P3 - Anyone run it?

[Obryn]

Tomb of Sartine? It's not worth rebuilding. It's a small tomb, and works pretty well as written (except for monster choices - they're worth replacing).

No, go to the Teeth and spend your time there. That's where the bulk of the problems lie.

Cheers!

Thanks! And I will do that, I'm sure. But like I mentioned, I'm planning to add a city fairly near Nightwyrm Fortress, and hopefully adding in the background info will help with that section a lot.

I'm more focused for the moment on the first 3-5 sessions, and the Tomb will come up fairly quickly.

I also need to replace the Skull of Sartine with something. I have literally zero orb-users in my current group - and only one implement-user at all, apart from a few Holy Symbol attacks from our Avenger. I'm stumped on this one.

-O

 

[Obryn]

Sorry to turn this into a kind of personal notes thread, but I'm still plunging through the necessary modifications.

I think the monsters in the Tomb might work - but they need some serious level changes. That last encounter - with a Level 22 soldier - is just insanity waiting to happen. However, I like the monster selection itself... So I went ahead and changed the Efreet into a Level 19 Elite, and dropped his defenses a bit. I kept his damage high, as I think an Efreet should be. I dropped the other Soldiers to Level 17; they'll be tough enough as-is. The Ash Disciples are fine; I mean, they're technically Level 20, but they're artillery - and most of their power is in Encounter abilities. (After that, they turn into flank buddies for the Cinderguards.)

Merric - were there any other encounters you saw that were in desperate need of revision?

-O

 

[MerricB]

Sorry to turn this into a kind of personal notes thread, but I'm still plunging through the necessary modifications.

...

Merric - were there any other encounters you saw that were in desperate need of revision?

I tend not to look at that sort of detail until I actually run an encounter; it's too hard to judge the capabilities of the party ahead of time. That said, I'm getting very wary of monsters of higher level than the party - there have been way too many of them. 4E works very well with the occasional monster of higher level, but not with most of them.

My group got to the Teeth last session and - as expected - climbed to the top of the wall and tried to directly access the tower. Didn't work; they wandered around the walkway a bit (and I had a couple of encounters with lone draconic wraiths to break things up a bit) and eventually made their way down into the Teeth proper.

I knocked a couple of points of defenses off most of the slaad without making other changes, just so combat would run a little quicker.

Cheers!

 

[Obryn]

Alright, so continuing right along...

I'm dropping some stuff from the Gloomdeeps and Tomb, and making up for it with some skill challenges and encounters in the Shadowfell. Had I done this earlier, we could have avoided the current ridiculous Cyclops + Carrion Crawler battle altogether. If I can come up with something by tomorrow, the fight in front of the tomb with the mishmash of stone golem + gargoyle + gibbering abomination might get zonked in some way.

In the tomb itself, I've switched the 1st encounter from the nutso and annoying bone nagas to a single MM3 monster - the Ghost Beholder - with his pet lightning columns. I'd rather not have the whole party dazed every round.

The 2nd encounter with the death knight makes no sense from me, so I'm going to blame it - and the ghost beholder - on "necromantic seepage." It will be avoidable, and nerfed. Seriously - a guy who became a veritable exarch to the Raven Queen shouldn't use undead to guard his tomb.

Then, I'm putting a fork in the road. The Skull is going to be guarded by the Archons and Efreet, and the main portal is going to be guarded by the Angel and a bunch of Keepers (replacing the stupid damn sword wraiths). The skull encounter is, again, avoidable.

I'm happier with it now.

-O

 

[OchreJelly]

Not bad. We also are in a very similar place. Last night I ran the encounter in front of the tomb. I took out one golem due to party size (3 plus Moyshana). It turned out to be a pretty interesting fight with a lot of damage flying around. The PCs did a good job of sliding the golem continuously into the trap to good effect.

I did modify the first room for similar reasons because I didn't think every single creature / trap in there with daze effects would lead to a fun encounter (well most anyway). I took out one naga and replaced it with a slime devil (MM3) I had lurking in the pit. I changed the pit from being spikes to a pool of acid. The idea was the slime devil would try to engulf a party member and then try to maneuver him into the pit of acid which the devil resists. All the while it would interrogate the party member with Raven Queen-themed questions with it's scour the mind power.

It was a fun fight, but not as hard as I anticipated. This was mostly due to some lucky crits early in the fight from the PCs and bad rolls on my part. The devil did get to engulf a PC, though, and started to drag him to the pit.

Lastly, I changed the first room so that the party had to lower themselves into it from a trapdoor in the ceiling. Personally I don't like it when the designers set up a room like this with such obvious traps. It just encourages the party to not venture into it, and fight outside in the previous room at the choke-point.

 

[Verision]

Seriously - a guy who became a veritable exarch to the Raven Queen shouldn't use undead to guard his tomb.

Not trying to nitpick here, but Sartine is a girl, not a guy (she's the "hand maiden of the raven queen").



Also, for anyone that hasn't made it to the Dracolich fight yet - BE CAREFUL!. This encounter can be incredibly difficult for some groups; specifically for melee heavy groups. The dracolich has an immediate interrupt, at-will, whenever attacked with a melee attack. The immediate interrupt is vs Will and stuns the target until the end of the dracolich's next turn. THIS CAN BE DEVASTATING TO A MELEE HEAVY GROUP. My PCs destroyed the majority of fights in this module right up to this point, and then got picked apart by the dracolich. They barely managed to get away.


TL,DR Version: DRACOLICH BAD!!!! Don't let it TPK your party.

 

[Obryn]

TL,DR Version: DRACOLICH BAD!!!! Don't let it TPK your party.

Yeah, those are known as one of the more troublesome monsters in MM1, with their bevy of Stun attacks. I have "fix this ****" written in pencil next to the stat block.

I'm still trying to figure out what it would do to my own party - who are mixed ranged and melee. I mean, the interrupt is insanely nasty - it will more or less completely remove one of the melee PCs from the fight every single round - but reducing it to a daze seems too weak. (Dazes aren't bad when you're already toe to toe with the guy you want to smack.)

-O

 

[Verision]

Yeah, those are known as one of the more troublesome monsters in MM1, with their bevy of Stun attacks. I have "fix this ****" written in pencil next to the stat block.

I'm still trying to figure out what it would do to my own party - who are mixed ranged and melee. I mean, the interrupt is insanely nasty - it will more or less completely remove one of the melee PCs from the fight every single round - but reducing it to a daze seems too weak. (Dazes aren't bad when you're already toe to toe with the guy you want to smack.)

-O

Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't remove one melee character from the fight every round, it has the potential to remove each melee character from the fight every round. Unless you can only have one immediate interrupt per round..... is that the rule? I can't remember. If that's the case, then the fight would be winnable, if still hard.

(Also, if that's the case, my PCs are going to be REALLY annoyed with me...)

 

[Obryn]

Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't remove one melee character from the fight every round, it has the potential to remove each melee character from the fight every round. Unless you can only have one immediate interrupt per round..... is that the rule? I can't remember. If that's the case, then the fight would be winnable, if still hard.

(Also, if that's the case, my PCs are going to be REALLY annoyed with me...)

oof. Yes, everything gets 1 immediate action per round, unless they have a specific ability that says otherwise.

I think your players are going to be annoyed with you.

-O

 

[Verision]

oof. Yes, everything gets 1 immediate action per round, unless they have a specific ability that says otherwise.

I think your players are going to be annoyed with you.

-O

Dang. I guess that's what happens when you take a year off playing D&D: you forget some of the rules...