First, thanks all for the great discussion. Keep it coming.
The way it played out in game, the paladin could easily be excused from the initial torture session issues. The party really only debated the kidnapping part vs public arrest. Everyone thought once he was kidnapped he would just tell them what they wanted.(why do my players feel just cause they are the PC's, the bad guys will spill all their secrets?) The torture for information came from the party members without so many morals, away from the paladins upfront knowledge. However, I am certain he has heard about what happened, and certainly is aware of Grigori's current treatment. That can't be ignored.
I am heavily leaning towards a strong warning from his god. (Erastil btw) I will be doing this in two ways. First, I will be providing a dream sequence or two (thanks Pennywit). His paladin powers came to him in a dream sequence, and so I have some good material to draw from. The initial dreams involved him as a young stag in a herd of elk growing up to protect and lead his herd. So i will build off that metaphor and he should pick up on the problems. Second, if he doesn't take the hint, He will begin to have difficulty using his paladin powers. Perhaps a lay on hands only works half way, or a fear effect gets through. The longer it goes on, the worse these effects are.
Now, while all that will be going on, Grigori will start plotting his next move from behind bars. Instead of an immediate jail break, i think he will "befriend" a few guards into spreading rumors through town. This should be fun.
So I have mostly finished the Grigori plot line. My players argued for about 2 hours how to "take out" Grigori after they figured out he was essentially a hired anarchist. The debate was mostly centered around stealth kidnapping vs public jailing and trial. Everyone but the druid eventually opted for the kidnapping which admittedly started as just a shake down for information.
The paladin, who is the ruler (in title only, they claim all council members are equal, but he is definitely the face), decided to stay out of the kidnapping so that he could have plausible deniability. Eventually after some torture, the party got what they thought they could out of Grigori, and were debating killing vs paying him off and sending him away, then the idea came up, "hey, we can just put in him in dungeon of the castle, no one will know."
Well, for most of my party, this seems like the end of the story, but should I let the Paladin get away with this. He knows, they have tortured a man and imprisoned him without trial for essentially life. Oh, they also specifically said they will be waking him up every few hours so that he cannot get a full 8 hours of rest, and therefor not have his spells to influence the guards with. That seems like more torture. And really, his only crime was speaking out against the ruling council, and they think (wrongly) he has used "offensive magic" on unwilling townsfolk. Which apparently is a law the council now decided exists. (they make up laws a lot, but hey they are the council)
Should a Paladin allow this to continue? should his god take away some of his powers until he atones? I haven't had a Paladin PC in my group before, and this seems awfully sketchy.
So before I could start thinking of ways to bring Nymixthriin back to cause some issues for the PC's, one of my members is wanting to put him up as the ruler of their nation. Now, i doubt the rest of the group will approve of this, but I certainly wonder how an emotionally scared, immature silver dragon on the throne would work out for them.
I am now thinking perhaps there was a son/daughter that escaped the fire, who is living out in the wild, lost and gone somewhat feral. Perhaps returning this family member to society will help with that. Maybe this becomes the lost boy down in book 2's lizard men camp.
I borrowed Nymixthriin Sunday night when my players attacked the Stag Lord head on. It was going quite poorly until they convinced him life could be better without the stag lord.
Nymixthriin flew off to "find himself" at the end of the day, but now I am thinking the party may hear rumors of a silver dragon "attacking" people. I will need to construct these attacks so that it is Nymixthriin trying to enforce "justice", but doing it a bit too harshly. The party will need to help him learn how to best serve justice without being a tyrant.
Overall, a fun addition, thank you Jedric for creating him.
So my players killed the stag lord tonight. It was a great fight all around, had a lot of fun.
My "problem" if you will, is that the players were rather "good" about avoiding a lot of exploration. They managed to hit the major events (Mites, kobolds, temple)and were high enough level to take him out, but they avoided a lot of quests. They didn't even go talk to the hermit potion guy, even though I told him about him multiple times, they just were not interested in meeting too many people with the Stag Lord threat looming over the land, I guess I can't blame them too much.
