WotBS Game balance and experience with potential adjustments

[Mrpereira]

I agree with your reasoning and have been thinking a bit along the same line, i.e. the Perform DC etc.

[Sblock]In my game it is too late to do anything about it in the current adventure. Also, they still have no idea about what Trillith really are or that they will be recurring during the adventure. This will change I guess after they face Madness at the end of chapter 4.
After this chapter they will level up to level 9, meaning they get a new feat. I could use your idea of making Extra Music available for them to use the song of forms.

I like the idea of Paradim Dogwood going to chapter 5. Recurring badguys are fun. Regarding Madness I was considering where she could show up Again in the story. I would probably have to toughen her up a bit, to make her a threat to the players later on. The options I am considering are:

If she goes to Ostalin, she could show up as a part of chapter 11, which could add a Little spice to what I hear is the weakest module in the series. However, with Pilus being the one in charge, Madness would not really have too much influence, although the Ostalin leader is a prime candidate for a dose of Madness.

If she goes to Gate Pass, she could show up as part of chapter 9, the festival of dreams. This probably makes most sense, as they encounter Trillith here anyway.

If she goes to Shahalesti she could either be a part of chapter 7 or just show up later on. This is more open ended, and could be used to fill a gap, or change the course of actions at some point. However, I do feel that it is less likely than the other two options with regards to her destination.

I don't see her going back to Dassen, as they probably would be on to her pretty fast.

Any input would be welcome - and I will continue speculating on how to make the most of her return. [/sblock]

I have been considering making a thread with the input of how the campaign has been going so far, with my thoughts and experiences so far. Not sure, however, if it is of interest to anyone else

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

[sblock]Chapter 9 or 10 would definitely make the most sense. I just suggested cramming her return into Chapter 5 because that means it happens soon enough after that you don't need to put much/any effort into leveling her up and she's still fresh in the players' minds. Plus Chap. 5 is bereft of encounters. Although finding a way to logically insert her would be tough... Those last two sentences are an issue w/ Chap. 5 in general that I had. I...Chap. 5 is a whole other topic, and one I have a fair bit to say about....
I haven't done more than glance at the last 3 chapters, but I could see 11 being content-weak. I have a rough idea for events to spice it up for my game, but they'd be completely irrelevant to you and your plot. And they're hardly set in stone. Of the first 9 chapters (I'm on 6 now, but have read ahead), 3 and 5 seem by far the weakest to me. Chapter 3 went terribly and half the players left they didn't enjoy it so much and my game nearly collapsed. Chapter 5 ended up going well mostly due to me learning from the Chap. 3 debacle.
Ch. 5 is a good way for them to learn more about the Trillith, though my players didn't learn much new other than, "whoah, not all of them are evil?"
Paradim was by far the best change I made to Chapter 5. I even foreshadowed it w/ them encountering mutated owlbears in the valley of storms on the way there (they didn't realize the connection, even when I said "in this entire campaign up until now, owlbears have been mentioned exactly once before" as a hint). Torrent was captured and taken away, so he knew they were coming (they made plenty of noise breaking in, too) and was prepared, eager for revenge and mentioning how he was jealous of Torrent, that Lee seemed to like her better as a disciple and he wanted to ambush and kill the group back in Seaquen but Lee's lingering affection for her weakened his resolve. The best part was that he managed to teleport away, and can thus return...probably in Ch. 11. Actually, the best part was the party thinking he was the boss and the psion dumping all his power points, right before the *actual* boss fight. They found Torrent in a vat, saving her before she could be transformed, but they had to go into the study to find her gear...the campaign says to just have the captive in the study, but why wouldn't s/he be in biomancy fluid? Besides, then they KNOW they made the right call not resting after every fight on the way there, b/c there was a "time limit" to save her.[/sblock]

I have been considering making a thread with the input of how the campaign has been going so far, with my thoughts and experiences so far. Not sure, however, if it is of interest to anyone else

I've been very tempted to do the same thing for a long time now. I'm just lazy, and hesitant to discuss certain decisions in depth since they are often made w/ future chapters in mind and I'd be afraid of revealing anything.

