Heart of Nightfang Spire Riddle Room (spoilers)

[stevelabny]

What was the general consensus on this room?

The one with the altar, the dragon statue on the ceiling, and the draconic inscription that says something like...

"What is greater than the Great Wyrm Ashardalon?
The poor have it,
The rich need it;
Eat it and you will surely die. "

After my gf's cleric did a knowledge religion on the type of altar/room this was I told her it was probably used for initation rites.

When she failed the will save, I told her she felt obligated to respond. She paused then spit out "nothing" , failed her fort save, and died.

She IMMEDIATELY understood what happened and started ranting about how she gave the right answer and shes so stupid. The other players were baffled and were SURE she answered incorrectly, since shes dead. The party barbarian, also under the spell, responded with an incorrect answer and set off the fire-trap.

I later explained exactly what happened (It is where they welcome new members into their undead cult. By giving the right answer, you pass their test and die.)
My gf is FINE with the death, but is upset that shes been reincarnated as a non-human.
but the rest of my players think this is "cheap" since she gave the RIGHT answer to the riddle.

I LOVE this room, as I think it is VERY old-school.

What did you guys think?

 

[Thanee]

I think your gf needs new dice.

She's a cleric and failed her will save and her fortitude save!?

I didn't like the adventure at all, when we played it. It felt just like a completely arbitrary collection of weird stuff.

Might have been the DMs fault, that he did not bring the underlying story across, but then again, I'm not sure if that was even possible with all that weird stuff they had amassed in there.

I'm not sure what happened in that room, tho, I cannot recall anyone die from that "trap". Probably just made their save, since I guess we would have answered correctly, too.

I think the trap itself is fine, tho. If you have some information, that it is an undead cult (we didn't have any such information, I actually read about this the first time here ) and with the hint about the initiation rite, there was a fair chance to get to the conclusion, that it might not be the best idea to answer. And it had two saves, too.

It actually makes more sense, then just putting a riddle there to be solved.

Bye
Thanee

 

[WizarDru]

I LOVE this room, as I think it is VERY old-school.

What did you guys think?

My opinions on Nightfang Spire are fairly well known, but simply put, this was a classic part of reason I didn't like this module at all. The cleric in my group fell to this one, as well, and the wizard nearly did.

The module, as a whole, has plenty of problems...but one of it's greatest sins is how it shifts gears from the rest of the adventure path, going for the jugular after previous modules play things out differently. There's some great set pieces in this module, but on the whole it starts to fall apart the longer it goes on. There's a lot of things that just don't make a lot sense in the module, and are there primarily because Bruce Cordell thought they would be cool. YMMV.

 

[DragonLancer]

I ran it as part of my last campaign, and the party really enjoyed the module. The higher level adventure path modules were very good.

As I recall, they also managed to work the puzzle out, though it took them a while to agree on the answer. No one died though, I remember that.

 

[stevelabny]

maybe im sleep-walking BUT

theres a tower. in the tower reside an undead cult to an ancient red dragon.

the main bad guys in the tower are UNDEAD (and lots of them) and GIRALLONS 4-armed ape creatures that are being used as slaves by the undead.

plus, theres a few golems.

it could be a little sucky for the party rogue with all the undead and golems, but he has enough traps to keep him busy, sneaking can keep him busy, and he can still sneak attack the girallons.

but what specific things dont make sense?
the gibbering mouther vampire is quite bizarre, but makes sense by its backstory.
Stitches, the half-dragon flesh golem and the Tombstone Golem are both pretty cool as far as golems go and make sense.
and there was a vrock, that had obviously been summoned and left trapped just in case they ever needed it.

Yes the module is nothign but a dungeon crawl, but I'm not seeing how it doesnt make sense. Please explain or link me to an old thread?

Also...I'm not sure how this module "goes for the jugular" when others dont.
The front door of Forge or Fury is a heavily-fortified death-trap. Not to mention its roper and dragon.

 

[shilsen]

I LOVE this room, as I think it is VERY old-school.

What did you guys think?

I abhor that kind of trap (also has very high DCs, IIRC) and agree with WizarDru about the module. Perhaps the fact that I also dislike a lot of old-school D&D stuff (*watches out for incoming Diaglo*) has something to do with it. Different strokes.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Frankly I think that any trap which is an encouragement to ignore stuff and not touch anything in the dungeon for fear of arbitrary punishment is a crappy one.

Hooray, a riddle in a boring dungeon hack. And what's my reward for the correct answer? Death! And what's my reward for a wrong answer? Slightly less death?

I mean, c'mon? At least it could have raised them as an undead creature after killing them. Then it might have made some sense.