Finding Mushrooms and dealing with the grove trap
Today I ran the
Finding Mushrooms Skill Challenge
It was awesome. It's important to let the players know that the creatures beyond the mist are afraid of them and at the same time that they will eventually come, so they know they can stall them.
Since the party was succesfull in the SC, they avoided the combat against the Fungals, so I couldn't test that encounter.
But we managed to run the Khadral ritual at the Dryad's grove.
I don't know if I understood correctly all that part, but I first put all the party inside the grove so all of them have to deal with the trap.
That encounter worked like a charm.
I've added a little twist/detail into the encounter: I give two of the coutnermeasures clues only after some Arcana and Nature checks (see below).
Once the vines attack, I give them almost all the details for the countermeasures:
- how to get +5 to reflex
- effect of melee attacks and reach of the vines
- how grab works
- how blasts and bursts are more effective
And another detail I added, so they know how the trap works:
- all four vines make two attacks, wether you are threatened by one or two of them. And you provoque an OA from all of them, not one. So if you provoqued an OA from one, you can keep moving to another, safely
The two countermeasures I give them when they make some checks:
The fact that the field goes down between two trees when they are destroyed is known by spending a Standard action and a successful DC 20 check of Arcana or Nature.
How to destroy a vine, is known with a DC 20 Nature check.
That's it.
Some details that are very important to run the encounter:
(or at least, that worked for me
)
- when Khadral falls in the hole, right after him, the force field forms. This prevents PCs from falling in, rescuing him inmediately, or from been too much out of combat if they are pushed by the vines into the hole. Climbing out of the hole is a DC 10 Athletics. And you take 1d10 damage for falling in.
- the +5 reflex bonus is gained at the end of the round, and lasts until the start of the next round. So it is only "active" while the vines attack in their turn, and only if the PC remained in the threatened area.
- if the vines come up in the initiative and no one is within reach, I have them ready both attacks agains the first PCs that come within threatened area
- the vines reach cannot be reduced below 1 (so, they can always attack an adjacent PC trying to pull it up)
- don't be afraid to make an effective use of the vines, readying actions, attacking PCs without the +5 reflex bonus to AC, pushing them into the hole, etc. I did my best, I was as mean as I could and the healing surges spent was well within the "budget" of an encounter of this threat
Well, that's all we did.
I hope this helps other DMs running this adventure