Adventure Path Reign of Winter

Game Master Almonihah

The main rule of thumb with templates is make sure you don't accidentally make something effectively invincible or give it an insta TPK ability combo.

Roger that, think we had our fill at near TPKs from Book 1; if I recall correctly, I think we had three encounters that were pretty damn close...

I think we've been somewhat lucky so far. That encounter with the wisps could have gone an entirely different way had we all been climbing the natural invisibility for ambush tactics combined with a failed climb check each time you take damage and their almost guaranteed ability to do so leading to almost certain doom via falling could have been really exceptionally nasty.

If that tree guardian is what I am guessing it is than it also could have been very troublesome.

Agreed...knowing the wisps were there beforehand was huge; it's a good thing we got on the Chief's good side...not sure what that tree was, but think that would've been a dangerous fight...

If you want my advice on an easy way to ramp up the difficulty have something grapple Findurel.

@Tez: As Fin said to Selena earlier, "SHUT YOUR PIE-HOLE!" ;)

@GM: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...

Kidding aside, grappling is one of the reasons, I wanted of the reasons I wanted to multi-class into Monk; I get Escape Artist as a class skill and its mod is much better than my CMB...it's also why I use Stealth a lot, keep my distance, and try to stay out of melee...

Already had a little fun with grapple, which if I remember is why Findurel shot Quasit...

I keep my eye out for opportunities, but I prefer to tweak feats rather than replace creatures in the AP (to preserve flavor).

Seems like we're all on the same page. Onward we go.

Already had a little fun with grapple, which if I remember is why Findurel shot Quasit...

You just had to remind me... :)

As far as difficulty goes, I'm personally a fan of two concepts, first, the original 3.0 concept of a very wide range of encounter difficulties favoring low lvl encounters (which got stopped almost immediately from players complaining about lack of balance among encounters in the first official modules despite following the guidelines in the core rules. I'm not sure where the idea of all encounters being roughly equal to party lvl came from but 3.x was not actually designed for it, and I've always hated it), second concept is to make encounters different, and sometimes difficult, by including gimmicks, environment, and other tricks to make the encounters highly variable in character. For example, a boat fight with unstable platform penalties and random chance for crashing waves requiring reflex saves to remaining standing, or a long term fight with sniping (as per the mechanic) goblins, etc.

It's all good for me.

Something I've always been curious to see play out would be encounters that are too difficult so players have to back away. Then later, something changes and the encounter is more manageable. For example, we might spy out a barracks full of a dozen frost giants along with half a dozen trolls. We should recognize that this is beyond our abilities and NOT engage. However, somewhere else in the dungeon we might raise an alarm intentionally so that some of the giants and trolls come out of the barracks in a number that we can handle. Or something else.

Anyway, the APs I've been involved in as a player or a GM don't seem to have that idea written into them. In the AP I'm GMing now I've tried to play a little with that idea but my players don't seem to have the idea of giving up. I'm afraid that they would fight till they were TPK'd. I'm afraid to offer them a real TPK situation that they should back away from -- I'm afraid that they wouldn't back away.

I suppose that for a game like PF, it is a bit difficult to do. As players, we tend to assume that encounters are scaled for our abilities so we tend to assume that if the GM put it in front of us, we should be able to face it. It would take the GM explicitly saying "Sometimes there might be things I put in front of you that you should back away from, at least for now."

But then if the GM says that right before presenting such a situation, it feels kind of gamey.

Selena, I do like your idea of tossing in environmental gimmicks. I think I'm going to try that in my face-to-face (or Roll20) games that I'm running.

To be perfectly honest in that fight with the horde frost giants in the woods running away was certainly on the table for Tez. He cast that thorny entanglement spell to slow their advance and was going to use slumber hex on anything that got too close in an effort to keep them at as great a distance as possible. His mindset at the time was that if those things get close we're done for and it's time to run. That all became moot once the hut sprung to life, though. To me at least when that many giants walked out of the woods I was expecting fleeing or diplomacy were the sensible answers.

@Tez: As Fin said to Selena earlier, "SHUT YOUR PIE-HOLE!" ;)

@GM: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...

