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 Recent Posts
Once again, I had time at work, so my players got this in their e-mail today: Kingmaker Season Three! <cue dramatic announcer voice> “In a world where 'high adventure' doesn’t have anything to do with altitude – or drugs – three years have now passed, and the burgeoning kingdom of Roma is slowly growing… and now new challenges and adventures await the kingdom’s founders!” <cut to rapidly flashing image montage> A group of lightly-armored centaurs sweep over a rise in a well-trained unit, bows already firing, sending a wave of arrows into the camera as they let loose an ululating cry. A small Erastilian wedding ceremony in a grove of trees, the bride garbed in green and brown, her face swathed in a veil. As the camera approaches, she turns and reaches gloved hands up to unfasten her concealing veil. A fog-shrouded swamp with shadowy shapes moving through it, dim torchlight dancing around them, and, a moment later, another shadowy shape following the torch-bearers. Howell Talbot slams his hands into a stone wall again and again, bloodying fingers and breaking bone, his head bowed and face bandaged, as he screams silently. A pretty woman with green skin and rose petals for hair sits on a throne, and smiles as the camera approaches like a supplicant, each step making it more plain that thorns emerge from her skin to pierce the dress she wears. A lethal beak snaps at the camera, which pulls back to reveal a richly-colored axebeak, several arrows protruding through its feathers, with one foot on a still-thrashing human figure. The axebeak lowers its head, beak agape, as the camera cuts away. Leaves blow through an empty street, the wind swirling them into a dust devil and causing a tavern sign to swing, creaking eerily in the stillness as a distorted shadow passes across the cobbles swiftly. A herd of mastodons move through a field, grazing, until one looks into the camera and sounds an alarm, causing them to encircle their young defensively and bugle cries of warning. A woman with short brown hair sits in darkness, her pale face dirt-stained and her clothing in tatters, her hooves scraping against the stone floor futilely as she tries to stand in the too-small space. With a rush of wind, a gigantic black-feathered wing blots out the sun and a tremendous claw sweeps across the screen to snatch up an animal so swiftly that all that can be seen are four hooves as they are carried off-camera. With a shudder, a moss-covered stone pulls free from the ground and unfolds to become a stylized humanoid figure of stone, wood, and ropes taller than a man. Green light plays about the carving on its stone surfaces, and it raises massive lithic fists prefatory to delivering a crushing blow. A raven flaps to a landing on a dead branch, peers into the camera first with one eye and then the other, and croaks 'Vanished' before taking flight again. Kyla stands before the camera, tunic blood-spattered, and holds the remains of a chipmunk in her hands, face stricken, fighting back tears, as she says, "She's dead." Armored for battle, a minotaur with steel-sheathed horns dripping with gore bellows a challenge whirls his greataxe, and charges through the screen, shattering the image to reveal a single bloodshot eye staring at the screen. <The dramatic announcer voice resumes as the camera slowly moves in on the eye> “Tune in this season and follow our heroes - Raj Mystery-Blooded, Mere Elkrider, Althais the Paladin, Osric the Stag Lord, and Kaylani Shadowborn – as they confront new dangers, new challenges… and one angry axebeak.” <The eye closes, revealing the words: ‘Season Three begins on or about 01/31/2012 – check your local stations for listings.'>
In my campaign, the player that had been made Lady Rannick did this, and used the return of the crown to improve ties with the dwarves, and convince them to (with her assistance) establish a colony at Hook Mountain as a way of gaining allies to her north and increasing trade.
I can never tell if this is a reprint or an original with Shadowrun products It's not a reprint. Having read through the PDF, there's material that was addressed in different ways and forms in past editions of the game contained in it, but by and large it's all re-imaged enough that it might as well be new.
Thanks, guys. =) The players thought it was a winner, too. (And watching them try to figure out things like 'What's happening to Akiros?' or 'Is that blood being washed away literal and metaphoric?' or 'WTF is up with those bees?' or 'Daddy? Which one of you guys has a daughter?' is making my night every time we play.)
