Mary Yamato's page

A number of people have commented that the PCs are unlikely to see module #6 coming, as the clues are subtle.

I like to do foreshadowing as a GM, and I have a player who is *all over* subtle clues and proactively pursues them. As a result, the PCs have known about Nyrissa in some detail since module 2. We are now at the transition between modules 3 and 4, and their awareness of Nyrissa is coloring everything they do.

At first I thought this had been a terrible mistake, because Nyrissa is an awful thing for low-level PCs to contemplate dealing with. The player and I did some brainstorming, and decided that we needed (a) a timeline for Nyrissa's attack, so they'd know it wasn't tomorrow, (b) concrete things to do to prepare for it early on, (c) a setup in which they knew for a fact Nyrissa couldn't physically come after them, nor they after her, until her appointed time.

Once we had those in place--Nyrissa will show up in 6.5 years, and can act only through intermediates until then--the player knowledge started to be a big asset. Without it, the PCs would be working on conquering Brevoy, which is not the game I wanted to run. With it, the PCs will put off that plan until post-Nyrissa, which suits me just fine. The threat of Nyrissa is giving focus and context to a lot of their kingdom-building and alliance-building efforts. I invented some ancient Nyrissa-stopping events, and the PCs are exploring to find relics of that period; this has helped keep the exploration game (which peters out after module 2, in my opinion) fresh and purposeful.

There's always a fear that knowing about the BBG too early will lead either to a catastrophic failure of PC morale (this happened to us in _Shackled City_) or a disastrously premature attack (this kept trying to happen in _Rise of the Runelords_). But if Nyrissa is not accessible until "the stars are right", the PCs can focus on hounding out her minions (hello, Irovetti!) and getting their kingdom shipshape in the meantime. And by the time they face her, she will not be a nameless foe; they'll know a lot about her and that should make the final conflict more meaningful.

One thing I will definitely add is an attempt to sway the PC King the way she went after other local male leaders. It's inexplicable why she doesn't do this (except that it is hard to handle in a module for unknown PCs) and I think I can get some good drama out of it. It won't be Nyrissa in the flesh, of course, as she can't in our setup: but Nyrissa in dreams or by proxy is already quite a visitor.

Overall, I think it works to have the PCs know, at least if there is a clear date. It would have been hard to set that date in the modules because kingdoms develop at different rates, but by somewhere around Varnhold the GM should know about this and be able to set the date appropriately.

If your players have a detective/planning orientation, as mine does, I recommend this route.

House Rogarvia is gone. House Surtova, which natively held the northeast corner of Brevoy, has taken its place with a very unstable regency. But Rogarvia's House holdings were in southwest Brevoy, near Restov.

Is Surtova directly holding all that land? It seems extraordinary implausible. Has it been taken by one or more of the adjacent Houses? Has Surtova pushed some minor family into Great House status in order to fill the void?

The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that if *someone* hadn't been put in charge in the old Rogarvia holdings, they would now be in open rebellion. It's been several years in our campaign already, and Nature abhors a vacuum, especially a power vacuum.

This matters to our campaign because we are seeing way more involvement with Brevoy than in the main line. The PCs just helped manage the liberation of Restov and its return to Free City status. I was all set to run the three-corner negotiation between the Restovites (who don't trust the PCs' future intentions) and the local Great House, when I found out that there *is* no local Great House. Oops!

Honestly, if the very Rostlander House Lebeda was now in control of the old Rogarvian holdings as well as their own, I think they would secede and form a Rostlander nation. That isn't what I want for my campaign, yet. Medvyed isn't much better, and does not sound well placed to take over the SW anyway. I ended up inventing an Issian minor house, Ostrov, pushed into prominence by the Surtovas.

Has anyone else spent enough time in Brevoy to have worked this through? I have an answer for my game, but would be interested in others' views.

These are my own ideas and may contradict things Paizo has published, but perhaps they'll be of use to someone.

Time

The Underdark drow long ago lost the concepts of days, seasons, and years. The one meaningful measure of time is the spell-cycle; the amount of time that must pass before you can renew your spells. A tenth-cycle is the common unit of daily time (about 2.4 hours). A hundred cycles is about a season; a thousand cycles is about three years; Zirnakaynin has existed for around three hundred thousand cycles.

No one has the *same* spell cycle, though. There is no active/inactive pattern in the city; it's always more or less active. (After all, drow don't sleep, and there is nothing to gain from having everyone meditate at the same time--it just makes the group vulnerable.)

Even otherwise polite drow are not at all punctual, with a few exceptions in the wizarding subculture. If they arrive during the right tenth-cycle that's close enough. People have servants to deal with too-early guests or business contacts, after all.

Drow are very aware of events in their history, but often extremely fuzzy on how long ago those events happened. Whether something is ten thousand or twenty thousand cycles ago doesn't matter much, especially when that's outside a particular drow's lifespan.

This is a good place for small PC slip-ups.

Drow Males

The Underdark sourcebook says that males are little better than slaves, but Zirnakaynin doesn't support this--there are way too many males in positions of power. (Starting with the head of one House and the acting head of another, but also chief arcanists, guard commanders, etc. Almost everything but priests.)

I think female drow grasp that males can be very capable. But there's a stereotype of male drow as frivolous, relatively unambitious, and not good at grasping the big picture or making long-term plans. They need female direction to be at their best. On the other hand, they are less ambitious than females, therefore safer in some respects, and a good choice for dull mid-level positions.

None of this is necessarily true, but it's widely believed by both males and females--and ambitious males use it to conceal their ambition, which is how I think the Patron of Caldrana got where he is.

Neighborhood Structure

There are no power vacuums in drow society. The Great Houses exert direct control over some parts of Zirnakaynin (for example, Vexidyre over the Pale Market) but everywhere else the role is taken by neighborhood bosses of various kinds, often with overlapping domains. These people enforce the basic order necessary to allow a dense city to function, though they are more like the crimelords of Riddleport than like conventional authorities.

Many of these are organized as little Houses. If one of the Great Houses were to fall, these would jockey to take its place. Chayt Gardens is perhaps the most logical current candidate. Banking is an unfilled niche at the moment.

The House structure comes naturally to drow, as they are marginally more able to trust their relatives than to trust anyone else. (There's a sense of "You may betray me, but you're not going to do it in a way that will ruin the House" and this gives a little predictability that smooths business relationships.)

"Relatives" always involves a lot of adoption as well as birth. No drow House of any size is composed mainly of blood relatives. But House membership *matters* to drow emotionally, even if they are adopted. This is as true of tiny organizations like street gangs as it is of the Great Houses--though most drow would betray their birth organization if it got them Great House status.

Up and Down

It's clear from looking at Zirnakaynin that up is the direction of high status and down of low status. The image of "clawing up from the streets" is a powerful one in drow thinking, and it's a literal climb, from the hell-pit of Rosgirnan to the heights of Eirdresseir. Even House Vonnarc is organized with the top people unequivocally on top. (Does this help keep them away from burrowing monsters?)

This is a significant part of why people who may never have seen a surface elf, or the surface, in their entire lives still hate them so much. Just by existing where they do, the surface elves are staking a claim to being higher status than drow! Most drow have never really thought about this, but it flavors their feelings.

