Clebsch's Reign of Winter

Game Master Clebsch RoW

Loot Table Link

Howlings
Map of Irrisen

Warm Circle Map

Events of Book 1: Six adventurers are tasked with figuring out why a region of Taldor is experiencing winter weather at the height of summer. They discover portal from Irrisen sending the cold, created by the White Witches who intend to turn all Golarion into an ice planet. They travel through the portal and invade the Pale Tower, a fortress controlled with an iron cold fist by Nazhena, one of the White Witches. Defeating the guards and servants of Nazhena, including her apprentice Radosek, the adventurers close the portal, but are compelled by events to travel to Whitethrone to use the Hut of Baba Yaga to locate the ancient witch and help her defeat her rebellious daughters and end the Reign of Winter.

Events of Book 2: Adventurers from Taldane closed the portal to the wintery land and magic of Irrisen. They then had to stay in the country and travel to its capital, Whitethrone, the reputed location of Baba Yaga's magic Dancing Hut. They must somehow liberate the hut and search for the Witch Queen as the only hope of stopping the evil plans of Baba Yaga's rebellious daughter, Queen Elvanna. It is time for Baba Yaga to return and install another daughter as queen. No one but Baba Yaga and past queens of Irrisen know what fate befalls such former queens, but Elvanna has no intention of finding out. After a hazardous journey across Irrisen, with help from members of a local resistance group, the group makes contact with members of a cult of Milani. Before activating a rebellion that will serve as a distraction while the hut is located, the group attacks and defeats a white dragon who helps keep rebellions in check from his lair atop an old clocktower. Once defeated the heroes must brave the strange enchanted forest that has grown around the Dancing Hut, defeating three Dawn Pipers and foiling their plans to steal the hut to take back to the First World. One final foe, the evil witch Nazhena, guarded the hut. Once she was defeated, the group entered. There they lost one of their members but were joined by three others who had also been empowered by a dying servant of Baba Yaga. They use the keys given by the Riders to take the hut on the trail of the missing Queen of Witches.

House Rules:

I have a few house rules you may want to know about up front. I try to play by the rules as written as much as possible, but there are exceptions.

Modified Chase Rules

Hit points at new level: roll your hit die two times and take the better roll. If the hit points gained at an earlier level is below half the maximum, each new level you can reroll one of those lower level results and keep the new result if higher than the former result. For example, if your hit die was a d6, you could re-roll results of 1 or 2. If you hit die was a d8, you could re-roll results of 1, 2, or 3. etc.

Touch attacks: apply the better modifier of strength and dexterity to melee touch attacks.

Sling damage: sling damage and range is the same as a longbow for medium size and as a short bow for small size creatures. This is based on scientific research into the effectiveness of slings in ancient battles published in Scientific American.

Drawing non-weapon items: Rules for drawing potions, scrolls, wands, and other magic items which must be held in hand to use are the same as rules for drawing weapons, as long as the item is kept in a pocket, pouch, or other easy to get to container or location on the body (not inside a backpack). Drawing these items is a move action if the character’s BAB is 0. Once the BAB reaches +1, the character can draw the item as part of a move action. Drawing these items does not provoke an AOO, although using the item might.

Cautious movement to avoid AOOs:
Characters with Combat Reflexes have the following option during movement: At any time during movement, a character can move five feet and expend half his/her normal movement allowance (round up) to avoid an attack of opportunity. This implies the character chooses to move out of the threatened square at an opportune moment when the enemy cannot make the AOO. No other action (such as drawing a weapon) may be done during this move action.

Characters without Combat Reflexes may avoid an AOO by spending 100% of their movement (for a normal move action) to move 5 feet out of a threatened square. If the threatened square is the square the character starts in, it's just the same as a five foot step. But if the threatened square is at a later point, the cautious move can avoid the AOO by using up the normal movement for a move action. Example: Joshu has a movement of 30' and no combat reflexes. He begins a move action but at 10 feet, he moves into a threatened square. By expending 30' he can move out of the threatened square without provoking an AOO. This the point where he moves to 15 feet from his starting point, he has expended 40 feet of movement and has 20 feet left in a double move action.

Both the above rules can only be used when the terrain is normal. If either the threatened square or the square the character is moving into is difficult terrain, the option is not available.

Cautious Movement replaces the Withdraw action.

The charge action only requires that the last ten feet of movement be in a straight line and over non-difficult terrain. More details will be given when the situation demands.

Light vs. Darkness, rationale:

I generally only house rules when the RAW are ambiguous or incomplete, or when rules are inconsistent with other rules. The light rules are both ambiguous and inconsistent. What follows are my reasons for invoking the rules listed in the next spoiler down.

1st Ambiguity to be resolved: What happens when light spells overlap with darkness spells? Two cases to consider: 1) when light has a higher level than darkness, 2) when the light and darkness spells are of equal level.

Darkness and Deeper Darkness state: “Magical light sources only increase the light level in an area if they are of a higher spell level than darkness.” I will refer to this as the “darkness rule” in the analysis below.

