| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Awaken Portal activate the initial portal and the connected portal for at least a month.
I don't mind the characters going through into an unknown place they have to prepare to battle to secure, but the Awaken Portal ritual costs money to provide nothing. There is no real time problems traveling to the levels by walking. There is nothing urgent or necessary driving you to activate these portals. I'm not sure why they put them in there at this point. Seems like it was a waste of words for something that doesn't add any value to the adventure and isn't necessary.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Inside the Abomination Vaults, Awaken Portal costs nothing.
My players use the portals. It's faster to move with them than by foot. But I force them not to sleep inside the Abomination Vaults, and as such they have to go back and forth every day. I also give XP for each awaken portal.
In my opinion, it really depends on how your players explore the dungeon. If they just move from room to room, going down after each floor is cleared up, they won't have any use out of them. Even having a glance at a lower level is useless, as it's suicidal to go down 2 floors without gaining the appropriate levels.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One thing I have done in my 6 player PbP game is jumbled up encounter difficulty so that there is less horizontal consistency. For example, I made the Fogfen monster a sea drake with the weak template applied who has a clipped wing and can't fly like other drakes. The players don't know that it has the weak template and can't fully fly yet as they have only seen it through the thick evening fog, as it leaves its cave to go out and hunt, while they hid a decent way off.
Many of the encounters deeper in the tower I don't adjust at all for 6 players, especially if my party is exploring a level or even 2 too low, but I will make them more dangerous as time goes on and Belcorra's forces receive reinforcements from below (when and where that makes narrative sense). The only exception is solo monsters that I want to be spooky I either add the elite template to them or pick a different but similar monster for. I also have some people in my play by post that are running the adventure themselves as GMs (play by post, and behind our pace), so I feel pretty comfortable changing up the monsters to keep things fresh.
Because of this, and the fact that the party is almost always interested in talking first and avoiding direct conflict, my party is very excited by the prospect of being able to move around from floor to floor quickly and without having to say hello to every creepy creature that they manage to form a tentative or temporary truce with. Basically, the players have decided to make finding these portals and activating them a party quest.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A style of exploration that follows missions and makes deals with creatures along the way without killing them. Then you might be wanting to be able to go and talk to someone on one level without taking a path that makes it super obvious where you were.
The hub is on the second level. It connects to all the portals and that could completely trap the party much too deep in the dungeon, not just because the monsters are too powerful, but because some areas are completely blocked off from the surface and opening the portal from the other end will take an hour with a much higher DC, depending on how deep it is.
I am all for letting PCs explore vertically in this mega dungeon, but jumping down multiple levels is going to be a big problem, for the narrative of the adventure and because the PCs will quickly trap themselves in an area they are 3 or 4 levels behind.
You really don’t want your party jumping past level 4 or 7. Making them find the portals first keeps that from happening. The other problem is determining what portal connects to the hub when your party opens one there?
And once one is open, it’s open for a month, so if you make them 2 way portals instead of one way, then anything below that discovers the opened portal, or chases the PCs back to the portal room is now on the second level.
These are all problems that you seem creative enough to fix, but the end result is almost 99% just moving the party to a location they are not nearly ready for, and that they very likely can’t get themselves out of.
The portals are an integral part of the vault because they teach the players about the original design of the vaults and the changing ecology of the dungeon. The party can activate them for free(except the top one) and they don’t take anything away from the story or the player experience.
As a GM it seems like you want them to result in more mischievous fun, but be careful assuming that is what the players want from them, especially as even skipping over 1 level is likely to be lethal.
Does it help to think of them more as a mystery for the PCs to uncover what rooms needed to be able to quickly access the secret boat dock and to help them see the more nuanced and shifting needs of the whole adventure’s dungeon ecology? It is a narrative adventure element with some mechanical utility if the party wants to use it. Whereas letting them find the ritual on level 3, then return to the portal room on level 2 and then skip down to bottom levels is entirely a lethal GM fiat trap.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And once one is open, it’s open for a month, so if you make them 2 way portals instead of one way, then anything below that discovers the opened portal, or chases the PCs back to the portal room is now on the second level.