Fertility

Drow are much more fertile than surface elves, perhaps comparable to humans. This hasn't always been the case, and one root of the matriarchy is the extreme value of fertile females during the early years--males were expendable, females were not. (Hence the "Council of Widows". Most drow today couldn't tell you what "widow" means, other than "councillor", as they don't marry. But the name stands.)

A creature as long-lived as an elf and as fertile as a human will overpopulate without high mortality, but that's not a problem in the given environment. Drow children are valued, but not in anything like the obsessive way that elf children are. Drow adolescents are preliminary adults, and treated as such. They can be rather dangerous, as they're as aggressive as their elders and have less common sense. More easily manipulated, though.

Mary

Various places in Endless Night describe "guards": at the gates, and as street patrols in the random encounter table. I'm wondering who these are, given the lack of city government.

I see four possibilities, but I'm curious which one(s) the designers had in mind:

(1) One of the Great Houses (presumably Rasivrein or possibly Vesidyre) is in charge of city patrols and of the heavy military needed to protect Zirnakaynin from the continual outside assaults mentioned in the sourcebook. This would seem to give that House too much power relative to the others.

(2) The Great Houses conjointly supply the military. If so, it must have an internal command structure, and it would be interesting to know where that's based (Ileccinoc, I suppose) and what it's like, as it's a weakness in the House system.

(3) There isn't a standing military--the Houses raise their own forces in case of an attack. The "patrols" on the streets come from whoever has power in that bit of town--Vesidyre in the Pale Market, Caldrana in Rygirnan, crime bosses in various areas not under tight control. I don't know where the gate guards come from in that case.

(4) There really is a city bureacracy capable of posting guards, even though it lacks House status. Presumably it's a kind of headless hydra, with low-level power and authority but totally at the whim of the Council of Widows.

I went with a combo of (2) and (3). Guards at the Gates rotate among the Houses (currently it's Vesidyre), as do guards at key internal locations needed to staunch riots or major attacks. But every "neighborhood" has someone in power, and that person or group also patrols their turf. My PCs are living in Orvignato's turf, and see his enforcers pretty often. Not far from them is the much more heavily policed Market with Vesidyre enforcers; a little further away is Sinocoscriel with a local crime boss who in fact reports secretly to Vonnarc.

(It really matters in our game; my player has gotten very political in Zirnakaynin.)

Mary

After much head-scratching, we decided to run _Second
Darkness_ "backwards": PCs as direct agents of the
Winter Council from the start. This was the best way we
could find to solve motivation and information problems
throughout the AP. (Thank you to tbug for this idea.)

The PCs were three relatives from a town in the deep
Mieriani: two elves, and a drow raised as an elf (an
experiment on her community's part). The elves were
a cleric/ranger and a ranger/fighter; the drow was a
wizard/bard. They were much higher level than intended
for the modules, but somewhat suboptimally multi-classed.
We felt that Winter Council agents should be pretty capable
people, and we wanted to reduce the pressure to optimize.

Shadow in the Sky:

I gave Riddleport an elven agent of the Winter Council,
Kytel, and made him Samaritha's father as well as a
friend/relative of the PCs. We intended from the start
that Samaritha would end up as a permanent party NPC.
I made a timetable of enemy actions, ending with Kytel's
kidnapping by Saul and sale to Depora about five days
before the PCs' arrival. The PCs were in town to follow up
on reports of freaks of nature, and also to check on Kytel.

The PCs followed out the clue chains, confronted Saul to
find out what had happened, went after Depora and captured
her. (My PCs always capture people and interrogate them,
so the "BBG diary" elements are irrelevant.) Most of the
module went unused; the PCs were totally uninterested
in the Gold Goblin. That was okay by me as I did not
want to have them commit when the upcoming modules leave
Riddleport permanently. We did have a bit of wererat
politics, but basically this was a short mystery scenario.

The starfall and subsequent chaos in the city was very
nice. I had no use for "St. Crispian" and thought it
was dull.

Children of the Void:

As written this module starts several weeks after the
previous one ends. My player didn't let that happen; as
soon as it became clear where the star had hit, the PCs
were in the ship market. To my amusement, they came up
with the same plan as one of the crimelords--nab the first
ship to hit harbor--and when I rolled for relative timing,
the PCs were there *just* before the crimelord and sailed
off in his ship. (The PCs had set this up by recruiting
unemployed sailors in advance, so that when they took the
ship, they had a crew for it.)

However, the PCs "knew" that there must be a major drow
stronghold on Devil's Elbow, and believed they couldn't
handle this without backup from the Council. So they
attempted to prevent all other groups from reaching Devil's
Elbow until their backup arrived. This led to a lot of
ship combat. Thank goodness for "Teeth of Araska"--I
desperately needed those ship maps and sailor stats.
Most useful side adventure ever!

The PCs went out as far as Devil's Elbow and captured
the drow transport (this ship must presumably exist
though it is never mentioned--"Teeth of Araska" again.)
With their two-ship fleet they then fenced with all four
of the other groups trying to reach Devil's Elbow, and due
to spellcaster concentration were able to drive them back.
(They sent Zincher's ship a note that said "I prepared
Explosive Runes this morning." Boom.) The Cyphermages
tried again with a more prepared expedition and the PCs
let them through, figuring it would be too dangerous to
stop them.

It became apparent that having the PCs leave Riddleport
permanently after this module would not be a problem, as
they are now personae non grata in Riddleport. (Though a
lot of folks love them for embarrassing the crimelords.)

Finally the PCs' backup arrived--six rangers and two
wizards from Crying Leaf--and they went back to Devil's
Elbow. Nothing ran as in the module, of course, since
most of the factions had never arrived. But the PCs
straightforwardly beat the akata and drow. They found
Kytel in Shindiira's collection, badly psychologically
scarred. They couldn't touch the demon, so it escaped.
They negotiated with the siren and freed her lover's ghost
much as expected. They then collected all the people who
knew too much about drow (mainly, the crew of the drow
ship) and headed off for an Elven community where they
could be brainwashed.

(I don't love brainwashing, but you have to assume the
Elves do it, or this whole secret thing is not going to
be sustainable.)

The Armageddon Echo:

I tried to run "Requiem for Crystal Rains" as a stand-alone
in the mountains outside the Mieriani, but the PCs were
having none of it. They bypassed it and marched the human
sailors to their hometown, Findaladlara's Watch, north
of Celwynvian--I positioned that town as the main HQ of
anti-drow efforts in the Mieriani. In town they learned
that drow had taken a Shin-Rakorath patrol recently, and
also that the town was seeing a lot of haunts. They were
asked to go after the patrol and see if it could be saved.

Halfway to Celwynvian they found that a powerful faery
had hit the drow-and-prisoners party and taken an elf
and a drow, charming them to see if they could be made
to get along. They extracted the elf and uncharmed her,
then fought the faery and her animals until she withdrew.
They hope to deal with her later. I was trying to touch
on a key character question here: can drow be redeemed?
Are they always evil, at least if raised among drow?
Will the drow PC go bad the way her fellows do? What kind
of evil does drow evil entitle us to commit in response?

There was also a subplot about Kytel's attempts to decide
a proper revenge on Shindiira, touching on the same themes.