Because I was given the time today at work, my players got this advance 'trailer' for Kingmaker Chapter 2 which they start tomorrow night: Kingmaker Season Two! <cue dramatic announcer voice> “In a world where high adventure doesn’t have anything to do with altitude – or drugs - one year has now passed, and the burgeoning kingdom of Roma is slowly growing… but what new adventures await the kingdom’s founders?” <cut to rapidly flashing image montage> Two snarling lizardman with jagged-edged war clubs charge through marshy grass at the camera. An achingly beautiful, but obviously non-human, woman peers at the camera from around a tree, half-fearful, half hopeful. A fog-shrouded swamp with shadowy shapes moving through it, torchlight dancing around them. Akiros slams back into a stone wall, wounded, and slides down it to the street, his sword dropping from limp fingers. A smiling dark-haired woman in festival garb dances towards the camera, hands out, as if trying to draw the viewer into the large festival dance behind her. Thunderclouds roll in over a lake, pushing a wall of driving rain sweeping over Staghold, washing blood from the streets. Swarms of bees pour out of the bushes and form a three-dimensional image of a female human face, the mouth opening to speak. In a barn engulfed in flames, a woman runs from side to side, hemmed in by flames, trying to escape. A wounded warhorse, reins dragging, staggers down a path, exhausted and riderless. A huge ebon-furred wolf with a silver mane, wearing oddly-designed armor, growls and circles the camera as if about to attack. A blonde-haired girl of perhaps twelve, eyes white and unseeing, rushes towards the camera, arms outstretched, crying “Daddy!” A rooster glares at the screen balefully, and sounds a challenging cry. Armored for battle, a troll swings a bloody greatsword, slicing the camera view in two, to reveal a single bloodshot eye staring at the screen. <dramatic announcer voice resumes as the camera slowly moves in on the eye> “Tune in this season and follow out heroes - Raj Mystery-Blooded, Mere Elkrider, Althais the Paladin, Osric the Stag Lord, and Kaylani Shadowborn – as they confront new dangers, new challenges… and one angry chicken.” <The eye closes, revealing the words ‘Season Two begins 04/05/2011>
My group is just finishing up the Runeforge, but my plan is to mitigate things somewhat by having them all be granted the altitude Affinity (or whatever it is called) feat by the Ice Nymph Queen, and then letting them acquire enough extra gear to cover the people that aren't still using the amulets (half the party has them still).
My actual thought was that what he'd do is try and use the party as cat's paws to eliminate threats that he considered dangerous to him and his plans while he worked on gathering his powers and forces to eliminate the party once and for all. The other Runelords for example, several of which are actually far more likely to punch party buttons than he is (at least at the start) The overconfidence angle is worth revisiting, though; I was, admittedly, thinking of him being more of a rational villain, and that's not as likely as I'd thought on further reflection. Not as bad as, say, the Runelord of Pride would have been but I doubt that any of these guys are really all that tightly wrapped.
So, Karzoug is smart, right? Appallingly smart. And he can scry out of the extradimensional space he’s stuck in. So, what happens when he plays ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ with the party rather than die permanently in the final fight? “No, don’t kill me – I need your help to stop the other Runelords from rising.” “No, don’t kill me – I need your help to stop the Second Starfall.” “No, don’t kill me – I need your help to….” Thoughts? How well would that work for your players?
Real life ran down my Runelords campaign in September, and we’ve just now gotten back to it, with the party fighting their way through the Runeforge, trying to wipe out the last of the surviving apprentices in the Hall of Gluttony. And things aren’t going well. They struggle to get their feet under them after the three-month skip in time, get just hammered – twice - by the mummies, almost lose the sorcerer to the ravenous zombie, and then suffer a near total wipeout to the negative energy trap battling the apprentice. And despite the screams and the laughs, and their ultimate success, something’s… off. That done, they take a day to heal up, de-mummy rot themselves, and start up the process of making some runeforged weapons to take the fight to Karzoug. They finish the first one, Karzoug possesses the statue and starts snarking in his dry, ‘been there, seen that’ way, and the players are all <yawn> “Yeah, whatever, baldy.” That’s when I figure it out. They’re not scared of him anymore. The three-month skip has disconnected them from the worry and fear they’d built up. So I keep talking when I reach the end of the scripted threats: “…your destiny is death, here, in the Runeforge, at my hands and those of my new friend. Say hello, Arkrhyst.” <insert draconian roar as the shielding spells on the dragon drop and he starts to force his way into the Runeforge Pool area through the passageway the party entered through> And there, in that moment, facing the animated statue and the reanimated dragon, as I told them “We’ll pick it here next time,” they found their fear again. Player commentary: P1, P2, P4: “WTF?” P3: “Arkrhyst? We killed him!” P2: “K-Man must have raised him.” P1: "Oh we are so getting our butts kicked." P3: “How? He’s still stuck wherever, right? And he’s a mage; he can’t raise anything except his hairline.” P1: “He possessed that statue, right? Maybe he did the same thing and got someone to do it for him?” P4: “That takes a lot of cash, where’d he get it? Not like it’s just lying… around.” <horrified look> P3: “Auuggghhh! That <censored> SOB used the dragon’s horde to pay for his resurrection! I *knew* we shouldn’t have left it outside the Runeforge door like that!” P2: “Well, he *is* the Runelord of Greed; makes sense he’d pay with someone else’s money.” P4: “Dammit! I remember why I hate this guy, now!” P2: "Wait, I bet the dragon has a rune on it, too! We kill it, and K-Man gets his 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card!" P3: “Dammit! I hate him more than I did before now!” Sometimes the magic just works.
