Dungeon 144

[Nightfall]

Shemmy's always been a Planar consultant. Just now he's got a consulting gig with Paizo now too.

Shemmy,

My bad. I misread that part.

 

[Razz]

Woah woah woah, let's assign credit for that adventure correctly. -I did not write it-. Chris Wissel was the author, so any happiness by you guys should be directed towards him, but James had me look over the draft and give any suggestions, comments, with regards to the planar lore and any more overtly Planescape etc tieins that might be relevant to consider. I had some input in the editing process, but I did not write the module. Let's be clear on that.

There were 'loths involved in the adventure, and I got asked for some input.

I have a handful of queries sitting as render fodder with Dungeon, but that's the most I've ever gotten. Don't give me too much credit here, especially when I haven't seen what, if any, of my suggestions or edits made it into the published piece.



Again, I didn't write the adventure, I just did some editing/influenced the editing process.

Ah, ok, it didn't sound like that in your last post. I assumed it was yours by the way it was written. My bad.

Well congrats to Chris Wissel then! If he sees this thread, that is.

But yeah, BOZ is right, a planar consultant for the Paizo team? That's just as awesome.

 

[Nightfall]

Yeah congrats Chris. I look forward to reading this!

 

[Raloc]

Nightfall:

Here's a short summary of each of the adventures.

The Muster of Morach Tor

This FR adventure is for 4th level characters and takes place in and around Nesmé. After a series of attacks, the defenders of Nesmé are reduced in number. The First Speaker of Nesmé hires out the Khoroshen, a nearby tribe of lizardfolk. The adventure centers around what happens when Khoroshen loyalty runs foul.

The Lightless Depths

The sixth in the Savage Tide (see, I've been out of the loop, the last Dungeon I had had the 3rd or so in the Shackled City one ) Adventure Path, the Lightless Depths takes place on and under the Isle of Dread. "Deep beneath the Isle of Dread, in a place forgotten by the world of light, and ancient, unfathomable evil festers. Within the desiccated ruin known as Golismorga, the debased kopru servants of Demogorgon work foul rites, steeping immature shadow pearls in pits of liquid insanity. None from the world above have yet fathomed what terrors lurk beneath the Isle of Dread, nor what mad scheme roils to profane life deep within the city's gangrenous corpse."


Diplomacy

This event based planar adventure takes place on the Plane of Gloaming around the negotiations for "The Valley of Light" (a massive planar diamond mine).

Can you tell us what the new monsters are?

Can you skip ahead to the Creature Feature of the issue and tell us what creature is presented? Thanks.

There are two new monsters in The Lightless Depths. One is called a Brain Collector (or Nehthalggu I guess), and is described as being "A hungry polyp upon twelve insectoid legs. Larger than a horse, the thing's tumid mass writhes with whipping tentacles. It has a lipless mouth heavy with protruding row of dagger-teeth, and a ridge of four bulging eyes above. A cluster of twelve knots crown the abomination's misshapen fom, the gray wrinkles of brains trapped within pressed against the semi-transparent membranes." It's a Large CR 7 aberration and can use the brains it captures to apply metamagic like effects to its spells (cast as a 6th level sorc.) without increasing their spell slot level. It can also store more spells known in the collected brains.

The second monster is called a Bilewretch of Holashner. It's described as "A thing half-centipede, half-squid, with a single alien, black eye staring from its octopoid head." (Though that's a paraphrase, as is the other description). It looks pretty much like it says, a one eyed (reddish in the illustration, not black) octo-looking head sits on a chitinous, many-legged white body (the head is white colored too).

It's a Huge CR 13 aberration. It has various abilities related to the mechanics of "bilestone" including gaining fast healing while at least partially submerged in a liquid pool of black bile, a bile breath weapon and some acid related things.

Who did the artwork for Sharlocke in the planar adventure? And assuming it remained in there, what CR do they peg the revised 3.5 arcanaloth at?

Sharlocke is listed as CR 23, and having 2 levels in sorceror and 4 in archmage.

 

[Nightfall]

Raloc,

Thank you for that semi-enlightening explanation.

 

[BOZ]

did this one have a Wandering Monsters column?

 

[Shemeska]

This event based planar adventure takes place on the Plane of Gloaming around the negotiations for "The Valley of Light" (a massive planar diamond mine).

I'll just add this for folks if they were curious, but the "Plane of Gloaming" is a demiplane, while the diamond mine in question is a location within Elemental Earth. That was the case pre-edits.

 

[James Jacobs]

The revised arcanaloth is a CR 17 creature, and it's significantly more of a CR 17 creature than the version that appeared in MMII. I know this creates an unfortunate bit of weirdness with the MMIII ultraloth being CR 13. For Dungeon's take on what I think a "proper" ultraloth should look like, check out page 84 of issue #141 for a CR 19 advanced version of the one from MMIII.

I'd hoped to be able to print the actual stat block of the revised arcanaloth in the issue as a new monster, along with the 3.5 stat block for the other updated planar creature that appears in that adventure as well (it's a tertian modron), but the issue was really jam-packed and there just wasn't room to do so. I did give the arcanaloth back a version of his ability to blast enemies with fire if he so chooses (something that they haven't had since 1st edition), though. They're properly tough customers again, I'm happy to report.

I suppose the next project should be the hydroloth, or maybe the dergholoth...

 

[Nightfall]

I'm all for the Dergholoth James.

 

[James Jacobs]

did this one have a Wandering Monsters column?

Nope; generally, if we do a Critical Threat, we won't do a Wandering Monster. There's plenty of new/updated monsters in the issue though. Aside from the updated arcanaloth and modron, there's the non-epic version of the brain collecter (which also first appeared way back in X2: Castle Amber), and the all-new bilewretch of Holashner.