Where does "open for a month" come from? Per the portal ritual:
Critical Success You awaken the portal. If its other side is awakened, the portal can be used normally and won’t deactivate naturally. If its other side is not awakened, this side remains awakened for 1 year, possibly allowing you enough time to find and awaken the connecting portal.
Success As critical success, but if the portal’s other side is not awakened, this side remains awakened for only 1d6 days before it fades and falls dormant again.
And once one is open, it’s open for a month, so if you make them 2 way portals instead of one way, then anything below that discovers the opened portal, or chases the PCs back to the portal room is now on the second level.Where does "open for a month" come from? Per the portal ritual:
Critical Success You awaken the portal. If its other side is awakened, the portal can be used normally and won’t deactivate naturally. If its other side is not awakened, this side remains awakened for 1 year, possibly allowing you enough time to find and awaken the connecting portal.
Success As critical success, but if the portal’s other side is not awakened, this side remains awakened for only 1d6 days before it fades and falls dormant again.
** spoiler omitted **
Sorry, I mis-wrote that, I meant a year on a critical succes. Which makes the point of letting you open the portal from the hub without finding the other side more dangerous and a little confusing. DO you make the portal one way? This would be bad because opening it from the other side is going to have a higher DC and potentially trap the party.
If you let it open them 2 ways, you have basically reactivated all of the portals at once and there are residents of the dungeon that know about them, not to mention the lower level party portals down to a level too deep, opens some doors, encounters a monster they can't handle and now that creature has a direct path to the second floor. Even if it is just for a couple of days, it is going to be a problem with little reward.
Sorry, I mis-wrote that, I meant a year on a critical succes. Which makes the point of letting you open the portal from the hub without finding the other side more dangerous and a little confusing. DO you make the portal one way? This would be bad because opening it from the other side is going to have a higher DC and potentially trap the party.If you let it open them 2 ways, you have basically reactivated all of the portals at once and there are residents of the dungeon that know about them, not to mention the lower level party portals down to a level too deep, opens some doors, encounters a monster they can't handle and now that creature has a direct path to the second floor. Even if it is just for a couple of days, it is going to be a problem with little reward.
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. If you activate the level 2 side of a portal when you first find it, you still have no usable portal. You can't use it to teleport to the other end, and critters (or you) who find the other end can't use it to teleport to level 2. However, having activated the level 2 side of the portal, once you find the other end (assuming it doesn't take more than 1d6 days or a year, depending on level of success at the 2 level portal) and activate that, you have an open two way portal that can be used to travel in either direction at any time. Theoretically, a "monster" could use it to teleport to level 2 and wreak havoc either there or on level 1 or even in Otari, but iirc all the circles on lower levels are behind secret or locked doors, and IME most "monsters" don't bother looking for secret doors or the keys to locked doors.
Nothing in the description of these portals (the ones that use the level 2 nexus) suggests to me that they are anything other than two way. Other portal links might be one way, if the description so specifies.
Zap started this post asking “what if?” The portals could be opened from only one side. I was responding to why that idea would take a lot of work not to lead to disaster for the party.
I see.
What would be needed to make the teleportation chambers an integral (=useful, purposeful) part of the Vault?
Let me see if I can make this more clear because I only answered this question.
It would be more integral if encounters were tied to the players going through the portal like a hit team that had to clear the area as soon as they came through. Like they have to activate the portal system to enter certain areas and they have to be prepared to fight as soon as they go through the portal to secure the other side.
That would make them more useful and integral to the adventure.
Right now they are completely unnecessary and forgettable. My players haven't even bothered to think about them because movement through the levels is easy with no motivation to activate the portal system to do so.
Maybe it will be more necessary in the third module, but in the first and second they are irrelevant.
I think they are very intentionally a fun side quest/narrative adventure element for parties that want to dig deeper into the story elements of the abomination vaults. If they were mandatory to use, or even highly advantageous to use, you would need to make sure that at least one player, but probably two are building to be good at rituals.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think they are very intentionally a fun side quest/narrative adventure element for parties that want to dig deeper into the story elements of the abomination vaults. If they were mandatory to use, or even highly advantageous to use, you would need to make sure that at least one player, but probably two are building to be good at rituals.
