I have a bit of a question here that im unsure about how I want to answer it.
I currently run a game for 5 Level 15 characters. They are going through a dungeon made by an archmage that includes various similacrums of him. But to keep it interesting and considering how ancient the dungeon is, I had decided that some of these similacrums should no longer be their normal archmage self. So I included one that had turned into a homebrew wraith-like creature, one had turned himself into a lich and another eventually became a demilich.
The party first encountered and defeated the demilich version. But not before one of the players got trapped in one of the gems. Luckly the party managed to get them out again. When the demilich died it turned back into a pile of now, like how similacrums are made. Except for the gems. Which they retrieved. One was a nonmagical gem and the other had the players soul in it. That one was destroyed to free the player again. When they searched the room they found a hidden pocket where they found another gemstone which ,they figured out, also had a soul in it. I was yet undecided about what this gem was exactly. Considering similacrums don't really have souls I was not yet sure if I wanted to make this the phylactery. But my players believed that it may be so they didn't do anything with it just yet because they don't know who was inside of it.
After that... During the battle with the lich version, after killing all the liches minions, the party is facing just the lich itself. (Its a bit homebrewed so its still quite a challenge on its own and its pretty much at full HP) But one of my players decided, for some reason, that it would be a good idea to shatter the other gemstone in the middle of the fight.
Im indecisive about what to do with it.
Should shattering it just count as destroying the phylactery and just permanently kill the demilich version?
Should it summon an ally. An enemy of the demilich' that was trapped and kept in the gemstone? My players are doing relatively fine, an ally would trivialize the fight if the ally is powerful. But if the ally is weak, then shattering the gem would basically be a wasted action and have no impact.
Should it summon the demlich back in full? or maybe a weakened state of it?
Maybe it should summon some other type of enemy? Another powerful undead or demon perhaps.
Im not sure what to do and would like to ask what you all would do in this situation. Would it be appropriate to introduce another enemy considering they were previously reluctant to free both the player AND the entity in the other gem when they first aquired it. Should I reward them with an ally for taking the risk? Should I have the phylcatery just be destroyed and nothing else?
I'd make it a elderly woman, frail, and helpless. And one of the following.
* As the PC fight, have the woman become younger and stronger when seemingly the lich takes damage. But in reality, the lady is feeding off the blood of the PCs. She manages to escape some time during the fight taking the PCs hp with her.
*She is just an lady who used to be a fighter in her younger days.
*She is the former lover of the lich. Her soul was trapped until he could find a vessel to put her in and they could live happily ever after.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
If the party manages to keep the child alive, and defeat the lich, the lich moves in to the child's body. In your NEXT campaign, have the child grow up to be the BBEG.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
This is super-interesting, it’s really sky is the limit. Seems like the first question is about this fight. But part of that is how much longer is the campaign? Is this meant to be a big final BBEG battle? If it’s a final battle, then definitely I wouldn’t want to introduce anything to make it easier. But if it’s just the final boss of a dungeon, then that can be fun — if it unleashes an ally to help them, it lets the player think they figured out a secret cheat code, everything lined up just right and they pulled it off. But it could add an enemy if you need to ramp up the difficulty a little, just to me adding in a small bag of bad guy hit points or good guy attacks seems the least satisfying.
It could also release an ally that doesn’t help them directly, but gives them some kind of reward. Anything from casting bless on the party and then leaving, to maybe giving a boon to the character that freed them.
Another thing to consider is your main plot. Is there some loose thread there? Some missing person or entity or something that could be inside the gem. So freeing them doesn’t help right now in this fight, but it will help them in the larger story. Or it wasn’t even actually a soul inside, it was some object they were looking for, and its true nature was cloaked. I wouldn’t worry about it seeming like the character wasted an action, they made the choice to take a big gamble, there’s no reason you have to give them a payoff.
I mean, the default outcome is that you destroyed a gemstone containing a soul and the soul goes to wherever it would go, which probably has no effect on the encounter, but you could certainly have something more dramatic happen.
The "soul" in the gem is yet another version of the original archmage, only this one was created to provide a sort of tutorial for the dungeon, so when it gets released it just starts doing a lore dump in the middle of the combat
The lich they're currently fighting, however, didn't know/had forgotten/is enraged by the reminder that they are a simulacrum, so seeing the "true" face of the archmage sends them into a frenzy that gives their spells and attacks some sort of boost
Alternately, the lich realizes that the tutorial version of the archmage still contains a fragment of their creator's soul, and if they can seize it they could absorb it/corrupt it and become even more powerful. So suddenly the goal of the fight shifts from just destroying the lich, to playing keep-away with the released simulacrum -- or it becomes a much tougher fight if they don't
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue) Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Dear dungeonmasters,
I have a bit of a question here that im unsure about how I want to answer it.
