Fletch's page

I am planning on running this

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786939389
red hand of doom. It is a perfect fit for level etc and there is a decent conversion somewhere on this site as it is 3.5 and it looks like an awesome adventure. In fact I can't wait to start and only just about to start golden death.

I dunno. RHoD *is* a great adventure, but isn't it level 5-10? I understand 'Golden Death' leaves the PCs at level 7...

I've been thinking of 'Felnight Queen' as an easy followup to 'Golden Death'. Just assume the town it takes place in is Kassan and see if you can't introduce some of the NPCs during the earlier adventures.

What I hadn't considered, though, was 'Bloodsworn Vale,' though. That *does* seem like a pretty good follow-up and could easily be run as opening the pass from the east rather than the west.

we hated all the npcs, and really werent interested in working with any faction.....but chose one to make the modules work

*Is* a faction required to make this AP work?

I haven't read past 'Race to Ruin,' but the whole faction set-up seems kind of unlikely for me and mine. I suspicion that my players will be making some effort to keep their discovery secret and any heavy-handed "oh they found out anyway" will make them pretty resentful. Even if I did manage to leak the info and start the race, I can't see any good argument as to why the PCs need a large group to go do something small adventuring parties have been doing alone for 30 years.

Spoil me. What happens later in the series that requires (or benefits from) the PCs having the support of a large organization?

My assumption is that my players will take the information they learned on the Shiv and just march their way through the jungle to find the city. Aside from the sabotage-related encounters in the two towns, my memory's failing on any conflict that comes from actually "racing" any other factions to the lost city.

I'm kind of enchanted with the idea of horses (and pets, I guess) earning experience points. Take your warhorse into enough battles, eventually he becomes a level 2 warrior warhorse. Leave Wildfire grazing in the field while you go slay drow in the deep-below and no advancement for him.

I haven't found anything yet that gives an intelligence requirement for earning XP.

The biggest flaw in this plan, though, is how do they find a replacement horse without getting saddled* with a brand new 0-level pony.

* See what I did there?

I know one of the intents behind Pathfinder was to be backward compatible with 3.5 stuff, does that hold true?

I'm rarin' to run Age of Worms for my local Pathfinder-lovin' gaming group, but don't feel like converting 20 levels of adventures to official PF status.

Aside from calculating the occasional CMD when needed, is there anything inherently disruptive about having PF characters fighting 3.5 monsters?

I could probably be convinced to convert those monsters with class levels to PF classes, but I'd just as soon rather leave as is and go with the given feat selections/spell lists/etc. from the previous edition.

Any thoughts?

If you want to make the horse(s) tougher, you could give them npc levels.

::blink blink::

I was honestly just thinking of ways to alleviate Greycloak's horse issues in my own gaming, but letting the mounts gain NPC levels never occurred to me.

I'll have to ponder this level of genius a bit more.

Whats Shattered Star?

Hope I got the name right. It's the AP after Skull & Shackles. Sounds like a big treasure-hunt AP, which I've been hoping for for some time now.

After a trio of APs of no interest to me, I've become really excited again with both the upcoming Skull & Shackles *and* Shattered Star. Toss in the updated Rise of the Runelords, and I think I'm going to hit a serious gaming budget crunch around early summer.

Realm of the Felnight Queen is set somewhere around that area and it wouldn't be too hard to put it in Falcon's Hollow rather than in whatever town it's officially in.

At 7th level, I believe it fits exactly after Hungry Are the Dead.

I'm not so much looking for a wrap up of 4th edition as I am hoping they fill in the blanks still left before they stop producing stuff for the system.

Game mechanics-wise, I'm still hoping for mass combat and kingdom building rules, plus I wouldn't mind some attention payed to epic play.

Also, as a huge fan of the Essentials classes, I'm hoping they finish out the sub-themes such as the remaining domains for the warpriest, seasonal builds for the sentinel druid, more virtues for the cavalier, schools for the mage and even some different weapon focuses for the knight and slayer.

I like to think of all outsiders as just being able to commit more to a pursuit than mortals can. Kind of like how an outsider will detect as its alignment while most mortals don't.

