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After two long campaign arcs separated by a nearly year-long hiatus, my game group concluded the main story line of Razor Coast last night. Here's how the finale played out at our table. Once the threat of the Skull Sargasso had been eliminated, the PCs went on a short side-quest in another part of my home campaign world to solicit the aid of a nearby city-state, Iskara-Ankul, in overthrowing the Dragoons of Port Shaw, helping to quell an army of gnolls in the process. Their success netted them the promise of another warship to add to their fleet, so they sailed back towards the Razor Coast to gather more allies in the fight against Harthagoa's cult. Their first stop was Sammerlock Sails; the elven arcanist had taken note of the site and decided it was worth investigating to see if any vessels could be salvaged (they had also found and rescued a derelict Sammerlock sloop in the Sargasso that was crewed by a lone warmech, an intelligent construct race that pops up in my campaigns from time to time). I built upon the notes in the gazetteer that mentioned the sea fort had been bombarded by Pele by leaving behind a mess of creatures from the Plane of Fire and the Hells, including a pod of fire whales from the Tome of Horrors Complete, a snake-headed aghasura, a brigade of huge fire elementals, a banshee, some callers in darkness from Ultimate Psionics, and a nasty haunt that had sprung into existence after the elves trapped in Sammerlock starved to death during the siege of Pele's minions. After exterminating the holdovers, the adventurers repaired and befriended the remaining warmechs and set them to work on building prototype battle jetskis (which were of great help during the battle for Port Shaw in our finale). Next, the PCs returned to the Pearl Eye Atoll in search of Old Makana, where I put a major twist on the included material by having their ship run aground by the possessed Hafguta. They awoke on an island populated by some familiar monsters from a certain video game franchise, battling their way past a green dragon charged with keeping Makana sealed within a dream world. Makana told them she could help them defeat Bonedeuce if they could free Hafguta from the curse of Tsathogga, so they set sail for the Witch's Teeth to find the behemoth. (I tied Makana into the Hawaiian legend of Namaka, Pele's divine sister, and in turn slated her as the creator of the three animal spirits which the Tulita worship.) We did the Jonah thing, and although they had little difficulty overcoming the tsathar pirate hordes of the Swordsinger's Folly inside the whale's belly, the idol itself gave them problems--it possessed nearly the entire group, causing the arcanist to teleport to Port Shaw and go on a fireball-dropping rampage before he snapped out of it while the rogue and fighter came to blows over who should get to keep the idol. Once they made their saves against the curse, Captain Martigan destroyed the idol with his god-touched holy longsword, but it shattered in the process. With Hafguta and Makana freed from their respective curses and a rebel fleet amassed in the Pearl Eyes, the PCs were ready to begin their assault on Kai's Bay. This is where things got ugly. Their ship, the Loa's Blessing, and the Albatross brought their cannons to bear on the Pride, and Bonedeuce ordered his forces to board the ships after returning fire. In perhaps the most anticlimactic moment of the campaign to date, Bonedeuce was eliminated in the very first round of combat when the arcanist Zydrunas dropped a prismatic spray on him, simultaneously killing him and turning his remains to stone (although he'll soon be brought back in place of Vanthus Vanderboren in the Savage Tide arc...). Aeron Chambers was hot on the PCs' heels soon thereafter, and a magical duel between Chambers and his former student, Zydrunas, ensued in the air above the Pride as the other PCs cut down Bonedeuce's lieutenants. Chambers killed Zydrunas with a finger of death spell and disintegrated his remains, forever eliminating his troublesome apprentice as a threat. Captain Martigan taunted the Sorcerer Supreme, insulting his swordplay skills and challenging him to a fair duel sans magic. Chambers' hubris was too great to refuse, and they fought a 3-minute-long duel on the deck of the Pride. Of course, once he was close to death, Chambers tried to use magic to escape--but the monk Hokan Ali'i, radically shapechanged into a monstrous hulking form thanks to a spell Zydrunas had placed in his ring of spell storing, interjected when Chambers broke the terms of the duel and pounded him into oblivion. It was then that Harthagoa surfaced in the waters east of the naval battle, and the pressure was on to reach Port Shaw before the Krakenfiend did. With the Commandant and Sorcerer Supreme both dead, the remaining adventurers and their allies--Hokan the monk, the roguuish Flynn, and the fighter Capt. Martigan, alongside the warmech Iaq, Hokan's slayer protege Sla'ark, and Bethany Razor--sailed into the harbor. Their allies from Sammerlock and the city-state of Iskara-Ankul pounded the opposition--I had a great time just narrating all of this rather than actually rolling it out, especially since they had worked so hard to attain allies in their rebellion. The Iskaran warship was pulled by two elder water elementals that crushed waves of skum and weresharks as it sailed inland, and the jetski-riding warmechs used cannons of force to blast away sahuagin shark riders before they reached the shoreline. Still, the PCs had to contend with a large group of scrags and some particularly nasty sahuagin mounted on toothwraiths (undead flying shark spirits cribbed from Rogue Genius Games' Monster Menagerie: Oceans of Blood), losing their warmech sidekick in the process. During this fight, Makana and her flying whale appeared, attempting to hold off Harthagoa--but Pele emerged from Fiery Heart on the back of a massive red dragon and commanded Makana to retreat, saying this conflict was not hers to decide. The two deities came to blows in the skies over Kai's Bay, soon taking their escalating conflict elsewhere, and