arkieNork
2023-09-28, 07:19 PM
After ~3 months of doubt, I let my players get their Bloody Skeleton Black Dragon.
You guys would not believe the sheer scale of bull**** our game has turned into.
Three short combat sessions since the Bloody Skeleton Black Dragon joins our party.
Combat 1:
The players raid the lair of a CR 12 demon spider brood mother . In the process of trying to lure her out of her cave where she was guarding her 'about to hatch' eggs, they spend six hours in the wasteland, building contraptions to lower one of them down as bait and have him get yanked out if the spider moves.
According to the module, you get an RE roll every 3 hours and also another RE roll for any combat that lasts over 3 turns. They end up rolling 3 times on that table and attracting exactly 6 more lesser spiders (that's 3 rolls for 2% probability to get these specific monsters on the encounter table for this region) Spider Spot+20 and none of the players bothered to level theirs up, the monsters see party before party seems them and the huge dragon skeleton with them. Because we have an agreement that monsters aren't going to be stupid about their behavior, and these spiders are super demonic spiders (Large Magical Beast, Int10, Wis12) I decided they wouldn't just rush in piecemeal against a huge dragon skeleton.
thanks to having the dragon skeleton with them, instead of fighting 3 random encounters one at a time, they ended up amassing 6 extra CR 6 spiders watching them from afar and waiting for an opportunity. Than the Cleric decides 'if she spider queen is refusing to come out of her lair for our bait, lower me in there by rope, I am going to use Gem of Seeing to get line of sight on her nest chamber and and cast Flame Strike in there.
Tl,DR - their munchkin ways and extra lucky dice rolls end up escalating a CR 12 encounter to CR 14... than on round 3 of that fight, they manage to roll into a 4th RE add and 4 Belkers join the party. Now, they win, but it was the closest fight they had.
They get no experience for this CR 14 encounter because by the rules of our game, if they have to involve hired help into helping them in fighting, the hired help gets all the experience. Things got bad enough that they requested aid from the hill giant they have hired to drag their chariot.
At least they a cool +1 Acid Resistance Buckler out of the lair.
Combat 2:
simple scouting expedition for next side quest. The party ends up meeting a 5 headed fiendish pyrohydra. It gets to ambush that same Cleric because it was, as according to the module, clinging to the edge of a chasm, waiting for prey. It has Smite Good and the cleric (by indulgence of his deity, despite using evil spell like Animate Dead, is still considered of Good alignment). Not only does the hydra gets its surprise round, it also wins imitative. So the cleric has to sink every 'faith point' he has been storing for his Pious Soul just to survive 5 breath attacks with his +4 Reflex save vs DC 15.
I cheated a bit and warned him that he was about to take 15d6 + 25 Smite Good to the face, before he had to make the decision of whether he wanted to use his Pious Soul for this. Also reminded him - "you are controlling this undead dragon skellie, you die, the rest of your EL 7 small party gets to be out here 60 miles from nearest source of help with bloody skeleton dragon that is no longer controlled. It has 60ft move speed..."
sidenote: the group spent like 2 months of play session and sunk 14k gold to fulfill side quests to get the cleric those faith points. He planned to use them to bust through spell resistance of any demons he had to fight. Instead he sunk them all on to survive a single round attack from a CR7 monster.
He 'withdraws' from the hydra and sends his dragon to fight the hydra. The dragon tears off every head in a single round. Hydra falls down the relatively shallow chasm. Party is bitching about faith points. None of the players know about monsters and their knowledge about hydras is 'its from greeks, right?' So next to no real life knowledge and no skill point investment in knowledge skills outside of Clerics Knowledge Religion.
About half a minute later I inform them that one of them made the Listen check and hears more noise coming from chasm.
They think there might have been more than one creature there. They ask the cleric 'so when you got close to the edge, how deep was it?" - about 30ft. Well lets just send in the dragon and tell him to kill everything down there.
