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It looks to me that if the PCs go to the shadow plane in A4, and then destroy the umbral vise, they would be stuck on the shadow plane because there is no way to advance to the next umbral vise without returning to the material plane. The next umbral vise is in A7, and the PCs cannot get past A6 without returning to the material plane unless they have a magical way of teleporting to the next room. Please let me know if I'm missing something.
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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They still have access to the first room's shadow version - I think it would be reasonable from a GM to rule that if they realize their mistake and contact the lodge using the tablet to open the shadow pathway, it's open both on the material plane and the shadow plane, Otherwise they might also get stuck at the end if they destroy all of the devices while on the material plane, and this doesn't seem to be an intended 'hazard' or puzzle.
THIS ADVENTURE WAS UPDATED AFTER LAUNCH - THE HIGH TIER VERSION IS NOW SLIGHTLY LESS DEADLY, remember to re-download the scenario if you have the old version.
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Party 6,7,8,8. (19 CP, high tier)
Despite initiatives 34,33,30,29 the mummy went first moved up paralyzed the whole party and breathes on us for ~35.
2 skeletons used their AoEs as well and back around to the mummy who moves right up to the party and gets 2 melee attacks in.
So we finally get a non paralyzed turn in. Party has about 280 damage on it. 2 people are unconscious and everybody is within range of the super AoO long spear.
We fought valiantly from there but it was never close.
Venture-Agent, California—Silicon Valley
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Ran it Friday, the boss fight went similar to Pirate Rob except a couple of the party went first.
Round 1: The Sphinx went first but delayed until after its Master went. The Fire Sorcerer shot a Fireball, which the mummy Crit Failed against, and the Fighter nailed it and the Sphinx with a Double Shot, doing another significant blow. The mummy was then at half HP when its turn came. It moved 20 feet and used its Breath weapon, doing about 45 damage, causing two PCs to use hero points to avoid a crit fail. The Spinx then pounced in, hitting the fighter twice for another 40 or so damage. Then came the skeletons, which is where things took a turn for the worse. After two more AoEs, the party was severely damaged, everyone was between 10-50% HP. The Champion then used their Necklace of Fireballs, and the Wizard used the Wand they picked up earlier, while the Investigator spent their round using Battle Medicine on the Sorcerer and themselves.
Overall: 3 Fireballs out on round 1, the Mummy was around 50 HP at this point.
Round 2: The Sorcerer shot out another Fireball, and the Fighter ended the Mummy with an Eldrich Shot with Produce Flame to finish off the Mummy. The Spinx was the next target to go down, and after that the Skeletons were easy pickings.
The whole fight ended in round 3 I believe, and they never left the entry way until the last round. If the party had rolled worse on their saves, I'm sure they would have TPKed as well, but thankfully they barely pulled through and stayed alive long enough to kill the Mummy before it reached them.
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I've now ran this twice, and both times the players insisted in not activating the strange devices and heading straight to the boss room... Even after I hinted that two of the Pathfinders they were searching for were on the Shadow Plane.
I've had this issue as well. I had to point out how they only came across one for the pathfinder's needing rescued.
They also destroyed the first two right off the bat since they were able to discern that they were what were causing the weakness.
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We did not have a knowledgeable party. Champion-8, Sorcerer-7, Barbarian-5, Druid-5. So it's very possible we missed some information.
We just figured it was best to clear the dungeon before we fiddled with the boxes. By the time we explored the whole map, disabled the traps, and killed the boss, we thought we were done, and just had some skill checks remaining. We had no clue we'd only finished half of the adventure, so we sped through the rest and finished in 5.5 hours.
When I GM this, I'll try to be clear that the boxes actually transport you somewhere, rather than just acting as a prison-of-holding.
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I'm prepping this one now, once for in-person and three-times at GenCon Online. Pretty sure I heard about two tpks at PaizoCon, along with one complete cakewalk. And then the couple of more nuanced experiences listed above. Definitely going to watching this thread a lot, hope to see more reports roll in.
It does seem extremely swinging, on a couple of saves, and the earlier curse DC feels extremely high. With it also being a standalone hazard it might not encourage people to pull out hero points/etc, until its too late.
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Ran this last night on high tier and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. Felt like a proper hard, old-school, undead-themed scenario where you knew your PCs were in REAL danger. Players were challenged throughout and tapped out on resources by the end.