leaving Harthagoa free to rise from the waves and begin creeping toward the Elder Lodge. In Bawd District, they faced off against a huge group of skum and weresharks led by two clerics of Dajobas (recycled Dalamar stats) that were terrorizing the red-light establishments. In this fight, Captain Martigan met his end when a wereshark cleric got off a lucky harm spell. Another apprentice mage of Chambers (I used the mage sniper from the NPC Codex) showed up as well, leading a crew of cultists from the Ring of the Kraken. The mage sniper wiped out Hokan with a suffocation spell, although the monk managed to roll well enough on his saves not to die outright, and Flynn had to duel it out with the wizard. As the tide of battle turned against the rogue, a team of clerics of Quell flooded the alleyways and beat back the horde of cultists, leaving Bethany an opening to take out the mage with a well-placed pistol shot to the head. The clerics took the body of the fallen knight of Quell, Marlin Martigan, promising to do all they could to raise him from the dead at their first opportunity (the player intends to retire Marlin and leave him in my hands as the new NPC leader of whatever organization replaces the Dragoons). The clerics of Quell healed the PCs to full hp and restored some negative levels they'd acquired while fighting the toothwraiths, leaving us into the final battle of the campaign at the Elder Lodge. Barrison Hargrove sent a particularly nasty message to Hokan Ali'i in the form of a half-flayed Tulita child who told the chieftain that Hargrove demanded his presence at the lodge to take the place of his people as a sacrifice to Harthagoa. Hargrove had also forced the young boy to read several spell scrolls prior to sending him out of the Lodge, casting a contingent disintegration spell on himself that was set to trigger if anyone tried to heal him--which Flynn did with one of his wands. Enraged by Hargrove's cruelty, their resolve to dispatch the racist old cultist was further steeled. The fight at the Elder Lodge was nasty--Hargrove was backed up by eight elite Dragoons, four Ring cultists, and a corrupt Dragoon chieftain from the Elder Council who pretended to be a hostage and waited until Hokan left himself vulnerable to strike at the monk. As Hargrove's forces fell to the heroes, the wily old entrepreneur took a badly-wounded Bethany hostage and threatened to kill her if they did not back down. Hokan called his bluff, knocking Hargrove away from the wounded captain and beating the plantation master to an unrecognizable bloody pulp (approx. -40 hp!) with a flurry of blows. The newly-acquired oracle, Dezun (a replacement PC for the now-dead Zydrunas), consecrated the Elder Lodge to disrupt the glyph of power prepared to strengthen Harthagoa, and the heroes ran into the streets, using fly and air walk spells to ready themselves for the fight against Harthagoa. Between hurricane-force winds disrupting ranged attacks and spells, summoned vrocks creating waves of lightning, and Harthagoa's mighty tentacle attacks and sinister spells, it was a tough battle. Yet scarcely six rounds later, it was all over--Harthagoa fell from the skies, reality folding in on itself around the Krakenfiend as its bloated, dead body was sucked back into the Abyss. The Dragoons have been overthrown, the Ring of the Kraken is irreparably broken, and for the first time in a long time, Port Shaw is well on its way to becoming a place where true justice and free commerce can thrive once more. I'll have more info in my epilogue post after our next session, and then we will continue our sojourn into the latter half of Savage Tide, beginning with City of Broken Idols and using the environs and NPCs of the Razor Coast as our backdrop for that campaign! Since that's a bit off-topic for this thread, I may begin a new campaign journal thread elsewhere to detail how that endeavor goes, but I'll link to it from here for anyone who wants to keep following our games. Many, many thanks are due to Nicholas Logue, Louis Agresta, and the rest of the team at Frog God Games for making this campaign a reality after years of struggle and offering such excellent feedback on these forums--we have had a blast playing through it!
Thanks to Belefaunte for resurrecting this thread, because I missed it when it was first posted. There is some excellent advice here. It's also interesting to see that the two GMs who posted above made some of the same choices I did, although for different reasons and sometimes ending in totally different results. I also planted a nightskitter in the basement of the Archives and highly recommend that monster as a strong challenge to remind the PCs just how vulnerable they potentially are. I agree with the last post's observations about Quinley as well; he struck me as kind of a dull, useless NPC and I omitted him accordingly--but I replaced him with Qvotgar Haas from Castles of the Inner Sea, which made for some nice hero worship moments between him and the star-struck party paladin, and also foreshadowed the future possibility of having to travel to Castle Kronqvist and find out what happened to the poor sot. Ashes at Dawn offers a LOT of great roleplaying opportunities for a diplomatically-inclined party and a smart GM who can alter his or her voice and mannerisms to breathe life into the NPCs. I played Radvir as a complete dandy fop, which really disarmed the PCs against him in their initial interactions and mad for a better surprise when he turned heel during the ambush in the park. Siervage is classic evil genius fodder, and if played correctly, he will really put your players on edge--the reality of just how perilous their situation is should sink in quite easily once they realize how much power he wields and how unreluctant he is to use it if it means crushing an enemy. And of course, Ramoska Arkminos is just a gem of a character--I played him up as creepily as I possibly could, with a leering, nasal faux-Romanian voice, but also with an undercurrent of joviality. By the end of that subplot, even the paladin in the group got along fine with Arkminos despite being a little wigged out by him.
