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-   -   I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway (https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=190737)

DouglasCole 05-05-2023 10:08 AM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm (Post 2482763)
In the original Gen Con sessions, the groups who went through the dungeon came up with novel proposals for how to deal with this area, and I went with their ideas. It does say, "Disarm: No, unless the GM permits Cleansing (Exploits, p. 24)." One group tried exactly that. I forget whether they used Theology with Seeking Guidance (Exploits, p. 90) to get a hint from me.
I remember it was my holy warrior who used Exorcism (I think with Contingency Casting) to cleanse the runes, and we got away with it pretty scot-free due to favorable wandering monster rolls: it took a long time, but no one showed up to punish us for our dilly-dallying.

mburr0003 05-06-2023 04:14 AM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm (Post 2482700)
It says "Once per visit." That means each time you enter area #5 from area #3 or area #6. It doesn't say "per second," "each turn," or anything else that would imply repeated damage over time.
Any word on when someone might have a free minute to put up some Errata pages?

Yeah, yeah, I know, SJG doesn't do that anymore. Really stings for those of us who've bought only printed copies of things released the last decade.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony (Post 2482701)
It does not say that in my copy, was it errata'd?
No. Reprinted.



Quote:
Originally Posted by sjmdw45 (Post 2482755)
Nitpick: there's no siege beast in (vanilla) I Smell A Rat.
Sword-armor golem, my bad. The two tend to get confused, especially when I don't revisit the material and just go off memory. I just remember that everyone who fought (twice as a PC and once as a GM running it) that it was "siege-beast" levels of rough due to the very high armor DR (everyone I've played with has either hated siege-beasts because of the high armor and decent damage they do, or ignored them because the Mind Mage just wiped them out).

sjmdw45 05-06-2023 01:21 PM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mburr0003 (Post 2482840)
Sword-armor golem, my bad. The two tend to get confused, especially when I don't revisit the material and just go off memory. I just remember that everyone who fought (twice as a PC and once as a GM running it) that it was "siege-beast" levels of rough due to the very high armor DR (everyone I've played with has either hated siege-beasts because of the high armor and decent damage they do, or ignored them because the Mind Mage just wiped them out).
Oho! Yeah, golem-armor swordsmen are very tough to kill, much harder than Siege Beasts. Due to the clause about "when the flesh golem is slain, the armor reanimates on its own as an 'armor golem' and must be destroyed a second time" and the obvious Cyberdyne T-800 reference, I give the reanimated form No Eyes and Homogeneous as well, so you have to beat that DR 17 instead of bypassing it with eyeshots or armor chinks.

Fortunately they're also quite slow (Move 2) and easily evaded. If you left the lock intact you may be able to even just lock it back up again in it's cell.

Count me as one of the haters, but I love to give players problems that I hate, so I'm a lover and a hater both.

Christopher R. Rice 05-06-2023 03:33 PM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm (Post 2482763)
In the original Gen Con sessions, the groups who went through the dungeon came up with novel proposals for how to deal with this area, and I went with their ideas. It does say, "Disarm: No, unless the GM permits Cleansing (Exploits, p. 24)." One group tried exactly that. I forget whether they used Theology with Seeking Guidance (Exploits, p. 90) to get a hint from me.

Both groups had expert thaumatologists who warned of the danger when the door was opened. They learned about selling their soul, but nobody wanted to do that.

Three of the pre-gens have Shape Earth, too. Nobody tried it, but it would've been an option if they were willing to spend lots of time casting and recovering (~14 cubic yards, so 84 energy because it's explicitly worked stone . . .), and mostly likely meeting wandering monsters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole (Post 2482770)
I remember it was my holy warrior who used Exorcism (I think with Contingency Casting) to cleanse the runes, and we got away with it pretty scot-free due to favorable wandering monster rolls: it took a long time, but no one showed up to punish us for our dilly-dallying.
It was. I think we started with the idea that we could chip our way through and then Doug was like "If only we had a wheelbarrow. That'd be something." Then we had the shared cleric PC and Doug's character destroy it and it wasn't a crit, but it was a SUPER low roll. Worked great.

Dalin 05-06-2023 04:36 PM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
When I ran this for some beginning players, the runed hallway was Ælin Rock-Talker's moment to shine. We determined that behind the stone of the hall was mostly earth, so he carved an expensive hole in the wall and then mined a relatively cheap tunnel parallel to the runes. Then one more expensive hole at the end. It wiped out most of his FP, but the rest of the party thought it was well-worth it.

sjmdw45 05-07-2023 02:25 AM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalin (Post 2482902)
When I ran this for some beginning players, the runed hallway was Ælin Rock-Talker's moment to shine. We determined that behind the stone of the hall was mostly earth, so he carved an expensive hole in the wall and then mined a relatively cheap tunnel parallel to the runes. Then one more expensive hole at the end. It wiped out most of his FP, but the rest of the party thought it was well-worth it.
If it were me, I wouldn't bother mining out a whole parallel tunnel. I'd just move about a 6 inch slice of the west wall onto the east wall (assuming the runes are carved into the walls). Then when the peshkali shows up, wrap it in stone too.

If you do mine out a tunnel, you can close off the tunnel mouth to mostly avoid random encounters, too.

Shape Earth is such a great spell.

mburr0003 05-07-2023 06:02 PM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sjmdw45 (Post 2482930)
Then when the peshkali shows up, wrap it in stone too.
Moved earth doesn't move fast enough to attack with it. The Peshkali wold need to be either immobilized or dumb enough to stand around while stone slowly (Move 1) climbed up her.

I've gotten away with it by wrapping golems 'disguised' as statues and such, mostly because the 'trap' trigger wasn't "stone slowly engulfing them" and the golems weren't programmed to deal with that (presumably failed IQ rolls).


Now, I would allow a canny Earth Wizard to set up deadfall traps but moving a slab of stone to the ceiling, maintaining, and then making it "let go" of the ceiling and fall on enemies. I've done this back in the 3e days, but I've never seen a caster do it in my games, even when they've had the chance to set up traps. Most like to go the way of "dig a very deep hole, make a super thin cover, drop cover when enemies are on it, close hole over enemies." Which also works.

sjmdw45 05-07-2023 08:20 PM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mburr0003 (Post 2482988)
Moved earth doesn't move fast enough to attack with it. The Peshkali wold need to be either immobilized or dumb enough to stand around while stone slowly (Move 1) climbed up her.
It's still a threat she has to honor. I'm not saying that having a moving wall trivializes the Peshkali; but you can cut off her retreat or constrain the ways she can use her step/possibly force her into a Move and Attack instead of an Attack. Not a bad use of your concentration, if you're a druid.

mburr0003 05-08-2023 02:14 AM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sjmdw45 (Post 2483000)
Not a bad use of your concentration, if you're a druid.
It is a good way for them to contribute at that.

WhiteLily 05-20-2023 10:42 PM
Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 
Would a Dispel Magic from AELin Rock-Talker also have worked?


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