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Now that I have read through the scenario, I have an additional question in reference to the ritual. If I have multiple secondary casters, with varying levels of success, do I take the better or stack them together?
A couple trains of thought her
1)take the highest level of success.
or
2) keep note of who got what and see what washes out. Say one critical success, which is +2 circ bonus to primary check, and then a failure, -4 circ penalty to the primary check, would be a net -2 penalty.
kind of harsh, but guessing that is the gravity of rituals.
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Now that I have read through the scenario, I have an additional question in reference to the ritual. If I have multiple secondary casters, with varying levels of success, do I take the better or stack them together?
A couple trains of thought her
1)take the highest level of success.
or
2) keep note of who got what and see what washes out. Say one critical success, which is +2 circ bonus to primary check, and then a failure, -4 circ penalty to the primary check, would be a net -2 penalty.
kind of harsh, but guessing that is the gravity of rituals.
As I read the Rituals Rules, each Critical Success by a secondary caster gets a +2, each Failure a -4, each Critical Failure a 'decrease level of success by one'.
Primary Caster: Occultism or Religion
Secondary Casters: Occultism, Religion, possibly Athletics and Nature. So up to four secondary casters - each crit success gives a +2, each failure a -4, each crit fail is really bad. Could get as good as +8, as bad as -16, or as awful as 'loose four levels of success'.
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Do the players have to deal with the disseases that they may have from the zombies of the second encounter during the 8 day journey to return from the barrow to the Farheaven Clan village?
The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:
Death
Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions
Curses
I count it as a negative condition, so yes I would of have them resolve the condition prior to leaving the table.
I would have it play out on the 8 days back and allow them a save as appropriate. IIRC it was 1 per day...
If they would have failed on their way back and I would have gave them a chance to purchase https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=73 or alchemical goods to assist in removal of conditions.
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I have a question about the haunt.
On higher tier, how many action does it have?
In lower tier it says '1 action' but on the higher tier, instead if saying that it has the symbol that represent 1 action.
Routine This section describes what a complex hazard does on each of its turns during an encounter; the number in parentheses after the word “Routine” indicates how many actions the hazard can use each turn. Simple hazards don’t have this entry.
IMO, it looks like an editing error.
How I feel it is, the haunt, regardless of tier, gets one action per round to use its mental attack.
Organized Play Developer
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1) 30 feet seems reasonable for Iverri's attack. Apologies for the omission.
2) Circumstance bonuses don't stack with other circumstance bonuses. Same with circumstance penalties. So multiple secondary casters may have redundant results. Usually a ritual *requires* one or more secondary casters to attempt it at all, but in this case they are optional. So, a PC who is not very good at the skill they're attempting as a secondary caster might do more harm than good. The goal in this case was to provide a few more options for performing the ritual, as not all parties will have folks who are good at Occultism or Religion. Constructive feedback on this "variation" of a ritual is always appreciated.
3) As for the diseases, that's more an "OP Guide" question than a question for this scenario. Unless the scenario says something specific about when/how to handle the checks, might as well follow the rules from the guide. There's a lot of dangerous stuff in this region... for some reason. Advise your players to be prepared!
4) The haunt has 1 action. Looks like "1 action" got replaced with the action symbol at some point during the process.
Hope that helps. Thanks for running the adventure!
Designer
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Another question about the haunt - Players gained the stupified condition, but it does not have a duration (and is not one of the conditions that states it is automatically reduced each round). Does this go away once they leave the area of the haunt (and the text with the susceptibility to good damage seems to indicate) or is there a duration that is missing?
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I noticed the chronicle sheet has no items listed, not even the wand of widening (burning hands) given at the end. Was that intentional or were they missed due to an error?
The lack of items isn’t an error. Only few chronicles actually have items. The widening wands are common items of level 4 and 6, so normally available to half the characters playing and perhaps considered not appropriate to be made available earlier than those levels by being on the chronicle sheet.
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Venture-Captain, Colorado—Denver
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While this is true the fact that you get this at the end of the scenario makes it a bit pointless.I noticed the chronicle sheet has no items listed, not even the wand of widening (burning hands) given at the end. Was that intentional or were they missed due to an error?The lack of items isn’t an error. Only few chronicles actually have items. The widening wands are common items of level 4 and 6, so normally available to half the characters playing and perhaps considered not appropriate to be made available earlier than those levels by being on the chronicle sheet.