Kidding aside, grappling is one of the reasons, I wanted of the reasons I wanted to multi-class into Monk; I get Escape Artist as a class skill and its mod is much better than my CMB...it's also why I use Stealth a lot, keep my distance, and try to stay out of melee...

In fairness I did also point out that SR also knee-caps Maka, Selena, Tez, and Saki...;)

If I had liberating command on Tez's spell list I'd be sure to have one prepped just for you buddy. For those special moments when your gatling gun of a ranger just ends up bushwhacked in a tiny room with a creature with reach and grab.

Balancing encounters is tough especially considering how many classes and abilities a party could have. I think it's working out well enough right now, very real risk and stakes but we're not regularly having characters die like back in book one.

I'm running an all paladin party through wrath of the righteous but there was an encounter where the enemy just couldn't be hurt by the party since they were immune to weapon damage. I tweaked it to give them DR/- but also buffed their offence and it worked quite well, thankfully I realised before the fight. If you had say Maka in that group... she would have one shot them.

Hit Points: 1d10 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 2 + 1 = 9
Stat Points: Intelligence +1
Language: Elven
BAB +1
Feat: Improved Critical (Longsword)
Fort Save +1
Skill Points: 12=2+2+1+7
Perception +1, Fly +1, Linguistics +1 (Vudrani)
Climb +1, Survival +2,
Sense Motive +1, Spellcraft +1, Knowledge Nature +1
Knowledge Arcana +1, Knowledge Religion +1, Knowledge Planes +1

Thanks all. Your perspectives are helpful in terms of how things are going and how to continue forward.

Question for Lareg: Do the centaurs speak their own centaur language or do they speak the native Iobarian? I picked up another rank of linguistics this last level and as a Tengu I get two languages to learn.

I figured Tez picking up on elvish after hearing it spoken a lot makes sense the other was going to be whatever the centaurs we met back in camp since he listened to a lot of them speak and studied some of their writings.

Thus far all the centaur have spoken their own language. Some have also spoken Iobarian. Some have also spoke Elvish / Sylvan. I don't know for sure if that pattern holds in the AP, but that's what I have seen so far.

I figured Tez picking up on elvish after hearing it spoken a lot makes sense the other was going to be whatever the centaurs we met back in camp since he listened to a lot of them speak and studied some of their writings.

That seems legit. Tengus are supposed to be very talented with languages, right?

He listened

@Maka
OMG I love that movie! I so wish I had it digital so I could it again.

@Sakitu

In the AP I'm GMing now I've tried to play a little with that idea but my players don't seem to have the idea of giving up. I'm afraid that they would fight till they were TPK'd. I'm afraid to offer them a real TPK situation that they should back away from -- I'm afraid that they wouldn't back away.

This is a matter of expectations. Strangely, players can get really weird expectations that end up radically impacting the community at large. This is one such example.

3.x was never intended for encounters to be generally "balanced" like this. It is actually still in the rulebooks to have something like 40% of encounters to low lvl and to even include some encounters really high level. But when wotc published some early modules following that paradigm, they received quite a bit of backlash for the "wildly variable encounters" and so they didn't do that anymore.

Personally, I blame computer games. A game like Halo has a story, but the actual gameplay has nothing to do with the story. The game is shooting bad guys, and the story just acts as a backdrop connecting the fights together and giving a reason for why you are shooting bad guys, but still the actual play is shooting bad guys.

The common player treats rpgs like this, but with some interactivity during the story sequences. This is why APs work so well, because the story, fir all the interactivity, id basically set in stone and the encounters are all established as the main focus of "gameplay" with the interactive story scenes acting to tie all the encounters together and give an excuse for just slaughtering all enemies.

Most players haven't had much experience doing anything else, and so the interactivity has blurred the lines a bit, quite a bit for some groups, but this is still the backbone that most players are familiar with, and until they actually experience something that totally breaks this paradigm, they won't truly understand anything else.

Thus, if you really want your players to run away when they should, here are a few tips and my methodology.