Sure I will. We're not starting immediately, though. *cough* Call me anytime. =D As to Fire As She Bears: Our group came to the opposite conclusion. We looked at the rules and tried to apply them in play once, but our findings were that they were just too dense for our needs at the table, and my players preferred combat that focuses on their individual struggles but allows for the opposing crews to affect the situation in small ways on a round-to-round basis. We've stuck to using a combination of the vehicle rules from Ultimate Combat and the mass combat rules from Kingmaker/Book of the River Nations/Ultimate Campaign.
My overconfident monk thought he should grapple the giant scorpion, as well. Yikes! Yeah, those sewers are a death trap for lower-level PCs. Like a sandbox full of poisoned caltrops.
One sad thing I forgot to mention: Korg died while valiantly defending a prone and disabled Bethany from an Omargwato cyclops. =[ She is PISSED. The drinking cup is actually a nod to a legend about the infamous pirate William Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard. (I'm an NC native and grew up on sailboats in the Pamlico Sound area, so my treatment of Bloodbane in this campaign draws heavily on the legends of Blackbeard, including his penchant for taking a wife in every port he visited.) Gov. Alexander Spotswood of Virginia sent Lt. Robert Maynard to kill the pirate king, and Maynard ambushed Teach and his men off the coast of Okracoke Island in November of 1718. Blackbeard was beheaded; his body was thrown overboard and his head was tied to the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop. But it was rumored that men loyal to Blackbeard (who was much beloved by the people of Bath and other coastal communities in North Carolina) retrieved the head from Maynard's ship and fashioned a drinking cup from the skull. As recently as the mid-20th century, a secret society that met at Blackbeard's castle is said to have drank from the cup, but their members and guests were forbidden to speak of their participation in the rite for a full 30 years after attending a meeting. Charles Harry Whedbee, a retired NC judge who wrote a series of excellent books about the legends and folklore of the NC Outer Banks, attended such a meeting in his youth and revealed the details of it prior to his death in the 1990s (having maintained his oath for far longer than the promised 30 years). Whedbee always hoped to obtain the skull from a surviving group member and have its origin verified by a friend with the NC Museum of History, but whether he ever got access to the artifact is unknown--if so, he carried that secret to his grave. As to your final question, Louis, I entered in a few of the early years of RPG Superstar with no success, but I hope to throw an item in the ring this year (I like working with weapons and armor more than I do wondrous items, so I'm glad to see Round One opening up a bit since Owen took the reins on the competition). I have a few other projects that are ahead of that, though, since I work for Jon Brazer Enterprises and also freelance for a few other companies, both gaming-related and otherwise. (Incidentally, my first full-length adventure, Reign Of Ruin, is available via Paizo.com and all the other usual suspects among digital retailers if you want to see some of my design work in action--I'd love to hear feedback and get some reviews posted for it!) But thanks for the praise--it means a great deal to me, and makes me all the more likely to participate in RPG Superstar ths year if I can manage it!
