As for the word "spread" that's not a typo nor a new slang term. It's a standard word for "a form of food that's smeared on or over a surface," like peanut butter or jam or the like. The idea being that the elves are accepting a non-elven method of reducing foods to things like jam or jelly or pate or the like.
Okay, that makes more sense than the way which I parsed the sentence originally as meaning that "... some elves have adapted to the tastes of other cultures and happily indulge ... to the point of becoming spreads"! I was visualising over-weight gourmet/gourmand elves at that point. Pea purée and mashed potatoes make a lot more sense. :D
I just downloaded the Player's Guide for Spore War. It's an interesting read (especially since Kyonin and elven society in general seem to have been more or less ignored in PF1 APs since the SD disaster).
But I do have some questions about the SW PG ...
One is about the following sentence in the section about elven cuisine: "Nevertheless, even an overcooked meal won’t be wasted, as some elves have adapted to the tastes of other cultures and happily indulge in a medium rare steak or vegetables steamed to the point of becoming spreads." Is "spread" some new slang word or did some form of typo creep in there?
Also, I need a PF2/PFR to PF1 translation guide. What are "aiuvarins" and "dromaars"? Are "nephilim" the new planetouched? Is "Chthonian" the new Abyssal? Who are the native speakers of "Arboreal"?
The map ... The Shoreline Road/A4 issue has already been mentioned by other commenters ("east and south" whereas on the map it's clearly going west instead). Some sizable buildings haven't been labelled. While some of that might be due to them being privates homes and/or not AP-relevant, there is one huge complex at the southwestern corner which looks like it should have been labelled. It rivals A2 in size and anyone - like a player - looking at the map will ask what's at that location.
NOTE: I'm going to be adding an update to the master errata doc for any GMs that wish to upgrade the various barbarians, monks, and rogues throughout the adventure into their unchained versions from Pathfinder Unchained (there aren't any summoners, but I'll include a note about them just to make this complete). I'm making this post so I can add a link to the document for any GM wishing to upgrade those NPCs into their unchained versions, and they'd like one comprehensive post that details all of the differences between each version.
For those GMs that came here from the master errata doc, below is a comprehensive list of the various differences between the original versions of the following classes and their unchained versions, in case it helps you decide whether you want to make the switch to the unchained version of the class(es) for those NPCs.
** spoiler omitted **...
Posting this analysis/comparison is truly a good deed! :)
I'm currently GMing a group of four players through the JR AP. They've just started Book 2 (and have managed to survive the ambush by Asvig's thugs at the bridge).
We've got a human Fighter (sword and board) with abysmal social skills, another human Fighter (trip specialist) with almost equally abysmal social skills, an elven Arcanist, and a human Witch (summoning specialist). No one's exactly the party's "face" so far.
Based on our experiences with Book 1 and early Book 2 plus advice from the sub-forum here, I've decided to ditch most of the caravan combat rules. (Some caravan encounters might be converted into regular encounters.)
Instead, I have added (or will do so) the three JR-focused adventure plug-ins from Legendary Games: "The Road to Destiny", "The Baleful Coven", and "Under Frozen Stars". Possibly also some Kaidan material from Rite Publishing (e.g., "Autumn Moon Bath House"*).
* I used to have that adventure/location as a PDF, but maybe it was on a previous computer because I cannot find it now. :(
I'm very much part of the market segment which got tired of dropping tons of cash on new rulebooks, sourcebooks, and HeroLab/other apps every time the system changed. That's why I didn't move on to 4e, 5e, or PF2. (I've been playing since the mid-'80s. While my first box set was Basic's Red Box, my first played game system was AD&D 1e.) HeroLab is a great blessing.
I happily left 1e and 2e behind because there were so many odd, arbitrary constraints. No female elf with a natural Strength of more than 16 - in a system where the ability scores usually produced the first bonuses at 15? Species who had glass ceilings placed on their character advancement beyond a certain arbitrary level (or were not even allowed to play a certain class combination)? Irritating ability score requirements for so many interesting classes (even though 1e's UA made it easier to get around that)?
