I've updated the loot sheet! We have some fine things in there. Sheets 3, 4, and 5 are new. You may want to be carrying some things from 3 & 4 (5 is the one we'll be filling up for a bit, so it's still basically empty).
Most notably we have 2 unclaimed ring of protection +1 and 3 unclaimed amulet of natural armor +1. I am going to suggest that we give them out as follows:
Miso: ring
Jennix: ring and amulet
Zachary: amulet
Terflynn: amulet
Seeing 4 charges left on the wand, I vote 2 go to Zach and 2 to Miso, bringing them both to just above 20 HP, just like me. Apparently Jennix is doing fine on his own.
It seems we also have 2 unclaimed potions of CLW on the loot sheet. I also have 1 on my sheet. Does anyone else?
No potions, but I have three more uses of heavenly fire available.
Ah, I was supposing everyone's header was up to date. I would suggest Jennix heal himself, we use up the wand, and each of us use a potion of CLW (though that will require at least one of you to already be in possession of one).
-Posted with Wayfinder
We are so close to finishing this book by the way. By the end of the week for sure if we keep things moving at a decent pace.
With just a little RP wrap-up we'll be finished with Book 2!
First of all, that means you can level up to 7!
Second of all, it also means you've all earned another chronicle sheet (for levels 5-7). I can get those out tonight. If you already know which PFS character you are applying it to, post their number below so I can report it. If you want to wait until you see the chronicle sheet first, that's fine.
3601-15, still. :-)
65114-8 Caradeum
There you go! It's the same for everyone so you can print it out as-is.
I'll need PFS numbers from Terflynn and Zachary once you decide who you are applying the credit to.
Same as before, thanks! 18601-9
I'll have to take a look tomorrow.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Now that we're in a town, Miso would like to give 1206 gp to Terflynn and request crafting a masterwork cold iron kama and a mithral kama. (Finding the resources should be easier now.)
Miso would also like to find/purchase/commission from Terflynn:
- armbands of the brawler (500 gp)
He will search for a temple or shrine of Korada to give 500 gp; absent that opportunity, he will try to locate a retired soldier infirmary to whom he can give those funds.
Hey, was going back through the thread and meant to ask: did Miso get this stuff from Terflynn? I never put it on my sheet if he did. :o
If Terflynn didn't finish it earlier, you certainly have time to do it now.
By the way, when you are traveling you can craft at half speed (2 days per 1000 gp). But the journey to the Crown of the world takes 5 weeks and the journey over the Crown takes 3 months minimum but you can honestly spend as much time up there as you want (in fact, spending more time may throw the onis off your trail a bit).
Yay for infinite crafting! I will build us an army!
EDIT: Hey Miso, did you want any... rings???
LOL
Lots of 'em, actually. :-D But if you're taking requests, I'd be quite interested in a ring of spell knowledge II or III
Will be looking to upgrade the amulet to a +2 in the near/intermediate future, too, and maybe a strength belt.
I'm very much looking forward to this book and the rest of the AP. The first book was decent, then I thought the second book suffered a little. But they were both really just leading up to this book, which is the big trek. Then roaming about Tian Xia in the last half of the AP will certainly be entertaining. The last two books look like they will be the best.
When I ran it book 3 was the slow point for my group. They got stuck up there so long and had a lot of difficulty with the encounters there. 4-6 were pretty solid though, with a lot of interesting stuff going on.
So, GMing question here: EF (and Sethious too, since you've run this): how much ad-libbing do you/have you done with APs? I have only made a couple of minor tweaks to Reign of Winter, but I'm thinking about changing that up a bit in the next book to fit my players and their PCs a little better.
Well, the whole front section of this book is about caravan encounters and I'll be skipping past that for the most part.
@Miso: That depends on the AP. When I ran Reign of Winter F2F I made almost no changes except for maybe leaving out 1-2 encounters per book that I just didn't feel like running or I thought were repetitive. Rise of the Runelords I have also made almost no changes to. I'm only on book 1 of Iron Gods but so far haven't made any significant changes to the AP itself, although we have quite a few homebrew rules (subraces, new feat system, spell points,etc).
In book 2 of Shattered Star I skimmed over the first section because I didn't see how the politics of bogards and the other swamp dwellers was particularly relevant to their mission or even that interesting. I've also been known to skip a few more encounters in Shattered Star because that's a dungeon-crawl AP so it is full of encounters and some of them I just know the party will wipe through so I just don't even waste their time.
Honestly, with this AP not having as good of reviews overall (and with Zachary's experience that this book might be a little slow), I think I will start taking a similar tactic and narrate through some parts and leave out a few unnecessary encounters that will only slow things down or waste time.
