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Thank you for that idea! :) If you (or anyone else) has any more inspiration, then I'm all ears. (Or is it "all eyes" when it's in a text forum?)
For your information, here's a wall of text. :) Road to Destiny spoiler (paraphrased a bit):
"Shirota, a member of the Amatatsu family, thought it prudent to submit and yield to the oni of the Five Storms rather than face certain destruction. His dark masters tasked him to spy on his own family and alert them of any sudden changes. When Shirota attempted to warn the oni of his family’s flight, he was caught by his family. Shamed before his kin, he was disowned and dishonoured — no longer even recognised by his family’s own mystic Seal. Shirota became enraged to the point of madness and attempted to murder his former family’s patriarch. He was instead cut down by a trusted bodyguard as the clan fled in the night. With no time for a proper burial, Shirota was left to rot. When the oni of the Five Storms came upon the abandoned estate, they found Shirota’s unburied corpse. There they performed foul rituals and Shirota arose to serve them once more, now as a vampire, a jiang-shi, a stealer of breath and chi.
The oni pursued the surviving family over the top of the world, and Shirota went with them. Whereas the oni focused their divinations upon the location of the family Seal and the general trajectory of the Amatatsu family's flight, Shirota sought them throughout time itself. Symbols, signs, and portents “speak” to a jiang-shi in ways now other being can comprehend. The slightest patterns and coincidences, from tea leaves, the migration of birds, broken crockery, to morning dew on a spider web speaks the secret language of universe to a jiang-shi, and in this way the vampire communes with the cosmos. To the obsessive Shirota, creation is riddled with hidden messages in every day events that only he can decode and interpret. Once the surviving family changed their name and went into hiding, the oni of the Five Storms lost their trail. Shirota harnessed his peculiar oracular gifts in order to see his way around the problem. The signs which he alone could fathom led him to an impossible conclusion: he could only cross paths with an Imperial Heir after his son did so. This represented a paradox because Shirota had died childless. Unlike the vampires of the West, a jiangshi’s internal organs rot away upon their fell rebirth and all their mortal lusts are replaced with an all-consuming obsession with the circumstances of their undeath. Yet a jiang-shi rarely questions the signs that haunt their daily existence. If the signs dictated a way, then Shirota would follow them, however impossible the way seemed. With foul sorcery, he possessed the body of a Viking reaver. With his cold intelligence and the reaver’s warm living body, the vampire sired two fraternal twin sons. Neither boy shared his blood but both were tainted by his undead curse." So the JR heroes run into Shirota's offspring and defeat/kill/destroy them. When the first one, Ranulfr, dies (shortly before they reach Brinewall), the following happens: "Far across the world, Shirota, Ranulfr’s 'true father' senses the death of his oldest son. Ranulfr’s eyes shine with an eerie light and his lifeless lips part to permit a sepulchral voice to be heard. 'So it was foretold,' the voice intones in the Far Eastern tongue, 'so it has come to pass!' Ranulfr’s corpse moves slightly, his head lolling on his neck unnaturally so the corpse can regard the PCs. The voice then speaks in perfect Common. 'My first son is dead. If she hasn’t already, the Kinslayer’s Heir shall soon discover the past. On that day my second son’s heart shall beat its last, but still you must defeat him battle! Only then shall I be unbound by the chains of fate. You have my gratitude, both now and for the day when you bring the Heir to me at long last.' With that, Ranulfr’s corpse shudders with an unwholesome laugh before it becomes still." Shirota is statted up in the appendix as a human jiang-shi sorcerer (destined bloodline) 11 (CR 12). Further information is as follows: "Ranulfr’s (the eldest son) obsession is inherited from Shirota, and is a facet of what it is to become a jiang-shi. The vampire’s motivation is revenge for his murder at the hands of his family (after he sought to betray them), but this goes deeper than surface thoughts and feelings. Shirota’s very undead existence bound up in this obsession. Were he to be free of it his soul might move on, or he might be finally liberated to a contemplative existence unfettered by the past. Shirota places himself somewhere where he anticipates that the PCs will pass through on the way to Minkai. His desire to prove his superiority over those who have questioned him, including some of the oni of the Five Storms, provides motivation for his acting alone or with minions loyal only to himself. There is no special game mechanic for the jiang-shi’s unique form of divination, but the GM should feel comfortable granting him some measure of “meta-game” information in regards to the party’s location — strictly for the purpose of creating future adventures and encounters (and not to acquire specific insights used to defeat the party). Shirota appears to be a Medium sized human with pale skin bordering on cyanosis. His physical form remains unchanged since the day he was raised from a corpse four days dead. His hair and mustache are jet black, pulled into a ponytail and waxed. A small prayer scroll is nailed to his forehead and dangles between his eyes. He dresses in an exquisite robe which buttons down the front and wears a black velvet cap with a round knob at the top. Like all jiang-shi he moves by means of swift but short hops." Anyway, I'm open to suggestions! :)
