Jade Regent - Questions - Help Please


Jade Regent


I'm starting a new group that wants to go through Jade Regent. None of us have ever played it. I've read through the Player's Guide and most of the first book and there is all the caravan stuff and four major NPCS that travel with the PCs.

Do the major PCs go with them through the entire? Do they stay with the caravan? If they do go with the PCs, I'm guessing they have to level at some time or they might die quickly and horribly.

That just seems like a lot of NPCs to deal with for a very long time.

I probably should have read the entire AP before I posted, but hopefully you guys can help me with these questions.

On an unrelated topic - Is there a place where feats are broken down into groups that would best fit certain classes. There are so many and it is feet overload when me or my players are making or updating a character. Or some site that gives idea on level progression, what to take and what not to take.

Thanks ahead of time for your help.


Generally, the 4 NPCs won't adventure with you, unless you really want them along. It suggest somewhere that you can level them, but when I GMed it, I didn't bother. If I needed stats for something specific, I just estimated a number.

There are multiple guides for the various classes on here on what to do for feats and the like, but I find them annoying in that they really don't cater to specific concepts, and are only about optimizing your numbers. Honestly, most feats you'll see time and time again are straight out of the CRB.


My advice-drop caravan encounters-they make little sense and just slow things down. By the 4th book we were sick of the caravan rules.


Instead of Caravan Encounters, you can have actual encounters, they really are quite easy to convert.

In the second book, try to have the NPCs show up to help at key moments (Shalelu as a counter sniper when Hekja ambushes the party, Koya with her poison antidotes when the party gets the Hemlock, Sandru when business negotiations need to be made, Ameiko to lend her bardic music in a particularly hard fight, that kind of thing.)

Otherwise you're going to go a long time without seeing them.

prototype00


If you are new, I would try a different AP. Plus do your new group realise there is nothing 'eastern' until book 5......yes book 4 has some, overshadowed by an over large dull dungeon. Book 5 is very good

Scarab Sages

You dont have to take the NPC's along on every dungeon run. Only if you feel your party lacks in a certain way and one of them can fill that gap its a good idea to take that NPC everywhere.

If you do, it would be handy to recreate the NPC in Hero Labs or PCGen. That way you can easily level them up when you need to.


I also suggest ditching the caravan entirely from the beggining, they are broken.
Yes the party continues to follow the NPCs, but you don't have to carry them when you go to "adventure" where the combats are happening, or if you want you can carry them with you but have them be a room or two behind the party.
On your last point, no there isn't anything like that, the only thing that exists are guides for most of the classes that offer some feat suggestions.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'll post up some alternative caravan rules for you to use, they've been seeing some success in my games and they really work for making the journey itself interesting and giving you a guideline for how much to handwave with description.

It'll have to wait until I get home tonight though.


How we managed the NPCs and the caravan evolved with the game.

First book, we tracked things, then by the second we dropped them.

Caravan encounters became regular encounters.

At first I had the NPCs participate in the caravan encounters, giving each player an NPC. Not long after, I went with "the heroes battle on their side, the NPCs on their own, if the PCs win so do the NPCs". Occasionally I added some flavor events (one ice troll took off with Ameiko and was hunted down). More often that not, the PCs handled everything.

For the non-caravan encounters, the NPCs usually stayed behind, and there were enough side-events to justify them gaining one level per book. Sometimes an NPC would follow if required. Ameiko was the notable exception as she followed the heroes in the House of Withered Blossoms and leveled several times in their company.

Even in Book 6, where several other NPCs were present, they just stayed back to protect Ameiko, and were simply flavorful backups if required.


DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

I'll post up some alternative caravan rules for you to use, they've been seeing some success in my games and they really work for making the journey itself interesting and giving you a guideline for how much to handwave with description.

It'll have to wait until I get home tonight though.

You home yet? I'm starting to get worried...

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