So confused about the rewards mentioned at the end. Are we supposed to give players those items for free? If not, what are they there for?
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Any of those 'post adventure named rewards, that don't appear on a chronicle sheet' (Grim Symphony also did this, IIRC) are best viewed as narrative/story telling flavor or as someone (author/developer/editors/someone) wanting to 'remind'/'highlight' some piece of equipment that people might want to consider buying at this level.
They don't get it for free; its not on the chronicle because its already available, etc. Just as mental nudge to consider that item.
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Any of those 'post adventure named rewards, that don't appear on a chronicle sheet' (Grim Symphony also did this, IIRC) are best viewed as narrative/story telling flavor or as someone (author/developer/editors/someone) wanting to 'remind'/'highlight' some piece of equipment that people might want to consider buying at this level.
They don't get it for free; its not on the chronicle because its already available, etc. Just as mental nudge to consider that item.
If that is the purpose then, at least for me, its a complete failure.
I don't even remember what the item at the end of Dirge was (and I played it about a week ago). And the opinion of some random person as to what I should buy (with absolutely no knowledge of my character) is pretty much of no value at all to me.
What would be nice (at least to me) would be if the item had some additional flavour (NOT mechanics, I'm happy with flavour) and WAS on the chronicle sheet. I just played The Star Crossed Court and one of our treasure bundles was a Diplomat's Badge. As it happens, the next purchase I'll be making for that character is going to be a Diplomat's Badge :-). It would have been nice if this came with an Iruxi flavoured description on the chronicle sheet.
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Giving an item to the PCs early in the scenario so they can use it is a reward. Put an item on the chronicle sheet that characters wouldn't normally have access to is a reward. Giving the characters an item in the conclusion text that does not appear on the chronicle is not a reward. It might as well as said we get a banquet in our honor or a hearty handshake from the Venture-Captain for completing our mission. Its a nice narrative but meaningless in the grand scheme.
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Blightburst (disease) When a blighted fungus leshy dies, a burst of rotted compost explodes from its body, dealing 3d6 slashing and 1d6 poison damage to each creature in a 30-foot
emanation. This area then fills with blighted fungi, becoming difficult terrain until the fungi wither 24 hours later.
This is the high tier/high CP low-tier version. With 3 of them that can potentially chain kill each other (they are susceptible to the slashing, but not poison), it's a lot of non-avoidable damage.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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When I ran it (high tier) the party had a lot of problems with the auto-damage. When I later played it (low tier, high CP) the GM instead used their spore cloud when they died. I thought that was weird and tried some leading questions about it, but didn't want to call it up directly.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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We ran this twice this week. High tier table had plenty of healing, but the situation still felt sticky and threatening.
Low tier: 2 dead, 4 ran away. They had the 3 blighted fungus leshies from CP scaling.
It seems like a mistake that the leshies have a huge AoE damage ability that doesn't give a save - and turning the terrain into difficult terrain means that PCs have harder time to avoid the AoE. At 12d6 damage total for 3 explosions, that's an average of 42 dmg dealt - enough to drop a roughly average level 3-4 character. Combined with the fact that the boss also has AoE capabilities, this can easily turn into a TPK.
EDIT: Actually, I want to emphasize that this is one of the rare scenarios where -actual character death- is a very real possibility. Normally, you take a hit? You go down to dying one. There's couple of rounds time to save you.
Here? You take an unlucky hit and drop to 0. Just 1 failed flat check and 2 explosions later, you're dead.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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That... Doesn't seem right. I mean, I can see the argument: "You're dying 1, then you take 7 points of piercing damage and 3 points of poison damage, moving you to dying 2 and then dying 3".
However, it's just 1 source of damage. If a devil attacks you with a flaming sword that also deals evil damage and you're at 1 hp, do you go:
dying 1 from the 8 points of slashing damage, dying 2 from the 3 points of fire damage, and dying 3 from the evil damage?
What if it's a crit, do you go:
Dying 2 because of a crit (from the slashing damage) and dying 4 because of the crit with fire damage (and dying 6 because of the crit from evil damage except you're already dead)?