Zapp is asking how to make them more useful and integral.
I know they are some tacked on side element that you don't even need to think about. But Zapp wants to make them matter. If you want to make something matter, you tie it to encounters that the players have to engage with.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my opinion, it really depends on how your players explore the dungeon. If they just move from room to room, going down after each floor is cleared up, they won't have any use out of them. Even having a glance at a lower level is useless, as it's suicidal to go down 2 floors without gaining the appropriate levels.Sorry but I don't follow - which style of exploring the dungeon makes the portals useful?
As said above, my players make extensive use of the portal system as I force them to sleep in town. So, every time they want to explore the Gauntlight, they have to go back to where they were, using the portal being the fastest way to do so.
I've given my players information about the portals in the vaults with the Awaken Portal ritual, as it's logical for Belcorra to keep notes of her portal network. So they know about a tavern, a prison, and so on.I've also added a few more destinations, and sometimes the portals vary. For example, Chafkhem is supposed to leave to Osirion. Considering he's a (quite) high level wizard, with some knowledge about teleportation, I decided he modified the portal next to his room to get back to Osirion. Disrupting the portal system at the same time than opening a way to his (very) old lab.
Of course, he also designed a small trap for my players, because evil has to be evil. And my players are currently chasing him in Osirion to make him pay.
So, there are things you can do with the portals. But I agree with you: You have to make them work. But at the same time, I prefer a dungeon with a bit too many features than a dungeon too empty. It gives me room for extra adventures. And it also gives the feeling that the dungeon hasn't been created just to be explored. It had purposes, even if now they may seem useless or of low interest.
I think they are very intentionally a fun side quest/narrative adventure element for parties that want to dig deeper into the story elements of the abomination vaults. If they were mandatory to use, or even highly advantageous to use, you would need to make sure that at least one player, but probably two are building to be good at rituals.Zapp is asking how to make them more useful and integral.
I know they are some tacked on side element that you don't even need to think about. But Zapp wants to make them matter. If you want to make something matter, you tie it to encounters that the players have to engage with.
The portals themselves are not a tacked on element to the adventure. They exist because the dungeon itself needed them when it was built and it showcases that the PCs are adventuring in home/former home of a powerful caster. Saying they don’t matter is like saying the altar to empty death doesn’t matter, or the equipment of Volluk doesn’t matter either. The party can learn quite a bit about Belcorra and the dungeon as a whole just from learning about the portals.
If you want your players to have a reason for activating the portals, I think a better approach is to tie a character reward/rare or uncommon character option/treasure to activating them than letting them be activated from one side only. Having players trap themselves in levels of the dungeon way out of their league is going to feel like GM cruelty, not a fun plot element.
One question came to mind last night that I haven't had time to research:
Also, IIRC, when you find the portal activation ritual writeup, you also find Belcorra's notes on where the portals are and to which other portal they connect.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think they are very intentionally a fun side quest/narrative adventure element for parties that want to dig deeper into the story elements of the abomination vaults. If they were mandatory to use, or even highly advantageous to use, you would need to make sure that at least one player, but probably two are building to be good at rituals.Zapp is asking how to make them more useful and integral.
I know they are some tacked on side element that you don't even need to think about. But Zapp wants to make them matter. If you want to make something matter, you tie it to encounters that the players have to engage with.
The portals themselves are not a tacked on element to the adventure. They exist because the dungeon itself needed them when it was built and it showcases that the PCs are adventuring in home/former home of a powerful caster. Saying they don’t matter is like saying the altar to empty death doesn’t matter, or the equipment of Volluk doesn’t matter either. The party can learn quite a bit about Belcorra and the dungeon as a whole just from learning about the portals.
If you want your players to have a reason for activating the portals, I think a better approach is to tie a character reward/rare or uncommon character option/treasure to activating them than letting them be activated from one side only. Having players trap themselves in levels of the dungeon way out of their league is going to feel like GM cruelty, not a fun plot element.
What are you saying? Those comparisons aren't equal at all. Volluk is an enemy with key information protecting a key part of the adventure in the first module. The Altar of Empty death is required to open the next level of the adventure.
The teleportation portals are something that you can completely ignore and have no effect on the adventure.
