NEW ARTICLE - Thoughts on Chapter 25: Who Holds a Grudge For 20,000 Years?

https://www.worldanvil.com/w/castrovel-28from-paizo-s-pathfinder-setting29-verrix/a/thoughts-on-part-62C-chapter-25---who-holds-a-grudge-for-202C000-years3F-article

#pathfinder #pathfinder2 #lashunta #castrovel #rpg #ttrpg #worldbuilding #worldanvil

Pathfinder 2e "Holiday Haul" Bundle on Humble Bundle

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-holiday-haul-bundle-paizo-books

Includes the (relatively recent) Rage of Elements book, which is the first book to use PF2e Remastered rules (and coincidentially also the last OGL book lol). Also various Lost Omens books (including the Pathfinder Society Guide which I haven't gotten before) and various Adventure Paths and PFS Scenarios and some other stuff. And as always it contains some core books and the (remastered) Beginner Box to get anyone started playing.

#Pathfinder2e #Pathfinder2 #Pathfinder #Paizo #HumbleBundle #GameDeals

We played our Pathfinder game yesterday and it was ROUGH.

We were still in the tower, working our way up to the top (where, presumably, we will again encounter the dragon that wreaked havoc on us a couple of sessions ago).

To tell this session's encounter properly, I have to back WAY up in the timeline.

We had learned, ages ago, about a demonic hydra called Slithermaw. There had been a legendary fight between an elven warrior and this monstrous villain. The elf was victorious, but before Slithermaw died, it bit through the elf's armor and the poison killed the elf.

This is important because there was some kind of lasting effect on the armor itself. The armor was recovered and passed down through generations. It was given the name Slithermaw's Bane.

We found that armor as some point (maybe the elves gave it to us?), and I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THIS but it was apparently the armor my character was wearing.

Truly, I do not have this written down on my sheet - did I miss it? Did the other player (the one who remembers this) make a mistake and they just thought I had it?

I will probably go through my old sheets and see if I can find it.

Anyway, I was apparently wearing Slithermaw's Bane, and that's why we won one of our fights tonight.

The first encounter we came to was behind a locked door. Upon listening through the door, we could hear what sounded like someone scribing with quills. We guessed from previous findings that we were going to encounter porcupine-like creatures in there. We hadn't fought any yet, but we had found evidence of them in previous rooms. The Wizard recognized the quills as having come from a Pukwudgie.

My character kicked in the door and jumped into what turned out to be a TINY room, and she whiffed mightily when attempting to hit the nearest bad guy.

Then the rest of the party squeezed in and we found out that you have to be REALLY CAREFUL when attacking Pukwudgies, because you'll get poked by their quills unless you make a really high save.

That probably should have been obvious.

The Champion kept hitting, then failing the save, and I think that's the most damage the Champion has taken in a while - usually she's really good at dealing damage and avoiding hits, but this fight really messed her up.

And there were only two of these guys. We took one down pretty quickly but the second one was made of sterner stuff and we had to really wear him down.

Once we cleared that room and healed up, we headed up to the next level and oof.

There was a ball of snakes on the floor. Only it wasn't snakes. The heads all untangled themselves and rose up and it was an UNDEAD demonic hydra. Yes, we had found Slithermaw. And he saw the armor I was wearing and zeroed right in on me.

Seriously, he was so gross that just him unfolding himself meant we had to make a save or be sickened. Ick.

And this was already going to be a tough fight, because this guy had 12 heads. Also, he had Reactive Strike for every head. So each round, if we did anything to provoke (like move too far, or cast a spell), that was a chomp.

There was a lot of chomping. His strikes weren't that good, and he didn't have reach (he was only large, rather than huge like hydras normally are), but when he did connect it was pretty effective.

And then he chomped me, and he GRABBED me. Suddenly I could not cast spells - all I could do was attempt (ineffectually) to escape.

That's when the player who had remembered I was wearing the special armor piped up and said, "Hey, that armor you're wearing has a special property that will probably only matter for this fight."

Apparently due to me getting grabbed, the armor started oozing poison, and it was the only poison this monster was vulnerable to. AND it caused persistent poison damage, so he started taking 7 d6 of persistent damage every round.

The way it worked was that he could not roll to stop the persistent damage as long as I was in his mouth. And this guy wasn't smart, so he didn't think of dropping me right away.

So I'm getting crushed (I think I was down to 58 hit points when normally I'm over 200), the Fighter had taken too many hits and was feeling woozy, the Wizard was just trying not to get hit (because it would probably be fatal for him), and the Champion is doing her best but this thing is tough.

And I'm just weakly struggling to no avail, and rolling damage every round.

Finally the monster chooses to do something else and runs out of actions - he didn't sustain his hold on me so I drop to the floor. The Wizard made a knowledge check and figured out that Breath of Life does something really bad to this monster, so I tried to cast that.

That danged hydra critically saved against my spell. Poof. Nothing happened.

I tried a 3-action heal and that helped us, but he saved against that too so it didn't do any damage to him.

I had started to head for the stairs because I really needed to heal up - I'm the main healer and I need to stay conscious.

Finally the Champion got a really good hit and the thing went down. We all breathed a sigh of relief and did our normal post-fight stuff - the Wizard started searching the room while the rest of us huddled up to do healing.

So there we are. In the center of the room. Next to the heap of undead demonic hydra heads. And it wakes up.

We learned later that Slithermaw, in this incarnation, was the product of a failed resurrection spell. I guess if you critically fail the resurrection attempt, the thing comes back wrong.

This is why it was undead, and I think also why it had special "rules" on what it would take to permanently destroy it.

So it recovered. And we found that it had recovered a LOT - it took a lot more hits to knock it down again. The final thing that got him this time around was the acid damage from my armor - it still persisted, so I was instructed to continue rolling it every round. And since THAT was the roll that took him out this time, he stayed down.

The Fighter didn't trust it, though, and she spent a good amount of time just smashing what was left to smithereens. I had to wait to heal everyone because she wouldn't stand still. Not that I blamed her.

We learned later that the final "hit" needed to be Slithermaw's Bane or fire.

With Slithermaw finally defeated (again), we decided to fall back to a more secure room that was a little more spacious, and we popped up our magical yurt so we could rest and recover. We set watches and had an uneventful night.

Now we get to level up and I guess we'll see if we find the dragon next week. I really don't feel like going up ONE level is going to make the difference with that dragon, but I guess we'll see.

#Pathfinder2 #ttrpg