Yeah, no that can't be right, and nothing in the rules seems to suggest that. It's an explosion, it happens to deal two different damage types but at the same time, it's just 1 source/instance of dmg, so you advance dying by 1. It would be different if it dealt persistent poison damage, or poisoned you with poison that you'd have to save versus to avoid taking extra damage from the poison.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Do the players have to deal with the disseases that they may have from the zombies of the second encounter during the 8 day journey to return from the barrow to the Farheaven Clan village?
The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:
Death
Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions
CursesI count it as a negative condition, so yes I would of have them resolve the condition prior to leaving the table.
This isn't correct. You missed the first section of the same part of the guide that handles negative conditions:
The Pathfinder Society takes care of its members by removing most ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions and repairing agents’ damaged gear to the condition it was in at the start of the scenario.
ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions include diseases, society takes care of them once you get to the lodge.
Meanwhile, the negative conditions part in
"Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions"
refers to permanent negative conditions (not just permanent petrification and "non permanent polymorphs and non permanent other negative conditions".
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Do the players have to deal with the disseases that they may have from the zombies of the second encounter during the 8 day journey to return from the barrow to the Farheaven Clan village?
The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:
Death
Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions
CursesI count it as a negative condition, so yes I would of have them resolve the condition prior to leaving the table.
This isn't correct. You missed the first section of the same part of the guide that handles negative conditions:
The Pathfinder Society takes care of its members by removing most ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions and repairing agents’ damaged gear to the condition it was in at the start of the scenario.ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions include diseases, society takes care of them once you get to the lodge.
Meanwhile, the negative conditions part in
"Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions"
refers to permanent negative conditions (not just permanent petrification and "non permanent polymorphs and non permanent other negative conditions".
I don't think that's correct. The adventure doesn't end until you make it back to Nelket. You have to deal with the disease during the week's journey from the barrow back to Nelket. Both Zombie Rot and Demonplague can kill a PC before they reach Nelket. Page 5 of the scenario indicates the barrow is 8 days away from Nelket and the end stage of both diseases is 5 days.
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Do the players have to deal with the disseases that they may have from the zombies of the second encounter during the 8 day journey to return from the barrow to the Farheaven Clan village?
The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:
Death
Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions
CursesI count it as a negative condition, so yes I would of have them resolve the condition prior to leaving the table.
This isn't correct. You missed the first section of the same part of the guide that handles negative conditions:
The Pathfinder Society takes care of its members by removing most ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions and repairing agents’ damaged gear to the condition it was in at the start of the scenario.ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions include diseases, society takes care of them once you get to the lodge.
Meanwhile, the negative conditions part in
"Permanent petrification, polymorph effects, or negative conditions"
refers to permanent negative conditions (not just permanent petrification and "non permanent polymorphs and non permanent other negative conditions".
Ah, good catch.
I would still have them play out the return to Nelket, especially if they were diseased.
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I don't think that's correct. The adventure doesn't end until you make it back to Nelket. You have to deal with the disease during the week's journey from the barrow back to Nelket. Both Zombie Rot and Demonplague can kill a PC before they reach Nelket. Page 5 of the scenario indicates the barrow is 8 days away from Nelket and the end stage of both diseases is 5 days.
Tier 5-6, full table, but no cleric. The party fighter-orc became infected with Ghast Fever, and on the way back roll three(!) 1 on the cube in a row to resist the disease. He died and was reborn as a ghast at midnight on the fourth day, and his brother, a half-orc barbarian, had to kill him with tears in his eyes. Great session. Thus, the probability of death from illness on the way back is extremely small, but it is quite possible. Don't ignore this.
P.S. Technically, Nelket is marketed as "god caller", which implies that she is a summoner. Since Dolok Darkur is of the beast type, therefore, Nelket is a primal caster. If you need to close a disease problem, I believe you can count it as a 5th-level primal spellcaster to pay for "remove disease".|
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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P.S. Technically, Nelket is marketed as "god caller", which implies that she is a summoner. Since Dolok Darkur is of the beast type, therefore, Nelket is a primal caster. If you need to close a disease problem, I believe you can count it as a 5th-level primal spellcaster to pay for "remove disease".
Reminds me of when a character needed a raise dead but the settlement they came to had no cleric, only a druid. I (GM) asked my VC and he let the druid cast reincarnate for the duration of the scenario, but had the char go back to normal afterwards.