My players aren't concerned with the teleportation portals. There's no time limit on the dungeon. It's not hard to move down to a given level back and forth. There's nothing to encourage them to check the teleportation portals. They are ignoring them because they are optional.
Please stop trying to make something other than it is. The entire reason Zapp is asking for how to make the teleportation portals a useful and integral part of the adventure is because they are not. This thread would not even exist if teleportation portals carried equal weight to Volluk or the Altar of Empty Death.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you want your players to have a reason for activating the portals, I think a better approach is to tie a character reward/rare or uncommon character option/treasure to activating them than letting them be activated from one side only.
Well, they get 30 xp per portal, so it is easy and free xp (apart from them adding to the atmosphere and whatnot).
But I like your idea of a reward - maybe there's a footnote by the ritual saying something like "I had Volluk take a break from brushing his hair to reactivate all the portals these past weeks, just to be sure they are in perfect working order, and after he was done he said something peculiar happened: when the last portal was activated he felt a strange tingling, and he now thinks he has acquired some minor teleportation power. Could this be the Light affecting the portals somehow, or has all the perfume that drow drenches himself in befuddled his senses? Need to investigate this further."
I think they are very intentionally a fun side quest/narrative adventure element for parties that want to dig deeper into the story elements of the abomination vaults. If they were mandatory to use, or even highly advantageous to use, you would need to make sure that at least one player, but probably two are building to be good at rituals.Zapp is asking how to make them more useful and integral.
I know they are some tacked on side element that you don't even need to think about. But Zapp wants to make them matter. If you want to make something matter, you tie it to encounters that the players have to engage with.
The portals themselves are not a tacked on element to the adventure. They exist because the dungeon itself needed them when it was built and it showcases that the PCs are adventuring in home/former home of a powerful caster. Saying they don’t matter is like saying the altar to empty death doesn’t matter, or the equipment of Volluk doesn’t matter either. The party can learn quite a bit about Belcorra and the dungeon as a whole just from learning about the portals.
If you want your players to have a reason for activating the portals, I think a better approach is to tie a character reward/rare or uncommon character option/treasure to activating them than letting them be activated from one side only. Having players trap themselves in levels of the dungeon way out of their league is going to feel like GM cruelty, not a fun plot element.
What are you saying? Those comparisons aren't equal at all. Volluk is an enemy with key information protecting a key part of the adventure in the first module. The Altar of Empty death is required to open the next level of the adventure.
The teleportation portals are something that you can completely ignore and have no effect on the adventure.
My players aren't concerned with the teleportation portals. There's no time limit on the dungeon. It's not hard to...
I was typing in a hurry and maybe didn't express myself clearly. I didn't mean the items Volluk is personally carrying, I meant all the details of the rooms B1 through B4 in his old quarters that establish what kind of person he was and what work he was doing for Belcorra. And as far as the Altar of Empty Death, I was actually talking about A15 and beginning to piece together that Belcorra was a pretty open devotee of nhimbaloth.
It is perfectly fine for your party to pay no attention to the portals, although they are an extra XP opportunity. It is perfectly fine to want to work them more into your personal story, as Zapp wants to.
I have even jumbled some of the encounter difficulties of my own run through this adventure to break up the sense of each level corresponding directly to a specific character level to both encourage and not punish vertical exploration.
I just recommend against the specific approach of letting the portals open from only one end, as the hub really complicates where the players might end up, and it has all the makings of a party death trap.
And I think taking some time to appreciate what the portals are doing in the adventure narratively can be made worthwhile for PCs relatively easily, by helping them understand the ecology of the dungeon.
One optional rule that could be interesting for the AVs is Proficiency without Level. It would allow the portals to be either always activated or at least activable from only one side and then you let the players dive into the dungeon the way they want as every encounter is one they can win.
You still take how they work for granted.
I am asking: how should they work for the players to be tempted to actively use them?
The first thing is then obviously: you CAN use them without having to find the other side first, because as long as that requirement remains, they're functionally useless as anything else than background story and decoration.
This is only true if your party is traveling through the mega dungeon level by level, killing everything that is remotely dangerous on each level, and not really interacting with anything socially, before going down to the next level. I think that is a faulty assumption, one discouraged by the story of the book, and the easiest thing to change to give the portals some practical purpose.
