ustalav, trying to repair the damage that had been unleashed by a nameless horror before he and his companions had defeated it. Percy suggested that since the souls had been born together and were naturally intertwined, why not just apologize to the cat and let them keep living the way they already were?
The Red Sash didn't respond audibly to either suggestion.
Finishing their work in Sandpoint, Percy summoned Phantom Steeds and the party made it to just outside of the abbey (well, 12 miles out) in just 5 hours. Percy summoned a Secure Shelter and they slept for the night.
The exploration of the ruins of the town outside the abbey was somewhat interesting. There were destroyed buildings, ruined crops, and half-eaten lifestock, but a dismaying lack of bodies. Exploring the few buildings outside of town, they did find four bodies, all of which had been cut with large slashing weapons, then hung up and bled. If someone was framing the redcaps, they were doing a good job of it.
Going into town, the Red Sash heard snoring. Approaching stealthfully, he spotted a hill giant and three ettins. Reporting to the party, Kyllia helpfully suggested he steal all their weapons. So he drank his potion of Invisibility and did just that, making the fight pretty ridiculously simple. For the next two groups, the party learned that his Stealth roll was plenty to get in, steal all the weapons, and start the attack. So much for all the outside forces.
For their final act, they flew up to the lighthouse window, convinced the obviously-terrified cleric inside that they were there to help, and got the password to get past the Forbiddance protecting the tower. This let Percy teleport the party into the room.
The cleric was Casamir Azmeren, father of Koriah, and he was in bad shape. Not only had he fled the combat instead of staying to fight with his colleagues, but he'd cast a Sending to his daughter hoping to be rescued, only to see her petrified by a medusa. They defiled her statue for a day before dragging it off, and now he was horrified what they were doing to it.
He identified the main bad guys for the party to deal with: The leader seemed to be Ardathanatus, the elven cleric of Pharasma who'd gone insane 130 years ago and killed 7 of the other clerics before fleeing. He'd had help on the inside from Zolerim, cleric of Nethys. And of course he had the medusa. And lots and lots of redcaps.
The party looked down from the tower at the redcaps. Seemed like as good a time for mass fey murder as any...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
*SIGH*
And into Hero Labs goes another 3 critters, all in a single room, all 3 with, "Save or you're out of the fight" auras.
*SIGH*
Seriously. If I ever play this AP I'm going to run a Paladin and then take that Feat that has the Paladin's anti-fear Aura give everyone within it fear immunity.
Part of me wonders if Paladins screwing with the Haunts of Foxmore Manor in RotRL may be why Paizo does these frequent "ignore the rules to screw over players" encounters.
Have you thought of when you have multiple critters with Save or Suck Auras to just increase the DC of the Aura by +1 per critter (with a maximum of +5)?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seriously. If I ever play this AP I'm going to run a Paladin and then take that Feat that has the Paladin's anti-fear Aura give everyone within it fear immunity.
Part of me wonders if Paladins screwing with the Haunts of Foxmore Manor in RotRL may be why Paizo does these frequent "ignore the rules to screw over players" encounters.
Have you thought of when you have multiple critters with Save or Suck Auras to just increase the DC of the Aura by +1 per critter (with a maximum of +5)?
We've talked about variations of that, like poison's +2 per dose, but it's more the underlying attitude of, "Make fights more challenging by removing PCs from the fight. Players love that!"
But yeah, we've concluded that considering how bad Strange Aeons, Mummy's Mask, and Shattered Star all were, we're done with Paizo APs.
Seriously. If I ever play this AP I'm going to run a Paladin and then take that Feat that has the Paladin's anti-fear Aura give everyone within it fear immunity.
Linkified for your convenience.
Part of me wonders if Paladins screwing with the Haunts of Foxmore Manor in RotRL may be why Paizo does these frequent "ignore the rules to screw over players" encounters.
Have you thought of when you have multiple critters with Save or Suck Auras to just increase the DC of the Aura by +1 per critter (with a maximum of +5)?
Or include an Antipaladin.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A (hopefully) final thought before I move on to actually reporting on the AP's progress (or lack thereof): It wouldn't be so bad if the issues weren't so 100% predictable and 100% prevalent in virtually every book:
(1) NPC casters are undetectable.
Pretty much every caster stat block in every AP lists, "Once the caster knows that the PCs are coming, they cast xxx, yyy, and zzz."
Except... they're right through a single door or down a hall and with a Perception DC of -10 to hear someone casting, it's pretty much impossible not to hear them start casting.
Plus at least one book in every AP always has a, "The NPC casts Charm Person on the PC at the dinner table," scenario. If the NPCs can do it, the PCs should be allowed to do it as well. But no, letting the PCs cast surreptitious Charm Persons would break NPC interactions, so we can't let players do that! Only NPCs!
Easy solution: A single locked door can provide several rounds of defense for the caster. Make it as solid as you need it to be to give the caster a few extra rounds.
(2) Skills don't matter.
Speaking of which, every AP has a plethora of, "Diplomacy won't work here" situations solely because they don't want it to. (The archons in Strange Aeons who are an auto-fight unless you make a deal with the devil come to mind.) Every book has a long list of "traps that aren't traps" because allowing a rogue to do their job isn't "fun" somehow.
Every AP includes at least half a dozen situations where a player spent the effort and time and skill points to buy up a skill, then tries to use the skill at an appropriate time, and the AP just says, "No."
Easy solution: If you don't want the PCs to be able to use Diplomacy, don't introduce NPCs where it might be reasonable. If you want to use a trap, make it a trap.
(3) It's "fun" to do nothing.
And, the one I've been harping on throughout Shattered Star: Groups of 3-8 monsters all spamming disabling abilities at once, because somehow making some of the players sit out the fight and do nothing is considered "fun".
I think those are the big 3 that are making us quit. But yeah, things like, "This worshipper of an evil god can channel positive energy because I felt like it," is just so over-the-top dismissive of the rule set I find it offensive.
Easy solution: Area effect disables should be few, far between, and done by single creatures.
Don't like the rule set? Don't write APs for it! Or at least label your APs as, "Pathfinder-compatible" rather than "Pathfinder-compliant".
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 31, Played 27-Sep-2020
So of course the party flew up to the tower, met Casamir, and flew down to the enemy.
Redcaps? No ranged attacks.
Ettin? 2 javelins at all of +5, then they're out.
So yeah, rooms A1-A19 consist of 12 redcaps, one named redcap, 3 ettins, and one named ettin. (Except for the one group that has flying members, but that won't leave their room.) That would be a heck of a dangerous running fight for a group of ground-bound PCs. It might even be a TPK.
Once the PCs are flying? The ettin run out of their useless javelins on round 1 and the redcaps spend their existence trying to make massive Acrobatics rolls trying to jump up to the hovering PCs. It's bound to be a pathetic fight. And it was.
(I always tell my players that if they can't deal with a flying opponent by the time they're 5th level, then they really deserve to die. The same is true of a fortress full of bad guys against a 10th-level party.)
As the party wrapped up with Casamir, he helpfully suggested that the Temple of the Windsong might have helpful healing supplies still stashed at the feet of the statue of Desna and gave them directions. When Percy learned of yet another temple being built on top of Thassilonian ruins, he audibly groaned. Casamir noted that they needed a key that the abbot had kept, plus a combination that the abbot had known, just to get through the door to the underground. They "thanked" him and looked outside.
A group of four redcaps were very visibly waiting at the bottom door for them to come out. Figuring that redcaps weren't idiots, the party prepared for the trap, then decided to spring it. As they flew down to engage the redcaps, the redcaps fled into a covered building. The Red Sash kept his distance and flew low enough to see into the building, spotting four ettin as well as the redcaps. The ceiling inside was still twenty feet high, plenty to stay out of reach of the redcaps, but the ettin would be a problem.
So Percy opened a Hungry Pit underneath them. And that was essentially the entire combat. Three of the four ettin went in. The redcaps, believing that their +10 Reflex saves would save them, occasionally stopped next to the pit. I never rolled out of the single digits. Eventually 3 ettin and 7 redcaps ended up in the pit, and Tussle and the Red Sash whittled down the two leaders and took them out.
There was absolutely, nothing interesting about the combat. The redcaps spent their rounds using their tremendous jumping abilities to try to hit the Red Sash, but he'd Shielded himself and wasn't hittable by them. The rest of the party stayed 40' up and trusted the DC 160 Acrobatics roll to protect them. The ettin never did anything except die in a pit.
And the combat took the entire session, so we ended with a bunch of dead bodies and nothing particularly interesting having happened.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
^Pathfinder in general seems to be a bit skimpy on anti-air for monsters. For enemies using PC classes, fortunately decent anti-air support already exists, and at mid levels also including the possibility of somebody to bring air opponents to the ground.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 32, Played 11-Oct-2020
The party looted the bodies, then headed west, finding the stairs up. Percy Detected Magic and spotted both the masked abbot's crown (a Headband of Mental Prowess +4 for Wisdom and Charisma) and the trap on the crown (a Glyph of Warding). The Red Sash disarmed the trap, spotted another trap (a pit trap on the opposite side of the room), and they decided to leave that one alone. Kyllia took the crown. Temporarily, of course.