GM notes; I have heard of this being run in a variety of ways that do not seem to match the rules/scenario as written:
Remember the teleportation effect; it changed the whole tenor of the battle. Leave extra time for it (roll a d8 then a d6 to determine teleportation direction/distance). If you are short on time do not remove this component of the encounter (which I've heard of GMs doing). You're just making it a lot harder on your PCs and should run it as written.
Remember the onset time for mummy rot (also, a crit failure on the save ≠ no onset time, as far as I can understand from Affliction Saving Throws ["On a critical failure, after its onset period (if applicable), you advance to stage 2 of the affliction and are subjected to that effect instead."])
Mummy rot doesn't affect all other damage, just the damage of the mummy rot
GMs don't HAVE to blast everyone aith AOEs right away. The guards focus on protecting Khisisi which means they might not try to torch paralyzed PCs out the gate.
I loved all the horrible traps
Had an Ustalavic scholar and Dhampir PC in our group, which really enhanced the roleplay experience
The other fights are no joke, and the intricate details of the backstory deserve attention. Took a full 4 hours, and had to call the last fight with Khisisi down to about 30 HP. I'd definitely give this one a 5-6 hour slot to really enjoy the combats and truly relish the setting.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I was GM for ROB's table and messed up the fight - forgot the teleports at the end of every turn. While that might have helped against the AOEs, it also would have stopped them from using the Channels they were using to keep the party alive, so I ruled that a wash.
I got to play it at Paizocon. Table was 5 (pregen),6,7,8 - I was the level 8 champion. We were better at flopping between sides, but didn't disable any of the vices. The final fight was SO much easier as all the AOEs were gone. In fact the low tier mummy is pretty boring compared to the high tier one.
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I was GM for ROB's table and messed up the fight - forgot the teleports at the end of every turn. While that might have helped against the AOEs, it also would have stopped them from using the Channels they were using to keep the party alive, so I ruled that a wash.
Also played on high tier and with no teleport, and two channelers. Made it a lot harder as we were subjected to 3 creatures' AOEs as well as improved reach AOO from the boss.
The enemies (as far as I understand) are not immune to the teleportation which makes their tactical positioning (especially for activities such as getting off perfectly-positioned 2-action cones) more difficult in the first place.
I will politely disagree it's a "wash."
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Edit: I do wish important environmental effects could be called out in the stat block section. I think it could help us remember. Especially because these complicated encounters tend to happen at the end of a long session after the GM and players are tired.
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One other thing I did that's notable — that I do for most complex dungeon crawls like this (another example is Salvation of the Sages) — I try to keep things in theater of the mind instead of on a tactical map while PCs explore. This way I can quickly sketch out the map as they move explore the dungeon, and the players don't have to worry about constant tactical placement when it doesn't matter. I draw individual maps for encounters. This helped keep things moving a little faster.
As there are essentially two maps here, this saves even more time. it also gave me time to draw special maps for the encounter rooms on the shadow plane. I drew rough maps in pencil, using wild lines, and then blurred them to create shadowy rooms. I wish I had some charcoal on-hand, that would have been even better!
Just sharing that idea here too. It was a simple effect, but the players at my table enjoyed it.
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Finally GMed this last night. Same group I ran through #3-09, so we saved some time skipping introductions, but just like when I played it, it took them about 3 hours to clear the Material Plane map before transitioning to the Shadow Plane.
One thing not covered in the Adventure: would you allow the PCs to turn on an Umbral Vise they had turned off? The Wizard Crit his Lore check to learn about them, so I ruled he could, so long as the device wasn't damaged.
Also, the group saw no reason to hurry, thinking that the Pathfinders must be dead, so they healed up to full between every fight and every trap. They even went back to the Lodge to decurse themselves after fighting the mummy.
They then backtracked through the dungeon from S10, leaving Glurorchaes for last. By this point they were so amped up to fight a Velstrac (which they prepped for after the briefing) that they were uninterested in hearing his offer. It wouldn't even have benefitted them if they did, since there were no more combats.
I would recommend prepping the Pyramid Insights as handouts. That ended up being way too much information to just tell them. They couldn't keep the information about the scholars separate from the Pathfinders separate from the Pharaohs.
Group was Wizard/Loremaster, two Druids, Champion and a Flickmace Fighter who kept virtually every enemy on the ground. The mummy fight was at least tactically challenging, but they destroyed the Umbral Vise with a Lightning Bolt early so the teleportation barely affected anything.
I'm about to run this and had some questions about the devices as well, so these were helpful responses!
What is the deal with teleportation? I don't think I understand that part...