(My players should not read this!) I used the "Road to Destiny" adventure plug-in from Legendary Games as a filler for the caraven trip between Sandpoint and Brinewall Castle in Book 1. The party was successful in killing the plug-in adventure's main villain, Ranulfr, and his "father" made a dramatic death monologue as was scripted. That means that I have to find a place for Shirota somewhere in Books 4-6 of the JR AP. My question for other JR GMs who have used this plug-in: how did you use Shirota? Where did you put him, did he have any minions or henchmen, was he helping any of the JR villains (maybe a weak one whose encounter needs beefing up), etc.? Thank you in advance for any inspiration. :)
Am I the only GM who has noticed the problem with Asvig's two Potions of Divine Favour (one of which he drinks on the first round of combat according to his Tactics section)? Divine Favour is a Personal target spell and those cannot be made into potions. Did anyone substitute other potions or items in place of these two illegal/impossible ones?
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
Thank you for the quick reply! :) I recognise almost none of the creatures listed under that Arboreal link, but from the looks of the names it's some sort of plant-based language. ("Entish" or "Plant", maybe?) That's actually a really good idea.
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.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how a Bard character could deal with having a Silence effect dropped on them? Obviously, if the Silence effect is stationary and the Bard can move, then there's option of moving away from the effect (if possible). And if the Silence effect is on a mobile object, then there's the option of moving the object away from the Bard instead (if possible). But other than that ... Any good tips on useful feats, spells, magic items, bardic masterpieces, archetypes, etc.?
Posting this analysis/comparison is truly a good deed! :)
This has been a helpful - if short! :) - thread for me. My own players have basically finished the "Mantis and Maiden" section in Book 4 and I'm facing a similar conundrum with what they did. Their characters killed a number of key personnel (one by accident), and rescued not only Marcus but also all the Grey Maiden recruits-to-be, plus they took some prisoners. They also made off with any documents which they could find. They even grabbed all the dead bodies that they they stuff into a Bag of Holding (mainly in the interest of getting away quickly; it takes time to strip that expensive magical full plate armour off a dead body). So they now have some proof of the indoctrination conditions (eye-witness accounts from the rescued victims, what the group saw with their own eyes, and the paperwork trail too). They also have some unconscious GrMs*, including Tisharue. Tish will not be an easy nut to crack when it comes to rehabilitation. She is listed as LE, and her stat block makes it clear that she's in it for the power. And as a Forlorn elf, she's messed up anyway. (Alas, my players seem to be allergic to playing elves in Golarion, so they - both in and out of character - have no idea about Forlorn elves. Even after meeting Laori Vaus! :o [So many failed Knowledge (Local) checks by a dwarf, half-orc, and two halflings! :D ].) So I'm thinking that the best that they can do with Tish is to ask Cressida to drop her into the deepest, darkest jail cell at Citadel Volshyenek, and deal with her later. The rescued GrM recruits decided en masse that it would be safer for them if they just fled Korvosan territory. That way, they couldn't be "re-acquired" and they wouldn't be putting their families at risk for sheltering them. (At least until Ileosa and her GrMs are no longer a threat.) But what about the rest of the GrM guards taken as prisoners? While getting Cressida to jail them too might be a short term solution, there's less justification for that than in Tish's case. Theoretically, they could be "cured"/de-programmed. I'm now considering working a new clause into Ileosa's contract, one which exerts some sort of control over the rank and file GrMs. * I used the "GM" abbreviation originally, but then realised that it could be misunderstood in a standard RPG context. Which is why I changed it to "GrM" instead. :)
When you say that "they snowballed maybe a little harder than necessary" in the late game, do you mean that they would have run into difficulties were it not for the cohorts?
Does anyone have any input about the Trial of the Totem question above?
