the map of the area has numbers on it like a key, but nowhere in the module can i find what these numbers refer to?
the party can only meet Kas at midnight but monadhan itself has no midnight or midday for that matter? i assume this is something they'd need access to some mechanical time piece like a clock?
those minor issues aside, the whole feel of the module is great, the betraying power of the realm and all that, plus the encounters seem to be really well thought out and some should be very challenging.
the final fight is something i am really looking forward to.
As for the midnight hour, I don't think the module implies that day, night, or even time itself don't exist, just that the pallor hanging over the valley dulls the difference between daylight and darkness. The first thing that comes to mind is an old novel I read as a kid based on Castlevania 2, that described night and day in Castlevania as almost as dark as a moonlit night during the day, and pitch black (can't see your hand in front of your face pitch black) at night.
Bottom line, at epic level, if they can't figure out what time it is, something should have eaten them. Seriously.
Hope this helps!
love the feel of the place, last confessions and rewarded for hurting your allies, it's great!
also the lack of skill challenges is a good thing too, my group seem to have this ability to not get skill challenges at all.
typically if they don't play along they just fail skill challenges and take the consequences. (it's not that they don't like them, they just don't seem to understand them and no matter how many times i explain the point they just kind of sit around and wait for other players to do something. case in point in tyranny of souls there is a large skill challenge about accessing the githyanki capital city without giving themself away, whereupon they simply asked every ship captain if they knew someone who was going until they found someone willing to take them. whereupon they were arrested for bounty of course)
also i just thought this morning, why are there no betrayers from the AP in this adventure?
the one that springs to mind is Bram Ironfell, betrayed all of the Elsir vale? surely he would be here somewhere?!
got to think about where to put him, although he is not particularly likely to hold a grudge to the pc's, so i might just have him in the town.
from there i'll see what they do, if they're neutral towards him he may do nothing, if they're friendly(they were last time) he may tag along and try to help them to earn his freedom(whether they know it or not) if hostile i think he'll join forces with Kas
the hydra encounter i altered slightly mostly to up it's damage and make it a credible threat, i dislike pointless beat em up encounters and my players will just moan.
i have merged the hero slayer hydra with the venom one from the essentials.
keeping damage same but adding 10 ongoing poison and 20 when bloodied
gave it the aura too (two attacks on anyone within the aura at the end of their turn as free action even if dazed/stunned)
it's defences suck and it will attack non-marked enemies due to it's aura, meaning punishment will be swift following.
there is also a mindflayer inquisitor lurking nearby, here due to whatever betrayals it has committed. it will lurk in heavy cover and close in as the fight progresses before opening up with mindblast and then trying to eat someones brains!
the two are not strictly allied but the mindflayer takes advantage of the hydra by scooping up yummy brains whenever possible.
most of the vampire fights look cool so i am leaving them as they are.
but the desecration fight looks rubbish: 1075 hps of doing very little damage and not much else. meh.
so i'm changing it so that hordes of undead erupt from the graveyard after the vampires have been defeated: they were not likely to come up when the vampires were there, no juicy flesh to eat and vampires too hard. but once they are defeated and players have 5 mins to rest the graveyard will come to life!
a horde of ghouls (huge swarm), a wight and some undead angel things (found in DM tools, annoyed there is no bio so making it up) along with a few others. after two rounds some minion undead archers are going to emerge too, primarily to avoid a total melee grindfest.
this fight should be tough as there will be a huge swarm, 4 level 21 undead and then 9 undead minions also level 21 making a level 25 encounter which will level them up to level 22
in the caves i am changing the leader of the death giants as the figth otherwise contained 4 soldiers, 2 of which were elite. this fight would have dragged on forever. his hits did 2d6+8 per hit and marked. with AC42 and Fort 39 and him and the other 2 having a +4 to defences on their allies pretty much whenever they wanted, that would have been tedious.
so i swapped him with a re-skinned death titan and made him into an elite brute with some real damage output, chances are this fight will be had when freshly rested and the only one before the final showdown so they should have no problem dealing with this fight.