 

[Mrpereira]

I would love to hear your input on chapter 5 in general, as any input is good to put Things into perspective.

[sblock]In my campaign chapter 3 actually worked out very well. I used an old trick that I have used before with great success. During the war council session I had prepared the speeches for each person and also when and where to object with the other players. I then had the players Draw lots as to who got which persons to act in the scene (making sure as much as possible that they would not have a person who would object to their speech.

I also made Kiernan take care of handling the agenda, and made it a Little longer than needed, so when the elves arrived they where in for a surprise. The only character I played was actually Simeon, as he had something to say to most of the others. As I said the scene was a big success, the players enjoyed portraying the others, specially the speech given by Giorgio and the Ostalin ambassador were masterpieces. The arrival of the elves gave a nice twist and had the players hooked on a firm believe that the aim for the chapter was to get rid of the elves. My chapter 3 ended up being on long string of surprises for the players, which made it fun.

Regarding Madness I am probably going to throw her into chapter 9, but will consider chapter 11 when I have read that one more throroughly. I have yet to read chapters 9-12 through on more than a superficial level.

In my chapter they never discovered the biomancer in chapter 3. They saw him at Lee's place, but never took time to look for him. They had so much else going on, that they forgot about it - and the two half-orcs as well until they showed up on the boat with Giorgio. I had him arrested at the end, but who is to say he didn't escape? It would make another tie to Pilus and Lee, as you mentioned above. I think I will consider that twist as well [/sblock]

It is partly laziness that has kept me from writing it up in this forum as well. I know for a fact that none of my players even know about this forum, so revealing anything would not be my big concern. My biggest concern is how to write it up so it is worth reading for others.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

[sblock]Chapter 3's War Council actually went really well. I thought it'd be dull for them w/ all the NPC text, but I planned all of it out beforehand (adding and/or modifying some of it) and it was pretty easy to think of replies to the PC's statements on the fly.

The sidequest with the abducted girls was the one thing in chapter 3 the party seemed really interested in, so I fleshed it out quite a bit. Some of the party visited a brothel and found out that rich halfling owned it though he left it in the management of another person, and also visited Paradim's shop and wondered what he was hiding. The party's ranger then staked out the back of the shop at night and saw some dark-clothed goons like the ones at the brothel deliver some drugged young women to Paradim, so he could work his magic. After they left, the ranger decided to confront Paradim solo rather than get the whole party first. Figuring he'd have cowardly traits and she'd gotten the drop on him, I just had him Wayfarer's Step outside and flee. The party got tired with the chapter and lost interest in the sidequest a while after, so Paradim's whereabouts went unresolved (I did have the authorities arrest the halfling crime boss in the chapter epilogue...original plan was to have the party take him down, but oh well).
That left me a lot of creative room on what to do. I decided what happened behind the scenes was he fled to Lee in desperation (losing the girls meant the halfling would probably have him killed) and wanted to arrange an ambush on the party to kill them, but Lee still had a soft spot for Torrent and hoped to avoid coming into conflict with the party, so instead Paradim fled town for Ostalin, to continue his work in Pilus's lab.[/sblock]
As for why Chapter 3 went so poorly...I'll save that rant for if I review the campaign. It's in the past for you now as well.

Chapter 5:
[sblock]The first thing I do when preparing for a new chapter is list all the encounters in rough order of occurrence, including ones that may not happen, with the CR/EL. I like to figure out at what point the party will get their mid-chapter level up, and if that is problematic. Namely...they need to rest to level up, and many chapters have a habit of dumping a TON of encounters in a single day at the end when the players must run a gauntlet, so that might necessitate giving out the level up early.

I immediately noticed Chap. 5 is bereft of encounters, even if you count on the unlikely optional ones (like taking on the 100+ Ragesians, or taking a swing at Pilus)...which also had some of the meatier EL values. This is compounded by 1) the fact that they spend a great deal of the Chapter parked in Eresh where having random monsters wander in is hard to believe and the fact that they'd get hit w/ Balance's boon and 2) most of the encounters happen during the Valley of Storms trip and the valley and lab are the only logical places to cram in more encounters after they reach Eresh, other than maybe some more Ragesian fights during the battle. Also, the party's supposed to level up before going to the valley (and the fights are tough, so they should)....so while it's presented like the valley can be done before the Ragesian army battle, it really can't w/o modifying the foes.

