Converting monsters from Tales From The Infinite Staircase

[freyar]

I'll go for that.

Ready to deal with those spells? I guess we are told that he has "Spells (15): burning hands (×2), darkness, detect magic, magic missile, reduce (×2), scry mirror (×4), shield, transport mirror (×2)," but that's a bit of repetition. Plus we have more spell slots available. I guess the first question is if we want to keep all of those.

 

[Cleon]

I'll go for that.

Ready to deal with those spells? I guess we are told that he has "Spells (15): burning hands (×2), darkness, detect magic, magic missile, reduce (×2), scry mirror (×4), shield, transport mirror (×2)," but that's a bit of repetition. Plus we have more spell slots available. I guess the first question is if we want to keep all of those.

I'd likely change the mirror spells to scrolls, since there's little point in cluttering up his spell slots with them, but would keep the rest of them.

Two burning hands and two reduce person spells seem excessive. How about cutting it to one of each, but use mirror spells for them? We could use our greater enlarge/reduce instead of plain enlarge/reduce person.

 

[freyar]

Well, if he is using scry mirror a lot, it would be cheaper to prepare it each day rather then scribe scrolls. I mean, really, you could say the same for any spell.

I do like using mirror spells for greater enlarge/reduce and burning/freezing hands.

 

[Cleon]

Before we go to far, I'd better update the Kamerel Leader Working Draft with the skills and feats we agreed on.

Well, if he is using scry mirror a lot, it would be cheaper to prepare it each day rather then scribe scrolls. I mean, really, you could say the same for any spell.

Cheaper sure, but in the case of the adventure Nen Itan is leading an expedition to retake part of his homeland that was lost to the Rilmani.

Every 3rd level spell slot occupied by scry mirror is one that can't be used for a spell he might need immediate access to in the face of a dangerous encounter, like dispel magic.

Scrolls are handy, but they tend to have lower caster level and save DCs than the spells a wizard casts himself.

Besides, our version of scry mirror doesn't last that long - at 1 min./level he can only check for enemies for 10 minutes. Nen Itan would likely want to check for threats more often than that.

I guess he could have one scry mirror spell prepared and a bunch of other ones on scrolls.

I do like using mirror spells for greater enlarge/reduce and burning/freezing hands.

That we can agree on!

I'm thinking there's little point giving him scorching ray/freezing ray like the mage if he's got burning hands/freezing hands, so what 2nd level mirror spell should we replace it with?

I'm tempted by the idea of arcane lock/knock, but that seems another spell that makes more sense as a scroll.

Continual flame/darkness maybe, to substitute for the blacklight/daylight the kamerel mage has?

Oh, and we'd better give him some Conjuration spells since that's what we chose Spell Focus in.

How's this for a start:

Typical Wizard Spells Prepared (4/5/5/4/4/2), DC 14 plus spell level, or DC 15 plus spell level for Conjuration spells.
5th—one¹, two;
4th—heightened blacklight/daylight¹ (DC 18 for blacklight), black tentacles (DC 19), three, four;
3rd—greater enlarge/greater reduce¹² (DC 17), stinking cloud (DC 18), three, four;
2nd—glitterdust (DC 17), mirror image, web (DC 17), four, five;
1st—burning hands/freezing hands¹ (DC 15), magic missile, shield, four, five;
0—detect magic, mage hand, open/close, resistance.
¹ mirror spell.
² new spell - see kamerel mages.

That's a lot of incapacitating and "save or suck" spells. We might want to swap one or two for something else.

Come to think of it, we should list the spell DCs in the kamerel mage. I'll update it with:

Typical Wizard Spells Prepared (4/4/4/3), DC 13 plus spell level.
3rd—blacklight/daylight¹ (DC 16 for blacklight), displacement, greater reduce² (DC 16);
2nd—glitterdust (DC 15), scorching ray/freezing ray¹, mirror image, hideous laughter (DC 15);
1st—burning hands (DC 14), magic missile, shield, protection from chaos/law¹;
0—detect magic, mage hand, open/close, resistance.
¹ mirror spell.
² new spell - see below.

EDIT: Hold on, those 2nd level spells aren't alphabetical. It ought to be:

2nd—glitterdust (DC 15), hideous laughter (DC 15), mirror image, scorching ray/freezing ray¹;

 

[freyar]

*UGH* I thought I'd replied to this already to find that it was just auto-saved. Sorry for the delay...

Well, I can generally agree with that reasoning. But I'm not sure we need to get rid of any incapacitating spells --- after all, your logic is that he's come through from Reflection ready to fight.

More spells for our leader:
1st -- obscuring mist, unseen servant
2nd -- flaming/freezing sphere, fox's cunning
3rd -- scry mirror, tiny hut
4th -- detect scrying, mnemonic enhancer
5th -- cloudkill, cone of cold/fire

What do you think?

 

[Cleon]

*UGH* I thought I'd replied to this already to find that it was just auto-saved. Sorry for the delay...

Well, I can generally agree with that reasoning. But I'm not sure we need to get rid of any incapacitating spells --- after all, your logic is that he's come through from Reflection ready to fight.

I said "might" not "had better". It depends on what other spells we decide he should have - if we start running short on slots at a particular level we may want to cut one of the incapacitating spells to make room.

