erikdlan's page

Most of my prep time as a GM in Jade Regent goes to think about plots involving the NPCs, so I do agree this is an issue for the AP. That said it's being very rewarding for me.

Quatar your cast of NPCs is far too huge in my opinion, what will you do when they find Miyaro, Hirabashi Jiro and Habesuta Hatsue? I think I would forget about some of the NPCs.

But if you want strategies to put more spice on your NPCs:

- Use the story of the mayor NPCs as plot hooks as much as you can: Sandru had two brothers, Alder and Jubrayl Vhiski. I made Jubrayl appear as a villain in Enganoka. I even put my pcs in Ameiko's dreams to make them play through the death of Alder Vhiski while they were fighting a few baku monsters. The dragon Shalelu killed could have some vengeful relatives.

- NPCs have feelings too and nobody said they can only fall in love with PCs: nobody was putting attention on Shalelu or Spivey on my campaign, so I made a love triangle between Shalelu, Spivey and Ulf. NPCs can ask for help to get their romantic objectives, as my Spivey did.

- Just kill'em: unfortunately is quite human to ignore the deeds of some people till they are dead. You have a huge cast of NPCs and it could be a shock for your PCs if one of the evil guys in the books kills an NPC they know in front of them. Hirabashi Jiro died in a big battle in my campaign.

My Ameiko totally behaves like Matthew suggested.

Is there something you want to tell us about this topic?
You know, sometimes the internet is full of rumors...

+1
For Golarion!

What would you suggest for Extra Arcana in place of the trip feats?

Spell Blending, the more the merrier. If you go the Hexcrafter way, then you will need some hexes like fly, slumber and ice tomb.

I'd suggest the Hexcrafter archetype. You can combine it with your archetype. Yeah, you lose spell recall (and that's a great one for your character) but you gain hexes and curses. That means you gain versatility and debuffs.

I think it's much more useful for a magus to gain more arcana with the extra arcana feat than putting your feat slots in the tripping chain.

That is probably going to depend on the nature of the check as not all perception checks are sight based .... that being said, if I were GMing, I would have both make the check. Just because something comes within the animals line on sight doesn't mean they notice it and visa versa

Yup, the empathic link just allows watch, but not hear or smell through the animal senses. Thanks for your answer.

erikdlan wrote:

Thanks, Magnuskn! Your question on Ameiko's banner has just inspired some scenes for my JR campaign.

And a question for James Jacobs: I think Ameiko is a dear friend of Merisiel so, why is not Merisiel one of the iconics in the Jade Regent AP?

Because the iconics we choose for an AP are chosen for a HUGE variety of reasons, and which ones are right for the story is only one of them. We also try not to repeat iconics in back-to-back APs, and since Merisiel was in Carrion Crown, we decided to go with other iconics. Nothing should necessarily be read into the implications of which ones we choose, though, since in the end they're really just placeholder art for YOUR player characters.

Thanks for your patience answering our questions.

Thanks, Magnuskn! Your question on Ameiko's banner has just inspired some scenes for my JR campaign.
And a question for James Jacobs: I think Ameiko is a dear friend of Merisiel so, why is not Merisiel one of the iconics in the Jade Regent AP?

I'm going to play the Kingmaker AP and I'm building a char inspired by the movie The Beastmaster. Of course, I will make it a ranger with the beastmaster archetype:
The Beastmaster

My question is, while using Improved Empathic Link to see through any of my companion's eyes, if a perception check is needed, should I use my perception ranks and bonus or my companion's perception ranks and bonus?

Awesome words of wisdom and schadenfreude

Don't do it. Try to resist. The thread is not about it...

I'm not an expert with iconics, but here's my 2c

If you are planning to use the relationship score system as written, I only use it as a guideline, the numbers should be near 35 for easy romance options and above 39 for difficult options, so I'd say Valeros and Merisiel should be 34 or 35, while Kyra should be 43 or so. I'm not sure about the others.

And my personal advice, if you want to put the iconics in the AP, ignore some of the NPCs the AP provides and substitute others with iconics. For example, substitute Kelda for Amiri, Ulf for Harsk and Miyaro for Reiko. Why? Well, most of my preparation time is going to decide what to do with NPCs. I'm GMing Tide of Honor right now and my NPC cast is Ameiko, Koya, Shalelu, Sandru, Spivey, Kelda, Ulf, Miyaro, Hatsue and Jiro. That is a huge NPC group. I'm having track of my pcs relations with all of them and even putting some romantic npc-npc relations.

