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So, my group tried Shard of Sin in PFS and it didn’t work out that well. This is our first foray into trying an AP with PFS rules. The issue is the sanctioned part of the AP is written for a level range of 2 to 4. PFS has it at 3 to 5. My players were averaging level 4. So they just cake walked a dungeon slog leading to 8 hours of game time boredom, with no danger to them what so ever. They still have the final level to complete which toughens things up a bit. But I really feel we wasted about 8 hours of game time with Absolutely no challenges which equals no fun.

So my question is do others AP converted to PFS have the same issues? Or is it just this particular conversion.

I’m leaning to not playing the AP’s as PFS any longer, we tried it, it didn’t work out so we move on.

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There are a awful lot of Tieflings and Assimars running around these days, when you consider their strengths they seem to be the strongest races to play. Especially Assimars with the player companion that allows you different stat increases.

So I have a suggestion, grandfather these 2 races at Gencon and open 2 other races to be played. It will add variety and control the Tiefling/Assimar infestiation.

The only question is what races to replace them with? I would like to see Catfolk and Ratfolk opened up.

For those who have played a number of the Pathfinder Modules, I curious how you would rank how good them are.

I've played or DMed 7 of them and I would rank the ones I have experience with as follows:

1-Feast of Ravenmoor
2-Masks of the Living God
3-We be Goblins
4-Murders Mark
5-Midnight Mirror
6-City of Golden Death
7-Crypt of the Everflame

How would someone create a holy symbol if they don't start play with one nor do they have access to buy one. I assume that a craft skill would be needed would it also need to be infused with magic somehow?

OK, so I’ve played about 20 PFS scenarios and they are all seeming kind of the same after a bit and are getting a little boring: explore the newly found ruins, escort someone, night in the museum, go get the goblins, etc. etc. I know there are limitations to what PFS scenarios can do in a 4 hour time slot, but what scenarios stand out as being really different. Examples I can think of is the Temple of Emperial Enlightenment, the Bloodcove Disguse, and We be Golbins.

I’m curious about how does the mechanics of this sort of module work? I know there are 5+ tables running at the same time, but besides that why are there 5 tables running at the same time? Are they competing?

My larger question would be would either me or my table be at a large disadvantage if I only had a level 2 character to run? While others maybe be as high as 11.

Has anyone come up with a good map of the Ruby Fortress in New Stetven?

On one of the threads Rob McCreary mentions that if the ship life is getting a little boring for your group add some mini quests or encounters.

Here's one that I'm going to use, does anyone have something creative that others can use.

On one of the days at a point when there land is far away. (Day 6 or 7 would probably be best). The PC rigger spots a rowboat off in the distance. Sitting on it is what appears to be 2 men sitting motionless staring at each other with a small chest between them. The spotting PC can notify the officers or ignore it. If the officers are notified the Captain orders a crew to investigate. Master Scourge decides he who spotted must go investigate and tells him to pick 5 mates and go investigate using the ships rowboat.

The 2 men don’t move or respond unless attacked or their row boat is boarded. At which point they stand up and attack. If they are attacked at a range they will throw their chest overboard and swim toward the party and attack. If the party tries to recover the chest that was thrown overboard they have 2 rounds to reach where it was thrown in or it sinks to deep to recover. A swim check DC12 will be needed to dive underwater and recover it. If the swimming PC is wounded and bleeding there will be a 20% chance per round he is attacked by a shark.

Any combat on a rowboat will require each PC who is standing and attacking to make a DC 10 Acrobatics roll or fall overboard. This also applies to the undead pirates. If a wounded PC falls overboard here is a 20% per round he attracts a shark.

The 2 men are undead pirates from Isles of the shackles pg. 62

The treasure chest is filled with fake jewelry worth a total of 5 GP. If the party makes a appraise check DC 16 they will notice 1 real necklace mixed in with the fake stuff worth 50 GP. A player may make an opposed Sleight of hand vs Master Plugg and Master Scourges perception to pocket it unnoticed. If this is done out at the row boat the party will receive a +10 to their roll due to distance between the rowboat and the ship.

If the party loses the treasure they will all be punished with 3 lashes from Master Scourge. Otherwise Mister Plugg will look at all the junk in the chest scowl that it is worthless crap and throw it overboard.

Besides the obvious Kingmaker and Rise of the Runelords is there any other AP where a modified kingdom building rules would fit? My players want to modify the rules and try them again.

I'm looking to start a game up that plays on Tuesday nights 7 to 11 PM weekly. I have 2 dedicated players and would love to add a couple more. Campaign will start in late May and we will likely play at my house which is a couple blocks from BART in San Francisco. We will be playing The Slumbering Tsar AP from Frog God Games.

email me if interested royaswel at yahoo dot com

I was planning on running the Slumbering Tsar which is a 3rd party mega adventure which starts at level 7. I don’t want to start my PC’s at level 7 but would prefer to have them go through some Paizo adventures to reach that level.

My group has already played RoftR, SS, CC, KM, we are going to play CotC, and JR so all of those are out. With the exception of those what string of low level adventures would you recommend to get PC’s to level 7?

I’m curious how other DM’s handled the conquest of Pitax. My players will get to this section next week.

I’m throwing around some ideas in my head. If the players try and annex Pitax maybe some role playing with the major Pitax factions where if the players do well then no problem if they don’t then maybe a 1d4 of unrest to represent a major faction working against them.

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I'm curious what recommendations people have for expansion material for the Skulls and Shackles AP. Are there good pirate themed adventures, source books, etc.?

I'll start with a recommendation.

Buccaneers of Freeport from Green Ronin is a great source book if you want to give details to other pirate ships. It details the personality's of a pirate captain, officers and crew for 9 different ships. It give backgrounds and NPC motivations. It devotes 15 to 20 pages per ship. It gives a map of each ship in 5ft square scale. It does not give stats which makes it easily transferred into any game system.