The PCs trailed the rest of the drow, with prisoners,
into Celwynvian itself. They bypassed the set-piece
locations, hit a random encounter which triggered a patrol
which triggered a second patrol (quite a long fight but
never in doubt) and then went in to the Academy of Arts,
still trailing the prisoners. They eventually ended up
fighting everything at the Academy at once.

This didn't go well. The player was in military mode,
but the Academy is not set up as a rational military
base--it's a dungeon instead, and he didn't realize that
quickly enough. He lost his wizard to the fireball trap
and Samaritha to the vrock. I disliked this dungeon very
much--I should have rewritten it as a drow base camp.
It contributed to an unpleasant sense that nothing in
Celwynvian was real. I was starting to see a lot of
no-roleplaying combat mode from my player, which was
disappointing after pretty good roleplaying earlier.

We had a metagame discussion of how to proceed, and I
ended up having the PCs' sponsor on the Winter Council,
Perelir, arrive to raise the dead characters. There was
an interesting conversation between Perelir and the drow
PC: Perelir sees this PC as a test case for whether her
friend Allevrah can possibly be redeemed.

The PCs asked Perelir and her bodyguards for help
clearing out the Echo. They went in through the Gate,
located Novelniss, and fought an inconclusive battle at
the Observatory. They were convinced that there were far
more drow than there actually are, so when they were badly
hurt they withdrew without finishing Novelniss. (They also
expected he'd be 14th level--it's a logical deduction from
the fireball trap. An unpleasant false clue.)

They captured Arkaxis the assassin and questioned him
with charm magic. I reasoned that Novelniss is a terrible
commander and a smart assassin like Arkaxis would resent
that. So he was willing to deal for his life, and the
PCs recruited him for the greater goal of getting into
Zirnakaynin. This touched nicely on the "can drow ever
be trusted?" theme. Reassured that Novelniss was not 14
level, the PCs went back and trashed him.

Future directions:

I expect that we will now do some mutant version of
_Endless Night_, but I am waiting to hear the PCs' planning
session with Arkaxis before I decide if the House writeup
I'm given will stand in for Vonnarc or Azrinae. I have to
think hard about the Winter Council intrigue here. I don't
want Perelir to go to Zirnakaynin; the easiest explanation
is that she has a dangerous enemy on the Council and cannot
afford to (a) be gone a long time and (b) be suspected
of being in league with Allevrah. She isn't telling that
latter to the PCs, of course, so I need to figure out what
she does tell them. It's lucky that the PCs accept her
authority to order them to Zirnakaynin, because frankly I
am not sure they would go otherwise; they think it should
be done by top-rank Winter Council operatives. It hasn't
dawned on them how close to top rank they themselves are.

The AP makes coherent sense with the PCs working for the
Winter Council; personally, I can't see myself making
it work with the "standard" setup so I'm glad we ran it
backwards. I don't know how the fifth part will work out.
I need to come up with a diplomatic goal for the PCs in
their interactions with the ruins of the Winter Council.
The module as written has nothing useful for the PCs to do,
which my player will not tolerate.

I may try to have the PCs gain a lot more levels in
Zirnakaynin, so that if _Memory_ is mostly skipped they
will be of the correct level for _Midnight_. But it's a
pity not to involve Winter Council PCs in the resolution
of the Winter Council situation. We'll see what happens
in Zirnakaynin.

I wonder if Perelir still believes that Allevrah is trying
to call down Earthfall *on the drow*? That misconception
could bear fruit here.

Consider this:

The PCs find their way into the drow city, and must now decide on a course of action. They have in hand an offer to become bottom-level agents of a drow house, but it's the wrong house.

I can't predict if they'll bite or not. I rather suspect they won't, because the chance that they'll be detected goes up *so* much if they are in daily close contact with the drow.

Even if they do bite, though, they have no way to know that persevering in the service of their House will get them what they want. It's the wrong House, after all, and drow Houses are very secretive, so why should anyone there know what they need to know?

It seems inevitable to me that a proactive PC party will raid Azrinae, looking for the information they actually need. Which will be unfortunate, as that will have to be made up from scratch. Azrinae is supposed to be mostly abandoned but heavily defended. Frankly, I don't feel up to designing it from scratch. And by this level, it is not feasible to give the PCs a quick warn-off; their resources are very extensive.

I like the PCs-as-drow-house-members idea; it's what attracted me to SD initially. I fear, however, that the PCs won't do it. I may have to resort to telling the player, "This is what the module expects, please stick with it" because the alternative of statting up Azrinae is beyond my resources, and I can't imagine that they wouldn't go there. (Or, if Azrinae itself is a dead end, go after the Azrinae drow, which is an even worse outcome.)

My other difficulty is that if the PCs do obtain the information, they will tend to go after Allevrah immediately. We had this at the end of RotRL #4 too. The PCs knew who their foe was, and other than levels, there was no reason not to strike. But RotRL #5 and SD #5 both require the PCs to diverge from this plan and for reasons that are not obvious to me. (The premise of RotRL #5 is that the PCs will obtain essential tools by digressing. Unfortunately the AP structure, meant to allow the modules to be run independently, almost guarantees that there will *not* be essential tools in one module needed for the next. That's the case here as well.)

Mary

Having read the first episode and the summaries in the back, I am very doubtful that I can make this campaign work as written, and I'd appreciate some feedback.

The PCs are repeatedly asked to do things for various NPCs. In the first module, at least, the motivation to do this is fairly lightweight. Almost always, the NPCs proceed to betray the PCs; I'd say the PCs are likely to feel very stupid for trusting them.

In my estimation, when the game hits the elven hostility and imprisonment of the PCs, my campaign will tank irrecoverably. I expect my player will be very angry, mostly at me--seesawing back and forth between "You're jerking me around so that I can't get any NPC help" and "How can they possibly be so STUPID?" The fact that this will be at least the third betrayal (if I am interpreting the summaries correctly) will be salt in the wounds. It's going to look to my player like his reward for being cooperative with the plot as written is getting screwed over and over.

How do the authors see this campaign arc as working? Other than the need to save the world, what is going to motivate the players to continue? (Please notice that I am asking about *players*. The PCs may have strong motivations, but if the players don't care anymore, the game dies.)

What kind of PCs do people see for this game? They need to be willing to be small-time crooks for a dirty employer in the first episode, but decide that they're saving the world, no matter how little it wants to be saved, within a couple of modules. I don't know what to tell my player. Noble characters who would do well with the elves are likely to refuse the first module. Shady characters are going to have a horrible time with the elves.

I must be missing something here--some idea about the emotional arc of the campaign. Any suggestions appreciated. I had been planning to run it but now I'm not sure I can.

Mary

My GM did a loose adaptation of Delvedeep's Demonskar Ball writeup (meant for SCAP) for CotCT. We ended up toning down the competitive set-pieces, but the ball itself was a good concept.

It led to one of my favorite character moments so far. The PC party leader Lashalla, a young woman of the lower nobility, has been cherishing fond dreams about Glorio Arkona's unmarried state. She was trying to nerve herself to ask him to dance, and not quite succeeding. Finally she got up the nerve, only to see him dancing with someone else: a pretty blonde girl who looked oddly familiar--

--in fact, the party illusionist, who had changed his apparent gender without changing much of anything else, so that it was quite clear who s/he was. (Not many blondes in Korvosa!)

