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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Urbannen" data-source="post: 1141455" data-attributes="member: 7643">Achtung!  Rappan Athuk 1 is really horribly designed.  It was converted to 3.0 before 3.0 was even published.  I ran it a couple of times and 1. it took many hours to get it to be 3.0 compliant, and2. it was either very boring or killer hard for the players.The module is not contiguous - that is, it is not possible for the players to get to all the levels by simply going down.  The dungeon doesn't make "ecological" sense unless you own all three Rappan Athuk modules.    In order to survive the lower levels (if they actually can find them), the players need to be pretty high level themselves, or have munchkin stats and equipment.  This means that the first levels are boring.  They can't get enough experience from the first levels to advance sufficiently for the lower levels either.  That said, I still did a lot of work on a correcting the upper level creatures if you want it.  The stats, skills, and features of almost all the NPCs in Rappan Athuk were pretty well messed up.    As for your question.  -I made the skeletons not have the deeper darkness spell since they are not immune to darkness.  I would still suggest finding a way to advance them for higher level parties.  -I advanced Scramge to a 3rd level sorcerer and gave him mirage arcana and seeming as spells (the sorcerer spellcasting levels stack with his).  This makes him have a really high CR.  These spells allow him to disguise his room w/o a save and make someone else look like a demon.  I also gave him Silent Spell, advanced his Charisma to 18, and gave him Spell Focus (Illusion) and GSF (Illusion). I didn't give him any direct damage spells.  In theory with these changes you can recreate the effects given in the module but still be rules compliant.  In practice you can never get the DCs of his Illusion spells to be high enough to fool an entire party or to get his seeming spell to always work.  Reread the running of illusions - it's tricky!  I gave my players too many saves.  My plan for the switch with the players was:Scramge uses an alarm spell to become alerted to intruders.S. casts mirage arcana to make his room look like a temple to Orcus.  The jackalweres change shape to look like human commoners.S. makes himself look like an orcish priest and hides in his own mirage arcana spell.  S. casts nondetection on himself.S. casts persistent image to make the appearance of orcs torturing the disguised jackalweres.The adventurers enter and fight the orcs.  Scramge allows them to win, using his free action Detect Thoughts to learn about the adventurers.  In theory the jackalweres will have a chance to use their sleep gaze.  If there is a paladin in the party they will not.  At this point it's unlikely that you could pull off the switch, but it's possible using seeming (which can't be silenced), shapechanging, and silenced suggestion spells.  An alternate plan I had was to have Scramge take on the form of an orcish cleric, advance, cast obscuring mist, then use his seeming spell to make the adventurers think he had summoned a demon.  He would then take on the form of the adventurer and use silenced suggestions to make the others attack their disguised teammate.  It's unlikely that you can pull this off, simply because the saves for most of these spells are just so chancy.  The room is very small and doesn't allow for much mobility on the part of Scramge.  Scramge killed my players (who were not too smart, IMO) by emerging from the mist disguised as the party cleric who was right behind him.  He used a suggestion on the party fighter who then proceeded to slaughter the "imposters" with his keen sword.  The party could just not get through Scramge's damage resistance and spell immunity, except for the fire damage from one flaming weapon.  Remember that Scramge will never reveal himself to be a rakshasa, thus possibly revealing his vulnerabilities.  His Bluff and Disguise skills are very hard to beat.  This foe can majorly screw with your players' heads.  Like I said, I did a lot of work converting most of the NPCs to be 3.0 compliant.  If you want, I can send you my work this evening if you give me your e-mail.</blockquote>

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