Mercutio Lives's page

As far as a villain, how about a spy/sleeper agent? I would make it someone the PCs rely on quite frequently, like a shopkeeper that they go to for all their supplies. The shock of his "turning" will enhance the campaign. I had a DM back in the day who really amplified the role of Gremag and Rannos Davl, the shopkeepers in Hommlet, as agents of the Temple (unbeknownst to us). They were our "go to" guys for buying and selling equipment. The anger and hurt we all felt when they turned on us was not only personal to our characters, but to us as players as well. A bonus for this construct is that your bad guys can learn about the PCs abilities before they fight them. This is especially beneficial when you need a legitimate reason for a bad guy having the perfect defense against a character who has some phenomenal ability that has spoiled more than a few of your best laid encounters.
Or you could go with the narrow-minded captain of the guard. She constantly offers the opposite opinion of how to handle a situation. The players say one thing--she says the other. She is basically good at heart and has the best interest of her town in mind, but she is skeptical and cautious. Traits that have served her well in times of peace, but these same traits need to adjusted now that the times have changed. In this capacity, the villain/rival is more of a foil to the characters. It would also add a roleplaying aspect to the campaign--perhaps the players need to change her attitude in order to succeed.
Or you could have both.

How does the rest of the party feel about Afonya? The roleplaying potential here is awesome. If the rest of the party is as attached to Afonya, the "loss" of your familiar should affect everyone. Perhaps they understand the need for healing and decide to pool assets to purchase healing (wand/potions) in order to spare Afonya's and your character's suffering. A bit of mutual sacrifice to solidify party cohesion. By the way, if I was your GM and you all capitalized on this amazing RP potential, I'd have a wand of healing appear in a treasure horde soon as a reward. Of course that might just delay the inevitable...

Look at other megadungeons. And don't limit yourself to just Pathfinder/3.X. There's some great megadungeons out there for other systems too, and some are even free.

Here's some notable ones:

Rappan Athuk
Castle Greyhawk
Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor
Castle Whiterock
Stonehell Dungeon
Castle of the Mad Archmage
Dragon's Delve (dungeonaday.com)

Agreed. I was awfully partial to 2nd Edition's Dragon Mountain back in the day. If you and your group have not played the original Temple of Elemental Evil, I would highly suggest it, as so many of us cut our teeth on that dungeon.

Another thought: Find a few dungeons/adventures that you really like and "fold" them together into your own megadungeon. Spend a bit of time fleshing out how they dovetail by expanding undeveloped ideas within each or creating some interludes yourself in order to link them.

I wouldn't let the edition scare you since it is so easy to convert older editions with the help of tools like Herolab and the assistance the folks on messageboards like these.

I've learned that the folks at Paizo are doing an admirable job at carrying on a roleplaying tradition that so many of us love. They've tried awfully hard to fix issues that plagued 3.5 (successfully in many cases I might add). As no good deed goes unpunished though, so many players of Pathfinder seem to feel that Paizo just doesn't do enough, yet they continue to play a game that they bemoan is broken.

Now I'll let you in on something I learned when I DMed my first game 28 years ago: The game is yours. Unless you are play PFS, you can fix whatever you want, however you want. This game used to be played with imagination and intuition. Two things I've learned the people at Paizo seem to have in spades.