Fires of Creation: Mapping area B7 [SPOILERS AHOY!!]


Iron Gods

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Now that multiple groups have done this part, I have a question about how GM's handled this room.

The habitat dome is 350ft in diameter (actually too small for what it is supposed to be). Mapped out for miniatures this works out to almost 6ft (1.8 meters) in diameter. That is far larger then most gaming tables.

And remember, this is just one room.

So, what I want to ask, is how have other GMs handled this mapping challenge?


I chronicled the adventures of my party in Fires of Creation. I would have chronicled more, but they went off the rails in Lords of Rust and I was too busy improvising to keep chronicling.

The party reached area B7 in the 7th game session. I will quote the relevant part below, but first some introductions:
Boffin is a dwarf gunslinger and smith. She had learned gunslinging from NPC Gerrol Sonder, who I switched from rogue to gunslinger. Boffin had good perception and learned Disable Device from a campaign trait, so she was also the party trapfinder.
Elric is a half-elf magus, the main offensive spellcaster in the party.
Kirii is a strix skald, the main defensive spellcaster in the party. As a strix, she has darkvision and can fly.
Kheld is a human fighter. This was the player's first roleplaying game and he was fairly clueless.
Val Baine is an NPC human bloodrager, thrown in as a 4th party member before Kheld joined.

I think the skulks had warned the party about the skeletons. They came in armed with bludgeoning weapons and holy water.

The party avoided the immobile ghelarn hidden in the sand in B6 by following the footprints of a previous expedition. When the party encountered the 1st skeleton, I put down a playmat that represented 110 feet by 110 feet with the skeleton in the center. I said that anything beyond the playmat was invisible in the darkness, even to Kirii's 60-foot darkvision.

Iron Gods among Scientists #22 wrote:

The footprints went in several directions as the previous expeditions had returned to the cave repeatedly in their explorations. Following a glint of green light, they found a kasatha skeleton standing immobile, its eye sockets occasionally flaring green. After talking a round or two, they decided that the lack of action did not mean it was harmless. Kirii flew over it and dropped a flack of holy water on it. It hissed and bubbled and fell apart into individual bones.

They were correct about skeletons not being harmless. The still one was bait. The other skeletons were converging on its location. I rolled nine d12s, which came up as 1,1,1,3,3,5,7,7,7. That was the number of rounds before the other skeletons reached it. Thus, the next round, three more skeletons surrounded them, but they had double-moved so they did not attack yet. One was adjacent to Elric, one adjacent to Val, and one had run short of movement before reaching the party.

Kheld threw a holy water flask at the skeleton that stood alone and missed, but the flask landed in the sand and did not break. Boffin shot that one and blew away half its ribcage with 3 damage. Elric stepped back 5 feet from his skeleton and cast Magic Missile to finish off the one Boffin had damaged.

Val yelled "Nerdrage!", went into bloodrage, and swung at her skeleton with her flail. She missed, and realized that she was standing adjacent to an unhurt monster that had four attacks per round. She panicked and ran away (regular move, not a run nor 5-foot step). The skeleton missed its attack of opportunity, because Val had upgraded to medium armor (I changed the homebrew archetype to allow medium armor again, but she has arcane spell failure checks in it).

From the air Kirii threw holy water at the skeleton that had attacked Val and demolished it. The remaining skeleton full-attacked Kheld, but could not penetrate his heavy armor. Yet Kheld missed him, too, and stepped back. Boffin reloaded and Elric tried Acid Splash, which was partially effective. Val lapsed into post-rage fatigue, but demonstrated her Steady Hand ability that lets her shoot without fatigue penalty. She took out that damaged skeleton with Gerrol Sonder's pistol.

The party waited, but no second wave of skeletons came. The round-3 skeletons were meeting up out of sight with the round-5 skeleton. Boffin could hear the clatter of their bones. The party advanced to put a rock outcropping to their backs. Val reloaded and fetched the unbroken flask of holy water before joining the others, leaving Kheld by the rock outcropping out of range of her light spell. Elric had low-light vision and decided to memorize other cantrips besides Light that morning. Kheld secured his sunrod to his belt rather than rely on Val for light anymore. Boffin used her Mountaineering trait to climb the rock outcropping.

Kirii flew in aerial reconnaissance and spotted three skeletons together. The skeletons spotted her, too, and began moving toward the party. She spotted a round-7 skeleton approaching too, and cast Grease under the group of three. One fell immediately, one fell on its turn when trying to move, and one continued toward the party. That one and three round-7 skeletons reached the party. One hit Elric for 5 damage, one missed Kheld, and the rest had double-moved.
...

After the battle:

Iron Gods among Scientists #22 wrote:

Kirii explored the entire habitat dome from the air. Strix have darkvision. She confirmed that no skeletons remained and spotted two features of interest: a cave to the northeast and a cluster of footprints to the southeast. The party went to the footprints.

Val and Kheld spotted the sliver of light from a rock wall. Boffin felt the doors behind the hologram and felt around until she found an access-card slot. She used her access card and the doors opened to reveal a biolock chamber.


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I ran my game online on Fantasy Grounds so it was not an issue for us.

You can abstract it a bit and just use desert maps for the part the party's miniatures are on and use descriptions for where enemies off the map are. perhaps using a smaller scale map side by side without minis but just tiny markers for mobile things. This could allow you to make the dome area bigger if you wanted.

Alternately just run with the biggest map you have.

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