ZEITGEIST Adv5 about to go off the rails

[RangerWickett]

I generally don't like strongarming players to make their efforts automatically fail. But it would be hilarious if they have Harkover do an epic ritual to break the geas, and the moment Grappa starts to spill the beans, a second hidden spell kills him.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Mechanically in Pathfinder I would blame it on a Wish spell cast by Kasavarina if I had to use mechanics, Harkover can't cast 9th level spells so it would be magic beyond him. My modified version of Kasavarina gets up to 18 levels of Sorceror casting so Wish is available. Alternativly if you want mechanics the ritual rules from the Occult book could easily be used to produce this sort of effect in a way Harkover could not break. Making Harkover a skilled magician is already quite difficult mechanically he is not an old enough sorceror to get great power that way , so he has to be a high level wizard or Sorceror as well as a dragon and that is a rare and powerful thing in the rules, or if you boost his age to give him the sorcery he is physically far too powerful for the occasions on which he can use his draconic abilities in books 9 and 13.
In general though I don't see this as strongarming the players , they are dealing with a ruthless group which at the moment has access to people and magics much more powerful than them so they should ocasionally encounter a situation that the Ob has prepared for and be unnable to overcome those preperations. If the Ob are not scary and powerful early on the players will not have a proper respect and fear of them. I know that as late as the end of book 8 my players are aware that the Ob's most powerful people are much more capable then them and are worried about the risk of fighting Nic or the Ghost council again , they know that Kasavarina at full power would be a TPK if they fought her as they have a character sheet for her

 

[efreund]

I was operating under the assumption that all the "big players" were at the same (max) level:

• Harkover Lee
• King Aodhan
• Leon Quital
• Asrabey Varal
• Kasavarina
• Nicodemus??
• Grandis Komanov
• Pemberton

Which roughly comes out to CL 15 for everybody. (Though if you parse the exact stats (in PF), some things are weird; for example, 'varina is a gish, Lee is mostly racial HD with just 3 class levels, and Nic's build is so weird that the devs put a note in the statblock to that end. And I'm just speculating on Komanov and Pemberton, who aren't statted out prior to the Great Eclipse.)

The only things in the entire world that are more powerful than "the 15 cap" are the fey titans, as they are effectively gods. Oh, and Borne. (Though neither titans nor Borne got that way through class levels.)

I see a few routes forward with dealing with Grappa:
1) something about the gaes prevented the transfer of the information from his old body into his new body; the protected data literally died with his fleshly body and never made it into his C3PO body
2) something about the gaes interacts with his circuitry such that attempting to access that data will cause a failsafe to activate, which would kill Grappa. This then becomes a problem to solve (vaguely like that one subplot in Rise of Skywalker). Maybe Tinker Oddcog could help with this?
3) just let him spill the beans, and reward the players. I'm not sure how it really hurts the campaign to let this information out early. From what I understand, everything Grappa knows gets revealed at ObCon in adv7. I wouldn't reveal Axis Island, of course, but the general plan of "I educated him on planar stuff so we could reprogram the stars" seems fair to reveal at this point. It doesn't knock adv6 or adv7 off course .... but I'm sure there's an angle I haven't thought through yet....

 

[RangerWickett]

The challenges you have are

a) making sure it feels meaningful to go after Tinker, and

b) keeping in the path of the party sneaking into, as you call it, ObCon.

Tinker still has knowledge of how the colossus works, but since the party won't actually fight it until adventure 13 (with maybe a small game of 'keep away from the smashy hands' at the end of 8), that's not actually useful in practice. I honestly did a less-than-ideal job making Tinker's knowledge of Borne be particularly useful.

You could do something a smidge weird, like make it so Borne's armor and joints are invulnerable, except for certain spots where bolts were placed. So if those spots are damaged, the rest of the associated body part becomes damage-able, but still pretty resilient. This would give the PCs some avenues to hurt Borne, should they want to, particularly in the adventure 8 fight. Then maybe he also knows that there's a hollow in his chest that can hold the lantern, and it's possible to reach his witchoil reservoir from there. If that's cracked, he'll power down.

