We use the milestone leveling system, so I haven't gone and calculated the XP rewards, but it feels like the level milestones listed Pg 3 are a bit off. Following that the players don't level to 2 until AFTER the Dragonfly Pagoda... that means they have done some story based encounters in their first 2 days, the entirety of the zoo, AND the entire Pagoda. It then says level 3 before investigating the Dreaming Palace, which means all they did from level 2-3 is the handful of encounters in the Undercity and a bunch of RP encounters in the House of Planes.
Seems more like it should be:
2 - After the zoo
3 - before investigating Dreaming Palace
On a side note, I get the math involved, but my players don't tend to rest when threatened... so they try not to rest in the middle of a dungeon or tower or whatever. They are trying to adjust their expectations based on how Paizo balanced the 2E APs and how tight the math is in 2E. But they also don't like to level when they don't have the opportunity to rest and obtain their new spell slots and daily abilities. So having a marker for level 4 be "before they delve into the basement" makes it difficult especially considering they should be "half-way to level 5" by the end. That means that the final encounters are balanced for a team of level 4 characters. That means we have to break our rules in some way. Either the players have to accept that they can take an 8 hour break while in the middle of invading this serial-killer's funhouse or I let them level without resting... then the question becomes whether they get their new limited use abilities that they would normally have to rest to get. Anyway /rantoff.
@Sovaka - I really like your version, however at 800x800 I had to zoom in quite a bit to get the grid to line up in Foundry. This caused the entire map quality to suffer. Would you consider posting a larger render... say double the size (1600x1600)? That would be awesome.
My group has an alchemist, cleric, rogue and druid. After their (successful) show they investigated the body and found tracks which I said headed toward both Bardolph's wagon and Myron's Wagon. I didn't give them that specifically, just that they headed toward the part of camp NW of the stream and toward the bridge. Knowing what lay in wait at each location, I was surprised when they decided to split the group and half follow one set and the other half follow the other. Especially since these players make jokes all the time about not splitting the group. Luckily (for them), Myron's wagon was locked and the rogue went toward Bardolph's. So when the cleric shouted for the rogue to come unlock Myron's wagon they hadn't yet disturbed Bardolph.
Whether due to the difficulty of some of these encounters or due to poor rolls, the perception thus far has been that EC and Plaguestone are extremely difficult. All of my players are veterans of Pathfinder 1E, having migrated to Pathfinder from 3.5 back in the day. But we have nearly wiped almost every encounter so far in both stories.
So in the first salvo, before she could even act, the pods had the rogue at 1 HP. The group survived, but burned a lot of resources. Then the cleric took The Great Fortunato's cloak and the group went to Bardolph's wagon. I had not choice :) I dropped the cleric to dying. Obviously that was a lot of resources to get her back in order. Once they started trying to figure out where to go next, I had the woodchoppers tell them about the snakes. Even though by RAW you can't do this, I let the druid 'diplomacy' the giant viper (mostly because I played a 1E druid and found it annoying that you get this ability to use diplomacy with animals, but every animal Paizo puts before you is in combat so the ability doesn't get used). Anyway, they did fine at the camp and mephits.
That was the end of that session, so before the next session I could take stock. I immediately decided that the cockatrice was too great a level difference (1 vs. 3) especially when they were essentially out of resources. So I didn't give them any hints to go there. Instead they heard the music playing as they left the forest for the grig encounter. I 'steered' them toward the resolution to join the music and guide it to conclusion. Luckily, the rogue made some excellent Performance checks, so this solution turned out to be no problem.
Between sessions I'd already examined the grigs and since they looked similar to a bard kit I gave them each a tiny wand of Soothe. So when the party kicked off combat with Nemmia, there was 2 extra heals they didn't know about... which is a good thing because it probably would have been a TPK without the grigs' assistance (both healing and damage). Normally I wouldn't upstage the heroes by doing damage with a support NPC, but in this case the players already felt desperate enough and that Paizo and the dice were against them that they didn't mind the aid at all. I had also prepped for Bardolph to come to their aid also. I'd decided the trigger was if any party member went down to dying and they squeaked by so I didn't end up needing him.