In other words, when I GM APs I generally don't mess with the story at all. I freely leave out or change encounters as I deem necessary and might even narrate past a side quest that I feel detracts from the story. But for the most part I leave it as is.
For me it really depends who is at my table and what they give me to work with. If I have character histories, or people make comments at the table such as "Oh man, I hope we don't see them again..." or "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if...", there is a serious chance I am going to sit down and write something around that history, enemy that got away, or player idea. If no one gave me a history, or the table grumbles about things, (such as my table did at part 3 of this AP) stuff starts getting cut to get us back to where the table is enjoying themselves again.
I cut small parts of Part 3 of this AP, and added in Under Frozen Stars (a third party supplement) in order to spice things up a bit. Looking through this specific AP book, a lot of the encounters are interesting, but with the exception of a couple of set pieces it basically is laid out as "Hey GM, roll a bunch of random encounters or try to write a cohesive story with this big random table and run your PCs through it." I tried to do the later, but it kind of turned into a slog, so I put the supplement in to break things up a bit and I think added another mystery to solve which pulled everyone back into the game.
Book 4 of JR I cut liberally. To avoid spoilers and put it simply, as I already discussed it with EF, I removed areas entirely. Many were, fight 4 of this creature, fight 4 of this creature again, but they are on a wall. Look guys, you get to fight 5 of this creature now, and we added one with class levels to the mix. So I cut from there and added roleplaying bits to an earlier part of the book, which I found much more interesting.
I have also run RotRL, CotCT, and CC. I can give more detailed examples from those if you like. I basically just cater to my table though, as I have 2 groups I play with, one rollplay and one roleplay and the changes really depend on which I am running with.
Just popping in to say that the loot sheet should be up-to-date, so claim anything you want. That which isn't claimed in the next couple of days will either be sold or default to my haversack.
Neglected to say: Jennix & Terflynn, please feel free to chime in too, if you guys have thoughts and/or experience with making AP changes
good PC-driven changes stuff
This kind of thing is kind of where I'm leaning. I haven't decided on 3rd-party stuff yet, but hey, it's campaign mode, you know? LOL
When I ran Runelords, I stuck completely to the script in part cos it was my first AP and in part cos JMSO it's so well done that I saw no need to change anything. After reading Shattered Star I knew I'd never run that as written, which is part of why it's still on my shelf and not ever been run. And once they (finally) sanction Serpent's Skull, I'll gleefully run that with modifications.
Thanks for the input, guys. I appreciate it.
I've never run an AP. I'm actually a really sucky GM. There are a few tables worth of players who can back me up on that.
Just popping in to say that the loot sheet should be up-to-date, so claim anything you want. That which isn't claimed in the next couple of days will either be sold or default to my haversack.
Thanks, Terflynn. Miso has claimed three potions of vanish and the wand of flame arrow; while he won't get much use out of the latter, he can use it on Zachary's arrows, and he certainly will.
Maybe Terflynn should make a haversack or something; some of the mundane stuff would be useful (snow shoes, sextant, smoked goggles, etc.), but is inconvenient to carry without some way to mitigate the bulk and weight.
I made a haversack for me. I could make one for any of you as well. With 10 strength and my fireworks addiction, I knew I needed one.
Also, note on potions of vanish: by raw, you'll want to draw them on one turn, drink them on the next. Otherwise you won't actually get a move action before it runs out.
Re: PC-motivated changes: Oh yeah, I try to do this too. It's a bit harder over PbP because some of the face-to-face familiarity is lost and you're not always constantly reminded of the character's backstory with the players' little comments here and there. But for example, I had a transgendered half-orc in my Reign of Winter game who conveniently found a girdle of opposite gender half-way through the adventure (before the other PCs knew his secret). I'm going to start making an effort to do this in my PbP APs as well after I go back through and reread any backstories the players have on their profiles.
Re: Shattered Star: I was apathetic about running this AP at first because 1) it seemed like a dungeon slog and 2) it was my first foray into PbP APs. However, I've got a really good group of posters and I have actually grown to really like it as an AP. The dungeons (while still dungeons) are at least varied in their encounters (for the most part) and all have unique and interesting stories worked into them. The first dungeon is the slowest IMO because there's only so much you can do at those low levels. But SS is an AP that only gets better as you go in my experience. Coming from someone who didn't think they would like it at all, it has really grown on me.
With my AP GMing experience, I would probably rank them:
RotR > RoW > SS > JR (too early to tell on Iron Gods yet)
I'm also playing Carrion Crown and Mummy's Mask and those have both been great so far.