3.x/PF gave me lots of material on my two favourite game settings: FR and Golarion. My only complaint for 3.x was their "boutique cosmology". I wanted a full-fledged Planescape and a slightly more rational Spelljammer to join all the settings together, so that my players' PCs could visit wild and wonderful worlds while still remaining in the same cosmology. Also: they forgot to include the Con penalty when they ported the aasimar species into 3.x. (Long live home-brew variants on published settings!)
Correct. This was the only place we could really talk about how moving away from the OGL would affect the Darklands. No other part of Golarion was as dependent on OGL content as the Darklands, and at the time I scrambled to write this article at the last minute we were looking at a possibility of a world where the OGL got revoked. Fortunately that wasn't the case, and we were allowed a more graceful transition, but still; going forward, the Darklands will need to change in future publications. We have no such plans for more in-depth Darklands stuff anytime soon, though, which is why we had to spike that article into the backmatter for Heavy is the Crown.
Bellona wrote:
Have the contents (or a summary) of that article appeared anywhere else since, as a Paizo blog post for example?
James Jacobs wrote:
Not officially, but the contents have been chatted about elsewhere on various sites.
As a general rule, we don't make our lore content free for use online in the same way we make our rules free for use online.
It's a pity that the rule set-driven lore changes can't be shared in a central location.
As a casual (and older) user of the Paizo website who doesn't haunt whatever "various sites" had that information, that makes it even harder for me to connect with the new vision of Golarion.
As it stands, I have so many PF1 APs that I'll just stick with them and their version of Golarion.
Correct. This was the only place we could really talk about how moving away from the OGL would affect the Darklands. No other part of Golarion was as dependent on OGL content as the Darklands, and at the time I scrambled to write this article at the last minute we were looking at a possibility of a world where the OGL got revoked. Fortunately that wasn't the case, and we were allowed a more graceful transition, but still; going forward, the Darklands will need to change in future publications. We have no such plans for more in-depth Darklands stuff anytime soon, though, which is why we had to spike that article into the backmatter for Heavy is the Crown.
Have the contents (or a summary) of that article appeared anywhere else since, as a Paizo blog post for example?
Though considering the new trend with less than six part aps, I actually think second darkness COULD be salvaged.
Like you could turn riddleport crimelord part into separate two or three part ap while the kyonin/winter council conspiracy/darkland adventure could be 4 part ap.
When asked, my advice for running SD has always been to treat it as two different APs. The first one is Riddleport-centric (books 1-2) and the second one is elf-centric (books 3-6). Players should make new, level 7 characters for the "second AP", ones with different motivations than the campaign traits found in the DS Player's Guide. In my opinion, that should get rid of most of the cognitive dissonance between those two sections.
As for the plot/railroad in the "second AP" ... that requires both some GM re-writing and some knowledge of what one's players are ready to accept. It can be done, but it will take some work.
SD also suffers from being one of the APs where Paizo experimented with not including enough XP in the main adventure. They did include small side-treks in the "back matter", but it is annoying to deal with nonetheless.
This does make me wonder if there is a suitable stand-alone adventure which could be substituted for the worst parts of book 5 ... I must go looking through my shelf of modules ...
Maybe this will be the final showdown between Lamashtu and Pazuzu over the fate of the Lost Coast? Using their proxies, of course, like the Red Bishop.
Or the Sandpoint Devil comes out to play ... Or both?
And then there's a certain undead mastermind-type lurking outside of Sandpoint ...
(Yes, yes, I know that LO doesn't use some of those terms, but I'm an unrepentant PF grognard.)
For both groups, Kendra Deverin asked the party to map the newly-discovered tunnels underneath the town. "If the goblins got in that way, then the exit(s) need to be found and closed off!" (And it would be easier to do so from the inside if the outside of the exit is really well camouflaged.)
