I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

I'm going to be running some DFRPG demos, but this scenario seems to suggest a TPK IMHO.

You've got the ruined-lined hallway (room 5), an almost unavoidable trap with unlimited shots that does 3d6-3, going into a very tough boss battle (room 6), with a nearby chamber of zombies.

I feel a lot of parties just die here.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

Honestly, depends.

If everything goes wrong, few to none save versus the Evil Runes, Rune damage rolls higher than average, no one figures out how to fight a Peshkali, zombies get involved, everyone gets cursed by the altar... it's definitely a party wipe.

However, from what I've seen the trap tends to deal low damage (average is 7-8, if it isn't resisted), some GMs even allow it to be disarmed*, the zombies rarely get involved in the mini-Boss fight... but the Peshkali does tend to be a tough fight, especially if it knocks PCs into the altar to curse them.

Not as oddly brutal as the later Siege Beast can be, but the Peskali is a mini-boss for a reason.


If your PCs have a super rough time with the Close Combat fights earlier (spiders and rats), maybe consider reducing damage by a d6 for the trap and Peshkali (so 2d-2 for both). And if the Peshkali fight is then going too easily, the demon could always burst the false wall and invite the zeds in to help spice it up.




* I'd say use Hazardous Materials to back up Trap (Disarm), but that's just me trying to give the Wizard skills some usage.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

It depends a bit on some assumptions that are not clearly stated. A key thing is just how often someone can be affected by the runes. If you have to leave the area and come back to be affected again, you can sneak carefully down the passage. If it hits people every turn, you have to run through it, and the odds are the party winds up noisily trickling into the room with the Peshkali. Or worse, piling up at the door because something blocks the doorway.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

IIRC, Kromm's intent was a "hits once per crossing", but don't quote me at him.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

It does not say that in my copy, was it errata'd?

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

The PDF say "once per visit", but not my paper version (first run).

I ran the dungeon a few time, the Peshkali can be a deadly fight with players not too Gurps-savvy and depending on the party composition you may want to tone it down, but the Rune hallway never killed anyone (although it came close once).
Although twice players ignored the very obvious (emphasis in the text, even !) trap and walked straight in after I described the evil-looking bright runes lining the passages... pain is a great teacher, however, they were more cautious after, which certainly help in the next room - a nice bit of scenario design there !)

For relatively inexperienced players, I allowed the runes to be disarmed using whatever clever idea they came with, especially when the group they made choosing pregens didn't have any way to boost HT or MR, and they only had a hired cleric NPC with them.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

I have very old PDFs that I haven't re-downloaded, so that's probably it.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

A cleric with Magic Resistance, like Miriam Suntemple, makes a huuge difference here. A couple of energy points toward the Magic Resistance spell gives a -4 to Evil Runes and a +4 to your own HT rolls, +8 total swing. The last time I ran this adventure I believe someone attempted the hallway, took a bunch of damage, and then pulled back out for healing. Then the party sent in three characters with Magic Resistance and other buffs, fought the peshkali (Grukuk lost an arm), and ignored the zombies/never released them.

Nitpick: there's no siege beast in (vanilla) I Smell A Rat.

I like your idea of involving the zombies better than the book's suggestion of multiple peshkalis. I'll maybe try that next time. It's an interesting tactic for a peshkali to try after losing an arm or two.

If you wanted to make the peshkali easy to kill I would suggest removing either its DR or its Supernatural Durability--but IMO the peshkali is the most interesting thing in the (vanilla) adventure so don't!

I also like replacing the Merle-thing at the end with a Merle-Ramex. It' thematic, dramatic, and mechanically interesting: instead of just blasting away at a target until it dies a second later, it feels more like the end of Ghostbusters where they hit Gozer and it's gone... but after a minute or so it comes back. For extra fun make Merle-thing visibly older each time it heals up and reappears. And reread Stephen King's story The Jaunt to get ideas for what kind of mad dialogue to give someone trapped outside of time.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.



No. Reprinted.



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).

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

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.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

It is a good way for them to contribute at that.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

Would a Dispel Magic from AELin Rock-Talker also have worked?

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

Dispel does not generally affect enchantments, which is probably what a trap counts as.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

No, for two reasons: 1) as Anthony mentioned, doesn't work on Enchantments or Curses, and 2) you have to know the spell you're dispelling and it's highly unlikely Rock-Talker knows "Evil Runes" a a spell.


Personally I'd treat it as a 'curse', so Remove Curse could work, but you're highly unlikely to have a PC with Remove Curse for an 'introductory adventure'*.


* I've often argued this is not an introductory adventure, it's actually quite rough for Players who aren't used to GURPS and how combat is quite brutal. And even with semi-experienced Players, the "premade characters" don't all have reliable close combat skills or weapons, which makes all the animal fights slightly roughly than one would expect.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

Dispel Magic does not require you to know the spell(s) being dispelled. You're thinking of Counterspell:

Counterspell is a single spell – but to counter a given spell, you must also know that spell.

Dispel Magic has no such requirement.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

I allow Dispel Magic to suppress an enchantment for 2d turns. At least for traps.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

Thanks, in fact Dispel explicitly states you don.t need to knwo the spell. Somehow my eyes wandered heavily when I was rereading Dispel Magic.

In which case if the Evil Rubes were an ongoing spell or magical effect, then I'd let Dispel Magic take it out. But in the case you're likely to see it, as a trap, it's either likely an enchantment or a curse.


I've a PC in a game who wants to start studying every set of Evil Runes he comes across to learn how to duplicate the effect... in the angle of protecting his home from sewer threats (slimes, worms, giant rats, etc). Not for Evil, no, no, of course not.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

Knowing me, I'd probably make the method require something horrible, like human sacrifice and/or cannibalism, just to see if he'll rationalize Joining The Dark Side for power. That's why they're Evil Runes, folks.

Light-siders can always just plant TL 4 landmines instead.

Re: I Smell a Rat: Rune-Lined Hallway
 

What is this Dark Side you speak of? Sounds positively bright compared to what that group sometimes gets up to...


(But no, that PC is a Psion and has bound himself to Elder Powers Outside of Time and Space, so no Evil Runes for him... but maybe a psionic equivalent once they realize Evil Runes really are Evil Divine, and Divine just isn't the power set he works with. His "god" is a dark and jealous thing, so no worshiping his Patron's enemies.)