Dragon gets the order 'jump down into that chasm and kill any monsters you see down there'. I ask for a tea break and spend 10 minutes resisting the temptation to have their dragon just run off down the 50 miles long labyrinth of the 'Chaos Rift' complete with a real chaos rift.
Dragon goes down there and sees the hydra crawling off. Runs after it and immediately takes 30d6 fire damage to the face to the face from the now 10-headed pyro hydra. Hydra btw, has a climb speed which it uses to go back up the chasm and away from the skeleton. Skeleton dragon does not have a climb speed. (28 strength though, so its still making very decent climb checks). Point is, hydra ends up getting out of the chasm first and as it goes it gets to pour fire back down on the dragon - its losing heads too.
back on even ground, the PCs do not have LOS down the chasm, because they were all keeping back from there and the dragon moves way faster than any of them. So what they get to know from their vantage point is 'your dragon jumps down into the chasm. about 4 seconds later you hear the familiar sounds of fire breathing snake heads and see smoke and fire flashes from the chasm. As you move toward the ledge, the creature that almost kills you climbs over it. It now has 8 heads and rather a lot of torn stumps and you can see that more heads are swiftly growing from them'
The party freaks out a bit. At this point the cleric is 30ft away from the hydra that just clambered up and his weaker party members are a bit behind. None see their skeleton dragon. A quick discussion concludes that next round, the 'creature' can do another salvo on the cleric who only has 20 speed. They also remember that their skeleton doesn't have climb skill and I am not telling them the climb dc of that chasm wall. Instead I ask "what skeleton dragon? last you've seen it, it jumped down in there, and than you heard what you can now make out as ten separate breath attacks... and than some more later"
There is an argument about how come the hydra could climb and breath fire with all heads at same time. I end up giving away 'it seems as if the heads can act independently from its body'. They decide that every head is like an independent creature. The cleric comes up with a genius plan on how to use what may be his last round alive. "I am going to flame strike the hydra"
He does. The hydra which actually had 12 hit points left dies. So do all the heads. There is a short celebration of 'good guess'
I remind them that they ordered their bone dragon to attack the hydra.
I also remind them that Flame Strike is a cylinder AoE that is significantly wider than the hydra.
I also remind them that half of Flame Strike damage is Divine... also known as that one damage type which can in fact destroy a Bloody Skeleton (pf1 template) completely despite it being Deathless (for context - 3 months of downtime activities were devoted to finding enough black onyx to animate this skeleton dragon. the world is in perpetual war against direct incursion from Orcus, prince of undeath, and so nercomantic supplies are very much a controlled substance)
There is a major **** storm in our tiny teacup of a video chat. I wait 5 minutes before informing them the dragon is not yet dead - they need to roll its reflex save to take half damage. They spend another ten minutes arguing and than have a roll-off to determine the luckiest one among them to make that roll.
Tl,DR - bloody skeleton dragon survives that combat with 4 out of 135 HP.
They get full experience for a single...CR 7 creature, which almost wiped out their whole group (Cleric 11, Fighter 6, Monk 7, Old Black Dragon Bloody Skeleton CR 11). it has no treasure. Also -14 Faith Points
Combat number 3.
My hands are getting tired so I am going to make this one shorter. They make a foray 80 miles into the Desolation. They end up rolling up 2 encounters in the Dead Fields and they end up fight 2 Blight Wolves and one Clay Golem (again, adds as per rules of the module)
(https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/golem/golem-clay/)
Over the course of the fight, the bone dragon gets hit for exactly 135 HP total. Not 1 more, not 1 less - it eats exactly 135 hp in damage from the golem with the last strike being delivered while the golem itself is down to 3 hit points.
After waiting 1 hour for their deathless bloody skeleton dragon to rise again, I ask the group for a vote.
Option 1: When a creature is 'destroyed' or 'dies' it no longer exists and magical enchantments on it all dissipate.