The chapter's just...logistically tough. You also need to be very careful about the order of things happening and how much free time they have, lest you're comfortable with them possibly deciding the best option is to force their way into the monastery, make them take in the townsfolk, and demand an audience w/ the brothers. I didn't want to deal with adjusting for that, and then the valley can quickly start to look like a pointless excursion to the party (they're just there to get the orb and maybe save the townsfolk from Ragesia). Even replacing the many lost encounters w/ fighting the monks, I really think the party should see what's going on in the lab before getting a chance to ally w/ Pilus, they should be able to see he's hiding a lot.

My solution to get through the chapter mostly boiled down to railroading them so hard they didn't even realize they were being railroaded.
I added some wilderness encounters on the way to Eresh to bolster their xp. Once they arrived, events happened so fast, they got caught up in the rush of it all and it went smoothly. I think they spent all of 3 days in Eresh (doing everything there and fighting the returning Ragesian army) before going to the Valley of Storms, maybe it was more like 2.5 days. There just isn't much to do there, and the more time they have to putz around, the more they'll get frustrated with the monastery being closed off.

One thing I did w/ Balance's death was make a list of different emotional spell effects (Good Hope, Crushing Despair, Mindless Rage, Fear, Hideous Laughter, and (from Pathfinder) Unnatural Lust...by far my favorite) and roll randomly to see what would affect a party member that failed the will save (and for the town at large, but I wasn't going to do all those rolls!). Lead to some hilarity and plenty of chaos. The party's effects lasted a few minutes, many of the townsfolk's lasted much longer (proportional to how long you'd been under Balance's calming boon), giving some encounters for the party to try and settle things down.

Before Balance perished (and, ironically, contributing to it), some troops from Duke Gallo (he got along very well w/ the party and the party's druid ended up in a romantic relationship w/ him) arrived to help and drove off the Ragesian camp on their way there, and the party managed to get some monks to disobey Caela and join in the defense based on the party's impassioned pleas, and I did an war battle like in Otharil Vale (I made my own subsystem for it), though this time w/ the odds stacked against them. I decided to let them level up before the battle even though it was mid-day (they could add new spells and daily resources but expended ones were still gone and already prepared spells couldn't be changed) upon realizing that if I didn't, they'd spend all of level 10 just on the Valley of Storms arc. And just in case they lost the battle and had to engage in regular fights against enemy waves, to give them a little boost.

They also had really bad luck, so they lost the battle convincingly (specifically, while they were losing in the direct combat as well, an enemy scout unit snuck into Eresh and set it on fire, causing and instant loss as the party's militia army broke in a panic...basically the fighting was south of the town and they had to prevent enemies from getting past the river into town while either wiping out the enemies or routing the general's unit). Eresh is engulfed in flames and fighting continues in the streets as the scattered and worn down party members have to reunite and then survive several waves of Ragesians before taking on the general's retinue. Midway through, some Two-Winds Elementals joined the fight to aid them, to the party's relief. After defeating him (and the Ragesian army retreating in response), they were severely weakened and as they were about to heal up, they noticed Torrent oddly quiet on the ground, writhing in pain, being grappled, pinned, and mouth held shut as a gang of invisible stalkers beat her unconscious. The Two-Wind Elementals stated it was time for the second phase of their orders, and turned on the party.

Once Torrent was out cold, the stalkers met the elementals in the air and handed her off so they could fly away at the "you can't catch me!" speed of 100 ft (perfect)...cause invisbile stalkers flying away at speed 30 and expecting PCs not to keep up is pretty foolish, and having the turncoat elementals betray the party just felt so right. The party tried in vain to chase after them before collapsing from exhaustion of the brutal day they just had and waking up the next morning in the healing house, eager to go rescue Torrent.