At some point, the outsiders get powerful enough to bestow power on other people who are committed to promoting their "object of dedication."

Fer instance, Abadar cares more about hoarding things than any mortal creature could even imagine caring about it. Anybody on Golarion with sufficient dedication to the act of hoarding things can get Abadar's attention and a little power boost to help them achieve their comparatively feeble efforts to hoard wealth.

Per this premise, the major gods of Golarion are just the ones with sufficient power to make a difference and a common enough goal to interest followers. The Mighty Shagron, Lord of Nice Carpeting, for example, doesn't get too many mortals willing to dedicate their lives to laying down nice piles.

What interests me the most here is a 4e version of kingdom building and armies.

Any thoughts on how those would be adapted to 4th?

There's absolutely room for an AP that includes different adventure types like Savage Tide,

In that case, that's my vote. The most frustrating part about all your APs is that you either build a kingdom OR become a pirate OR engage in urban intrigue OR discover lost cities. I want it all, and I want it in one campaign.

Where it's placed is irrelephant.

James, is there a company policy on how closely you stick to a theme for an individual AP?

I mean, I sat out Carrion Crown because I'm not interested in horror adventure enough to sit through a whole campaign on it. Conversely, Savage Tide remains my favorite AP because it had such a wide variety of adventure types (including dungeon crawling, city building, sea voyaging, wilderness exploration, etc.)

Is there room for a Pathfinder AP to include different adventure types like this, or is there a preference to sticking to a narrow premise for each path?

From what I read on people's reactions to Numeria, it seems like they envision it as a place where there are high rise buildings, teleporters, hovercraft and ever-present Gestapo-like robots with laser canons.

My preferred view of Numina is a Thundar-inspired land of sorcerer-like tyrants using the little-understood technology of the metal mountain to lord over the fearful-yet-rebellious Kallid barbarians.

Unfortunately, illustrations showing giant robot scorpions and talk of police robots/gearsmen make me think it's a bit more sci-fi for sci-fi sake rather than sci-fi seen through the eyes of fantasy.

I really want some Numina adventures because I don't care much for the place and want to see something Paizo-tastic done with it to show me what I'm missing.

My big fear, though, is that it might confirm why I don't like it. Clearly that's the gamble James and crew aren't willing to take.

This isn't from experience, but my future-running of CotC will include changes and additions to get the PCs more connected to the city of Korvosa before things start to turn sour.

SPOILERS FOLLOW (of course).

SERIOUSLY...SPOILERS.

I'd delay the King's death for a couple adventures, so I'd delay the anarchy parts of 'Edge of Anarchy' and replace them with the Golden Goblin scenes from Second Darkness' 'Shadow in the Sky.' Not only does this give the PCs a chance to live in the city under the king, but the inheritance of the Goblin would give them a connection to the city and a reason to care about its wellfare.

My second major addition is to add 'Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale' to the AP after 'Seven Days to the Grave.' Mostly because the adventure's awesome, but mostly because I want to see my players' faces when they succeed at their mission, return to the city to receive their promised grant of nobility, and discover the city in chaos after the death of the guy who was going to knight the lot of them. Heheh.

There are some other minor changes to help this make sense. I kind of want to use the king's brother Venster as the scapegoat for his murder rather than the painter, and I'm pretty sure I'd want the final showdown to be at Castle Korvosa rather than outside the city.

however, the array was seldom even balanced by xp...the NPC's in the Bloodstone Pass series were always about the same level, although the rogue should have been waaaaay ahead of everyone once 10th level came and went.

Y'know, it always kind of baffled me that old D&D adventures weren't advertised for a specific XP range rather than for a level range. Saying an adventure was for characters with 15,000xp rather than level 7-9 (to make up some numbers) would've let some of those classes take advantage of their faster progression.

Speaking as someone who only knows WotW from the description here on the Paizo catalog, could you run the mod and just say "demon" instead of "Elder God?"

It sounds like people have enjoyed the module on its own merits, but if you think your players will object to Cthulhu, you could just say its demons (or even daemons) and carry on.