We're about halfway through Chapter 1 and the party falls out like this: Mere - Female Gnomish Ranger. [Desna] Taking the archery path and planning on acquiring an elk animal companion to use as a mount. Looking at an archer prestige class. Osric - Male Human Druid. [Erastil] Has a tiger as an animal companion. Gearing to become the 'Druid King' in Chapter 2. No plans to class out at this time. Kartike - Male Aasimar Martial Artist. (From Tripod Machine's 'Adventuring Classes') [Iori] Light armor halberd fighter, planning on classing over to sorcerer in a few levels, and then maybe Arcane Knight. Althais - Female Half-Elven Paladin. [Erastil] Gearing towards a Swordlord style combat form. Planning on running straight paladin. Kalyani - NPC Female Shadow Assassin (Super Genius Games). Trailing the party, but hasn't actually met them yet. Here to discharge a debt to Althais' family held by her master.
It is a known bug (wrong references), which I have fixed in my draft document..... however I am a bit busy with other stuff at the moment so the next update (including armies) will take a bit longer than anticipated..... My bad - mea culpa! - the error does not appear in the 1.5 version of the document. (at least for me) I plead blindness at not reading the version number earlier!
I'm getting an odd error when naming cities: City 1's name propagates to the Kingdom Summary sheet just fine, but none of the other cities will do so. Is it me doing something wrong, or is it an actual bug? Thanks!
I haven't had anyone take the plunge to play one, although almost everyone has read the write-up. Some started laughing and couldn't stop, some shook their heads, and at least one was interested enough to go and get their own copy, but as to actually playing one, nope, not yet.
I'm running it now, and the party's primary NPC is, in fact a fey, and another party member is courting one, so there's plenty of room for fey interaction and storylines in the Adventure Path.Does the fey NPC accompany the party openly into urban areas such as Sandpoint of Magnimar? If so, how do the NPCs react to such a creature in their midst? The NPC utilizes a Hat of Disguise to avoid the worst of the 'pointed fingers and whispers' issues, and hasn't really caused a problem (in that regard, anyway). She's amused by the whole 'sneaking' idea, and smart enough to realize that she doesn't want to give anyone a reason to scream and start swinging a sword just because leaves fall out off her hair when she combs it, or her hair, eyes, and complexion change color with the seasons. She's really far more likely to create an issue by simply talking - she lacks virtually anything resembling the 'filters' that humans have regarding what to say or not say to a given individual in a given situation.
I'm not familiar with the Quickling Faen, and I do not wish to spoil further adventures, but there are certainly places in RotRL related to fey, or where a fey character would be useful. I'm running it now, and the party's primary NPC is, in fact a fey, and another party member is courting one, so there's plenty of room for fey interaction and storylines in the Adventure Path.
The last time I ran something like this as a plot element, the individuals that the group encountered, while insane demon cultists, weren't portrayed as such. They were attractive, cheerful, pleasant sisters who had more in common with the young people that come around on Saturdays trying to get you to come to their church than the popular image of robe-wearing, chanting psychopaths. They flirted casually with folks, offered them tea, and talked about things in terms that completely obscured the acts in question, such as 'escorting the aged and deathly ill to Great Lord Pazuzu's cloud-filled realm in the skies' (sneaking into villages and taking the old and sick to be staked out in the desert and devoured by fiendish vultures), and so on. Things were helped along by having the sisters cheerfully and happily volunteer information about, and assistance against, a competing cult that the party was mixed up in a conflict with.
I had my players stop in Wartle and get wrapped up in a local dispute that required them to participate in the local 'judicial combat' system to resolve. Essentially, they chose a champion (they could have hired one of the locals, but - wisely - chose to do it themselves) and were assigned an area roughly on city block in size and told that they had three hours to catch snakes. (This was made possible by my interpretation of Wartle as a town built on stilts, with raised streets and rope-bridge side streets/alleys stand, to avoid the constant flooding) The one with the highest point value of snakes was considered the winner. Standard snakes were one point. Poisonous snakes were three points each. Goblin snakes were five points each. No magic was allowed to summon or contain them. The locals caught them with snake sticks (sticks with loops of rope suspended from one end that could be pulled tight), but the party won by discarding the snake-stick they were given and having the fighter just snatch them up with her bare hands.