From there...they went through the valley, I added some Phrenic owlbears and an encounter with a severe lightning storm they had to find shelter from. In the lab, a major image of the invisible and pre-buffed Paradim greeted them and called forth Aurus. They found Torrent in a vat while fighting through the complex and after winning (Paradim fled...again!) but without her equipment. They find it in the study and explore the room while she hastily gears up (I changed the carpet trap to one Caela could activate remotely as an action, rather than have it go off when they walked in and poor Torrent was still without her stuff) and then Caela gives her spiel and attacks. The rest of the chapter went as written. I had a whole plan for if they attacked Pilus, but they decided to make a deal with him.[/sblock]

 

[Mrpereira]

[sblock]Interestingly enough the missing girls was also something that caught their attention, however, the green dragon was even more tempting, and they spent their time running to and from the swamp and in the end didn't get around to finding the real culprits. So Paradim was captured by the town officials end the epilogue, just like in your case. I liked your idea of him reappearing in the next chapter, so when they return to Seaquen he will have escaped

Like you, I also prepare the encounters beforehand, but not because of the XP issue. Some time ago, when we started playing some of the different superadventures/adventure paths we stopped really tallying the XP closely. Most of the games have points where players get to level up and everyone in our game is happy with doing it that way. That makes Things easier in that regard for me in my game as I dont have to depend too much on a given number of encounters to happen. If the game says it is time to level up, they will - as long as it fits in with what they are doing. Like you say, it makes sense that they have to be able to rest to reflect over Things. I prepare the encounters to make them as smooth as possible, when we play - the encounters can easily eat up a lot of time, if they are not prepared. And secondly I do it because I sometimes want to tweak something or redo some of the NPCs/enemies.

I like the idea of the death of Balance releasing emotion spells, that will give some fun situations. I might steal that one as well .

My biggest worry for chapter five is the thing you alos pointed out, the fight with the Ragesians followed by the valley. On one hand I am inclined to use the extra waves to make it a more tough and bloody affair. However, if I then capture one of their number, they will feel most likely rush after them, which could make it a quite deadly trip. On the other hand, if the Rageisan encounter is too easy it will be kind of anticlimatic.

I am most likely going to let the fight in town be a bit tougher than in the book, and then allow them to level up, and regain spells - a 'you levelled up so everything gets renewed' kind of ruling (My priest with Persist spell will probably love getting all those turn attempts back ). I would then probably have to throw in some more encounters on the way through the valley. It helps having Paradim at the Lab to make it a bit tougher there, but I think one or two two-wind air elementals and maybe something like your owlbears might be waiting on the road as well. Another option is not to put too much opposition on the way and then redo Caela so she will be a real threat to the players, that might be a solution too. Not sure if both options are viable or needed, but since you played through the adventure already, you might have some input.

Did you tweak Caela, and if yes, what did you do to her? [/sblock]

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

[sblock]The green dragon was surprisingly brief for my group. They could tell immediately she was nothing to mess with. I did make a fun little alleyway maze with secret tunnels for them chasing down Nathan Lowduke (they arranged to meet him; he chose the location... 'natch), and they did lie to the dragon by saying he got away when in reality they let him go rather than subject him to the dragon's wrath, so it was a bit interesting.
To be clear: in my game I had the halfling ("Cerneban"?) arrested. Paradim was explicitly still at large and the party kind of forgot about it after a while. But yeah, have fun re-using him. I made him a Transmuter 7 for the fight with a bunch of aberrant feats from Lords of Madness.

I don't give xp, either. Makes it easier on me. But I try to stick to the "13 equal CR encounters per level" guideline, and just in general...it's pretty lame when they spend a single in-game day at a given level before going up again. This campaign seems to love doing massive gauntlet runs of encounters at the end of a chapter. I guess it's nice for keeping the casters in line, though.

I also did the random emotions thing before s/he died whenever any of them failed the daily save and were "violence'd" out of it early, albeit only for a few rounds. Best part was when the really abrasive/jerkish PC got calmed and the rest of the party left him like that for hours because he was far more tolerable that way. It even caused him to have to sit out a combat and just roleplay being a hippy while they took care of it.

