So we've just had our second session of E4aE. Everything's pretty much going by the book. The party are all spread out a couple of hours after dinner. The bright wizard went to check out the library to find the librarian seemingly reading his book. I was thinking he was getting ready for the ritual and managed to look innocent as the wiz arrives, but that doesn't have to be the case. The librarian manages to blow the wiz off with an excuse about it being late and says he has to leave soon, and invites him back the next morning. The wiz thinks this is a bit dodgy (with all the rest of the strange that has been going on) and he hides outside the library to wait for the librarian to leave. He hears something like a door and waits a few more minutes before deicding there must be some secret way out of the library, so he goes back in and checks the place out.

It's getting late and the wiz only has 4 wounds, and it's a bit tense coz they know something very spooky is happening, and the earlier sighting of the painting has put the PCs all ill at ease. I ask the player to describe what he's doing, and he doesn't mention the floor, his desc is all about shelves and walls. I give him a Hard (3d) observation check to find the trap door. He rolls Boon Boon Boon Boon Success Success Success Chaos Star Chaos Star Chaos Star.

I'm trying to think what to say, but I can't think of anything good, so we just end the session (it was time anyway). So, any ideas? There's (presumably) a cellar full of cultists and a daemonic painting directly below him. I was thinking of having him just fall through the floor, but that's a bit mad, and will probably kill the wiz in any case. I'm also thinking about giving out some miscasts coz of the proximity to the Chaos artefact, but as he wasn't using any magic at the time, it doesn't sound very good. I could just read the dice conventionally and come up with a couple of boon effects, but I'd really prefer to use the 3 CSs in a creative way, and then mitigate whatever danger might occur with success and boon effects.

Any ideas?

He finds the hidden door when he accidentally topples a bookshelf that falls on and through it?

This would let him find the thing he was looking for, but also alert the cultists, and give him a headstart on getting to safety and getting the word out.

I know its really boring, but if I remember the rules right, if there isn't any specific effect for a chaos star it just becomes a bane. That would mean that, on that dice throw, he would have ended up with 3 successes and 1 boon, a good result. The wiz should think himself lucky he wasn't using magic!

ragnar63 said:

Yep, it is a bit boring, plus we play that a CS can become a bane or a challenge (to mirror the Comet), so I'd be obliged to make it a 4 boon result, which is even more boring.

Plus, 3 Chaos Stars!!! a few yards from a daemonic painting within hours of its apotheosis. It must be something.

monkeylite said:

I would convert 2 Chaos Stars to boons to cancel two of them (leaving 2, good for universal stress recovery if nothing else), and 3 succcesses which is the typical "improved success" amount, let him find the trap door and get some sense of what's beyond it "a mental image perhaps" courtesy of chaos magic but then have the remaining Chaos Stars translate into something like a terror test with as many difficulty dice as stars (2) from the image. The image conveys some useful info so it's a twisted form of superior success.

It's a bit tricky and GM shouldn't be "killer" but all "non-card" checks should be open to having improvised "Chaos Star" matters, particularly when the dice are screaming for it.

Rob

I think what might be nice is to have aquirk of the gathering energies syphon off some of the wizard's energy. He feels this process and can tell that the winds of magic turn gale-force for a moment - in the direction of the trapdoor.

This should alert him to the passage - but what effects might it have?

The cultist's might be alerted, but I think a nice additional effect might be for it to 'power up' the daemon, so to speak - giving it an extra point of defence or something.

Another effect might be that the wizard finds it harder to cast magic until the daemon is slain - adding a misfortune dice to future channelling rolls.

Dave Allen said:

Yep, all those sound great, I'll drain him to 0 power (which makes complete sense in the circumstances) and he can have a brief dialogue with the daemon as it happens, as the daemon gloats over his inevitable triumph (and he can clear up a few plot points, Gideon style, too). That should all work nicely. And it should have the added bonus of making the wiz go and gets his mates, coz I was a bit concerned about what might happen to him if he went down there alone.

valvorik said:

Yeah, I agree with that.