As I posted before, I am playing with a bunch of folks who are all very new to tabletop RPGs and Pathfinder. After some hiccups, I think they are proceeding well, but I am trying to be prepared for all the ways this group could jump off the AP track.
In our last session they finished the Glassworks, capturing Tsuto and rescuing Ameiko. They discovered the Smuggler's Tunnel and peeked into the tunnel leading to the Catacombs of Wrath. They read Tsuto's journal pages and before we ended the game already started discussing what they might do next.
For one, some of them do not want to give Tsuto up to the authorities. I have no idea what they want to do with them instead, but there's a paladin in the group who needs some coaching about alignment and paladins in general. They're also very gung-ho about heading to Thistletop, though one of the more careful players suggested that they might not be strong enough to deal with such a predicted force of goblins plus Nualia.
Obviously I want to guide them towards exploring the Catacombs of Wrath. The paladin succeeded on his religion roll and so I told him a little bit about quasits. I am looking for further ideas to provide incentive to actually explore the catacombs.
As far as NPCs go, they have a tendency to not listen to them. I was going to introduce Brodert Quink and make him very interested in anything found underneath Sandpoint, dropping hints that he thinks valuable Thassilonian artifacts might be hidden there. If anyone else has any clever advice, I am very open to it. I am a returning GM who took a very long break of 10 years and feel very very rusty.
I am a bit nervous about the Eryllium fight, my guys tend to get frustrated easily, and this fight sounds like an object lesson in frustration.
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Eryllium can be really obnoxious, yes. If you think it will be a frustration issue for your group, it might be best to just have her use bad tactics and stay in reach.
Since you're at a session break, one thing that you could do that might poke them towards the Catacombs without having to use an NPC to encourage them is to have some active monster action come out of there into town while they're planning; maybe Korovus sneaks out and murders someone, and they can follow a trail back to the catacombs, or something less sneaky like a sinspawn just wanders out and gets wrathful on someone, and the party can save the victim and then follow it back to the source.
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What Ian says. The adventure gives a clear hook to Thistletop, but if they go without heading into the Catacombs first, then they run the risk of being underleveled and underequipped for the threats there. One thing I did was to make sure that the PCs knew they were the only thing standing in the way between the goblins and Sandpoint. Belor Hemlock has already left the town to go get support from Magnimar, mind you, so there's only the guards, which are irregulars at best.
In my case, I've got a PC that's Kendra's cousin, so he went straight to her with the news that there's something underneath Sandpoint. She asked them to make certain that there's nothing else beneath their feet that they need to worry about before they go out to Thistletop. That was all the prompting they needed. If they tend not to listen to NPCs, then you might need to goad them into action with something like Ian's solution.
Tsuto's journal explicity references "freaks from below" - it should not take too much imagination to see a threat directly beneath the town should take priority over a goblin fort more than a half-day's journey away.
On the paladin, it can be fun to develop a code of conduct for a paladin, etc. but if the player is not quite up for that, you can try something simpler: Would Superman do that? Would Superman torture the enemy? No. Would he poison the goblin's waterhole? No. Etc. It's not a perfect system given the violence inherent in PF but can be a benchmark of sorts.
Erylium can be tough. Given the pc's power level, it should be nigh on impossible for them to kill her. With invisiblity, flight, fast healing and DR and a willingness to flee she can't be finished off. Except she's not willing to flee, she may leave the runewell briefly to get allies but she simply won't stand for the pc's to be there for long. When I ran her, she could not abide the pc's being in the same room with the runewell and once her minions and spells and abilty to do damage from a distance was gone, she drank from the runewell, went into a rage and attacked the pc's directly. I did that to call out more about the wrathful nature of the runewell (I had her visible when she did it) and to call out the depth of her insantiy. One could argue many of the early antagonists - Tsuto, Erylium, Nualia, Aldern, everyone at Habe's - are nuttier than a fruit cake. For that matter, Mokmuran and every inhabitant of Runeforge are several cards short of a full deck too.
** spoiler omitted **
...she drank from the runewell, went into a rage...
Without saying who we're talking about I have to admit I really like this as a way of ending the encounter. Wish I had thought of it!
With regards to Ms. DR/Fast Healing/Energy Resistances/Flying Invisibility: You could allow them to get ahold of a cold iron weapon, or a scroll of glitterdust. Or you could encourage them to come across Father Zantus, who could give some useful tips.
I'm not one to nerf encounters like that (I'm really not), but seriously, that quasit is as annoying as an orange.
You could allow them to get ahold of a cold iron weapon, or a scroll of glitterdust. Or you could encourage them to come across Father Zantus, who could give some useful tips.
When my players went through this, a member of the party already had a cold iron morning star as a backup (and really, why wouldn't you? They are cheap as borscht). But the trick is figuring out to use it. The party had the journal in their hands but did not bother doing any research about what a Quasit was, even though I actually prompted them on it.
Ironically the best prepared character was the one that started as a GMPC since we started the campaign with only three players. He was a half-orc plain fighter, but he was the one with the cold iron morning star and he also had the keen scent feat. He had used some of his treasure to buy scrolls of enlarge person which he had given to the party sorcerer.
The funny part is that when a player actually took the character over I allowed him to swap some things around, and he foolishly got rid of scent in favour of a sword-and-board thing that really wasn't necessary at 2nd level.
That's weird. A morningstar was exactly what I was envisioning.
That's weird. A morningstar was exactly what I was envisioning.
A morningstar is a pretty good backup weapon for a character with an edged weapon, since does both blunt and piercing. They are also cheap; a cold iron one is only 16 gp. If you also want a silver one a silver light mace is your budget option at 25 gp.
Do what you can to hint to them that maybe they should ask around for some advice. My party stocked up on cold iron arrows. Plus, they figured there were some useful spells: glitterdust, see invisibility, and gust of wind. Some of those were scrolls, but gust of wind is level 1, IIRC.
Gust of wind sadly is level 2.
Faerie fire is actually the best spell for low-level characters to reveal an invisible creature, since it is level 1. The problem is only druids get it on their list. I'm not sure if it's RAW but you could allow players to buy an oil of it that could be used as a splash weapon for the same cost as a L1 potion. Or if someone in the party has a half decent UMD let them find a partially charged wand of it.
There are also lots of non-magical ways to pinpoint invisible creatures.
Thanks for the advice. I think I'll have a Sinspawn show up outside the Glassworks if necessary, if it seems likely that the party will head to Thistletop straight away.
Also great advice for Erylium. If my guys don't prepare properly (the paladin knows what a quasit is), she might just fight like the insane demon that she is.
My first group managed to do away with all of Erylium's minions the first time they fought her, so I had her brave her agoraphobia to fly to Thistletop - where the players learned to hate her bitterly. She chased off my second group a humiliating two times, but they managed to do her in the third time.
All in all, she can be incredibly annoying. :)
The Erylium fight is an object lesson in research as preparation (Tsuto's journal explicitly names her for what she is, IIRC) and thinking outside the "just kill it" box.
My group were really starting to show signs of frustration when the Monk realised he had a net with him. I figured that kind of general prep was worth rewarding, so I gave him a generous to hit bonus even though she was invisible (big net, little target). Once she was on the ground, the Paladin Smote her and it was over quickly.
Without that net, they might still be plinking away at her...