Not wanting to go upstairs immediately, they checked the doors across the refectory and saw... two nyogath qlippoths, irritating creatures with both nauseating auras and a 7x/day Fear spell-like ability. Because ONE area-effect disabling effect isn't enough any more. Percy cast Disintegrate on one and Tussle started shooting, so they put up an Acid Fog to protect themselves, as the party protected themselves from acid as well. So the qlippoths split up and came in from two directions and managed to disable Tussle, but a second Disintegrate and the Red Sash managed to do them in.
The party went upstairs, only to be challenged by a rough voice seeking one-on-one combat. So the Red Sash faced off against Luthask the undead hobgoblin. Unfortunately, just as Kyllia cast Blessing of Fervor on the rest of the party to protect from from Luthask's three mummy minions, Luthask rolled three 1's in a row. Convinced that Kyllia had done something to interfere with the combat, he ordered his mummies to attack.
And yeah, they all got killed, because CR 5 mummies against 11th-level PCs. They got in a couple of hits (two natural 20s), but didn't cause any mummy rot. And the Red Sash beat Luthask fair and square, unless you consider Luthask's attack rolls of 1, 1, 1, 5, 4, 3 to be cheating in some manner.
However, as the fight was progressing some gruff voices started chanting from the door to the south. It was locked, so the Red Sash broke it down. Three vrocks were performing their Dance of Ruin, and they were willing to spend the full extra round it took to get it done, even after Percy put a Cloudkill on them. Unfortunately, everyone in the party except Tussle simply stepped out of the line of fire once the vrocks couldn't see them any more, so only Tussle got hit. He made his Reflex save and took half damage, but Geary was electrocuted.
So Tussle did the logical thing and tried to annihilate one of the vrocks, but didn't quite get the job done, and they managed to teleport around and do massive damage (72 to the Red Sash and 60 to Percy because they were crit-happy). Percy Dimensional Stepped the party to a safe distance, then teleported them into the tower. And that ended the session.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
After running my homebrew and having THEM run into a group of Grey Gardeners who (of course) have Cause Fear and Hold Person as spells, I think I finally realized the issue:
In most RPGs, dungeons have "themes": This is a goblin's lair. This is a wizard's lair. This cleric allied himself with the qlippoth so most of the encounters will involve qlippoths.
Similarly, virtually every RPG has creatures that have save-or-you're-out-of-the-combat abilities.
The standard path is therefore:
(1) The GM provides clues as to what the party will be facing. This may be NPCs, or corpses, or ancient texts, or what-have-yous, but players who spend some time doing research are rewarded with, "Aha! I'm going to be facing a xxx! And it has the ability to do yyy, so I need to be ready for that!"
(2) In pretty much every other RPG, the players can obtain spells, or magic items, or mundane items, or something that protects them from the effect.
(3) Because the players did the research and obtained the necessary protections, the fight is a fair-and-square slugfest, and, if the players use good tactics, they emerge victorious, and are extremely happy with their good planning and tactics.
In particular, if they fail any of the steps and they do end up disabled, they don't hold it against the GM. "Well, we skipped xxx, so we kind of deserved that."
For some reason (probably vengeful GMs who don't like that trope), Pathfinder is rife with creatures for whom there is no protection.
The medusa's a good example. The Ring of Stony Flesh is only available in Mummy's Mask (and costs 18,000 gp to boot), and otherwise you're just plain stone. You can try to fight with your eyes closed, but the author intentionally has her wander invisibly into a different fight and then go visible, just to make sure the PCs aren't allowed to take any precautions. Every qlippoth is the same: Every single one has a standard action 30' radius gaze attack where if you fail your save, you're debilitated for the fight in all kinds of ways where there's no protection. (Nauseated, paralyzed, etc.) And there's nothing the party can do to prepare for those fights: Echolocation is personal (great, the wizard can fight!), and otherwise it's avert your gaze (only a 50% chance of being safe) or fight blind.
Players just plain don't like that. If they plan well, reward them for their good planning. Don't tell them, "Tough luck! Nothing you could have done! Now roll your save or you're out of the fight!"
That way lies discord.
Pathfinder 2 does take steps toward dealing with these problems. It's no longer Save or Suck. It's: You can fail, you can *really* fail (and that sucks), you can succeed, or you can *awesomely* succeed. There are some spells that don't use all four steps, but they don't usually have the truly "suck" levels of failure.
Perhaps you can take spells from Pathfinder 2 and bring them into the Pathfinder 1 system so that you no longer have the Save/Suck system but still utilize the elements of Pathfinder 1 that you like.
Pathfinder 2 does take steps toward dealing with these problems. It's no longer Save or Suck. It's: You can fail, you can *really* fail (and that sucks), you can succeed, or you can *awesomely* succeed. There are some spells that don't use all four steps, but they don't usually have the truly "suck" levels of failure.
Perhaps you can take spells from Pathfinder 2 and bring them into the Pathfinder 1 system so that you no longer have the Save/Suck system but still utilize the elements of Pathfinder 1 that you like.
Well, Shiro's working on yet another new gaming system (he already co-created one) and once he's done he's going to want to run us through it, then Lara Craft Guy likes to run very out-there systems, so I think once Shattered Star is done we're done with Pathfinder for quite a while.
It reminds me of AD&D: We played the original D&D several times a week until AD&D came out. We immediately quit in disgust, went over to Runequest (and Traveler, Champions, and a host of others) and didn't return for over 30 years. So I think there's going to be PF hiatus for a while while we play systems that aren't so punitive towards the players.
After running my homebrew and having THEM run into a group of Grey Gardeners who (of course) have Cause Fear and Hold Person as spells {. . .}
Are you going to be posting a journal of this campaign?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
After running my homebrew and having THEM run into a group of Grey Gardeners who (of course) have Cause Fear and Hold Person as spells {. . .}Are you going to be posting a journal of this campaign?
Unfortunately, no. Running 2 games and helping both kids get through school during the pandemic is more than I can handle right now. Once the kids' schools have stabilized I may do the next one, especially if I'm a player.
I do like Trig's journal...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 33, Played 01-Nov-2020
As you can tell, I don't like creatures with area effect disables, so it should come as no surprise that I haven't run creatures with gaze attacks before. So, the AP "kindly" introduces gaze attacks to me using qlippoths: They use a standard action to activate their horrific appearance to "assault the senses" of all within 30 feet. This is resolved as a gaze attack. So everybody who's looking at the qlippoth has to make a save when it takes its standard action, right?
Wrong.
Each opponent within range of a gaze attack must attempt a saving throw each round at the beginning of her turn in the initiative order. Only looking directly at a creature with a gaze attack leaves an opponent vulnerable. Opponents can avoid the need to attempt the save by not looking at the creature in one of two ways...
Shiro's argument was that it could therefore be played thusly:
"You see the qlippoth activate its horrific appearance ability for the round.""OK. On my initiative I close my eyes (way #2), then turn my back on it so I can't see it at all."
"Great. You don't need to make a save. It loses its gaze attack. But it gets to move up and make a single attack against you using your flat-footed AC."
"Whatever."
It takes gaze attacks from "brutal" to "nigh useless", and the medusa's strategy of invisibly positioning herself to be within 30' of the entire party while her minions fight isn't particularly effective when the whole group can say, "Nah, we're busy with minions, we turn our backs on her."
I did some further digging and it's fairly clear that the intent is that you first roll your save, then you can take an action such as hiding your eyes, but it's yet another in a now-infinite series of arguments about the exact wording of rules and how they're supposed to be played.
Exactly what I hate the absolute most about GMing.
I honestly don't see us finishing this book, much less this AP, at this rate. Once they get to area C and beyond, 6 of the next 12 encounters have area-effect disables, and 2 more have "save or you're out of the fight" abilities.
Because somehow, this author decided that sitting around making saving throws or making sandwiches is what players love.
The group rested for the night, then buffed up with Casamir's assistance and Dimension Doored into the room with the vrocks, hoping to surprise them. They were indeed surprised, and the door to the north that the Red Sash had smashed was blocked with piled furniture. As a group of redcaps started trying to smash through the furniture, Percy started walling off the room with Force Walls to cut the fight into manageable chunks. Knowing that they were in trouble, first one vrock and then the other used its Stunning Screech. These were extremely effective in keeping Tussle out of the fight, so although the Red Sash managed to down one, he didn't kill it.
While this was happening, the woman in the next room was casting her buffs, and soon enough the party was facing four redcaps from the north, a redcap and a hill giant from the south, and the remaining vrock. That might have been a feasible fight except the medusa appeared in their midst and petrified Percy.
The Red Sash picked up Percy and Kyllia used a wand of Dimension Door to get them out of the fight. Having no way to restore Percy, they returned to Magnimar and are now shopping and planning their next move.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 34, Played 15-Nov-2020
As you may be able to tell, it was a silly, silly session.
And the thing that made it all the worse was Lara Croft guy's idea of "effectiveness". He took extra feats so that his Cleave lets him do sneak attack damage. So using Cleave he does more damage... by distributing it to multiple foes. So yeah, I had a swarm of 5 redcaps, ALL of whom were at around half hit points, and they eventually rolled well and crit and killed Tussle. Because there were so many of them, because the idea that doing less damage to a single target is more effective than spreading more damage around multiple targets isn't a concept Lara Croft guy gets at the moment. So I have to track tons of different damaged creatures, and they all get to hit the party.
Ah, well.