By that time, they would be well into teleport levels so they could get partway through the dungeon, meet what's her name the helpful Giantess, learn of the attack and zap there in the middle of the giant attack, coinciding with the attacking giants opening a passageway into the Scribbler's dungeon.

Are your players the kind of people who would go back to Jorgenfist afterward? If they race away after contact with the helpful giantess, won't they potentially miss the library and all its obscure information about Thassilon? More importantly, won't they miss their very first ever mention of and encounter with Karzoug which starts them on the path to Xin-Shalast?

My plan had been to let the victorious PCs discover maps in the library with a big, red X over Sandpoint. That way they won't be motivated to return to Sandpoint until *after* they've killed Mokmurian, "met" Karzoug, and at least learned that an ancient library is available to them below J-fist.

My main problem is one that is common for DMs whose parties decided to keep the Keep. Sandpoint is a really long way away from where they want to be and their investment in that town has dropped very quickly, despite starting with strong ties there.

One possibility is to flip the Stone Giant book and do the two parts in reverse order. Your group is in the perfect spot to investigate Jorgenfist either as a follow-up to the stone giant they battled at Hook Mountain or as a report from a loyal scout concerning stone giants massing to the north.

Your PCs investigate, kill some stuff, and in their exploration of the library discover the clues that suggests an army has gone off to sack Sandpoint to look at the Old Lighthouse. Then the race is on to get there in time to save the town.

Lady's choice if you want to run that as written (boosted for your PCs levels, of course) or convert it into a mass combat where the PCs rally their old friends to battle.

I've long wanted to combine several APs into a series of epic quests for the same party of characters, but am faced with the obvious difficulty of how to challenge PCs with something as simple as a shipwreck after they've become powerful enough to defeat a Runelord.

Is E6 the answer? On the surface it looks like it allows the PCs to become more skilled without gaining access to too-powerful magics or abilities. If that's the case, I can imagine scaling up the challenges on Smuggler's Shiv without having to worry too much about PCs having easy access to teleport spells which would negate the hazards entirely.

Is this feasible? I'm not opposed to having to put a lot of work into this. I'm not planning on converting every encounter of every book, only the real set-piece encounters or those which really add to the AP's story.

What I'm really looking for is if the E6 model, combined with Pathfinder's monster scaling rules, allows for a 15th level adventure to be pared down to challenge 6th level characters even if they have a bunch of feats and skills.

What's more, am I underestimating the power of an experienced E6 character and would they really not be challenged by a 1st level encounter even if the monsters and traps were bumped up.

Is there a downloadable, html version of either (or both)?

I like the ease of use of links, but would love to be able to edit it for my own tastes and especially have it available on the off chance I find myself deployed at sea for several months with no internet access (go Navy!)

I disagree with Sunderstone above.

I LOVE my Nookcolor, but of course I am not using a stock version of the OS, but rather have my rooted with CM7 OS, and use pdfreader as my prefered reader.

I love my Nook Color too, but I'm having the same problem 'Stone has. Unless you're willing to do whatever Peddler did to yours, the NC is going to have some trouble with all the graphic elements Paizo piles on their pages.

For the most part, I love the way they make the artwork "selectable" so it can be removed and manipulated for handouts and such, but it confuses the heck out of my Nook. Often times the backgrounds will black out around pictures and can block a lot of text where it's text-wrapped around the image or, heaven help you, in a side bar.

It'll read single-image pdfs just fine (like all my old TSR pdfs), and I'm still looking for a way to "flatten" my Paizo books. As an added bonus, I'm sure a flattened version would turn pages quicker, too.

Thanks to the heads up, I was able to download the RT intro/quickstart rules and check it out. Rules-wise, it does seem very comprable to WHFRP. (2nd edition at least. I don't know that I was even aware of a 3rd edition)

City-sized space ships of 10,000 crewmembers seems a bit beyond the scope of what I enjoy, though. I didn't see anything that suggested I'd be arrested for fudging that at my table and declaring ships to be a lot smaller with a very reduced crew.

I'll have to take a peak at those ship creation rules and see what I can manipulate.

Step 3, then, is to invite my local Pathfinder group over some night for a Rogue Trader sampler.

For the record, I'm *very* interested in Rogue Trader.