I haven't had a chance to keep my play reports up to date, sadly, but we did start playing "The Krakenfiend Rises" back in early June 2015. Here's a (maybe not-so-) quick summary of what's happened to date. Spoilers abound. (NOTE: I am also combining Razor Coast with Savage Tide, so you'll see some references to that AP scattered through this and future posts as well.) "In retrospect, I think our biggest mistake in the last campaign arc was not burning Port Shaw to the ground." -- Evan F., player of Marlin Martigan Two PCs--the fighter and now-Dragoon captain Marlin Martigan, and the monk and Tulita tribal leader Hokan Ali'i--returned from our "Night Of The Shark" arc. Another returning player introduced a new PC named Zydrunas, an elven arcanist and Dragoon sorcerer who studies under Aeron Chambers. Our new player started out playing a cleric of Quell named Syrian, but quickly switched over to running a rogue privateer named Flynnerrol (Flynn for short) instead. The campaign kicked off with a series of vignettes customized to each PC's backstory:
Zydrunas helped take Brim into custody and Martigan interrogated the mage, who accused Chambers of leading a demon-worshiping cult that planned to destroy Port Shaw. However, evidence found in Brim's makeshift hovel in Tide District (planted by the Ring of the Kraken) indicated that Brim was the cult leader. Brim challenged Chambers to a public duel, during which he managed to cut free Chamber's clothing, allowing Martigan a glimpse of the Ring's mark beneath his arm. Chambers finished off Brim with a stroke of his cutlass, then covered up the mark with an illusion which neither Martigan nor the others could see through, and Martigan was charged with insubordination when he accused Chambers of being a cult member. Shortly thereafter, a necromancer in Hargrove's employ set off a shadow pearl beneath Port Shaw, causing a flood of horrors to rise from the steam tunnels, and the PCs had to infiltrate his base (the former laboratory of Tarath-Vreen) to stop the problem at its root. As punishment for his insolence, Captain Martigan was tasked with escorting some of Hargrove's merchant ships from the Pearl Eye Atolls to the edge of the Razor Sea, removing him and his loyal crew from Port Shaw for several weeks. Zydrunas was assigned to his ship to spy on the captain, and Hokan offered to join the expedition, filling out Martigan's crew with his Tulita followers. They spent a few days at sea fighting enemy ships (including the frost giant pirates known as the Gert Brothers and the lycanthropic Nightslinks), and befriended Bethany Razor by informing her of the evidence they uncovered in the last campaign arc suggesting that Bonedeuce had betrayed her husband. Bethany clued them in that Bonedeuce had been dilly-dallying in his supposed quest to rescue Perrin, sailing far off-course from where the Albatross had last been sighted. She also mentioned that she had been hired to escort Hargrove's ships out of the Razor Sea, and would relieve the PCs when they reached the middle of the ocean. Next, they explored a few of the islands in the Pearl Eyes, where they heard rumors of Old Makana but never chased down the leads, and I inserted a short but deadly sidetrek adventure, replacing its BBEG with Rachel Ventura's bad-ass sea witch, Orsolya, from JBE's Advanced Merfolk. Among the witch's treasures was the cloak known as Fiend's Embrace--an artifact hewn by the demon lord Graz'zt and given to his lover Iggwilv (another plot seed for upcoming events in Savage Tide). Also in the booty was a silver cup made from a skull--in fact, the skull of Garr Bloodbane. His men retrieved the pirate king's disembodied head after Bonedeuce executed him and fashioned it into a drinking chalice--when someone drinks the blood of a slain enemy from the cup, they gain the benefits of greater infernal healing, but if they don't do this every day after using the item in this manner once, they are subject to a nightmare in which Bloodbane tortures them in horrible ways. Martigan has claimed the cup for his own, and I have alluded through story elements that only Old Makana can tell him how to break the curse. With that quest completed, they made their rendezvous with Hargrove's foppish merchant-marines, who were actually disguised contract killers hoping to lead the heroes into an ambush. The killers sprung their trap early when the PCs confronted them about some irregularities in their cargo manifest (Flynn had snuck aboard their vessel and found false cargo boxes fluffed out with packing material, as well as a pair of hidden swivel-mounted 12-pound cannons built into a secret hull compartment and listed in the manifest as a crated steam engine). During this fight, Zydrunas was badly poisoned and teleported back to Port Shaw to seek aid from Chambers--but when he came to, he found himself tied to an altar in the shrine of Harthagoa beneath Fort Stormshield, with Chambers leading a ritual to empower a massive black pearl with the elf's life essence. Luckily, he had the means to cast a silent and stilled teleport spell, and escaped after gleaning as much information as he could from Chambers, but at the cost of all of his gear and, most painfully, his spellbook. Once the PCs reunited, they searched the assassins' vessel, and found and freed a large group of slaves trapped inside a portable hole with a bottle of air and scant iron rations meant only to last two weeks, but they knew not for what purpose (the slaves were meant as gifts to the troglodytes and kopru of the Isle of Dread as payment for more shadow pearls). Nevertheless, their path was decided: it was time to stage a piratical insurgency against Hargrove, Bonedeuce, and Chambers. Fearing that an ambush had also been set for Bethany and the crew of Quell's Whore, the PCs sailed to where they were to rendezvous with Captain Razor to warn her. In the process, they fought and killed Captain Barnabas Harrigan (who I lifted from Skulls & Shackles and had introduced in my last Razor Coast arc), who had been holding the disgraced pirate captain Falken Drango in his brig. They set Drango free and gave him command of the Wormwood and the few crew members they could ascertain not to be evil-aligned, asking him to raid Hargrove's ships and any Dragoon vessels he might encounter along the Razor Coast (which, of course, he was all too happy to do). At the rendezvous point, the PCs found the minotaur Korg floating in the water upon the wreckage of the Whore. After being revived, the minotaur led the party to the northern coast of a huge island nearby (the Isle of Dread), where they found the remains of both the Albatross and Quell's Whore. They followed the trail of Perrin's men south to the Omargwato ruins, where they fought off the cyclopes and rescued both Bethany and Perrin from certain death. Bethany and Perrin are now repairing their ships so as to join Drango in raiding Hargrove and Bonedeuce's vessels, while the PCs have departed southwest to seek out the aid of the foreign lord who warned them of Hargrove's illicit activities (namely, shipping slaves and other illegal goods to the Isle of Dread in exchange for shadow pearls to aid the imminent coming of Harthagoa). In our last session, they awoke one morning to find themselves trapped in the Skull Sargasso, for which I used a re-flavored and highly advanced version of the Mother of All and her plant minions from Savage Tide's "The Sea Wyvern's Wake". As of the end of this adventure, the PCs are all 13th level. More to come later--oh, and I've got a bunch of stat blocks for rebuilt or advanced NPCs and monsters if anyone wants them, btw. Here's some of the more interesting ones I've made for this game so far:
Savage Tide Notes: Bonedeuce, Bethany, and Drango are all stand-ins for (respectively) Vanthus, Lavinia, and Harliss in Savage Tide. So, yeah, there's, erm, another stat block for Bonedeuce sitting in my pocket... I got to break out one of my favorite monster templates from the 3.5 version of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book. =D
New Occult Adventures iconic pre-gens and still no APG iconics or Seltyiel makes me a sad panda indeed.