And if you're wondering about Pathfinder's "complicated" rule set, my list of RPGs played is Blackwatch, Bunnies & Burrows, Call of Cthulu, Champions, D&D 1 and 4, Runequest 2 and 3, Shadowrun, Traveler, Tunnels and Trolls, and a LOT of homebrew/houserule games. Of all of them, only Champions comes remotely close to Pathfinder in terms of complexity, and Champions has an attitude of, "If there's no rule for it, make something up! Because none of it really matters when fights take 15-20 rounds and nobody ever dies!"
The party spent some time in Magnimar shopping for the items they thought they'd need to combat the medusa: Stone Salve, scrolls of Stone to Flesh, and a lot of bullets for Tussle, including nearly 6,000 gold pieces worth of +1 Holy Evil Outsider Bane bullets. Once they were ready, Percy teleported them back to Casamir in the lighthouse and they set about buffing themselves. Once they felt they were ready, they teleported into the corner of the Windsong Council Chamber, surprising the hill giant who was guarding that room.
Tussle's entire gun was loaded with +1 Holy Evil Outsider Bane bullets, so he spent time unloading the precious, precious bullets and loading ordinary bullets so as not to burn thousands of gold pieces pumping a giant full of lead. The next few rounds saw the five redcaps pour into the room and engage the party. As mentioned, Tussle wasn't shooting at full capacity and the Red Sash was distributing his damage evenly among all five of the redcaps, so one eventually crit Tussle, killing him instantly. Kyllia's Breath of Life brought him back just as the two vrock teleported in. Things looked bad...
...except Percy Dimension Doored them to the opposite site of the room, buying the party time to regroup! The next few rounds were spent with Tussle and the Red Sash burning down the vrocks' Mirror Images, and the Red Sash's Cleaves eventually dropping the redcaps.
As this was happening, the medusa crept invisibly into the room. Yet again, Percy spotted her with his See Invisibility, but this time he rolled a natural 20 on his save and opened a Hungry Pit beneath her.
It got worse. One vrock was planning to rescue her but Tussle finally had a pistol full of holy bullets and he was out of Mirror Images. He died. The other vrock went down the pit to fetch her, but Percy used a Bead of Force to block the top of the pit. The vrock teleported out with only one redcap to assist him and he and the redcap were quickly put down.
Percy proceeded to summon three large earth elementals to cannonball into the pit, then dropped a Cloudkill on top of them just to be sure. With nothing on her spell list or in her gear list to get her out of a pit, much less one filled with earth elementals and poison gas, the medusa died a fairly horrific and grisly death.
Searching her room, the party found Koriah as a statue and returned her to flesh. It was time to meet up with Casamir and decide on their next steps!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
{. . .}
Percy proceeded to summon three large earth elementals to cannonball into the pit, then dropped a Cloudkill on top of them just to be sure. {. . .}
Which reminds me of an Order of the Stick couple of panels where somebody summons a Chlorine Elemental and a Titanium Elemental . . . .
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Session 35, Played 29-Nov-2020
We'll see how things go when they get into "real" fights.
After a heartwarming reunion between Koriah and Casamir, Koriah admitted that she'd nearly been killed because of her difficulty working with others, and asked if she could come along with the party as a "trial" for both her and them. Her knowledge of the Darklands might come in handy, depending on how far down the dungeon went, and she could learn to work with others. The party discussed it for a bit, then decided she was welcome to come along. Since they now had another fighter, Tussle asked to go back to Magnimar so he could work on Geary, and the party agreed and teleported him there.
Once everyone was rested, recovered, and recuperated, the first order of business was to explore the remaining rooms of the abbey. At the entrance to one room they were stopped by a dust mephit, who was delighted to learn that:
(a) Some of the party spoke Auran, and
(b) They were willing to listen to him.
After determining that he reported to a mistress who played music, the party begged to hear her perform. The mephit was sure this would delight her, and so the party met Larla Clankypump, the sole remaining living redcap in Windsong Abbey. Larla complained bitterly about not being allowed to lead her brethren, which was clearly a mistake, seeing as how all of them and Sufestra were dead now. The party begged her to play for them, and her performance was out-and-out astonishing, better than anything they'd ever heard in Magnimar. . Kyllia invited her to perform in Magnimar, but Larla didn't think that was a good idea, seeing as how she'd be killed on sight and all. Kyllia suggested Larla might take off her cap at least while she was in town, and that abruptly ended that idea.
However, after determining that all Larla wanted was to go back home to the Hollow Mountain with her mephits, the party readily agreed to let her go, and to tell anyone else they met that they'd killed her and she'd died valiantly doing her duty and all that. She cheerfully wandered off playing her flute, her mephit friends trailing behind her and waving goodbye to the party.
Unfortunately, she'd warned them about the kitchen, but they weren't quite ready for what they found. All the human victims had been made into sausages and preserved, and barrels of blood were set aside for the redcaps' use. Even worse, one haggis hanging from the ceiling was trapped to summon something horrible. The Red Sash managed to disable the trap, and the group brought down Casamir to say some words over the fallen (and presumably prove that there was nothing they could do to "save" them).
Returning to Sufestra's room, they found her book of badly-written, poorly-coded poetry and immediately recognized it as the code for the Doomsday Lock. Unfortunately, the Red Sash assumed that "West" meant a quarter turn instead of a full turn, so he triggered the trap on the Doomsday Door and spent a round trapped in a barren gray maze. (He rolled a natural 18 to get out, so it was a very short trip.)
On his second try, he opened the door correctly. The party buffed up, went down, and spotted some poorly-hidden skulks. (I swear. I had half a dozen skulks and among them their stealth rolls included a 1, two 2s, and a 3.) The only interesting part of the combat was that one of the skulks ran down the hall, shot a clockwork golem, and got it to join in the fray. The Red Sash's adamantine earthbreaker made short work of it, and nearly made short work of Koriah (the dreaded, "Critical hit nearest friend" fumble), but Kyllia's quick Heal spell made everything better. Some of the skulks tried to flee, but Percy's Force Wall ensured that they didn't get far, nor did anyone else in the dungeon get to hear the outcome of the fight.
Once the golem was down and they couldn't escape, the skulks decided it was time to surrender. Percy refused, and the party killed them all with prejudice. I guess the sausages got to him.
It was time to move on.
oriah asked to come along and the party said OK
Tussle returned to Magnimar to have Geary repaired
Casamir told them about the Doomsday Door, the trap doors, the Doomsday Key, and the Doomsday traps and additional doors
They searched the rest of the abbey and found:
Larla Clankypump and her dust mephit friends
They had per play for them and then let her go
Human sausages
Kind of messed up the plan to rescue people
Sufestra's poetry
The Doomsday Lock combination
It took two tries, but the Red Sash opened the lock and they headed downstairs, only to be attacked by a group of skulks and a broken golem
Once the battle was going against them the skulks tried to surrender
This did not go over well
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Who's playing Koriah, now that Impus Minor left?
AND
Was any of the poetry "An Ode to a Lump of Putty I Found in my Armpit"?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Who's playing Koriah, now that Impus Minor left?
AND
Was any of the poetry "An Ode to a Lump of Putty I Found in my Armpit"?
The Red Sash's player is doing double duty.
And sadly, no.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 36, played 13-Dec-2020
Anyhoo, straightforward session this time...
The group decided to explore the first level of the caverns below Windsong Abbey by following the wall to the left. They found the "refrigeration room" Casamir had told them about (cooled by four ice golems), but the door was frozen shut and the group decided that the golems must have gone haywire so they didn't bother trying to break the door down. They were looking for either survivors or the Shard of Envy, and they were pretty sure they'd find neither in the ice room.
As they proceeded, they found a crudely-constructed brick wall blocking off one of the trap door entrances Casamir had told them about. Obviously whoever was down here wanted to prevent anyone from coming in without a Doomsday Key and the combination, but (assuming it was Ardathanatus) his motivation was still a mystery.
Their next stop was the lumber room, hundreds of feet from the workshop, and also hundreds of feet from the nearest entrance. Apparently clerics liked to carry wood long distances underground.
They finally came around to the stairs down to the next level and were "ambushed" by 6 skulks. Unfortunately, the skulks' Stealth rolls were mostly too bad to hide from either the Red Sash or Koriah, so it was more of a, "OK, time to start slaughtering more skulks," moment than an ambush. The skulks cried for help, and a huge giant came squeezing down the passage. Percy Dimension Doored the party back the way they'd come over a hundred feet, forcing the giant to squeeze all that way. Once it got near, he Dimension Doored the party back the other way.
Yep, it was that kind of fight. The skulks spent their time trying to run around passages to help the giant flank the party, the giant squeezed its way all over the dungeon, and the party almost leisurely picked them off one by one.
The one moment of hilarity was when Percy asked whether the skulks could see him; that is, whether they had 60 foot or 120 foot darkvision.
The dungeons are mostly unlit, and those denizens of the complex who need light to see must carry their own light sources if they delve far from the well-lit areas.
So... er...
...the skulks are in rooms B1 and B4, neither of which are listed as being lit. The maps show no torches. Either the skulks had darkvision, or they were attempting to hide in a room where the torches they were carrying provided the only light. Yeah, forgive me for assuming they had darkvision. Hilarity ensued as the party started trying to mimic skulks trying to use Stealth while carrying lit torches.Anyhoo, the fight was a mop-up and the party explored the rest of the level, finding a 40' x 20' cloakroom (yes, THAT just added to the giggles) with the giant's nest (and some treasure) in it (and a pair of cloaks the party ignored for reasons I don't understand), a common room, the servants' quarters, and a workshop.