All you have to do is vary up the difficulty of some encounters so that it becomes clear that certain monsters should not be fought right away, and then perhaps lessen the difficulty on some encounters that lead the party to the various portals and a lot of opportunities open up for moving around the dungeon secretly and accomplishing various tasks behind different creatures backs. Especially in books 2 and 3 there are plenty of options for creating uneasy alliances that can benefit the heroes and give them reasons for wanting to get past certain levels without drawing attention to their passage.
Alternatively, If your plan is to make the portals something that can be jumped through from one side, I would probably remove the hub on the second floor and just have some of the portals directly connect to each other and not have any of them bypass any major narrative blocks or more than a single floor down.
However, I think that idea will make the party incredibly suspicious of why the portals were put in place as their utility to the original design of the dungeon becomes suspect, and they become more of the workings of someone losing their logical reasoning capacity, just looking to make trouble for the residents of their own fortress.
And once one is open, it’s open for a month, so if you make them 2 way portals instead of one way, then anything below that discovers the opened portal, or chases the PCs back to the portal room is now on the second level.Where does "open for a month" come from? Per the portal ritual:
Critical Success You awaken the portal. If its other side is awakened, the portal can be used normally and won’t deactivate naturally. If its other side is not awakened, this side remains awakened for 1 year, possibly allowing you enough time to find and awaken the connecting portal.
Success As critical success, but if the portal’s other side is not awakened, this side remains awakened for only 1d6 days before it fades and falls dormant again.
** spoiler omitted **
Yeah, well, in order to choose to open a door into unknown hostile territory you need to be able to shut it again, in like 6 seconds.
Anything else is just unplayable. Hence this discussion thread :)
Mu understanding is that if you awaken one side of a portal, you can't use it until you awaken the other side. Also, if I'm not mistaken, there are Belcorra's notes on how the portals are connected when active in the same place you find the ritual.
IME, "unplayable" usually maps to "I don't like it". :-)
Here's what I did:
I made the ritual 2nd level rather than 3rd so they could use it as soon as they found it in Nakazharin's temple. I put the blueprints there, too, so they now had a goal of getting to the portals they had not yet found, which worked better than the Otari trails at getting them motivated to move forward.
I let critical successes automatically connect and activate the next floor down, but it won't work across the two book-barriers. They haven't taken down the barrier between books 1 and 2 yet, so this hasn't helped yet, but they did crit on the Level 4 portal.
So far, it's been interesting to them. They tricked their way past the werewolf guy and then ran from the voidglutton into the altar room. At the end of the session, they were surrounded by enemies, but had a goal of cutting through the level to the portal on their map so they could do their ritual and get out.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
IOW, you don't like it. :-)
What makes you think that a pursuing monster will follow you through a portal? Even if it does why is that different from it following you up a flight of stairs?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In some systems, magic is generally malfunctiony. Or at least not as reliable as technology. IOW if you cast fireball, even on a success sometimes you don't get quite the same result you got last time you cast it. Not a thing in Pathfinder, I admit, but it kind of appeals to me.
That said, Skeld's idea might well work, with a bit of... attention to detail, I guess.
Sorry for the necro, but... not having run AV yet, I have a question or two about these portals.I'll spoiler it all.
2. What is the DC for the Primary checks at each level? The way the description is worded (in the hardback edition of AV) I'm thinking:
Portal level DC
2 18
3 20
4 23
5 26
6 28
7 31
8 34
9 36
10 39
I.E. same as the DC for that spell level.
3. What is the DC for the secondary checks at each level? I'm inclined to think it's the same as for the primary. This isn't, as I understand it, the case for most rituals, but the way this one is worded it looks that way to me.
4. The ritual calls for "up to 5" secondary casters. What's the minimum? 1 or 0?
As I read it, you discover the ritual notes on level 3, but you can't do the ritual at all until you're level 5 (3 is half of 5 rounded up). Correct?
5. It seems the effect of the secondary checks is that a critical success gives you +2 on the primary check (so in theory you could get +10), a success does nothing, failure gives you -4 (so potentially -20) on the primary check, and critical failure the same -4 plus a reduction in the success level (so the primary check may well fail.