I think you inverted your spells per day? Yikes! Yes I did--thank you for pointing that out!
D'oh, one small error of omission: AC 25, touch 17, flat-footed 20 (+8 armor, +2 deflection, +4 Dex, +1 dodge)
Ruthbert Maclaen
I still need to stat up my familiar, but what do y'all think so far?
I did a preliminary build for my hexcrafter last nignt, but didn't quite have time to finish him up. I'll post a stat block and background story here later today.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I want to play a hexcrafter magus. But I'll gladly go warpriest if nobody wants to play a healer--although last time I ran one, I was fighting for Asmodeus, not against him... Hmm. Let's see if our fourth chimes in before con time; if not, I'll build and bring both PCs just in case.
I was thinking of playing a warpriest of Milani, but I see bdk had a similar idea. bdk, let me know your direction--if you'd rather play the divine caster, I might try an arcanist or magus instead. Also, James, question about books: I'm traveling cross-country and trying to pack light. Will printouts or an SRD/PDF on a tablet be sufficient for any resources beyond core that we might use, or are you requiring that we have original hard copies of all sources used? Looking forward to this session, fellas--let's get ready to rock House Thrune!
Awesome! Thanks so much to both of you for looking into that for me. I think I'll be keeping that feat on him after all!
Question for Lou, Nick, or anyone else on the RC design and development team reading this: Falken Drango has a feat called Dreadful Gaze that is said to be in the appendix, but I couldn't find it anywhere in the book, or even something close to that name. I ctrl-F'd the PDF and everything. Can anyone shed some light on what this feat was meant to do? I am adding 6 levels of deep sea pirate and the fortune-spurned template to Drango to make him a bit tougher in my next campaign leg, so I'm interested to know what this feat does before I replace it altogether. SIDE NOTE: I also rebuilt Bonedeuce as a swashbuckler/duelist, and then made a death knight version of him (I'm merging Razor Coast with Savage Tide, so he's taking on some of the role of Vanthus Vanderboren in that AP, with Bethany filling in for Lavinia in parts as well). I expect to have quite a few nice custom stat blocks to add to the repository for other folks to use soon! We start back in 2 weeks, so I'll be posting play reports here again, although I may move the non-RC content (such as the Isle of Dread, River Styx, and other crazy additions of my own) elsewhere to ensure that this thread stays on-topic.
I'd be delighted for spoilers too, as well as for discussion in this thread to stay on the topic of Unchained rather than psionics/psychic magic. =b
*casts hold monster, coats GoatToucher in gravy, locks him in pen full of starving goats*
*snicker* Oh, that is too precious. I highly approve. ]=D
PS In case its not clear, the gaps between sewer sections should be labeled "...hours of random tunnels and encounters wherein everyone gets covered in fecal sludge from exploding methane pockets then fights horrific monsters..." Nice to know we're on the same page.
I think dominating another party of NPCs to attack a PC party they don't know from Bob (or vice versa) is a lot easier than dominating one party member to attack a fellow party member who is an established ally. I'd not even bother with a new saving throw each round in the former case.
Hey, I understand that Ramoska Arkminos appears in another Pathfinder adventure. Could anyone explain his role there? What’s there to know about him? I haven't read it in great detail in a year or so, but Arkminos appears in AP#8, Seven Days to the Grave. AP#8 Spoilers: As best I can recall, in that AP, the queen of Korvosa, Ileosa, seeks to infect the poorer districts of her city with a terrible plague. Arkminos and some other baddies are on loan to her from other factions as experts in infectious disease--among them, the Red Mantis assassins and Conte Tiriac, who has a different first name in that AP but whom I assume is the same person as Ristomaur Tiriac of Varno. I think this was written before F. Wesley Schneider had really nailed down a lot of details on Ustalav's major players and their dispositions, since being involved with a sinister plot like that seems rather out of character for Tiriac based on what is said about him in Rule of Fear.
The mythic glabrezu is definitely showing up in my version of the Abbey... and that vampire orc from the Monster Codex is going to be the perfect rival for the party's elf barbarian shortly, too.
