NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 6233430" data-attributes="member: 79141">Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'save or die'.  A potential TPK is a nice way to top and tail heroic tier.  Having said that, the bomb is really the principal threat in the encounter.  Other DMs would be wise to up the ante somewhat if they want to spend longer engaged in combat than they do drawing the map.  If the players focus on the engine car, the encounter is over, unless you have the dwarves start offing the hostages in response.  Zubov is definitely a threat, but the encounter allows the PCs to get the drop on him, and that is curtains for most monsters at this level.The piercing clamp traps are a waste of time, visible to the passive perception of any halfway decent scout, and dishing up an attack so feeble it wouldn't matter if they walked down here blindfolded.  They serve only to alert the party to the fact that there are traps in the area, meaning none of the traps get sprung (even if you impose a -5 to spotting traps in the thick of combat as I do).  In hindsight, I should have made the cultists two-hit minions, as well as giving the prophet extra hit points and powers.  I've no objection to the PCs having an easy ride every now and then, but like I say the map took a while.That really did come out of nowhere and ended up working very nicely.  The idea of linking him to the eschatologists developed only after Rumdoom (being rather lazy) gave Azon a huge amount of control over the Rumschatology sect he had created.  My initial idea was that Azon is a charlatan who used Zubov's name and muscle to fleece the sect of their cash.  I intended for him to have absconded with that cash again by the time the unit caught up with the cult at Soknik's Repairs.  But there comes a time to admit that there are too many unresolved plots in the air, and Rumdoom already has one nemesis in the shape of Khaled Valchek, so Azon bought the farm early.But I would wholeheartedly recommend linking any eschatologist PC to the cultists in some way - through contacts possibly, or simply a background character who has interacted with them positively up to this point.  In some ways I missed a trick: I think it would have been even more fun to have an NPC the players liked get involved with them, someone they would be sad to have to oppose, perhaps even kill.  A character with a tragic background that explains their radicalism, perhaps. Wish I'd thought of that earlier.</blockquote>

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