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So here is my question to fellow GMs and the staff at Paizo: By the time the PCs become high enough level (say, after Assault on Longshadow), what is to stop them from leading an attack to liberate Phaendar and its surviving enslaved inhabitants from the Ironfang Legion’s clutches? The reason I ask is because if I was playing a character with deep connections to Phaendar, my goal would be to liberate my hometown. Or, if taking Phaendar would be too costly, at the very least staging a rescue of its enslaved inhabitants and bring them to safer territory. By the time the players are finished with Assault on Longshadow, and assuming they have achieved victory, the PCs are now at 11th or perhaps even 12th level. They are no longer on the run and surviving by the skin of their teeth. Presuming that things went as well as they could have during the siege, they have the economically prosperous town of Longshadow in their pocket; the refugees from the first AP are safe either in their forest hold or in Longshadow; the Chernasardo rangers are behind them; and many inhabitants of Longshadow realize the Ironfang legion is definitely a long-term threat, and may be willing to join the PCs going far afield in order to stop the Legion from ever threatening their homes and loved ones again. Presuming the players use the Militia Rules, they should have a fairly well-established militia with teams to carry out their goals across southern Nirmathas. And by this time, the PCs are responsible for having crushed an Ironfang army, killing, capturing and scattering over two thousand hobgoblin soldiers and their allies. If they did superlatively well during the siege, it is likely that the PCs might be more than a little drunk off their own victory (or may simply wish to capitalize on their success) and itching to take the fight to the Ironfang Legion. With all that in mind, it certainly isn’t unreasonable to think that many PCs forced to flee in the first AP as their hometown burned around them and their friends and loved ones were killed or dragged into slavery will be either be (1) hopeful that they can rescue the surviving enslaved people of Phaendar and (2) thirsty for revenge, and now have the power and wherewithal to exact it. What are some possible rewards for capturing the newly fortified citadel of Phaendar? What would the challenges be? Are there any modules out there that could give a GM like myself some ideas of assaulting/infiltrating a heavily fortified base to rescue hundreds of civilians? Or would such an idea be overly disruptive, derailing the campaign as the Adventure Path is written if the PCs did so? If Phaendar is practically a hopeless deathtrap at this point, what are some good ideas to discourage headstrong PCs from rushing headlong to their doom? ...OR am I getting ahead of myself and a section in one of the upcoming APs has been devoted to carefully detailing the possibility of retaking Phaendar and rescuing its people?
A little while ago, I was in a discussion about Chaotic Neutral exemplar outsider races, such as Proteans, Chaos Beasts, and Slaad. My thoughts on these races are simply this: The writers do not appear to know what to do with them. Slaad and, to a lesser degree, Proteans, are portrayed as races of violently insane psychotics who will rip your arms off, beat you over the head with them, and then transform your quivering remains into prismatic horrors as an afterthought. In essence, they behave just like demons, but Smite Evil does not work on them. And this seems to be how they are written almost every single time. They are almost invariably violent psychotics. While this is certainly one way to go, and could be one aspect of Chaotic Neutral outsiders, I would imagine that there would be a greater deal of variety with races that are literal representations of entropy. So I am curious, how do other gamers portray them, or believe they should be portrayed? Or are Chaotic Neutral races being constantly and violently psychotic really the only practicable way to go?
Hey guys, I wanted to pick the brains of the community who have played/run Serpent's Skull. One of the most interesting features of the game is, of course, the lost city of Saventh-Yhi. However, the books surrounding this magnificent location are a tad threadbare as to the contents of the dungeons below the city ruins (at least from what I have read thus far). My player group is generally very exploration-hungry, and would probably expect massive dungeons existing below the ruins, and perhaps even find the sacred tomb of Savith herself. With this in mind, I was wondering if anyone had suggestions as to a good Mega-Dungeon that could be woven into the campaign and would work well with the whole "Lost City" vibe of Saventh-Yhi?