First, it is generally best to start at the beginning of new campaign or at least a new story arc, something that really breaks the continuity from the prior sessions, then be explicit in saying that you are trying to make the world feel more wholesome and plausible (a more apt term than "realism.") and that means many enemies will be weak but some will be far more than they can handle.

Second, plan a few early encounters, a couple easy gimme encounters and a somewhat challenging one, then after that have them face an overwhelming encounter but with enemies that don't want the players dead (slavers or something). Thus, the players can lose yet you have reason to not outright kill them. This could even lead into a short side quest of trying to get free or something. Then your players will know what you mean by many easy but some encounters they should run from.

That seems legit. Tengus are supposed to be very talented with languages, right?

+4 racial bonus to linguistics and they earn 2 languages for every skill rank instead of one. So he's up to 9 languages known at this point. Probably better picks than elvish and centaur, but the flavor was clearly there.

Thanks, GM. I edited my original post, wiping off the slime as I don't have evasion. I assume that'd be 4 points total damage: 1 for half damage and 3 for the round it took to wipe it off...

That sounds exactly right.

GM: Was I spotted and targeted? Or did I just happen to wander into range of something?

ETA: I just read the GM spoiler and didn't see a Perception check so I assume I wasn't spotted and just wandered into range of some spell...I think I'd get an extra +2 on the save as it seems like an enchantment but wouldn't matter with a roll of 1...

That about sums it up.

Busy morning. Post was later than planned and may be sparse throughout the day.

@Lareg, How high are the ceilings in the tunnel and in the larger room?

Tez prepared stone shape this morning.... :) So Tez is tempted to just flat out wall off this hallway if need be. Although it would probably require Q to 5ft step back to give him room.

I'm sorta waiting to see if Fin actually escapes the grapple before acting.

But what if we need something in here? Remember, we're here on a treasure hunt for Hut keys.

Hence the phrasing 'tempted' and 'if need be'. Just throwing it out as an option in discussion.

The situation seems precarious enough to consider. I'm not entirely sold on the idea, but I imagine there is likely another way into the room we could find later and walling it off doesn't mean it can't be undone later. Preferably with something like protection from evil cast on the party members with low will saves.

I suppose it depends more on how Audrey the grapple happy plant monster holds up to Maka's fire. If it has Spell resistance or fire immunity and Maka's usual routine is ineffective than it's tactical position blocking the only entrance in a bottle-neck with a 'friendly' flying caster being 'helpful' than that might move the needle a bit more in that direction of opting for "yeah, lets just close the door to this room for now".

In any case I'm going to hold off posting my actions till Tez can see what everyone else can do against this thing and probably make a knowledge check to see if there's anything he might know about this awful creature.

I GM’ed a session where a guy cast stone shape to widen a hole in the wall...so I think Tez could always cast stone shape again later to create a hole back into the room, if needed...

Bad luck with both Q and Fin failing their saves, especially with us being so spread out...although we apparently weren’t hit by the same spell. Hopefully, Maka can torch the giant plant...but, if not, Tez’s idea could let us live to fight another time, providing Fin can escape the thing...

The passage is no larger than ten feet high.

GM: So Fin didn't escape then...damn, was hoping that would be enough. The plant thing has at least a CMD of 26+ then; Fin may very well be toast. I'll move Fin back into its clutches on the map then. Since my escape attempt failed, I still have my move action right? I'll drop my bow and draw my dagger as my move since I assume I'm fixing to be in the belly of this thing...

The satyr said "let me help you." which is basically a claim of friendship, at least temporarily. Also, are we not in a swamp room? I guess she moves to a good vantage point (without touching fungi) and then readies a dispel.

Not meaning to speak for the GM, Selena, but I think his point may be that you initially mentioned sticking at the back of the group; at the time of your post, Bulvi was guarding the door way back at the beginning of the passage so the back of the group would've been beyond him (and your token was alongside Bull's, before he recently moved, back at the door to the passage, where it still is).

Technically, Fin is the only one of us actually in the swamp room; the only characters that can see the flying creature are himself and Quasit who is at the entrance to it. That's why I'm guessing the GM said you don't have line of sight to the creature to dispel the magic...and perhaps you were deemed too far from the room to have heard the banter between it and Quasit.

