Incidentally the Valsharess is a ludicrously easy boss. She begins with a boatload of magical buffs on, but if you can dispel them or find a way to circumvent them she drops like a mook. She's significantly weaker than the sub-bosses you fought to get this far - Sabal, the Maker, the Dracolich, the Eye Tyrant... all of them put the Valsharess to shame.

There's actually a humorous conversation path you can follow at the end of chapter 2. If you betray the Seer, you can warn the Valsharess that Mephistopheles is going to betray her. She doesn't believe you, then moments later Mephistopheles betrays her, and her response is to... attack you for trying to warn her about it? The writers didn't even bother to come up with an excuse for that one. I quite liked the minor villains in chapter 1 and 2 of SoU. Tymofarrar the White Dragon and Kel-Garas the Mummy were quite well-done.

I never actually played that one either. Hmm... sounds like fun. Masochistic fun, but still.

Oops, well that explains where the confusion came from. Thanks for clearing that one up.


She had buffs? Lol, I never actually noticed. When it came to fight her, I used a chargeof divine might and charged her. Whacked her a few times, her health went to badly wounded, she teleports away, fires off a healing spell, I close in and wham, no more Valsharess. I never took note of any enemies using any buffs getting used because my 4 ftr / 6 COT / X pally was steamrolling everything, even from the beginning of HOTU.

Why doesn't that surprise me? From the cut scenes, Valsharess killed subordinates or at the least, threatened to kill them anytime she felt like throwing a temper tantrum. Once again, Bioware stands firm that evil = stupid so maybe they thought any idiocy evil characters commit doesn't need good writing because "that's what evil is". Definately hoping to play some user made modules that get away from that crap. Jason_the_Iguana shares my feelings on the occial campaigns, just hoping I share them with user made content. He mentioned quite a few promising modules in his post but, maaaaaan, where does one start?

I liked Tymofarrar too, I never fought him though cos I thought he was kinda spiffy. Kel-Garas certainly wasn't bad either, I did like that dungeon though even though I was on the verge of raging trying to get the Holy Avenger. That guy was tough.

I've never played it myself, but I have a copy of the original module that came as an extra for the sequel module. Having read the thing, I can attest that the Tomb of Horrors isn't just a name to keep the neighbors away :)

You know, if we got a willing DM we could actually try to do a normal PnP run-through over Skype or something, or use the module within the game if you can disable all traps and have just the DM roll to simulate everything in order to be able to use creative solutions to get through the game, including adjusting the characters' HP.

Actually it's not canon. If you read A Grand History of the Forgotten Realms by Brian James, that is where the Sarrukh were introduced in the 'Ancient History' section. In his own words (in that book) he says:

"Is this canon?
The short answer is no. Unlike the rest of the grand history which
is 100% canon, the Ancient History chapter was made up by
yours truly as one possible history of ancient Faerûn. Many of the
details were inspired by actual canon realmslore spinkled
throughout a handful of sourcebooks."

Odd. Normally the forgotten realms wiki labels anything that's noncanon. Well, nice to know it isn't, so thanks for the information! They are more "official" than they would have been had they just been made up by Bioware, though, which is worth remembering.

Here's a very brief list of some of the custom content modules that stood out to me. None of the links work at the moment since I haven't updated it for the new vault but you should hopefully be able to find them.

I could get behind DMing the Tomb over the net at some point after a few weeks. Skype would be easy, but if visuals are important, I'd need to read up on how to DM in NWN or Roll20/something comparable, which shouldn't take too long.

You can pretty much do all of that in the DM client if you install the DMFI tools. Adding and removing traps is pretty easy. Rolling skills, stats, saves or whatever can be done easily with those tools. Adjusting HP is a bit fiddly, but there are tools for that too.

When I DMed things in NWN I got pretty good at adjusting monster stats on the fly to make sure players were challenged but things stayed just short of TPKs. (Unless they were asking for it.) Of course, it's rather more hectic in a real-time game than it is in P&P, so there were some spectacular failures on my part too. Y'know, the party getting killed in two rounds flat because I underestimated the power of some effect, or the final boss proving a pushover... the works.

Her buffs are just applied automatically at the start of the fight, she doesn't actually need to cast them. In any case, an optimized character at this point in his career is going to just steamroll everything in his path. My Sorcerer stopped time, flung off a disjunction followed by a few maximized IGMS, and then watched the Valsharess die. My fighter/rogue pulled out a scroll of disjunction, then proceeded to get a couple of consecutive critical hits and brought her down. She could at least put up a sporting fight, but she's just that weak...

Tymofarrar is probably the best villain in the NWN campaigns. Certainly evil, but in a reasonable and affable way, more happy to live as a god-king amongst kobolds in the distant mountains than try to raise a ruckus. And if you threaten him with the phylactery of ice? He actually backs down rather than pick a fight he might not win. Intelligence and sensibility that's sorely missing in other NWN villains.

Hard enough in pen and paper as it is, where a little luck on the first round (win initiative, get a lucky roll on your first spell/attack/ability) can really turn the tables of a battle.

I'd still consider the Sarrukh themselves canon. They were first mentioned under the term 'saurians' as one of the Creator Races in the 3.0 FRCS, and then fully named and defined in the FR-supplement Serpent Kingdoms (which was released three years before A Grand History of the Forgotten Realms).

That would be awesome! I myself don't mind if we don't have the visuals, especially if you'd be willing to do the original 1e version - which one do you prefer?

And you or someone else has the time we could even try to have an adventure or two with another module(s) before tackling the ToH to make sure our group works well together, as I expect surviving ToH will be all about the team effort. :)

You're welcome to come along. ;)

Groovy :) I own a copy of the original AD&D module that came boxed with the sequel (which I have yet to examine), so I could run off of that. No real preference about visuals, but as a practical matter working with visuals will take some prep time. Either way, I won't be available to do so until after the end of July.

A couple of thoughts, though. Firstly, having read the module... well, let me put it this way: either the party needs to be prepared to not finish the module or we can allow for more than one character per person so that the party will be able to have higher odds of completing it (i.e. have a limited/limitless number of lives for each character; requiring a complete reroll every time could get to be a little silly and time consuming). Secondly, the original module is tailored to the older AD&D rules with regards to things like certain spells and saves; depending on the party's preferences, I can either attempt to convert the system-specific notations to the closest 3.5 equivalent or provide a legal link to free AD&D material.