Is there any word as to when the second part is released? What's here already looks amazing, can't wait to play this as my next campaign. Having GM'd the original 1e AP, this is going to be interesting.
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I have started running Rise of the Runelords in an oline round recently and picked up Dungeondraft to create maps for use in Foundry VTT. Maybe others might find these useful for something. I will add more maps to this folder as we progress through the campaign. All maps were created using assets from Forgotten Adventures.
I am running my second game of RotRL today and the last session ended with the players hearing about Ameiko's disappearance. Now, page 27 (Anniversary Edition) mentions an argument between Ameiko and Tsuto. Is it mentioned anywhere what this was about? I can't find it. And another (maybe related?) question, is Tsuto's father mentioned anywhere? I have an Half-Elf in my group, so I had the idea of connecting Tsuto and that character, that might create an interesting situation in the Glassworks, half-brother vs. half-brother or something...
We are going for our fourth try at an AP next week when I DM RotRL. And I think it'll be the first one, we will really finish. Our first AP was Kingmaker. That went quite well, until halfway through book 3, I think, the group fell apart for non-RPG-related reasons. We were able to put together a new group for it, but it just didn't feel right with a whole new group. We set that one aside for now, but I might start that AP in the near future with another group, and I definately plan to play the last part at some point with the old group. Then we started Serpent's Skull, in which I am a player. We are now about halfway through book 2. Problems with that group are, first, we don't play so often and second, probably due to not playing so often, at least I am not overly invested in the campaign yet. I mean, the thing is named RACE for ruin and I really don't feel like we are racing anyone... After Kingmaker, I started DMing Carrion Crown. At first, we had an awesomely flavourful group of PCs, but sadly there was a TPK in the lower parts of Harrowstone. The Players made new PCs, but sadly, they were not as coherent a party as they were before.
Campaign's gonna start next week and at last the party stands, though most still have no names.. Gwynn - Human (Galt) Ranger - Fled from Galt, making a living in the Sandpoint Region as a guide. Iridian - Half-Elf (Varisian) Inquisitor of Desna - -- - Human (??) Bard - Seeking Thassilonian Lore and a chance to reenact it on stage. -- - Daemon-Spawn Tiefling (??) Magus - Stole his father's sword and fled to Varisia.
Got mine yesterday. They really are beautiful and I am really looking forward to starting the campaign next week. But I have to agree with some others, the art overlapping into the discarded area is a bit disappointing on some pawns.
We are starting this AP soon with following party: Human Ranger (Archer)
How necessary would those running or having run the AP say would it be to swap out loot? We are playing the Anniversary Edition, btw.
I made a little document to help me bring the town of Sabdpoint to life. It consists of a small random encounter table to get the PCs get to know some of the less important residents, a list of businesses in town and a little space to take notes. I had some time on my hands so I translated my document to english (my original being in german) to share here, maybe someone can use it.
If some players are still reading in this thread, big big spoilers ahead... First off I wanna say thank you all for the great ideas in this threat. It inspired me to flesh out the villain in this story for my game too. If someone who maybe deeper in the story of all the AP could look over my ideas for potential holes or problems, that would be awesome. Anyways, here it goes. We are through HoH already, so sadly no A.A. at the funeral. But I want to introduce him at the trial. I combined that with replacing the count with someone the SC will be more invested in, which I hope in my game will be Justice Daramid. So Adrissant will be in town during the trial and meet the PC briefly. I will also have him buy a picture from the coutroom sketchist, for possible use in later scrying attempts. At the end of the adventure, when the PC have said their farewells to Daramid, they will again meet him briefly, when he enters her house, as they are leaving, intending to abduct her then. Should the PC inquire Daramid about this guy, she can actually not tell them very much. Just that he appeared a few years ago, weirdly very interested in her but lost interest after a while and is just back in town after they haven't met for a long time. I'd also like the PC to be able to track down a bit more info on him, maybe by asking around and especially in BM, in Ascanor Mansion, where Adrissant was a regular for some time. Still working on details there though. Any thoughts? Btw, if my names are a bit off, that's because I have the german translation of the AP, I think they changed a few names a bit.
Will there be any chance to get an overview, sample pictures or good descriptions of what exactly is in these collections? I will very probably not get the AP (or many future APs, if this sticks) but I might be interested in collecting useful pawns for other adventures. But when I have no idea of what's in there then I probably won't buy 100 Pawns just to collect them. At least not in my current financial situation...