She's furious, and plotting revenge. Glorio, I think, is just amused. (He gave the young wizard a sufficiently good groping that he surely knows he's a boy, but didn't seem to mind.)

We are not doing the plague, but for those who are, lavish balls held while the city is going to hell outside are a perfectly reasonable trope. Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" springs to mind.

Mary

It's possible to work out from the APs that the domain of Greed covered much of Varisia, Wrath is sunk off the west coast of Varisia, and Lust was south Varisia and some drowned areas south of that. Where were the others? I have a PC who was born in the lands of Pride, and he really wants to know where that is.

He's a reborn Vraxeris from RotRL #5, and according to the art he's blond; this might suggest that Pride was in the north, around the modern Lands of the Linnorm Kings.

Mary

"Domain [or school] powers which mimic spells are spell-like abilities; the others are supernatural."

This means that the base school and domain powers are always supernatural abilities: cannot be dispelled, do not provoke attacks of opportunity, never require Concentration (now Spellcraft) checks, are not subject to Spell Immunity or Spell Turning or Spell Resistance, and have no components of any kind (and can thus be cast in Silence, while grappled, bound, gagged, etc.)

I'm pretty uncomfortable about adding so many widely available supernatural abilities to PC classes. I would much prefer it if these things were defined as spell-like abilities (and given a proper spell writeup). How can Legendary Charm be removed, for example, given that it can't be dispelled?

Also, as supernatural abilities with no further specification, these abilities don't fall under specific types of magic. The blindness effect of the wizard's Illusion school, for example (p. 48) isn't an illusion (and will presumably, therefore, affect creatures immune to illusions). The daze-like effect of the Enchantment school (p. 47) is similarly not an enchantment. Legendary Charm is not an enchantment! As a GM this makes me very uneasy.

I didn't care for the trend in 4e that all PC abilities have to work all the time. I think players can cope with being put at a disadvantage now and then, and it adds a lot of tactical richness. This is a small move in the 4e direction which I'd rather not take.

We have also found that if spellcasters cannot be prevented from casting by being bound and gagged, they can't reasonably be taken prisoner and it will be logical to kill them instead. This is a game-world consequence I really dislike.

Here's a vote for making all school and domain powers spell-like unless they clearly can't be mapped as spells.

Mary

For some reason I am totally unable to post to the "two more haunts needed" thread, so I will give it a try here. (I note that no one has ever managed to respond on that thread--maybe it's not just me?)

One source of additional haunts would be the dead children. We see them from their mothers' POV but we don't ever get their POV. Some ideas: toys coming alive, the death or death and reanimation of a beloved pet, a child eavesdropping on his parents and hearing something awful, monsters under the bed, an imaginary friend. The attic whisperer in RotRL #1 might provide some inspiration if you haven't used it previously.

Another possibility is that Iyesha's Varisian kin returned at some point looking for her and came to a bad end; you could do haunts related to them. A harrow-reader tearing her own eyes out, someone hacking off a part of his body to get rid of fungus infestation, that sort of thing.

Mary

After a long discussion yesterday we agreed to abandon the CotCT campaign we'd been planning, having done a couple of introductory adventures but nothing from the printed module yet.

We had two problems:

It seemed incredibly hard to get things to make sense, both in the backstory and in the adventure, and the GM, looking at the summaries of upcoming adventures, felt that this was likely to get worse rather than better.

Neither of us could, despite efforts, develop any liking for Korvosa, especially Korvosa in the grips of the described situation.

He offered to rewrite the whole thing, dropping enormous hunks of the plot, but it just seemed like too much work to be worthwhile--we use APs so that we can spend our limited fun time playing rather than doing game prep.

I am really, really bummed. I'd been looking forward to this for a long time. After SCAP I was resolved that I would never play in another AP, but I was coaxed into trying this one by elements of the early descriptions--I love city adventures where the PCs can build a connection with a single place and not have to move around constantly.

But at this point it looks guaranteed to duplicate a lot of the elements which made SCAP a miserable experience for me, and I'm not willing to do that again.

This is not a blanket condemnation of the AP. I'm sure it will be a ton of fun for a lot of groups. I'm just totally sad that we're not among them.

Mary

The Thassilon background article says that Karzoug built the Hellfire Flumes to keep Alaznist's armies out.

All the internal evidence in #1 and #5 says that the Hellfire Flume belonged to Alaznist.

Should one assume that some border areas had changed hands? It looks as though Karzoug was losing ground, if so.

My PCs are very interested in questions like this: they want to know more about Karzoug's capabilities, and the possibility that he sank Bakhrakan is troubling them deeply.

Mary

My PCs are not quite there yet, but they will be. I am pondering how this will play out. Between the effect of the Sihedron amulets and the effect of the rune giant Domination mindlinks, it seems apparent that Karzoug will know where the PCs are and what they are doing--either all the time, or at least a significant part of the time if they ditch the Sihedrons. The rune giant commanders in the lower city will too.

My player is a stickler for world logic. Therefore, I need to come up with an enemy response to knowledge of the PCs' presence that (a) makes sense and (b) does not result in an epic battle with hundreds of giants, lamias, etc. fairly early in the scenario. I think the PCs should lose that battle, but in any case I don't want to run it; too much work!

At the moment I think Karzoug still hopes to recruit the PCs, or at least to recruit their allies, so simply making everyone converge on their location won't be his immediate plan. At some point, though, the failure of this strategy will become apparent.

Saying "Karzoug doesn't care enough to deal with the PCs" seems to diminish his stature as a worthy opponent. He knows that they have runeforged weapons, after all. I don't like villains to be outright stupid or sloppy, though over-subtlety or blind spots are okay. In this case I think he expects the PCs to be in thrall to one sin or another--if not Greed, perhaps Wrath or Envy--and he's sure he can use this to manipulate them. He needs to replace Mokmurian....

(He is right; they are pretty deeply in thrall to Wrath. I am looking forward to the Champion of Wrath meeting his opposite number in the Upper City.)

I could really use a killer plan for that manipulation. The situation is that the PCs will arrive with a large force, mostly giants, which they will likely lose almost at once; then they will probably set themselves to the task of eliminating the rune giants so that they can reclaim their army. This gives Karzoug lots of time to try to turn them or put them to use. I just need a brilliant idea for *how*. (It doesn't have to succeed, but it has to be a credible try.)

Karzoug doesn't really have a serious enemy in the local area other than the PCs--if he did, I'd have him try to turn the PCs against that enemy.

Hmm. I wonder what would happen if the forces holding Xin-Shalast, rather than immediately attacking, welcomed the PCs with open arms. The PCs might think this was an error on their enemies' part and try to exploit it, thus setting themselves up for an awful surprise with regard to rune giants and domination. That might be *too* mean.

Anyway, ideas?

Mary

I had to change this one a *lot*, but despite my initial pessimism, it ran fairly well--a pleasant surprise. I frankly thought it would be unworkable for us. The level is well above my comfort point.

I added several lost people from Sandpoint to Runeforge, sent there by Xaliasa to scout (building on the statement that he wanted to send an expedition there): Hemlock, Ameiko and her new husband, and some Hellknight investigators from Magnimar. Xaliasa also had taken the town midwife, as he was pregnant and worried about delivery.