To be fair, Quasit is hollering back at the group that this new guy is a friend and Fin is yelling the opposite. I can see where someone might be dubious that the guy flying around in the room with the elf-eating plant is totally cool.

On a wall the most mileage I could get for the spell is to cover the width and height of a tunnel and be about 2 inches thick. It would have hardness 8 and 30hp. So it probably wouldn't last more than a round or two if something was trying to break it down.

I don't have a lot of great spells for this situation. So best I could do is soak some damage with life link and get close enough to either hex, channel positive energy, or set up for a hex strike + stunning fist + powerful smash hit next round to give this thing a couple saves or be stunned/dazed.

Best of luck Fin, don't die.

Best of luck Fin, don't die.

Out of my hands, can't make any promises. :)

Gave it my best shot and thought I had a decent chance with Escape Artist and a decent roll, but some of these bigger creatures have pretty high CMDs...I can't think of anything else I could've done...

Thanks for the life-link, hope it continues to work on me from inside the plant as I have a gut feeling that's where I'll be after this round (just a hunch as the last scenario I GM'ed had a huge plant that swallowed folk)...if it swallows me, gotta hope I can stay alive/conscious long enough for y'all to kill it or be able to cut my way out somehow...

Think my fate is tied to how quickly Maka can take out the plant...if it was fire resistant or immune, think Fin'd probably be a goner...but your life-link might gimme an extra round or two as well and Bull should be able reach and hopefully hit the plant next round. Even then though, with the plant dead, y'all will still have the flying creature to deal with...

@Fin don't forget you have unarmed strike.

Thanks Maka, I'll try that as opposed to another escape attempt...but there's a chance I'll be either dead or unconscious next round if the plant's still alive. I'm pretty sure I'd have been better off it had swallowed me instead of getting more bite/tentacle damage...

Tez, you might want to consider doing that stoneshape spell to block the blobs behind us once Maka and Sakitu get closer to us...just in case I'm wrong about them opening doors (I probably am)...

Also keep in mind that Quasit picked the lock on the door. So there is also a door that can lock.

Thanks, GM...

And thanks for the confirmation reminder, Q, dunno how I missed that...I went back and added it to my OP but, as my luck has been running for this encounter any way, I rolled a natty '1' for confirming...

Question for Lareg,

OOC I am pretty sure that satyr has enchanted the both of them and is playing friendly while he does stuff to mess with us, but I don't believe Tez was close enough to even see the enchantment take effect so he clearly wouldn't know that.

However last this current round both Q and Fin took damage, if it's from a spell or spell like ability and Tez is in range to see the effect than should he get a spellcraft to identify it? If he doesn't identify it specifically is the effect noticeable enough to determine that something off and magic is afoot and would he need a roll for that of some kind?

I don't want to us meta OOC knowledge too much, but I think there's probably some opportunity here for Tez to know something fishy is going on.

@Fin: If you remember that harrowing that Tez cast on you a while back it lasts a week. Granted it's not a huge bonus, but it's a bunch of things as a free action. Might be helpful next time you make a save that isn't rolling a 1 or tip yourself over the edge when trying to escape a grapple or confirm a crit.

Tez can of course take actions to try to understand the darkness. Such an action, if it were detect magic for example would determine if the darkness is magical in nature and proceed following the normal detect magic rules.

Thanks Tez, went and looked that up. We did that just before we fought the frost giants when leaving the hut...it took us one day to get to the centaur camp...two days to get to Vurnirn; spent a day there, leaving the following afternoon. And three days to get to Artrosa...and then we spent the night. Sadly, I think the week probably ended this morning, although there's no way to tell the exact time. Too bad as I think that +1 to Will might've saved me some damage on that last satyr spell; Q made her save with a 20 and Fin failed with an 18...the dice have not been friendly to me this encounter. My best checks were wasted with my failed Escape attempt...

And Fin is not enchanted any longer...when the plant first struck me, that snapped me out of it...and I think Q is under a different enchantment than I was...I was compelled to move forward and I never saw nor spoke with the satyr, only heard his pipes...think he was just leading me to feed the plant...and Q can move freely, she just pretty much believes what the satyr says...