Skipping Varnhold sounds like a good idea, especially since that was the first event every player now in the group has played. Involvement in Brevan politics is exactly what I'd like to be a big part of low to mid-level play. Can you go into more detail on what you did? Do you have any interesting sources beside the Kingmaker books themselves? I do not, however, want to ditch the first world part. With good forshadowing it is a great finish to the campaign as I don't really buy "mere human" politics and war at high levels. The characters are almost demigods, after all.
Spoilers for the campaign ahead, you're warned. Hi, everyone. For various reasons, our Kingmaker campaign has ended before it was finished. I'm not going into too much detail here, but we lost 3 out of 4 players, went on with 3 new players, one of which is extremely unhappy with the way we play, two are completely unfamiliar with the world and one is a ninja, which is just going on my nerves by being constantly invisible. Well, we talked and decided we were to stop the running campaign. But we all like the Kingmaker campaign and want to begin anew. Needless to say, I don't want it all to be the same, but I also want to incorporate familiar faces. For example, the Levetons, the Stag Lord, and a few others, I guess. But going the same way as before will be quite boring. First of all, at least one of the players has seen it all (though a year ago..). Secondly, we'd all like to progress a bit faster. So we are either going to use the fast XP track or level by story. So, in this thread I hope to get ideas on how to give old faces and encounters a new twist, tips on how to fasten play, especially exploration, which we want to have, but which also tended to be boring at times, and ideas for new encounters and side-stories. I'll begin with what I thougt of so far. For speeding up, I'm going to roll random encounters up front and have all hexes around the players prepared before a session starts. However, since we are going to play bi-weekly and I don't have too much time, ready-made encounters you found or created will be extremely appreciated. As old faces go, I definately wanna keep the Stag Lord. But this time around, I'd like him to be more than what he was. Maybe the rumors about the animal demon cult are true? Or he has some more sinister control about the zombies. I could imagine making Kressle the boss of the bandits and to use the Stag Lord as the first threat to the player's kingdom. Then I'd like to start in Brevoy, at some sort of ceremony for the new Charta-bearers to meet the opposition, introduce some NPCs and so on. I'd like Brevoy to play a bigger part in the beginning, maybe there could even be a bit of a war of independence. Also I'd like to have a bit more forshadowing of Nyrissa. As it went, my players didn't catch any of the clues, as they were to small to stand out among all the other things going on. I don't want to eliminate the more mundane threats, like other kingdoms or bandits, but those I'd rather have at the early levels with the highter level threats now occupied by Drelev and Irovetti, to be rather mythical. Maybe a few new lieutenants of Nyrissa. Anyways, I am open for any ideas and suggestions. Next Wednesday we are going to meet, talk about what we all expect from the relaunch and create characters with a common background.
I am currently in the process of turning the Darkmoon Vale into a ready to play sandbox setting. There really isn't much to do, as the Guide to Darkmoon Vale really does most of the work. I just convert a few things from 3.5 to Pathfinder and fill in what is only hinted at in the guide (like haunts in the abandoned Lumber towns and such), spice up the random encounter tables and write up NPCs who never got a stat block. Also there are many modules in this area.
I have put together a little something preparing the darkmoon vale area as a sandbox style region. A plant monster that infested the old sawmill in Falconsridge, an abandoned lumbertown. Now, I was first going for CR 6, so the bestiary proposed 9 HD, but looking at the stats it seems a bit hard for CR 6... So, what CR would you assign to this one? Saw Mill Horror CR 7
And now that I am at it, I wrote up other creatures in the Guide to the Darkmoon Vale... Caustic Drake:
Caustic Drake CR 4 XP 1,200 CE large dragon (earth) Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +9 AC 17, touch 11, flat-footed 15
Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft.
Str 19, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 12, Cha 10
Thunder Drake: Thunder Drake CR 6 XP 2,400 CE large dragon (air) Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +11 AC 20, touch 22, flat-footed 17
Speed 20 ft., fly 60 ft. (good)
Str 19, Dex 17, Con 18, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 10
Sonic Blast (Su) A thunder drake can, as a standard action, release a focused scream that explodes into powerful sonic waves when it hits an object. This attack has a range of 60 ft. and deals 7d4 points of sonic damage (DC 17 Reflex half) to all creatures in a 20 ft. burst. Every creature that does not make its save is also knocked prone. Once a thunder drake has used sonic blast, it cannot do so again for 1d6 rounds. The Reflex save is constitution-based.