Travelling the 40K universe on a warrant of exploration for profit is a great campaign premise and if the $60 price tag weren't so intimidating, I'd already be playing it.

Clarify one thing for me, though, RT players. I understand the assumption is that the Traders are leading a huge ship filled with dozens or hundreds of faceless crewmembers. Is this true? Since I'm more a fan of the Firefly-like small crew of wealth-seekers, would it be a challenge to just sort of ignore that part and play the game as if the PCs were the only people on the ship?

Also, as a big fan of the ol' Warhammer Fantasy RPG rules, how closely does the RT rules adhere to that?

Oh, and how are the adventures published by Fantasy Flight?

Anybody else looking forward to S&S as an opportunity for some Spelljamming or maybe even conversion to a science fiction space setting?

I'm definitely going to be looking at this with an eye to making the seas into ether, islands into asteroids, and the Eye of Abendego into a black hole.

Seems feasible from the basic description, and I've been looking for a good space fantasy AP for longer than there have been APs.

GM the First Steps intro series. Make a table of players happy, and simultaneously get to that second level risk-free. :D

::blink blink::

You get xp for DMing?

I need to read those rules a little closer.

For 3, I really like hook mountain and it will take you to the storval plains and right into History of Ashes.

We're going to have to disagree on that one. Hook Mountain is actually really low down on the list of favored AP volumes for me.

Burnt Offerings is my favorite campaign opener, so I'd very likely start with that.

Likewise, Sound of a Thousand Screams is my favorite campaign finale, so I'd definitely try to lead up to that.

In between, I'd try my best to squeeze in Children of the Void and A History of Ashes

I don't know that I have a favorite 3rd and 5th volume, though.

It wouldn't be much of a challenge to start in the coastal town of Sandpoint and lead into the opening of Void. Since we're already in Varisia, I'm sure there'll be an easy excuse to have them adventure into the Storval Plateau for Ashes, too.

The vague, nebulous areas in between would likely involve some kingdom building to set up for Thousand Screams.

Just to save you some future pain; that guy on the clockwork horse?

He's probably not legal, either.

;)

See, that's why he'd also have a level in Summoner and have a clockwork horse for an eidolon.

As far as I can tell, I can get (mostly) the same effect by making a 1st level gunslinger and then levelling as a cavalier for the rest of his life, so it's not a total write-off.

The only thing I'd really be missing out on is that I'd have to spend three adventures on foot and in light armor.

But this archetype immediately made me look at my pistolier Warhammer minis. It's a character I *need* to play.

Just wanted to make an AAAARRRRGGGHH! post upon my discovery that the musketeer option for cavaliers (as seen here) is not allowed in PFS play.

I'd happened across the archetype by accident the other day, and it inspired me to immediately make one and race to my nearest PFS game.

Sure engouh, the musketeer is specifically barred from Society play, so I needed to come make a frowny face to the only people I know who might sympathize.

:(

Are there any free pre-made adventures (a la an intro to an adventure path, free rpg day offering, etc.) worth picking up? I'd rather not have to convert anything for the first shot.

I'm assuming the Forgotten Realms book you have is the Player's Guide rather than the Campaign Setting, because the latter includes a couple quick-start 1st level adventures which are pretty good.

Since you already have the Forgotten Realms book, you could also download any of the Living Forgotten Realms modules available for free from hereabouts.

I never thought they were great, so they may not inspire your players, but at least they're free.

For $10, though, you can pay for a month's worth of DDI which lets you download every single Dungeon and Dragon article ever. You'd have lots of adventures to choose from then. I especially recommend "Dead by Dawn" from issue 176. If you like skill challenges, this mod has some of the best integrated SCs I've seen. It's 2nd level, but it's no challenge to let your players make 2nd level characters to play it.

Plus, with a couple weeks of DDI, you can use the online character builder to show off all the different options for making characters.

I'm also secretly hoping a late-start AP will be an option for new players just finishing the Starter Set.

I feel like it'll be kind of disappointing to graduate at level five only to find out you'll need to start a new character if you want to participate in the flagship line of Paizo's Adventure Paths.