For ObCon, you need a person to stand in for the now-dead Leone. Or have ghost Leone, which the lich in the glacier can still deal with, by doing some magic hoo-ha to transfer Grappa's soul into the etheric construct of Leone's ghost. Or have one of the PCs get to be Leone?

 

[efreund]

Or have one of the PCs get to be Leone?

This sounds amazing, and I have to find a way to make it work! (I've read all those "Kasavarina as PC" threads and burned with jealousy.) But this is a problem for the future. A significant problem, but a deferred one.

Right now, I need to figure out how to deal with Grappa, and get my PCs down to Ber.

I also need to figure out how to thread the needle on the fact that one of my PCs views Pemberton as his mentor and patron (he's already handing over all of Oddcog's paperwork recovered from The Facility and is receiving generous gifts in return (yay, graft!)), and would possibly be willing to defect from the RHC if Pemberton invited him into the inner circle. I considered doing a rewrite of adv6 from a pro-Pember perspective, but I couldn't quite swing it.

Flavor-wise, I also need to figure out the dramatic tension, as the PCs are convinced that, in their moment of weakness (their navy destroyed), that Danor is surely planning on taking advantage of them, and launching a conventional military invasion. To that end, they want to drum up patriotism like it's post-9/11, and convince the King that Peace was but a dream. I want to do something meaningful with that narrative tension. Just saying "over the next three months things feel patriotic, but nothing really happens, now off to Ber!" is a bit deflating.

I like the idea that "only Oddcog knows how we can damage Borne", as I sense my party is itching for a Shadows of the Colossus battle. I like the panels-reveal-weakspots idea.

Also, question for my 4th ED friends: what are Inatch's the Hex-Eater's iconic "hex eating" abilities? In PF, he's just a fire-sorcerer. I imagine he's dispelling expert or something in the original? (relevant to how I consider his ability to break the gaes)

 

[RangerWickett]

Here he is in 4e.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

One of my pc's did defect to Pemberton!
I just replaced him with a new character , the player may get to bring back his old character when the party allies with Pemberton, or not as he seems to be enjoying his new character but it will be his choice.

As writen Pemberton and other dragons were always more powerful than CR15 , Pemberton is I believe a Wyrm so is massivly deadly even without flight , but as he is off stage thats not a problem. The king is technically CR15 but the age stat modifiers mean he is very weak , which is good as it makes killing him easier in book 9.
Fairly certain even the published Kasavarina is more than CR15 , indeed she is 17th level like Athrylla . I just upgraded her and many other NPC's.
Upgrading Nic is a bit of a pain as he is so weird , I may just give him some minions when he turns up in a couple of weeks.

 

[efreund]

I never considered "hex eater" would be so literal. (bite attack to dispel)

Man, the 4e blocks were so much more flavorful than the PF conversion. Yikes. Not just all the amazing fluff writeup, but the actual abilities too! I really feel like I'm running this in the wrong version.

And yes, Kasavarina (in bk8) is level 17, but a gish, so CL15. Looking at Lee's bk9 stats, his racial-based abilities are at CL19, which outpaces her.

 

[RangerWickett]

I did cut loose toward the end with the 4e statblocks. Not to disparage his work, but when Russell Torres took over the PF conversions from Thurston, I think he was less willing to try to find ways to make things work in PF mechanics, and instead went with the closest existing equivalent.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Book 9 Harkover is a 13th level sorceror, his spell like abilities are CL19 but his sorcery spells are a mere CL13, really I consider the version in book 9 to be far too weak as a magician to fill his story role. It's the problem that draconic spell casting is linked to age catagory and if he is a good sorceror then he is also far too powerful as a dragon.
I have got around this by going with the other none standard features of creatures in this campaign and stripped him of his sorcerous talants instead letting him become a wizard who has reached 15 level. Note that as written Harkover cannot break even a stanard Geas spell as it requires remove curse (at a caster level of at least 17,) Limited wish or Wish none of which he can cast, so problem solved , No matter how your players whine Harkover cannot break the Geas in fact as written probably only Athrylla can of all published (before book 12/13) characters