Sethvir's page

Good day. My players, all 10 of them, are currently scouting the Hollow Hills. They moved immediately to Longshadow and skipped going to Redburrow and Radya's Hollow first. They met with the mayor and council and managed to convince the mayor despite the protestations of the council. Thus far they have attributed the lack of movement of smelted to goods to malfeasance and greed. They almost attacked the council, but cooler heads prevailed. They are searching for the proof of the Ironfang now, having now encountered the Trench Mist at Redburrow and have found the Ridgeline Camp. We ended the last session there. Not sure what they are going to do about Radya's once they tear through the Ridgeline camp.

They have plans for the defense of the city, and have come up with some creative ideas for defense. One thing they have not yet considered is the attack from the dockside.

Anyway, my question is, how were you managing the river crossing by the PC's getting to the munitions camp? Using the ferry or were they relying on other magics, Walk on Water and such?

Thanks.

Sethvir wrote:

... what should I use as the creatures to send against them until they follow up on the plot point?

Thanks and look forward to input.

Remember that Longfrond is attacking the refugees and Misthome due to lumping them in with the Ironfang Legion.

Having some Ironfang bodies and maybe a favourite refugee or two strung up in some tress on a well-defined forest path might prompt the PCs to not side-trek.
The main theme running through books 3-6 is to find other allies that can help fight the Ironfang, and hopefully discovering allies in unexpected places and differing motivations within the Ironfang. Ultimately the story is about having your own home and what happens when that is threatened.
I'd look at more than just a steady stream of enemies to fight.

They have been making allies and are serious about defending Mist Home and are starting to see the different motivations of the Ironfang. I like the strung up bodies idea. The last attack was against the NPC's as I mentioned to Erpa's notes, and nearly went south for the NPC's. So it may be enough for them upon their return to Mist Home as the PC's are out raiding the forts. Thanks for the input as well. It is appreciated.

I went really outside the book with all the encounters given. This part would be just a random encounter to me, but it sounds like you are really leaning into it.

You could have some animated trees REALLY wandering far and wide to attack the encrouching PC Band of refugees, and maybe hurt some npcs that are out foraging-or even hurt someone who doesn't return (wouldn't kill the npc, because yah, I doubt then your group would try diplomacy with Longfrond). Then, the PCs respond, track down the lost refugee(s), find out about walking trees, then end up scouting to find Longfrond.

I wouldn't do another owlbear encounter. The poorest rating I would give this whole AP is that you are just fighting the same militia like hobgoblins nearly the entire time. Multiple fights of the same thing again and again are boring to run and play, I think.

Just wait til book 3...I LOVED that book.

Thanks Erpa for the input. I actually do have a couple of players that are leaning pretty hard into the whole diplomacy thing, so I expect that they will work on negotiating with Longfrond. Just want to keep it fresh in their minds. The last attack occurred when the PC's were away from camp and was both planned and also coincidentally tied to a Militia Event - Assault I think it was. NPC's took some heavy damage. Players actually enjoyed running the NPC Military Militia team to see how the "other half" lives. The suggestions you gave are good ones and I will spend some more time thinking about your ideas.

In the interim, they used Diplomacy in a big way for Fort Ristin and came out of that relatively unscathed. Fort Nunder proved to be a bit more of a challenge, where the trolls pushed the players to the limits of their health and pushed two to within a couple of hit points of dying and death. They just found Fort Trevelay during last night's session and realized that assaulting it in their current condition after the fight at Nunder was a bit of a suicide mission until they more fully recovered. I've tweaked the rules a bit and healing and recovery take longer, so they just started scouting. In the interim I have two weeks to more fully flesh out preparations for their assault on the Fort as we are taking a break for Thanksgiving holiday here.

I've also begun prepping Book 3 and am looking forward to it. And general feedback on the campaign from the players is that they are really enjoying it, both story line and the modifications I have made for the game as a whole.

Thanks again.

Nice to see folks still running this campaign. I am 36 sessions in and the group just reached Fort Nunder last night. Had a nice discussion afterwards with a couple of the players and they are still enjoying the campaign which is great. Couple of quick notes, we are using the Militia system and that is slowly increasing as they haven't picked up a lot of allies yet. I have a very large group and even with upgrading the monsters they pretty much walked through Fort Ristin. Be that as it may, they still had a great time with it.