I looked at their offerings on DriveThruRPG last night and had much the same reaction. Even taking the 'bundle' option, which gives you both for $30.00, and knocks the individual prices down to essentially $15.00/each, it was still a bit pricey for me right now. I also found it odd - really odd, in fact - that they'd chosen to not advertise here, even after the products were released. One would think that the boards of the company that makes the product they were writing for might be a good place to do that, yes?
I always told players when they asked this question that it was because elves, as a highly magic-intensive and magic-using race, *and* one that liked peace, quiet, and serenity, had used Sleep spells on their children so many times as infants that by the time they reached adulthood, the constant interaction of the Sleep spells with the elves' inherent magical nature had rendered them immune to the effect.
Link to my thread over in Homebrews, talking about the Demonic Initiate of Pazuzu prestige class: Demonic Initiate of Pazuzu
So, following last week's RotRL game in which my party met some female vampire Pazuzu cultists I find myself in need of a prestige class governing said cultist arrangement. Original thread Fortunately, Paizo came through for me with the Demonic Initiate, a prestige class from the ancillary material in Pathfinder #15 "Descent Into Midnight." Unfortunately, the Great Lord Pazuzu was not one of the samples given. So... here's my take on the variable sections of the prestige class (the fixed specifics you'll need to look up yourself): Abyssal Resistance: You gain a profane bonus equal to your class level on saves to resist possession and versus scrying attempts. [Pazuzu seems to be all about scrying on innocents and corrupting them.] Demonic Boon, Lesser: You can cast nondetection, summon swarm, and entropic shield as spell-like abilities once per day each using your character level as the caster level. [I had to work at this one, but based on the description in Pathfinder #18's ancillary article "Demon Lords of Golarion" and some guesswork I came up with these three.] Demonic Boon, Greater: You can manifest Pazuzu's two pairs of feathery bird wings and fly for a number of minutes per day equal to your character level with a speed of 60 feet and good maneuverability. The duration need not be continuous, but must be tracked in minimum increments of 1 minute. Does this look about right to folks? Too much? Suggestions and comments welcome. Thanks!
My players are currently in the middle of some downtime between Chapters 4 and 5 [I know the campaign didn't give them any, but they were exhausted from the Fortress of the Stone Giants and talked up what they wanted to do so much that I revised the material to let them], and, in the middle of all their personal subplots, decided based on one of those plots last night to go to Chopper's Island. Not what I was expecting at this point, but, hey, you gotta roll with these things, so.... The Characters: The 4-man party are all 12th level at this point, and called in both of their recurring NPCs, making it a pretty heavy batch of folks. That gave them Tara, a Fighter 9/Blooded Noble 3 [PC]; Tressa, Cleric of Desna 8/Spherewalker 4 [PC], Xelgar, Rogue 6/Swashbuckler 2/Fortunate Son 3/Sorcerer 1 [PC]; Djordi, Sorcerer 3/Dragon Disciple 8/Wild Child 1 [PC]; Daelyn, Ranger 6/Fighter 6 [NPC]; and Shayliss, Rogue 2/Sorcerer 9/Wizard of Wrathful Flame 1 [NPC]. The Set-Up: The party is spread all over the map at the start. Tara and Daelyn are at Ft. Rannick dealing with a visit from an earthbreaker-wielding local hero who’s personality was modeled on a loud professional wrestler’s ring persona [pick one]. Djordi is hanging out in Magnimar, trying to avoid the centaur Hellknight that he accidentally saw naked thanks to a misplaced teleport, and, according to his apprentice Shayliss, may have, in fact, now married because of that. Shayliss, his apprentice, is in Magnimar retraining a feat to learn a different weapon, spying on her friends in town to make sure they’re all right, and inflicting her non-sequiters on unsuspecting townsfolk. Tressa is in Magnimar, prepping for a blind date that Djordi set her up on, little knowing that it’s with a female mage the party knows. Xelgar is in Sandpoint, spending quality time with his wife, Ameiko and plotting his revenge on the Sandpoint Devil, which is stalking him like a B-movie supernatural serial killer after failing to kill him back when Xelgar was 8th level. The local hero is handled in Ft. Rannick (for the moment), and Djordi dodges the centauress (for the moment). Tressa, despite her very firm hetero leanings, has a nice but non-romantic 'girl's afternoon out' with the female mage, but vows revenge on Djordi for getting her into this. Shayliss trains and spies and utters non-sequiters. Xelgar… Xelgar gets asked to go and have a look at one of the Kaijitsu tenant farms where a cow was ‘swallowed up by the earth.’ He asks around a bit, finds that most folks think it was just stolen by travelers or local ‘critters’ – although his wife suggests that there might be some of those ‘big bugs’ back again (ankhegs). He rounds up a few locals to go with him, starts out… and is stopped by the discovery of a human body just outside of town. Said body (thanks to an episode of NCIS I saw last week) had been turned into what amounts to a jigsaw puzzle, with none of the pieces bigger than a cell phone. Xelgar stares at it, remembers the stories about ‘the Chopper’ from the early days of the campaign, and decides (not unreasonably) that he’s back. Based on that, he pays to send some magical messages to Magnimar to get Djordi to start people-moving folks back to Sandpoint. Djordi does so and the investigation gets underway. After some discussion and a few spells, they determine that 1) the remains belong to a single individual; 2) it was, most likely, a human male about 6’ and 210 or so; 3) each and every piece of the remains has been lovingly enchanted with a spell so that it will never decay or rot and always remain fresh and ‘juicy’; 4) a series of Make Whole spells will, in fact, reassemble the body; 4) that there a few pieces missing (they suspect animals carried them off or that they were kept as sick trophies by the killer); 5) there were no animal tracks near the bodies, but some dogs appear to have circled the area of the remains and left; and 6) a Raise Dead won’t work because the man’s soul isn’t available to re-inhabit the body. From this, they deduce that the killer is a supernatural entity (or at least supernaturally empowered) and that this represents some sort of escalation of the Chopper’s past killings (he only took eyes and tongues back then). They talk to their local expert, Shayliss, who tells them the information from the ‘History of Sandpoint’ section of Chapter One again, and this leads them to go to Chopper’s Island to make sure that the local constabulary did the job years ago. Some climbing, a fly spell, and several comments from Shayliss about how ‘even drunk local boys trying to impress their girls aren’t stupid enough to climb a 100’ cliff to get to a haunted island’ later, they’re atop the island and looking around, and I am officially winging the hell out of things. When in doubt, ask players to make skill checks so… they start rolling Perception and Survival checks to scout out the island. Based on hearing a woman walking their dog outside, they discover some human tracks that belong to, according to Daelyn, someone about 5’9” and no more than 135-145 pounds; either an elf, a woman, or a slender man. He also locates some pawprints that look like 3-4 animals were romping around with the walker; big things, like dire wolf size. He can’t decide if there were two identical walkers, or one more than once. They move to the burned ruins, and check out there for a few minutes [Shayliss: “Oh! I found a copper piece!”] [Djordi: “All of the umpteen hundred birdhouses in the trees are masterwork quality.”] before locating the collapsed stairway to the underground areas that Shayliss told them were there. Several Stone Shapes from a staff retrieved from the Fortress of the Stone Giants later, they’ve cleared the stairway and are walking down it, marveling at the carvings on the walls of birds doing ‘bird things’ like catching worms, flying, singing etc. Once downstairs, they first find the Chopper’s workshop, with his masterwork tools and twenty or thirty bird statuettes, birdhouses, and other things in mid-creation, all undisturbed from six years before. Next it’s a big wardrobe full of dozens and dozens of mason jars with a clear liquid in them. Then it’s a room with a cloak rack and a small basin filled by a bird fountain. From there, it’s a T-intersection, both sides of it making Tressa uneasy since they’ve walked into an Unhallowed section of ground, which sparks some player conversation and planning - because making players decide which way to go is always good for a few moments of time to think. The party goes left, and, since I know there’s a chapel or something with the bird statue where Chopper was found down here, that’s what they find. My few minutes of time bought while they cast buff spells and rearranged the party order gave me time to pull up the Lamashtu write-up from the AP and confirm my memory that she and Pazuzu hate each other. A lot. And Pazuzu is a Demon Lord of birds. And Jervis carved birds, talked about birds and so on. So…. When they enter the chapel, it’s a rectangular room with two long thin tables making a sort of narrow approach to the statue. The tables are two-tiered, and lined with one mason jar after another (as many as Chopper had kills plus seven or eight) that each contain a pair of eyeballs and a tongue floating in clear liquid. [Tressa: “Are they looking at us?”] [GM who won’t turn down a freebie: “Yes. They all turn in their jars and watch your progress through the room.”] [Other Players: “Eww!” “That’s so cool!” “Now I *know* this place is evil!”] At the end of the room is the statue – which, in clear light, is revealed to be a statue of Pazuzu. [Shayliss: “I’m never eating chicken again!”] Not having the time to deconsecrate the chapel, they search it, finding the bloodstained floor where the Chopper had removed his own eyes and tongue and then died, and discovering two sets of prints in the dust on the floor; Daelyn pronounces them to be the same as ‘upstairs’ and confirms them as either elves or women, since one set is wearing sandals but the other is bare-footed and shows the shape of the foot. Armed with that information, they move down the other corridor. Tara, using an item purchased after the encounter with the undead spider-things in the Fortress of the Stone Giants detects undead in the room ahead. (I didn’t know that there were undead involved until right then, but she asked and, hey, if a player wants to shell out thousands of gold to buy an item that lets them detect undead whenever they want, they ought to get *some* use out of the thing, right?) They spell up and move into the room… to find it’s a library. But with bird statuettes, not books; thousands of coke-can sized bird statuettes (I had one in my hand when they asked how big the statuettes were), all different. They also find the undead, which, based on my seeing a copy of ‘Howl of the Carrion King’ to my left on the shelf, are at that moment, created as a pair of Katapeshi twin sisters (turned into vampires by the power of a PC’s question), one in a chain shirt wielding what I described as a ‘two-handed kopesh’ (she had the sandals) and the other wielding a staff with an ‘evil bird backed by wings’ cap on it, which I described as similar enough to the Sarenrae symbol that it was likely a mockery of it.’ Djordi fires off a metamagic-enhanced Magic Missile at Sandals – which fizzles on a Shield spell. [Sandals: “Ooooh! That was a big one!”] [Barefoot: “He cheated; they don’t come that big without cheating.”] [Shayliss: My master’s do!] [Djordi: “Ummmm….”] Barefoot casts a spell, and announces that ‘They’re only adventurers’ which causes her sister to relax a bit and confuses the party even more. Several covert skill rolls later, Tressa identifies them as vampires, and the party gets more confused. Conversation ensues, as opposed to the combat that everyone expected. (Which was good for me, since I was going to have to be whipping stat blocks up on the fly, otherwise.) The twins reveal that they were here to honor the life-long devotion of their fellow worshiper of Lord Pazuzu, Jervis Stoot, who had lived here for decades, watching over sacred sites of the B%~+# Mother, Lamashtu for signs of new activity. [The party: Blink. Blink.] Jervis was, they revealed, finally driven mad by the taint from the Lamashtan holy sites in the area, and escalated his rate of holy offerings to Great Lord Pazuzu to the point where he offered the final sacrifice, himself, too soon. [The party: Blink. Blink.] The party questions them about the new murder, which confuses the twins. [Sandals: “That wasn’t us, we both offered sacrifices just before we left; we won’t have to do it again until the dark of the next moon.”] [Barefoot: “How was he killed? (after description) Oh no, that’s not how the Great Lord Pazuzu tells us to sacrifice. We take the old and sick out to the desert, and stake them out for the holy vultures to devour.”] [Party: Blink. Blink.] This goes on for a bit, and I spin things from the twins into a discussion of Pazuzu and his cult based on the info from the AP sidebar and my own fevered imagination. This results in the sisters talking about, among other things: how Great Lord Pazuzu’s worshipers are a cult where each member sacrifices differently in some manner connected to birds; how nice it is to meet reasonable people after those tiresome Sarenraen clergy and their followers back home; that Jervis Stoot was worshiping Pazuzu by carving one of every kind of bird in the world but died before he finished; how forgiving Great Lord Pazuzu is of past misdeeds on the part of new worshipers when they join the cult (hint, hint); that the animal footprints were from the ‘sacred lions of Great Lord Pazuzu’ that they summoned for a nice walk and romp the previous evening; how the twins and Great Lord Pazuzu’s mutual interest with the party in hating Lamashtu and her minions and works and makes them so similar; how the damp air is terrible for the twin’s skin; and so on. Finally the big reveal comes after someone asks the right question (and I’ve had time to think), and they tell the party that they’re here to fight Black Magga when she comes ashore at Sandpoint to destroy the city for defying Lamashtu so many times. [Party: “Black Magga?” “Again?” “Here?” “<expletive deleted> me!”] (That’s not in the AP, but I’ve always meant to come back and do *something* with Black Magga once the party was in a position to hang with her in a fight, so this seemed like a good way.) More talking ensues, in which it’s revealed that neither the twins, nor Pazuzu, know why Sandpoint is so important to Lamashtu, and that they don’t really care. They just know that if she wants to destroy it badly enough for Black Magga to come here and do it in person, then they want Lamashtu to fail. More talking ensues, where I feed them the information that the twins only know Black Magga is coming before the dark of the next moon, and that Great Lord Pazuzu is sending no more help, since the twins were told that they were sufficient. At this point, the party decides that making a deal with attractive female vampire demon cultists in the interest of saving Sandpoint is better than not having the twins’ help in fighting Black Magga (a moment that warmed my heart), especially since the only other alternative they can see is calling the Hellknights in, which everyone thinks is a bad plan. (They have no idea of the relative power levels involved since she romped all over them at Turtleback Ferry, and haven’t figured out that they can actually take Black Magga on their own at this point. I also found it hysterical that they thought the cultists were a better choice than the Hellknights for aid.) The twins, who care nothing for Sandpoint or its citizens, are glad to make a deal if it means that Lamashtu gets one in the eye, and they can go home to the wonderful dry heat of Katapesh and away from this ‘vile damp miasma clinging to our skin.’ The deal is made, with the twins promising to help in the fight, or, if it’s daylight, to send Great Lord Pazuzu’s sacred lions to help and then do what else they could – but only if the party lets them pack up Jervis’ shrine and its contents and take them away with them to safety in Katapesh. (Unsurprisingly the party had little issue with this) At that point the party moved back to Sandpoint to plan which is where I stopped. Nothing like the scenario I started out to run, which was about a serial killer who had come to Sandpoint to ‘test’ himself against the most ‘notable serial killer killers’ in Varisia, but hey, that’s the way they roll sometime. Honestly, looking back at it, if the Pazuzu connection wasn’t in the original draft then it retrofits so perfectly that it certainly *ought* to have been. Hope someone gets at least a bit of enjoyment, if not a game idea or two from this!