D'oh! Sorry about that, KC&C. I get confused with all the cool stuff flying around this thread!
I just ran this part last Saturday and used two mythic nabasu (Legendary Games/Tom Phillips) instead of the three standard ones. I also swapped out the 8 ghouls for 4 higher-CR variants from the Monster Codex, and swapped all of the charmed guards with Rakshaka's bloodsucking fiends (see above in this thread). A pretty effective squad, on the whole--the mythic nabasu weren't overly deadly but definitely more useful than the normal ones would have been, I think. At least 3 PCs are walking around with two or more negative levels right now, but are determined to press on and eliminate Radvir before he has time to regroup and refortify his lair. (It also doesn't hurt that Luvick was pretty emphatic about them nipping this int he bud sooner rather than later--the patience of a vampire lord has a tendency to wane when dealing with mortals...) We'll get to the basement next month. I didn't use Quinley in my run, but the PCs did convince Desmond Kote (the inquisitor of Zaebos in the dark chapel) to join them against Radvir. I need a way to take him out of the action before the final fight ensues, because he's way too effective as it stands.
time's fleeting... But listen closely...
Have you seen the NPC Codex error thread? :D Yikes. I just did. I don't know whether I love those guys, or hate those guys.
Page 18 of Rule of Fear indicates that citizens of Canterwall "swear whole towns sometimes go missing in the mists, losing their connection to the world and vanishing forever in the haze". That seems to me to be a pretty clear invitation for GMs who want to drop Castle Ravenloft into Ustalav to fit it into Canterwall. I also recall comparing the maps of Barovia in several sources to that of Ustalav and realizing that, geographically, Barovia would fit well if placed east of Lake Lias along the Vistear River (corresponding with the Ivlis River in Barovia).
The quick answer (click here). The not-so-quick answer: Aside from a small handful of Pathfinder Society scenarios, the Carrion Crown Adventure Path and the module Carrion Hill are your best bets for getting your Ustalav fix. The fifth book of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, Skeletons of Scarwall, is set on the border between Belkzen and Ustalav, but it is by no means low-level. You could take the framework of that adventure and repopulate it with weaker monsters, I suppose, but that'd be a big undertaking--and some of those creatures may not have lower-CR analogues (the demilich in particular). Castles of the Inner Sea and Dungeons of Golarion offer details about Castle Kronquist and the interior of Gallowspire, two iconic locations within Ustalav, for the DIY-minded GM, but again, these are not low-level adventuring environments. I'd recommend picking up the Rule of Fear campaign sourcebook and plunging deep into its contents for story hooks you can flesh out yourself, or seeking out horror-themed modules by third party publishers that you can reskin as Ustalav-based.
I'm very happy with having both games around, myself. Pathfinder and D&D 5E scratch two different itches for me.
My group was so peeved and jaded by the plethora of Garr Bloodbane Treasure Maps (TM) that when the real one floated their way they remained convinced it was just another scam. ** spoiler omitted **It was a perfect moment. Ha! The exact same thing happened in my game, too. Poor fella. =[ SIDENOTE: Whenever we get back around to playing through Part 2, I'll be shifting the location of Bloodbane's haul into one of my favorite dungeons from Goodman Games' 3.5-era products. This is one nasty module, and it fits right in with the themes of Razor Coast with just a little re-skinning.
So I started running this campaign. We started at Level 1. Here is my complete run down, spoilers and all: http://www.nongamergamer.com/2014/09/razor-coast-part-1-level-1.html?m=1 Sounds like a great first session, and a well-balanced three-man party to boot! Nice to see those Official Garr Bloodbane Treasure Maps(tm) still making the rounds. =D Keep us updated!
Also, its grapple CMB is +18 with Solo Maneuvers. Two bloodsucking fiends might both take Outflank instead, getting +4 to their grapple checks if they flank an opponent. =O I heart you so much.
That is quite nice indeed! I will have to look more closely at this build later and see if I can tweak it any to make it even worse for my players... I came so close to draining a paladin last session, so I'd definitely like a second shot at juiceboxing a PC! One thing worth noting: I'd add in a note next to the CMB that it gets a +15 to grapple checks since that's the defining feature of the build.
Rakshaka, I used six of your vampire archers along with Radvir in an ambush scenario today--they are TOUGH. Their shots dropped the bard in the first round and took out the paladin by the end of the fight, too, plus they wore down the barbarian to low double digits before they could defeat the vamps. They'd not have survived had the oracle not had a wind wall at the ready. Nice build! My group got the idea to set bait in the park, so the sorceress was magically disguised by Evgenya as described in the AP. But her Bluff and Knowledge (local) are pretty low, and hence she blew her cover when they stopped by Radvir's shop before setting the ambush. So he set up the archers in the trees around the standing stones and donned his homeless-guy disguise, and they walked right into it. (Oh, and the werewolf rogue in the group is HATING on Desmond Kote... I may have to have him turn heel just to watch them fight!)