They were all extremely happy when I let them level to 2 after all that and they seem more hopeful... that will be until next session and they go in the church...
RicoTheBold - You are my hero!!! I hate the way images (non-maps) look when copied directly from the PDF. I hate it so much I would use the Windows Snip & Sketch to snip the image (text and all), drop into paint, then spend a bunch of time copy/pasting pieces of the background over the text to create an image that looked nice. Sometimes having to go pixel-by-pixel in some places just so it didn't look janky.
I read your post and immediately downloaded the latest TokenTool (latest is 2.1, I had 2.0 and it couldn't open PDFs) and tested it. Then I saw your line about just dragging and dropping from the PDF image view and my mind was BLOWN!!! the resulting images look so good and the image viewer even has backgrounds and border images to grab that I can use elsewhere. This has changed my life as a GM and saved me HOURS of prep time. Thank you so much!!!
As I was preparing Muminofrah's chariot race in Book 3 Part 1, I was not entirely happy with even the modified chase mechanics. The legs sounded interesting and if you run it as described the only way to win would be to skip legs. So I completely reworked the whole thing. I just ran this event with my group tonight and it was a hit... the highlight of the entire session. Everyone got really involved and they really enjoyed it. So I thought I'd post what changes I made and how I ran this event.
First a little additional information: We use Roll20 for maps and combat and Hero Lab for characters. So first I took the map of Tephu in Roll20 and on the GM layer drew lines for each leg of the route so that I could move them to the Token layer each time they hit a new leg. I also put a text number in a small circle on each leg just to label them. In order to get 13 legs and for some of the legs to match what was described vs. where the leg actually went I used the following route:
Leg 1 and 2: Depart point 15 on the map (Palace of Gentle Reeds) and follow the canal south and south-east
Leg 3: cross the canal heading north across the southernmost bridge
Leg 4: Follow the road from the bridge north to around the border of New City
Leg 5: straight shot north on the road through the market at point 20
Leg 6: From point 20 snake east (following the road) closer to the reed fields then north to the northern border of New City
Leg 7: Drop back south of the New City border 1 block then follow the road west to near point 13, then sharp turn on the border to go around point 13 and follow the road north toward the canal.
Leg 8: Straight shot north to the edge of the city, then follow the road west around the edge of the city
Leg 9: Follow the road southwest straight through the middle of the plaza at point 17.
Leg 10: Follow the roads SW from point 17 then 90 degree turn SE through the camel souk at Point 3
Leg 11: Follow the road south of point 3 on the edge of the city then turn east to follow the road to eventually come from the south through point 22
Leg 12: Continue north from point 22, cut WSW on the road just south of where it says "Wadjet's Walk" on the map and follow the road heading straight for point 11. Just before point 11, turn west then make the sharp turn back east to follow the road just north of point 11.
Leg 13: Straight shot from there back to the Palace of Gentle Reeds.
I then used Hero Lab to create statblocks for 12 NPCs from various levels and backgrounds. Some were crafters, some were farmers, some were nobles, some were retired adventurers. I made a token in Roll20 for each of them so that I could add all of them and the PCs to the Roll20 combat tracker. To make figuring out their checks easier, I made a spreadsheet with their applicable skill checks that would calculate all 12 NPC results at the same time.
So here are the rules I used:
- Every player and NPC needed to make a check at every leg.