About the calming boon and the bartender guy...the numbers are just impossible, as written. There's no way he'd stave it off for weeks. That bothered me. So I complicated the rules for the DC a bit. I made the DC 10 lower if you hadn't engaged in anger or fighting in the past week (so, no change for the murder hobo party), I reduced the DC if you had neutral components to your alignment (-2 if partly neutral, -4 if True Neutral). And...I buffed the bartender's will save. All three combined meant the mellow retired TN bartender w/ strong will could logically stave it off while most around him (including any who fought against the ragesians attacking) fell to it.

I would definitely go for a harder fight. The more beaten down and spent they are after it, the more obvious it will be that they're in no condition to continue on to the valley w/o resting. I actually narratively "railroaded" them into blacking out from exhaustion and they were annoyed a bit, but knew full well they would've needed to rest anyway. The harder it is, the greater they'll feel when they overcome the odds, too.

One thing I tried to do in this chapter was establish the Ragesian army's dominance. I had spent the whole campaign talking up how unstoppable they were (since Coaltongue's rise, Duke Gallo's been just about the only one to decisively beat them, and that's with his great tactical skills and virtually unassailable position in the mountain pass to defend). The party had fought a bunch of thugs, maybe with an inqusiitor, up till now. But this is their first experience against the Ragesian army proper. There's a reason Kiernan is hesitant to go to battle with them and they've amassed so many victories, and I wanted the party to see that. It also meant that it was a historic moment when they actually defeat the Ragesians at Eresh, leading a bunch of untrained peasant militias, no less.
I buff and tweak pretty much every NPC (including Three Weeping Ravens...he ended up pretty badass, actually), but I've put a lot of effort into the Ragesians. Aside from my changes to Inquisitors (general buffs...especially defensive... and all of them are a LE adaptation of Church Inquisitor), I also revamped the 3.0 Forsaker prestige class and use it for some of their elite soldiers (in this chapter, they were the "Veteran Soldiers"), added in Ragesian archers (they have a stat block w/ CR near the party's...but are oddly not really used here), and I also got sick of how useless the Commander class was and made a Tome of Battle version of Marshal to replace it (which will apply to others besides Ragesian officers....one of my PCs now has levels in the class, too). I also tried my best to have them utilize smart tactics and synergize with each others maneuvers.
The mountain path fight before Eresh actually killed Torrent (she had a rough chapter....). She got reincarnated (technically Last Breath, but same concept) as a gnome. Anyway, I wanted to present the Ragesian soldiers as a force to reckon with and be cautious about, and I think I got the point across. It meant they didn't want to risk attacking the soldiers outside Eresh, then in Ch. 6 the whole "hurry before the army gets there" is a legitimate, scary proposition for them.

I didn't have any air elementals on the valley path because it felt like I had enough encounters already and I wanted the owlbears (for foreshadowing) and the storm danger (they round trip through a valley of storms that is rumored to be so active that people think thunder gods dwell there and...nothing? seriously?) more than them. Also, the party has a druid w/ an air elemental companion, so they had already come to the view that the elementals were not really enemies and merely forced to do the bidding of the monks, so yet another fight against them would've been unsatisfying.

I heavily re-did Caela, as I did all the monks....seriously, they suck. Just stick to the intent that she be mobile, flashy, and defensively sturdy, but not that dangerous offensively. I created a Battle Dancer (monk-like class, but with Cha to AC) fix based around the martial art of Capoeira (one PC has levels in it) and used that for Caela and the East Wind monks instead of monk. Though you could just stick w/ Monk and Aesthetic Mage feat to get the Cha to AC. I also gave all the monks Practiced Spellcaster (for both casting classes for Caela), among other things.
For the forest battle before the valley (and if they had stormed the monastery) I had the West Wind monks set up as tanks and with Shield Other on an East Wind partner, using their whips mostly to trip or disarm. The East Wind monks, meanwhile were quite deadly* with their (Energy Subbed to Electric) Combust spells. Which they could combine w/ +2d6 momentum kick damage (a feature of my battle dancer class) w/ a feint check (Insightful Feint spell + Imp. Feint to do it as a swift action) and normal unarmed damage.
Caela was actually less dangerous than them...for single targets, at least. Her main schtick was Like Lighting + Snap Kick. I also gave her Wings of Cover (though I nerfed it to "only" a +8 cover bonus, not an auto-miss).
*In my campaign, the player with visions can potentially negate up to one attack per round (for one ally), so "one big hit" attacks aren't nearly as scary for the party unless they come in clumps. Also, they are fairly high powered. Though I actually ban Persistent Spell (and night sticks), while as you allow it.[/sblock]