More spells for our leader:
1st -- obscuring mist, unseen servant
2nd -- flaming/freezing sphere, fox's cunning
3rd -- scry mirror, tiny hut
4th -- detect scrying, mnemonic enhancer
5th -- cloudkill, cone of cold/fire

What do you think?

At 5th level, I was thinking of cloudkill too, but prefer transmute mud to rock/rock to mud for the "mirror spell".

For the 4th level, detect scrying is a good fit but mnemonic enhancer is of limited utility. Maybe wall of fire/wall of ice? That'd mean we'd have to exchange the heightened blacklight/daylight for a standard or heightened blacklight spell (plus possibly a separate daylight spell), but that's no great loss.

With the 3rd level spells, I would still prefer giving him a couple of scry mirror spells on scrolls. One of those 3rd level slots would be much better utilized for a dispel magic. There's little point to tiny hut considering Nen Ita and his kamerel guards are all indoors during the adventure. Plus, there's more than 10 of them so they wouldn't all fit inside the hut.

A fox's cunning is fine, although there are a lot of good 2nd level spells in the SRD - minor image, protection from missiles or misdirection would all be handy for him to have.

Maybe another magic missile among the 1st level spells or, failing that, ray of enfeeblement? I like unseen servant for him, but obscuring mist seems a bit surplus to requirement when all the mages has blacklight.

 

[freyar]

I thought about mud to rock/rock to mud myself but wasn't sure it fit. But I'm happy to change to that. It was definitely an option.

What about lesser globe of invulnerability in place of mnemonic enhancer? If his CR is meant to be a few above the party, it could really play havoc with PC casters.

Swapping dispel magic for tiny hut works for me. But I'd like to go with one scry mirror (plus scrolls) as consistent with the original.

Take your pick on the 1st and 2nd level spells. I agree that there are a lot of good choices.

 

[Cleon]

I thought about mud to rock/rock to mud myself but wasn't sure it fit. But I'm happy to change to that. It was definitely an option.

What about lesser globe of invulnerability in place of mnemonic enhancer? If his CR is meant to be a few above the party, it could really play havoc with PC casters.

A lesser globe of invulnerability would likely be too effective. At the levels the adventure's supposed to be the PCs' casters may not have any spells able to penetrate it.

Come to think of it, the same problem applies to cloudkill - if it's a large party with an average of 6th level similar to the original adventure, they could easily all die to that spell. DC 20 Fort vs. death is a hard roll at that level.

Hmm, we've already giving him detect scrying, but he doesn't have anything to prevent scrying once detected. How about mage's private sanctum. If kamerel are such paranoid xenophobes, he's likely to have a morbid fear of non-kamerel spellcasters scrying him.

He'll need to stick his head outside the sanctum to talk to kamerel outside the area of effect, but that's no great problem - he's more likely to talk to allies inside the mage's private sanctum anyway.

Hmm... come to think of it, since he's their leader he ought to have a spell or two to send instructions to his minions, like whispering wind or message.

Swapping dispel magic for tiny hut works for me. But I'd like to go with one scry mirror (plus scrolls) as consistent with the original.

Take your pick on the 1st and 2nd level spells. I agree that there are a lot of good choices.

Very well. How about this for a revision:

Typical Wizard Spells Prepared (4/5/5/4/4/2), DC 14 plus spell level, or DC 15 plus spell level for Conjuration spells.
5th—mage's private sanctum, transmute mud to rock/rock to mud¹ (DC 19);
4th—black tentacles (DC 19), heightened blacklight (DC 18), detect scrying, wall of fire/wall of ice¹;
3rd—dispel magic, greater enlarge/greater reduce¹² (DC 17), scry mirror², stinking cloud (DC 18);
2nd—darkness/continual flame¹, fox's cunning, glitterdust (DC 17), mirror image, whispering wind;
1st—burning hands/freezing hands¹ (DC 15), magic missile (×2), shield, unseen servant;
0—detect magic, mage hand, message, resistance.
¹ mirror spell.
² new spell - see kamerel mages.

 

[freyar]

That's fine.

Did you want to add any equipment, or are you satisfied with what we have?

Similarly, should we change up the tactics for the leader?

 

[Cleon]

That's fine.

Updating the Kamerel Leader Working Draft.

Did you want to add any equipment, or are you satisfied with what we have?

He definitely needs more equipment - we've only spent about 40% of his budget.

We were going to give him some scrolls of scry mirror (380 gp). Let's say two of those, for 760 gp.

Then add either a ring of mind shielding or a ring of protection +2 for another 8,000 gp. I'm leaning towards the protection ring myself.

That leaves 918 gp, which is enough for a hand of the mage - which means we can exchange his mage hand cantrip for another message or the open/close the driver mage has prepared.


Equipment
Budget: 16,000 gp [10th level NPC]
+2 ring of protection (8,000 gp)
+2 headband of intellect (4,000 gp)
+1 dagger (2,302 gp)
hand of the mage (900 gp)
two scrolls of scry mirror (780 gp)
Spent: 15,982 gp
Remainder: 18 gp

Similarly, should we change up the tactics for the leader?

I guess so. He's more a "hang behind and debilitate the enemy while his allies finish them off" type.