With using the Militia rules, they had an event last night at Misthome. The main party was almost all the way to Fort Nunder and the event that came up was Invasion. It dovetailed nicely into the whole Longfrond and the owlbears incident which I was planning anyway. The group got to play as some of the NPC's repelling the attack, and made them realize they needed to invest in the NPC's a bit more. They are taking a modified from of Leadership, so working that in. They also enjoyed playing as the NPC's and they want to periodically follow them as short one-offs when the Teams start venturing out. So I am working on incorporating that into the game.

The question is, I have now sent all of the owlbears from Longfrond up against Misthome. The PC's started to follow tracks back after 2nd encounter with them but got side tracked on another quest that led them to Fort Ristin. this is now the third encounter with the owlbears, which the book says there are a total of 8 that Longfrond sends against Misthome. So my question is, and I'm looking for suggestions, should I continue to have Longfrond send attacks against Misthome and if so what should I use as the creatures to send against them until they follow up on the plot point?

Thanks and look forward to input.

Thanks Erusbo.

There are several folks in the group that like the resource management aspect of the game. They've been managing the resource allocation for keeping everyone fed and figuring out how many provisions they have. I gave them the choice about using the system or not before we started the campaign and those folks were up for it.

For the campaign management, I am using a campaign manager which should stream line a lot of the team and militia management. Once they get through Fangs of War, the players will probably move out of the officer roles and replace them with NPC's.

Thanks for the ideas for the Camp Red Jaw as well.

Edit: Regarding team size it is specified in the Teams info in Lands of Conflict. Apparently I can't read. Sigh.

Looks like the Ironfang has been a little slow the last couple of months. We've actually been on a hiatus for 5 weeks due to a number of factors. Anticipate starting back this Sunday again.

However I did run into a question about the militia and teams that I am hoping that someone can give me some insight into what they did.

Specifically my question is how large or small are militia teams supposed to be? Is there an optimal size. If NPC's are assigned to a team then are they not always present at the camp? And for the Igral's Axe group that the PC's may acquire in Fangs of War I think, how large a team is that or how did you decide how many individuals were assigned to the group?

From a game perspective, the group took out Fahrak and acquired the mpa have have had the two stealthiest start to scout the area around the ravine. Great stealth checks moving through the area. Avoided patrols and avoided being seen by the watchtower. They are planning to try to charm the watchtower denizens and learn more about the camp and the troop disbursement, which of course they are lowly hobgoblins so they don't know much. I expect that overcoming Camp Red Jaw is probably going to take the next two 4-hour sessions. Since I generally have 8 players, I have upgraded the numbers, the hit points and advanced some of the residents of the camp in preparation. Should be a good fight I hope.

Looking forward to some input on my questions above. Thanks in advance.

Alright so latest update from my campaign, is that they have cleared the Trog Caves and have the refugees starting to settle in. I finally figured out how I was going to get them to Fort Ristin after Camp Red Jaw. They encountered a Monthuni patrol, that they also wiped out as on of the players is a former Foxclaw. What they didn't find is the mapping booklet of the patrol that details them following a group of Chernsardo Rangers to Fort Ristin, before the invasion began. They will encounter a second Molthune patrol that retrieved the first parties journal and probably wipe them out as well, and that will lead them to Fort Ristin.

There has been some discussion about restoring Aubrin's vision as well. They also have come up with the idea of the banner on their own, which should come into play this week as well.

I anticipate that we will be starting with the milita's this week as well. All told things are going well. As noted above I have increased the encounter difficulties because I generally have 7 or 8 players each week. For the Oracle's lair, I added two additional regular trogs and maxed hit points on all and added a second Acolyte. We went 7 rounds, that lasted for the better part of two hours last week. Dropped two players to unconsciousness, and a couple more to within 5 or 6 of that state. Not a TPK but a tough fight for them nonetheless.

Encounter with Fahrak is this week and some missed wilderness encounters, and probably scouting Red Jaw for assault next week.

Latest update from my campaign, they've cleared a bunch of the Forest encounters, and just last session discovered the Trog Caves. Sunday they will be tackling that. I expect the clearing of the caves to be two or three sessions. Then planning on Fahrak coming after they have taken the caves to lead them into Camp Red Jaw.