Ignoring the Doomsday Door on this level, the party went down the steps to finally see Desna's shrine.
And there, the chernobue qlippoth made its fatal mistake. The party would obviously be a bunch of do-gooders, they wouldn't recognize what it was, and if it was obviously in distress they'd approach to see what was wrong with it. This would bring them into the room where it would be allowed to attack them and devour them at its leisure. So when they grouped up at the door and Percy cast Open, they saw a slippery, writhing mass of tentacles and stalked mouths with one huge hideous eye and a fanged maw for a belly flopping about helplessly in the middle of the room. And the party did the completely unexpected. They closed the door. Then Percy made a massive Knowledge:Planes roll to know exactly what the chernobue's abilities were. First, they put Freedom of Movement on everyone to protect themselves from the paralysis. Then, he summoned a lillend azata to provide them a bardic performance and assist with healing. Finally, as they opened the door the Red Sash Hasted the party.
It should have still been a pretty hard fight. Yet the chernobue was having single-digit-itis (surprising since I use Roll20's dice roller) and couldn't get in a decent hit as it was pummeled to death by the Red Sash, Koriah, and even the lillend (providing a flank). Kyllia decided to make its life utterly miserable with a Spear of Purity that did 63 points of damage to it. Not bad for a 2nd-level spell! Plus being blind for a round didn't help its attacks at all. Towards the end of the fight Koriah heard creatures coming from a passage to the north, so the party prepared for the next fight.
It was... werebears wielding axes? And of course, as fate would have it as the first werebear moved into Percy's Magic Circle Against Evil he made his save and warned the group that he and his friends were all under the control of two horrific giant squids.
One Greater Dispel Magic from Percy and the bears were free. The shoggti qlippoth Dimension Doored into the room so Percy Dimensional Anchored them. They died. Badly. One even got dropped into a pit when it had 1 hit point left.
Learning that the werebears were acolytes of Erastil, the party escorted them up to Casamir where they had a happy reunion, then the group brought Casamir down to help clean up the temple of Desna. He showed them the cache of hidden healing supplies, and they gratefully took them.
They decided to spend another evening in the lighthouse, then renew their assault in the morning.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Interesting... I'd swear Spear of Purity included the "light" descriptor (so 1.5 damage to the chernobue), but it's in the flavor text, not the descriptor.
Ah, well, sometimes bad guys have bad days...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
{. . .} Either the skulks had darkvision, or they were attempting to hide in a room where the torches they were carrying provided the only light. Yeah, forgive me for assuming they had darkvision. Hilarity ensued as the party started trying to mimic skulks trying to use Stealth while carrying lit torches.
{. . .}
Makes me wonder if they had anybody proofread the AP. Although it does seem odd that Skulks, with their camouflage adaptation being partly for underground use, wouldn't have Darkvision.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
{. . .} Either the skulks had darkvision, or they were attempting to hide in a room where the torches they were carrying provided the only light. Yeah, forgive me for assuming they had darkvision. Hilarity ensued as the party started trying to mimic skulks trying to use Stealth while carrying lit torches.
{. . .}Makes me wonder if they had anybody proofread the AP. Although it does seem odd that Skulks, with their camouflage adaptation being partly for underground use, wouldn't have Darkvision.
Oh, I'm sure they'd counter, "Well, it's obviously a well-lit area because the skulks are there."
But if your description says that all the rooms are dark "except the well-lit ones", I'd expect your room descriptions to include, "This room is lit."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 37, Played 27-Dec-2020
Also, at a certain point as a GM you just have to say, "No."
Multiple rooms with, "This room's paint job is so disturbing that PCs have to make a Will save or be disabled."
I've seen amazing paint jobs. I could see, "Disoriented" or "Momentarily distracted". But "nauseated"? Nope. Just not doing that. So the PCs marveled at the elaborately-painted rooms and actually enjoyed the decorations, instead of thinking it was one more bit of rules cheese the author was using against them. "Oh, it's not a trap, so you can't detect it nor disable it. And it's not worth any XP. But it disables you for 1d3 rounds while the monsters get to attack you. But that's not added to the monster's CR, either."
If you want to make a fight harder, make it harder honestly. Don't throw in traps that aren't traps or whatever and keep saying, "Oh, the rules are just guidelines. As a GM, you should ignore them any time you can force all the players to make save-or-suck rolls so that half of them don't get to join in on the fight..."
I swear. Just make the fights harder. Save-or-suck with no escape sucks.
In morning, the party figured things were likely pretty clear in the first dungeon level, so the proceeded down to the stairs leading to the temple of Desna and did all their buffing there. Once they were thoroughly buffed, they went downstairs and started exploring the areas of the second level they hadn't yet seen.
Their first "stop" was the residences of the werebears of Erastil they'd rescued, but they didn't want to search thoroughly while their buffs were burning, so instead they did a quick scan of each room with a single Perception check and Detect Magic. The bedrooms themselves were only noteworthy because of the sorry state of the bedding; it was clear that the qlippoths had forced the men to stay in their half-animal form, as their beds and bedding were horribly torn. The armory at the end of the hall was more noteworthy, only because in its demolished state it was easy to pick out the weapons that had survived the destruction, and were therefore more likely to be magical. The party picked up a masterwork longsword and longbow and seven +1 undead bane arrows.
The second stop was the temple of Sarenrae, which was disturbingly undisturbed by the invaders. After thoroughly checking the door for traps, Percy first Opened the door, then, seeing the pristine state of the temple, cast Detect Magic...
...and was rather surprised to sense a divine-level Antipathy placed over the temple. Sarenrae was taking an active interest in this location! Percy notified the rest of the party, then managed to roll a high enough Knowledge: Religion to be able to kneel before the statue of Sarenrae in the temple proper and offer her a prayer. The vision that flooded his mind nearly knocked him over. He first saw Ardathanatus as he was when Aroden fell, and feels the pain and horror that Ardathanatus wrought upon Windsong Abbey a century ago when he went berserk. But as Percy was watching the horror unfold, he also sensed that the elf’s soul was not lost forever; an ember of his old faith in Pharasma still smolders and could be rekindled.
In short, in order to please Sarenrae, the PCs had to capture Ardathanatus alive and attempt to redeem him. The group promptly responded, "No problem."
Curiously, after being insanely cautious throughout the "known" areas of the temple of Sarenrae and the werebear barracks, once they were in unknown territory the Red Sash rushed ahead to the outlet of the cistern; a fabulously-crafted mouse head whose nose acted as the spigot. Unfortunately, as the Red Sash neared the mouse, the spigot shot out with tremendous force, hitting him square in the chest. This hurt quite a bit, but he was able to resist being knocked over by the strong stream of water now shooting forth from the cistern. As he watched, the water started forming into a creature. Percy recognized a Summon spell when he saw one, and declared that he'd cast Control Summoned Creature the moment the creature formed. And thus Percy gained control of an elder water elemental.
Moving along quickly with their new friend (Percy speaks Aquan, so he was asking it about life on the Plane of Water), the next room was lit with four Continual Flames in braziers and included a statue spewing prophecies. Since no one could figure out what it was, Kyllia did her trance thing and identified it as a representation of one of Groetus' heralds. Even more impressively, the prophecies it was spewing accurately described the fall of Aroden some 10,000 years after the statue was built. The status itself had a magical aura, but Percy couldn't figure out what it did beyond the fact that it had something to do with the school of Divination.
Turning left (north), the Red Sash started checking for traps every 10' (I even said, "You can take 10 every 10' and just move at half speed without having to roll," but he kept rolling until Percy cast Detect Magic and assured him there was nothing in the passage. After about 60' they arrived at a room with incredibly-realistic murals so that the room looked like it was in the middle of a ruined cathedral. A pile of rocks in the middle of the room completed the illusion. The Red Sash was sure that the pile of rocks was some kind of trigger, so he moved up to it. Much to his surprise, it turned into a qlippoth and cast Baleful Polymorph on him. The Red Sash promptly turned into a tiny fuzzy blue mushroom creature with beady black eyes. It was adorable, but Percy wasn't having any of it and used Greater Dispel Magic to restore the Red Sash and had the water elemental beat the creature half to death before it departed. After that the creature's damage reduction was problematic, but the Red Sash made his next two saves against the creature's continued attempts to polymorph him, and eventually it succumbed. Curiously, it was carrying a +1 Scimitar it hadn't used.
There were stairs down that the group ignored, so they went to the end of the hall, found an apothecarium that the Red Sash wanted to explore later when their buffs weren't burning, but Percy used Detect Magic and found a curious black stone, and once again Kyllia used her trance to identify it as a Philosopher's Stone.
Going back to the room with the braziers, the party turned left again (east) and saw another room, this one painted as a neverending series of pillars into an infinite void, and another rock qlippoth was sitting in the room. As the Red Sash approached to try to get a surprise attack on it, it noticed him and tried to polymorph him. This time he saved all three times, so the fight went better.
Once again, beyond the room was a flight of stairs down, and down these stairs was the sound of someone forging. So they went down...
...and ignored the room with the person forging to go the other way!