They skipped going to Nettles crossing(I even moved it's location so they would see him at a different river area, but they still avoided him, grr). So they never got the quest to hand over the stag lords body. The body is now buried in an unmarked grave, minus one head for identification to the swordlords.
My question then, is what to do with Nettle now? I don't want to turn it into just a quick stop of "oh, you want his body, ok we go dig it up for ya, thanks for your stuff..."
Couple options I could go with.
1. He just is gone, effectively turning the hex into an unexplained burned up toll bridge.
2. Turn Nettle into a bit more aggressive enemy. Perhaps nettles is mad that his revenge is no longer possible and he haunts the PCs for taking the chance away. Make the party actually discover the back story another way, while being haunted. Not sure how to release Nettle yet though through this.
Glass Castle, Why does your player believe the glue will stick to Nyrissa at all?
If casting antimagic field... to end time stop... allowing the bag to fall is the way the rogue sets up his "trap", then the glue is now in an antimagic field when it is in contact with Nyrissa. The glue is a magical wondrous item, it requires magic to create the permanent bond, its not a mundane item. The glue will not work in this field.
1. Party plans to cast some long-term casting spells, like Heroism, Bestow Insight, etc. ahead of time since they figure they'll know where her throne room is.
2. Druid has a spell that allows someone to reroll their check once to try to succeed again. (can cast it twice I believe).
3. Rogue plans to cast 9th level scrolls without a caster level check. Prayer Beads should get the rogue to be able to cast Time Stop without a caster check.
4. Rogue plans to cast Time stop, get next to the Fey Queen. Ignore all else. (The party has SEVERAL time stop scrolls).
And here's where the plan gets odd.
5. Plans to put glue on self, stick self to the Queen, then try to blind her physically or with a spell. Then activate a scroll of anti-magic field.
1. Nothing wrong with pre-buffing if Nyrissa gives them the time to do that.
2. Valid spell.
3. I am confused on how this can happen. How does prayer beads allow a rogue to not need a caster level check to activate a scroll? I must be missing something.
4. Yeah, time stop won't help when Antilife Shell is up. Remember, if they get the antilife shell down, and then try Time Stop, the rogue can not attack Nyrissa or the spell ends. I would argue the glue move is a grapple attack of sorts, and not usable while the spell is active. The best he can do is get next to her and be ready to strike when the spell ends.
5. Creative i guess. I am not sure how I would handle this yet...
As far as handling the fight with your knowledge of their tactics, I wouldn't add or change anything in the fight that specifically negates their plan. That would ruin the "trust" your players have put in you by giving the plan ahead of time, even if they don't deserve it. Instead, plan the encounter as you think it needs to be to be a challenge, and prepare from a rules perspective what the ,very intelligent, Nyrissa will do to counteract their plans in real time.
6° Detect magic is a 60 foot cone, and it takes 3 rounds to concentrate on a single spell, don't forget that. So simply have all spells ready by school (divination, abjuration, etc) and go like this:
Player A: "I use detect magic."
DM: You succeed, round 1.
Player A: "I focus on her."
DM: You succeed, round 2. You notice abjuration, divination, ... spells
Player A: I focus on the divination spells.
DM: "You succeed. You notice she has spell X and Y on her." The other types you have no idea, but you can continue to focus.
Actually, detect magic is not able to identify specific spells cast on a target, only Schools and Strength of active spells/effects.
You detect magical auras. The amount of information revealed depends on how long you study a particular area or subject.
1st Round: Presence or absence of magical auras.
2nd Round: Number of different magical auras and the power of the most potent aura.
3rd Round: The strength and location of each aura. If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each. (Make one check per aura: DC 15 + spell level, or 15 + 1/2 caster level for a nonspell effect.) If the aura emanates from a magic item, you can attempt to identify its properties (see Spellcraft).
Magical areas, multiple types of magic, or strong local magical emanations may distort or conceal weaker auras.
