I suspect it isn't a mistake, but on pages 23-33 there's the stat block of the Raptor Guard Wrights. Under weapons they deal 3d6+14 with their claws, but only 2d6+14 with their spears (+1 striking according to inventory). Feels weird they don't have Greater Striking (level 12 rune, which as they're level 13 in a level 16 fight, doesn't put them so beyond the curve it'll create a financial problem) which would put the spears in line with their claws, as I'm not sure why they'd use their spears when claws just do better damage with no downsides (in fact, with Agile they've got a better MAP than usual).
Hey there DM's I have 2 questions.
I found that the creature ZINOGYVAZ is missing her ranged bow attack. I assume it's 34?
Also there seems to be an item called ghost bolt that I cannot find anywhere. What is with the item?
The spear is magical, and can be thrown--either of which might matter in some situations. You're right, the claw is the better option if they're only mixing it up in melee.The treasure a creature can get is usually based on the level of the creature, not the level of the heroes expected to encounter them; even though the heroes are 16th level, the wights don't all have greater striking runes because that would be too much for level 13 creatures. Now, monsters in adventures break this general rule all the time--particularly the significant NPCs--and sprinkling interesting treasure around to get the expected treasure for the heroes is important. But that's why their spears are less magic-y than you expect.
Interesting. I'll try to run as intended then, likely favouring the claw even though the imagery of these warriors showing their spearmanship kind of stuck in my mind. Then again, the spear could be akin to a javelin as an opening volley before closing in and attacking. Thank you.
I am loving the AP so far. My players are loving it too.
So here's my question:
How did you handle the Iffdhasil encounter with how straight up
deadly it can be?
So, I actually preloaded this entire module by warning them there are two fights in Chapter 1 that are Extreme difficulty. Considering how often they actually struggle with even Moderate fights (going to get to that with my own comment on the module), they knew that when the Extreme fight hits they probably don't want to be in the area. I did not tell them which fight though. It was enough to put the "fear of god" into them and dampen their "if it breaths, we can kill it" mentality.
So, when I ran it and it crawled out the ground consuming the worms, I emphasised the aberrant nature of it. The fact it had just eaten the last worm that was alive, and that even the aura was making them Doomed (I even got cheeky and increased by 2 on a crit fail) on a pretty high DC, they booked it hard. Which it just watched, like the book says, as it is more just confused about the Orb Reflections than much else. I might bring it back between Chapter 2 and 3 for a lark though.
However, to get to my own moan, I do wonder how Paizo rates the level of these creatures. The Lesser Death fight in Chapter 2 nearly wiped my party hard, and even with fudging it left one character at 13 health and another with regenerate running. As a Moderate 16 fight (so, two level 16 creatures), it should take the wind out of the characters. Instead, with a mixture of 60ft AOO range that disrupts on a hit, 20ft Misfortune Aura, Negative Healing which prevents positive damage (while the undead element prevents negative damage), it is actually pretty devastating. I was disrupting spell casters up-n-down the field. The attack modifier was high enough crits were semi-common. Finally the Status Sight meant they kept targeting weaker characters.
This is also putting aside that the Roll20 version of the stat sheet is just wrong. It keeps happening with books that crucial typos make it in, like how the AOO range was written as 100ft and the fly speed as 50ft instead of 40ft. It's rare, but it's common enough to be a genuine issue.
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I have to wonder how you get the PCs to go after orb #6, and not the one the druids took. I mean, other than saying "Players, you gotta. You figure out why." It seems as though the druids' argument to you can be summed up as, "A faction we disagreed with took the orb, dooming this area. But you can't have it. So go to the Vaults for the other one, okay?"
This module is really flavorful and was fun to read for me up until the pyramid, but then "we have to make sure you hate the xulgaths so you won't be tempted to pity them" kicked in, and right now...that's not a theme I really wanted to see. Bad timing, I guess.