I'd actually argue in favor of Kingmaker. The majority of the encounters are one-per-days as she explores the stolen lands and they can be more forgiving for someone to run away from or even retire back to town afterward if things go south.

Plus, it has a list of built-in NPCs to cover some bases if your wife chooses not to play a spellcaster or needs an extra sword arm. After she founds her kingdom, she could even travel with a half dozen soldiers to serve as extra hit points as they absorb all the hits she'd take otherwise.

If the only challenge is the Queen requiring a high charisma, I say you fudge it and let her ruling trait be whatever her highest one is. In effect she inspires her followers just by being the strongest barbarian or smartest wizard or wisest priest.

Perhaps another series of modules akin to the Osirion arc (J1 and J4)would fill this need? You are looking for a second campaign arc, but not an Adventure Path.

Yes please, but only because the Osirion adventures you named were awesome just in and of themselves. Taken together, they become double plus awesome.

However, I do appreciate a good long-term AP. Hopping from one adventure to the other is too far to the other extreme. I guess what I'm saying is that a single story arc/villainous plot is too narrow, but multiple villainous plots becomes too scattershot.

My gut tells me that a six-level mini-Path followed by a 14-level Adventure Path (followed by a 5-level epic Path) is my sweet spot.

The alternative could be to allow all powers to be attempted at will but making them harder to perform.

As much as I like 4e (and, post-Essentials, I secretly like it more than Pathfinder), the narrative declaration requirements of martial dailies bugged me enough that I couldn't play it without a houserule along these similar lines.

My rule, though, was to charge the martial character healing surges to reuse encounter and daily powers. I'm leaving out the details, but the general gist was that you could keep attempting these super-attacks, but you'd exhaust yourself.

I will say that up through 4th level, it worked out alright and my martial players had a unique level of strategy I think they enjoyed.

In any case, I'd even prefer 'Mage's high chance of failure approach to martial attacks over the "let's just assume you'll fail if you try again" approach required to rationalize martial dailies now.

Has anyone already mentioned that the first, low level book in every AP is usually quite nice to very good?

That's kind of my problem. I have a lot of good starting adventures from Paizo. I have no qualms with a group of adventurers, fer instance, saving a lumber town from local undead kobolds over five levels and THEN getting into a larger story arc to take them to 20.

In fact, I actually rather like the idea of having an opening adventure (or mini-series) disassociated from the Big Bad super campaign villain. A) it gives a player a chance to love or hate his character before he's committed to a 15-level storyline with him and 2) it better represents the type of game world I prefer where stuff just happens that doesn't always necessarily tie into one central plot.

So yeah, I'd definitely be in the market for an AP that I could start *after* my players finished Falcon's Hollow or Price of Immortality or even the first book of another AP which just didn't catch on.

Going waaaay back, one of the first home-made adventure arcs I did for AD&D started with a bunch of 1st level characters tasked with slaying a green dragon who'd roamed into the area.

Not a lot of details needed, but half the fun was watching the players realize over time that yes, I really was expecting them to eventually fight a dragon. When they finally faced the dragon with their hard-won arrow of dragon slaying and then miss the shot...oh mercy. One of my fondest gaming memories.

But I do want to comment on the probably unintentional mini-AP subplot about dragons in 'Age of Worms' when...oh what the heck...spoilers:

Each encounter was different and there was a noticeable growth to how each one built on the last.

In summary, it's possible to make multiple dragon encounters distinct and memorable. I know 'cause you already did it.

Now, I don't have a complete run of all the APs, but I do have some individual issues which are clearly my favorites. For those of you who have a more complete collection than I do, which ones (or parts of ones) do you think are the absolute best each series has to offer?

Fer instance:

RotRL: Burnt Offerings is one of my all-time favorites. I really like the first half of Skinsaw Murders, but Burnt Offerings is great from beginning to end.

CotCT: Unlike seemingly everyone else, I actually really like History of Ashes. Of the entire AP (one of my favorites as a whole), it's this book which provides the most consistent entertainment throughout.

SD: Meanwhile, I think I'll get a lot of agreement on Children of the Void being the top performer.