My group is SWIMMING in ring of prot/cloaks of resist/amulets of nat armor +2 right now. A change from that monotony is welcome at my table.
Thanks for these--my main beef with using stock vamps is that the baseline build in the Bestiary is a spell caster, and that can be cumbersome to run too often. The archers, in particular, will be getting some screen time at my table!
...any way to carry a corpse inconspicuously? Can one shove a staked vampire corpse into a handy haversack? I don't think a handy haversack is large enough (80-lb. limit). Most bags of holding should work just fine though; a type I has a 250-lb. limit. And it's not like a staked vamp needs to breathe... =b One last question: Can the spawn from below join the fight? I guess we can assume the fly trap is trained to ignore them as they emerge from the hole, or that the fly trap would not be interested in them because they are not living? Difficult to say. I'm no biologist, but I'd think necrotic flesh would likely not be nourishing to a flytrap, since they seem to process blood more than raw protein (and presumably vamps don't contain blood that would be nourishing for a carnivorous organism), although the digestive enzymes do break down the 'meat' of the prey too. On the other hand, with an Int of 1, I doubt they'd be too selective about what they ingest. It's tough to train something that dumb to do much of anything reliably, outside of controlling it magically, as Merrick likely does.
In my case, I'm upping the difficulty on just about everything simply because I've got a party of six on my hands... which is part of the reason that the Abbey St. Lyrimin encounters are being shunted into Castle Kronquist! \=D And it would have killed the wizard if not for a lucky dimension door. Heh, the sorceress in our group who got swallowed did the exact same thing. Great minds think alike, I suppose!
My group just met Merrick and convinced her to introduce them to Luvick...Interesting. I read the module as contemplating the fight with Merrick was pretty much unavoidable, because she was the guardian the PCs needed to fight through to gain access to the Underground, which had been sealed on orders of Siervage. The main reason Merrick let them by (aside from the Diplomacy check in the low 40s that the party bard rolled during her interaction with the druid vamp) is that the PCs expressed knowledge of the same information that Radvir has presented to Luvick about a cabal of Caliphas nobles being behind the killings. Adivion left that info right in their path for them to stumble upon, for a multitude of reasons that would take WAY too long to explain since I've gone way off-the-books with some story elements, but mostly in hopes that it would distract them for awhile longer while he finalizes his own plans. Since the evidence they have corroborates Radvir's accusations against the nobles, and the PCs are openly expressing their distaste for the Whispering Way at every opportunity in order to court the vampires' favor, Merrick figures her master should speak with them... and she's confident that if they are lying, Luvick will surely find out about it, and deal with them appropriately. \=D
Nice work, Kalindlara! You have definitely inspired me. My group just met Merrick and convinced her to introduce them to Luvick, so they've gone through the pleasantries and interrogated Ramoska Arkminos; we pick up there next time. I like how you've introduced new vampires specifically to challenge and unnerve the PCs in your party. This is great food for thought.
At some point, I'd like to see a breakdown of the CR spread of the builds in this book, even if it's a very general one. I rely more and more on digital books these days, but it's my hope that the Monster Codex and the new Advanced Bestiary from Green Ronin would be my definitive desk references to have in hard copy for when I want to mix X theme with Y creature type at CR Z for an upcoming game session.
Chalk up another vote for Ustalav. There are so many unresolved mysteries that I want to learn more about every time I read Rule of Fear or the appendices in the Carrion Crown AP volumes. What's going on in Bastardhall, and does it have something to do with the legendary true Daughter of Urgathoa? What happened to Haserton Lowls to make him an insane recluse? Who or what is Damita Adler? Who built the Spiral Cromlech of Lepidstadt? The best thing about GMing Carrion Crown, for me, is that there is enough lore about Ustalav to keep my players busy even if they go off the rails of the AP (which I sometimes hope they'll do just so I can try something funky!). I'd really like to see another product about this region of Golarion, but who knows when or if it will happen? (I summon Wes Schneider to answer all of my questions!)
Question for the masses: Has anyone managed to truncate the roleplaying portion of the Caliphas vampire murder mystery down to just a 4 to 6 hour session? If so, what's the best way to trim down/streamline that leg of events? I'm keeping a lot of the encounters from "Ashes", but relocating the witches' laboratory to Castle Kronquist instead of the Abbey and making Malyas himself the mastermind of the bloodbrew plot. So far, my players seem much more interested in a dungeon crawl than in a long sequence of dramatic events inside Caliphas proper. So, I'd kind of like to fast-forward through the talky bits and drop them right at the entrance of Castle Kronquist by the end of the next session of play (they've already fought Rask and been referred to Abraun Chelest by Judge Daramid in Lepidstadt, so we'll pick up right at the Haraday Theater/Quarterfaux Archives at the start of next session).
