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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 3376759" data-attributes="member: 704">First, to answer your question, the Keystones / Gate are meant to function as follows.The Gate is essentially a large obsidain slab with four slots.  The keystones are small obsidian objects about the size of door knobs.  You insert the 4 keystones into the slab, and you essentially manage to open something you probably should not have.  My current solution is to have the keystone as an object used by the villians to open their own portal.  The problem with that is simple;  Why the hell are the goblins opening a portal for Tiamat when they could be trying to open the portal in the Sunless Citidel?  It also seems redundant to have two plots in this campaign focused on magical portals.  Happily, its the sort of problem I can probably solve seamlessly at the last minute.Now for your questions / concerns.Well, for the spy, if your not happy with a re-write, why not use a Doppelganger and toss in a few class levels?  That should give you a very powerful spy type without having to worry as much about filling the right Niche.  Still no Gather Information, but it does get Detect Thoughts.Now, as for having to go through all the NPC's one by one and figure out how you intend to use them, I suggest a slightly different approach.Figure out what kind of NPC's make sense for you to have in this adventure, and then find places to drop them in.  Since much of the adventure is event driven, its not going to be too hard to insert your own custom events (aside from the work involved in detailing them).  It is even easier to cut or drop events that you do not like.  From a mechanical standpoint, I would do this.1)  Review the primary villains.  This means all the Wyrm Lords, and the Lich.  Make sure you like the builds, and customize as needed.  If anything is likley to need to be rebuilt, it is these NPC's.  They are meant to be signifigant combatants, and while they are powerful as presented, you should not hesitate to customize them.  Ideally, you should know every reasonable dirty trick and tactic they are likley to use.2)  Identify recurring NPC's that you want.  Do not look at the adventure for this, just decide what you want to have.  For myself, I am probably going to drop in an allied Lore Master that the players can ask questions of (No one has ranks of history).  I will also want to have a few military commanders on hand that can recur.  I will also want to have a few other NPC's to represent interested parties (One each for the Elves, Dwarves, Khinasi, Anuireans).  Also identify a few villain types that the players may capture.3)  Identify what NPC's in the adventure you like.  I have not had as much chance to fully review this adventure yet, so I do not know what NPC's I particularly like or dislike from those presented.4)  Familiarize yourself with the stock recurring combat events, and tweak them if necessary or desired.  There are a few raiding party configurations on hand.  I intend to create a few variants (adding Draconaians and templated goblins).The only parts likely to be difficult from a mechanical standpoint are familiarizing yourself with unfamiliar spell casters and special abilities.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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