All in all, and excellent job. The characters are well thought-out and well-presented with enough information to make them interesting, but not so much that the flavor text overwhelms the mechanics. You do a good job presenting the new feats and mechanics, and none of them are overbalancing to what I consider the median average for most games. I look forward to seeing future material, Crystal; thank you for sharing this with us!
For my game, Black Magga was really more of a 'WTF? Ahhh! Get it off! Get it off!' sort of encounter for the players. They finally did enough damage to make her leave, but now they've got plans building to hunt her down with whatever mercenaries they can hire, plus as many Hellknights as they can rope into the mix (because, oddly enough, the party regards the Hellknights as far prefferable to Magga, and the Hellknights are all about eliminating things like her from the world.
In my campaign, I had the Lord Mayor of Magnimar ennoble the party's fighter (who had a family connection to the Order of the Nail, as her father had been an armiger with them) as 'Lady Rannick' and assign the territory to her. Which required negotiating with the fey in the Shimmerglens, the gnomes in the forest behind the Shimmerglens, a couple of towns, and a lot of rebuilding at the Fort. The offer wasn't extended to the rest of the party, because, realistically, they were either unsuitable or wouldn't take it. The rogue was engaged to Ameiko Kaijitsu and didn't see a need to add a second noble title to that relationship. The sorcerer flatly refused, not wanting to be tied down. The cleric passed on it, saying it would interfere with her duties as a priestess. So.... easy choice.
My group is in the final stages of 'Fortress; now: Xelgar Kaijutsu - Male Half-Elven Rogue/Swashbuckler. Rapier and shortsword fighter. Native of Magnimar, originally came to Sandpoint to get away from some 'difficulties' with the Scarzni there. Took the Kaijutsu name when he married Ameiko. Cousin to Djordi. Djordi - Male Human Dragonsblood Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple. Wields a Varisian scarf. Native of 'nowhere in specific' Varisia, his mother was a wandering cleric of Desna. Originally in Sandpoint to meet his cousin Xelgar, he keeps going on walkabouts during downtime to avoid being tied down to one place. Took Shayliss Vinter on as an apprentice sorcerer after her failed seduction. Tara - Human Female Fighter. Uses a two-handed sword. Daughter of a former Armiger from the Order of the Nail, who settled down and opened an inn after losing a hand to a 'boggart bite.' Originally in Sandpoint as a guard on a merchant wagon coming for the festival. Currently 'Lady Rannick.' Tressa - Female Elven Cleric/Spherewalker. Rapier and starknife wielder. Originally in Sandpoint to assist with the festival and study at the temple there. Very, very tired of seeing priestess, temples, and worshipers of Lameshtu, and very, very hopeful that she'll do something to earn a vist from 'the big butterfly.'