If you're referring the minor Runewell of Anger underneath Sandpoint, then neither of my groups' parties figured out how to destroy it. They didn't even manage to identify it really. Then they got distracted by Tsuto's notebook (which directed them to Thistletop). Then other stuff happened to them. :)
Brodert Quink is a good source of "wild" Thassilonian theories. I had a few of the PCs overhear him arguing with some of the more orthodox historians in town (in the bookshop's "café", but something like that can happen at other locations too).
As for the Runelords, the PCs' first exposure to the concept was the statue of Alaznist in the Catacombs. Next was Karzoug's damaged message underneath Thistletop. (I described the message as being like a hologram recording which was stuck on repeating a certain segment.) Of course, any mention of ancient artefacts (statues, etc.) would attract Quink's attention and he'd be ready to natter on about Thassilon until their ears fell off.
The only problem with Quink is that he doesn't know enough. Some things can be found out with higher Knowledge checks and good libraries. But it's been 10,000 years since Thassilon fell, and certain facts can only be found in actual Thassilonian libraries. Luckily for the PCs, they eventually gain access to one underneath Jorgenfist (which I re-named Jotunfist) during Book 4. (Unluckily for them, M. has already been through it and removed the details on how to find Xin-Shalast - much to the librarian's distress.)
I added some extra events to the Swallowtail festival, including Risa Margravi telling old Varisian folk tales to the kids. The more perceptive PCs noticed that the stories usually started with some variation on "An evil wizard lived in a tall tower ...". (This was a remnant of the time when the Varisians were oppressed/enslaved by the Thassilonians, but the truth was fragmented over 10,000 years of oral tradition.) If your group is already past the Swallowtail Festival, then they could hear Risa's stories either at her family's tavern (Risa's Place) or maybe during a story-telling contest at the Rusty Dragon.
If you haven't already found it in the community-created material thread, then you might get some mileage out of a selection of entries from an old diary of Nualia's (from before she set fire to things and fled to Magnimar). It depicts the miseries of her childhood, how she was seduced then abandoned by a scoundrel, mentions the sudden "outbreak" of anger in town, then her need to escape Sandpoint. I had my PCs find it amongst a pile of damaged books which had been rescued from the temple fire five years earlier.
For those PCs who had grown up in Sandpoint, I had a selection of pictures to show them what various NPC neighbours looked like. Among them was the picture of Nualia from Bastards of Golarion (the demure, shy teenager with a Desnan necklace). It made quite the impression when they met her in person later and I showed them the picture from the cover of Faiths of Corruption. (And the illustration of the Divine Scion from Inner Sea Magic.) "My goodness, Nualia, how you've ... changed." :D
I'm keeping the Drow in my "homebrew variant" of Golarion. Which isn't any difficulty, seeing as we're still using the PF1 ruleset (with a few 3.5 hold-overs).
It helps that I've invented a different origin/backstory as to why the Drow are the way that they are in both appearance and culture. It involves an entire elven pantheon - one loosely based on the D&D one (running from 1e to 3.5 - anything after 3.5 is ignored) - and the fact that the elves are indeed off-world colonists (but not originally from Castrovel).
It's actually very freeing not to be constrained by the new canon. :)
One spelling nit-pick: on p. 112, the full-length description of the Shugenja 7 Air spell "Borne by the Wind" has an extraneous "u" in its title ("bourne").
There also seems to be a plethora of "Breath of Battle" spell write-up templates after that, but maybe they're just place-holders?
(This was in no way an extensive editing pass, but just something that I noticed when checking the end of the document.)
I acquired the Basic D&D red box back in 1980, but due to cirumstances was unable to find a group. So I was reduced to making the occasional character and sighing in dramatic despair. :)
When I started university in 1986, I found an 1e AD&D group and bought a few books for that system. I still have the contents of the original grey Forgotten Realms box (the box itself is long gone) and a few other FR sourcebooks.
Then 2e rolled around, followed by the Player's Option series and a proliferation of settings beyond Oerth and Toril. Loads of fun! My university gaming group was quick to adapt to 2e as it loosened a number of shackles on character creation, etc. I still have a good selection of material from that period, mainly FR, Al'Qadim, and Ravenloft, with a sprinkling of Spelljammer, Planescape, Maztica, Kara-Tur, and other settings and/or systems.
