Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 9589550" data-attributes="member: 42856">We ascend the stair of the tower. It's a observatory tower, full of astronomical charts and implements, the secret of which died with Psyche.Taking the stairs up, we arrive at a landing.We don't take time to measure it exactly, so we will never know if it is an appropriate 15 feet wide landing for a magical tower. Two doors, a white and a black one, can be tried.We first go throught the white door. In the room, hung with silk curtains, stands a cowled figure in a corner, that bids us to close the door behind us, because there is a draught.We are presented the choice of agreeing, or leaving.Being certified jerks, we would certainly tell him to shut up and keep the door open while we loot his room, but this option isn't given. Hearing the click as the door close, the figure removes his cowl and gives a gleeful chuckles. He reveals himself to be a leper. His face is ravaged and his eyes are sightless. He taunts us that we're trapped now with him as the door is one-way, and while he's guarding a golden mirror, the irony is we won't have any use for the loot as we'll just die of leprosy with him.We have no solution but to die here, wallowing in despair, as now the Psyche is dead, there is few chance one of the slaves would venture here and open the door from the outside...Seriously? Ways of leaving: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There is a window, that is blocked by the silk curtain. We're on the first floor. Accident happens, but between leaving through the window and being trapped forever and die from leprosy, I think it's worth trying.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">We can force the door, as we did by bashing the front door, which was a slab of rock larger than the interior wooden door.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">We have access to the Immediate Deliverance spell. It's a short-distance ethereal jaunt, more than enough to move to the other side of the door. And we've seen the other side of the door since we came through it 10 seconds earlier.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">We have a flying carpet to leave through the air.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A Sage can fly through his Levitation power. There is a window. We have all the time we want to empty our mind and reach weightlessness. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">We have a fire orb that will burn easily through the floor, since it burned through a whole whaler ship in seconds when activated in a path we didn't take (mostly because doing so while standing on the whaler ship in high seas was not deemed as smart.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">We can probably do the same by casting Nemesis Bolt repeatedly at the floor. We're doing 7d6+7 damage every two round, continuously. We could level the place easily... let alone blast a wall.</li> </ul>All are easy solutions, but the books offer more convoluted reaction: "hey let's die here and revel in hopelessness". Also, don't kid me. Those poor slaves were positively frightened of their mistress, now there is noone else but them in the rich villa, and they won't want to loot it to start their lives anew? However, we have a Trickster, so we are told to go to section 354 instead, without a choice.Trixie moves forward and takes the mirror from the hand of the leper, after wiping it thoroughly against an silk carpet. Then she leaves through the door that she blocked with a wire on the way in, having noticed that there was no handle on the inside and anticipating a trap. The leper asks how we did that and Trixie just replicate with click sound with her tongue and boast the usefulness of being able to imitate a creak on a floorboard, the crackling of fire, or the mewling of a cat. The leper is rejoinced that he can at least be free, but we close the door shut before he can cross, saying "The next sound you hear will be the click of the door actually closing".Well, that was very cool. And I liked the book playing a trick on the reader. Though my rant still stands. I also liked the jerk move, as befits us, including the added, gratuitous taunt! Even if the blind leper was working for Psyche, he wasn't really in a position to refuse the job.We enter the other room and loot an empty crystal phial containing a potion we can drink anytime outside combat (section 370).We try to ascend on the second floor, but a force field, a diminishing remnant of Psyche's magical power, blocks our path.So we get back to bed. We have a short, but sound sleep. In the morning, a slave named Sha'at brings us a fine breakfast of spiced buttermilk and unleavened bread with dates and oranges. Everyone gets back 3 HP -- and since we had been healing all the way, everyone is now back in full health.The slaves assume that since we killed Pyche, we're now the new sorcerous owner of the place, including all the properties, which include themselves. These poor people probably have nowhere else to go. It would be inhumane to just leave and not add Psyche's estate to our list of assets? There is nothing wrong to get a little richer while adventuring, isn't it? Honestly, in this book we're total jerks.  We have the choice to explore the tower (131) or get back to Crescentium (521), since this detour hasn't helped us to get a clue on the location of the blade of the Bloodsword.And yes, all these books are 600ish section longs, with few strings of linear section without a real choice (mostly only when several path remerge again). </blockquote>

Verification