This has been extremely informative reading, both the original review post(s) and the comments afterwards. I will definitely try to keep all of this in mind for my own JR campaign. In my campaign, the caravan has just reached Kalsgaard. The party is finding the various investigations hard going, as there is no dedicated "face" character amongst the PCs and only two of them speak Skald. (Despite me dropping hints at their last level-up. :( )
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. :(
Thank you for that link and the insightful review of the AP! I'll bring some of those points to my players the next time that we play and offer them a free re-build of the caravan.
Part of the reason for L 2 "dragging on" for my four players is that I'd inserted the "On the Road to Destiny" Plug-In adventure between Sandpoint and Brinewall. I'd wanted something to liven up the long trip up north to Brinewall and I'd heard that the caravan encounters in the AP were woefully unbalanced. So my party will be going through all three JR Plug-Ins, plus possibly one or two more in Minkai. (I think that I have somewhere a short adventure taking place in a haunted bathhouse.) All of which makes me wonder what I can do to fix those in-book caravan encounters. I'm terrible at math (... why am I the GM?!? ...), and the comments in the Plug-In about changing the caravan encounter math only confused me. Possibly because the caravan rules didn't quite make sense to me in the first place. :)
Thank you both for your swift answers! Yeah, the Frozen Shadow archetype didn't exactly bowl me over either, but I was wondering if I was overlooking something. It would be more relevant/useful if any of the FS Ninjas survived and decided to track down the party to take revenge. My players have just fought off Asvig's thugs at the bridge, so I'm trying to look ahead to Kalsgaard and manage expectations (mine and theirs) as to when they will be levelling. (The running joke during Book 1 was that their characters would be forever stuck at level 2 and if they ever did level, they'd skip level 3 and go directly to level 4. :D )
(Hmmm. It doesn't look like anyone is checking this particular thread anymore. But I'll still try to get answers to my questions, both old and new.) 1. Frozen Shadow archetype for Ninjas (from Inner Sea Intrigue): has anyone used them in this adventure? If so, how did well did they work? 2. The levelling advice at the front of the book is too vague! I level my players' characters when they reach certain benchmarks, so I haven't been tracking how much XP they've been gaining from each encounter. Going from "The PCs begin this adventure at 4th level" to "By the time the PCs enter the hold of Ravenscraeg, they should be well into 5th level" is not good enough. When do parties normally hit L 5 in this adventure?
I still check/post on the forums occasionally, as I'm running two different PF1 APs for my usual groups plus a bit more PF1 for a more casual group.
I know that this is more than a month later, but I thought that I'd share one important thing which I've learned about underlevelled characters: their saving throws are their weakest points. They should be looting/buying/crafting Cloaks of Resistance and anything else which helps them to make their saves. In general, a larger but underlevelled party - in comparison to a typical four-person party with the correct levels - has the action economy on their side, a different distribution of hit points (the overall hit point pool is probably bigger), are less likely to complete their attacks (due to lower BAB or DCs on their abilities), and are more likely to fail their saving throws. And that last bit is the worst, particularly in "save or die" situations.
I love this idea! :D
IIRC, there was a retcon with regard to plane-touched age categories. The final decision was to follow the half-elf aging pattern (I think). As to the rest of the question ... I haven't yet done that deep a dive into the various sources.
I slapped a permanent dispel magic zone/wall on the arrival area in the Eye of Avarice. No buffed-to-the-gills party! :) So as soon as they left that effect, they clustered together for some group buffing ... In perfect fireball formation! :D
Good luck with everything!
Other posters have already mentioned things like bracing and the clay golem's haste ability. But what many people forget is that it is possible to take two Climb skill checks per round. A Climb skill check is a move action. Anyone can take two move actions per round instead of a move action and a standard action (or just a single full round action). So a clay golem could climb 10 feet per round normally or 20' per round if hasted.
And then there are the players who apparently like to swap out characters for every book of the AP.