When 3e came, I was living in a different country and had a new gaming group. Again, we adapted fairly quickly. And yet again when 3.5 turned up. I bought many rulebooks, etc. for 3.5 and expanded my FR collection where possible. By that point I was running a "homebrew variant" of FR. Also, when White Wolf got the license to publish the 3.x version of Ravenloft, I grabbed what I could there too. (There was a particular sale on their website where I got the bulk of my WhW RL sourcebooks. Much money was saved there!)
During the years of 3.5 I also dipped my toes in the d20 (revised) Star Wars pool and took a deeper plunge into the Saga Edition Star Wars pool. (To my eternal regret, I didn't move fast enough to buy the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide. That book sold out incredibly quickly!) This brought me to the message boards at WotC. At the same time, I was also buying both the Dragon and Dungeon magazines more frequently and had noticed a series of connected adventures. "An adventure path, you say? Let my buy some more Dungeon and Dragon issues!" The Savage Tide AP bowled me over; I still want to run it some time - or even play it!
Then the 4e announcement hit and the Grand History of the Forgotten Realms was published. Yikes! While I appreciate deeply the work that went into most of the GHotFR (the original free PDF which was the basis of that project is still one of my most treasured PDFs), the "future" years described were grim tidings indeed, including character assassination - both literal and figurative - of many deities.
For 4e, I have precisely 2 books: the PHB and the FR Campaign Guide. While I did participate in a few sessions of 4e, it was more for the companionship than for the system itself. (No offence meant to my 4e GM! It was the system, not his game, that turned me off.)
I do recollect someone from a FLGS showing me the first two issues of the RotR AP at a local gaming convention in the autumn of 2007, but I didn't bite immediately. Instead, it took some posts on the WotC boards (before everything was wiped) to lead me to Paizo's website in 2008 where I found CotCT being published and news of an upcoming AP with drow. It was (and still is) a very friendly place. I haven't looked back to WotC since.
So now I have all the PF rulebooks, most of the Golarion sourcbooks and APs in one format and/or another, a bunch of single adventures, several decks, many boxes of pawns, and multiple maps and map tiles. Plus I dropped a load of cash on HeroLab's system so as to be able to print out character sheets which included spells and other necessary class features.
PF2? No, thank you; I've invested enough in PF that I don't feel like moving on to yet another (and not so compatible) system. I acknowledge that PF has some warts after ten plus years of rulebooks, etc., but I'll stick with it for my standard fantasy RPG gaming. After all, I have enough material to run games for the rest of my life! :D
Note: this description of my history with D&D/PF does not include most of my other, none-D&D game experiences (Call of Cthulhu, FFG Star Wars, Hero System/Fantasy, Savage Worlds, etc.).
The Shugenja conversion looks interesting and I hope to download a copy when it's done.
One small issue: the last part of the introductory class description (just before the mechanics like HD size, etc.) seems to have a floating sentence fragment. It's just after the paragraph which starts with "Shungenja cannot learn Item Creation feats, ..." and the fragment itself is "Many shugenja".
This AP has a LOT of traps. I cannot see how this works without a Rogue (or other trapfinder).
The Gunslinger would have been the trap skill monkey (using the MM Trap Finder campaign trait, which allows the character to find/remove both mundane and magical traps).
(AFAIK, MM is the only AP to have a campaign trait which allows that sorst of stuff.)
I'm running JR for the first time. We're still in Book 1, with the L 2 party en route to Brinewall (I'm using the "Road to Destiny" plug-in). One of the players is completely new to the Pathfinder system but the other three have been through RotR together (also run by me). Due to not wanting to overwhelm the new player, I haven't been pushing all the sub-systems in JR straight from the start.
Caravans: I first introduced the Caravan rule set when the L 2 party returned to Sandpoint from the Brinestump Marsh and gave the letter to Ameiko. Am I correct in ruling that the caravan "starts" as a L 2 caravan, basically jumping immediately from L 1 to 2 due to the party being L 2 at that point?
