Spectres vs Rune Giants

[Tinalles]

We're in Book 6, exploring Xin-Shalast. Last session my party finally managed to locate some reliable information about the city, in the form of some records from a survey the rune giants conducted shortly after waking. They then made a beeline for the Spolarium, where they announced that they wanted to set loose the spectres of slain gladiators with instructions to go hunt down and kill rune giants.

I BS'ed my way through putting some challenges in the way of doing this, but amazingly, high-level adventurers have a broad range of powerful magic at their disposal. They handily accomplished each goal, and so there was nothing for it. They asked how many spectres they got, and I thought "well, these were in use for aaaages, so there should be a lot of them, so ... 1d100 per building." They managed two buildings out of a possible five and proceeded to roll 90 and 84 on their 2d100, for a total of 174 spectres set loose. And that's where we called session.

It turns out that spectres are really good against rune giants. The spectres hit on a 2+ and inflict two negative levels. Rune giants have 20 HD, so ten hits means they die and become a fresh spectre.

Meanwhile, rune giants have masterwork weapons per the default stat block. They're not magic. As incorporeal creatures, spectres take zero damage from non-magic weapons.

The rune giants' Spark Shower ability probably counts as magic, so spectres would take half damage from it (on average 35), which is not going to be enough to kill one in one hit. Furthermore, spectres are intelligent (INT 14) and organized (LE). After the first couple of rune giants, they'll probably get smart enough to send in one spectre to harass the target until they use their Spark Shower ability, whereupon the rest of them pop out of the walls and swarm the giant before its Spark Shower can recharge. If they can arrange a surprise round, that wouldn't even be needed.

The occluding field will probably shield the Spires. It keeps out ethereal creatures, and I'm pretty sure the spectres count as those, so they probably can't get up there.

I'm trying to work out what to do with all this. My first inclination is, basically, to let this work. It's cool, and I don't want to trample their agency.

But I also want to throw some complications their way. The players made it a condition of release from the spolarium that the spectres would only kill rune giants. They did not put any magical binding or enforcement of this clause in place, but since the spectres are lawful I'm inclined to think they'd honor that restriction. However, the party failed to specify that the same should apply to the spectres rising from dead rune giants, so the ones from the spolarium could easily exploit that loophole and send the ex-rune-giant spectres out to murder their way through every living creature in Xin-Shalast, slowly converting the entire place to a city of the dead.

I don't think I really want to do that, though. I want to finish this campaign, which has been running since 2012. We're so close to being done. I don't want to introduce a major new problem at this stage. I just want there to be some consequences to using the shades of the dead as a weapon.

Anyone got ideas for other ways this could play out?

TL;DR: My players set loose 174 spectres on Xin-Shalast with orders to kill Rune Giants. I don't want to just convert the whole place to spectres. What other consequences might come of this?

[Mudfoot]

If the PCs have released the spectres on condition that they kill Rune Giants, one might argue that as soon as either of the following is true, a given spectre is released:
a) it has killed (or maybe just level-drained, or directly helped in the killing of) a Rune Giant
b) all Rune Giants in Xin-Shalast are dead
c) its creator is released.

So sooner or later, many of the original will be released, and their spawn can do what they like. The originals might just dissipate, as they were created by the aura of the Spolarium and were released by the PCs, so *poof* they vanish and Pharasma can take over.

Which just leaves the Rune Giants. I suspect they'll come after the PCs as being responsible for this mess. I haven't read up on whether they can get all the way to the Pinnacle, but they no can fly and longer need to breathe, so I suspect they can. Which means undead Rune Giants popping up at inconvenient moments.

[Jhaeman]

The weird thing about this is the PCs are actually hurting themselves. The Rune Giants in the city don’t matter, and every one they kill just strengthens Karzoug and hastens his escape.

[Tinalles]

I'm pretty sure they can't get to the pinnacle -- the description on page 342 of the Anniversary Edition says "it creates a completely impassable barrier to creatures that are astrally projecting or who attempt to enter the region while ethereal or shadow walking." If I understand correctly, incorporeality comes from being partly on the ethereal plane, so I think that would hedge them out.

[Tinalles]

Whoops, double-post, sorry. I got distracted while composing the last one, left it sitting fully composed in the browser for a couple of hours before I found a moment to hit the submit button, and then didn't notice Jhaeman's response.

So, to respond to Jhaeman:

I think that the most likely explanation for this is that the players have forgotten the mechanics of Karzoug's escape. The campaign is taking a very, very long time, and it's been two or three years since the sihedron tattoos and the soul well were mentioned. Maybe three and a half. Book 5 alone took about 2 years, if I recall correctly.

For that matter, it didn't occur to me that killing the rune giants would help power his escape until you mentioned it! So I can't blame them too much for forgetting.

I think, in-character, they saw that killing off rune giants would disrupt Karzoug's control of the army of giants and cause chaos amongst his minions. That's all they're really going for, I think.

[Askar Avari]

I think the solution here is self-emergent.

1) The military problem is fixed, as it were. Rune giants in Xin-Shalast are handled. There may be some wraiths to deal with later down the line, but this plan genuinely worked.

2) Their deaths will hasten Karzoug's return. Remind them of this! And while things are easier on them, give them only a very limited amount of time left to finish the campaign in-game.

As a side-note, incorporeal creatures are not ethereal - that was true, if I remember correctly, in 3.5, but not Pathfinder. These spectres likely could enter the Occluding Field as-written, but you could simply say it keeps them out anyway - or, more likely, doesn't keep them out, but kills them for being inside without a ring.