So I do have a question and am looking for some suggestions. They found All-Eyes Wood and found the half-burned note. Aubrin was the one that suggested going to look at that location. As I understand it, Aubrin has been to Fort Ristin but doesn't exactly know where it is. In Trail of the Hunted, she directs them to the All-Eyes Wood location then in Fangs of War she admits to knowing about the other forts. How did folks handle this and directing them towards Ristin and Nunder and Trevalay.

Looking at this post it should probably have gone in Fangs of War, but thought I'd ask here to start that prep work for that book.

Thanks.

Since others are sharing, thought I'd add mine.

Started in September last year and have 9 players now. Lots of times they divide up into two groups of four. They've been clearing the Chernsardo slowly. They have just discovered the Trog caves last session.

They have missed some of the forest explorations and I've had to adjust timing of events a bit. Going to let them explore the Trog Caves and then have Fahrak appear shortly after they clear the trog caves to start to lead them into the Camp Red Jaw portion.

Hey thanks all for the feedback. I have virtually always maxed out hit points just by the nature of the group in general. As noted Hexploration has been in groups of 4 so that has been working well there. I actually had one encounter that went 8 rounds and did tax all 8 players to their fullest. I'll look at the forest encounters a bit more, but the players have been enjoying the Raging Swan descriptive happenings quite a bit and it has generated some good roleplay as well. I need to go reread about Novvi because I don't remember her from Books 2 & 4 at all, but been a while.

I have run some skill checks as well. Will look at maybe some more of those as well.

I appreciate all the suggestions.

Greetings,

I have been waiting to run this AP since it came out and finally after numerous delays, I have finally begun. It's been the first one that I could really sink my teeth into.

Someone earlier in the thread commented that they had 6 players, I am currently running with 8 players and me.

Starting classes included:
1) Human Maestro - Interjection Games
2) Oread Protean Scribe - LPJ Design
3) Fetchling Riven Mage - Rogue Genius Games
4) Human Fighter
5) Human Cleric
6) Halfling Druid
7) Dwarf Cleric
8) Human Spell-Less Ranger - Kobold Press

Gave them 1 full day to wander around the festival and the town. Several have connections to the town. Got the players to create a bunch of NPC's and establish their connections. Played up Aubrin to start them in the Inn for when the attack came. Starting them at Spring Equinox and the dark of the moon. When the attack came, they split into two parties to rescue as many as they could. Only one they didn't was Vane Oreld. Since they were split in two groups of four, pretty much ran the encounters as listed. Plus random ones in town. One of the groups made the bridge before the other, and I started the encounter In Media Res, where they had lost a few NPC's totally random selection. A couple of the death's hit the characters hard. Upped the difficulty at the bridge since all 8 were present. They did manage to collapse it with some difficulty, since nothing to blow up the bridge. I had two player's on their last legs after the encounter.

Fled to the forest, they pushed hard and made it fair way into the forest. Overall they escaped with just over 30 refugees. For the forest, I used the hex map that someone made that I found further up the thread and they are using a modified Hexploration rules for this first section. They've found Veld and a few other encounters. They are getting close to the Trog caves so probably next session. They are liking the resource management for the care and feeding of refugees and so far so good. It is going to start to get tight if they don't find the trog caves, but they are getting closer. Hexploration has been a mix of the planned encounters and then I am using Raging Swan's Wilderness Dressing tables to add depth to the forest. That has generated a couple of random encounters as well, a couple of which resulted in a run away and nearly dead result for a couple of the PC's. They are splitting the group into two groups of 4 to fully explore each hex, which has been working pretty well. They are now dealing with the Rogue Hobgoblin slaying an NPC, and we ended with that discovery, last time. About to encounter Orlu. When all 8 PC's are present I have been adding additional creatures to encounters and upping their hit points to max to accommodate the larger party.

Working on planning out the Caves and Camp Red Jaw which I saw folks had posted about above. Going to be reading those for ideas and advice.

And Backer #7. After the quality of your first two releases, especially Path of Shadows, instant back on the kickstarter. Have downloaded the playtest doc and will start to look at it next. Thanks and best of lukc on this kickstarter.

Raging Swan Press is still publishing 1st ed. stuff. Rogue Genius Games just released a 1st ed. Wildshaper. Legendary Games have released a couple of things fairly recently as well.