Aura Strength: An aura's power depends on a spell's functioning spell level or an item's caster level; see the accompanying table. If an aura falls into more than one category, detect magic indicates the stronger of the two.
The only spell (that I can remember) that actually tells you what spells are active on a person is Arcane Sight, Greater. which is a 7th level spell.
One could house rule with a good spellcraft check, you can also determine the spell on a subject with detect magic or Arcane Sight. But that is up to a DM.
I have had an interesting idea for a kingmaker modification I am hoping to get help vetting it out. I want to integrate the ancient Cyclops nation into my game a bit more, and then have that lead into more back story for Vordekai. If anyone else has done something like this I am interested in hearing about it. If anyone has any ideas about where I can take this that would be awesome too.
Added/changed History::
-Nyrissa is interested in trying to see the future.
-She is aware of a major Cyclops city in the Stolen Lands. She is also aware the cyclops have a natural ability to see glimpses of the future.
-She pulls said city into her first world. This will be forshadowing her attempts at her ultimate goal of the entire stolen lands.
-She is able to utilize the Cyclops natural abilities of divination to see into the future. This is how she gets her visions of her own death.
-Because she wants no one else capable of using this power and finding out her weakness, she sends the Cyclops city into its own isolated area.
-No one ever interacts with the Cyclops people again.
-Vordekai still back on Golarion fades into obscurity as per the books events.
Current day::
I hope to have a few areas “cyclopsed up” a bit.
-The warriors burial site will be of Cyclops era.
-Under Candlemere(likely) I will have a set of ruins that are from the ancient Cyclops. Within, it will have some sort of magic device that was set up long ago by agents of Nyrissa. This is the device that is responsible for the disappearance of the city. If interacted with, the PC’s will end the effect and bring the city back into the present day.
This opens up some interesting possibilities. Either I can have the Cyclops citizens dead or still alive. They can either be hostile or potential allies (my current preference is alive and allies) This may also add in some interesting politics when they try to interact with the centaurs. How will they react when the PCs are now allies of an ancient enemy.
-Could use some other areas...
-The link to Vordekai will be the city was subjugated by him long ago. There will be some references to the 'Power in the East', or some such. Being that ancient Cyclops people worshiped the Sun, I think there is a chance to have the PC’s be unaware of just what power in the east means. Many may think it refers to the sunrise in the east, when actually it refers to Vordekai. I will need to add some clues to point to something other than sunrise. IF the PC’s investigate, they may be able to find out what the Power actually is.
These ideas are not fully flushed out obviously. Again, curious if anyone has thoughts or ideas of where to take this.
Is there any spell that can protect from magical arrows? Protection from arrows is overcome by a +1 weapons, so that's no good- the ranger has a +3 striking, etc. bow.
Hi, like many others, I have been a long time stalker of this Messageboard as I plan my KM campaign to hopefully start early next year.
I am going to be running kingmaker with a slight change to the start. I feel the whole random group of unknowns gets a charter to explore was a bit too forced. My PC’s will be hired on as members of the exploration group with a NPC leader that is in charge of the expedition (shamelessly stolen from another post).
However, I want him to be working secretly against the best interests of the Brevoy Swordlords, perhaps even working for the Surtova House. I am thinking his motivations will actually be centered on making an alliance of some sort with the bandits in the green belt. I plan to play him as an administrator type sending the PC’s out to do tasks (i.e. explore hexs) while he makes secret meetings with the stag lord’s officers.
Eventually I hope to have the PC’s discover this and take action upon themselves to rise up and lead this exploration, thereby making a name for themselves and earning the right to settle the land.
Some concerns I have.
1.) One PC has a backstory that will play into this a bit. He will be suspicious of the leader from the start. So I need to keep it played down a bit early.
2.) If the party fails to recognize the NPC’s plan, should I just have him killed in a meeting gone bad and let the plot develop from there?
3.) While this will involve some degree of Brevoy politics, I don’t want it to divert the plot back to Brevoy too much.
Any suggestions on how to play this up without being too obvious?
To what end is he making these plans?
Any obvious pitfalls to avoid?
