After baf posts to the other thread about the ring and about searching the chest room, I think we'll be finished with that room. I've been skimming through the monsters that are out there, and I vote that we visit the owlbear room next.
A vanilla owlbear doesn't have any truly nasty special abilities that I can see, and they're relatively low CR, so we'll probably just be facing a big bunch of them, which should be good for Cleaving. And more importantly, I've never seen one before, so I'd like to try beating one up.
Anyone else have any thoughts on the matter?
We're probably going to have to go into all of these rooms eventually. Owlbears are as good a next step as any.
If we want to continue action between sessions, I suppose it's Crumbly's job to take point again. I'll approach the gray sphere, search it for traphs (taking ten), and touch it, and, assuming it leads to a passage, go through.
You all clamber out through the crawlway that led into the chest room and emerge into the hallway of spheres.
Crumbly searches the area around the gray sphere and finds no traps. He touches it... and nothing happens. As far as he can tell, it's just a gray sphere painted on the wall.
Well that was unexpected.
Anyone have opinions on other spheres to try? Or do you think we solved the clues correctly and hit the only ones that lead anywhere?
Maybe check the owlbear sphere area for secret doors? Or for an illusion that's not centered on the sphere itself -- maybe the creature itself is the passage this time.
Failing that, how about the Minotaur?
Running from north to south along the west wall:
The gold sphere (naga) hides a crawlway leading to the statue room.
The orange sphere (mummy) hides a regular door.
The purple sphere (minotaur) isn't special.
The bronze sphere (nymph) hides a regular door.
The gray sphere (owlbear) isn't special.
The bright blue sphere (sahuagin) isn't special.
The white sphere (red slaad) isn't special.
The turquoise sphere (satyr) isn't special.
The scarlet sphere (mind flayer) isn't special.
The pale green sphere (medusa) isn't special.
Running from north to south along the east wall:
The pale blue sphere (werewolf) isn't special.
The silver sphere (four-armed gargoyle) hides the door by which you entered this hallway.
The green sphere (half-orc) isn't special.
The yellow sphere (falcon-headed creature) isn't special.
The pink sphere (yuan-ti) isn't special.
The black sphere (hydra) hides a crawlway.
The pale violet sphere (kuo-toa) isn't special.
The red sphere (skeleton) hides a crawlway to the chests room.
The buff sphere (wizard) isn't special.
The indigo sphere (bat-winged woman) isn't special.
Plus there's that mist-filled archway at the south end of the hall.
So, our options are mummy, nymph, or hydra. Or, to put it another way, orange, bronze, or night's good color.
Or, of course, the archway or back someplace we've been.
So let's look at the SRD and break down the pros and cons of the standard versions of those monsters (which we may or may not find on the other side of those doors):
Pro: A standard mummy is only CR 5. Also, their movement rate is only 20 ft., so our faster characters could probably evade it given enough room to move. Also also, it's undead, so Clem could try to turn it.
Con: Mummy rot, a supernatural disease that does lots of con damage and doesn't go away. Death from mummy rot turns you to dust, which I think prevents Raise Dead from working (although Reincarnate might still). Oh, and we might actually end up facing a CR 15 mummy lord instead of a normal mummy (or a flock of mummies, or a four-armed mutant mummy or whatever).
Pro: Usually chaotic good, so there's a good chance she won't actually want to kill us. She might even be helpful. On the other hand, she probably has good charisma, so she can probably make us think she's nice even if she's not.
Con: Blinding Beauty. Looking directly at a nymph causes permanent blindness. Do we have any way to heal that? We can try to be careful by looking the other way or wearing blindfolds, but that may not be fully reliable, and may interfere with finding out what's in the room.
Pro: It doesn't have any really nasty special attacks (even if it's a pyro- or cryo-, that's just straight elemental damage, not something permanent). Most kinds of hydras seem to only have moderate to hit rolls. Removing heads weakens it, by taking away its attacks.
Con: They get to make lots of attacks per round. Attacking the heads directly requires a sunder check in addition to doing damage (and provokes AoO), and if you just attack the body it can regenerate that damage.
Strategy
I think we have access to the spells needed to heal mummy rot, but I'd recommend waiting for a day when Clem's actually prepared them ahead of time before going through that door.
Roger, "[a]s a red-blooded druid," voted for the nymph. If we face her, what's our best strategy for not being blinded? Just blindfolds, to start? (I suppose we can make them by tearing up any spare non-magical cloak.)
Personally, I'm in favor of trying the hydra next. But if we do go that route, we need to figure out our strategy before going in: do we focus on the heads (which requires a slashing weapon, a successful sunder check, and a bunch of damage for each one -- not to mention fire or acid damage to the stump to prevent it from growing back), on the body (each round it recovers back 10+headcount HP), or both (maybe people who can work on the heads does so, while everyone else just does what they can)?