I've been troubled by the vast injustice of Aroden's actions all through, and if I were to run it I'd have to find the PCs some way to make things right. Maybe #6 plans to do that, but if so, the relentless Aztec-ritual-sacrifice motif in #5 is not going to help.
Regarding the druids, perhaps the ones with whom they interact can say that they hope to mend things with them and do good in the world together again. That, coupled with their offer to transport them near another active orb, which they sense is in peril, should do it.
My books are downstairs and I am still lounging in bed, but there is a disenfranchised xulgath in Book 6, still with Sarvel. I plan to introduce her in name if not in body much earlier (both of them, really) and have her serve as a sort of reconciliation option. Will also be changing her scent to be along the lines of the emanation described in the Xulgath write-up (Book 2?), a throwback to their imperial days.
They are conduits of incredible terraforming power at the campaign's conclusion. I may give them the option to each use their essences to restore some of the xulgaths, some of Vask, or both, in addition to the restoration of the Starstone Isles. That moment should be dramatic, and feature a montage of past personalities from Books 1, 2, 3, and 4 witnessing miraculous natural rebirth.
Of course, working with xulgath on a micro- rather than magical macro-level might be just as satisfying, so I plan to include a fee more who, given an opportunity, might break away from being consumed by vengeance and corrupted by demonic influence.
Whether a bug or a feature, Sympathy for the Xulgath is inevitable among both my players and their current (Book 1) characters, so I am proactively layering in options for how they might address the injustice.
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Yep. That's the kind of stories we enjoy, ones with some intrigue, twists, and moral dilemmas.
Some enjoy narrative work from the frame of as-written APs, tailored to players and their characters.
It's clear you have put in a "pile of (good) work" on the crunch, Zapp, with how much you have tinkered with the circus show mechanics.
Hope your campaign is progressing well!
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Whether a bug or a feature, Sympathy for the Xulgath is inevitable among both my players and their current (Book 1) characters, so I am proactively layering in options for how they might address the injustice.
Yeah, I've been seeping this in for a while. It's a point of frustration that was heightened when Ron mentioned the intent was you were just facing the bad evil Xulgaths and that there were some neutral/good ones (I believe it is book 2 where there's a chapter I dig about Xulgaths that describes some of them more like peaceful druids who uses natural occurrences as omens and signals), and yet if you run as is every xulgath is evil. I've already had a Cavnakash subplot (the boss from Book 1) where players converted on a nat-20 30 Diplomacy roll (it kind of made sense he was grossly frustrated enough to think there has to be a better way). He had a might-means-right mentality, but was trying to learn from the NG bard/champion about how sometimes protecting innocent people are good. When the bard died, Cavnakash went off the next day (canonically, likely to seek out a temple of Shelyn to work as a Champion, using his might to make things right while playing the drums in his free time as taught).
Book 5 I'm definitely going immensely deeper on this. I'm doing a side-plot involving one of the Cults of the Darklands called Tanagaar's Arrows, with hopes of using that xulgath to really underline "not all xulgaths are evil, really". Actually going to be involving a weird mix-up with the Cult of the Faceless Sphinx where the Tanagaar's Arrows ghouls will be trying to assassinate the group under the belief that they're working with the Faceless Sphinx (due to some weird mix up involving an Oracle who gets their powers from the dark tapestry and a Amnesiac rogue who was an assassin/thief for the cult).
Along side this insanity, I've already underlined that there's nothing to say they have to take the orb to the surface. The core mission is to just get the reflection. Willowside will rot without the orb, but maybe if Shraen has the orb and if the urdefhan and drow fighting is imbalanced enough to severely weaken both sides enough for Tanagaar's Arrows to swoop in (especially if word travelled that a city might get a certain shift in alignment)... Well, it could be a rare good-aligned haven in the Darklands. It's unlikely my group will go for that due to the sacrifice of Willowside, but I like it being on the table.