At the end of a loooooong passage, Percy Opened a door to reveal a giant red horned gorilla creature with a maw in its chest that had been waiting for them to open the door. It did significant damage to Koriah, but Percy kept opening pits underneath it and at first it teleported to avoid them, but then Kyllia put a Dimensional Anchor on it so it spent every round making Reflex saves to avoid plummeting. In a miracle of GM rolls, it never fell, but eventually the Red Sash was able to lay it low and its unconscious form fell into the pit, ensuring its demise.
Finally, behind the gorilla they found a set of jail cells. Percy didn't want to go anywhere near them because he suspected haunts, but as they started looting the jailkeep's desk and listing the items they were taking, a faint voice at the back of the cells called out, "Hey, stop taking my stuff!"
A bit of hilarious roleplay ensued as Percy asked the voice who it was (Nildus Thilano) and which god he worshipped ("None! They have all abandoned us!") and then decided to leave him in his cell. It took a bit of convincing, but they eventually went to the back and rescued the fallen cleric of Erastil. Not wanting to put him at risk, Percy Teleported him to the werebears and Casomir (all of whom recognized him immediately and welcomed him), then Teleported back to the party and they walked out to rest for the evening.
They did return Nildus' stuff to him, though he told them to go ahead and keep his scrolls, as he wouldn't be able to use them anyway. Percy also warned Casomir that Nildus had lost his faith, and Casomir said that he hoped the werebears could help...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
In this rendition of, "WTF, Authors!??!?!?!"
(1) OK, fair enough. The authors put in a LOT of grabby grabby qlippoths in the first few levels of the dungeon, so at this point the party should have Freedom of Movement up on everybody, but...
TWELVE mummies? Twelve of any creature is an out-and-out waste of everyone's time in Pathfinder. Their CR is just too low for them to be any threat to players. So they're just a time-wasting, "If you didn't put up Freedom of Movement you're out of the fight," gang that also happens to disease players if they do manage to get in a lucky hit. The encounter is in unbelievably poor taste.
(2) On p.49: "If the PCs still have xxx traveling with them (see the free web enhancement for Pathfinder Adventure Path #62...)". OK. I ran the web enhancement. It goes out of its way to point out that this NPC is insane and a liability to the party. "Unfortunately, as long as he remains mad, [he] could well become more of a liability than an asset, but the additional healing he brings to the expedition could well offset the times he goes a bit too crazy in combat." It would have been really nice to know in the web enhancement that, "So-and-so could have a greater role to play in Book 4."
As it is, crazy NPCs trying to follow the party are never well-received, so the idea that they'd still have him along after two full books is incredibly unlikely. If you want an NPC to be with the party in a later book, kindly inform the GM of this fact. I could have worked him in rather easily. Instead, the PCs weren't interested and there was no clear benefit to having him around, so he vanished into the weeds back in Book 2.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Edition 2 requires a plot spoiler:
...the PCs have one final chance to rescue Ardathanatus if he’s been grabbed by the qlippoth lord—casting freedom of movement on the elf makes it easy to pull him loose...
All very dramatic and spectacular and a very action-movie-esque ending... EXCEPT:
Once [Ardathanatus] knows that the PCs are drawing near, he also casts air walk, freedom of movement, stoneskin, and spell resistance on himself.
I figured I was missing something. Maybe Yamasoth casts Greater Dispel Magic or something? Nope. The author honestly created an epic final scene against a qlippoth lord and then protected his own guy from it, creating a fairly epically stupid final scene.
There's even a post on it in the GM thread, and as usual, the answer is, "Just ignore the rules."
Really?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Makes me kind of glad that
Admittedly, we never managed to get the "Ardathanatus can still be redeemed!" message, so we weren't really trying to keep him alive.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hmmm... I've moved on to starting to prep Book 5, and two things concern me a great deal:
(1) Richard Pett
Yes, he produced the absolutely brilliant Skinsaw Murders and We Be Goblins. Trial of the Beast was our favorite module in Carrion Crown. I *loved* running Forest of Spirits. Escape from Old Korvosa had its hiccups, but in general was also one of the better modules from Crimson Throne. City of Locusts was really hard to run, but played out fairly well. Carrion Hill was fun to play through. And even though I've never run it, The Sixfold Trial is legendary in its hilarity.
He's got a really, really good track record of excellent modules.
Unfortunately, the last of his modules that we ran were legendarily bad, with railroading so hard the PCs could see the track marks on their butts. The Wormwood Mutiny had the whole "rum" system that had to be discarded, and GothBard rewrote much of the book to make it enjoyable. The Whisper Out of Time was the book that was so nonsensical it made us quit Strange Aeons. ("You have to befriend this slaver, and kill that one. And you have to kill a bunch of innocent neutral NPCs and loot their corpses. And people hate you for no reason.") Shifting Sands had the other group discussing abandoning Mummy's Mask.
So in spite of the fact that most of his modules have been superior, his few fails are pretty epic in stature, so if this module doesn't go well the group'll drop it in a heartbeat.
(2) The opening By James Jacobs about how Scrying and Teleportation ruins dungeons. Er... how?? If you don't know who you're looking for (which the PCs don't), you can't Scry them. It's been generally accepted (even by James) that Scrying doesn't provide enough information for a Teleport. So, maybe Scrying and Greater Teleport can work, but
(a) The bad guys get fairly easy Will saves, and know that a spell targeted them if they make their saves, and
(b) The PCs don't know who any of the bad guys are, so scrying doesn't work anyway.
So, "We disabled teleportation and scrying throughout the dungeon to prevent something that can't happen," isn't a good way to start off a book.
EDIT: And honestly, any reasonably-organized group would have at least one 7th-level arcane caster, giving them access to Detect Scrying and Nondetection. Given that the PCs are 13th level and expected to hit 15th level by the time they reach the boss, I wouldn't hesitate to add False Vision (9th level caster) or even Screen or Mind Blank (15th level caster), completely defeating scrying attempts.
All within the rules, and not requiring me to disable the party's teleportation.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 38, Played 10-Jan-2021
So yeah, plenty of hit points, easy to hit, hit easily and did a lot of damage, and great mobility, and the party actually had to think about a fight for once. It was an amazing contrast to the rest of the dungeon's, "This creature has one special ability and if you save against it it's useless and if you don't you're hosed."
It's why I like running giants. They're a no-brainer encounter to run, but the party needs to use intelligent tactics to avoid having any party members pounded into paste. Give me a nice, simple giant over some outsider with 36 special abilities any day of the week. It's more satisfying for the people on both sides of the screen.
Anyway...
The group Dimension Doored back to the third level of the dungeon, yet again ignored whoever was smithing in the far right room, and started searching the dungeon counterclockwise. Their first encounter with the boogeyman Ricle Peakes was extraordinarily short: He pretended to be the ghost of a librarian, nobody believed him, especially since he couldn't speak Thassilonian, and the moment Percy pointed him out using See Invisibility he cast Phantasmal Killer on the Red Sash, killing him instantly. Except Kyllia rushed in and used Breath of Life on him (interestingly enough, Phantasmal Killer is not a death effect), then Percy used Getaway to return the party to the surface. Very short trip.
While they were topside, Kyllia entered her loracle trance and determined that Ricle was indeed a boogeyman, a wicked and cruel fey who thrived on fear and... who didn't have darkvision!
Percy was beginning to see a pattern.
He asked the party to rest for the day and night, then they waited an extra hour so any ambushes Ricle prepared or buffs he'd cast would be gone. Percy put Darkness on a stone he was carrying. They Dimension Doored to outside the forging room and started heading for Ricle Peakes' room. Fortunately, the Red Sash spotted the ethereal night hag heading their way just before she arrived so the group was ready for her. Unfortunately, just like Xondra before her, she learned that all the levels of witch in the world don't help you if you don't have friends to protect you. She was surrounded, Dimensional Anchored, and being beaten to death before she managed even a "by your leave". On paper, she's a good fight. In a narrow hallway with a well-prepared party, she did exactly diddly-squat.
Even worse, Ricle heard the hubbub and rushed to help her, just in time for Percy to put a Force Wall behind him and move the Darkness over him. Guess what a boogeyman trapped in the darkness against a Force Wall is?
Ding! The correct answer is indeed, "Useless and dead."
More troops arrived, but it was six sinspawn so they were hardly worth mentioning, though their loot was top-notch and their levels of ranger and human bane arrows did at least do some damage to Koriah before they died.
Considering that after all this time whoever was doing the forging hadn't come out, the party decided they had to know who it was. Percy opened the door and a fiery giantess surrounded by fire lizards told him she had one more day of work and she'd be done, so he should leave or she'd have to burn him to cinders. Percy decided not to argue. Once again, Kyllia tranced and determined that the giantess was an efreeti, a Lawful Evil outsider who couldn't possibly be willingly working for a Chaotic Evil cleric. Since she was obviously bound to complete a task, they'd be best served by disrupting the task, but it didn't seem fair to kill the efreeti. Kyllia had a scroll of Planar Ally, but she was one hit die short of summoning the ghaele azata she'd need to free the efreeti. Considering that Kofusachi was a god of travel and exploration, and this poor efreeti was trapped, Kyllia decided to appeal to him directly with a Commune spell with a single question: "May I call a ghaele azata for the sole purpose of freeing this efreeti from her bondage?"
Kofusachi found it a reasonable request, and granted the extra hit die. As the door opened and the efreeti recognized the ghaele azata and that it was attempting to Dismiss her, she passionlessly deadpanned, "No, please, don't send me home, I still have work to do," as she dropped her Spell Resistance. Once the efreeti was gone, her minions thanked the party in Ignan and went on their way. In the room was a horucalcum Flaying Halberd and an almost-completed suit of houcalcum plate mail. The Red Sash scooped it up, wondering whether to sell it or have it completed.
