[PF2] Malevolence (GM Watery Soup) (Inactive)

Game Master Watery Soup

Welcome to Malevolence!

Please dot into Gameplay, but read this before finalizing your character.

Per the recruitment, I've mostly selected you as players - we've played together before, as GMs or players for PFS, and I've found your characters flavorful and interesting in general. I left characters out of recruitment for a few reasons, but one of which is that there are some extra considerations for your characters, individually and as a group, which I'd like us to discuss before the game formally begins.

1. This is a horror-themed adventure, and I'll confess that I have never run a horror adventure before (my experience with RPGs has been mostly as a kid myself or with my kids now, and PFS tends to be only minimally creepy). It's possible that some things appear weird/funny rather than scary. To help me find a balance between entertainment and discomfort, I'm asking each of you to send me, privately, anything that you think is inappropriately scary (no questions asked, I just want to know what's out of bounds). Formally, the disclaimer on the Adventure is as follows:

Malevolence presents a fully detailed haunted house—a place filled with horror, tragedy, and elements that some players might find uncomfortable. These elements include body horror, filicide, domestic violence, gore, mental illness, mental trauma, mutilation, physical trauma, and suicide. Before you run this adventure, understand that consent from everyone at the table, including the players and the Game Master, is vital to a safe and fun play experience. You should talk with your players before beginning the adventure and modify descriptions or events as appropriate.

2. There is an absurdly deep, and moderately complex backstory to this Adventure, which you're expected to uncover piecemeal through a Research subplot. I'm going to recommend that the group coordinates to make sure that the skills Occultism, Religion, and Society are thoroughly covered. Alternatively, Library Lore is often used as a substitute for those skills, and I've been toying with the idea of just giving it to each of you as a bonus Lore. Your input would be appreciated.

3. The setting is an abandoned village in the middle of nowhere; this presents a problem in that, technically, you'd have to spend a week or so traveling to the nearest town and back. With agreement, I'm going to use a system that my kids liked: whenever you would otherwise buy something from town, let me know what you'd want to buy, and I'll have it appear as treasure. Common items of up to your current level are always available.

4. As part of your character's backstory, you'll need a reason to be in Crooked Cove. I'm posting two of the pre-written ones, and then adding two of my own. These are moderately important in that, depending on your background and plot hook, you may start with advantages in the Research subplot.

I am in!!!!

Hey @WaterySoup - thanks for having me at your table! I appreciated being picked from that lovely bunch from recruitment thread.

@Deevor, Ebonfist, Farol, Halgur, rainzax, and Tyranius - great to be playing with you at what I hope will be a bit longer engagement. Good to see you all in here. A fine company indeed!

Organizational matters: between 13th and 20th of October I will be on vacation, using my mobile. I might not be the most chatty of all players. So I will make an attempt to make my PC ready before 13th.

My thanks to Watery Soup for putting this together.

I'm really excited with this band of players. Like Farol I've either been GM'd by you or you have been in my games, so this is a real treat.

As for my character, without looking at the plot hooks above, I had the idea that this gnome is a barrister from Cheliax who was looking into the legacy of the building for a questionable and silent client. As a respected chelaxian barrister, with knowledge of contracts and legal documents, and very often able to turn the contracts to his and his clients own advantage (hence the diabolic bloodline) he is looking forward to get the most out of this visit as he can, both for his client and for himself.

He is not overtly evil, but the law is the law for good or ill.

So this kinda falls into the Unexpected Inheritance type of plot hook. Obviously if there is someone who is here because they are the person inheriting the mansion, Sibelius de Pourrimenmots of Sibelius, Sibelius and Grieg, will work on your behalf.

Will have legal lore, the bloodline will give training in religion. Library Lore would fit the character as well, although probably won't have the intelligence to be terribly good at it.

Background can change in line with fitting the group, but that's what I thought might work.

Awesome! Glade to see and be able to play with all of you. :)

@GM- What are your thoughts on a Tengu with the Returned Background to go along with your Nosoi Psychopomps plot hook?

Farol, your schedule is fine. Let's plan to start on the 21st, so you have a day after your vacation to make any last minute changes.

Deevor, I think that fits exactly within An Unexpected Inheritance. Sounds great.