KM: Sound of a Thousand Screams is a great finale to a good campaign. Not only does it provide a great conclusion to the AP, but can be run just as well as a stand-alone.

As an added bonus, you might notice each of these are in a different level range, so there's the potential for an ideal campaign which goes Burnt Offerings --> Children of the Void --> ? --> A History of Ash --> ? --> Sound of a Thousand Screams.

Guess I need to find a favorite Chapters 3 and 5 to complete my Best of the Best AP.

I quite enjoy the spell system in Castle Falkenstein.

Mechanically, it was mostly a 'words of power' style spell assembly system with a system to "collect" magical energy up until you had enough to cast it.

Setting-wise, different spellcasting organizations owned different ancient texts which allowed them to cast a certain type of spell, so you'd have to choose the right societ if you wanted to cast healing spells versus casting illusions.

Demon Dogs!

In general, I love that Golarion's hodge-podge of possibilities made me consider some campaign ideas I wouldn't even have thought of before. The Mammoth Lords, for instance. Barbarian tribes riding mastadons never occurred to me, but I love it.

More specifically, I love the three-tier design of the underdark here. It allows for the typical deep dark D&D races and monsters, but provides a space for the more pulpy Lost Worlds.

Even more specifically, I love Varisia. The dueling city-states placed amidst the ruins of an ancient, half-forgotten civilization is a no-fail setting for D&D-style adventures.

An early Golarion mod I considered was to replace the Shoanti with half-orcs. I don't much buy into the idea of orcs and humans interbreeding, so re-imagined half-orcs as being orcs who have been slightly civilized.

Just as Rome paid various barbarian tribes in Europe to war with other barbarian tribes, the Chelaxians hired several orc tribes from the Cinderlands to war against the other orcs up near Belkzen. After a few decades of this, the "friendly" orcs changed due to their interraction with the Chelaxians, becoming slightly smarter, for instance, and not as susceptible to sunlight.

Never did actualize it, but I still like the idea.

Otherwise, my mental Golarion kind of deletes or glazes over those regions I can't think of anything interesting about. I'm not sure why there's a Molthune, fer instance, and I find the Mammoth Lords to be about 30x more interesting than the Linnorm Kings.

I'm not saying there isn't an Isger (mostly because I'm too lazy to actually redraw a map without it), but it'll never get mentioned in my campaign.

I don't have a problem with Numeria, per say. I just wish that they would do someting with it.

I agree. On the surface I'm not a fan of Numeria, but kind of at least dig the concept of a nation of Conan-esque barbarians fighting for freedom from the alien-powered Sorcerer Kings. It kind of reminds me of John Norman's Gor books and its warrior culture vs. the Priest Kings.

Not sure I'm interpreting it right, but that's the vibe that works for me.

While you may be right, I think the one after Jade Regent is pirates.

Calendar fail. The pirates starts in February when the Worlds Guide comes out. I guess that product doesn't support my theory after all.

I guess the next AP *could* be Dark Sun...

Cloak, if you tell me where you live, I'll start the process of moving my family to your town and bring pizzas to your house until you let me join your gaming group.

If your campaign is this much fun to read, I can't imagine how exciting it must be to actually play.

For the record, my ship just pulled into port and one of the first things I did with stable internet access is catch up on my missed podcasts like yours.

Still can't be bothered to listen to the character workshop or encounter lab, but still a fan.

If it's a valid candidate, add my vote to Savage Tide. That single campaign has the best of everything there is to offer from D&D: dungeon exploring, urban adventures, plane-hopping, kingdom building, sea-voyages, wilderness exploration, etc.

It also had the best supporting 'Savage Tidings' articles whose usefullness to PCs in the campaign has not been equaled by any of the articles included in the Golarion APs or Player's Guides.

I've sleuthed it out.

Paizo is clearly flipping through their old TSR library for AP inspirations and having done homages to Al-Qadim (Legacy of Fire), Birthright (Kingmaker), Ravenloft (Carrion Crown), and Oriental Adventures (Jade Regent), their next AP is obvious:

Spelljammer!

Some may point out that Planescape or Maztica are viable options too, but I submit that neither of them benefit from this -clicky- coming out the same month as that next AP begins.