Their final stop was a room where two apparent kytons were tormenting a naked, bound, unconscious, and obviously nearly dead man. The kytons wanted the Red Sash to join them in their "fun", but he decided that combat was the better option. He managed to survive both Phantasmal Killers that were thrown at him, and Percy(?) identified the creatures as animate dreams rather than kytons. As the fight progressed, the party heard casting coming from through the northern door so Percy put a Force Wall between the party and the caster. The fight went poorly for the Red Sash until Kyllia Death Warded him, at which point one of the animate dreams dropped and the other had to flee into the wall. Unfortunately, it was at exactly that moment that Zolerim, he of the "my creator didn't believe in my spending points on Perception checks", flung open the door and tried to cast a Flame Strike through the Force Wall that he couldn't see (invisible) nor make the Knowledge: Arcana roll to figure out why he couldn't hear the party (must be a Silence spell).
After he used his Flame Strike he knew what it was, but it was too late. Percy Dimensional Stepped the party to surround him, and it was the whole, "Caster in a small room," issue ad nauseum. The animate dream popped out of the wall to where the party had been before, but that was beyond the wall, so it was of little use to Zolerim as he got two-rounded. By the time it got there, everyone was Death Warded except Kyllia, so it got in one good hit before dying.
The party healed and woke the unconscious victim, realized he was at 0 Wisdom, and used a precious charge from their wand of Restoration on him. It was Gein Kafog, cleric of Zon Kuthon! They'd rescued another of the abbey's clerics! Kyllia quickly Healed him and they teleported him back to the tower for a fond reunion with the other survivors.
I guess if you're going to use an AP, you have to do some editing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 39, Played 24-Jan-2021
* The peephole into Ardathanatus' room. Why is it there? What's the point? As Percy's player pointed out, since the gongorian qlippoth in front of the peephole had warned Ardathanatus, he and all his guards were fully buffed and ready for the party. What kind of party would skip an entire level of the dungeon just to teleport through a peephole and engage the BBEG early, when he's aware of them and fully buffed? And if you check his stat block, he has no teleportation abilities, so the only way he could get at the PCs through the peephole would be to get up close and personal with them while carving a hole in the wall, thereby joining the "caster in a tiny room" crowd. In our opinion, it was a stupid addition to the dungeon.
* The greater shadows. Yes, there was a pillar in the room before them that basically said, "Undead are here," so yes, the party prepared Death Ward. But after a horde of save-or-suck monsters, a pair of, "If we get three attacks on you you're dead unless you have Death Ward up," just felt bad.
* Twelve mummies. At first we were rolling for all the fear auras and before even half of them were in the room the Red Sash and Koriah were out of the fight. Then we remembered that everyone in the party had Freedom of Movement up and it became a non-fight. So... either you had FoM up and it was a pointless fight, or you didn't and it was a TPK. Fun?
So yeah, not so much a "straightforward" session as a "typical of this wretched AP" session.
While the party spent the evening in the tower with the clerics they'd rescued, they researched the books they'd looted:
In the morning, they returned to the third level of the dungeon and started exploring. Once again, Percy encased them in Darkness in case there were any more dungeon denizens who couldn't see in the dark. They eventually found two more gongorinan qlippoths pretending to be piles of rocks, so they killed them without much difficulty. Koriah heard casting through a stone wall (Yes, a -30 to her Perception and she still heard it) during the fight, so Percy checked for secret doors and found one. Behind it was a peephole. Koriah looked through and was hit by two Baleful Polymorphs, a slew of arrows, and... nothing from Ardathanatus because yes, he couldn't see in the dark, either. Once she'd identified two gongorinan qlippoths, four sinspawn, and Ardathanatus, she simply walked away and they sealed up the secret door.
With the level cleared, they took the closest flight of stairs down and found a water-filled cave with a pack of sea drakes who demanded tribute. The party retreated for a moment, decided the drakes were vermin that needed to be eliminated, protected themselves from electricity, and returned. The drakes eagerly engaged them, and when three of their number were down and two more were below half hit points in under two rounds, they begged for mercy. Kyllia healed the fallen (miraculously none had died), the party claimed their treasure as just compensation, and they left the drakes alive and went back upstairs.
The second flight of stairs down was more promising, with a pillar indicating that this was the level where Groetean priests had been laid to rest.
The Red Sash spotted the Glyph of Warding on the next door and disarmed it. As soon as he stepped into the room he was beset by two greater shadows, who quickly learned that he was warded against them. Kyllia started putting Death Wards on the other party members as the Red Sash engaged them and they went around him to try to find unprotected victims. They hit Koriah twice for most of her strength, but once she was Death Warded and Percy used a declared action to teleport away from them when they went for him, they were toast. A wand of Restoration fixed Koriah right up.
They next went into a room with a collapsed corridor so Percy teleported them down into a fight with 12 mummies. Freedom of Movement, a wand of Fireballs and an oracle with Flame Strike made it rather silly, but Koriah did get Mummy Rot, so that was funny. (The party has decided to ditch her at their earliest opportunity.)
Moving on, they saw another mummy, but this one was dressed better than the rest and was obviously waiting for them. The Red Sash called out to him in Thassilonian, and they learned that he was Kandamereus, mummy high priest of Groetus. He could not let them pass unless they answered a series of questions. In spite of Percy trying his best to be rude and start a fight, Kyllia successfully answered Kandatereus' questions and he offered to join them in killing Ardathanatus. They declined, so he provided them with information as to what to expect beyond him.
Moving on, they killed the stone golems outside of Ardathanatus' room (well, to be exact they dropped them in a pit and waited a while for them to come out, at which point the Red Sash had an adamantine earthbreaker), then decided to call it a day. On their way out, Kandamereus wanted to come with them, but Percy didn't have enough teleport capacity, so Kandamereus swapped one of his dead mummy minions with him in case Ardathanatus sent anyone looking for him.
The party rested for the night.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 40, Played 07-Feb-2021
Well, we had the final battle of Book 4. And hoo, boy, what a battle! It took on the order of 24 rounds, most of which were agonizingly slow. The Red Sash continued to use Cleave instead of full-round attacks, so every enemy in the room was losing hit points and none of them were dropping. Koriah did indeed prove to be the worst-built ranger ever, and did not contribute significantly to the fight.
The interesting battle was the chess match between Ardathanatus and Percy. Percy knew Ardathanatus didn't have Darkvision, so he kept putting up Darkness fields. Ardathanatus' spell list was (suprise surprise) ill-suited to fighting a high-level party (if a player ever took Quickened Cure Light Wounds as a prepared spell I think they'd be kicked out of their party), so he spent his time using what he had, using Flame Strike and Blade Barrier to some effect, but massively hindered by the darkness and his utterly appalling choice of spells. (Yeah, as a player I prefer clerics, so looking at that spell list made me wince. Constantly. 8th, 7th, and 5th level spell slots set aside for quickened cure spells, when a single Heal (WHICH HE HAD) rendered them all meaningless.) He burned his two Dispel Magics early to get rid of two of the Darkness spells, but Percy had one himself, he summoned a lillend azata who cast a second one for him, and he used his bonded item to cast a third. The only spell I'd swapped out was Quickened Cure Critical Wounds for Dimensional Lock to prevent the party from scry-n-frying him, but it (and the darkness) prevented him from joining in the melee.
Most interesting of all was Percy's reaction to the "breathing" door: He put a Force Wall in front of it to block it. If the party had had a decent frontline fighter, the fight would've been over before the Force Wall went down and the climactic scene with Yamasoth trying to crawl through the portal would've been... less-than-climactic, as there'd have been a Force Wall in the way.
But going back to the fight in the trenches. The sinspawn had AC 21 and 77 hit points. Any Hasted 12th-level frontline fighter that isn't killing one (or even two) per round is a bad build (or bad tactics). With Koriah and the Red Sash in the frontline, there were still sinspawn running around on round 15. Koriah had the excuse that she got Baleful Polymorphed for the first few rounds of the fight. The Red Sash? At one point the four sinspawn were at 21, 11, 7, and 5 hit points left. That's how evenly he managed to distribute the damage among them, prolonging the fight immensely.
Oh, and once the gongorinan qlippoths stopped using their Baleful Polymorphs and moved in to start doing real damage, the Red Sash ran away instead of trusting Kyllia to heal him, leaving Koriah to die. (She only survived thanks to some appalling rolling on my part while full-round attacking her with the two qlippoths.)
Long story short: Two gongorinan qlippoths and four sinspawn took 15-16 rounds to defeat. It was embarrassing.
Once that was finally done and they took on Ardathanatus, we had a final capper in the fiasco when the Red Sash tried to grapple him, he got loose thanks to Freedom of Movement, and the very next round the Red Sash tried to grapple him again. That's about how invested people were in the fight. But Percy had teleported the group right on top of him, so he was in melee in the dark and couldn't cast without a strong risk of losing the spell, so he fell quickly to nonlethal damage.
Yamasoth made his appearance, but everyone had Freedom of Movement on them so on the first round he only moderately damaged everyone (I can't believe how little damage he does per hit, and of his 10 attacks, three of them were natural 1's). And as a final tip of the hat to this author's awfulness. On the first round:
Yamasoth makes his attacks (also exposing all in the room to his horrific appearance...)