The PCs negotiated with Xaliasa to be sent to Runeforge. They immediately (I don't know how they did it as they ignored the statues) found the Wrath faction and struck a deal with it. They planned to quietly use up a lot of wrathlings taking out the other factions. Athroxis had the same idea in reverse....

I dropped the corridor-stretching "trap" after huge player annoyance on first encounter.

The PCs, plus Athroxis and a few of her people, hit Gluttony and were swarmed by the lesser undead--I had them all come pouring out round by round, which was more fun than I thought it would be. Kazaven himself was stymied by the fact that we don't have teleport-style spells so his contingency had to be something else--dimension door was just what he needed, as the black tentacles tied him up completely. He did manage an enervation against Athroxis that left her very brittle (the PCs did not volunteer the fact that they could have healed her).

I really appreciated the detailed combat notes for each major opponent; they were well thought out and practical. Kazaven's contingency was particularly well chosen.

The PCs did not search the rest of Gluttony but immediately went after Lust. The wrathlings turned out not to be useful against the alu-demons, so they took on the giants (several died) while the PCs fought the alu-demons. Lel was charmed but the other PCs eventually reacted to this (and a good thing too; Lel is a TPK waiting to happen). Chavali became invisible, went into the tent and harassed Delvahine until the other PCs could arrive and take her out. This prevented a potentially lethal confusion, a spell my PCs fear greatly.

Swapping in some fresh wrathlings, the PCs went after Greed. The morphic mist caused a great deal of rules angst. The empty rooms frustrated and disappointed the player, and the fight was over in a round, despite my having added a transformed hellknight bodyguard. The terrain was bad for Ordiken and he needed blocking forces to keep the PCs from swarming him. In retrospect I should have added several automata or transformed metal animals here, at a minimum. The player found this the least interesting part. The PCs flatly refused to interact with the item recharging pool.

Then Pride. The PCs were feeling, by this point, like they owned Runeforge. Two sinspawn walked into the Mirrors of Opposition and were torn apart by their doubles; then the mirrors were removed by invisible Chavali. The group poured into the great peacock temple--and ate three overlapping empowered fireballs from the simulacra, who had rolled well on their initiatives. This killed Athroxis and all but the quickest of her four wrathlings, put a PC negative and scared the lot of them spitless. They pulled out the big stuff and took out the simulacra: disintegrate, freezing sphere, feeblemind, massed weapon attacks. Lel, killing Athroxis' killer, became the Highlord of Wrath. (This was so perfect for the character, the player thought I must have improvised it; he was surprised that it's in the module.)

They found a baby in Vraxeris' cloning apparatus and took it with them. After a fairly simple mopping-up operation, they waited for Xaliasa to open the gates again, and the whole group poured through--hostages, wrathlings (including some youngsters), PCs and all. They found Xaliasa and his forces waiting in the Temple of Lamashtu and overwhelmed them (banished the glabrezu before it could act) including the hound of Tindalos that cut its way out of Xaliasa's belly.

I omitted the rod of cancellation and the ethilion pool. The player was totally uninterested in the Tomb of Horrors aspects--basically, he was clearly enjoying the creature and politics, but hated the static traps. The only good trap was Kazaven's as it was tied to a creature. In retrospect I wish I'd left out the morphic mist and corridor traps as well, and replaced them with more greedlings.

The PCs did not create runeforged weapons. They are now looking for virtue tokens to replace the sin tokens.

The PCs are having a lot of trouble with their new wrathling allies. They raised Athroxis, who is unhappy about no longer being Highlady; her old second in command is unhappy too. And none of them know how to live in the material world--they had rote practice at eating and sleeping but are hazy on the details, and know nothing about getting along with people other than themselves.

The PCs scammed the hellknights who came to investigate and departed in some haste. They plan to reunite with the giant army and sack Xin-Shalast. This plan will, ahem, not go as they expect (beautiful interaction with what's in Xin-Shalast!)

Overall? Better than I expected. The politics were still pretty shallow (the faction leaders are, oddly, written to shut down interaction rather than encourage it, and I didn't manage to fix this completely) and the lack of sin aspects was disappointing. But the combats were fairly interesting, there were some politics with the Wrathful and Xaliasa, the hostages helped keep interest high, and the scenery was certainly spectacular. I could do a better job if I ran it again. The player suggests living spells for Sloth: a living acid fog plus slow should make things pretty nightmarish.

I ran my changes by the player afterwards and we were pretty much in agreement. SotS is too static and too trap-heavy for us as written; cutting out traps and adding interactions among the creatures made it sparkle. I'm getting quite fond of Athroxis.

Mary

My PCs found out about making the runeforged weapons, and then did not do it. I was wondering why all session. Finally found out: they are contemplating trying to force the magic back toward the Thassilonian virtues instead, because they think sin-forged weapons are going to be bad for them.

We looked up the virtues and were immediately stymied by the equation enchantment==fertility. So we're going to use enchantment==loyalty instead. (Maybe fealty is a better word--the love owed a master by a subordinate. Certainly a virtue the Thassilonians appreciated.)

Now the PCs need to find tokens steeped in the appropriate virtue. There clearly aren't any in Runeforge. The ones we worked out:

tassels from Ilsurian's battle-flag for loyalty
stones from the top of the Arvensoar for honest pride
pillows from a sleeping-saint of Desna for repose
a hero's weapons for righteous anger
something from a dragon-hoard for wealth

We're still looking for abundance and eager striving.

I like the ambiguity of these virtues--they suggest a society quite different from modern Varisia, or from modern US either. They are not the PCs' default moral virtues by any means, which should be interesting roleplaying fodder.

I don't know if the Halfling of Wrath can find the fine line between righteous anger and wrath, especially with Athroxis and her people as role models....

Mary

My PCs feel the need to fix the dam at Skull Crossing permanently. They asked Mvashti how to do it. (For some reason, they are convinced that Mvashti is a powerful faerie. She hasn't bothered to contradict them.) She did a card-reading for them that showed a giantish woman (Conna), a string-pattern holding stars in its mesh (spirit quest) and a ghost (Conna's murdered husband).

They now have an alliance with Conna and can ask her what this means. She will say that she can't help them directly, but she can send a PC on a spirit quest to find the needed stone-strengthening magic, as that is the sort of thing the stone giant ancestors know about.

I expect that the PC priest of Erastil will do this. For a different PC it'd have to be adapted somewhat. My strategy in running this will be that failed saves/skill checks are just setbacks, not losses. The only way to lose will be to make a clearly wrong decision or give up.

The PC will find himself climbing a harsh stone mountain, and will have the following encounters. Conna will have warned the PC that to fly/teleport at any point is to leave the quest behind: it is a quest of earth and must remain grounded.

(1) Wolf. A dire wolf one size larger than the PC will offer to carry the PC upwards. A DC20 Religion check will remind the PC that "stand on your own feet" is an important principle in giantish religion. If the PC mounts the wolf, it will try to carry him downhill (5 rounds total). He can master it with a DC30 Ride, dismount safely with the usual Ride check, fall off for 2d6 damage, or try to cast with a DC15 concentration check--various spells can work here. If the wolf reaches the bottom it mocks the PC and vanishes, and the PC will be Fatigued by the time he gets back up.