on the other side having 3 soldiers marking the pc's and the soul shield to give the brute protection for his otherwise dismal defences may actually make this fight entertaining.
will make sure in future i read through all fights and do this in future modules, could have avoided some right boring fights previously had i done that before!
the ongoing will make it's splash damage increase due to the ongoing poison amount.
the venom maw hydra does something like 3d12+8 per hit, so the damage is still lower than that one but on single targets it will be higher.
i forgot all about the mindflayer until nearly too late, it still scared the crap out of the players though.
next encounter death giant does his nasty at will ranged attack: stunned save ends. on each turn you start stunned you lose a surge.
party decided they don't like this, all failed monster knowledge checks so had no idea how nasty it could be. it got annihilated, started it's turn heavily bloodied and the players killed it with immediate interrupts (3 of them all in one go!)
chuul juggernaut fought until bloodied (this monster was rubbish! so many hps and elite and no real special abilities, did not read this encounter or would have changed it) then tried to flee, well the party were not having that and pinned it down and butchered it.
i added Bram in, he passed on information and led them to the seer eventually, the RP with him was good although the party have just kind of accepted him. i've given him a few more powers including an encounter power and a ranged basic attack.
the vampire fight was a bit of a waltz for the party, the brutes accuracy sucked utterly even when giving them +2 to hit and double static damage, they were just hp punch bags. and the party runepriest has a radiant flail so their vulnerable 15 radiant really hurt. the callophage vampire died but the soulthief escaped and is leading them to the next fight, they are following not even considering the possibility of a trap. i'm considering giving the monsters an ambush attempt due to the players looking up mostly.
have decided i may need to muscle up the encounters as even the hydra, while it did considerable damage to the two defenders, was not really a threatening encounter for the rest. especially as the battlemind has an epic destiny power: when you shift all allies you can see can shift the same no of squares as a free action!!
most of the encounters my party were actually hitting really really easily too, maybe i need to do something wrt defences? will see what happens
anyone else finding this?
also i'm adding something to the graveyard fight as otherwise i doubt they'll even need a extended rest.
as this is effectively a historic moment i am adding in an Aspect of Nerull, idea being that monadhan was destroyed in the war of the gods, while Nerull was still active so the aspect can still be there.
mostly i wanted something scarier than a bunch of level equivalent mobs to fight. the aspect will appear in round 2 in some kind of "who disturbs by restful slumber?" kind of way :D
@rachweded my characters hit everything and the the monsters hit nothing in his module. At least most of the time. (I'm being a little over dramatic due to this being aggravating for me) I get pulled to the defenders who I need to roll 16-20 on. The only reason i'm bloodying anyone is that the ranger moves off to the side of the group giving me access. Besides that, I ended 6 encounters later, no rests, and the group had only used up about 10 surges between the 5 of them. I'm hoping this is a function of just moving to epic destiny and not an unbalance from all the none core books and errata that never effect the adventure path. Someone please tell me I don't have to alter every encounter for the rest of the AP?
players were getting hit ok it was just the brutes, must've been cursed dice as in next fight the brutes did their job.
i typically give +2 to hit for brutes and double static damage on all monsters, a fix i heard of from a friend. this makes some brutes hideous (treasure golem and frost giants stand high on this) and others just about worth bothering with.
that being said my two defenders are wearing dawn warriors armour and other damage reducing effects so they're well capable of weathering a storm.
will still look through future encounters though, if someone else wil benefit i'll add it here.
got to say the graveyard fight was epic, the ghouls were not as effective as i hoped due to the extreme mobility of my party (wilden battlemind epic destiny has a power at level 21 that says whenever the BM shifts all his allies that he can see shift the same number of squares...he also has a feat which adds 1 to all his shifts, he just shifts all of the time enabling the party to entirely re-arrange!)
but the undead angels were hideous! i'll find their real names and post them up, the sorcerer wandered to one side and blasted them both, their go they flanked him and dropped him!
the aspect of Nerull was awesome too, did not do much damage to be honest, but the "2 saves failed and you're dead" scared them senseless, i had it flee when Kas approached as at that time it was just players and Nerull left so no point dragging it on.