I'm having much fun, but it's an awful amount of work sometimes.

I'm GMing Jade Regent and one of my PCs is a cleric of Nethys, so i would like to know:
1) Is there any relation between the church of Nethys and the church of Qi Zhong?
2) What does Nethys think of Qi Zhong?
3) What does Qi Zhong think of Nethys?

I'm addicted to Igor Presnyakov's covers in youtube.
Here's one of my favourites, Thunderstruck

I have recently finished a high level game (we started at level 16) where I played a dragon disciple and I really enjoyed the class.

RuyanVe is right and Oterisk's guide is a must for any dragon disciple wannabe.

Why the level in oracle? You won't get any divine spellcasting support in your dd levels and dd is not a full attack bonus class. I would totally make it a Barb 2/Sorc 3 or Barb 1/ Sorc 4. If you want some divine flavor in the mix, you can make an awesome Palla 2/Sorc 3 build.

Feats: RuyanVe's advice is gold. I think that your saves won't be impressive so great fortitude could be good for your health too.

Feats great for dds: the eldritch heritage chain (put some abyssal or orc blood in your life and become the strongest one!), spell perfection and the dimensional agility chain.

The magical knack trait is almost too good for a dd and it's flavorful for being the disciple of a magical creature.

Soo many awesome options for soundtrack:
RA RA RASPUTIN!

Your ideas sound great! If you want to give the heir role to a pc and you are afraid about that pc over-shadowing the others, how about working with your players to make the pcs a family? Or a samurai clan bound with blood and honor ties? That way some of them will be potential heirs (without any deus ex amatatsu seal) and your pc heir won't be the most important pc in your story. They don't even need to be a family, think about Guan Yu, Liu Bei and Zhang Fei. Liu Bei is a cool character, but I don't think he over-shadows Guan Yu, or Zhang Fei or Zhuge Liang...

I have tried older versions of PC Gen and I'm enjoying the new one. You really did a wonderful job improving the application, much better performance, much better interface, new shiny features like export to pdf... Thank you very much for your hard work.

I did not use them much in my game, but they had a sad end.

Some ideas for Bevelek and Vankor:
- One of them could fall in love with one of the ladies in the caravan (Ameiko, Shalelu or even one of the female pcs), this could create some roleplaying situations or even the upset you describe: "I would give my live for you and you act like we don't even have faces!"

- They are not heroes so they can get really scared of any of the terrible monsters or supernatural events they face during the adventure.

- One of them could be offensive or openly racist against people from other countries and cultures (ulfen, erutaki or minkai people). This could create some troubles for the party.

- One of them could betray the PCs and help the evil guys. Onis and ninja can be very persuasive if they want to and nothing is more persuasive than gold.

Your build seems pretty solid, but when I thought about making a cleric of Besmara I wanted to use the Versatile Channeler feat. Being able to heal AND harm with channel energy would make any cleric a much more powerful beast in my opinion.

I like the classic portrait format. It's the same format the AP goes and tablets usually adapt quite well to portrait format, the only trouble comes with laptops.

I'm very interested in more plugins for the Far East Adventure Path. I promised my players they will finish the Path at level 20 and I have some ideas I'll eventually share in the forums, but I am not sure I will have enough real life time to develop adventures for five levels.

Have you got plans for more plugins? Varisian ones, Viking ones, Artic ones or Far East ones?

By the way I'm DMing The Hungry Storm and it's being a blast. Great work!

Congrats Kajehase!

There's something I love about Wrath of the Righteous. I mean, others APs talk about villains, their plans or their thingies (Rise of the Runelords, Jade Regent, Second Darkness, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Carrion Crown,...). Wrath of the Righteous it's a badass name and it talks about heroes.

EDIT: had "The Redemption Crusade" and realized that Erikdlan beat me to it by an hour...

-TimD

My avatar looks like a dragon, but has some ninja training.

The Redemption Crusade

Redemption for the Wound

Heart of the Crusaders

Nemeses of the Demon Lords

Crusade agains the Demon Lords