Both maybe a bit wild, but I'm hoping with things like this to really help give players options to do good things in a terrible dark place (already had one or two players really let down they had to let a prisoner die in the urdefhan camp) and to reinforce there are good xulgaths out there.
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Wouldn't it have been easier to come up with a story where the fair clean humans were actually in the right and where the ugly smelly monsters were actually in the wrong?
Yes.
It would have been totally unsatisfying and I would have checked out long ago. My players also would be annoyed because they wouldn't have anything to dig their teeth into.
I don't want stories where the "fair clean humans" were totally absolutely 100% right and the "ugly smelly monsters" were actually totally 100% in the wrong. It may work in more dungeon-centric gameplay where the gameplay is front-and-centre, but when the story has to (at least) share the limelight it just has to do a lot better than "GOOD HUMANS, KILL BAD MONSTERS!" and I keep suspecting a lot of the story problems do boil down to the lack of commitment of going far enough.
If they want Aroden depicted as kind of a colonalist who doomed a race to devolution to help bring life to the surface surrounding the Starstone, then that's actually a really interesting take. However, where it staggers is actually because the xulgaths, run as is, are just undeniably evil. You can't even say "well, because Aroden damned the race, they were exploited by a demon" because if you take the temple in Chapter 2's accounts of the events then the Zevgavizeb worship predates even finding the vault and if you don't then the temple to the deity was erected before the orbs were taken. Otherwise you're trying to justify the signs of steel xulgath weaponry in the barracks and advanced-for-their-era bartering system within said temple. I do try to run that line of logic, but Book 5 contradicted that strong enough that it's flimsy at best.
The druid thing does need to be fixed by doing something like saying the old druid order they were a part of actually broke the orb. That they had noticed it was dying and tried a ritual, but the ritual failed and the orb disintegrated. Then the group fragmented as the larger amount decided to vacate to other pastures under the orders of a guilt-ridden druid leader. A smaller group stayed behind, hoping to keep the tide of pestilence back despite senior members of the original order saying it was hopeless and that "maybe nature needs to naturally become what it really is under this interventionalism". Not tried this and does need some polish, but it does solve two problems in one hit. It not only means players don't observe the obvious problem of "why don't we get the original orb in Absalom?" and it ups the stakes because, as one of my players put it, the xulgaths actually never accomplish anything so there's so way of knowing the orbs are even able to be broken.
Then again, I suspect things like pacing problems (like the xulgaths never achieving anything, so there's no "raising of the stakes" before the finale) are born from Paizo's fragmenting the campaign into different books by different authors approach. That said, I'm going off topic now.
Generally though, if anything, I want more grey-scale morality adventures from Paizo. Something where the players really have to think about what they're doing and how they want things to pan out. It's definitely harder and would require a ton of planning (especially on an over-arching plot scale), but it would definitely make players pay close attention to what is going on in the plot and really engage with it. As is, and I do genuinely sympathise, the plot sometimes one too many times focuses on "players as heroes" rather than "players as adventurers". Maybe that's part of their writing philosophy though?
I have really struggled with the implementation of Blightburn Sickness. What's the point when the characters have access to level 8 Remove Disease?
The adventure requires weeks if not months to complete, and each time a character feels Blightburn Sickness to be inconvenient, the party simply removes it.
But it doesn't end there. The rules for the disease say: "Creatures native to the Black Desert are immune, as are creatures who are affected by blightburn sickness but recover from it."
In other words, each party member only needs to fail a single save (to contract the disease) and a single Remove Disease (to recover from it), and then the whole concept is rendered totally moot.
I don't understand the writers' thinking here. The disease is entirely trivialized. Surely this is unintentional, given how Blightburn Radiation is played up as lethal?
Or am I missing anything?
My feeling is that the writers didn't want to make it too lethal as reduced saves and hit points for most of an AP is no bueno for reasons you are familiar with. So they talked it up, but put in rules that made it a minor nuisance the DM can make more dangerous if they feel like playing up the dangerous nature of the Blightburn radiation. So there are enough rules to let you know it is there, but not enough you'll end up dying from it.
