| EmpCod |
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My players (level 2 party of four) steamrolled past the regular Morlocks and the Morlock Scavengers, exhausting most of their spell slots and triggering a level-up to level 3.
Despite their knowledge of the disappearance of FOUR Osprey Club employees, and witnessing a SINGLE sacrificed corpse in B14, they decided to head back to Otari midway through the chapter for a 24h downtime. I'm usually a lenient GM when it comes to letting my players take as much rest/downtime as they wish without too many hassles or random encounters, unless there is an explicit time pressure element within the adventure. In this specific case, I think a little 'punishment' would be justified. Knowingly turning back when 3 Otari citizen lives are on the line, for selfish considerations like selling stuff and levelling up, doesn't hit me as 'heroic' behavior.
The Morlock Engineers encounter was initially marked as Severe 2. Now that they'll be coming back as Level 3 party, any advice on how to spice up the encounter (e.g. crank it up to Severe 3)? My first thought was that the Morlock Engineers would use that extra 24h to fix their ballista and operate it from a distance in the B21 corridor. Would that be over- or under-powered? How to prevent martial characters from rushing, rendering the ballista useless in melee (remember they steamrolled the previous Morlocks)? Also, I'm not sure how to evaluate how much extra XP the ballista would grant the encounter? (my extra budget is 40 xp).
Any other suggestions?
| EmpCod |
Small follow-up in case some GM has a similar need. I decided the Morlock Engineers in B22 used their extra 24h to prepare for the encounter with the PCs. Namely, they were able to setup 2 trip-wires in B21 that upon trigger drop a pair of handcrafted openwork portculis made out of the old bedframes found in B8. Their idea was to trap some of the PCs in the corridor long enough to push out the ballista from B22, and start showering them through the portculis bars.
The portculis themselves are not very solid, and more intended as a way to slow down the PCs, not trap them indefinetly. I halved the stats of a wood portculis (Page 515 of Core Rulebook) to account for the rushed nature of the trap and the poor quality of the base materials.
For the ballista stats I used (https://2e.aonprd.com/SiegeWeapons.aspx?ID=2) although I debuffed it to 4d10 dmg because it was rushed out of scrap parts. Be aware it needs 2 to crew so both Morlock Engineers need to operate it.
How it went in my game? I'd say pretty fun. First, our Ranger spotted the trap easily coming from the north, and the Fighter decided he'd trigger it intentionally, carefully staying outside the trapped zone it would delimitate. The Morlocks, hearing the trap activate, went on to push their pre-loaded Ballista from B22 to B21, and started aiming and firing through the portculis. Our brave Cleric decided to stand his ground, taking cover behind a tower shield and attracking aggro, while the rest of the party went on to surprise the Morlocks from behind, going all the way around B33, B35, B15, B14 and B8 which they'd already explored. However, this gave enough time for the Morlocks to slowly reload (2 load actions needed, so one each), aim and shoot again. Despite greater cover, the second bolt took the Cleric down, just as our fastest moving PC got to witness the situation coming from B8. One PC ended up circling back to stabilize the Cleric, while the rest of the party surprised the Morlocks from behind, clearly outranking them in melee combat.
All in all, it felt different and refreshing from your typical "open the door, kill the monsters" type of encounter which seems the norm in this adventure path. Don't expect the Morlocks to be able to fire more than 1 or 2 bolts though, and that's fine. Dealing 4d10 damage can possibly take down a single squishy Level 3 PC. Two bolts could take down the beefest.
From a storytelling aspect, I think the modified encounter did deliver. PCs got to detect and partially outsmart the bad guy's plan, then complications happen (ballista shows up and downs a PC: huge downbeat), and finally the PCs reverse the odds coming from behind and disband the ballista crew (upbeat).
Hope this can help someone!