(2) Servant of Erastil. A giant wearing Deadeye's sign will meet the PC at the bottom of a sheer cliff. He will ask about the PC's mission and perhaps about any major decision the PC has recently made. If satisfied, he will show the PC the subtle handholds which will allow ascent. Otherwise it is a DC30 Climb.

(3) Cave bear. A dire bear confronts the PC at the mouth of a dark cave. Ask the player what has been the PC's moment of greatest (non-magical) terror. If the PC overcame that terror, he can re-experience it and pass the bear. If not, he must make a DC20 Will save. If he fails but still approaches, the bear will strike him, leaving scars on his back to symbolize the scourging out of cowardice. Fighting the bear is an option but should be done in a way that shows courage. (Wrestling the bear is a great folkloric solution. Of course the PC is likely to lose, but being brave enough to do it is enough.) Beyond the bear, the PC must climb up through a dark cavern to emerge finally at the mountaintop.

(4) Ancestress. A giantess who resembles Conna (one of her ancestors) will ask the PC what he has come for, and then will three times offer "Is there a boon you would ask for yourself before taking the stone that will mend the dam?" This is the real test, as it tests Greed. If the PC asks for a boon he will be given a modest one, but he will not accomplish his quest. If he demands to know why, the giantess will tell him the Greed will give him over to Karzoug in the end.

Otherwise, the giantess will give the PC a rock he can barely carry. The PC may ask, after receiving it, for a boon to help carry it; if so, she grants +4 Strength for the duration of the descent. (At the GM's option, the PC might permanently gain the ability to invoke _bull's strength_ once a day as a caster of his level.)

(5) Descent. The way down is a different path than the way up, but the heavy stone is a problem. Three DC18 Str checks need to be made. Failure by 5 or less means the PC must set the stone down and rest; failure by more than 5 means it falls and rolls to the bottom. Spells can be used here, but the PC must carry the stone himself, not have a summoning or disk carry it--if he tries that, the stone falls.

(6) Stone pile. If the PC dropped the stone, it has rolled here into a big pile of identical stones. There are a lot of ways to find it, including a DC20 Search check, Scent, Tracking, Wilderness Survival, augury, etc. If the PC walks off with the wrong stone he fails but may try again.

If the PC successfully returns with the stone, he can set it into a gap in Skull Crossing and it will repair the damage that has been done. This is not, as the ancestor giant will tell him, a permanent solution: even mountains wear away in the end. But it's a solution for many stone giant lifetimes.

I'd run this fairly rules-light, focusing on giving the PC some chance to reflect on morality and the future. I don't know if it fits into anyone else's game, but perhaps there's a usable idea here somewhere.

Mary

Stephen Greer made some great suggestions for adding a political element to _Sins_ in another thread; I'm starting a new thread for them, as it's intrinsically spoiler material.

My biggest problem is that I'd like the PCs to at least consider allying with one or more of the internal factions--that's going to be a lot more dynamic and morally challenging than simply fighting them. But an alliance should have a gain for each side. Stephen suggested that the Wrath faction should hold the Runewell and persuade the PCs to kill the other sin wizards and bring back the components. This is nice for the Wrathful, who will possibly eliminate their foes and can then, if they like, jump the PCs when they're nice and weak and lugging the components; but it's not clear why the PCs would agree if the Wrathful have nothing to offer but "we're holding the Runewell for you." The Runewell is not going anywhere, and frankly, anything the Wrathful could defend against, the PCs could easily attack and defeat. (Defense is much harder than offense in D&D.)

In #3 the scenario added NPC allies directly to the party, but that gets harder and harder on the GM as the levels increase. So I'm not too keen on having the Wrathful help in combat. I might not be able to run the resulting fights well.

(I do like using the Wrathful for this, as Wrath is my PCs' sin for sure: they were the ones who actually thought of themselves, for a while in #1, as working for Alaznist. If it weren't so hard to write high-level adventures, it would be interesting to see if they'd contemplate waking Alaznist to get rid of Karzoug. Now *that* would be a spectacular sin. I'm not up to writing it, though.)

The Wrathful can claim to have essential information, but I wonder if the PCs will respond by thrashing them and applying Detect Thoughts or Speak with Dead or Dominate Person. Maybe not; they do share a sin, after all, and the PCs may decide they like them. (This is the party which made friends with Aldern Foxglove in #2. They have...interesting tastes.) I might try this. I don't *have* to get an alliance, I just have to make it a realistic possibility.

Maybe there are things only a native of the complex can do? Then the Wrathful would have more bargaining power.

Maybe the Wrathful have an existing alliance that will let them get close to one of the other sin wizards, giving the PCs an in to use for an attack (or negotiation)? Betrayal is a good sin.

Or maybe the PCs' sympathies can be engaged by putting the Wrathful (who seem like the most likable faction, at least for my particular PCs) in a dangerous position with one of the other factions, so that the PCs end up rescuing them. There's a tendency to like people you rescue....

I will have to go through the mechanics carefully as it seemed to me on first reading that the Wrathful are actually toast if molested by the others. They'd need to be a credible faction. But if that's a problem, it should be fixable.

Still thinking about this. I will probably need to run it in two weeks, so I need to start the mods now.

Mary

Fairly early in Skinsaw Murders it became apparent that my player wouldn't enjoy the continuation as written.

On analysis, we were both troubled by the fact that the haunts and clues clearly establish Vorel Foxglove as the source of the evil in this scenario, but the resolution of the scenario involves defeating Aldern, not Vorel. There's a method suggested for getting rid of Vorel but it reads like an afterthought (as well as involving spells a party of this level probably will not have).

The player also really wanted to have a chance to save Aldern, which is tough in the main line as he's been dead for some time before there is any opportunity for the PCs to act.

I ended up changing things quite a bit. I don't know that I recommend these changes in general, but for my particular game they worked well.

(1) Aldern isn't dead. Xanesha jumped the gun and sent him that very disturbing letter a bit too early. This galvanized him into searching for a way to save himself, and being the heir to a master of disease, death, and undeath, he succeeded. Unfortunately, the rituals gleaned from Vorel's notes didn't stop him from turning into a flesh-eating monster. He's just a *living* flesh-eating monster. (I used the same mechanics, toning down the high stats just a little, and deleting the undead immunities and vulnerabilities.)

(2) Ieyesha had enough perspective to know who her real enemy was, so she is not utterly fixated on Aldern's destruction; in fact, her very best outcome would be sacrificing Aldern to destroy Vorel.

(3) Aldern, as Vorel's heir, is the key to destroying him permanently. Vorel can be lured into possessing Aldern and then will be vulnerable in ways he isn't while possessing a house.

(4) Aldern is mostly in Skinsaw Man persona (he's stark raving mad, and no wonder) but has moments of lucidity. During one of these he writes a note to the PC of his obsession and substitutes it for one of the Skinsaw Man's notes. (My player's PCs actually found this note at Foxglove Manor, having gotten there very quickly.)

(5) Aldern isn't home when the PCs come calling, but Ieyesha can lead them to him.

I didn't script the outcome of this situation. The PCs might well have killed Aldern on sight. As it happens, though, the PC who he was obsessed with managed to "talk him down" into a moment of lucidity and stage-manage a very tense confrontation between Aldern and Ieyesha. The PCs' final plan was for Aldern to deliberately invite Vorel's possession, and then for the PCs to use _cure disease_ to kill Vorel-in-Aldern before the lich killed them all. (With a backup plan of simply killing him, assuming they could.) This worked pretty much as described. They finished by burning the house to the ground.