I am currently prepping a sandboxy campaign in the Darkmoon Vale and I read about the Dream Wolves there, who, sadly, never got stats. So I created them. Any comments, critique, ideas? Especially for a better ability than my forced daydream and about one or two more SLAs. Stat Block: Dream Wolf CR 3 XP 800 NG medium magical beast Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +12 AC 16, touch 12, flat-footed 14
Speed 50 ft.
Str 13, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 12, Wis 15, Cha 16
Forced Daydream (Su) As a standard action, a dream wolf can force a creature to experience a maddening daydream. The target must succed on a DC 15 Will Save or take 1d3 Wis damage and be confused for 1d4 rounds. The save DC is charisma-based.
I think there was a clarification by the Devs that Vital Strike does indeed work on charges and Spring Attack. I have always understood the wording "whenever you use the attack action" to mean "whenever you make a single melee/ranged/unarmed attack". Even if this isn't clarified somewhere, I don't see how this would hurt the game, really.
An alien conspiracy is attempting to infiltrate a fantasy kingdom. I'm doing something similar right now. My campaign is bulid around the pactmasters and the mysterious countdowns mentioned in "Entombed with the Pharaos". More Details: The players found one of those countdowns and have already deduced, when it reaches zero, which is only a month and a half away. They have informed the Pactmasters of their findings and they (there are five of them in my Katapesh) have split and thrown Katapesh in a short civil war. As it turns out, some alien evil (the nature of which neither the players nor me have determined exactly yet, but it's gonna be aliens) is on it's way and two of the Pactmasters plan to welcome them while the remaining three have charged the players with helping them. The civil war came to an end when meteors fell from the sky and Katapesh was invaded by alien dog-like beings (akata) and golems (the alien's shock troops).
Now the players are searching for the two "evil" (actually they just see their chance to finally go home) Pactmasters to retrieve the key to the Glass Pyramids which is believed to hold the key to fend off the invaders (the two entombed dwarves did it once already).
I can see three basic variants of the True Neutral alignement.
I am german and we mostly use the original english material. We had one player in our group who had the german core rulebook, but in my opinion that is a real mess. I mean, seriously, a book which has the exact same page count in english and german, how can you expect it to be any good? I have played 3.5 in the german version for a long time, but even then we had a portion of the books in english. So I do know most of the german words for feats and stuff, but I mostly ignore them. When we play a written adventure (as we are now, playing Kingmaker), I sometimes paraphrase the "read-aloud-texts", but as we all have a decent grasp of the english language, many times I just read them, especially if I find them really evocative or fun. Names are never translated, only if someone doesn't get a meaning that way, but after the explanation it stays as in the original. At some point, as a test of my language-skills, I would really love to play in a english-speaking game, but since I don't like the idea of online gaming, that's probably not going to happen anytime soon...
OK... We are now almost finished with VV and our kingdom encompasses a measly 16 hexes and produces maybe 5-10BP on a good day... The players were very reluctant with expansion in the beginning as they didn't see the benefit of it since it increased the control DC. I have now housruled only every other hex increasing the DC and some other minor tweaks but they still don't expanse too much. They are beginning now as I told them that their land will never support an army like that but we are still going very slowly.
So, first session is done. I had them level up once (now 8th) on a credit before they entered and by attacking them with the Wyverns while they were trying to enter in the night they arrived with maybe 40% of their resources drained convinced them to take a nap before.
Yes, I guess as long they are on the first level, I'll give them the chance to run. The trap(s) may really be a problem, because they have noone to deal with those. If I remember correctly, they don't even have that high a perception, so they will probably not find the other entrance. If they should reach second level and decide to go on, I really don't think, that I can justify giving them the chance to rest in the tomb. Well, I guess, I'll see tomorrow. They should have a few Hero Points, so there should be a way out of the direst situations...
My group went straight to the centaurs after Varnhold and are now on their way to Vordakai's Tomb. Since they practically race there, they are only 7th level, maybe 8th if I let them level mid-session and give them some sort of "random" encounter. We have 5 players, one iInquisitor with a (then)3rd-level fighter cohort, a sorcerer (earth) with a (then)3rd-level sorcerer (fey) cohort, one Ranger and one oracle (of lore, very ineffective in combat). Am I in for a TPK? We play tomorrow and I am not sure, if I want to let them go or somehow metagame them into not entering for now.
5 players in Greenland, the new barony north of the Stolen Lands (KM)
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