We ran our sixth session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, October 16, 2023

The party had finally reached Wave Echo Mine! Hooray!

Entering the Mine, they quickly discovered a pit and the corpse of one of Gundren’s brothers. Moving quickly, they looted his cloak. Because it looked magical. And they’re adventurers!

The pit led to tunnels leading east and west. Using the ropes that were already set up, they descended and discovered an unusual corpse: that of a goblin with a deformed head. This is foreshadowing for the new material, but – once again – it’s not particularly good foreshadowing. It’s just sort of – there.

The big decision point now came: East or West? They chose east, and soon came to a larger cavern with many old skeletons in rusted armour lying on the ground. They’ve definitely played a lot because they expected them to animate. However, the adventure had a surprise: while they were concentrating on the skeletons, stirges would attack from above! The stirges weren’t that effective, and only manage to hit Nymia once. The satyr cleric was not that happy about it, but what can you do with overgrown mosquitoes? (Change to the adventure from the original: 10 stirges became 6 stirges).

Heading south, they discovered 2 ogre zombies and 6 dwarf zombies in a ruined guardroom. Nymia was swarmed and knocked unconscious. A healing word restored her to consciousness, and then Syzoth used fog cloud to allow her to escape. (Fog cloud has proved extremely useful in my campaigns). (Another change from the original: 9 skeletons are replaced by the ogre and dwarf zombies, and as a result it’s a much, much harder fight).

The subsequent fighting in the corridor alerted ghouls in a nearby chamber who came to join in. We had a lot of questions from the players of the sort “do I need to see the opponent to cast this spell?” And the fun that two blinded creatures attack each other… normally. Disadvantage cancels Advantage. “I can’t see the attacker!” Attack with advantage! “I can’t see my target!” Attack with disadvantage!

A shatter spell from Vel’rari left the ghouls all on 4 hit points. Syzoth was able to take down the last. The battle against the zombies took a long, long time – one zombie succeeding 5+ times on its Undead Fortitude save – until finally it fell.

The party gathered a few coins and gems from the room the ghouls came from (this is a mistake in the Roll20 implementation – the ghouls were placed in the wrong room, and I didn’t notice that during play. The Ogre Zombies were also given incorrect hit points in the Roll20 version). A short rest allowed Nymia to identify Gundren’s brother’s cloak of resistance and wear it.

Exploring around to the east the party came to a chamber of many fungi. They correctly identified – with good Nature checks – the violet fungi lurking in wait and avoided them, skirting the side of the room.

Then they came to some human-sized ruins (not dwarf-sized). The first ruin the investigated held a wraith. As the party is devoid of magic weapons – and force damage – they fought it with most of their attacks doing half damage. The divine sorcerer hit it twice with guiding bolt, while missing with all his sacred flames. Eventually it went down – Simeon the fighter was left on 1 hit point! Key to their success was the artificer’s construct. For most of the battles in this campaign, he has it set to provide temporary hit points to everyone within range, and that makes a big difference. (His player has remarked on how it’s his only good ability. The half-caster aspect of the artificer means that they’re not great with spells, and if you take a non-fighting subclass, not great in weapon combat either).

After the fight with the wraith, the party were low on hit points and spells, and retreated out of the caves for a rest. There we ended the session! It was a relatively short session, but it was a natural break point.

Speaking of changes from the original, all the advice on role-playing the wraith is gone.

The new version:

“This room contains the restless spirit of the last wizard to die here, Mormesk the wraith. Mormesk was a powerful mage until he met his end in the spell battle at the climax of the bandit attack. Centuries of anger have poisoned his soul, transforming him into a hate-filled apparition.

“Mormesk leads the Undead that haunt Wave Echo Cave. The wraith spends his time here because the treasure he had amassed in life lies in the scorched chest. No longer corporeal, he cannot touch or possess the wealth he enjoyed in life.”

— and that’s all it has on the wraith.

This is the section that was deleted:

Mormesk speaks in grave whispers. When the wraith first rises up from the floor, it says, “Your presence is offensive to me, your life forfeit. My treasures are mine alone, not yours to plunder!” If the characters make no attempt to reason with the wraith, it attacks.

If the characters try to reason with the wraith, it listens to what they have to say, provided they have not harmed it in any way or seized any of its property. The wraith is irrevocably evil, so the only way the characters can stay its spectral hand is to offer it something a former wizard would consider valuable in exchange for their lives. Mormesk values magic items (particularly scrolls), spellbooks, and arcane knowledge. Whatever the gift, a character must succeed on a DC 10 Charisma (Persuasion) check to convince the wraith of its value.

Regardless of what the characters offer it, the wraith won’t relinquish the wooden pipe in the scorched chest. It will, however, part with the coins and gems if the characters agree to kill the spectator in the Forge of Spells. (The wraith doesn’t explain what a spectator is. It merely points toward area 15.) Once it receives its gift, the wraith allows characters to peruse its books and keep the secret map in one of them (see the “Treasure” section).

I am unimpressed by this deletion. This is the sort of thing that DMs reading an adventure want. It’s too easy to just end up running everything as a combat encounter.

I want prompts to give me ideas about how to transform something into a role-playing encounter, even if it might then turn into a combat.

One of the interesting things about this playthrough is looking at the rebalanced encounters – which are often much harder (it’s a surprise when I get an easier one). We really needed to have a long rest after the encounter with the wraith.

Ogre Zombies + Zombies = short rest
Then Wraith = long rest.

It’s not like there weren’t difficult encounters before. (Flameskull!) But with more of the encounters ratcheted up, then the flow of the adventure changes. You need to retreat and rest more often.

It’s interesting looking at that: is this good for the adventure flow? We’re not in a standard dungeon crawl where the only goal is exploration (and loot and treasure), but instead we’re trying to rescue Gundren’s brother and find out what’s going on. Too many hard combats, and you lose the story flow. By the way, the flameskull encounter has not changed. Except for one thing: An explanation about how it’s one of the encounters that has made the Spider pause while he works out how to get through. That’s a very nice change.

The cavern of fungi has also made the Spider pause… though that one seems weird.

“This cave has hindered the Spider’s explorations. Nezznar suspects that the mine’s magic workshops are nearby, but he’s reluctant to risk facing the dangerous monsters here.”

The dangerous monsters = two violet fungi. A Flameskull is dangerous. Violet fungi? Not so much. Although I guess the Spider is an incredibly underwhelming final boss. They’ve made him more powerful with a Poison Blast attack. +5 to hit, melee or ranged 120 feet, 2d8 poison damage.

Violet Fungi? Not immune to poison.

In the original adventure, there were no violet fungi in that chamber. Instead, was filled with poison gas. Which would do a much better job of delaying The Spider than the new version.