The biggest winners in the NPC department for our campaign have been: Shayliss Vinder - Currently the apprentice to the party sorcerer (who she tried and failed to seduce), and the lover of absolutely no one. Functions as the originator of an unending stream of comments on the vagrancies of the adventuring life [Last session's best quote, after being blinded, repeatedly acquiring the nauseated condition, reduced in size to Small, and then reduced *again* to Tiny: "What the f--k? No, that's not making it anymore. What do you say when 'what the f--k' isn't making it anymore?"] and non-sequiters. Brodert Quink - Believed by the party to be a secret mask-wearing crimelord known as 'the Quasit' but still gone to because he's got the Thassilonian knowledge they need. I played up the discrepancy about there not being a listed academic institution in Magnimar and he 'admitted' to being an amateur when pressed... and then, once the players came up with the whole 'masked crimelord' thing, I couldn't *not* run with it. Daelyn Andosana [renamed and regendered Shaelyn] - Involved with the party fighter who wound up being ennobled and being 'gifted' with Fort Rannnick. (I have two male and two female players, and the males set themselves up with other NPCs so I reconfigured Shaelyn to appeal to the other half of my player-team.] Deadly with a bow, but keeps getting his rear handed to him once the fight moves to melee. Ameiko Kaijutsu - Now married to the party rogue/swashbuckler after a hysterical courtship where everyone (including Shayliss) was simultaneously playing Cyrano de Bergerac for him without consulting each other. The rogue wound up adopting her family name on marrying her. The Sandpoint Devil - No, really! They heard all the stories, bought into the myth... and then started adventuring with Shayliss, who is *not* a believer, and rips the legends every time they come up. After a while, folks decided that the locals were, as she said, having them on with the 'Whinnney of Horror from out of the Fog.' Until, that is, the Devil came for the rogue one night between the Kaijutsu manor and Sandpoint and just cleaned his clock. Now he's jonesing for a rematch, and Shaylis is accusing him of making the whole thing up to play a joke on her.
Jubrayl fell by the wayside in my game after he was used by the Skinsaw Man to handle the thefts of the SM's 'beloved's' belongings, and then by the leader of the cultists in Magnimar as a cutout to kill the PCs in order to prevent them from following clues to Magnimar. He and his cronies got caught, and the survivors wound up on a prison ship to Magnimar escorted by the party for a date with some Hellknight interrogators (and were subsequently assassinated before they could spill anything incriminating). The party, however, took the notes in Nualia's papers about 'the Quasit' and ran with them, deciding that there was *another* crimelord in Sandpoint using that name who was pulling strings to get them to eliminate threats to his control of the Varisian underworld in the area. After some discussion, they fingered Sandpoint's resident Thassilonian sage, Brodert Quink, as the likely suspect for the new threat they'd conjured up. Even the discovery of the literal quasit under Sandpoint hasn't diminished their suspicions.
Personally, I'd say 'yes' as well (and I'm not role-playing and/or channeling Mr. Jacobs). To get to that point without the feat, a ranger wouldn't need to be insanely high in level anyway. At 5th level they could be +4/+4 on a favored enemy, and with Deadly Aim -2/+4. With a DEX of 18, they'd be +6/+8 on each arrow at that point, +7/+9 with Point Blank Shot if they're within 30 feet, and +5/+9 with Rapid Shot for 2 arrows per round At that point, another +1/+2 really isn't that big a deal.
My party took him and his honor guard with only one casualty, but with something like three to five instances of party members dropping to negatives and getting pulled back out by the cleric. It was a hard fight, but not unwinnable for them. The stand-out moment for me was actually not the direct Mokmurian combat, but instead when his guardian stone giant snatched up the group sorcerer and began to use him as a club to whale on the rest of the party.
Wraithstrike has the right of it, I believe. Lower-level bosses can be simple and straightforward fighters and the like without compromising playability, but once PC's start to accumulate serious ability, they simply fall by the wayside as major threats. Granted, if the level boss at the end of Runelords was a CR 21 fighter, for example, he'd likely wipe out half of the party or more, maybe even all of them if equipped correctly, but he'd frankly be boring. Players - mine at least - expect that anyone they've build that long to confront is somebody *special* and not just a guy with a sword.
IIRC, they state in the Runelords material - last module I think - that *all* of the other Runelords survived the destruction of Thassilon just like Karzog did, through the use of their own 'escape hatch' plans. Check 'Spires of Zin-Shalast' and see if it's there. They mention how several of the others survived and await awakening.
I've generally handwaved the trips for the most part (deduct money for supplies and expenses with a random die roll to reflect whether they went over or under budget on the trip) unless the group was stopping in a town and wanted to do something there, or I had a side-quest adventure planned that hit them in said location. My guys aren't that interested in the minutia of planning long trips - they want do things. If your guys aren't advancing along the experience track in pace with the adventure path's benchmarks, monster encounters can help, but I've never been a big fan of the things as a player or GM so I tend to place small side quests (defend a Varisian caravan; settle a dispute caused by a girl eloping with someone from the wrong side of the tracks; help a fey out by eliminating something that's moved into her woods, etc) to fill the same experience-building niche and give the group more flavor for their XP.
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