Option 2: Enchantments, curses and other magical effects stick to the 'body' and persist through death, resurrection and any similar effects.
picking 1 means your Bloody Skeleton Black Dragon gets to revive because the Cursed Wound (Ex) from the Clay Golem will have worn off and thus its Fast Healing can take effect. But it also means your cleric's control of it has also worn off.
and 2 of course means that you get to control it with the 1 HP it gets from its Deathless revival, but the Cursed Wounds stay too. 'there might be some way to defeat the curse... but its probably not wise to ask your Good aligned divine patron for any help on this particular task'
Players decide that this bloody skeleton has brought them nothing but bad luck since they raised it. Unanimous vote for option 1.
In-game the cleric swears off necromancy on the spot, does a Wisdom check about losing control of the skeleton dragon and nukes it with Flame Strike at first sign of movement.
Summary
A while ago I made a thread here about at will abilities:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?659376-Considering-removing-At-Will-abilities-Vrock-encounter-example-What-am-I-breaking
which then side tracked into my worries about giving them the go-ahead to use necromancy and this very skeleton and what I might need to do as a DM about it.
Outcome of doing absolutely nothing and just letting the game guide itself:
1. The vrock encounter I was worried about, never manifested. At least not yet - the players got side tracked with other side quests.
2. The 'undefeatable, deathless skeleton' that I was worried about unbalancing my game and trivializing the entire module, ended up nearly killing the party 3 times in a row (literally, every time they have left the camp with it) and actually turned out to be very much 'defeatable'
3. The game and the dice resolved my 'necromancy is unbalanced' dilemma all by itself.
ps. I am never going to forget the time the party freaked out at a CR7 monster and all 3 players unanimously approved a holy damage AE nuke on their own Bloody skeleton mascot. And not a single one of them realized it until I spent nearly a full minute beaming my best cheshire cat grin at them. I hope they never put a point in any knowledge skill ever.
ps2. for those wondering, we are doing Slumbering Tsar Saga pf1 version by Frog God Games.
You guys would not believe the sheer scale of bull**** our game has turned into.
Three short combat sessions since the Bloody Skeleton Black Dragon joins our party.
Combat 1:
The players raid the lair of a CR 12 demon spider brood mother . In the process of trying to lure her out of her cave where she was guarding her 'about to hatch' eggs, they spend six hours in the wasteland, building contraptions to lower one of them down as bait and have him get yanked out if the spider moves.
According to the module, you get an RE roll every 3 hours and also another RE roll for any combat that lasts over 3 turns. They end up rolling 3 times on that table and attracting exactly 6 more lesser spiders (that's 3 rolls for 2% probability to get these specific monsters on the encounter table for this region) Spider Spot+20 and none of the players bothered to level theirs up, the monsters see party before party seems them and the huge dragon skeleton with them. Because we have an agreement that monsters aren't going to be stupid about their behavior, and these spiders are super demonic spiders (Large Magical Beast, Int10, Wis12) I decided they wouldn't just rush in piecemeal against a huge dragon skeleton.
thanks to having the dragon skeleton with them, instead of fighting 3 random encounters one at a time, they ended up amassing 6 extra CR 6 spiders watching them from afar and waiting for an opportunity. Than the Cleric decides 'if she spider queen is refusing to come out of her lair for our bait, lower me in there by rope, I am going to use Gem of Seeing to get line of sight on her nest chamber and and cast Flame Strike in there.
Tl,DR - their munchkin ways and extra lucky dice rolls end up escalating a CR 12 encounter to CR 14... than on round 3 of that fight, they manage to roll into a 4th RE add and 4 Belkers join the party. Now, they win, but it was the closest fight they had.
They get no experience for this CR 14 encounter because by the rules of our game, if they have to involve hired help into helping them in fighting, the hired help gets all the experience. Things got bad enough that they requested aid from the hill giant they have hired to drag their chariot.
