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[Let's Read] Odyssey of the Dragonlords
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 7966913" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/S6tsuwV.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Continuing our nautical chapter themes, the Nether Sea is one of the two realms of the titans who the PCs must visit in order to avert the Doom of Thylea. It is accessed via Charybdis, who much like in the mythological source material is a giant whirlpool. The one of this setting is in fact a portal kept open by two of Kentimane’s hands, and the mixing of the two oceans is what results in the whirlpool. A ship which ends up in it will sink, but instead of a watery grave will spin down to what very well looks like a subterranean ocean.</p><p></p><p>The Nether Sea is in perpetual night, and has its own pseudo-sky and constellations which are mithril veins in the cavernous ceiling. The waters are highly acidic and can quickly eat through the hull of most ships (but the Ultros’ is highly resistant), and those who become submerged or drink the water end up having their very forms changed. There’s a d100 table with a list of effects, and the durations get longer the more times one is exposed to the waters; you may get lucky and turn into an elemental, treant, or merely get an increased ability score, but at worst you may turn into a statue or lighter-than-air gas. Scattered through the plane are iron prison cubes impenetrable even to the efforts of the gods, holding unknown monsters from the world’s earliest days. Massive evil-aligned whale-like things swim about and ignore the party unless attacked. These monsters have no names, for their existence is unknown to the mortal world. I actually like this touch of unknown horrors.</p><p></p><p>The Nether Sea is vast, but the adventure details 7 places of note. There’s a Charybdis-clone which can shoot the Ultros back up into the air so the PCs can leave, and the River Lethe pours from a high-above tunnel in the form of a rainstorm. An island containing Lutheria’s petrified titan siblings can tell the PCs of their sister’s weaknesses, where and how to find her, and the properties of the Nether Sea as a plane of existence. The Island of the Oathbreakers is a prison managed by yugoloths and erinyes devils, and one of the prisoners can give both similar and new information as the titans.</p><p></p><p><strong>Epic Paths:</strong> One of the prison cubes has already fallen and broke apart. It once housed the Kraken, but now it’s home to Hezzebal, a former brass mount of a Dragonlord driven insane from his time in this forlorn realm. He blames the Vanished One for being left behind, and will treat the PCs as an enemy unless they magically heal his shattered mind. The fabled treasure hoard of the Dragonlords is here, and the Lost One can find one of their wish list magic items among the loot. Estor will claim the Xiphos of Slaughter as part of the oath, a cursed item which drives the user murderously insane. Which is a good deal as such a mentality is superfluous when it comes to the wicked ghost.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/wsXp9t3.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Prison of the Tarrasque:</strong> The only other cube the PCs can infiltrate is a mini-dungeon which houses perhaps one of the most infamous entries in the Monster Manual. An impossibly slow sand hourglass hangs above the cube, counting down to 300 years until the cubes open and the beast and rest of its kin are free to terrorize Thylea once more.</p><p></p><p><strong>Bioware Trope Alert: Time-Sensitive Unsealed Evil:</strong> The cubes unlock early during the final chapter of the adventure path. Additionally, the overall concept of these monsters is not unlike the Old Gods of Dragon Age Origins. Said beings are dragons corrupted by Darkspawn blood who slumber deep beneath the earth and rise every few generations to make war upon the surface. Mass Effect’s Reapers are the same in that they lair in the dark reaches of space before coming to destroy galactic civilization every 50,000 years or so.</p><p></p><p>The dungeon is a one-level, 12 room jaunt, and all of its inhabitants are geared towards the care and feeding of the tarrasque. Golems forged out of primordial clay act as stewards and caretakers, feeding and breeding a pair of chained purple worms for their larvae. Said grubs are thrown off a bridge into a massive chamber full of thousands of the squirming things. An ultraloth is the cube’s ‘warden,’ tasked with guarding the tarrasque as part of an oath with Lutheria. He has no love for the god and will offer to show them how to find the goddess by awakening the tarrasque which sleeps at the bottom of a deep pit in the cube. A secret he will share if the party swears an oath to kill the goddess and bring back her crystal scythe to him. Fortunately by ‘awaken’ he means merely raising it from its slumber as opposed to freeing it: the beast will angrily ram against the cube’s sides, attracting Lutheria’s attention and summoning her barge into nearby waters.