Tyranius, tengu with the Returned background sounds great. We can talk on E-mail / GDrive / Discord (I'm playing two GDX games on Discord so I check it more frequently than I used to) if you want your background to be a little mysterious to the rest of the group.

Hey good people!

Laurel - aside from being "young" - is a pretty basic character in terms of mechanics (Human Ancestry, Ranger class plus Swashbuckler Dedication) - and as a Desnan, he will enter the story through Plothook #4, making a Holy Pilgrimage with his Mom to the site. Ideally, having travelled to Crooked Cove from Etran's Folly recently. Fascinated with knives, he will eventually want to rig his "lucky" starknife to Return to him like a boomerang. I will try to squeeze the Religion skill into his build.

Laurel will play like a skirmishing monk or rogue, and has some skill in Thievery (but not Expert) - which is negotiable if the party needs it.

As a player, I consent to all the themes you outlined above.

Cheers!

Rough Draft here.

Zoiqoppour Royok or Zoi for short is a molten looking Tengu behind a dark green cloak that covers most of its feathers. A long scar cripples part of his left wing. He wasn't always an adventurer and came across a rough group that tried to rob him down an alleyway on the docks. Wrong place, wrong time.

In the end he died and found himself in the Boneyard speaking with a pair of Psychopomps named Umble and Thoot. Pleading for more time in the mortal realm came to no logical conclusion when dealing with the bureaucratic nature of the Dead Roads. Luckily for Zoi Pharasma had a different fate for him. It was not yet his tie and Zoi would return for a few more short years to do Pharasma's bidding before returning to the Boneyard for the rest of eternity.

With his stamps Barzahk the Passage allowed Zoi back into the mortal realm where he feels the same, though a bit different. Around his neck hangs a small medallion dedicated to Pharasma as well as a new found power. Nosoi psychopomps flutter little by little wherever he travels. Every once in a while he sees a small flock and over the past few months has been following them to a massive gathering at Crooked Cove. He is curious what they and Pharasma are leading him to.

Thinking Tengu (Returned Background) Cleric of Pharasma w/ Sorcerer (Psychopomp Bloodline). This will get the group a little extra healing and at 4th level will also take the Sorcerer feat to get the Psychopomp bloodline spell. Thoughts? As I'm not sure what everyone else is going with.

So it is time for my rought draft, in the recruitment I did not see any 'tanks' (for lack of better word). So here it is,

Farol's PC (name in progress) is Champion of Margrim, dwarven god of death and craft. Working closely with Parasma and psychopomps. As a Champion he took part in fighting the whispering tyrant where he got seriously mutilated making it hard for him to speak. After recovering he found a place working on his graveyard and making tombstones. Finding work in the stone soothing.

He learns of the Crooked Cove through his connection to Margrim, I will write down a bit more detailed story.

So far in my head, he is a strong but silent champion (Warhammer and shield) Redeemer. Stat wise he would be STR, CON, INT. With a CHA dump (first draft). As I am a bit concerned about our INT skills, so he could cover Crafting/Occultism/Society with a bit of Religion. And again stats are not written down, I am playing this PC through scenes in my head, and seeing how it 'flows'

Thanks for selecting me, Soup. This will be a good group and I look forward to playing. Sorry it's taken me awhile to post my character ideas. I just got my booster shot yesterday morning and I'm only just now starting to get over it.

So far I have two ideas that would work. Malcolm is a human mastermind rogue that is found by Sibelius to be the inheritor of the estate. He's a petty con man that occasionally poses as a spiritualist to bilk money from bereaved widows.

A second possibility would be Caterwaul, a duskwalker bard and follower of Pharasma. Her mother was an adventurer and cleric of Pharasma that felt compelled to confront a banshee while she was pregnant. She managed to defeat the evil spirit but the banshee's wail very nearly caused the death of the unborn child and ultimately caused her to be born as a duskwalker.

@Deevor what class is your barrister?

@Halgur .. He's a sorcerer at the moment .....

A few logistical things that are going to be different from the way I run things in PFS scenarios:

1. Due to the size of the slides, there will be a few separate slide decks. One is the current slides (or current-ish slides) which should be relatively small. One will contain past slides, things you may want to reference, but it'll likely be very large (my GM-facing slide deck is already 50 MB and I'm nowhere near done). Another will contain all the research topics you can research and the information you've learned. Depending on how it looks, I may combine this with the current deck, but don't want to clutter up the current deck with too much stuff.