I currently run a game for 5 Level 15 characters. They are going through a dungeon made by an archmage that includes various similacrums of him. But to keep it interesting and considering how ancient the dungeon is, I had decided that some of these similacrums should no longer be their normal archmage self. So I included one that had turned into a homebrew wraith-like creature, one had turned himself into a lich and another eventually became a demilich.
The party first encountered and defeated the demilich version. But not before one of the players got trapped in one of the gems. Luckly the party managed to get them out again. When the demilich died it turned back into a pile of now, like how similacrums are made. Except for the gems. Which they retrieved. One was a nonmagical gem and the other had the players soul in it. That one was destroyed to free the player again.
When they searched the room they found a hidden pocket where they found another gemstone which ,they figured out, also had a soul in it. I was yet undecided about what this gem was exactly. Considering similacrums don't really have souls I was not yet sure if I wanted to make this the phylactery. But my players believed that it may be so they didn't do anything with it just yet because they don't know who was inside of it.
After that... During the battle with the lich version, after killing all the liches minions, the party is facing just the lich itself. (Its a bit homebrewed so its still quite a challenge on its own and its pretty much at full HP) But one of my players decided, for some reason, that it would be a good idea to shatter the other gemstone in the middle of the fight.
Im indecisive about what to do with it.
Should shattering it just count as destroying the phylactery and just permanently kill the demilich version?
Should it summon an ally. An enemy of the demilich' that was trapped and kept in the gemstone? My players are doing relatively fine, an ally would trivialize the fight if the ally is powerful. But if the ally is weak, then shattering the gem would basically be a wasted action and have no impact.
Should it summon the demlich back in full? or maybe a weakened state of it?
Maybe it should summon some other type of enemy? Another powerful undead or demon perhaps.
Im not sure what to do and would like to ask what you all would do in this situation. Would it be appropriate to introduce another enemy considering they were previously reluctant to free both the player AND the entity in the other gem when they first aquired it.
Should I reward them with an ally for taking the risk?
Should I have the phylcatery just be destroyed and nothing else?
What would you do in this situation?
Thank you in advance!
I'd make it a elderly woman, frail, and helpless. And one of the following.
* As the PC fight, have the woman become younger and stronger when seemingly the lich takes damage. But in reality, the lady is feeding off the blood of the PCs. She manages to escape some time during the fight taking the PCs hp with her.
*She is just an lady who used to be a fighter in her younger days.
*She is the former lover of the lich. Her soul was trapped until he could find a vessel to put her in and they could live happily ever after.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It is the soul of an innocent young child.
If the party manages to keep the child alive, and defeat the lich, the lich moves in to the child's body. In your NEXT campaign, have the child grow up to be the BBEG.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
This is super-interesting, it’s really sky is the limit. Seems like the first question is about this fight. But part of that is how much longer is the campaign? Is this meant to be a big final BBEG battle? If it’s a final battle, then definitely I wouldn’t want to introduce anything to make it easier. But if it’s just the final boss of a dungeon, then that can be fun — if it unleashes an ally to help them, it lets the player think they figured out a secret cheat code, everything lined up just right and they pulled it off. But it could add an enemy if you need to ramp up the difficulty a little, just to me adding in a small bag of bad guy hit points or good guy attacks seems the least satisfying.
It could also release an ally that doesn’t help them directly, but gives them some kind of reward. Anything from casting bless on the party and then leaving, to maybe giving a boon to the character that freed them.
Another thing to consider is your main plot. Is there some loose thread there? Some missing person or entity or something that could be inside the gem. So freeing them doesn’t help right now in this fight, but it will help them in the larger story. Or it wasn’t even actually a soul inside, it was some object they were looking for, and its true nature was cloaked. I wouldn’t worry about it seeming like the character wasted an action, they made the choice to take a big gamble, there’s no reason you have to give them a payoff.
I mean, the default outcome is that you destroyed a gemstone containing a soul and the soul goes to wherever it would go, which probably has no effect on the encounter, but you could certainly have something more dramatic happen.
The "soul" in the gem is yet another version of the original archmage, only this one was created to provide a sort of tutorial for the dungeon, so when it gets released it just starts doing a lore dump in the middle of the combat
The lich they're currently fighting, however, didn't know/had forgotten/is enraged by the reminder that they are a simulacrum, so seeing the "true" face of the archmage sends them into a frenzy that gives their spells and attacks some sort of boost
Alternately, the lich realizes that the tutorial version of the archmage still contains a fragment of their creator's soul, and if they can seize it they could absorb it/corrupt it and become even more powerful. So suddenly the goal of the fight shifts from just destroying the lich, to playing keep-away with the released simulacrum -- or it becomes a much tougher fight if they don't
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Make it a male drunk goblin dressed as a ridiculous woman with lipstick and a flame-tongue rapier.