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/OcK46FQ.png?1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Hypnos, the Throne of Dreams:</strong> Lutheria’s residence of choice is a garden-barge towed by her enslaved sibling Talieus, who confusingly shares the same name as one of Sydon’s sons encountered in Praxys. His eyes and mouth are sewn shut by indestructible thread, but the sword Titansbane can cut through them. This frees him from service, and he gives the party a hearty thanks by leaving Lutheria’s base of operations high, dry, and immobile. The barge’s magic and floral scents create a dreamlike sensation of those who board: the PCs will lose their overall sense of time and distance.</p><p></p><p><strong>Bioware Trope Alert: Impassive Enemies:</strong> The barge’s inhabitants act irrationally and do not notice or react to fights and other disturbances outside their rooms no matter how loud things get.</p><p></p><p>A fair portion of enemy monsters have deception, fey, and shapechanging themes. Jackalweres and lamia are the most common monsters and take various forms: beautiful people who attend who tempt the party with sleep-inducing drugs,* children who seem eager to show them a gallery of strange art and treasure, and drooling madmen who attack if the PCs try to steal any treasure as but a few examples. The barge’s armory is full of cursed weapons and armor forged by Sydon, their magic wrought from Lutheria’s own mind in a failed attempt to cure her insanity. The equipment causes the goddess to gain disadvantage on attack rolls and/or suffer the Confusion spell effect when she attacks those bearing such an item. Even better, the equipment will immediately be rid of their curses if this happens during combat.</p><p></p><p>*they won’t kill sleeping PCs. They will bind them in the kitchen quarters to later cook them alive.</p><p></p><p>Lutheria herself holds court in the very last, very large room. A group of goatlings along with a pair of lamia and satyr minstrels* are drinking and partying. The PCs are being judged by the goddess as soon as they set foot here, and if they piss her off too much she’ll abandon any attempts at mercy, negotiation, or chatter and attempt to kill the party. It is possible to bargain with Lutheria and renew the Oath of Peace, although the adventure path at large leans heavily in favor of going Kratos on her ass given that her demands are both unpalatable and create a minor plot hole: in the very next chapter, she ends up attacking Mytros despite this explicitly being forbidden, thereby making her an oathbreaker.</p><p></p><p>*like satyrs, but with some bardic abilities.</p><p></p><p><strong>Editing Retcon:</strong> I made a bit of a mistake in regards to the Nether Sea chapter. Lutheria will not go on her rape and murder spree in Mytros if the PCs swore Oaths of Service to her as part of the Oath of Peace bargain. Which makes what I thought was a major plothole less of one, although there’s still the issue of what happens if she’s called out when cheating at Twenty Squares.</p><p></p><p>What are the 3 things that change Lutheria’s reaction one way or the other? First, choosing to join in or refuse the attendant drunken party (which will deal psychic damage until a Wisdom save is made); laughing or not laughing, however insincerely, at Lutheria’s terrible comedy routine where she only knows jokes about torturing children; and finally, challenging her to a game of Twenty Squares in which the Three Furies will act as neutral judges.</p><p></p><p>Twenty Squares is a very popular fictional board game of strategy and skill, and the boards are magically enchanted to make players honorbound to the conditions set should a player win or lose. The PCs must be the ones to request the game, and part of the game’s rules means that the challenged person sets the terms of winning/losing. Lutheria summons seven crew members along with seven of her goatlings, where the losers’ side will die at the hands of her crystal scythe.