- At each leg I could describe the challenge then give them a choice of what check they would like to make (without telling them the DC of said check). Example (Leg 3): "As you charge down the road next to the canal, you see ahead that the bridge you were supposed to cross is under construction. You can either make a Handle Animal check or a Knowledge (local) check". I would then describe the results of that check depending on their result vs. the DC: "You use your knowledge of Tephu to find an alternate route around the bridge. You are able to charge ahead a bit"
- For each check they either gain or lose 'points' depending on their roll.:
Success = 0
Success 5-9 over = +1
Success 10-14 over = +2
Success 15-19 over = +3
Success 20-24 over = +4
Success 25+ = +5
Fail 1-4 = -1
Fail 5-9 = -2
Fail 10+ = make Handle Animal DC 15 check or crash (10d6 dmg; Refl DC 20 for half)
- I would keep track of the point totals in Roll20's combat track where it would normally display the initiative. that way the players could see the standings on the screen at all times.
- They could still go solo or double up
- If they doubled up, certain checks (where it made sense) I allowed them to aid eachother
I believe I kept the obstacles the same as described in the AP, but adding more descriptive flair to make it interesting. At the end of it the players talked about some other AP that had a chase mechanic in it that they all thought didn't work very well, but that they really enjoyed the above described method.
A couple of points of feedback from this:
- They suggested capping the success gain at +2 or maybe +3 to keep things tighter in the standings. After around leg 6 the PCs had started to get so far ahead of the NPCs that the only threat was that they would fail their own checks so bad they would crash... but none of the NPCs were contenders anymore.
- Because our players are using Gestalt rules, they are a bit more powerful than normal, so I adjusted up most of the DCs of the checks to give them more of a challenge. This resulted in the NPCs, which were already poorly suited to the challenges, having a great deal of trouble making the checks. By the end of the race EVERY NPC had crashed so it was only the 3 PC chariots. If the challenge of the checks was to be increased, the NPCs would need to be artificially buffed to provide a better challenge for the PCs (and not all crash before leg 8).
Anyway, like I said, this was a hit and one of the better moments for the group in the last 2-3 sessions. I thought I'd share in case it helps someone else.
One of my players too Blood of the Pharaohs and really wanted that to mean something and he really like RP opportunities, so really wanted something to come of this idea.
His character is a paladin of Sarenrae and backstory was that she was a member of the Precinct of the Left Eyes before the Lottery and her service was up. Right around that time I had some homebrew story about bandits on the trade route from Katapesh as a way to bring the players together before the Lottery. Anyway, the other piece of information about his character was that the character lived in Wati with her grandmother who was always going on about her being meant for more and the character just thinking she's an old coot.
So for the auction at the beginning of Book 2, I had a lot that included some census records dating back to before the Plague of Madness and something about the records sparked something that his character (Persephone) remembered her grandmother saying, so she purchased the records from the auction. When she checked on her grandmother during Book 2, she gave her the records. At the end of Book 2, I had her grandmother unveil the 'family secret'. She explains thus:
Persephone is descended from a family that was cousins to the pharaoh a long time ago. They were made governor of Wati and the city prospered under their administration. However, when the Plague of Madness hit Wati, another greedy noble family betrayed Persephone's family and made the citizens believe that Persephone's family was the cause of the Plague of Madness. In their fear, and because of the Plague, the citizens turned on Persephone's family. Before they were slaughtered, they had the handmaid for their youngest heir flee with their child. They escaped to Tephu and, fearing for the safety of the child, hid their identify. The handmaid raised the child as her own, revealing the secret only when near death. Each generation, the descendants of the handmaid protect the descendants of the heir to the family in hopes of one day restoring the family.
With the census records from before the Plague of Madness, Persephone had one piece of the puzzle to restoring her family. Her grandmother provided her with a signet ring with her family's crest and suggested that further research in the Great Library in Tephu could reveal more. This allowed me to let his character make her own research checks regarding her family history while the rest of the group worked on research checks in Book 3 Part 1. Additionally, I'd said that the original handmaid left evidence with the priests at the Houses of Order and Wisdom. Between these, it provided his character with a 'mini-quest' to work on while the rest of the group was doing research.