Can someone help me know how to properly pronounce Shraen? Thanks.
I would say it rhymes with train.
I can actually answer this because I literally just hit it. In Book 2 Chapter 3, there's a book you can find that talks about the deeds of Aroden. At that point a ghost commands you to find the each of the reflections and take them to Aroden's throne in the mountains. Page 35.A narrative question. At the start of the book, Unakite tells the party "it has become clear to us that your task-bringing together the energies of the five aeon orbs in Aroden's sanctum in the Kortos mountains-is of dire importance".
But I don't recall this task (or Aroden's sanctum) having been mentioned before. Am I missing something?
Thanks! I'd totally forgotten about that bit. I'll have to make sure to continue to remind the players as they proceed.
On the topic of people catching things I've missed: Is there any lore (in the AP or some other book) explaining why the Circle of Stones took the aeon orb from Willowside? And what they're using it for?
(And although I expect this is something that hasn't been written about, I'm also curious to learn more about the origin of the aeon orbs. Where did they come from? And who placed them underground in the Vask in the first place?)
Interestingly i ran into this also, i kind of skated over the point in the speach w Utakite, but then used the hallucinating mushroom room to remind the players of it.
I'm asking just to make sure I haven't missed out on a mechanic in the game, but the Anchor Spear makes it so that an enemy who tries to climb or burrow treats the terrain as difficult if damaged by it and the reaction is used.
Can't almost any escaping monster still just burrow away with ease if it's trying to escape with the spear embedded in them? I ask as the Purple Worms or similar are likely creatures the party will encounter and I'm imagining someone tossing the spear in them to prevent their escape and them just burrowing 60 feet underground and.. Well.. Bye spear. :') Am I understanding it correctly?
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I can actually answer this because I literally just hit it. In Book 2 Chapter 3, there's a book you can find that talks about the deeds of Aroden. At that point a ghost commands you to find the each of the reflections and take them to Aroden's throne in the mountains. Page 35.A narrative question. At the start of the book, Unakite tells the party "it has become clear to us that your task-bringing together the energies of the five aeon orbs in Aroden's sanctum in the Kortos mountains-is of dire importance".
But I don't recall this task (or Aroden's sanctum) having been mentioned before. Am I missing something?
Thanks! I'd totally forgotten about that bit. I'll have to make sure to continue to remind the players as they proceed.
On the topic of people catching things I've missed: Is there any lore (in the AP or some other book) explaining why the Circle of Stones took the aeon orb from Willowside? And what they're using it for?
(And although I expect this is something that hasn't been written about, I'm also curious to learn more about the origin of the aeon orbs. Where did they come from? And who placed them underground in the Vask in the first place?)
This is hinted at in the Lost Omens World Guide:
"Eastgate’s verdant Green Ridge neighborhood is home to the Grand Holt, the oldest and largest tree on the Isle of Kortos. This multi-trunked fig tree spans several city blocks, with buildings demolished or modified to account for its increasingly fecund growth (especially in the last decade). Even as blights like the Tyrant’s Grasp and the Welt seem to rob Kortos of its vitality, the Grand Holt grows stronger year after year. A fanatic cult called the Circle of Stones cares for the tree, as well as for Iolanthe, the immortal dryad queen who dwells within."The bit in parentheses are particularly relevant, since the Empty Stones mention that the Circle of Stones stole the Aeon Orb approximately 10 years ago and they think the orb was relocated to Absalom.
As far as I know, it has never been mentioned why Grand Holt suddenly required the support of the Aeon Orb, since it had been extant even before the city of Absalom and was a massive figure in the city for ages.
Perhaps it was beginning to fail as a result of the faltering strength of the Aeon Orbs, so the Circle of Stones sought to power their singular tree directly from one of the orbs, instead of more passively be virtue of being on Kortos.