2. There will be a separate sheet on which I'll track XP and loot. I used this format when tracking things for my kids in The Slithering; if anyone has suggestions on how to do things differently, I'm open to suggestions (the sheet is primarily for your benefit so whatever works for everyone).

3. I'm usually very laissez-faire about timekeeping in PFS scenarios. However, in the case, I'll probably note the day (relative to when you arrived) and the time periodically as part of my posts. I'm still not going to track food or mundane arrows, [Borat]ees boring[/Borat].

@GM - awesome idea with slides. It makes it faster to load => easier to post from a mobile device or bad internet.

With regards to the loot sheet, I love it. I will try to help to update it, to ease some of the work from you.

================

Regarding my PC, I crunched on some numbers and first I landed on 16|12|14|14|14|8 (STR, dex... cha) making him a stoneworker, occultic knowledgable champion. But I can't honestly play PC with 8 CHA.
So most likely I will go with 16|12|14|12|14|10 and trained Diplomacy just for the sake of it. I was wondering at taking 16 Wis and 10 INT to be better at religion, but maybe I will settle at Expert Religion.

@GM - what are the rules for creating PC at lvl 3 Are we following the official 70 gp or something else?

It's 75 gp, and yes, start at level 3. Common items and spells are always okay, nd we can talk about Uncommon. In general, PFS-like access rules apply, so Uncommon items from PSG and regional weapons are probably okay.

With respect to ability scores, remember you are expected to hit level 5 (if you survive muhahahahahaha) so you'll get boosts mid-game.

Actually, on a serious note, it's quite possible and maybe even likely a character dies - if so, replacement characters will follow the same rules for creation (with level and WBL adjusted if the dead character reached level 4 or 5). I assume y'all are mature enough not to pull stunts like killing characters intentionally to get more stuff.

Deevor @ Gnome Barrister Sorcerer w/ (#1) Unexpected Inheritance
Ebonfist @ ??? w/ (#?) ???
Farol @ Dwarf Champion w/ (#3) Nosoi Psychopomps
Halgur @ Human Mastermind Rogue w/ (#1) Unexpected Inheritance
rainzax @ Human Ranger / Swashbuckler w/ (#4) Desnans
Tyranius @ Returned Tengo Sorcerer w/ (#3) Nosoi Psychopomps

To be clear, you don't need to use the backgrounds if you don't want to.

Ok, so I think that my profile is mostly set. I went with Artist background (stone worker) Magrim Champion with shield and Warhammer + half-plate. He has plenty of skills as I went few feats to make him more well-rounded. Toughness for more HP, between reaction, lay on hands and a shield he should be a solid member in fights.

Expert religion, interesting(at least for me backstory), Crafting, Nature, Occultism, Surival should make him a participating member of the team. Skilled in Diplomacy just for the sake of it and Athletics.

First name borrowed from Prof. Tolkien, last name from my clan that created while playing plaguestone.

Can you link your backstory?

I really should have posted earlier...

Since we don't need 2 Dwarf Champions or 2 Swashbucklers and we probably do need a little more healing I'm going to go off book and see if I can get this approved -

A Created Fleshwarp Ancestor Oracle. When his curse presents it is different aspects of the bodies that were combined coming to the fore.

One of those bodies happens to have been the last (no longer surviving) heir of the Xarwin line. He doesn't remember any details but when he catches wind of the situation, he's drawn inexorably toward the manor.

Backstory wrote down into the profile. I will think about it, and might change some details, but the fact that he was operating a graveyard is set in stone (so to speak ;)).

@EbonFirst yeah it is a pity, as I could have created another PC, I just tried to fill the gap that I felt we had

@Farol, it's no problem. Somebody would have had to come up with something new and I like your concept.

Mine might not have worked, anyway since he was going to be a NE Desecrator.

OK, changed the name around for background purposes ...

Will write up the background and add items/scrolls, signature spell alterations to be attempted. ...

The nub of the stats are there ....

Not a normal type sorcerer, if you ask me..

I'll be finalizing my character in the next couple of days. I the meantime I have a couple of questions.

@Deevor-Will you be okay with my character being the heir that you are escorting to the manor in your capacity as executor of the estate?