</p><p></p><p>Twenty Squares has no fancy mini-game rules. It is a series of seven opposed skill checks where the first person to roll higher in four of them wins the game. Each check is a specific skill in order, with a focus on strategy-minded and social ones such as Deception, History, Insight, etc. Lutheria, being whatever the womanly equivalent of an immature manchild is, cannot stand the thought of losing and will resort to cheating by spending one of her Legendary Resistances* to automatically win a check. This is a weakness the PCs can learn on the Island of Oathbreakers. It says that the PCs can catch Lutheria cheating with a high enough Perception check, but does not explain how/if the Furies punish her if caught red-handed. Which, given that Twenty Squares’ rules has magical foundations, begs the question of to what extent cheating counts as oathbreaking.</p><p></p><p>*A common 5th Edition “boss battle” ability where they can automatically succeed on a saving throw should they fail it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Renewing the Oath of Peace:</strong> The only terms Lutheria agrees to are:</p><p></p><p>1. The party as a whole must swear an indefinite Oath of Service to her where she can ask them to do anything for the rest of their lives upon pain of death (Geas). This will not be enforced until the PCs render Sydon dead or defanged of being a threat.</p><p>2. She will promise not to harm the mortal cities of Thylea, with the implication that smaller settlements will receive no such protection.</p><p>3. Lutheria’s temples will remain standing and receive worship and sacrifices. The book says that this will be a continuation of the status quo in regards to her faith and its activities.</p><p>4. As Sydon is not present, renewing the Oath here will not ward off the Lord of Storms’ wrath. But she will not aid her brother nor hinder the party in opposing him and his Order.</p><p></p><p>No halfway-reasonable gaming group is going to find this satisfactory. Not only does it allow for Lutheria to make any number of demands on the PCs, it will not bring peace to Thylea. Her brother Sydon is still a threat, one which she is not obligated to commit any resources on her part in fighting. Furthermore, the promise not to attack Thylea’s cities rings hollow; even discounting the many smaller settlements, Lutheria’s cult is very much a “rot from within” type of cult and doesn't have standing armies. One could argue that individual acts of her worshipers (like the cult in Mytros) can violate this, but the mention of continuing the status quo makes it sound like the cult is going to keep being sex pests, murdering children, and transforming teenage girls into monsters (not discounting when she breaks this part of the deal in the chapter of Mytros’ invasion). Furthermore, she will not budge on any issues, no matter how much the PCs got on her good side.</p><p></p><p>Compounding things, the Doomed and Haunted One’s backgrounds cannot be resolved unless the PCs kill Lutheria, and she has no desire to reverse their ill fortunes.</p><p></p><p>So what if the PCs end up in combat with Lutheria? Well, it’s going to be a very difficult battle. They should be around 10th to 12th level at this point in the campaign unless they skipped most of the islands, but the goddess herself is a Challenge Rating 23 powerhouse with some impressive stats. She has advantage on saves vs all forms of magical abilities (not just spells), and her lowest saving throw is +5 Dexterity (the rest are in the double-digits). She has 3 legendary actions, and can spend 2 of them to afflict Confusion or dealing 6d6 necrotic damage to a target on a failed Wisdom or Constitution save respectively. Her offensive spells include a mixture of some debilitating options such as at-will Blight and Hideous Laughter, and 1/day Finger of Death, Irresistible Dance, and Animal Shapes among less directly offensive options.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately the PCs have a few advantages. In addition to the above cursed equipment and draining her legendary saves, she will not immediately take action for 1 round and order her minions to attack the party first. Her servants all have the poisoned condition from their bacchanal and thus have disadvantage on attacks and ability/skill checks. Furthermore, a few of her spells are utility effects which won’t be of immediate use such as Pass Without Trace, Dreams (1 minute casting time), Mirage Arcana (10 minute casting time), and Project Image (which may grant her remote sensing but her Truesight makes this limited in effect). She can cast Animal Shapes which can buff the goatlings into something fiercer, although as it’s concentration that can limit her ability to drop Hideous Laughter and Irresistible Dance. Besides a natural flight speed and her 180 foot Legendary Action Confusion, she doesn’t have any good long-range means of attacking long-range or mobile attack opponents. A canny party might be able to reliably remain out of her range. Scorpion Island centaurs, the pegasus, and Hezzebal the dragon* can all make for reliable allies at this point in the campaign.