I just wanted to have a little spirited discussion and brainstorm with the community here. For those of you who have read the background history of the Drow inthe Second Darkness AP, Into the Darklands, and the Advanced Race Guide, there are a few things we know about the Drow: First, Drow culture revolves around deception, cruelty, demon-worship, and capricious acts of sadism, which is expressed against all races including other drow. Second, everyone who has discovered their society and has encountered them hates them due to their extraordinarily cruelty, and they are constantly fighting against other races in the Darklands for supremacy. Third, Drow are constantly assassinating one another, with matriarchs of the various houses killing other matriarchs, younger nobles murdering senior nobles in order to advance in station, and drow male and females being flesh-warped into driders and other monstrosities for real or imagined slights or for simple amusement. In other words, the Drow show little to no solidarity with one another; Drow simply hate each other, distrust each other, and kill each other for any number of reasons (or no reason at all). The closest real-life analogue to living in drow society would be living in the most violent unregulated prison on earth. With that in mind, we must remember a few things about elves, and drow in particular. First, elves take over a century to reach adulthood; the longest time to mature out of any current playable race. Second, even after a century taken to reach maturity, they are still novices. It takes many more years, decades, and even centuries for the Drow to master their crafts as wizards, clerics, and warriors. Every time a matriarch, demonic cleric, or senior military commander is killed, centuries of institutional knowledge is wiped out. Each of these drow leaders is worth their weight in gold not merely for their abilities, but for the sheer time it took them to achieve their powers. And this is what really confused me about how the drow as a society and culture are written. You see, I understand how a constantly in-fighting chaotic evil race such as orcs have managed to survive extinction despite the way they were written: Because they breed in litters, with a gestation period of only six months, and they reach full physical maturity in just twelve years (according to canon). Thus, even though orcs are constantly killing and dying by the truckload, there is always a huge new generation of orcs on the cusp of maturity. If one orcish warlord kills another orcish warlord, there are many more up-and-coming orcs who can take his place. The Drow have no such advantage. Each time a drow leader is murdered by another drow in a moment of pique or caprice, the race is made all the weaker because there is no one who can immediately replace that person. Unless the drow are uniquely fecund, with each drow female birthing dozens or even hundreds of children during her lifetime, I do not understand how drow society would be able to survive such immense self-inflicted attrition. I contend that if any race behaved in such a manner while in the midst of a sea of enemies that hated them, that race would have been conquered and enslaved or utterly exterminated long before they became a threat to people living on the surface. So all this leads up to the question: How on Earth have the Drow managed to keep from going extinct in spite of their constant infighting and murdering? I welcome any theories, speculation, or explanation from the authors!
Hello everyone, I plan on starting Shattered Star soon, and one of the things that has spurred me to pick this Adventure Path over others is the PCs adventuring to Kaer Maga. Having read the third chapter of the Scenario, my one complaint would be its brevity. I was wondering, does anyone know of any good Pathfinder Scenarios/modules that take place in Kaer Maga that I could incorporate into the campaign?
Alright, I just had a quick question regarding the two main human ethnic groups of Brevoy, i.e., the Issians and the Rostlanders. From what I understand, the human of Rostland are mainly of Taldan decent, speak Taldan (Common), worship Taldan gods, tend towards Taldan cultural norms, etc. But what about the Issians? I realize that they are a northern people, but which particular group specifically? Would they be considered Ulfen or Kellid groupo? Personally, because they are known for raiding and using ships, as well as seeming to have a more traditional feudal societal structure, I was leaning towards Ulfen subculture, but I could be wrong.
So, for those of you ladies and gentlemen who have read Stolen Lands and have seen the Stag Lord's backstory, do you believe that redemption is possible for the character? Is it a desirable outcome? Or is the Stag Lord such a self-loathing misanthrope that you believe any attempt to bring him to goodness (or at least try to convert him from evil to neutral) would be futile? I mean, if the Stag Lord could be redeemed he would make a fantastic addition to the government of the new Kingdom that the PCs build (probably as the Royal Assassin/Enforcer). If and when I run Kingmaker, I plan on making the Stag Lord's redemption a possibility, if the players desire to do so. Any thoughts on the matter?
The reason I ask is that one of the bigger game book distributors (Alliance) has none of it left in stock, and hasn't for a very long while. I checked with two separate game stores in the general area. Perhaps it is the fault with the distributor itself. I do not know how Paizo's printing system works for its hardbound books, or how Paizo provides its books to distributors. I am seriously curious as to when the Inner Sea World Guide will be printed again for distributors to carry.