I haven't worked out all the finer points, but ultimately by the end of the AP the intention is to have collected enough evidence to proves that A) Persephone is descended from the family that was governor at the time of the Plague of Madness and B) was betrayed and lands stolen by this other family (unnamed) which are still a wealthy/noble family in Wati. All evidence collected would result in the close of the AP his character restoring the family name and acquiring a potion of the lands/wealth of the family that wronged her ancestors.
Just posting some stories from our campaign through Mummy's Mask. I only started playing Pathfinder this year (last I played D&D was in the '90s) and MM is my first attempt GMing. We use a heavily modified Hero Lab (since I learned how to code it) and Roll20 on a custom table with a TV built into it (last session I'd upgraded to Pro to use dynamic lighting and that went over well).
Anyway, the party ended up having 6 characters and we always use Gestalt characters. So I've been increasing the difficulty of all encounters usually by adding Advanced Template and sometimes adding a few extra enemies to the encounters. Also, I worked in a little homebrew Prelude that has resulted in everyone being a level ahead of the AP. I might need to tweak further on the treasure because I think they are having to scrimp a lot, but they seem to be having fun nonetheless.
Some stories:
Tomb of Ahkentepi:
This was both my and the party's first dungeon. They were unsure what to expect, and so was I. They are all very interested in the setting and the stories, so I often handwaved some of the Knowledge (history)/(local) checks just to give some of the backstory listed in the book that isn't explicitly stated. Like the story about his family's tragedy and his mistress's unfinished tomb.
Warrior Dolls: This was neat and kinda freaked them out when it first came up. I'd read in the Obits the hardness being a problem for a lot of groups, so I was all ready for this to be an epic battle. But in the first round our Inquisitor/Ranger wielding a falchion crit'ed the first one she hit for like 30 dmg, then cleaved the next one also killing it in the first blow. I'd increased the number to 3, so there was one left. It took them a few rounds just to hit that one, but it was far less harrowing at that point.
False Tomb: They have 2 trapspotters, so I knew that a lot of the fun of this room would be ruined. So I modified the trap activation. Since the rogue immediately found the trap, I decided that his disable only disabled the lightning arcs. Triggering the false sarcophagus battle also triggered the water trap. Even though I kept the trap broken, I extended the water duration a few rounds so it got up to 4 ft I think. I designated that the platform was 1 ft up, so they got a few rounds out of the water while fighting the sarcophagus. They did seriously think they were going to drown, so the 2 front line fought the sarcophagus, the rogue tried to push the water doors shut (futilely), and 2 other characters started searching the walls for secret doors. They found the one with the slave mummies and opened it, so that was cool. They did find the other one, but by the time the rogue could get over there to unlock it the water had stopped rising so the urgency was gone. Still went very thematically though.
House of Pentharu:
Even though they were level 3 for the House of Pentharu, they had a hard time. To be fair, I'd increased the difficulty to account for the higher level and Gestalt, but they also don't have a strong dedicated healer (closest are bard and oracle).
Haunts: These played out nicely and gave provided a good thematic atmosphere. I know at least one player that was very interested in the haunts and wanted to figure them out to cleanse the place. Unfortunately, RAW none of the characters have any way to speak with the spirits of the haunt yet, so were not able to figure out the proper steps to cleanse them. Perhaps because of the higher level or because of Gestalt, I did feel the Haunt save DCs were super easy. I don't think anyone in the party every failed any of them even though I changed their reset from 1 day to 1 hour so they triggered the front gate haunt both coming and going.
Giant Centipede: They chose to go left first, so this was actually their first encounter. When I presented it in Roll20, it was a big 'Oh Crap!' moment for them and I just about killed the Paladin. They survived, but were a little rattled as they started the rest of the exploration.
Eastern Courtyard: They chose to go eastern yard after finding the crypt in the western yard. This was tough because it was one combat after another. They pushed through, but had burned most of their resources by the time they entered the House through the kitchen.
Inside the House: They went down the east side of the house first (which was good based on their condition) and I described some of the flavor stuff. They were intrigued by the fresh corpse missing a head on the privy and that started all kinds of speculation. They hit the foyer and the guards, but only one party member entered range of the haunt by the door. After fighting the skeletons, they were pretty tapped out of resources, so decided to return to Wati, get more supplies and rest up.