@GM Watery Soup-The current build I'm playing with has a summoner dedication for a psychopomp eidolon taken at level 2. You mentioned nothing from guns and gears. Is secrets of magic okay to use or should I ditch the summoner idea?

Secrets of Magic is fine, I (a) own the book and (b) have read through it. I'm not planning on getting Guns and Gears until December.

@Halgur .... That sounds good, my charges won't be too extortionate.
I will send you our terms and conditions with or without the smallprint.

So where are you from, any special connections family wise .... Did my grandfather work for yours, as he created our law firm. Grandfather and father are the Sibalius and Sibalius on the firm's card. A family firm, Grieg died many years ago, but his name lives on.

@Deevor-Will you be okay with my character being the heir that you are escorting to the manor in your capacity as executor of the estate?

@Halgur .... That sounds good, my charges won't be too extortionate.

Building on that, perhaps Laurel and his mom were sub-contracted as the physical transport? (Already set up in Gameplay...)

Oh wow, people are getting acquaintance already :) dropped something into the gameplay.

In the meantime I have a question to GM: in this adventure the players try to accomplish a common goal? Or is every PC having their own agenda? I am asking as the hooks are fairly wide for example: heir and his lawyer want to get the manor for 'themselves' what if the papers/proofs that we find says otherwise? So are we supposed to be playing to accomplish our own goals first?

n this adventure the players try to accomplish a common goal? Or is every PC having their own agenda?"

Each PC will start off with their own agenda, but the hope is that by the end of the adventure, they're trying to accomplish a common goal.

You're all active PFS players, so it's PFS style of cooperation - characters running off to solve their personal quests at the expense of the other characters is discouraged. But, given the freedom afforded Campaign Mode, it's certainly possible that at some convenient point we take a pause from the main mission to split up and do personal quests as side quests.

Over the next few days, I'm going to be looking through characters to make sure that (a) I understand them mechanically, and (b) to see if I can modify elements of the plot or NPCs to satisfy any personal quests the characters may have.

Excited for this one. It has gotten a lot of great reviews!

Lazlo Gorog's stats and such are finalized. I'll work up a bit about his background in the next couple of days.

@Halgur .... That sounds good, my charges won't be too extortionate.

I will send you our terms and conditions with or without the smallprint.

So where are you from, any special connections family wise .... Did my grandfather work for yours, as he created our law firm. Grandfather and father are the Sibalius and Sibalius on the firm's card. A family firm, Grieg died many years ago, but his name lives on.

So far I'm thinking that de Sibelius doesn't know much about Lazlo. He is the nephew of a recently deceased woman that owed quite a bit of money to one of de Sibelius's clients. Even after liquidating her assets she still owes a decent amount. Fortunately it seems that she and her recently discovered nephew, are the heirs to the manor. Initial inquiries indicate that this will not only pay off the debts but there will be enough left over to provide Lazlo with a decent legacy.

I envision that you and Lazlo have gone to tour the property and determine its value. You essentially have two clients. the unnamed creditors and Lazlo himself.

Galimus is also mostly finished. I just have to transcribe everything from levelling up from my analog source to the digital one and write down his backstory.

He has amnesia but when he saw the postings about the Xarwin manor, he was drawn to the name and has come to investigate in hopes that he can get some clues as to his past. Is he (or part of him) the rightful heir? Was he just a servant? An enemy? He must find out!

I've finished looking over characters and PMed individuals with any questions I have.

Fundin, can you put a text version of your character sheet into your character page? It's helpful for me because I'm often on my phone and it's difficult to read PDFs. It looks like you used Pathbuilder? You can use the "Export Stat Block" option instead of "Export PDF" and it should be fine.

---

Full disclosure, my current to-do list:
- Read over fleshwarps, runescarred dedication, mastermind rogue
- Integrate hooks for Galimus and Lazlo into the NPC interactions
- Generate macros for the secret checks (I may make you guys fill out a Google Sheet, but I think I can export it from my current sheet faster)
- Some aesthetic stuff on the slides

I think we're on track for starting material on Thursday (October 21).

A few additional notes.

1. I usually make a note that I consider spoilers to be unopened unless the characters share it specifically. To be honest, I'm usually pretty lax about enforcing that, because most people share everything in PFS scenarios. This adventure will be a little different, because I'll be frequently using spoilers to indicate things like visual hallucinations that your character may not realize are hallucinations. Please don't open each others' spoilers.

