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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber. Organized Play Member. 5 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 2 Organized Play characters.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Keep up the great work. I’m proud of you all.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Still trying to get my friends to do a Playtest, so can’t say I have anywhere near the experience the rest of you have had, but did want to chime in on this as resonance has been bugging me a bit since I first heard about (sometime during the GCP Playtest).

As it was described at the time, most of the time resonance won’t affect you. But then why have a new complicated system that won’t have much effect? I understand the issue they’re trying to address - at least I understood it as being directed at abusive / excessive magic item usage, we can break the game difficulty. But I think the OP’s post is spot on - I would rather just have a limit on the number of magic items / potions you can use in a day, rather than a chance-based system.

Question is how easily it can get unwound, considering that a lot of classes are probably balanced by the resonance rules (eg Alchemists et al with more resonance than other classes), and some classes (again, eg, Alchemists), that rely heavily on resonance.

On that, my limited experience with resonance so far is just trying to prepare an alchemist. Resonance and batch prep of alchemicals and then you need resonance to use them too... it just kind of did my head in, and I’m sure I don’t understand the rules yet - which seems like it’s just a bit too hard.

I wonder if one of the things I’m finding makes it hard to understand is that it’s not entirely clear what Resonance is intended to reflect? Other than it’s “You’re innate ability to use magic items”. Why is it innate? Why can’t it be learned (or maybe it can, cause Alchemists get it that way?). It’s almost like they’ve added The Force to the game, but haven’t explained what The Force is or how it works. We need old Ben Kenobi (or at least his equivalent in Golarion) to explain resonance and why people have it in different measures. Without something to grasp on to it makes it harder to accept the mechanism it’s reflecting, and this makes understanding the rules and how they work harder, and also undermines “believability” (yeah, I know it’s a fantasy setting, but there are internal rules to comply with as well).


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Would be interesting to hear how this went. I was thinking it might take too much control of the PCs backgrounds to make it happen for them, though could work with entirely different characters.

Another thought would be do run this idea as a “flash-back” of sorts, with the player’s bringing different characters of 10th level or so (or whatever their current level is for their “main” characters). It mixes things up for a nice break from the main story line, and it could be used to emphasise just how dangerous and deadly Azaersi is right when they’re turning the minds to her. Early in the game, the PCs are trying too hard just to survive, and it’s not really until part 3 (or was it 4?) when they can actually take the fight to Azaersi. By “losing” in this side game (could be a fun TPK!), they now have a reason for revenge - and fear. They could even fight and lose to one of the villains who appears later in the adventure.


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Grumpus wrote:


They have ALOT of refugees, since they got the half-elves to stay with them, and also the 2 aristocrats from the upstairs of the inn too. And have not lost any of them along the way.

I am considering adding a hobgoblin on the bridge to basically pepper the refugees with ranged attacks to thin those numbers a bit. Possibly The channeling oracle may be able to save them all anyways.

...I am surprised on how few posts there are in this thread, been a couple months with no one posting.

I’m planning to start this later in the year, and have been trying to think through similar potential issues. Is the number of survivors a big problem, considering that it’ll mean more mouths to feed? If you’re concerned about it, maybe bring the bad water encounter forward when you get to the next part, and have it affect more of the NPCs.

I’m surprised too about how few posts there are.

What are people’s experiences with starting the first encounter in the Inn?

I’m prepping up my approach to Part 1 now. Hoping the PCs end up at the Inn at the end of the day, and we start there. A couple of questions: the setup suggests there’s a dozen or so NPCs in the room with you and Aubrin at the time, and while it’s not clear to me from the adventure, in the Inn alone you’re going to add another 5 from Jet and a few others hiding in the basement, plus (potentially) two from upstairs. So that’s 17+ people from there alone. As I understand it, only the CR 1 encounter is replaced - so that means some hobgoblin is simultaneously coming in and starting to loot the pantry (and my assumption is that Jet and the others hiding in the basement ran down there from the pantry and/or upstairs right away).

My initial thoughts were to start with a session 0, allowing PCs to explore the town, buy some goods (I’ll encourage them to ‘save’ money from character creation by offering goods at a discount during the day), then move to an introduction of the PCs to Aubrin and Jet (and possibly other key NPCs) at the Inn. Oreld and others might then wander home after some stories. Then the door bursts open, and the Ironfang Scout (Smefet?) from area C fires her crossbow into Aubrin (we’ll call it a crit, rather than worry about a ballista bolt from somewhere random). She’ll walk off with instructions to the 2 hobgoblins “Take them all prisoner. If any resist, kill them,” then walk away (to be encountered (hopefully) later). End Session 0 (start first session with rolling initiative).


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I agree - pretty important! I'm prepping a number of characters already, and it's a bit of a chore to do it all by hand. We'll have the hard copy from the Core Rulebook soon enough, but I'd want to cut it out and take it in to work to photocopy it, and I'd rather not.