
sacrelicious2 |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I am not sure how to parse this part of Ren Mei Li's influence stat block
Influence 4 Lady Ren becomes annoyed that the PCs
are ruining her game by being so influential. Each PC
should attempt a DC 24 Diplomacy check. If no one
succeeds, she casts outcast’s curse on a random PC;
failure at the Diplomacy check results in her casting
outcast’s curse on the attempted diplomat instead.
If the PCs attack in response, proceed with “Parting
Ways” (page 42).
What happens if 1 player succeeds and the rest fail? Does she cast the spell 3 times? It seems like this is a worse outcome than having everyone fail, in which case she just picks one target at random.

sacrelicious2 |
Also, I am assuming that the Caster DC for outcast's curse is 34, per the jorogumo stat block. This is an incredibly hard DC for the level, and most player's are going to at least fail, if not crit fail, meaning the effect's are permanent. What options do the players have for removing this? Assuming there is a caster with access to the spell in the party, they still need to hit the 34 DC to counteract, which is still incredibly hard. A level 8 caster can have at most a +16 (8 from level, 4 from expert and 4 from attribute), meaning they have to roll an 18 or higher. There is no one in town who could cast the spell at a higher level, and even Shinzo doesn't have the spell in their stat block.
The best chance the player's have to remove it is to buy a 5th rank dispel magic scroll from Shinzo for 150 gp, as that will still counteract a 4th rank spell on a failure. Of course, if the player's roll a crit fail (7 or lower), they still fail to counteract and lose the scroll.

![]() |

Influence points are accumulated on an NPC, not on individual PCs; this way an entire party can work together to influence an NPC. Thus, when the Ren Mei Li's Influence points reach 4, and if none of the PCs involved in the encounter can succeed at the DC 24 Diplomacy check, that's when she casts outcast curse on a random PC.

![]() |

Also, I am assuming that the Caster DC for outcast's curse is 34, per the jorogumo stat block. This is an incredibly hard DC for the level, and most player's are going to at least fail, if not crit fail, meaning the effect's are permanent. What options do the players have for removing this? Assuming there is a caster with access to the spell in the party, they still need to hit the 34 DC to counteract, which is still incredibly hard. A level 8 caster can have at most a +16 (8 from level, 4 from expert and 4 from attribute), meaning they have to roll an 18 or higher. There is no one in town who could cast the spell at a higher level, and even Shinzo doesn't have the spell in their stat block.
The best chance the player's have to remove it is to buy a 5th rank dispel magic scroll from Shinzo for 150 gp, as that will still counteract a 4th rank spell on a failure. Of course, if the player's roll a crit fail (7 or lower), they still fail to counteract and lose the scroll.
You can assume that it's the standard DC 34 save to resist outcast's curse cast here, since...
It IS a pretty rough effect for 8th level PCs to endure, that's for sure, which is why hopefully one of the PCs in the group can prevent this from happening by succeeding at that average difficulty Diplomacy check.
If a PC does get cursed, but they resist the urge to attack her and continue to interact with her and manage to reach Influence 12, you should consider having her feel guilt at her overreaction earlier at the perception of the PCs being rude and undiplomatic. In this event, I suggest having her give the cursed PC a panacea and let the potion automatically counteract the curse. But if they attack her or lash out, then it's up to the PCs to remove the curse using their own resources—again, the hope is that someone in the group will use Diplomacy to avoid this in the first place, but part of this encounter's goal is to establish the jorogumo as frightening.

sacrelicious2 |
Influence points are accumulated on an NPC, not on individual PCs; this way an entire party can work together to influence an NPC. Thus, when the Ren Mei Li's Influence points reach 4, and if none of the PCs involved in the encounter can succeed at the DC 24 Diplomacy check, that's when she casts outcast curse on a random PC.
Ok, that makes sense. It's just that the way it's worded in the stat block is confusing. What is the effect of this phrase: "failure at the Diplomacy check results in her casting outcast’s curse on the attempted diplomat instead." It was unclear if failure here meant an individual failure, or a group failure. Especially the 'instead' part, which makes it sound like it is a distinct outcome from the preceding line. If this whole line were to be omitted, then your explanation above would be the clearly communicated intent.

![]() |

James Jacobs wrote:Influence points are accumulated on an NPC, not on individual PCs; this way an entire party can work together to influence an NPC. Thus, when the Ren Mei Li's Influence points reach 4, and if none of the PCs involved in the encounter can succeed at the DC 24 Diplomacy check, that's when she casts outcast curse on a random PC.Ok, that makes sense. It's just that the way it's worded in the stat block is confusing. What is the effect of this phrase: "failure at the Diplomacy check results in her casting outcast’s curse on the attempted diplomat instead." It was unclear if failure here meant an individual failure, or a group failure. Especially the 'instead' part, which makes it sound like it is a distinct outcome from the preceding line. If this whole line were to be omitted, then your explanation above would be the clearly communicated intent.
Ah, yeah that's a little awkwardly worded. If no one tries a Diplomacy check, she casts the curse on a random PC. If the PCs try Diplomacy checks and no one succeeds, she casts the curse on the PC with the worst Diplomacy check result. It would have been simpler to just have her target a random PC regardless of whether anyone tried Diplomacy or not.
(The intent was that if no one bothered, she'd target someone randomly, but if the PCs try to use Diplomacy, the one who fails the hardest is the least diplomatic and thus the most insulting and thus the one she targets to punish that person in particular.)