Except, having had to run qlippoth ALL MODULE LONG because this author put qlippoths in every other fricking room...
All qlippoth have such horrific and mind-rending shapes that those who gaze upon them suffer all manner of ill effects. A qlippoth can present itself as a standard action to assault the senses of all living creatures within 30 feet...
Even in the writeup for qlippoth lords, it does not change either the range or the action.
So Yamasoth's choice is to either do a full-round attack or present himself, and even if he presents, it's only got a 30' range. It's pretty embarrassing when the AP author doesn't even know the abilities of the BBEG he's using.
Anyhoo, Kyllia carried Ardathanatus and the Red Sash carried Koriah away (she was at 7 hit points, so the tentacle managed to knock her negative), so the party wasn't anywhere near within 30' on Yamasoth's next turn, nor were they looking his way, and he vanished in a very stupid, anticlimactic way.
Final notes:
- Ardathanatus was turned over to Brandi (paladin of Sarenrae) in Magnimar for rehabilitation
- Kandameerus was invited to join the council of clerics at Windsong Abbey. Having nothing better to do while waiting for the end of things, he agreed
- Koriah decided to stay at the Abbey and help her father rebuild it
- The party is trying to recruit a decent fighter for their next adventure
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 41, Played 21-Feb-2021
Even in Book 6, with the party at 15th level, the trek to Xin-Shalast is peppered with rich storytelling elements: The abandoned dwarven cabin. Svevenka.
More than any dungeon, the party remembers the journeys.
Along comes Shattered Star. Book 1 takes place in Magnimar itself, so at least there's some social interaction to be had. Book 2 had the party travel south to the Lady's Light, and provided one boring set encounter by land, and one more interesting set encounter by sea. Not exactly an engaging journey either way. Book 3 was one grossly-underpowered fight on the river and one grossly-overpowered one that broke quite a few rules along the way, but still it wasn't a journey, it was, "Here is the one requisite encounter to remind the PCs that they're traveling."
Then we get:
Windsong Abbey is approximately 120 miles north of Magnimar as traveled via the Lost Coast Road. As the PCs should be well into 10th level by this point, details on the relatively short trip to Windsong from Magnimar are not necessary here.
In other words, "Travel is unimportant. Start the dungeon!"
This adventure doesn’t cover the journey from Magnimar (or wherever the PCs are at the start of this adventure) to Guiltspur, as it assumes the PCs can make such an overland journey with ease using magic. Spells like shadow walk and wind walk can make the journey pass quickly, as can teleporting to a familiar site like Kaer Maga and then traveling north.
Yet again, it's, "Forget the travel! Start the dungeon!"
The heart and soul of APs is getting ripped out by the idea that PCs have no interest in social interaction nor travel, but just want a dungeon crawl. In Shattered Star Books 2, 3, 4, and 5, a grand total of 6 pages (of 189) are dedicated to the journey, with 5 of those 6 being in Book 3). Approximately 170 of the remaining pages are dedicated to nothing more than dungeon crawls.
So, Shattered Star is a dungeon crawl AP. We hate dungeon crawls, and the authors routinely breaking the rules to make them "more challenging" just adds to the frustration.
After noticing this, it's no wonder the whole group wants to quit Pathfinder for a few years.
The session started with the party interviewing potential replacements for Koriah. The first candidate was Nettle the dwarf, who had a fascinating back story: He didn't start off as a dwarf, but he'd been killed many times, coming back as something different each time (the time he'd come back as a bugbear had been the worst). He was a wrestler by trade, and promised that he could buff himself up with a variety of spells, then grapple anything that got in their way.
Percy asked the fatal question: "So, you've grappled and pinned your foe. What happens next?"
Nettle had no idea. His concept was a one-for-one trade: He'd take down one monster and hold it down while the rest of the party dealt with the rest of the monsters.
The next candidate was Reginald Lancaster, a former city guardsman who'd seen that adventurers worked far less hard than guardsmen (15 minute days as opposed to 8-hour ones), progressed in power much more quickly, and got a lot richer a lot faster. He was an absolutely standard sword-and-board fighter build: Step Up, Stand Still, the Antagonize feat chain, and everything else to ensure every creature in the room was attacking him, and a crit-heavy scimitar with a lot of damage adds to deal out plenty of single-target damage.
A very vanilla, very boring, very, "Built to exactly the required specifications," fighter.
The final candidate was Galyn Smashynbashn, a huge Ulfen barbarian who fought with axe and shield and specialized in protecting others (Saving Shield, Stand Still) while providing the standard barbarian damage output and hit point sink. He was a cheerful and pleasant fellow, and there was very little debate before the party decided on him.
They took him to the Lady Heidmarch, got him initiated as a Pathfinder, and received the next debriefing: They were searching for the Shard of Wrath, and they'd need a Red Sphere ioun stone to disable it. Kyllia focused on the Shard of Envy, got a mental image of a towering green stone, then went into her trance and quickly identified it as Guiltspur. Once they had its name, the research was very straightforward:
- Guiltspur is said to be cursed, and avoided even by the local giants
- It's a Thassilonian, ruin, which is no surprise
- It was Karzoug's embassy to Leng, run by the church of Lissala
- A blue wyrm dragon named Cadrilkasta took over the place and started hill and fire giants mining it. All indications are that Cadrilkasta found the Shard of Wrath in another ruin, was taken over by it, and is now excavating this ruin for unknown reasons
Knowing that they'd eventually have to fight a wyrm blue dragon, the party made what preparations they could, then Percy went to the local surveyor and the Pathfinder Lodge to see what kind of drawings he could find of Guiltspur. Finding one with Guiltspur peeking over the horizon so they'd appear quite some distance away from the stone itself, allowing them to approach stealthily on foot.
Once they were there, Percy used Prying Eyes to evaluate the dig. As expected, it was manned by hill giants and well-defended.
The party started in on their assault plans...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
{. . .}
The session started with the party interviewing potential replacements for Koriah. {. . .}
Now I've got this vision of that scene in Mystery Men . . . .
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 42, Played 14-Mar-2021
Shattered Star proves that a writer who doesn't spend one second pondering the level of the PCs in his (in this case) book, or anything that happened in the previous books, will write terrible encounters.
What did the PCs learn in Book 2? They learned that their enemies were going to ruthlessly take advantage of Darkness and Darkvision to exploit the PCs' weaknesses. So while I haven't gone out and read every single playthrough of Shattered Star ever posted on Paizo, I would expect two things:
(1) By Book 5, every single party had Darkvision for all its members.
(2) By Book 5, most tactically-minded parties should be using Darkness as an offensive spell because Book 4 was all about being underground with a bunch of fey, skulks, and giants, none of whom had Darkvision. I don't know how the final battle with Ardathanatus went for other parties, but any party that learned anything from the AP would have had as much of a joke of a fight as we did.
So yeah, so far Book 5 is a fiasco:
- A battle between giants with +9 ranged attacks (+10 for the fire giants! Wooo...) and a flying party where even 3/4 BAB PCs have better attacks than the giants
- An entire underground cave system populated by... giants with no Darkvision.
It's not particularly exciting, but at least my players are having fun wiping out the utterly-helpless giants, so there's that...
Now that Percy's Prying Eyes had provided a general layout of the giants' encampment, the party decided on a plan of attack: They'd fly in behind the windowless compound, out of sight of the hill giants digging at Guiltspur proper and out of line of attack of the ballistae, and they would slaughter the giants as they approached.
It was horrifically effective. As the hill giants from the ballistae joined the fire giant in an attempt to hurl rocks at the party, Percy hit them all with Caustic Eruption (none of them managed to save) while Kylia unknowingly put up a Wall of Fire near the tar-coated mastodons, igniting them and sending them terrified through the melting giants, adding trample and fire damage to their woes. The Red Sash and Galyn simply watched the brutal spectacle.
Once the first wave of giants was down, the giants down the hill were battling the flaming mastodons to try to keep themselves alive, and the giants from Guiltspur had run into the Wall of Fire and tried to go the other way, Percy dropped a Cloudkill down the chimney of the fortress building.
At that point General Stom surrendered the fortress. The party spent a bit of time deciding whether to slaughter her and all the giants or whether to let her go, and they didn't particularly care whether she knew they considered her and her ilk beneath their contempt. They finally let her take her surviving giants, promised her nothing, used Locate Object to make sure none of the giants were trying to escape with any valuables, and let them go.
Yes, the fight was that one-sided.
They went in, searched the building, found a bit of treasure, and found a staircase leading belowground.
Percy put Darkvision on the party, Darkness on himself, aaaaand...
...turned the level into a walkover, since no one downstairs has a light source brighter than a torch. The fire giants at the entrance died after hitting the Red Sash once. The three hill giants who came to aid them didn't even get a hit in. And so forth and so on.
They finally reached the prisoner pits and the three rift drake guards, who finally had Darkvision and inflicted serious damage on the party with their acid breath, but a Wall of Force from Percy and both the Red Sash and Galyn engaging them killed them quickly enough, Kyllia healed everyone, and they got ready to fight the remaining giants in the underground level.
In the dark.
With no Darkvision.
Seems like Locate Object wouldn't let you search for valuables in general, although it would let you search for the nearest valuable item of a certain type.
Seems like Locate Object wouldn't let you search for valuables in general, although it would let you search for the nearest valuable item of a certain type.