</p><p></p><p>*who has 3 permanent levels of exhaustion once cured (disadvantage on pretty much every d20 roll and half speed), but is still a formidable dragon.</p><p></p><p><strong>Epic Paths:</strong> Lutheria will waste an additional round of combat laughing at the Doomed One as she recalls how she made their life a living hell. In the event that the Haunted One is present, she will become fearful of what he represents and focus all of her attacks on them to the exclusion of any other threats.</p><p></p><p><strong>Much Ado About Oathbreaking:</strong> I’ve been going on in the past of how breaking an oath is a much bigger deal for the gods than mortals. And since I’ve been talking about it quite a bit, I may as well spill the beans on what happens. A deity who breaks a sworn oath dissolves out of existence, their form turning into grain-like motes before disappearing entirely. The process is not instantaneous, but it takes effect quickly and manifests in a matter of rounds. This is in fact how Lutheria meets her end at the conclusion of the Adventure Path when she goes crazy enough to try and destroy all of existence. The specifics are that she promises to help some risen empyrean former gods in destroying the PCs, but instead lets them die at the party’s hands so as to fuel a Sphere of Annihilation. Her current actions in this chapter surely beg the question of what makes the time in the Nether Sea different than in the grand finale when she goes back on her word with another group.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far:</strong> The Nether Sea is cool in concept and I adore its creepy Primordial Horrors of the Deep theme. The various means of finding out Lutheria’s weaknesses and follies are great as well, allowing for the party a chance at adequate preparation against what may very well be one of their most difficult fights so far in the adventure path.</p><p></p><p>The chapter’s weak points revolved around Lutheria herself, be it her plot hole-inducing actions or the sheer one sided nature of her terms for renewing the Oath of Peace. It is the most transparently-unfair Deal with the Devil scenario I’ve seen in a D&D adventure, and that’s saying a lot. Even discounting the fact that it doesn’t stop Sydon, I imagine that precious few players will want to willingly bind themselves for life to a Chaotic Evil Dionysus. Although she is a literal goddess, it seems unreasonable to make her encounter so wildly out of bounds for the average party level when combat against her is such a likely scenario and all but mandatory for 2 out of the 8 Epic Paths.</p><p></p><p><strong>Join us next time as we climb Praxys, Sydon’s Tower of Power!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 7966913, member: 6750502"] [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/S6tsuwV.png[/IMG][/CENTER] Continuing our nautical chapter themes, the Nether Sea is one of the two realms of the titans who the PCs must visit in order to avert the Doom of Thylea. It is accessed via Charybdis, who much like in the mythological source material is a giant whirlpool. The one of this setting is in fact a portal kept open by two of Kentimane’s hands, and the mixing of the two oceans is what results in the whirlpool. A ship which ends up in it will sink, but instead of a watery grave will spin down to what very well looks like a subterranean ocean. The Nether Sea is in perpetual night, and has its own pseudo-sky and constellations which are mithril veins in the cavernous ceiling. The waters are highly acidic and can quickly eat through the hull of most ships (but the Ultros’ is highly resistant), and those who become submerged or drink the water end up having their very forms changed. There’s a d100 table with a list of effects, and the durations get longer the more times one is exposed to the waters; you may get lucky and turn into an elemental, treant, or merely get an increased ability score, but at worst you may turn into a statue or lighter-than-air gas. Scattered through the plane are iron prison cubes impenetrable even to the efforts of the gods, holding unknown monsters from the world’s earliest days. Massive evil-aligned whale-like things swim about and ignore the party unless attacked. These monsters have no names, for their existence is unknown to the mortal world. I actually like this touch of unknown horrors. The Nether Sea is vast, but the adventure details 7 places of note. There’s a Charybdis-clone which can shoot the Ultros back up into the air so the PCs can leave, and the River Lethe pours from a high-above tunnel in the form of a rainstorm. An island containing Lutheria’s petrified titan siblings can tell the PCs of their sister’s weaknesses, where and how to find her, and the properties of the Nether