I'm going to stat out most of the ship crews from this source book to Pathfinder and use them as additional rivals for the PC's.

Can someone point me in the direction where it says in the rules that ability focus a monster feat can be used to enhance a witches hex.

I have found some threads where some posters say it can be done, but I can't find one that has pointed to the rule in which this is allowed.

Anyone have ideas on how to make politics interesting? Things like having the various ruling positions having to make interesting decisions.

For example; I'm going to have Maegar Varn come a visit on a state visit and try to make a peace pact with the PC's. To sign the deal he will promise marriage of his eldest (and very attractive & talented) daughter to seal the marriage. But since the kingdom is currently only size 5 and with no nice places to stay he will honor the agreement 1 year hence with the promise that the PC's build an appropriate living space for a ruler. Within 1 year Vh vanishes. Not only does it give some interesting role playing opps. Once VV happens the PC's will really care about the fate of its citizens. I'm undecided if the daughter will live or not.

The Warden will have to make a decision on a crazy case in the farmlands where one family decides to trade his cow for an unwilling daughter of another family who promptly runs away. So now the daughter is gone and he wants his cow back. If the part investigates where the daughter went she turns up as a 14 year old victim to poverty and a prostitute in the town brothel.

Anyone have any interesting challenges for the politics running of the country?

Completed Carrion Crown Campaign.

Well my group has finished up and even though I had some gripes about some of the errors in the 1 & 2 module overall it went really well.

I asked my players if anything stood out as being particularly good or bad and they said they thought the whole thing was good. They thought it strung together nicely and they liked the variety from module to module.

The string together was partly me every time I could mention the Whispering Way I did, so not having a main bad guy to chase down didn’t hurt the stream of the adventures they just saw it as an organization they needed to take down.

This is the first AP we have finished. We went through the first 4 modules of RotR before the DM quit, but we were not having that good of a time as players. We went through the 3 first 3 of SS, we liked it but the campaign got put on hold due to the DM having personal problems, but we plan on getting back to it in a few months.

My group has been playing RPG’s pretty consistently since 1979. And this ranks very high on our campaign ratings. I would say the first Dragonlance will always be the best, we still tell stories from that campagn from the tail slapping alligators which pissed off one player so bad he stormed out, to the death of Flint faling out of the sky with the death of the dragon he was riding. To Sturm after dieing 6 times and his con. geing drained pretty low(in 2.0 you lost a con point permantly every time you died), deciding to be reincarnated instead and came back as a reindeer. Fun times.

We start Kingmaker tomorrow, my players are raelly looking forward to it.

I’m a very experienced DM who has questions about the kingdom building system. We are fine with the high level of accounting needed. The players interested in kingdom building will show up earlier and we will do the kingdom building phases and then later in the session play the role playing section. My players like all the rules laid out in front of them up front, any changes mid stream really pisses them off, so I’m trying to set the house rules up front.

From what I read on these forums there are a few issues revolving around the kingdom building system. There are mentions the magic item/economy system being broken. but I’m not sure exactly what is broken. I have heard also that after a certain point all the kingdom rolls are pretty much automatic.

For issue one I’m not sure I completely understand the issue but from what I gather it involves players pulling out BP converting them to GP and having huge magic item buying power. Is that correct? Would just banning this conversion fix this problem, or maybe upping the penalty from 1 to 5 per BP conversion work?

In regards that automatic rolls with larger kingdoms; would increasing the DC roll based on kingdom size to make the rolls progressively harder as the kingdom grows mediate the problem. Maybe saying the DC increase on all rolls +1 per 5 kingdom size, representing that larger kingdoms are harder to manage.

Would these works?

Are there any other kingdom glitches that need to be addressed?

Thanks,

My party does not have a sense of urgency, they just stop and craft items while at the same time they are supposed to be on a clock to stop the WW. How would you propose changing the last 2 adventures (Ashes at Dawn & Shadows of Gallowspire) to make it more difficult due to the party ignoring the clock and taking their time.

I want to do something, I believe the party's decision should result in a tangible reaction. So, OK, they can stop and craft but the adventure then becomes more difficult as a result.

I don't get the AP plot line after Adventure #4, am I missing something? The Whispering Way is collecting items to create the Carrion Crown. One of these items is the Raven Head. The party finds the Raven Head at the end of Wake the Watcher, and yet the WW still can make the Carrion Crown without it. Ice Titan in another thread suggests the WW finds a replacement item, OK I guess that can work but its a bit flimsy.

I just can't help but thinking that I'm missing something. Really? the way this is written all these items are important to the plot of the AP, the party gets one of these items and in the end it doesn't really matter the WW just keeps going without a hiccup.

I’m wondering how other DM’s would think is a fair and semi-realistic way for a party to recover a body that fell into the river from Schloss Caromark. My group will be playing this tomorrow and since they do not have a rogue or a way to fly or levitate I’m pretty sure a few will fall off the bridge and die from the fall and get swept down stream.

I have no idea how this would be in real life or how long it would take to do a search and rescue. I’m thinking I will roll a 1-50 roll (d100/2). 1-30 represents how many miles down stream the body went. 31-40 the body was found in Lepidstadt floating down the river. 41-50 the body is lodged under water with no chance of recovery. Each day the body lies there, there is a 20% change some critters find it and eat it. The party can go ½ movement rate and search if they make a Survival 20 roll, otherwise they go ¼ movement and search. When they get to the area where I determined the body to be they have a perception 20 roll to spot it. If the body was recovered it Lepidstadt all items carried are missing. If down stream somewhere a 5% chance per day someone comes across the body and takes all the items.

Does this sound fair and semi-realistic?