He uses the, "Locate the nearest stash of 100 or more coins" version of it, which is plenty to know whether or not the giants are attempting to abscond with loot. Between Detect Magic and Locate Object, the only thing they'd get away with would be mundane valuables and or masterwork items. And they figured the giants wouldn't be smart enough to segregate their items that carefully.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the "real" issue with this AP is that I'm posting Shiro's homebrew at the same time, so I get to see what a good job Shiro did of challenging us (wights with bows so they could drain levels at range, flying creatures with 120' darkvision so we were hard-pressed to locate them without mobile Light spells, etc.), and what a terrible job the authors of Books 4-5 did.
For example: The hill giants. The author needed to increase their CR because regular hill giants are useless.
Option 1: Ignore the possibility that the PCs have any mobility, battlefield control, or vision-impairing abilities and mindlessly add the Advanced template and a level of fighter. You've successfully increased the hill giants' CR by 2 each without making them any more difficult for the PCs. Free XP!
Option 2: Recognize that darkness has been the underlying theme in books 2, 3, and 4, and instead of class levels argue that the proximity of Leng has corrupted the giants in the area and given them the half-fiend template. You get the exact same +2 CR, but now they have Darkvision, a fly speed, DR, and SR and are an actual threat to the party.
EDIT: If you think about it, Percy's main line of attack is pits and Force Walls. Giving the enemies flight eliminates these threats. Giving them darkvision eliminates using Darkness to cripple them. All of a sudden your CR 9 creatures aren't being crippled by level 2 spells (Create Pit and Darkness are both 2nd level and both cripple a standard hill giant, even with the Advanced template and a level of fighter).
^I don't think Wights get to conduct Energy Drain through ranged attacks (unless some Wight variant that I missed has a ranged Energy Drain), and reading the Conductive property, it seems that having a Conductive Bow doesn't help if the ability is a melee ability. (This is just like how a Magus doesn't get to Spellstrike at range unless using an archetype that specifically supports Ranged Spellstrike.)
With respect to Giants not having ways to deal with PC abilities: I wonder if Giantslayer is any better about doing something about this?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
^I don't think Wights get to conduct Energy Drain through ranged attacks (unless some Wight variant that I missed has a ranged Energy Drain), and reading the Conductive property, it seems that having a Conductive Bow doesn't help if the ability is a melee ability. (This is just like how a Magus doesn't get to Spellstrike at range unless using an archetype that specifically supports Ranged Spellstrike.)
With respect to Giants not having ways to deal with PC abilities: I wonder if Giantslayer is any better about doing something about this?
It's a wight variant akin to the cairn wight but with range that he found while researching the Mother of Wights; he wanted to be able to publish his AP at the end, so he didn't build any of his own creatures. I'll see whether he remembers where he found it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
^I don't think Wights get to conduct Energy Drain through ranged attacks (unless some Wight variant that I missed has a ranged Energy Drain), and reading the Conductive property, it seems that having a Conductive Bow doesn't help if the ability is a melee ability. (This is just like how a Magus doesn't get to Spellstrike at range unless using an archetype that specifically supports Ranged Spellstrike.)
With respect to Giants not having ways to deal with PC abilities: I wonder if Giantslayer is any better about doing something about this?
As I mentioned, Rise of the Runelords had effective giants throughout. The problem is putting giants underground in dark caves, or in the open. Giants in well-lit buildings with ceilings they can reach are quite dangerous.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
^Actually, looking up Hill Giants (since these were mentioned in the last episode), they should be reasonably dangerous out in the open as long as they have a supply of suitably sized rocks. Rock Throwing with 5 increments of 120' is not too shabby, and should let them get several hits inn on PCs trying to put up Walls of Fire or especially Caustic Eruptions in the open. So the problem isn't just flying PCs, it's flying PCs who have face-bending spells, while the Giants have absolute trash saves. But who puts CR 7 Hill Giants up against level 13 or 14 PCs (the minimum level needed to cast Caustic Eruption in the first place, as Wizard or Sorcerer, respectively)? If they wanted a horde of lower level enemies, at least use CR 8 Stone Giants, who, despite being only 1 CR higher, at least have semi-passable if not outstanding Saves, and have 5 Rock Throwing increments of 180' each, and decent Intelligence and +6 better Perception to figure out that the PCs are coming and are a serious threat needing special tactics to deal with.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
^Actually, looking up Hill Giants (since these were mentioned in the last episode), they should be reasonably dangerous out in the open as long as they have a supply of suitably sized rocks. Rock Throwing with 5 increments of 120' is not too shabby, and should let them get several hits inn on PCs trying to put up Walls of Fire or especially Caustic Eruptions in the open. So the problem isn't just flying PCs, it's flying PCs who have face-bending spells, while the Giants have absolute trash saves. But who puts CR 7 Hill Giants up against level 13 or 14 PCs (the minimum level needed to cast Caustic Eruption in the first place, as Wizard or Sorcerer, respectively)? If they wanted a horde of lower level enemies, at least use CR 8 Stone Giants, who, despite being only 1 CR higher, at least have semi-passable if not outstanding Saves, and have 5 Rock Throwing increments of 180' each, and decent Intelligence and +6 better Perception to figure out that the PCs are coming and are a serious threat needing special tactics to deal with.
Check again: Their ranged attack bonus is +6. Even adding the Advanced template and a level of fighter puts it up to +9. No one in the party other than the wizard has an AC of under 29 at this point, and the wizard's minimum is 24 with Mirror Images up. When you need a natural 20 to hit anyone in the party other than the wizard and you need a 15 just to have a 15% chance of hitting the wizard, you're not a threat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If I ever ran this I'd modify them to be several Hill Giant Troops. Auto-hits, auto-damages. Sure, it takes more damage from AoE attacks but if the PCs try to do something like Disintegrate or Magic Missile? No sell.
Check again: Their ranged attack bonus is +6. Even adding the Advanced template and a level of fighter puts it up to +9. No one in the party other than the wizard has an AC of under 29 at this point, and the wizard's minimum is 24 with Mirror Images up. When you need a natural 20 to hit anyone in the party other than the wizard and you need a 15 just to have a 15% chance of hitting the wizard, you're not a threat.^Actually, looking up Hill Giants (since these were mentioned in the last episode), they should be reasonably dangerous out in the open as long as they have a supply of suitably sized rocks. Rock Throwing with 5 increments of 120' is not too shabby, and should let them get several hits inn on PCs trying to put up Walls of Fire or especially Caustic Eruptions in the open. So the problem isn't just flying PCs, it's flying PCs who have face-bending spells, while the Giants have absolute trash saves. But who puts CR 7 Hill Giants up against level 13 or 14 PCs (the minimum level needed to cast Caustic Eruption in the first place, as Wizard or Sorcerer, respectively)? If they wanted a horde of lower level enemies, at least use CR 8 Stone Giants, who, despite being only 1 CR higher, at least have semi-passable if not outstanding Saves, and have 5 Rock Throwing increments of 180' each, and decent Intelligence and +6 better Perception to figure out that the PCs are coming and are a serious threat needing special tactics to deal with.
Okay, I missed/forgot about the Hill Giants' trash Dexterity score. But my point stands: Who puts CR 7 Hill Giants up against level 13 or 14 PCs? Although against that much AC, even Stone Giants still need to seriously outnumber the PCs to be a threat.
I like the Troop idea.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Session 43, Played 28-Mar-2021
There's really no purpose in GM notes, or a long writeup, or anything beyond, "So, what else could go wrong?"
Let's see...
...as the remaining hill giants finished donning their armor in the adjoining room, Percy cast Create Pit on the doorway. And yes, a simple level 2 spell turned the doorway into an impassable obstacle for the hill giants and their +4 Reflex/-1 Acrobatics rolls. A flick of his wand of Darkness and the hill giants weren't a ranged threat, either.
...unfortunately, at that point they found the trapped trolls, and felt it would be hilarious to Haste them, put Mass Fly on them, cast Prayer on them, and completely engulf the entire area in Darkness spells.
Trolls have darkvision. Giants don't.
...not needing to deal with any giants outside of Jubbek's room any more, they dropped a Darkness on the door so virtually all of the declared attacks missed, then a Hungry Pit from Percy swallowed up Jubbek and all his fighters. Only Skullcracker made his Reflex save, and he was rewarded by getting one-rounded by the Red Sash and Galyn.
...bored of watching the hill giant concubines unwilling to approach the darkness where all their brethren were being slaughtered, Percy summoned a huge earth elemental to start plucking up the concubines one by one and dropping them in the Hungry Pit on top of Jubbek.
So yes, if you count it up it was 12 regular hill giants, 5 advanced hill giants, a fire giant, an advanced dire tiger, and Jubbek, for a CR 18 encounter.
And excluding the nonsense with the trolls, it took four second-level spells (3 Darkness and one Create Pit) and one fifth-level spell (Create Hungry Pit) to turn it into a farce. (Yes, I'm ignoring the rift drakes, but they cost one Force Wall and were still a decent fight.)
Large numbers of lower-CR creatures are NOT a threat once the PCs hit level 10 or so, no matter what the numbers say.
Once the stupid was over, the party released the trolls to the Cinderlands to hunt more hill giants, looted everything they could, found the Shard of Wrath on Jubbek's club, and teleported back to Magnimar.
The party leveled up to 14.