Adapting J1 - Entombed with the Pharaohs to Spheres of Power

[Keante]

Hi all,

I started a thread just like this on the Paizo forums, but I'm looking for people's ideas, and I've not gotten any responses there yet, so here we go...

I am running a few sessions going through Entombed with the Pharaohs and using the opportunity to introduce some friends to Spheres of Power. They've all made their characters, but I'm still working on some of the NPCs and villains.

I wondered if any of you might like to make any suggestions on classes and spheres to use for them.

I haven't decided whether to make Sceptre a casting class, or perhaps use something else and just do a custom magic item for that wand rifle of his, making it an item that allows use of the Destructive Sphere and a couple talents maybe. As an argument for giving him a casting class, I think he could make use of some of the (lens) talents from the Light Sphere (these weren't in the original SoP book; I think they first appeared in the handbook for the Light Sphere).

Of course someone known as the Radiant Pharaoh needs to make some use of the Light Sphere. She's written up as a conjurer wizard, so I'll probably use some Conjuration Sphere talents as well.

As for the Pharaoh of Numbers, I think he seems rather ho-hum as written. I'm thinking he should invest in the Enhancement Sphere for animated objects, and make hieroglyphs spring off the walls to attack the PCs.

What other ideas do you all have?

[Keante]

In the encounter with the Chelish legionnaires, I had only two players present (instead of the full party of 4). I sent 6 legionnaires at them at once (the module is written to have maybe 2 show up at a time). I gave the legionnaires a few extra hit points if I recall correctly, but made no other changes.

The 2 PCs steamrolled them. They also had no problem handling the hieracosphinx.

At that point I was worried I really needed to get things converted to SoP, but I kept not having the time to get it done, and then we had our first session in the pyramid, and the undead dragon turned out to be far deadlier than I had expected. I made no modification to the dragon at all--but it had one PC and 2 NPCs (Neferet Anu, and then Hrokon after I had that party show up because the PCs seemed to be in danger) unconscious. The lightning breath and its full attack both did a lot of damage.

So the dragon surprised me (I'm not an experienced DM, or maybe I would have seen that coming just from looking over the stat block, I don't know). I still haven't done any conversion of the Radiant Pharaoh and Pharaoh of Numbers. I'm maybe halfway done with conversions of the NPC party, but I don't know if it's ultimately going to be necessary. Not sure how difficult I can expect those 2 pharaohs to actually prove to be.

That thought prompted me to look again at the stat blocks for the dragon, the Radiant Pharaoh, and the Pharaoh of Numbers. They are CR 9, 8, and 7, respectively. So the PCs have tackled the hardest challenge already, right? Unless the Radiant Pharaoh escapes up the ladder and waits to fight with the Pharaoh of Numbers. I don't know how CR math works, but I'm guessing a CR 8 and CR 7 working together are more challenging than a single CR 9 creature.

[EldritchWeaver]

My experience is that SoP characters are more capable against enemies in particular at low levels regarding offense, so it makes sense to buff enemies with the Advanced template on the fly. Assuming they are mobs, the bosses are likely tough enough.