Relationships: I'm about to introduce the Relationship rule set today. Am I correct in thinking that a PC can try to improve a Relationship score once each level (by means of gifts/insults) with as many different allied NPCs as he/she wants?
These are probably no-brainer questions, but I wanted to make sure that I haven't misunderstood or overlooked anything important. :)
I originally bought this fantastic plug-in as part of the incredible "30 for 40 Mega-Bundle". I'm currently running the Jade Regent AP, so this is an excellent fit for Book 1 of that AP.
However, the Mega-Bundle contains only the full colour version of "Road to Destiny". Is there any way to get the "stripped-down printer-friendly version" without making a separate purchase?
Wow! I'm impressed that this is still going on! :)
Please add my e-mail below for any/all conversions available. (I've had some computer crashes in the intervening years and need to be sure that I can recover as much as possible.)
From the text advertising the product at the top of the page: "Designed to work alongside the new Kingmaker Adventure Path campaign book, this volume makes quick conversion of the campaign to Pathfinder First Edition a breeze!"
It certainly makes such a conversion less insurmountable for someone with absolutely no knowledge of PF2 rules. But "a breeze"? That's not true.
Furthermore, I backed the crowd-funding project based on the following description ...
Paizo/Game On Tabletop wrote: "Kingmaker Bestiary for Pathfinder First Edition (Add-On): Does your group prefer to stick with First Edition? We’ve got you covered with the hardcover Kingmaker Bestiary for Pathfinder First Edition, a 160-page monster and NPC resource that converts the new companions, NPCs, and monsters unlocked by this campaign into old-school Pathfinder First Edition. Play along in the new and updated encounters with this helpful conversion guide featuring back-converted stats for the entire Kingmaker campaign, plus other rules conversions, tips and tricks to run the campaign smoothly. This add-on book is your ticket to playing Kingmaker in classic style."
(Game On Tabletop Kingmaker link: https://www.gameontabletop.com/cf194/kingmaker-10th-anniversary.html)
Using terms like "conversion guide" and "other rules conversions", then leaving the non-PF2 GM hanging on a few rather important points - it was a failure of expectation management.
(I find the new website difficult to navigate. The older version had a much easier to find/read page overview of all the APs and smoother transitions from one AP listing to another via the numerical sequence. This new website keeps dumping me back on a very colourful PF2 summary page - which doesn't include the latest ones in the pipeline.)
I'm still quite angry that the promised "conversion information" was lacking some very important bits.
Treasure? Effectively: "Wing it with the help of the PF1 version, and we're not helping you at all with converting the treasure found in the expanded content."
Skill checks? Effectively: "This is what a flat check is. No comment otherwise on converting skill checks between editions."
Not only did my dead computer make me miss the big controversy over the OGL and its potential replacements, but I also missed out on the Lost Omens World Guide free PDF. :(
Since I missed the start of the big brouhaha (my computer died - again - at the start of January and it took several weeks to resuscitate it) and therefore lost the chance to post on the original ORC announcement thread before it was locked, let me take this opportunity to congratulate Paizo on leading the ORC charge. Whether or not WotC/Hasbro end up killing the OGL at some point, this contretemps shows that the wider industry does need a better option.
Therefore: thank you Paizo - and everyone else in the 3PP world who has followed them! :)
(The message above is meant in all sincerity despite my TTRPG of choice still being PF1/PF Classic.)
The background document is amazing and very well done! :)
I would like to download the document as a PDF file but it's not working. Is it a matter of permissions at the GoogleDocs end or do I have to do something at my end?
Perhaps some mod can shift this thread over to there?
On the other hand, it's nice to have a thread dedicated to the revised KM's "PF1 version" (changes/additions, bestiary, stats, etc.) here in the original KM sub-forum. (Similar to how both the RotR and CotCT sub-forums deal with both the 3.5 and revised PF1 versions.)
I know that when I get around to actually running KM, it will be with the revised story-line (and revised stats, etc.) in the PF1 system.