Here's my suggested fix for an unchained fighter: Give them Vital Strike, Improved Vital Strike, and Greater Vital Strike for free at BABs +6, +11, and +16, and add an ability at those same levels that lets them replace a single attack with a Vital Strike instead of an attack action. This would give the fighter a unique, versatile damage-dealing ability that no other class has and open up a world of possibilities that a lot of PF gamers have been wanting for a long while. It would also cut down on the fighter players' frustration of having to constantly move into position to get a full attack and feel less effective than other warrior types. For a mental stat-related bonus, I'd also give them the Combat Expertise feat for free at 2nd level regardless of whether or not the character has sufficient Int. A lot of good combat feats that allow those characters to specialize in combat maneuvers are tied to Combat Expertise, seemingly without any good reason except that "that's how 3.5 did it, so we have to do it that way too". This would lower the feat tax on the fighter and allow them to pretty quickly acquire signature abilities without having to bump a mental stat during character generation. Archetypes could offer alternatives to this that play more on Wis and Cha.
It kinda feels like folks are making mountains out of molehills here. The reality is that we don't yet know what licensing terms, if any, will be in effect for D&D 5E, and we won't until at least November, judging by the official word from WotC. I do think, though, that actions of the sort that Necromancer is currently taking are ultimately deleterious to the possibility of us getting a viable 3PP licensing scheme for D&D 5E, if only because the way they're going about it is sure to leave a bad taste in WotC's mouth. I'm pretty sure that whatever they are doing is legal, but I'm a bit concerned that they're going to spoil the fun for a lot of other publishers just to be able to say "FIRST!" and make an easy cash grab via Kickstarter. That isn't an effort that I am willing to support as a consumer and a gamer.
I can see how the barbarian could be revamped. The class was, IMO, a lot more fun to play in beta than in the final release of the rules. There were a lot of innovative, simplifying rules in the alpha and beta rules releases leading up to the Core Rulebook that would have been marked improvements over how things were done in D&D 3.5, which seem to have gotten scrapped due to an vocal outpouring from potential customers who just didn't want to let go of that game. (The expanded use of the Spellcraft skill for things other than "HAY WUTS THAT GUY CASTING" was one of my personal favorites that didn't make it, as was the brief abandonment of the poorly-structured 3.X skill ranks system that didn't survive alpha. And I REALLY hope this book offers an option for eliminating iterative attacks from play.) So, yay for Pathfinder Unchained! It's long overdue that this rules team got to make some solid, fun mechanics that helped move the game forward without having to be tied to the bloated dead body of D&D3.5.
Excuse the thread necromancy, but does this HL data set or any other contain the Agent of the Grave prestige class? Statting up an NPC and need to add some Whispering Way-itude to it. Thanks in advance for any help!
The closest I've come to doing this was a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game where we played ourselves as late-blooming garou. The game began with a government agency of some sort raiding my home during a party in search of a magic totem and either killing or capturing all of our friends... except the five of us who were garou, of course--we promptly wolfed out and decimated them. The first campaign arc culminated in us finding the research center near Washington DC where the agency had taken all of the captives from the party raid and performed horrible medical and metaphysical experiments on them. When I and the rest of the pack found the bodies, we flew into a rage. The level beneath the research center was guarded by armed men in clearly marked FBI duds, each wielding SMGs and assault rifles loaded with silver rounds. They hurt us, to be sure--but we hurt them more, and we did it faster. I fight almost exclusively in Hispo, in stark contrast to my teammates who mostly prefer Crinos. But before the agent I had targeted was finished off, I shifted to Homid and beat him to a bloody pulp with my bare hands, screaming, "THIS IS WHAT YOU GET YOU F**KING FED PIECE OF S**T" the whole time. Searching the agents' body yielded a massive array of ID cards and security clearances--FBI, NSA, CIA, DHS, DOJ, DOD, you name it. We suspect there's a connection between the research facility and someone in Congress based on other evidence we uncovered, as well. But we also know that there are helpful garou in positions of federal power as well--people who might aid us during the next story arc. So, yeah, we're quite comfortable with role-playing armed insurrections and acts of treason again the U.S. government at my table. =D
Every time I begin a new recruitment effort for my Carrion Crown campaign, I have a document that I make potential new players review and email back with an acknowledgement that they read it. It says a lot of things (including our house rules and things about scheduling and wotnot), but it's pretty much a document that says, "Hey, if a majority of people at this table think you're a dick, we're gonna kick you out." At cons and OP events, I'm fine with a random player roster--that's what those events are for, and you can occasionally meet great people that way. But if a player shows his ass and makes a fool of himself at a table I run, I will definitely inform the event organizers that said player is not allowed to sign up for my games any more. I've never had any organizer refuse me on such a request, either. And yes, I'm highly selective of who I allow to participate in my home games. I need to feel comfortable about letting them into my home, and also ensure that they are the type of player who will appreciate the effort I put into my games. For my monthly Carrion Crown sessions, I need to know them personally or have another player in good standing vouch for them. For my weekly games, I don't consider anyone that I haven't played with previously, and they have to be strongly compatible with my long-running players who have been coming to my house for over 5 years now. Life's too short to spend 4-6 hours a week with people you don't like.
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