Sea as a plane of existence. The Island of the Oathbreakers is a prison managed by yugoloths and erinyes devils, and one of the prisoners can give both similar and new information as the titans. [B]Epic Paths:[/B] One of the prison cubes has already fallen and broke apart. It once housed the Kraken, but now it’s home to Hezzebal, a former brass mount of a Dragonlord driven insane from his time in this forlorn realm. He blames the Vanished One for being left behind, and will treat the PCs as an enemy unless they magically heal his shattered mind. The fabled treasure hoard of the Dragonlords is here, and the Lost One can find one of their wish list magic items among the loot. Estor will claim the Xiphos of Slaughter as part of the oath, a cursed item which drives the user murderously insane. Which is a good deal as such a mentality is superfluous when it comes to the wicked ghost. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/wsXp9t3.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Prison of the Tarrasque:[/B] The only other cube the PCs can infiltrate is a mini-dungeon which houses perhaps one of the most infamous entries in the Monster Manual. An impossibly slow sand hourglass hangs above the cube, counting down to 300 years until the cubes open and the beast and rest of its kin are free to terrorize Thylea once more. [B]Bioware Trope Alert: Time-Sensitive Unsealed Evil:[/B] The cubes unlock early during the final chapter of the adventure path. Additionally, the overall concept of these monsters is not unlike the Old Gods of Dragon Age Origins. Said beings are dragons corrupted by Darkspawn blood who slumber deep beneath the earth and rise every few generations to make war upon the surface. Mass Effect’s Reapers are the same in that they lair in the dark reaches of space before coming to destroy galactic civilization every 50,000 years or so. The dungeon is a one-level, 12 room jaunt, and all of its inhabitants are geared towards the care and feeding of the tarrasque. Golems forged out of primordial clay act as stewards and caretakers, feeding and breeding a pair of chained purple worms for their larvae. Said grubs are thrown off a bridge into a massive chamber full of thousands of the squirming things. An ultraloth is the cube’s ‘warden,’ tasked with guarding the tarrasque as part of an oath with Lutheria. He has no love for the god and will offer to show them how to find the goddess by awakening the tarrasque which sleeps at the bottom of a deep pit in the cube. A secret he will share if the party swears an oath to kill the goddess and bring back her crystal scythe to him. Fortunately by ‘awaken’ he means merely raising it from its slumber as opposed to freeing it: the beast will angrily ram against the cube’s sides, attracting Lutheria’s attention and summoning her barge into nearby waters. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/OcK46FQ.png?1[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Hypnos, the Throne of Dreams:[/B] Lutheria’s residence of choice is a garden-barge towed by her enslaved sibling Talieus, who confusingly shares the same name as one of Sydon’s sons encountered in Praxys. His eyes and mouth are sewn shut by indestructible thread, but the sword Titansbane can cut through them. This frees him from service, and he gives the party a hearty thanks by leaving Lutheria’s base of operations high, dry, and immobile. The barge’s magic and floral scents create a dreamlike sensation of those who board: the PCs will lose their overall sense of time and distance. [B]Bioware Trope Alert: Impassive Enemies:[/B] The barge’s inhabitants act irrationally and do not notice or react to fights and other disturbances outside their rooms no matter how loud things get. A fair portion of enemy monsters have deception, fey, and shapechanging themes. Jackalweres and lamia are the most common monsters and take various forms: beautiful people who attend who tempt the party with sleep-inducing drugs,* children who seem eager to show them a gallery of strange art and treasure, and drooling madmen who attack if the PCs try to steal any treasure as but a few examples. The barge’s armory is full of cursed weapons and armor forged by Sydon, their magic wrought from Lutheria’s own mind in a failed attempt to cure her insanity. The equipment causes the goddess to gain disadvantage on attack rolls and/or suffer the Confusion spell effect when she attacks those bearing such an item. Even better, the equipment will immediately be rid of their curses if this happens during combat. *they won’t kill sleeping PCs. They will bind them in the kitchen quarters to later cook them alive. Lutheria herself holds court in the very last, very large room. A group of goatlings along with a pair of lamia and