Part Six: Pinnacle of Avarice

[Nimor Starseeker]

I am game mastering this Pathfinder adventure. We are in book 6, part 6.

The occlusion Field at the Spires of Xin Shalast prevents teleportation and one of the players characters has built his monk with dimensional door feat chain, where he teleports next to opponents and full atacks them all in one full round action. This will nerf his character tactics concept for the rest of the book except X14 and the final encounter.
-How do I break it down to him nicely?
-Also, I think that he has to make the attempt, by spending his action to find this out. It feels a bit mean, but the book says, teleportation does not work here.

[Askar Avari]

People who invest heavily in a particular concept get hit hard when that effect is controlled for. My party relies heavily on bard's escape to position in combat, and it utterly field them in their first battle of the Pinnacle.

- The way it'll get broken to him (or anyone in the party attempting a teleport), is watching a spell or SLA they attempt to use suddenly fail. It's definitely a bad feeling, but unless it was saved for a particularly compromising situation, this should be before they get in too deep.

- It's possible the party recognizes the dimensional lock over the region before attempting it in combat. For instance, something like arcane sight or greater arcane sight could tell them this, as could a legend lore on the Occlusion Field.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Note that wearing a Sihedron ring/medallion will let characters ignore the Field. Chances are the PCs will be picking up and using S rings/medallions anyway because the Field is not a pleasant effect.
There is a question of whether this only protects against the damaging effects of the OF, or whether 'ignore the effects of the OF', means literally that. I have seen people argue both, and I am inclined to use the latter interpretation. Seems unfortunate if powerful spellcasters in the service of Karzoug can't TP around. IMG it was a moot point because the PCs just tanked the field and sped through the Pinnacle and killed Karzoug.

On a more general note, stop feeling so guilty. Sometimes PCs are put in less than favorable situations and they have to get out of them, either by using spells/items/tactics made to handle the situation, or by gritting their teeth and toughing it out. This is a core part of the game.

Specifically screwing over a PC all the time is a dick move*, but occasionally throwing a curve ball at a player is good. Even better, you can point to the adventure and say "I didn't write this to mess with you, it's in the book".

* I played a supercharger once. Throughout his career he managed to charge twice. Apart from that there was ALWAYS some reason he couldn't, like terrain or obstacles or people in the way or whatever. And one of those two times the target had Side-step Charge. The DM claimed it wasn't on purpose but you begin to wonder.