(Warning: I haven't really dived into the PDFs yet, but I did skim a few of them.)
My main interest is if there is enough material to be able to run an improved/revised Kingmaker AP in the PF1 system. (Particularly as I missed the chance to buy the original KM books in their hardcopy versions.)
The Bestiary for PF1 seems to cover most of the PF1 game mechanics for this update: monsters, NPCs, traps/hazards, and companions.
My main concern right now is how to convert skills, treasure, and the kingdom management system.
I'm really not familiar with PF2's skill system at all, so that's a question mark for me.
Regarding the advice on awarding treasure for a PF1 game, it appears to be a matter of "look it up in the original PF1 PDFs". But how well will that scale with the added content and potentially higher-levelled characters? Apparently the PCs can end up at character level 20+ if all the encounters are used.
And, as stated above, I haven't had a chance to see how well the Kingdom Management system converts from PF2 to PF1.
I'm embarking upon the Jade Regent AP as a GM in a few weeks' time. During my preparations, I've been looking at the four major NPCs who accompany the caravan from the start (Ameiko, Koya, Sandru, and Shalelu) and some of the later potential caravan NPCs (e.g., Kelda and Miyaro).
Did you re-build the four main NPCs or any of the others? For example, making Ameiko a Bard/Swashbuckler instead of her official Aristocrat 1/Bard 3/Rogue (rake) 1 combination.
If yes, then how was the character re-built (classes, archetypes, levels)? What effect did it have on the AP?
Did you keep to the NPC level guidelines suggested? That essentially keeps them at cohort levels.
At the end of Book 3:
By the end of “The Hungry Storm,” the PCs have likely reached 10th level, and have surpassed their NPC allies in levels. At this point, you might want to consider leveling up Ameiko, Koya, Sandru, and Shalelu. They should not be as powerful as the PCs, but you can certainly add a few class levels to them, bringing them up to 7th or even 8th level. As the Adventure Path progresses, you can continue leveling up these NPCs, though we recommend keeping them two or three levels behind the PCs to allow the players’ characters to shine!
Wow, how did I miss this thread when it first started?!?
(Probable answer: because I was hanging out on the FFG Star Wars boards.)
Anyway, I am still playing PF1 (for me 1e refers to AD&D 1e), and do not foresee playing PF2.
I am currently running three PF1 games, all of them tabletop (long sessions, usually once per month).
1. Rise of the Runelords:
* Male Dwarf Bard/Ranger dip/Eldritch Knight.
* Male Human URogue/Fighter dip.
* Male Elf Evoker ... with Shalelu as a cohort.
* Male Elf Fighter/Oracle dip.
This group will be tackling Jade Regent next.
2. Rise of the Runelords (yes, I'm running two different groups through this AP!):
* Male Half-Orc Barbarian (invulnerable rager) ... with Enga Keckvia as a cohort.
* Male Human Magus (kensai) dip/Fighter (Aldori defender)/Duellist multi-class horror.
* Male Human Magus/Cleric/Mystic Theurge.
* Female Ratatosk (home-brew version) Druid (menhir savant).
This group will be tackling Curse of the Crimson Throne next.
3. Crypt of the Everflame, about segue weirdly into Mummy's Mask:
* Female Half-Orc Slayer.
* Female Elf Bard.
* Female Elf Oracle (ancient lorekeeper) ... likely to be changed for MM.
* Male Elf Fighter ... likely to be changed for MM.
Other games in which I participate as a tabletop player (not GM), all of which tend to be even more infrequent than the ones which I GM:
* 3.x Planescape-based gonzo campaign (all supplements!)
* Tribe8 (Silhouette system)
* Star Wars Saga Edition (on a slight hiatus)
* Star Wars FFG Force and Destiny
Other games in which I participate via play-by-forum-post (to distinguish it from the days of real play-by-post - yes, the turns had to be posted - using stamps - in the post box back then!):
* Star Wars FFG Clone Wars AU
* Star Wars FFG Old Republic/Revan's War
* Star Wars FFG in a period between the (newly introduced) High Republic and Ep. 1
(Yep, three different forum post games.)