satyr minstrels* are drinking and partying. The PCs are being judged by the goddess as soon as they set foot here, and if they piss her off too much she’ll abandon any attempts at mercy, negotiation, or chatter and attempt to kill the party. It is possible to bargain with Lutheria and renew the Oath of Peace, although the adventure path at large leans heavily in favor of going Kratos on her ass given that her demands are both unpalatable and create a minor plot hole: in the very next chapter, she ends up attacking Mytros despite this explicitly being forbidden, thereby making her an oathbreaker. *like satyrs, but with some bardic abilities. [B]Editing Retcon:[/B] I made a bit of a mistake in regards to the Nether Sea chapter. Lutheria will not go on her rape and murder spree in Mytros if the PCs swore Oaths of Service to her as part of the Oath of Peace bargain. Which makes what I thought was a major plothole less of one, although there’s still the issue of what happens if she’s called out when cheating at Twenty Squares. What are the 3 things that change Lutheria’s reaction one way or the other? First, choosing to join in or refuse the attendant drunken party (which will deal psychic damage until a Wisdom save is made); laughing or not laughing, however insincerely, at Lutheria’s terrible comedy routine where she only knows jokes about torturing children; and finally, challenging her to a game of Twenty Squares in which the Three Furies will act as neutral judges. Twenty Squares is a very popular fictional board game of strategy and skill, and the boards are magically enchanted to make players honorbound to the conditions set should a player win or lose. The PCs must be the ones to request the game, and part of the game’s rules means that the challenged person sets the terms of winning/losing. Lutheria summons seven crew members along with seven of her goatlings, where the losers’ side will die at the hands of her crystal scythe. Twenty Squares has no fancy mini-game rules. It is a series of seven opposed skill checks where the first person to roll higher in four of them wins the game. Each check is a specific skill in order, with a focus on strategy-minded and social ones such as Deception, History, Insight, etc. Lutheria, being whatever the womanly equivalent of an immature manchild is, cannot stand the thought of losing and will resort to cheating by spending one of her Legendary Resistances* to automatically win a check. This is a weakness the PCs can learn on the Island of Oathbreakers. It says that the PCs can catch Lutheria cheating with a high enough Perception check, but does not explain how/if the Furies punish her if caught red-handed. Which, given that Twenty Squares’ rules has magical foundations, begs the question of to what extent cheating counts as oathbreaking. *A common 5th Edition “boss battle” ability where they can automatically succeed on a saving throw should they fail it. [B]Renewing the Oath of Peace:[/B] The only terms Lutheria agrees to are: 1. The party as a whole must swear an indefinite Oath of Service to her where she can ask them to do anything for the rest of their lives upon pain of death (Geas). This will not be enforced until the PCs render Sydon dead or defanged of being a threat. 2. She will promise not to harm the mortal cities of Thylea, with the implication that smaller settlements will receive no such protection. 3. Lutheria’s temples will remain standing and receive worship and sacrifices. The book says that this will be a continuation of the status quo in regards to her faith and its activities. 4. As Sydon is not present, renewing the Oath here will not ward off the Lord of Storms’ wrath. But she will not aid her brother nor hinder the party in opposing him and his Order. No halfway-reasonable gaming group is going to find this satisfactory. Not only does it allow for Lutheria to make any number of demands on the PCs, it will not bring peace to Thylea. Her brother Sydon is still a threat, one which she is not obligated to commit any resources on her part in fighting. Furthermore, the promise not to attack Thylea’s cities rings hollow; even discounting the many smaller settlements, Lutheria’s cult is very much a “rot from within” type of cult and doesn't have standing armies. One could argue that individual acts of her worshipers (like the cult in Mytros) can violate this, but the mention of continuing the status quo makes it sound like the cult is going to keep being sex pests, murdering children, and transforming teenage girls into monsters (not discounting when she breaks this part of the deal in the chapter of Mytros’ invasion). Furthermore, she will not budge on any issues, no matter how much the PCs got on her good side. Compounding things, the Doomed and