2. I realize that I asked you all about off-limit topics, but didn't answer the question myself (and noted that Paizo's disclaimer asked me to). So, to be fair and transparent, I'll answer my own question: I find very few of the traditionally "scary" things scary, so basically all traditional horror elements are fine with me (although one downside I've mentioned is that I don't really have a great handle on how to scare/disturb others). I will take certain themes off the table, like child abuse and sexual violence, but I think those are covered under Paizo's forum rules anyway.

3. I'm going to remove your main aliases from the Characters list to keep the Characters list rather clean. I can reverse this on request.

Still a little bit of shopping to do, but nothing to hairy...

couple of daggers, crossbow and some anti swarm stuff to throw and the old healing potion.

token added

@Gm I updated the stats from Fundin. I still have 15 gp to spend, I am considering shield spike and a healing potion. But I will finalise it tomorrow.

I don't really have a great handle on how to scare/disturb others

I feel this is a bit 'difficult'. It requires us to separate what scares me as a player vs what scares my PC.

If I as a person am afraid of Zombies but Funding is not I should play him like everything is ok. But if something disturbs the dwarf I should be playing him accordingly. Is it the damaged soul that puts him at unease? Spiders? Or something completely different? And now you gave me another point of consideration for him.

One more note, about Recall Knowledge checks. It's pretty standard for PFS, but just for transparency ...

Philosophically, I like letting PCs roll as much as possible. So, in general, I use a tiered approach to Recall Knowledge.

Most Secret: I pull your modifier and roll for you. You don't even know a roll was made, much less what the die roll or DC were. I don't usually do this very often for PFS scenarios but I think I will end up using this more in this Adventure.

Secret: I ask for your modifier and roll for you. You know a roll was made, but not what the die roll was or what the DC was.

Open Check: I ask you to make a roll in the open. You'll know that a roll was made and what the roll was. You can probably guess the DC from the results.

Spoilered Check: I post the results in a spoiler and list the DC right up front.

Got an office halloween party tonight, will post in the morning ... if I don't get a chance now ... one of our directors is sitting next to me today, so not as much time to play at work.

Lazlo Gorog wrote:

A successful save vs flaming sphere results in zero damage, not half.

I've never noticed that before. It's rather confusing they call it a basic save. That would have changed the combat, but I'm just going to note it for the future and not retcon.

I agree with GM WS, it's confusing it's not a basic save if it takes no damage it should say 'a reflex save' .... then you know not to use the basic save rules.....

I never took in that bit before....

In their defense, the top line description says, "Saving Throw: Reflex" and not "Saving Throw: basic Reflex."

The only people confused by it would be the stupid idiots who read the first half of the spell description but not the second half.

In their defense, the top line description says, "Saving Throw: Reflex" and not "Saving Throw: basic Reflex."

The only people confused by it would be the stupid idiots who read the first half of the spell description but not the second half.

That's me ... ohhh!!! ... :-)

Long day - can post tomorrow!

"Watch out" the boy begins, having not thought the rest of his boast through "is mah middel nem!"

My kids are on the rambunctious side, and I yell at them a lot. I never realized how much I did until one day we were at a park, I yelled at them, and woman there asked me if I lived on <My Street> Street. When I said yes, she said she lived behind me, a few doors down, and recognized my voice from me yelling so much. :\

My 6 year old chided me for yelling at the dog.

"It sounded like you were mad" she said (while crying.)

"I was mad."

"Yelling is not nice."

"..."

:D She is not wrong ;)

A surprising number of my characters are based upon people in my large irl family.

This one is upon my rambunctious nephew who invariably speaks his mind.

=)

I was looking over Lazlo's equipment and realized I made a big mistake. I forgot to purchase thieves' tools. I have the gold. Can I go ahead and make a retroactive purchase? If not then please include a set as treasure at some point soon.

A surprising number of my characters are based upon people in my large irl family.

This one is upon my rambunctious nephew who invariably speaks his mind.

=)

It makes me wonder, who in your family resembles Ghul ... ;)

Can not one be in one's own family?

I'm away this weekend visiting my daughter and won't be taking my laptop, so I'll be posting next on Monday.