Rule sets for PF1 ...
* Pathfinder Unchained: Unchained classes, fractional bonuses, background skills (plus Lore and Artistry), combat stamina (Fighters only, basic feat is free for Fighters, only combat tricks based on the Fighter's bonus class feats).
* The Advanced X Guides, Ultimate X, and X Adventures rules are a bit of a mixed bag, and I will severely prune their availability in the new APs.
* Golarion-based crunch only if it fits the character concept. "No, I'm not allowing your Garundi mermaid character with traits from both Avistan and Tian Xia, not to mention an archetype found only on the steppes of Casmaron, who uses an Arcadian magic item and ..."
While I'm open to importing good ideas from PF2, I'm sticking with the PF1 chassis. My bookshelves do not need another set of rulebooks.
I had to get creative when one of my (two!) groups in Book 6 got to the point where they realised that they needed Sihedron rings/medallions in order to scale Mhar Massif.
They'd destroyed the Hidden Beast and the dragon and looted them/their lairs thoroughly. Gamegin had 'ported out the first time he fought them and the party 'ported out the second time, so no ring (yet) from him. That put the ring count at only two. They have four full party members and one henchwoman, so they need three more Sihedron items.
How the party solved the problem (after being too clever and causing part of it themselves):
To date, they've found four medallions (Nualia, Xanesha, BB, Mokmurian - Lucrecia has succeeded so far in evading death because she can Dimension Door/Teleport away).
One medallion was still in their possession, in a Bag of Holding (it had been used to keep Enga Keckvia "fresh" until the CN Barbarian could take the Leadership feat). The other three had been sold to various sea captains in Riddleport after the party had finally discovered the "hidden feature" which allowed Special K to scry/contact them. (I'd treated that feature as a curse, and their item identification abilities hadn't been that good when they found the first one.)
The party has (at least for now) given up on finding Gamegin's ring, so they decided to track down at least two of the other three medallions. (While they do have the opportunity to meet a levelled-up Lucrecia with a medallion in Xin-Shalast, they don't know that yet.)
So where were the three other medallions?
I decided that one sea/pirate captain had retired in Riddleport. That required only some Diplomacy checks (to find him and to persuade him to sell it) and the cash to buy the item (he demanded full price for "the inconvenience").
No Diplomacy checks could find the other captains, other than to say that they were "at sea". So the party started throwing Divination, Commune, etc. at the problem. One annoying thing about the Commune spell is that if the user has a good grasp of geography, then he can basically quarter the world map until he homes in on the item's/person's location ("Is it north of the Inner Sea?", "Is it west of Riddleport?", etc.) unless the target is protected against that level of divination magic.
I told them that one location was on the south coast of Vudra, and then every time they checked up on it again, that it had moved. The other one was approximately 1,200 miles SW of Riddleport, and not moving. The party assumed that it was on an island, and that it was the easier one to buy/take back.
After some discussion, they crafted a Folding Boat and then Windwalked to the vicinity over the course of three days. (One of them also had Overland Flight active, so he could come out of Windwalk earlier than the others, activate the Folding Boat, and then everyone could land on it to sleep, etc.) When they got there, there was a big storm in progress and they had to anchor themselves two miles away.
Figuring that the storm was natural, the Druid just cast Control Weather in stages to "carve out" sections of the storm to calm. This brought them closer to the target location. A Commune let them know that they were roughly six miles from the target, so they continued onwards "towards the island". No island appeared. The next Commune let them know that the target was now six miles behind them. A few more questions later, and they realised that they needed to go deep sea diving. Yes, six miles down. Why, yes, now that you ask, the GM does have the Aquatic Adventures rules supplement. :)
Even with Life Bubble (I'm really starting to dislike that spell as it supplies too many "get out of jail free" cards), various magical light sources, and a Druid in giant octopus form, reaching near the bottom of the equivalent of Challenger Deep/the Mariana Trench is no joke. Particularly if the party hasn't been in the habit of diving before. I was nice and only demanded one DC 15 Will save to avoid being Shaken. (In retrospect, I should have started at DC 15 and increased it with every new zone entered on the way down.)