Daylight spell is higher level than darkness and equal level to deeper darkness. By the darkness rules stated above, it should increase the light level in an area of darkness but not deeper darkness.

Brightest Light spell is higher level than both darkness and deeper darkness, so it should increase the light levels against either of these spells.

Daylight (and by extension, Brightest Light) states: "Daylight brought into an area of magical darkness (or vice versa) is temporarily negated, so that the otherwise prevailing light conditions exist in the overlapping areas of effect." I will refer to this as the “daylight rule” in the analysis below.

Without this daylight rule, the rules for overlap are perfectly consistent: when light and dark overlap, the darkness prevails if it is of the same level as the light spell or higher. The light prevails if it is higher spell level than the darkness.

Note: it is still not clear how to determine the resulting light level. This will be addressed separately below.

With the daylight rule, we not only have it contradicting the rules stated in darkness and deeper darkness, but it introduces a 2nd possibility for the overlap: cancelation of both effects, leaving ambient levels in area of overlap. This adds inconsistency to the ambiguity.

The daylight rule makes no mention of spell levels and so makes daylight both more powerful than other higher level light spells in some cases and less powerful than lower level light spells in other cases. It is more powerful than 3rd level continual flame spells, which don’t cancel or overpower deeper darkness. It is less powerful because a 3rd level continual flame spell will overpower a darkness spell but daylight (same level) only cancels a darkness spell. It is also more powerful because it can cancel a darkness spell of equal or higher level (deeper darkness, heightened deeper darkness spell, or blacklight).

No rational is stated or implied for why daylight works so differently from light and continual flame when they otherwise work in much the same way.

2nd Ambiguity: The rules do not state how to resolve cases where other evocation (light) spells which use light to deliver damage are applied to targets in an area of darkness. Does the darkness block the light and so prevent the damage? Does the relative level of the light spell to darkness spell matter?

Only one spell, sunburst (level 8), addresses this. It specifies that sunburst dispels any darkness spell of 8th level or lower. In this case, a light spell of equal level to the darkness doesn’t just prevail over the darkness but dispels it, even though the darkness rules state that darkness prevails if the light spell is of equal or lower level than the darkness, and sunlight only cancels darkness even if the darkness is higher level than sunlight.

What about spells like flare (0), flare burst (1), glitterdust (2), burst of radiance (2), blinding ray (2), searing light (3), sunbeam (7), prismatic spray (7), and prismatic sphere (9)?

Trying to infer how these interact from the rules on light and darkness, we could use the darkness rule and state that light spells of an equal or lower level than the darkness spell do not affect targets in the area. What about sunbeam, which presumably uses the same power as daylight? Would it be ineffective in any darkness region because daylight only cancels the darkness but doesn’t raise the light level in them?

Another ambiguity is determining what the resulting light level is when a light spell is of a higher level than a darkness spell. The darkness rule states a light spell of a higher level than the darkness “increase the light level” in the area affected by the darkness. It has been clarified in the forums that the increase or decrease of light levels only applies to the ambient light level of the area. Mark Seifter interprets the situation as follows: the higher level “light spell has its normal effect, as per the spell. Do not reduce its light level again for the darkness spell; that already happened.” It is not clear why he assumes that, but it seems reasonable and simple.

This clarifies these sentences in Core Rulebook: You can touch up to 6 willing targets as part of the casting, but all targets of the spell must be touched in the same round that you finish casting the spell. If the spell allows you to touch targets over multiple rounds, touching 6 creatures is a fullround action. When the spell cast requires just a standard action to cast, the caster can take a move action and touch up to six targets, provided the caster can move within reach of each target. This is a special version of a Full Round action, not an additional full round action after the round the spell is cast.

Light vs. Darkness Rules:

To resolve all these ambiguities and inconsistencies and establish one overarching set of rules to resolve questions of overlap, I will use the following:

1) Disregard the sunlight rule that specifies it merely cancels darkness spells of any level in the overlapping area. Sunlight simply works the same as the darkness rule, overpowering darkness of lower level than the sunlight.

2) Modify the darkness rules so that darkness prevails if it is higher level than the overlapping light spell. Light and darkness effects that are of equal spell level will cancel each other out where they overlap, like the effect described in daylight rule.

3) When a light spell tries to penetrate a darkness region to do damage, blind, or otherwise affect a target using light, the spell is ineffective on targets in areas of darkness that are equal to or higher level than the light spell. If the light spell is of equal level as the darkness, it merely creates a flash of illumination if there are light sources that can illuminate the area were it unaffected by darkness. Note: spells cast on one or more targets cannot affect targets hidden by darkness.

4) In areas where light and dark effects overlap, when a light spell is of a higher spell level than a darkness effect, the darkness is negated, and the light level is the same as the light spell would produce on the ambient light. When the light and dark areas are of equal level, the light level is the ambient light level. Other light sources can raise this ambient level in the area of overlap as if there were no light or darkness effects present.