Got bored, wrote Python code. I can test arbitrary cases now, but here is how New PA compares to old PA for +3 damage and -1 attack, for a d12 weapon. https://i.imgur.com/dQLAjeT.png Plot for fun! Forgot labels in this version, but red is old PA and green is new PA.
Adventure Paths are written assuming 15 point buy and a party of four characters. Usually going up to 20 point buy doesn't impact things too much (makes the SAD a little better, but really helps out the MAD more). As for the experience track, I believe Medium is what Hell's Vengeance assumes.
So, Starfinder has an interesting quirk in their ability score buying math that the +1 stat bonus from Themes ends up being functionally useless. This is the result of the fact that bonuses come in groups of +2 (except for going from 19->20 which only gets you a +1) and the fact that ability score pre-reqs are mostly gone (except for Dex 15 if I recall). Will this be the case if we are now taking their ability score system and porting it to Pathfinder, or will changes be made to address this?
Sort of by definition, they are all railroads! I would certainly agree with that assessment. However, with many of them, the railroad can be at least somewhat disguised under the veil of the players taking initiative where the clues tend to point with big glowing arrows. Hell's Vengeance at many points you have higher-ups telling you exactly what to do.
I will also add one thing that may be perhaps more meta than some of the other suggestions. Make sure the players buy-in to the understanding that a substantial amount of the arcs involve doing things other people tell you to do. This is not a sandbox (though a few books have some elements of it) and is possibly the second hardest railroad of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. If the players don't buy into that style of game, you will have to do some not insubstantial rewriting.
That is the specific line that would rule out charge, but I do not think it rules out Mounted use of Vital Strike necessarily.
Honestly, in hindsight, I would cut the Rebellion subsystem. I have struggled to tie the Rebellion subsystem to their actual actions and it often feels more restrictive than an addition. The main problem I think stems from the fact that the rebellion system acts on a timescale of a week, whereas the players are typically not going to want to feel like they should just spend a week letting the villains do whatever they want while they wait for their teams to carry out some act. As a result, I find that they tend to jump ranks a lot (multiple ranks a week was pretty common) and that when they tend to do other rebellion linked tasks, I tend to reward them for it in the rebellion subsystem just to give them a reason behind the two. I will say Notoriety tracking is good. I will say maintaining the idea of a rebellion and adding allies to their ranks is good. But I think the actual subsystem with Rebellion Actions is kind of subpar at best.
1) How the heck does one pronounce "Miacknian"? My hunch is that it is "me - ack - knee - an", but I could be terribly wrong. "Akie" seems to suggest that you should get an "ack" sound somewhere in there though.
I got this one! They leveled up as adventurer/thugs from level 1 to level ? during their period of time that they had amnesia. With the loss of that amount of life experience, they no longer qualify as high level adventurers. The Sorcerer forgets some applications of magic, the Cleric loses some connection with their faith, the Fighter forgets those neat tricks he learned to beat people up better, etc. They were also in an asylum, so atrophy could explain loss of physical stats that might have raised.
Throughout this particular module there is a lot of mention of the PCs regaining memories, but there is never particularly specific mention as to how these memories should be assigned - likely to make it possible to easily incorporate any number of PCs with relatively minor tweaks. That being said, is there any risk of assigning memories between this and the next module that might conflict with each other, or is each memory effectively independent of the others?
So. You know what I want that I know will likely not happen? An Adventure Path that is not human-centric. I want an AP in which the most reasonable thing is the players not all being humans. An AP in which they have to think about how their human-because-they-are-so-good PCs actually fit into the setting. My thought is a dwarven campaign. Take a bunch of dwarves in a Sky Citadel of your choosing. Have something terrible come out of the paths to the Underdark, to serve as a catalyst. Have the PCs have to mount an expedition deep into the bowels of the Earth in order to solve the resulting problem. Bonus points if there is an NPC Wizard you have to sacrifice to escape a Pit Fiend.
Rise of the Runelords: Bad things happen to Sandpoint, then you leave it and more bad things happen to it. You finally get fed up with it and tell the BBEG to stop being mean to Sandpoint. Aside: why are people are saying Sandpoint is Gravity Falls? I love both, but I do not see the connection myself! Reign of Winter: Heroes are press-ganged into a terrible plan to free a very evil deity. Hell's Rebels: Group of thugs beats up lawful government employees until they can find a loophole to do a corporate takeover. They then beat up an abused, tortured man.