Then they had a marginally sane Aldern, with the powers of a ghoul; and they adopted him as a party NPC. That, I admit, I had not expected. But it's been really fun, some of the best PC/NPC interaction I've seen.

Aldern got to take his revenge on Xanesha at last: cue a very uncomfortable moment as he tried to explain what happens to people he kills, to a paladin of Sarenrae who didn't at all approve....

The only person outside the party who knows the awful truth is the shopkeeper whose daughter Aldern murdered, but so far, everyone dismisses him as drunk and crazed. The PCs' reputation as the heroes of Sandpoint will take a real beating if the man can ever prove his wild claims.

This is rather a fragile scenario; if the PCs simply kill Aldern it pretty much reverts to the main line. But if it goes the way I sketched, there's a lot more sense that the PCs have really defeated the evil at Foxglove Manor, not just killed another of its victims and waited for the cycle to repeat.

Mary

Based on some comments here, I read the Jorgenfist section of Pathfinder #4 carefully, and realized it was not going to work for my group as written. My player is very much into strategic planning--he wants to know what the watch structure is, what's the best time to attack, etc.--and the material presented will fall apart if given that much attention.

For anyone who may have similar players, I offer some suggested changes:

(1) Add a barracks room to the Feasting Hall (A12). By day there are 4 giants sleeping here (relief for the tower watchers) and 2 giants working with the animals nearby. By night there are 6 giants sleeping here (2 animal tenders and 4 tower watchers).

(2) Add 4 giants to level B to serve as Galenmir's henchmen and response team. At any given time, two are awake in B4 and two are asleep in B10. If there is an alert, Galenmir collects these and responds. If there is a crisis outside the Black Tower, he takes them plus one or more dire bears. (This covers ogre squabbles, guests arriving, etc.)

(3) At night, the two giants from B9 are asleep in B10. The cook is asleep in B5. Galenmir is asleep in B3. The ogres and dwarves, being slaves, sleep in their workrooms. Conna sometimes sleeps in B5 but also tends to creep around at night, spying and tending her shrine.

This gives you enough giants that they can move around and show some life: exercising the animals, carrying food to other parts of the complex, hanging around and chatting, etc. I strongly recommend doing this as the complex is very static as presented.

(4) The lamias and dragons need to sleep, too. I don't think they are disciplined enough to stand watches, so I assume that all four are awake around dawn and dusk and asleep at midday and midnight.

(5) The runeslave needs to sleep, too; he's a living creature. Add another one and have them bunk down in C2 by turns.

(6) Work out how Mokmurian avoids the trap in C2 (dimension door?) and how he might get victims to the Cauldron without being tagged by it. Or give him a way to bypass it. (There is no way he just walks through--a 1 in 6 chance of being shrunk?! I can't see him tolerating that, he's touchy about his height already.)

(7) Work out how the Cauldron can be destroyed. I decided that 100 points cold damage followed immediately by a blow from an adamantine weapon would do it. (My PCs had forewarning and asked about this at Windsong Abbey....) It's almost sure to come up as the thing is too big to steal--though my PCs, who have a serious Thing about Thassilonian artifacts, are going to steal it anyway.

This has all added a lot of giants, so I'd consider deleting the scanderig (it doesn't seem to fit anyway), and possibly the redcaps and/or trolls. (Why are there trolls here anyway? I'd think the giants would be offended.)

(8) The undead are wasted guarding an empty room, but if they are moved in with the Cauldron the EL is probably too high. I'd consider deleting the stone golem and just moving the undead in with the Cauldron. The golen is too stupid to be a good guard here--Mokmurian must know that disloyal giants are a possibility, so a guard that ignores all giants is a poor choice. Or, if your PCs can handle it, put both of them in with the Cauldron. The Headless Lord's head is so cool! This critter deserves a better role than standing around in an empty room.

(9) It's worth knowing that when the module says that giants are mostly immune to the harpies, it lies. So the people inside must have a means of communicating with the people outside, similar to Cinderma's fires, that doesn't require anyone to approach the gates too closely. The PCs may well require you to figure this out, and it's easier to do it in advance. I used bullhorns.

(10) The harpies shouldn't be there 24/7 either. At most, have 2 awake by day and 1 by night, or vice versa. The poor things will lose their voices if they have to sing all day and all night.

(11) You may need to know what tribe the inside giants come from. I said that they were giantish renegades and exiles, and thus unusually loyal to Mokmurian because they had no homes to return to. It's going to be an important point in our game, since the PCs understand what those Sihedron marks imply and mean to avoid killing giants as much as possible.

All this is a big fuss, and only worthwhile if your players are interested in the internal workings of Jorgenfist; but if they are, it may help. For my own group I think the adventure as written would have been a bust--my player gets very disengaged if things don't make sense and give him some hooks for tactical planning.

Mary

After bad experiences in previous APs, we reached a group decision to ban all movement magic above Expeditious Retreat and Spider Climb. No Fly, no Levitate, no Dimension Door, no Teleport, nada.

We're currently in the second part of module 4 and loving the results. By this point in the previous APs the PCs were all flying all the time, and we're finding the terrain interactions a lot more interesting without that. The PCs feel more...grounded, more like they're really there. And the fact that they have to travel has given the setting much more depth. They can name all the towns and interesting sites between the places they visit; it's not just "hitting the high points of the map."

I was afraid we'd hit too many situations which relied on Fly but so far the only really bad moment was the quasit in #1 (and the PCs wouldn't have had Fly yet anyway). I do have to avoid making flying enemies too tough, but it's doable. Most foes can't fly either, except for ones who actually have wings, and those are vulnerable in ways that magic-flying creatures aren't (they crash if they are held or entangled, for example).

The player's comment at the end of the giant attack on Sandpoint was "I'm sure glad the PCs weren't flying; that would have been much less fun."

Only worth trying if your players feel the same way, of course, but it has really worked for us.

Mary

I am writing up a side adventure my group used in conjunction with a Pathfinder module, and would like to put it up on a web site and make a pointer to it here.

Is it legal for me to say, "For this NPC's stats, use the ranger on page X of Pathfinder #3"? Or does that infringe on Paizo's turf? I don't want to do that.

Mary

I have had problems with Hook Mountain--it reads well, but seems to have logic issues when run.

(1) The Graul farmstead is half a mile from the village and therefore must be practically on the road between the village and Fort Rannick. And has been there for at least a decade, given some of the details (the cache of baby-girl bones in particular). I caught this on the fly and moved it to an hour away, and my player still felt it was way too close--there's no way the rangers and townsfolk should have missed it.

This sort of thing works in real-world settings because no one expects cannibal ogres next door. However, in Turtle Ferry they *do* expect cannibal ogres next door, and don't have to worry about "Are we allowed to shoot them?"

Fix: move the farmstead a lot further from the town. Halfway between Fort Rannick and Turtle Ferry, and well off the road, strikes me as
best.

(2) Skull Crossing is 10,000 years old. We're expected to believe that in 10,000 years no one has walked into that control chamber and done anything at all to the pit fiends?! We haven't had that scene yet, but there's no way my player is going to believe that.