Enroute to House Day 2: Sidestory, I have some homebrew planned for midway through the campaign which resulted in me requiring one player to play 2 characters, one of which is a gun wielding character. However, I didn't realize how expensive using a gun was in Pathfinder, and felt bad for him when battle after battle on the first day of Pentharu he would be reluctant to fire because each shot was 1gp. So I needed a way to 'gift' him a Wand of Abundant Ammunition, some alchemical charges, and a better gun. So I took the random encounter with the Flickering Four and added a gunslinger to the group to make the Flickering Five. I then prepped this encounter on the Skirmish in the Ruins map which I display to them every time they transit to or from a site in the Necropolis (so they never know if they will get an encounter and will be used to the map when the planned encounter comes up). So when they approached the group, Lirgala gave a diplomatic speech about how they saw the player exit the previous day after only half a day exploring and they must have found a lot of great loot to need to make multiple trips (this illicited a lot of jokes from the players since they actually left because they were getting beaten). She proposed they should share the wealth and let the Flickering Five join them. Then I had the dwarf pipe up and say he'd rather just fry them. Lirgala turned around and yelled at him to shut up, the barbarian just huffed and rolled his eys, and Virichi whined about how they should just go back out of the necropolis and let him research for another week or two before trying to come back in. This was a fun little RP as the players got to see how disfunctional this group was. Then I had the gunslinger pipe up and say he had his own agenda and that gunslingers were rare enough that there couldn't be two in Wati and he challenged the gunslinger party member to a one-on-one duel. My player RP'ed it out that his guy wouldn't engage in a duel and no matter how much I'd goaded him, he wouldn't bite. So I finally had the dwarf just start tossing fire. The frontliners took down Lirgala and the dwarf nonlethal, but the barbarian and the gunslinger needed to die. The first time he was attacked, Virichi ran for his life and ended up escaping. They ultimately took the unconscious Lirgala and dwarf to the necropolis gate guards who locked them up at the Precinct of the Left Eyes.
House Day 2: On day 2 they encountered the beheaded and Heshsharu. Both were great encounters. Heshsharu ended up putting 4 of 6 of them to sleep as soon as she got bored talking to them, leaving the oracle and rogue awake. Rogue held her off while the oracle went around trying to wake up the frontliners. After this battle, since they'd explored the first level, they went upstairs. They went into the small room first where they found the body that showed signs of turning into a vargoille. So things started to make sense. I'd intended on them following that around counter-clockwise, but they went straight for the master bedroom instead. Since they had already come and gone once, I decided that Imanish would go out that night and use charm person to find himself a guard to bring back. He then got him infected with vargoille's disease via a kiss, so by the time the PCs arrived, he was in the final stages of turning. However, when they opened the door they saw 5 guards all in final stages of vargoille disease because 4 of them were images. So they ended up burning a few spells and lots of actions trying to hit the fake ones until they could make their Will checks to disbelieve them. It was fun when the Paladin decided they were all fake and backed out of the room to fight the vargoille that had come out of their rooms hearing the noise, only got get an attack of opportunity from the one real guard and take a heavy flail to the back. I'd doubled the number of vargoille, so there were 4 of them. The heavy damage dealer got paralyzed from the first shriek for 3 rounds, but she was far away and the vargoilles couldn't get to her to kiss her. But they did manage to paralyze the gunslinger and kiss him before they finished them all off. I didn't feel like having Imanish show up again later, so I just had him fight the party as soon as his charmed guard died. It was all pretty epic and they were super worried about the gunslinger turning into a vargoille, so they immediately left to go to the temple to get cured up. Almost killed another with poison during the battle and the ranger/inquisitor had donned the dead man's headband and wanted to get the curse removed. So it ended up taking them 3 trips to get through the House of Pentharu.