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Is Dyzallin... weak?
My players have finally made it to and through most of Shraen, and in prepping the showdown for the titular Lord of the Black Sands, I'm underwhelmed. Many of his spells feel right for his schemes, but with so many of them incapacitation or prediction based divinations that it feels like he only has a few actual options to be a threat to the PCs. Add on that his spell DC is honestly low (while technically high for his level, "At 15th level and higher, the extreme numbers become standard for spellcasters." GMG 65), and some choices like a heightened Magic Missile to a level 8 slot, I just don't know how he'll shine. [Why does he have Telepathic Demand when he doesn't have any way to telepathically contact targets? He has 5 7th level slots, but 3 of his 4 spells are likely useless against a 17th level party. I like that some of his spells are things he might be casting every day to build his power in Shraen, but it's too much.]
Can anyone who's run the fight chime in on how it went? Or someone with a better eye for numbers/boss building tell me that I'm crazy.
I'm thinking about pulling things from Book of the Dead or other sources to give him a few more interesting spells or abilities, but if he has TPK'd a bunch of parties as written I might back down.
I'm not trying to be an adversarial GM and I love my party, but I want this to be a fun and challenging encounter.
My group finished that fight about two sessions ago. They made some bad decisions, IMO, and the fight was a tough one for them. But that was more due to the elementals than him.
The fighter charged into the room, triggering the fight. Most of the elementals made it difficult for anyone else to get close, and the party was rolling poorly on their savss against the various AoE. Animal companions were getting caught up in the tornados and flung around the room, etc. I don't remember which of dzallin's spells I had used, but I had the fight almost dead before the rest of the party was able to start helping.
I have a feeling the moment my players hear the word "slaves" they are not going to to want to friend the cults. I wonder if they are just going to kill everything.
How would you all remove the slave aspects?
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Is Dyzallin... weak?
Can anyone who's run the fight chime in on how it went?
He for me felt weak, but on the other hand that Utter Despair aura played havok on my party, they hated that, so it was a hard fight for them, and they loved when he went finally down.
Also having in casting initially mislead, well, the party is going to have problems just discovering where he really is...
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I have a feeling the moment my players hear the word "slaves" they are not going to to want to friend the cults. I wonder if they are just going to kill everything.
How would you all remove the slave aspects?
I was worried also because, before this AP, we did AoA, and well, they were hating the slavers with a passion.
In this case they swallow that hard pill for a greater good (getting the orb).
Of course it was even harder because the party cleric is from Pharasma, and so many undead...
He just release some tension when they met the banshes, it was like this
Banshee - Lets do a musical contest!
Cleric - No way! I had enough! Sunburst!!!
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Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll still change 2-3 of his spells (moving Magic Missile down to 7th level, and swapping Telepathic Demand for something else), but I won't give him any other special abilities or change his DC. (And Utter Dispair combined with Repulsion might make life hard for my barbarian.)
I think I had been thinking about the fight a bit wrong. He doesn't do a ton of burst damage, but he has so many spells and abilities to keep himself safe while the elementals, visions of danger and wand of manifold missiles do damage every round. (And it might last long enough for the mummy rot to trigger.)
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How would you all remove the slave aspects?
I struggled with this. I think that in part the module sets the scene well enough to show just how out of their comfort zone the heroes are. The Urdefhan surround them in this inhospitable desert, and their alliance is tenuous at best.
I think it's totally fine for the party to not be friends with the cult. I would then find a way for them to get the information needed, and describe seeing Urdefhan scouts watching them from far sand dunes as they travel, but not forcing them through endless encounters.
Though to answer the question you directly asked, you could spin the camp to be more of a place with captives for ransom (from shraen or duergar caravans). If you're trying to remove slavery altogether from the module, include more mindless undead in Shraen, and have the Forbidden District be off limits to any living souls. (Keep the dhampir bartender, he might be the only non-circus recruit ally in the whole book.)