At least they a cool +1 Acid Resistance Buckler out of the lair.
Combat 2:
simple scouting expedition for next side quest. The party ends up meeting a 5 headed fiendish pyrohydra. It gets to ambush that same Cleric because it was, as according to the module, clinging to the edge of a chasm, waiting for prey. It has Smite Good and the cleric (by indulgence of his deity, despite using evil spell like Animate Dead, is still considered of Good alignment). Not only does the hydra gets its surprise round, it also wins imitative. So the cleric has to sink every 'faith point' he has been storing for his Pious Soul just to survive 5 breath attacks with his +4 Reflex save vs DC 15.
I cheated a bit and warned him that he was about to take 15d6 + 25 Smite Good to the face, before he had to make the decision of whether he wanted to use his Pious Soul for this. Also reminded him - "you are controlling this undead dragon skellie, you die, the rest of your EL 7 small party gets to be out here 60 miles from nearest source of help with bloody skeleton dragon that is no longer controlled. It has 60ft move speed..."
sidenote: the group spent like 2 months of play session and sunk 14k gold to fulfill side quests to get the cleric those faith points. He planned to use them to bust through spell resistance of any demons he had to fight. Instead he sunk them all on to survive a single round attack from a CR7 monster.
He 'withdraws' from the hydra and sends his dragon to fight the hydra. The dragon tears off every head in a single round. Hydra falls down the relatively shallow chasm. Party is bitching about faith points. None of the players know about monsters and their knowledge about hydras is 'its from greeks, right?' So next to no real life knowledge and no skill point investment in knowledge skills outside of Clerics Knowledge Religion.
About half a minute later I inform them that one of them made the Listen check and hears more noise coming from chasm.
They think there might have been more than one creature there. They ask the cleric 'so when you got close to the edge, how deep was it?" - about 30ft. Well lets just send in the dragon and tell him to kill everything down there.
Dragon gets the order 'jump down into that chasm and kill any monsters you see down there'. I ask for a tea break and spend 10 minutes resisting the temptation to have their dragon just run off down the 50 miles long labyrinth of the 'Chaos Rift' complete with a real chaos rift.
Dragon goes down there and sees the hydra crawling off. Runs after it and immediately takes 30d6 fire damage to the face to the face from the now 10-headed pyro hydra. Hydra btw, has a climb speed which it uses to go back up the chasm and away from the skeleton. Skeleton dragon does not have a climb speed. (28 strength though, so its still making very decent climb checks). Point is, hydra ends up getting out of the chasm first and as it goes it gets to pour fire back down on the dragon - its losing heads too.
back on even ground, the PCs do not have LOS down the chasm, because they were all keeping back from there and the dragon moves way faster than any of them. So what they get to know from their vantage point is 'your dragon jumps down into the chasm. about 4 seconds later you hear the familiar sounds of fire breathing snake heads and see smoke and fire flashes from the chasm. As you move toward the ledge, the creature that almost kills you climbs over it. It now has 8 heads and rather a lot of torn stumps and you can see that more heads are swiftly growing from them'
The party freaks out a bit. At this point the cleric is 30ft away from the hydra that just clambered up and his weaker party members are a bit behind. None see their skeleton dragon. A quick discussion concludes that next round, the 'creature' can do another salvo on the cleric who only has 20 speed. They also remember that their skeleton doesn't have climb skill and I am not telling them the climb dc of that chasm wall. Instead I ask "what skeleton dragon? last you've seen it, it jumped down in there, and than you heard what you can now make out as ten separate breath attacks... and than some more later"
There is an argument about how come the hydra could climb and breath fire with all heads at same time. I end up giving away 'it seems as if the heads can act independently from its body'. They decide that every head is like an independent creature. The cleric comes up with a genius plan on how to use what may be his last round alive. "I am going to flame strike the hydra"
He does. The hydra which actually had 12 hit points left dies. So do all the heads. There is a short celebration of 'good guess'
I remind them that they ordered their bone dragon to attack the hydra.
