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Forked Thread: KotShadowfell wierdness/plotholes.

As a player, I found the whole deal a bit annoying. One thing that might have helped would have been to describe the "infinite skeletons" as getting back up again instead. This passage makes little enough sense, so what I really didn't need here was a fight straight out of a video game.


cheers
 

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As a player, I found the whole deal a bit annoying. One thing that might have helped would have been to describe the "infinite skeletons" as getting back up again instead. This passage makes little enough sense, so what I really didn't need here was a fight straight out of a video game.


cheers

Yeah, the last thing the first 4th Edition adventure needed to get away from video game comparisons was blatant Gauntletesque spawning points. ;)

I do like the idea of defeated skeletons reforming much better than new skeletons popping out infinitely. I think I'll go with that.
 

Don't threadcrap.

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Wasn't there that imprisoned goblin who was talkative, too? (Maybe our DM added him.)

Yeah, the last thing the first 4th Edition adventure needed to get away from video game comparisons was blatant Gauntletesque spawning points.
The irony for my group is that we expected stuff to come out of the tombs, so we took the lids off preemptively ... found nothing ... and then got attacked anyway.

Fair enough. I will remember that as the official position the next time someone tells me to " not think too hard about fantasy" as it relates to logical rules construction.
Very few social rules are universally applicable across different stiuations. I caution you against trying make a mod eat his words.

Cheers, -- N
 

It's actually mostly explained in the text for the adventure.

These were the tombs where the garrison of the keep buried their dead. It's natural that there would be a shrine to Bahamut there, so that interment rites could be performed. The skeletons were later animated under the influence of the rift; they were not created by Bahamut. Praying to Bahamut subdues them, as a way of protecting those who worship him from evil.

It also says that Keegan hid in a pre-existing tomb. The only open question, it seems to me, concerns his coffin. The carving on the lid kind of suggests that the coffin was made for him to be buried in, but that doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of the plot presented. Some possibilities are

(1) the coffin was made for him in advance, like pharoahs built their pyramids while they were alive (this seems a big stretch to me)

(2) it's someone else's coffin, and Keegan took it over - perhaps the previous commander of the keep (kind of weird)

(3) as suggested earlier in this thread, maybe he made it for himself (I like this idea, as it seems like a delightfully macabre thing for a suicidal, guilt-ridden knight to do when he finds himself facing eternity there in undead form)

(4) it's just a random coffin; the keep was manned by soldiers, so the carving on the lid could be more generic than it seems at first take

I'm going to go with (3) as the most flavorful of the options. But I think this is a detail; the plot doesn't really have any serious inconsistencies.
 

In the past I often found myself coming up with elaborate back stories to make sense of events.

There is definitely a fine line between an adequately and unnecessarily detailed back story. I don't think this really qualifies though. A tomb dedicated to Bahamut in the middle of a dungeon dedicated to Orcus practically begs the players to ask questions like "what the hell is this doing here?" If there's no explanation given or the one provided makes no sense, it's something of a problem.
 

I ran the encounter with the skeletons and Keegan a week or so ago... and no one questioned the fact that Bahamut (sp?) was able to grant the PCs safe passage.

My thought was that Kalarel specifically animated a number of undead to defend the Keep. He didn't animate this group. So, this group, although re-animated by the Rift isn't specifically loyal to Orcus/Kalarel and thus could still hold their prior allegiance to Bahamut.

Had it been asked, that's what I would have said.

As for the coffin thing... I noticed that as well, and thus when the challenge was over and successfully completed, Keegan explained that when he overcame his madness, he carved his own tomb here before committing suicide. My players seemed fine with that explanation (and I'm not sure they would have asked otherwise).

The discrepencies I've had the biggest trouble with are room descriptions like the entrance to the Keep that begins "descending into darkness" and then you get to the features of room #1 and it's bright light. My players were a bit confused by that. So now when I tell them it's a dark room, they need to question "So, how bright, exactly is this darkness?"

Other discrepencies are in the Perception DCs to spot things... and it seems pretty common that the DCs will be different from one place in the text to another. Balgron's secret door is a DC 20 Perception check in the Perception line and a DC 25 elsewhere in the description of the are. This is also the case with the Blue Slime encounter (I think it's DC 20 in the "Perception" line and DC 25 in the Stat block).
 

There is definitely a fine line between an adequately and unnecessarily detailed back story. I don't think this really qualifies though. A tomb dedicated to Bahamut in the middle of a dungeon dedicated to Orcus practically begs the players to ask questions like "what the hell is this doing here?" If there's no explanation given or the one provided makes no sense, it's something of a problem.

Did you read the history of the keep at all?

The dungeon wasn't "dedicated to Orcus" - it was built by the good guys to guard the rift. Then they died and the bad guys moved in to try to reopen it. The shrine to Bahamut, like most of the areas, was built by the good guys a couple hundred years ago.
 

Did you read the history of the keep at all?

The dungeon wasn't "dedicated to Orcus" - it was built by the good guys to guard the rift. Then they died and the bad guys moved in to try to reopen it. The shrine to Bahamut, like most of the areas, was built by the good guys a couple hundred years ago.

No, I didn't read the history at all.

If there's an explanation for what the tomb's doing there and why the skeleton's are doing Bahamut's will, what's the OP's problem?
 

I think the plot hole is that Sir Whatshisface has a tomb, despite his backstory being that he went crazy, killed his wife and child, killed several guards and then retreated into the catacombs once he realized what he did, and then getting walled up in there (I missed the part where it said he killed himself, but I shouldn't be reading KotS anyways since I'm a player and someone might run it some time), which he accepts as punishment for his crimes.

The issue here is thus: The room he's in has a tomb fashioned in his likeness, so who built it?
 

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