Also, a few questions for dfan: Does "A hydra's Combat Reflexes feat allows it to use all its heads for attacks of opportunity." mean that it gets a separate AoO for each head per round, or is it still limited by its Dex bonus (per the Combat Reflexes description), with those extra attacks just able to come from whichever head is most convenient? For the purpose of sunder checks, does a hydra's head count as a light weapon, like other natural weapons? And also, does successfully destroying one head allow one to use Cleave to attack a different one?
Apparently the Combat Reflexes question has been debated for years. My ruling is that each head gets an AoO and the Dex bonus doesn't apply.
The hydra's head counts as a light weapon for all purposes, including Sunder checks.
You can use Cleave to get an additional attack if you destroy a head.
Paulie asks (of Grog), "Want to fight a hydra?" Grog looks confused. Paulie asks, "Want to fight a big monster with lots of heads you can cut off?" Grog grunts in the affirmative. Paulie points at the black sphere. "Take a look inside that hole. There might be one on the other side."
Grog has darkvision to 60ft., so he should be able to see some distance down the crawlway if he sticks his head in.
Paulie says, "See what be around that corner, Grog. If ye need help, yell and we'll come after. If ye see something dangerous up ahead, or ye be unsure which way to go, just come on back."
Grog gamely crawls into the tight passage and out of sight.
A few minutes later, just as you are all starting to get worried, he climbs back out into the hall. "Crawlway goes far, very twisty and turny, then ends, dead end. Found nothing."
There's a secret door at the very end of the crawlway!!
(by the way, it was around 200 feet total, although you got turned around enough that you're not sure what direction you're facing by the end. I didn't want to give numbers to Grog.)
The door opens into a chapel approximately 70' by 70'. The door is at the very left (as you look into the room) of the far wall from the altar.
Chapel accoutrements fill this chamber, including great wooden pews on either side of a central mosaic path that leads toward an altar on the far side of the room, which is separated from the pews by a wooden railing. Scenes of everyday life are painted on the walls, but all the people are portrayed with rotting flesh, skeletal hands, and worm-ridden orifices. Yet depicted amidst these disturbing portraits are various symbols of readily recognized benevolent deities.
Behind the wooden railing is an opalescent blue altar, which is set before a tiered dais that supports a well-carved and padded wooden chair. Two large brass candelabra, each holding five white candles, stand on either side of the dais. A large white pottery urns sits in each corner, each stoppered with brass. A human skeleton wearing badly rusted and torn black chainmail lies dead in the southwestern portion of the room [fine, i guess you know that you entered from the north], one outstretched arm seeming to point into a mist-filled arch on the southern end of the west chapel wall.
The mist-filled arch looks just like the other mist-filled arches you've found, but the mist is sort of a luminescent orange rather than just grayish.
[[url]http://hamesucken.com/tomb/14.jpg[/url] is the view you would see if you walked down between the pews to the southern part of the chapel and faced west, but I'm just going to make it available now.]
Crumbly will search, in order: the dais, the chair, all four urns, and the skeleton, taking ten for 36 each time.
Also, bear in mind that as an elf, I should be getting an automatic search check for any secret doors I pass within five feet of, although oviously I can't take ten on those, and without using my searching gear I only get +16.
(Thanks for the reminder on the automatic secret door check; I had forgotten. Luckily it hasn't made a difference so far.)
Crumbly's search of the dais, chair, urns, and skeleton does not reveal anything more than the original description did. (I assume he has not tried to unstopper the urns yet.) By the way, the description of the urns was unclear; there are only two, one in each of the southwest and southeast corners.
Crumbly does notice something while examining the southeast urn; in the east wall, just south of the wooden railing separating the pews from the south side of the room, is a small slot, perhaps an inch high and a quarter inch wide, at about waist height. The letter O is faintly inscribed on the wall just above it.
I'm going to go back to the party and report on my findings so far. Then I'm going to come back and play with those urns a little -- not unstoppering them (Crumbly != fool), but tapping on them and jostling them and trying to determine if they're empty or contain liquid or if something growls inside or what.
The party is overjoyed to see Crumbly again! Some of them were getting pretty concerned!
The urns sound hollow and jostling them a little doesn't seem to cause anything to move around inside.
Is anyone following Crumbly back in?
Rosie returns with Crumbly, checks out the ceiling (using the Boots of Levitation), and otherwise makes herself available for the next battle. She is OK with the idea of sacrificing a RoP+1 to the slot, and subsequently opening the urn in question, but won't be the first to do so unless asked.
The mosaic path is similar to the one you found in the first hallway, but has no runes hidden on it. It starts in the corner of the room you entered, goes along the back of the room to the center, and then right down the aisle between the pews all the way up to the altar.
The altar is basically a big (say 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, 3 feet high) rectangular solid of some strange material, perhaps some sort of stone, glowing faintly with pale blue light from inside.
The ceiling is smooth stone (as it is elsewhere in the tomb) and slopes slightly, highest in the middle of the room and sloping slightly down to the left and right sides. Say 12 feet high at the sides and 15 feet high at its peak.
I'm waiting to hear what Ebezar is going to use the wand on.