 

[Mrpereira]

[sblock]My plan for chapter 5 - which should have started this saturday, but we had to cancel sadly - is to start off softly. They will travel to Seaquen at the end of chapter 4, where they will notice that part of the town is being rebuilt after yet another fire. If they investigate, they will find out it is the jail, that was burned down to cover Paradim's escape. The game states that Kiernan can polymorph them into red dragons, but with the amount of spells and the duration of the spell (1 min/level) it could end with a lot of arrows shot at them after the teleport. I decided that Kiernan has made his own version of a mass polymorph, with a duration of 1 rnd/level - combined with the delaying effect of the teleporting pillar, this will result in the spell ending just a second after the firedamage would have hurt them, but they will show up as them selves when the smoke clears. I must admit I don't expect them to make trouble there, so that part will most likely go over smoothly.

My idea is then to let them have the feeling that things are going almost too easy - hopefully to give them a bit of a creepy feeling about Eresh. The ambush I will run as written, and the town will be besieged mostly be green og regular Ragesians. The elite troops will arrive with the general. It makes sense to me that he had to get better soldiers to handle the situation. The challenge will of course increase a bit with the air-elementals, but until the general arrives they wont be tested - this will hopefully change after this point .

I will go with the three waves, but I will tweak them a bit. In the first wave I will throw in some of those archers you mentioned, it makes sense that a besieging army would have archers supporting the infantry. The second wave I am considering changing a bit, so that instead of Wyvern knights they will face 4 vetarans (same DC). I can see them fighting through the battle, first facing the lower level grunts, then as they get closer to the general, they will face the tougher veteran soldiers.

As for the final wave, I will most likely remove the 4 standard soldiers and replace them with either a veteran or elite more. I agree with the commanders being useless, so I was actually considering turning him into a Paladin of Tyranny or Slaughter instead, with the destrachan as his speacial mount (based on the dragon steed mount, which allows a 9HD dragonne) - that would make him stand out as a very charismatic leader replacing the commander - and might make the destrachan last just a little longer.

After this fight they will need to rest, and I will keep the air elementals as a reserve as a helping hand from the monestary if needed... until they change allegiance (according to the players). As for the Valley of storms - I am still not sure how much or how little to throw their way, before meeting Paradim and Aurus. The jury is still out on that decision

That leaves Caela... not sure yet what to do - so far I am mostly inclined towards a monk/sorcerer/enlightened fist.

That is my current idea for the major battles. I dont espect them to fight Pilus or to pick a fight against him, but would love seeing the mage roll a spellcraft check and then seeing his reaction to Pilus casting Time Stop [/sblock]

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

[sblock]I didn't even bring up polymorphing, it lead to a question I was unsure of how to answer. Polymorph grants the fire subtype, but not any qualities of the form you take, so I'm not sure if you actually get the fire immunity.
With Protection From Energy layered with Resist Energy, it's nearly impossible for them to die anyway. Even if they would die, Indom's Boon means they won't. My party did have two PCs that joined later and didn't have it. I suggested temp hp and/or Torrent using Shield Other on them to soak half the damage (and with Indom's Boon, she could not die from the teleport).
The burning sky rules are messed the hell up anyway. It's supposed to be that longer ports are more dangerous, but that's only true out to like a mile or so. Logically, you'd be safer simply doing a few shorter ports and "hop" your way to the destination. But instead it's the exact opposite. The cap happens so fast that doing a few hops instead of one big port means eating the exact same damage anyway...multiple times. I'm strongly considering revising them, though at this point it's probably too late... I get that they wanted to make the port to Yen Ching survivable, but nothing requires it to be one single port. Even if it required resting an extra night to get more teleports, it's still saving WEEKS off of overland travel. There are other ways to make the trip plausible w/o gimping the devastation of the burning sky.
Just be sure you take some time to competently set up the defenders. I had the cage surrounded by archer towers and two different layers of gated walls with plenty of soldiers around, making it blatantly obvious fighting was a bad idea. If the party thinks they can take 'em, they just may decide to try.