Oh, and even though it doesn't have the best reviews and would need some serious modifications to update to the PF power-growth, I've always been interested in Legacy of Fire, primarily because I really love 1001 Arabian Nights and those sorts of settings.
Runelords was pretty solid to begin with. I had a really large table for that,(I think 8) and only 2 people gave me real decent histories to work with so I didn't change overly much story wise.
I had a pair of brothers who were demon hunters from Cheliax. I took the opportunity to add a lot of demonic influences into the campaign. It fit because there was a Lamashtu shrine in the catacombs of Wrath, and Nualia was the BBEG of the first book. I also had an 8 person party, so tossing the occasional dretch, babau, or other demon in to help the bad guys and harass these two worked quite well.
They had their own personal villain in a Succubus that had been playing with the hierarchy of ruling classes in a post CotCT Korvosa, who was allying with Karzoug. Every once in awhile I'd send dominated NPC's to mess with them when they were in town (refuse to sell these two PC's goods, noisy neighbors in an inn so they couldn't sleep, other minor annoyances to drive them nuts) I wrapped up their side story in Book 4 and had her support Mokmorian, where they finally got their revenge and put her down.
The group as a whole was also very interested in exploring Xin-Shalast when they got there. They made an ally in a mu spore that they spoke with in the Tangle. It was extremely lazy and just wanted them to deal with all its problems. They killed a bunch of plant giants and a variant moss encrusted Linnorm for it that I put in there. I had begun writing up the encounter with the Root of the Tangle when they decided they should get back on task and deal with Karzoug.
Those are the main changes I made to RotRL that I can recall. I know I made a lot of heavy edits to CC due to no continuity between the books. CotCT was well written, and I don't believe needed heavy edits, however I had a lot of good back stories to work with and made some heavy changes to more deeply involve the characters.
I haven't forayed into the realm of PBP DMing yet. Most of my player posts were done during downtime at work where I wouldn't have access to the books. Considering our filters have now blocked Paizo's site, it has really hindered my ability to post, even as just a player, so I don't see myself getting into that soon. I can see where it would make things more difficult though.
Ranking the APs I have run as GM I would probably rank them CotCT (completed) > RotRL (completed) > JR (completed) > CC (TPK Book 4)
I have played in KM (To book 3), Way of the Wicked (just starting book 6), RoW (Barely into book 1), WotR (Barely into book 1), Skull and Shackles (completed), and JR (to where we are now). Seeing as I have only really completed one AP I have played in, (lots of DM bails) I can't rate them very well from the other side of the screen.
I am gearing up to run Rappan Athuk for my Saturday group as soon as we finish Way of the Wicked. I have been doing a lot of heavy editing for that recently as well... because, good back-stories, haha.
Speaking of AP sanctioning, Serpent's Skull is next on the list and wasn't Carrion Crown released over a year ago? Are they ever going to finish the AP sanctioning? (Probably shouldn't even get me started on Wardens....) We've got some VOs here. . . anything word on that or anything you can do to speed the process up?
It's in the plans. There have been some hiccups — some common knowledge we can talk about, some not that we can't — but I've been told by Mike Brock face-to-face that full back catalog sanctioning is the plan (including updating all the 3.5 modules and Season 0 scenarios to Pathfinder). The timetable has been altered due to...to "things"...but it remains on the agenda.
As far as anything we can do to speed things up: believe me, we have offered to help out more times than I can count. Jennix will concur with this; we've offered and the answer is always the same: to maintain standards, they keep developing, editing, etc., in-house. They'd have to send anything we produced through the gauntlet anyway, so I can see some of their point.
It's in the plans. There have been some hiccups — some common knowledge we can talk about, some not that we can't — but I've been told by Mike Brock face-to-face that full back catalog sanctioning is the plan (including updating all the 3.5 modules and Season 0 scenarios to Pathfinder). The timetable has been altered due to...to "things"...but it remains on the agenda.
As far as anything we can do to speed things up: believe me, we have offered to help out more times than I can count. Jennix will concur with this; we've offered and the answer is always the same: to maintain standards, they keep developing, editing, etc., in-house. They'd have to send anything we produced through the gauntlet anyway, so I can see some of their point.
Well that's all good news. I didn't realize updating 3.5 modules and scenarios was even being considered anymore due to how long it was taking just to keep up with and finish the PF modules and APs. So that's good news I guess.
And yeah, I've heard that line before too about the VOs and other volunteers helping out. It just seems like it would take them a lot less time to check things over that someone has already finished rather than having to do everything themselves from start to finish. But I guess they're in charge so there's nothing we can do if they say no. But a year between AP sanctionings (and nearly a year since Wardens was released and it hasn't been sanctioned) is getting a bit ridiculous and frustrating. Maybe if they knew how frustrated the player base was at the slow sanctioning system? Maybe not though.