Allow me to add a strange entry - a death that should have been, had I as DM not been frazzled with thoughts of 'am I being fair in this brutal murder? Is this going to be a TPK they will all loathe?' But the events are too dramatic to NOT add to this list. Name: Ilias Dune
The party had been carefully moving forward through the Many-Steps Monastery. They have always wanted to minimize how lethal they were being during combat, focusing extensively on nonlethal methods whenever possible; the group consisted of a fledgling Paladin of Sarenrae chosen after the Night of Ashes to the divine calling named Galen, Arryn - a Life Oracle who believes her powers come from Sarenrae, the elder brother Alexander Dune - a wizard and now head of the noble house, the younger brother Ilias Dune - a soldier by trade with an alchemical drinking habit that turned into Mutation Fighter, and a would-be-bartender and play writer Bard Bartholomeus. After taking down Yillev in an exchange that left them short some memories, Bartholomeus quaffed a potion of Invisibility and started scouting ahead alone. Right into Mephiry. Thankfully, he escaped the Hellhound and armed with information about the enemy troops, they pressed forward. They defeated the group of Redactors and pushed toward the main study where Nox and company had set a trap. Knowing there was an invisible sneak around due to failed Stealth checks + opening doors into people + nearly getting bitten by Mephiry, Nox set some of her troops to prepare an ambush at the door. Even as the first battle with the Redactors wrapped up, Bartholomeus decided the best plan of action was to open those front doors. Right into a Hellhound ready to breath fire. An addition of my own (to account for five players) was an Asmodean Cleric to beef up the Redactors. This is where the fight started going to hell (pardon the joke). Readied actions went off: the fire was mostly avoided by the still invisible Bard, but he was not in a happy place. The party wheeled to get into position, but Ilias Dune was struck by a Hold Person spell from the Cleric. Redactors approached ready to deal lethal blows, bumping into the invisible Bartholomeus at times and slowing them down. Nox started a slower approach, letting her minions close ranks first. Ilias threw off the first batch of paralysis, only to get hit by a second Hold Person thrown out by the enemy Cleric, hidden behind the approaching Redactors and Hellhound and the Lout. A Redactor stepped forward to snap Ilias' neck, but he barely managed to survive by strength of will alone (Hero Points to Cheat Death). The fight only accelerates from here. Alexander threw Glitterdust out over the clustered enemies, but struck the unsuspecting Bartholomeus as well, breaking the invisibility. Bartholomeus took a hit by Nox's glaive that nearly brought him down, but soon took to defending himself with his shield, fending off the worst of the blows. Arryn took wounds upon herself to keep people alive and bring Ilias back to his feet, who crawled away in the confusion (DM not wanting to make the Cheat Death feel pointless). More Hero Points were spent as the struggle continued: one to throw out a higher level spell of Stinking Cloud that failed to stop Nox, but worked wonders at blocking off the Cleric and making Mephiry and a Redactor run off retching. An out of healing Arryn pushed herself to cast a larger curative spell than she had in the past. Galen pushed his body to the limit to strike down a Redactor before they had a chance to deliver a lethal blow to a weak Ilias. Before long all that remained was the Hellhound and Nox, pushed down one of the corridors. Nox was forced to Dimension Door once, revealing her ability to teleport and positioning herself on the party's flank, leaving Arryn awfully vulnerable. Ilias charged with Lucerne Hammer in hand, to put himself in the way and strike down Nox. He delivered the first blow to Nox, one that hit with a large chunk of damage that crunched bone and brought her body downward a little. Then the worst happened. Nox. Crit. For those of you who have run the game already, I do not need to say how bad this is. This is where an alternate timeline happens. I made a mistake - she had just teleported, I thought it was an Opportunity Attack at the time of calculation, and I ruled that Power Attack was not an option (for some reason I had it in my head you can only activate Power Attack on your turn). The damage was lowered from an extreme 63 down to a more manageable 42. And so what was truly a lethal blow of Nox's glaive was tuned down to something that only dropped him from nearly topped off to being on Death's Door. But I know, in my heart of hearts, the Rebellion suffered a grievous loss that day and was likely captured as the group failed to beat down Nox. In our actual reality, they were able to return Ilias to his feet and through a lucky string of two critical hits and another Hero Point to get another action, take Nox down for good. The party, made with 20-point buy, two traits, and Hero Points, certainly has the power to survive an encounter that by all rights they should have. My calculation after the fact put the fight at +4 CR. Even with full resources, it was close. If I was more careful on the rules, it would have been a wipe due to that Nox crit likely. The upside is they now have a fight I am sure they will remember for a long time. ...that being said, I hope that I do get to give this thread a proper obituary next time. Here's for hoping that the Lucky Bones brings their first true death. |