After reading the discussion on Sexism in the Games Industry with Jessica Price, I came to the realization that many people have already had: Namely, there are very, very few memorable and compelling female characters in games, at least in terms of compelling playable characters. I find this to be especially true in the case of video games. We find this all the time in electronic games: Female characters in many games often exist to be (1) rescued by the protagonist, (2) killed off so that the main character (most of the time a male) can enact his revenge upon the killer(s) or (3) in a support role with varying degrees of effectiveness/ineffectiveness. And when you actually do get to play female character, most of the time they are very poorly characterized such that one cannot relate to them(Lara Croft in most of the Tomb Raider games, Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII), overly sexualized to the point that their sexual nature seems to be the only facet of their personality (Bayonetta, Lara Croft again to a lesser degree, and every fighting game female character ever), OR worst of all they are made to affect the worst aspects of masculine characters (Rubi from "Wet"). There are notable exceptions to this of course, but overall I find that there is a dearth of interesting female characters whose story I would want to explore further. This is not to say that there aren't problems with poor writing in general when it comes to male characters (Marcus Fenix from Gears of War strikes me as an apt example). However, because there are fewer female protagonists than there are male protagonists in general, and of those, the majority fall into the prior categories, we are generally left with few female game characters that most people would truly relish playing as. My question is what can be done about changing the paradigm? Does anything need to be changed? Perhaps I am tilting at windmills? As far as I am concerned, Paizo has done some of the best work when it comes to making compelling female game characters whose stories actually draw you in. So I guess it should also be asked what makes a female character interesting or compelling to both a male and female audience, such that a person would want to play as that character if given the opportunity? What should be focused on? What should be avoided?
I was reading up on Kaer Maga in "City of Stranger", and perhaps I overlooked some things, but this is how I see the city: The city is shaped like a gigantic hexagon. The outer "ring" of this hexagon is covered by a large, fortified roof. The outer ring consists of multiple levels, making it essentially a singular multi-storied building (kind of like the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.). A portion of the hexagon's outer ring has collapsed in on itself, forming what is now a shopping district. Another portion of the hexagon's outer ring's inner levels have collapsed on themselves, so that buildings are built on the remaining tiers. My questions: if I have the architecture of Kaer Maga correct, (1) exactly how many "levels" does the outer ring consist of? (2) And how high are the levels from floor to ceiling? I can imagine that some of the levels are more tall than others, since Kaer Maga once acted as Shalast's version of Alcatraz and some of the larger, non-human prisoners required more space than others. And (3), like most modern prisons, were the multiple levels/tiers open air, or did the floor of the upper level cover the lower levels as their ceilings? Help would be appreciated, because I want to soon run some adventures for my players in Kaer Maga, and I want to be able to explain the architecture to them.
Hey guys, I'm going to be running the Carrion Crown Adventure Path shortly, but with a slight deviation in the storyline. It will take place either after Part Four of Five of Carrion Crown, and involves agents of the Whispering Way trying to distract the PCs from stopping their nefarious plot by instigating one of the Orcish clans of Belkzen to break through Bleakwall and lay siege to the capital of the Palatinate of Casterwall: the fortress-town of Tamrivena. The heroic PCs are naturally forced to break off their quest to help stop this more immediate threat (or they may deal with it on the way back). I came up with the idea from the Pathfinder Rival Guide, when I decided to use the Night Harrows as some of the primary antagonists in the AP. We're told in the Rival Guide that the vampire Vesnic Demicci has an Orcish warlord named Kourzek in his thrall. Meanwhile, in Rule of Fear, the entry for Tamrivena states that there are rumors of an Orcish attack being imminent. I simply decided to simply make Kourzek the warlord known as the "Flayed Skull." I have been wanting to bring some slightly more traditional fantasy elements into this AP, and Orcs can still be quite horrific if they are handled correctly. I also did not want to waste such an opportunity since the Hold of Belkzen is Ustalav's next-door neighbor. The main problem that I am faced with is my lack of creativity and imagination when it comes to actually executing such a grandiose diversion. Long story short, I need a module that centers around a siege of a fortified town, city or castle, even if it is from an earlier edition of D&D, as long as it can be converted. If it involves a siege by orcs or other vicious monster race, all the better. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Hey guys, I'm going to be running the Carrion Crown Adventure Path shortly, but with a slight deviation in the storyline. It involves agents of the Whispering Way trying to distract the PCs from stopping their nefarious plot by instigating one of the Orcish clans of Belkzen to break through Bleakwall and lay siege to the fortress-town of Tamrivena. The PCs are naturally forced to break off their quest to stop this more immediate problem. The main problem that I am faced with is my lack of creativity and imagination when it comes to actually executing such a grandiose diversion. Long story short, I need a module that centers around a siege of a fortified town, city or castle, even if it is from an earlier edition of D&D, as long as it can be converted easily. If it involves a siege by orcs or other vicious monster race, all the better. Does anyone have any recommendations? 
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