Tez, how are you set up for healing at the moment? I'm down to 7 hp and was thinking on retreating back into the passage to recover a bit...I wanna shot at the satyr, but he'd wipe the floor with me in my current condition...

@Tezuzu If you haven't already feel free to put a spellcraft in the gameplay thread.

Gameplay hic up. I did my best to clarify things, but the OOC details are getting out of control.

- I think I covered most of the specifics with Findurel.
- Maka, the fire jet is a temporary flying isn't it? Are you still in the air? If not the area below you is water / difficult terrain so the move action may need to take that into account. I moved you assuming you were still flying.
- Tezuzu, I am assuming the life link thing goes off as soon as Findurel receives harm. Let me know if that isn't the case.
- Quasit, I'm not sure where you are positioning wise. Previous round I had you right next to the plant thing. I'm assuming you would back away from the darkness after it hurt. You have a chance to redo actions, but let me know if I missed something.

I think that covers the specifics, but do let me know if I'm missing something.

Happens at the start of Tez's turn. Anytime a character that has a link has 5 under of their maximum HP it activates. He can end any number of links as an immediate action.

It becomes quite problematic if you hit the entire party with an AOE because pretty much the entire party is linked to Tez. Then I have to decide who gets cut off or suffer 35 damage on top of the original AOE each round.

GM: Sorry, I misunderstood earlier. Tez beat me to it...lifelink starts on Tez's turn but since we're in block initiative, not sure how that works. Fin's CON is 12, so he's dead if lifelink doesn't kick in beforehand...let me know if I need to make a dramatic parting death scene...

It seems weird that the spell effect activates twice before Tez takes a turn under any circumstances. Re-reading and taking a closer look back on it and sneaking a peak at GM spoilers there is a roll labled UB when it went into effect.

If it's unholy blight which is my best educated guess at this point the 1d4 rounds pertains to the sickened condition not the damage, but you could still get the same effects if it was metamagic'd with lingering spell for anyone entering the area. It just wouldn't hit Fin twice in one round or damage anyone further that isn't already in the area of effect.

Just my 2 cents. We have a scroll of breath of life for a reason and Findurel going down isn't a terrible story narrative and if Fin happens to die than you can expect his very dramatic death scene to be interrupted by an awkward Tengu giving him a life saving kiss. So that would be amusing even if not an expensive use of a scroll.

- Quasit, I'm not sure where you are positioning wise. Previous round I had you right next to the plant thing. I'm assuming you would back away from the darkness after it hurt. You have a chance to redo actions, but let me know if I missed something.

Yes, my intention was (1) to run back into the passage out of the darkness, because OW and (2) to stay next to Fin and offer him a potion. If he didn't make it out of the dark cloud, then she would have gotten beyond the cloud and then stopped to lend assistance to Fin, if needed.

I didn't get the picture that Fin was in difficult terrain, let alone swimming in a pool. He had been grabbed by the plant monster and yanked into the room, so Im not sure the terrain ever became an issue up to this point.

Yeah, I realized all there was the description of him falling into water before the plant grabbed him.

No Maka dropped so if there is difficult terrain due to the water she deals with that.

A) I thought we all moved into the swamp room, though uncertain about Bulvi, hence my confusion there. Sorry.

B) The satyr's speech was not spoilered, so I took that as something we all heard. Then it responded to what I said, so I figure my response to that should stand.

C) Tez, your wall of stone may be weak with only 2" of thickness, but that won't be obvious to the enemy. So would they try to dig through stone? I would expect them to only try that if they have good tools for stone or they were familiar enough with the spell's limitations to realize it would be so thin, and even then they might not try it without good tools.

D) Does this plant thing make anyone else think of Kobold Adventure? (don't look it up unless you're into explicit content cyoa. I learned that the hard way. Though it was well done up to that point.)

D) Does this plant thing make anyone else think of Kobold Adventure? (don't look it up unless you're into explicit content cyoa. I learned that the hard way. Though it was well done up to that point.)

Haven’t seen or heard of that one...will look it up...

It reminded me of Little Shop of Horrors...with Fin playing the Steve Martin role...