Douglas Pirko's page

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As a GM of Kingmaker, where have you "gone out of the box" and made significant changes to the AP? And if you have, or haven't, why?

0. I did "Russian-ify" and "German-ify" a lot of names, to go with a narrower cultural theme for Rostland and Issia.

1. Jhod Kavkin, Priest of Abadar.
One of my PCs was a priestess of Erastil, and she had prophetic dreams of the Temple of the Elk as one of her reasons for heading into the Stolen Lands. Making "Father Kavkin" an Abadaran let me add one more of Brevoy's main religions to the area.

2. Kesta Garess, female.
With two of my five PCs being females, first, I wanted a strong military female character in the setting, as there will be lots of strong male characters. Secondly, it tied into Sir Falgrim Sneeg in a different way, that made him seem more redeemable. (See below). And since Gorum is still popular in Northern Brevoy, I made her and her war band Gorumites (including a character with one level of Cleric).

3. Akiros Ismort is Sir Falgrim Sneeg
Changing the Garess/Sneeg story to a love story gone wrong, and an arranged marriage escaped, even though it meant Sneeg was expelled from his position, and excommunicated. Not that Sneeg was without fault -- well, for simplicity's sake, let's just say his motives may not have been Paladin-pure, mixed with a bit of "Lancelot goes mad for a couple years and wanders the Wilderness" vibe.
Unfortunately, any attempt to "resolve" this story-line ended badly when an Alchemical bomb rendered him unconscious and on fire in the battle in the Stag Lord's fort. By the time the battle was over, there really wasn't much left of Sir Falgrim Sneeg. They still have his enchanted sword, Akiros, though. (And another "normal" bandit took over the spot Falgrim had in the rank and file).

4. In RRR I've used most of DM aka Dudemeister's Changes to Hargulka's Kingdom. with great results.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms all welcome.


With an important RP scene looming tomorrow, the burial of a young cavalier who served Abadar, I'm looking for a couple key (ha) phrases for the Abadaran priest. I don't need the entire ceremony, I'm just looking for some flavour.

Burial seems like an appropriate funeral for servants of the Master of the First Vault. A mausoleum would be more appropriate, but out on the borderlands of Brevoy there don't seem to be a lot of those about.

Some ideas so far...

"We lock him away in the earth, Great Lord, so that you may open the doors of the Great vault to your follower, that he may continue to aid your work in the afterlife as he did while among us."

"Master of the Vault, we pray that you weigh your servant's deeds, and find him worth to include in your treasures."

Sort of running into a wall at this point.

Thoughts?


Yesterday my group assaulted the lair of the Stag Lord.

I used a different castle lay-out, more Skyrim castle-ruin like. It stretched the encounter out a bit --- from front to back it was a 24 round combat. By the end the Alchemist was out of bombs, the Cleric out of Channel Energy, and the Mage had exhausted a wand of Burning Hands and was beating on Giant ants with his staff. But Aid potions and Str Buffs carried the day.

Spoiler:
But that's where the problem starts. Versus the Stag Lord and Nugrah the party were doing okay -- and in both cases when they were down to single digit hit points the Cleric managed Ranged Touch attacks with her two memorized Admonishing Rays! They have captured the Stag Lord and Nugrah alive! Nettles' Ghost? He's going to have to deal with a party that wants to cart the Stag Lord back to Restov to face trial!

I admit to being in a bit of a pickle. I mean it's not terrible, but the expectation is that they fight to their death. Thoughts?


I guess one of the advantages in running something a year or two late is a lot of people have gone before me, and by reading a lot of critiques and Actual Plays a wealth of ideas are presented for me to use.

So -- I've done some work foreshadowing of the The Big Bad of Chapter 6 in Chapter 1 -- little things, but the group is drawing some interesting conclusions.

They have already been critical of the less significant "minor quests" in Stolen Land. There are a number of minor quests in RRR that the group is probably going to have very little interest in. And many of the minor quests point the players' characters at locations -- and plain old rumours will do the job well enough.

My question is this: What Pathfinder Modules could be adapted to "flesh out" RRR?

Realm of the Fellnight Queen seems a little to closely paralleling the action in later chapters.

Revenge of the Kobold King might be a good fit -- since the PCs did cause a certain powerful kobold to pass away. [a]And[/a] the players are convinced a powerful necromancer is at work in the region after they found a dead unicorn.

And someone else posted on how they had used Carnival of Tears -- and I think a "Feast of Fools" over the Winter Solstice would work wonders and come in right about the six or seventh month of Kingdom building.

Any other recommendations? Or Organized Play modules that might be suitable?

More info on our game can be found here.