Wow, 21 posts while I was out of the "office" today.
1) I haven't had chance to look at the loot sheet.
2) I would love for Serpents to be sanctioned soon! (As well as Wardens and Iron Gods.)
3) Need to check if Jennix would like anything crafted.
4) I have considered altering AP (or campaign mode modules for that matter), but I'm usually too busy and trying to keep up with my games to make any significant changes. (I have handwaved some things in Dragon's Demand, but that's about it.)
5) Should Jennix, (or someone else) look at taking Exotic Weapon Prof., in order to make use of the blades we found. (The names escape me at the moment)
Re 5: I think it would be awesome if you did. Though it may not be optimal.
Suishen is a katana; Zachary and Jennix can both use it two-handed since they both have Martial Weapon Proficiency. One-handed requires a feat (or a level of Samurai).
Oathbreaker is a tetsubo, which is an exotic bludgeoning weapon. Someone would definitely need a feat for that.
I think Oathbreaket is also Large.
I think it would be worth it to grab EWP(katana) and make that part of your TWF, Jennix. I wasn't impressed with the tetsubo.
@Terflynn: have you decided who you are applying the chronicle to yet?
--
Also, they better sanction Iron Gods soon before my group finishes Book 1. . . .
I believe I'll go with # 37563-9 aka Kerak, the Crab King.
I think it would be worth it to grab EWP(katana) and make that part of your TWF, Jennix.
...or a level of Samurai. ;-)
Zack is going to be very sub-optimal in melee. I know it is a great artifact, but it would be mostly a waste in my hands unless something gets in my face to where I cannot back up and shoot.
First of all, that means you can level up to 7!
Miso would like to take five days to retrain a feat (Blind-Fight -> Wpn Focus: claws). Base cost is 350 gp.
Zack is going to be very sub-optimal in melee. I know it is a great artifact, but it would be mostly a waste in my hands unless something gets in my face to where I cannot back up and shoot.
I agree that a two-handed weapon isn't great for you, but for melee in general I think it's a good idea for an archer to keep a quickdraw shield and a one-handed weapon on hand. Mostly to keep the enemies busy while your team tries to cope with the fact that people cornered the archer in the first place.
First of all, that means you can level up to 7!Miso would like to take five days to retrain a feat (Blind-Fight -> Wpn Focus: claws). Base cost is 350 gp.
Feral combat?
Feral combat?First of all, that means you can level up to 7!Miso would like to take five days to retrain a feat (Blind-Fight -> Wpn Focus: claws). Base cost is 350 gp.
That would be level 7's feat, yep.
I've got a buckler that I can get enchanted to go along with whatever backup sword we have at the time.
Jennix is basically leveled, including taking Ex Weap. Prof.
So if I read the loot sheet right, we each have ~ 4600 gp?
Looking at the sheet, it looks like there is spare RoP +1 and three AoNA +1. Jennix would take a ring and an amulet, unless everybody else wants them. Can Terflynn create a belt of Dex, for Jennix?
I'm really tempted to take a level of ninja, but would hate to lose the BAB and have to wait until 8 for an iterative. Since we have encountered so many, I could see the archaeologist in Jennix studying their moves an emulating them. Samurai, I have a harder time, fitting in flavor-wise.
I thought of proposing the levels of ninja, but losing a BAB and an HD tier is not an easy thing. Still, the ki pool, the tricks, the ability to use all these cool things we're finding... But just taking EWP is probably good enough.
I'll update the gold we have once we've all sorted our loot, but yes, we should each have at least that much.
As for the ring and amulet, I've already assigned them to you on the sheet. I also gave you:
3 potions of vanish
Suishen
Deadly Kiss (super dangerous self-poisoning dagger, remember?)
3 scrolls of Magic Circle Against Evil (for UMD)
And there's still lots of things like tindertwigs, thunderstones, climber's kits, stealth outfits...
Yeah, I'm was thinking of either losing the BAB this level ans sucking it up, or taking ninja the next few levels, and retraining the feat. Because, yeah, ninja would be cool in this AP. Jennix, the white shadow!
I totally get that, Jennix. Just throwing out the "more efficient" option. :-)
Turns out Miso can't retrain Blind-Fight into something that's not a bloodline feat, so he'll need to give up Arcane Strike (which is okay since Miso has a ki pool). So that's what he's gonna need to retrain for 350 gp and five days, if EF is okay with it.
This level's bloodline feat is gonna be Toughness, since Miso misses a fair amount anyway which makes Power Attack kinda dumb.