Haunted One’s backgrounds cannot be resolved unless the PCs kill Lutheria, and she has no desire to reverse their ill fortunes. So what if the PCs end up in combat with Lutheria? Well, it’s going to be a very difficult battle. They should be around 10th to 12th level at this point in the campaign unless they skipped most of the islands, but the goddess herself is a Challenge Rating 23 powerhouse with some impressive stats. She has advantage on saves vs all forms of magical abilities (not just spells), and her lowest saving throw is +5 Dexterity (the rest are in the double-digits). She has 3 legendary actions, and can spend 2 of them to afflict Confusion or dealing 6d6 necrotic damage to a target on a failed Wisdom or Constitution save respectively. Her offensive spells include a mixture of some debilitating options such as at-will Blight and Hideous Laughter, and 1/day Finger of Death, Irresistible Dance, and Animal Shapes among less directly offensive options. Fortunately the PCs have a few advantages. In addition to the above cursed equipment and draining her legendary saves, she will not immediately take action for 1 round and order her minions to attack the party first. Her servants all have the poisoned condition from their bacchanal and thus have disadvantage on attacks and ability/skill checks. Furthermore, a few of her spells are utility effects which won’t be of immediate use such as Pass Without Trace, Dreams (1 minute casting time), Mirage Arcana (10 minute casting time), and Project Image (which may grant her remote sensing but her Truesight makes this limited in effect). She can cast Animal Shapes which can buff the goatlings into something fiercer, although as it’s concentration that can limit her ability to drop Hideous Laughter and Irresistible Dance. Besides a natural flight speed and her 180 foot Legendary Action Confusion, she doesn’t have any good long-range means of attacking long-range or mobile attack opponents. A canny party might be able to reliably remain out of her range. Scorpion Island centaurs, the pegasus, and Hezzebal the dragon* can all make for reliable allies at this point in the campaign. *who has 3 permanent levels of exhaustion once cured (disadvantage on pretty much every d20 roll and half speed), but is still a formidable dragon. [B]Epic Paths:[/B] Lutheria will waste an additional round of combat laughing at the Doomed One as she recalls how she made their life a living hell. In the event that the Haunted One is present, she will become fearful of what he represents and focus all of her attacks on them to the exclusion of any other threats. [B]Much Ado About Oathbreaking:[/B] I’ve been going on in the past of how breaking an oath is a much bigger deal for the gods than mortals. And since I’ve been talking about it quite a bit, I may as well spill the beans on what happens. A deity who breaks a sworn oath dissolves out of existence, their form turning into grain-like motes before disappearing entirely. The process is not instantaneous, but it takes effect quickly and manifests in a matter of rounds. This is in fact how Lutheria meets her end at the conclusion of the Adventure Path when she goes crazy enough to try and destroy all of existence. The specifics are that she promises to help some risen empyrean former gods in destroying the PCs, but instead lets them die at the party’s hands so as to fuel a Sphere of Annihilation. Her current actions in this chapter surely beg the question of what makes the time in the Nether Sea different than in the grand finale when she goes back on her word with another group. [B]Thoughts So Far:[/B] The Nether Sea is cool in concept and I adore its creepy Primordial Horrors of the Deep theme. The various means of finding out Lutheria’s weaknesses and follies are great as well, allowing for the party a chance at adequate preparation against what may very well be one of their most difficult fights so far in the adventure path. The chapter’s weak points revolved around Lutheria herself, be it her plot hole-inducing actions or the sheer one sided nature of her terms for renewing the Oath of Peace. It is the most transparently-unfair Deal with the Devil scenario I’ve seen in a D&D adventure, and that’s saying a lot. Even discounting the fact that it doesn’t stop Sydon, I imagine that precious few players will want to willingly bind themselves for life to a Chaotic Evil Dionysus. Although she is a literal goddess, it seems unreasonable to make her encounter so wildly out of bounds for the average party level when combat against her is such a likely scenario and all but mandatory for 2 out of the 8 Epic Paths. [B]Join us next time as we climb Praxys, Sydon’s Tower of Power![/B] [/QUOTE]
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