Best way I can think of is to look at Drivethrurpg, filter by Pathfinder 1st ed and then when the list appears sort by the date added.

And he is supposed to be contributing a new adventure to the new Frog God Games kickstarter for Sea King's something or other for 5E.

Grim Ranger wrote:

DJEternalDarkness wrote:

Seattle and the area get stupid when it comes to snow. As someone who lives here now, and has lived in New Mexico, the desert is better able to deal with snow than we are here. :)

The desert is flat.

Albuquerque is "high desert". Like Denver, it's a mile above sea level. Just east of the city are the Sandia Mountains. Add another mile.

when I was in grad school in ABQ, I got up one morning to drive to class. In the five mile trip, I counted twenty seven cars with their noses in the ditch - because of a half inch of snow.

All I can say is yep! Lived there 35 years. When we first moved there in the early 70's, sanding the roads was a guy standing in the back of a dump truck using a shovel. I kid you not. Winter 2006/2007 we got about 15 inches of snow, shut virtually everything down for several days.

I'm in again this year.

Next week, Raging Swan Press releases Village Backdrop: Lanthorn 2.0 by Creighton Broadhurst in Pathfinder, 5e and System Neutral editions. Members of our Patreon campaign at the $2 and up levels get all three editions of the village this Friday as a thank you for their pledge. So for as little as $2 they get over $10 worth of gaming goodness!

About Lanthorn
High up in the mountains, and often besieged by packs of murderous trolls, the village of Lanthorn stands as civilisation’s last glimmering light in an otherwise bleak and barren mountain range. A strange alliance of wizards—the Grand Conclave of Sublime Artificers—and a gaggle of (almost) civilised goblins—the Flaming Skull tribe—dwells in a bizarre atmosphere that is both scholarly and anarchic. Protected by high walls and gigantic magical lanterns imbued with potent fire magic, the wizards craft the mundane and wondrous items for which they are famed. Without the walls brave—or foolhardy—goblin “miners” search the nearby troll-haunted mines for lead and silver—some of which is reputed to have magical properties.

This updated edition of Village Backdrop: Lanthorn comprises several extra pages of new material along with notes on playing goblin characters!

Sign Up Today!
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Head over to Raging Swan's Patreon page.
Sign up at the $2 level or above before this Friday 9 am (GMT).
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Hit the links, check out and enjoy your book.
It's that simple, and you can cancel at any time if our Patreon is not for you.

Thank You!
I hope you decide to join us! Thank you for supporting Raging Swan Press.

Creighton

FWIW, I have been supporting this Patreon for quite some time and have been very pleased with it. The nice thing is that Creighton runs all his rewards through RPGNow/Drivethrurpg so that if you stop supporting the Patreon, you still have your rewards. It's also about the only Patreon I currently support and a good portion of why is the quality material and the Drivethrurpg support.

And apparently John Norman continues to write additional volumes in the Gor saga, with the last one looking to have been published in 2016.

I'm going to chime in here since there is an existing thread about the PDF downloads. I'm not missing any downloads, that I know of, but what I am seeing on the store page is some weirdness with the download page. I'm seeing PDF's that I know are not from a publisher associated with that publisher. For example,I see the Purple Mountain AP from Purple Duck Games associated with Four Dollar Dungeons. I alos see Shadowlands Carthica's Price Adventure Arc under them as well. Which also appears under 0One Games. In fact using the find on page, I find it 6 times in my list, instead of just once under Blackstar Studios.

Arakhor wrote:

Brother Fen wrote:

And how many people play it with you?

*Crickets*

Answering your own apparent "gotcha" question within the same post indicates that you have no wish to actually discuss the issue.

Quite honestly, 2E causing some people to leave is a feature to me, not a bug.

^^^^ Best laugh I've had all day! Thank you!

Busy flagging them as spam as I see them right now.

taig wrote:

Indeed there is! J4H34D created a spreadsheet (thanks!) to keep track of the rolls. You'll find the 1s all on the far right column.

link

Many thanks!

The dice of fate tell us that Sethvir is the BIGGEST LOSER, meaning he gets a free print copy of something I've got here at the house. Send me your address and get something fun in the mail!