I think after seeing what they see by the end of the chapter, even with my hard work it was blatantly absurd that the Ragesians ever had a shot of enforcing their will on the monastery, and even early on the power of the air elementals under the monks' command made it seem kind of questionable. So I'm not sure making the Ragesians initially seem even weaker and the elementals stronger/more numerous is a direction I'd go, but....suit yourself.

As for Pilus...yeah, I was REALLY looking forward to the party's reactions to him casting time stop. Oh, how they'd panic!
I had a pretty elaborate plan for what happens if they attacked him (it's so recent I'd rather not post in case a player of mine reads this, I can IM if you want), but alas they plugged their noses and begrudgingly formed an alliance with him. I even made sure to have Longinus note that the orb had already been constructed in anticipation of giving it to a group they deemed worthy (ie; there's literally no need to put up with Pilus, he's already helped construct it), rather than the "we'll start on it right away!" that the book seems to describe it. I think I failed to make it clear enough that they didn't need Pilus, and made them aware of it too late in the conversation, after they had already resolved during a brief 5 minute private discussion break (that they noticed was being scryed upon!) to just go through with it. But they are pretty sure he's a bad person, and I would like to have their alliance come back to bite them in the ass down the road in some fashion (why doesn't the campaign have input on this? making "a deal with the devil" usually ends up having a major downside), just as I try my best to reward them when they show mercy to foes or otherwise do the good thing instead of the easy thing. Making a deal with Pilus is kind of the opposite of that...[/sblock]

 

[Mrpereira]

Sure, feel free to IM me with it

[sblock] I thought about Paradim and how he would have ended up there, and I settled on the fact that he must have been run out of towns before. This means he must have left things behind before in his life, so I decided not to give him a spellbook, but give him a couple of spellmastery feats instead. He is on the rebound, but hasn't recovered yet. However, his spellmastery will make sure that he is not completely harmless, specially with Aurus around.

The benefit is that it makes the escape story a bit more credible, since they thought they had him neutralised in the jail. He wasn't and burned the jail down to cover his escape. *With Caela I decided to drop the cleric level and her east wind feat. She is Pilus' creature, so she is a monk/sorcerer with enlightened fist built on top. That will still allow her to cast 5th level sorcerer spells, and give her a SR of 21 - on top of making her unarmed attacks a viable threat combined with her spells. [/sblock]

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

[sblock]I'd just be wary of the players getting accustomed to the idea that being put in jail means nothing. They'll just start executing everyone. Of course, you could capture them and let THEM break out of prison 50 times, and so long as the enemies never did it, they wouldn't question the effectiveness of jails.

For Caela, I thought it was important to leave in vestiges of her west wind training background, and liked having her as a fusion of the two styles. It did vastly inflate her HD to get enough spell levels in arcane and divine, though. And I think my players metagamed what level she'd need to be to have all that and assumed Pilus and Longinus must be even higher level, influencing their choice to not pick a fight w/ Pilus. Even though in reality, her multiclassing is super underoptimized and even beaten down from the Aurus/Paradim fight and the psion completely out of power points, they dispatched her in like 5 rounds w/ no one coming close to dying (and it only lasted that long b/c she hit and ran so they couldn't truly bring the pain in any round). I gave her SR, too. Via the cleric spell, so with Practiced Spellcaster, she had a pretty high SR. Again, I built her with much more of a defensive focus. I was shocked and dismayed she still fell so quickly. They did disrupt her cloak of the mountebank teleport she planned to use to fall back and heal, though. That drastically shortened the fight.

As for Pilus, see my PM's. Couldn't fit it all in one! I'm so sad all those plans were for nothing, hopefully you can make use of them.[/sblock]