I also remind them that Flame Strike is a cylinder AoE that is significantly wider than the hydra.
I also remind them that half of Flame Strike damage is Divine... also known as that one damage type which can in fact destroy a Bloody Skeleton (pf1 template) completely despite it being Deathless (for context - 3 months of downtime activities were devoted to finding enough black onyx to animate this skeleton dragon. the world is in perpetual war against direct incursion from Orcus, prince of undeath, and so nercomantic supplies are very much a controlled substance)
There is a major **** storm in our tiny teacup of a video chat. I wait 5 minutes before informing them the dragon is not yet dead - they need to roll its reflex save to take half damage. They spend another ten minutes arguing and than have a roll-off to determine the luckiest one among them to make that roll.
Tl,DR - bloody skeleton dragon survives that combat with 4 out of 135 HP.
They get full experience for a single...CR 7 creature, which almost wiped out their whole group (Cleric 11, Fighter 6, Monk 7, Old Black Dragon Bloody Skeleton CR 11). it has no treasure. Also -14 Faith Points
Combat number 3.
My hands are getting tired so I am going to make this one shorter. They make a foray 80 miles into the Desolation. They end up rolling up 2 encounters in the Dead Fields and they end up fight 2 Blight Wolves and one Clay Golem (again, adds as per rules of the module)
(https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/golem/golem-clay/)
Over the course of the fight, the bone dragon gets hit for exactly 135 HP total. Not 1 more, not 1 less - it eats exactly 135 hp in damage from the golem with the last strike being delivered while the golem itself is down to 3 hit points.
After waiting 1 hour for their deathless bloody skeleton dragon to rise again, I ask the group for a vote.
Option 1: When a creature is 'destroyed' or 'dies' it no longer exists and magical enchantments on it all dissipate.
Option 2: Enchantments, curses and other magical effects stick to the 'body' and persist through death, resurrection and any similar effects.
picking 1 means your Bloody Skeleton Black Dragon gets to revive because the Cursed Wound (Ex) from the Clay Golem will have worn off and thus its Fast Healing can take effect. But it also means your cleric's control of it has also worn off.
and 2 of course means that you get to control it with the 1 HP it gets from its Deathless revival, but the Cursed Wounds stay too. 'there might be some way to defeat the curse... but its probably not wise to ask your Good aligned divine patron for any help on this particular task'
Players decide that this bloody skeleton has brought them nothing but bad luck since they raised it. Unanimous vote for option 1.
In-game the cleric swears off necromancy on the spot, does a Wisdom check about losing control of the skeleton dragon and nukes it with Flame Strike at first sign of movement.
Summary
A while ago I made a thread here about at will abilities:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?659376-Considering-removing-At-Will-abilities-Vrock-encounter-example-What-am-I-breaking
which then side tracked into my worries about giving them the go-ahead to use necromancy and this very skeleton and what I might need to do as a DM about it.
Outcome of doing absolutely nothing and just letting the game guide itself:
1. The vrock encounter I was worried about, never manifested. At least not yet - the players got side tracked with other side quests.
2. The 'undefeatable, deathless skeleton' that I was worried about unbalancing my game and trivializing the entire module, ended up nearly killing the party 3 times in a row (literally, every time they have left the camp with it) and actually turned out to be very much 'defeatable'
3. The game and the dice resolved my 'necromancy is unbalanced' dilemma all by itself.
ps. I am never going to forget the time the party freaked out at a CR7 monster and all 3 players unanimously approved a holy damage AE nuke on their own Bloody skeleton mascot. And not a single one of them realized it until I spent nearly a full minute beaming my best cheshire cat grin at them. I hope they never put a point in any knowledge skill ever.
ps2. for those wondering, we are doing Slumbering Tsar Saga pf1 version by Frog God Games.