And my free print copy arrived in the mail today. And it is, may I have a drumroll please...

Righteous Heroes.

Thank you very much Jason. Look forward to mining it for ideas.

taig wrote:

Indeed there is! J4H34D created a spreadsheet (thanks!) to keep track of the rolls. You'll find the 1s all on the far right column.

link

Many thanks!

The dice of fate tell us that Sethvir is the BIGGEST LOSER, meaning he gets a free print copy of something I've got here at the house. Send me your address and get something fun in the mail!

Wow! That is unexpected! I'll PM you shortly. Thank you and Happy New Year to you and all that participated in this year's random roll off.

Best news I've had all year. :)

Thanks.

Added to my downloads but not visible in downloads page or from Downloads tab on product page.

Very excited about this. I'm a gear junky, I have problem.

And admitting you have a problem is the first step! LOL

Congratulations, ladydragona.

You'll get it next time, Sethvir.

And yes, congratulations to all the winners thus far. Forgot to include that too.

Congrats to ladydragona. So close, Sethvir!

And yet so far. :) It's all good.

TriOmegaZero gets the sole 14 (I apologize to Ragadolf and Sethvir for the cruel treatment by the dice roller, which decided to give you 20s).

Yep, that's the way I roll! Come up with the Nat 20 when 14 would have sufficed. :)

Thanks to Sethvir and El Ronza for the excellent and insightful reviews!

Sorry for the long delay and you are welcome. Bard X Feats is up next. Hopefully before year end on this one.

And if anybody has looked at the This Week at Paizo email that just came out, we have a very unique situation today. The 10 ten list from other companies is entirely comprised of one company, Kobold Press. Their Kobold Quarterly sale for $1.00 for all their PDF's, has driven everyone else off the list entirely. We've seen lists where a company had upwards of more than half the list, but never 100%.

Which in light of some discussion upthread, is that KQ not only encompasses Pathfinder, but 13th Age, 4th Ed. So how do you classify this week since there was opinions expressed about Pathfinder vs Starfinder vs other.

Count me in as well.

I'd ask, but I have had trouble finishing the review for the last set of offerings and it's not fair for me to ask when I haven't done the last one.

Nice spell book, although I found about 5 spells that are listed in the spell lists but don't appear in the book.

Shrouds of Fog
Soporific Fog, Greater
Fog Creature II
Fen Twin
Recuperative Slumber on the Moor

Unless I just missed them....

Much as I would love too, the timing on it just isn't right. Ahh, the way of the world. I missed the first one as well. I really like the concept behind this though. I certainly wish you the best with doing this project. If you continue to do these, I will continue to watch for them and hope to jump on the next one that comes around.

Great questions I would like to see answered as well.

Help us out Paizo! We need more details on the militia system!

And the material in the Lands of Conflict book doesn't help with this system, which is where I understand the mechanics of this are supposed to exist?

And it's 424 pages long per the product description above.

I was playing with it and it was very nice. Liked the filtering capability for it. It's a nice preview of what is coming down the pipe, and if it will work even better than it was, that will be great.

Just curious if folks need copies resent, have questions, etc, as we at TFPG are eagerly awaiting reading what other folks have to say about our feat work. PM reviewers if you have any issues, questions, or problems.

And thanks in advance.

Review is still pending. Same issue as ITB: Bard. Real Life. I have been given to understand at home that I may have some minus family time, that if it comes true, I will attempt to complete reviews of both this and Bard X feats.

My review is still a work in progress unfortunately. I haven't forgotten. Unfortunately RL sadly trumps gaming.

I have this spreadsheet I maintain.

Nice I am so getting a copy of that. That is fantastic!

I'm looking at one small change at the moment in the adventure.

Go to Lava Rules!.

Wow. Quick turnaround! Received and downloaded. FYI, working on the review for the Bard into the Breach. Two of may favorite things about it right now are the Siege Carillon and the Hurdy-gurdy.

Since I am already going to be looking at the Into the Breach Bard, may as well add this one too.

Excellent, thank you for the kind offers folks, expect copies shortly, sent yours Vol to the same email as previous books. Sethvir, I don't think I actually have an email you use for PDF deliveries, feel free to PM me your preferred email delivery address.

PM'd.

I've done a few reviews, I'll give it a whirl.

I would appreciate one of these as well.