Six miles down they found a ship's graveyard. And a kraken. Luckily not a kraken with class levels, particularly not spellcasting levels. (Dispel Magic would have been ... deadly.) The kraken's ink cloud caused a lot of problems: no one had the Blind-Fight feat - except for the kraken - and I'd ruled that the Fog-Cutting Lenses didn't work underwater. However, three (!) criticals later and the kraken was history despite having maximized hit points. Two high-level Barbarians and an Intensified Vampiric Touch from the Magus are no joke.
Some successful Perception checks while searching produced the medallion (around the neck of a human skeleton). And now the party can return to Xin-Shalast.
I would keep it the way it is. Like it was mentioned above, it's one of the spells that puts the fear into even high-level parties. It's particularly necessary for evening the playing field when the spellcasting BBEG doesn't have enough minion support (a bad tendency in some modules/APs).
I saw the movie on Thursday afternoon (C.E.T.), and enjoyed it. Were there the occasional problematic issues? Yes. But I still enjoyed watching it, and will be seeing it again tomorrow/this coming Sunday.
Posters on certain forums complained quite a bit about the new movie. In some cases, it seems as if those viewers don't realise that certain things were already being "set up" in the first two movies. One has to take RoS as the third part of a connected trilogy, not as a stand-alone movie.
For better or worse, there apparently were differences of opinion/approach between J.J. Abrams (ep. 7 + 9) and R. Johnson (ep. 8). So the three movies don't connect as well as they should have. The pace is very fast in the first part of RoS, as it has a lot of ground to cover and a lot of information to drop on the viewer. Maybe if ep. 8 had been a slightly different movie, then the transition would have been easier.
Novels and other media will probably be used to fill in the gaps/"plot holes". Hopefully something that's generally available, as opposed to being gated content on the Disney+ channel.
Non-spoiler spoilers: Rey has a good reason for being strong in the Force, and the BBEG gets the ultimate "F-U" at the very end. :)
I'm not jumping on the PF2 bandwagon. (And I will never call it "2e" - for me 2e came out in the 1980s.)
Among other reasons, the thought of investing in a new series of rulebooks simply does not appeal. (And don't start talking about the on-line availablility of the new rules - I don't want electronics at my game table. They distract people too much.)
What I will do is take another look at certain sections of PFU which I skipped when it first came out. If the roots of the "tighter math" in PF2 is in PFU, then I will consider using those roots.
It's more of a VERY popular fan-theory that has received some sly "Hmm... Now that would explain some things, ne?" kinda comments from some of the developers. (Enough to solidify as almost canon among many... <edit> Not sure it has been confirmed as such, though.)
(This wouldn't rule out the all-but-confirmed daemon involvement... <edit> It's possible that the daemon involvement angle may've already been confirmed somewhere, at least with regards to the Final Blades...)
A Galt AP would be a great way to confirm this!
;)
Carry on,
--C.
@ Psiphyre and Rysky (who got ninja'ed by Psiphyre): Thank you both for your explanation!'
Not Tyrant's Grasp. That's surival horror of the darkest sort, where the PCs die at the end (even if they succeed in their objective).
Granted, there's an optional side-bar in TG suggesting how they could be reincarnated or something like that, but that "survival" would take place a few centuries later, so there's nothing left of most PCs' lives/connections (unless elves and possibly dwarves).
Druids are part of the Magaambya tradition, so I don't think that the acadamy has any problems with life in the jungle. It's also an advantage when it comes to defence (again, particularly if druids are helping you).
Somehow I don't think that Walkena's crowd will have many druids helping them.
+1 for wanting to hear more about these characters!
The art is gorgeous, as always. Although I did worry about those ground-level rooms being very hot and humid (as there did not appear to be adequate ventilation) - until I remembered again: druids. And magic in general. :)