I'm seeking advice on two different issues/questions which I have about this book (CotCT RE). The first (and simple) one is about the Trial of the Totem(s): am I right in thinking that allowing a totem to fall down briefly is not an automatic failure unless the PCs don't manage to raise it immediately or even the next turn? The second one is more complicated, as it's about the timing for the raid on the GM headquarters. Basically: when should I run it? My players' PCs are approaching the end of their second-last "fetch/do quest" encounter; they've killed the red reaver at the House of the Moon and are about to meet Akram. Because they chose to do the quests in an odd order, all that they have left is to present some monster trophies (plus maybe acquire one or two more) and then go to Flameford. They don't have the minimum number of required Respect Points yet, but they do have the option of getting the rest at Flameford. There are four PCs and they're at character level 11. The GM HQ raid is generally scheduled for character level 12, but I use benchmark levelling, not XP-based levelling. As soon as they agree to do the Trial of the Totem, they'll be locked into a progression: totem trial, attack on Flameford, return of the shaman and the last scene (information, song, and Zellara's harrowing for the start of Book 5). So, should I send them back to Korvosa now, before Akran arrives and they all go to Flameford? That, at least, would prevent them from rudely leaving Flameford just as the shaman returns to give them the information which they want. Or should I have the shaman delay his return after the attack on Flameford ("communing with the ancestors will take a week") and let the party teleport back to Korvosa, attack the GM HQ, and return in time for the shaman's return and the information/ceremony/harrowing? ... Hmmm. I might have answered my own second question there, but I'm curious about any insights from others who've run the RE version of this chapter. And I still need to figure out the answer to the "dropped" totem question. :)
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!)
It shouldn't be necessary to spoiler information in a GM Reference thread.
Argh! I love that song (the full version), but it was a true ear-worm which took a long, long time to get out of my brain the first time around! Will I survive a second exposure? :D
Name of PC: Beanie Gillian
Beanie, who suffers from the Short-Attention Span flaw, was eager to leave the lower level so she was first up the lift shaft. That meant that she was the one who ran into the ambush which the RMA had set up around the top of the shaft. Four sneak attacks later, she was just a floating bundle of rags, dripping blood back down the shaft. The RMA didn't have long to celebrate their victory however, as the rest of the party then boiled up the shaft and took their revenge - the noise of which woke up the havero tentacles. Beanie's player got to run Krojun and his groupies until the next day, when the Sarenrite cleric raised her from the dead.
This coming month I'll be changing both internet providers and the method that's being used to provide it. If all goes well, there should be not be any interruption in service. But if the companies involved do muck things up (and I'm a pessimist based on their previous track record), then there might be a disruption in my ability to keep track of things here. Therefore: my apologies for any inconvenience which might be caused during the process. And if a combat breaks out while I'm unvailable on-line, then the GM has my permission to use Kel as a temporary NPC. (Her focus will be on protecting the party and taking down bad guys/gals.) :)
Let me congratulate you on the amazing work which you have done on this project. Thank you!
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.
Have the contents (or a summary) of that article appeared anywhere else since, as a Paizo blog post for example?
An intellect devourer? Or something else?
Hmmm. August, you say? I'll have to see what my groups can do to mark the annivesary. Thank you for the reminder! :)
In general, when the party gets to the final combat in Book 6, I think that Ileosa's biggest spellcaster foes in party will be the Bard/Harrower and the Witch (who loves using her long-hair hex and halfling jinxes). Does anyone have any good advice on how to script the BBEG's side of the combat? I've never played a Bard myself, let alone run one as the BBEG, and most of my players are very much into optimization. Among other things, I'm thinking of letting her have some asura help as I've houseruled that their immunity to curses extends to hexes and halfling jinxes.
Thank you for those stats! One question: what is "EitR"? I'm drawing a blank on that abbreviation. (Or maybe it's just too late in the evening for me.)
I seem to recall a 3PP PDF about Kaiju which included a recipe for monster-shaped cookies ...
The stand-alone module is set before WotR. It could serve as a short introduction to the Worldwound borders and the issues with them, but it doesn't fit into the AP itself. You could run it as is with one set of characters, then start the AP with a new set of characters. Also, IIRC, some Worldwound facts were changed between the module (3.5 Golarion) and WotR (PF1 Golarion).
I would be interested in seeing that build (assuming that it's for PF1).
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 ...
At (or near) the end of the first book, there's a one-page summary of the AP's overarching plot (on a book by book basis). Whether or not it mentions names/other information which needs to be reinforced/seeded/name-dropped earlier on, is something that I can't answer. (I'm AFB right now.)
And a happy New Year to everyone! :)
Happy Christmas (okay, Boxing Day in my time zone)/holiday of choice! :D
Are you running AoW with the original 3.5 ruleset or PF1? Or some other ruleset? If PF1, what changes have you made to the AP and its monsters?
Try this thread. As always, the more recent posts likely have the more up-to-date links.
The information is there in my physical copy of Dragon 310: the relevant tables are on p. 71 and the long description is split between pp. 71 and 72 with the actual class features described on p. 72. I don't have a PDF of that issue, so I have no idea of what's present in that format.
Do you mean that you're missing the single page with the contents of pages 71-72? |