Fix: a Wall of Force openable only by using a Sihedron amulet as a key.

(3) Why don't the four trolls kill the five ogres? I had a lot of fast talking to do here--my player's initial reaction was "This is totally unbelievable, there must be something else going on."

I don't have a good fix for this. I can't figure out what was supposed to have happened up there.

(4) When the flood comes, it gouges into Turtle Ferry but does not destroy the upriver road. I just can't describe this plausibly. In the narrow canyon the flood spares the road, but on the wide lake it is deep enough to flood the village? How does that happen? The villagers send someone *upriver* into the flood to ask for help--does that make sense?

I don't have a good fix for this. Luckily it doesn't seem likely to happen in my game. Pity to lose the flood, but it's really hard to get it to happen the way it's described.

(5) Black Magga in the lake is a pretty intractable problem to end the module on. Hm, we were heroes, we saved the village...oops, they're all doomed anyway, and it's a monster way beyond what we can handle. Too bad.

I'm just going to leave Black Magga in the Storval Deeps. She'll be happier in deep water anyway.

I like the scenery and atmosphere of this module a lot, and the derelict ship in the marsh is extremely cool, but it was a pain to run because I kept tripping over the logic issues.

Mary

...Alaznist!

They decided to talk to Nalfeshnikor, and he charmed their priest. I figured that Nalfeshnikor wants out, and having him with no way out was not interesting, so I decided that the BBG of #2 has a Sihedron amulet that will unlock Nalfeshnikor's prison.

The PCs know that their priest is magically influenced, but for complicated party-dynamics reasons are going along for now--they understand what's happening in terms of a conflict between Alaznist and Karzoug, and so far are much more comfortable with Alaznist. So they are working their way into #2 with a goal of finding the greedspawn and their masters, getting the Sihedron amulet, and then--well, if the priest is still charmed things will be complicated. Even if he isn't, they will probably be complicated.

I got to do a wonderful nightmare scene with the priest where he was pursued through a house he could not escape, and finally opened a door to find a glorious blue-black wolf. He and the wolf, working together, could finally turn the tables on their pursuer, so the nightmare ended.... (Knowing the player, I may be able to sell the priest on freeing Nalfeshnikor even if the charm does wear off.)

The PCs are all Varisian, and not comfortable with the strongly Chelish society of Sand Point. They keep having discussions--tying what is happening now in with the Founding and so forth--and I say at the end of the discussion, "So, the best solution is to burn Sand Point to the ground, is that what you're saying?" And they blanch. It *is* what they are inclined to feel, but it's also too awful for them to actually stomach. But on the other hand, this town bred Nualia, it bred Chopper, it bred Tsuto (the massacre at the Glassworks disturbed them very much)....

Greed is a very Chelish sin, so the old conflict is reflected in the modern one.

I am really liking this material. It seems to have a much more nuanced evil than the previous Adventure Paths.

Mary

I've been very impressed with Paizo's customer service in the past (and am looking forward to the imminent arrival of Pathfinder#1).

Sadly, when I openned up my last Paizo box, there was a nice manifest listing my entire order (Dungeons#140 through #150, plus the SavageTidePlayer'sGuide) but both issues#149 and #150 plus the Player'sGuide were missing.

I sent off an email to "customer.service@paizo.com" yesterday, but haven't heard anything back yet.

I know things have been more than a bit hectic recently, but I wasn't sure what I need to do (if anything) right now.

Thanks,
Mary

Kyuss's ascension clearly didn't go as he planned, but why? My players are dead-set on discovering this, and it makes sense--the information could help them stop him, and also, one of the PCs is plotting her own ascension and doesn't want to screw up the way Kyuss did.

I can't find anything about this in the modules.

Has anyone come up with a clever answer? I'm currently thinking that there may have been bad blood between Kyuss and Nerull (there's a reason that Nerull isn't part of the Ebon Triad....) but I'm very open to other answers.

"The Harbinger of Worms probably knew this," say the PCs. "Too bad he's dead." And the one PC who knows he isn't dead just pats her backpack, where his phylactery is residing, and smiles to herself.... So they do have the means to find things out, though she is going to have to be very sharp indeed to keep this from the other PCs, or get them to accept it.

Mary

We just started Prince of Redhand, and I must say, I'm enjoying the material but I can't see this adventure staying on track at all. I have a very proactive player, and he is bound to see Zeech's ziggarut as a problem that must be solved NOW. I also think that when they're told they can't see Lashonna for a week, the PCs will plunge into Lashonna's manor house, which is completely undetailed, and then start using Commune and Locate spells to figure out where she is.

They have also noted the presence of an arena, and the prophecy about "a hero of the pit gifts a city to the dead"--which is at least going to get them competing in the games, and at worst, working out who the hero of the pit is (it's Zeech, isn't it?) and going after him right away.

The PCs are powerful and smart. They are not going to get themselves killed tackling the city organization; they'll use pinpoint tactics and probably succeed. But yikes, this is not what the prepared material is good for--I'm not looking forward to having to stat up Zeech's defenses, Lashonna's manor, etc.

Does this module stay on track in other games? If so, how?

Mary

My player is bound and determined to find the other six parts. The PCs became quite balky when Manzorian asked for the piece they had (they have decided that Manzorian is a bad guy, though one too powerful for them to oppose directly) and are now going to use Commune and other spells to try to find the remaining parts.

I told them about the pit fiend with part #6 and gave part #5 to the Vecna priest in _Library of Last Resort_. I asked for a rain check on the other parts....

Has anyone run this? Are there good published adventures that could be swiped for finding the other parts? (The PCs are nominally 13th, but very strong 13ths--an adventure for 13, 14 or 15 would probably work fine.)

I'm kind of regretting putting the first piece in. On the one hand, the PCs could really use more experience (there are too many of them, meaning not enough EXP to go around) and treasure. On the other hand, it's going to be a ton of work, and the reason I'm running an Adventure Path in the first place is lack of preparation time.

I guess it's a tip of the hat to older D&D material, but if I'd thought ahead, I would have made it a Staff of Three Parts!

Mary

My PCs found an...unusual way to deal with Ilthane in Gathering of Winds. They hit her with, in very fast succession, -8 levels due to enervation, feeblemind, charm monster, and baleful polymorph. She is now a friendly little Int 1 lizard.

This would be okay except that they plan to strategically undo some of those spells later (after they find Allustan) and question her. With their resources, they are almost certain to succeed. I have no idea what she knows, other than the plot in Mistmarsh. She invoked Dragotha's name when attacking the PCs, and that caught their interest. But I really have to avoid providing information that would lead to them shortcutting to the endgame, since of course it will kill them.

What does Ilthane know about Dragotha, and how? Does she know anyone else involved in the main plot arc? Maybe her main contact was Bozal; that would limit the usefulness of her information a bit.

(The PCs handle most fights with stuff like this. Up until the end, where they redeemed themselves in the public eye by their fight against the ulgarstasta, they were the most unpopular successful gladiators in the history of the Games. They would win, but no blood! no heroics! no spectacle! They turned Madtooth to a frog before it ever got an action. I had them roundly booed, but they didn't much care. Raknian had to have the frog turned back into Madtooth and killed by someone else that afternoon, or there would have been riots.)

Mary