6. Presumably if you fail, once you've dealt with the immediate effects of that, there's no reason you can't cast the ritual again. Correct?
1. Do you have to do the ritual at the 2nd level nexus once, or eight times? I'm thinking once, but I dunno.
I ruled once. Seems silly to do it eight times.
2. What is the DC for the Primary checks at each level? The way the description is worded (in the hardback edition of AV) I'm thinking:
Portal level DC
2 18
3 20
4 23
5 26
6 28
7 31
8 34
9 36
10 39
This is accurate, but it makes the checks nearly impossible later in the adventure - the DC's scale twice as fast as the DC per level table. I'm not sure if this is intended by the developers or not.
3. What is the DC for the secondary checks at each level? I'm inclined to think it's the same as for the primary. This isn't, as I understand it, the case for most rituals, but the way this one is worded it looks that way to me.
Yes
4. The ritual calls for "up to 5" secondary casters. What's the minimum? 1 or 0?
I would assume minimum 0.
As I read it, you discover the ritual notes on level 3, but you can't do the ritual at all until you're level 5 (3 is half of 5 rounded up). Correct?
This is true, but I didn't realize you can't cast a ritual that's higher than your spell rank it until I looked it up. I did not enforce this for my players.
5. It seems the effect of the secondary checks is that a critical success gives you +2 on the primary check (so in theory you could get +10), a success does nothing, failure gives you -4 (so potentially -20) on the primary check, and critical failure the same -4 plus a reduction in the success level (so the primary check may well fail.
Yes, failing secondary checks is extremely punishing.
6. Presumably if you fail, once you've dealt with the immediate effects of that, there's no reason you can't cast the ritual again. Correct?
Correct. My players spent 3 hours (both in game and real time!) critically failing the check on Floor 6. See issue with DC scaling above.
Thanks, Thebazilly, for the good help. :-)
I wonder if there isn't some way to improve the chances of success on these checks that we both have overlooked. :-)
I have some more questions. :-)
1. Once two or more of these portals are "awakened", how do they actually work? The "Teleportation Circle" ritual (from the APG) on which these are apparently based says it's an open "gateway" between two points and you just have to walk into it. So that's one possibility, but... are the runes involved engraved on the inside of the door as well as on the walls? If so, I can imagine that closing the door activates the portal. So go into the room on level N (N≥3), close the door, and you end up in the room on level 2. Go into the room on level 2, close the door, and you end up on level N. Either way, how does the 2nd level chamber know which of the N≥3 levels to drop you on (assuming more that one has been awakened)? if they're just "always on" like a regular teleportation circle I can understand peoples' concerns about monsters discovering and using them.
2. I did some fiddling with numbers. Assuming that the primary caster of this ritual is level 5 (because it's a rank 3 ritual he'd have to be) and expert in Arcana or Occultism, whichever he's using, he has an 80% chance to awaken the 2nd level chamber (ignoring, for the moment, any secondary castings). Assuming he goes to master at level 7, he'll have a 35% chance to awaken that chamber. At level 10 he has only a 15% chance of success. Secondary castings are more likely to hurt than help, as they have the same DC as the primary check and anything but a critical success either does nothing or causes the primary check to probably fail, especially at higher levels. Is this really "working as intended"? The primary caster will never get to Legendary skill level in this AP so we can ignore that. Seems to me there ought to be some way to improve the chances of success at higher levels. Any suggestions are welcome.
3. As I read it, you have to go through the 2nd level chamber to get from the level you're on (> 2) to another level (also > 2); you can't go directly from say level 4 to level 6. Not a big deal, just a minor inconvenience.
4. I did not account for the fact that this ritual is Rare. That means that RAW, the DC should be adjusted to 5 more than what I said above -- which would make the level 8, 9 and 10 chambers impossible to awaken.
5. I think this thing needs some tweaking to make it a viable thing for the PCs to do. I would want to give the secondary castings more of a chance to help rather than hinder and assign the DCs per level rather than per spell rank. Even with the rarity adjustment this would make the chances of success more reasonable.
Comments invited. :-)