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Ectoplasmic Armor (Su): At 4th level when an ectoplasmatist manifests her spiritual lash ability, tendrils of ectoplasmic material envelop her body, granting her a +4 armor bonus to AC.
At 12th level, the ectoplasmatist's armor bonus to AC increases to +6 and is treated as ghost touch armor.
There's the rules hole in question.
I really enjoy my Ectoplasmatist, who relentlessly hunts down the undead. He's more than impressed some others with his ability to continue attacking while healing the party. As Illeist mentions, though, it was kind of a rough blow to have such a similar archetype come out in a softcover that seemed to...
Ahhh yes. I see the problem redundant armor problem. I wrote that as a deflection bonus, and not sure why that changed on publication. These things happen, usually for good reasons.
I'm not too familiar with the phantom blade and can't speak to the similarities, but I originally envisioned the ectoplasmatist as manifesting the spirit appendages of dead creatures, not weapons, and its lash originally emulated natural attacks (claws, bites, etc), with some special abilities that eventually let you perform monster special abilities like grab, rend, etc. When I get around to playing one at my table, that's probably the flavor I'll go with.
I finally got on the other side of the GM screen and rolled up a Spiritualist, and I'm really enjoying it. When the game started I was in the middle of researching a lot of Black Dog folklore, so I opted for the totem spiritualist archetype and gave myself a churchyard grim (phantom wolf animal companion). Even without the emotion powers regular phantoms get, I find it a versatile scout that holds its own in combat since it starts off with that extra hit die (Improved Natural Attack helps, too). Makes a great flanking buddy for me and other party members, and my character uses a long spear to get a little more power and maneuverability to stay a step out of harm's way in combat. Great buff spells on the spell list keep the black dog going strong, and 3rd level brings touch spells transmitted by the companion into the equation, so that's nice.
I hoped to enjoy playing the class after having so much to do with Occult Adventures, and I really am. Our games aren't highly optimized, so I can't speak much to that, but it is versatile and fun and definitely holds its own.
And thanks for the Ectoplasmatist love, ya'll--that one's mine. I gotta go see what that rules hole in the archetype's AC is, though. I haven't heard that before! Ooops?
Hey guys! Excited to see y'all getting into the action, and thanks for the kind words!
There was a request upthread for an "original write-up" but I'm not sure from the conversation I see there what information is sought. This adventure as published is pretty pure from my turnover, so I don't know that I'll have any significant input on original intent versus what you guys have in-hand. Always happy to help, of course!
The lower level minions were one of the first instances in my writing where I wanted to introduce my troop subtype rules from my home game in a Paizo product, but it was my first AP chapter and I didn't have much influence to get a new ruleset introduced (finally got them in Rasputin Must Die!).
So, that being said--the Cultist troop from Bestiary 6 (they are drow, but you can file off the serial numbers) are CR 11, and just about right for a substitute for the minions that populate Renchurch, if you want a more streamlined way to run a bunch of low-level cultists.
A slime naga (p. 199) paired with about a half dozen slithering pits (p. 254) made for one of the most exciting and unique encounters I've run in a while. Have fun with that combo, folks!
I'm currently running House on Hook Street, and one of the PCs in the group has the Lucid Dreamer feat. ** spoiler omitted **
Hey there! I think both are fine solutions, particularly if you think that's best for your group. Another solution is to...
Spoiler:
have them sleep outside of Bridgefront so they aren't subject to the nightmare plague every night, and can choose when they might want to risk immersion (not exactly a known option for the poor and uninformed citizens). You could also introduce Madame Carrington's sanctuary ASAP to help mitigate the fact that you've got a PC who should technically be lucid dreaming every night, and have that be a place where they can rest easy without inadvertently slipping into the Dream Realm, with the lucid dreamer appearing there (and staying put/not exploring) every time, so that they aren't randomly appearing and having to deal with major threats solo. I think it would be wise to impart just how deadly their circumstance would be, otherwise, so that they comprehend just how screwed less privileged citizens are, which is a great motivator. But maybe let them slip up a time or two and have some great encounters before they arrive at these solutions! ;-)
What a ride! NINE MONTHS! I greatly appreciate you sharing your experiences and feedback so thoroughly, and know this thread will be a great boon to future GMs running House on Hook Street. And what a first campaign to tackle--MAJOR KUDOS!
In my playtest, I used Nahum's dreamscape-warping abilities to set up a couple of contingencies that are triggered by certain events, thus saving his action economy. It's a little meta, but pretty cinematic. When he hits half hit points, for instance, the nearest wall could defensively reach out and swat his attacker. Fun stuff!
Hey everyone! I'm continually impressed with this thread and your work on this campaign, Andrew--very well done! And MAJOR KUDOS to Rycaut for braving some PFS convention play--21 hours! That's some marathon session for which you deserve a frikkin' blue ribbon. Amazing. My playtest was over 48 hours of gameplay, and the fact that you got through what's meant to be a relatively extended mini-campaign in a weekend is very, very impressive. Great work, all!
Going to spoiler the following Drune stuff:
Spoiler:
If you haven't already, I wouldn't reveal what your PCs missed regarding Drune just yet. They likely already realize Drune is pretty scheezy, and if they didn't catch that clue to his involvement, they didn't catch it. HOWEVER--they are going to have to learn they got played at one point or another, but I worry if you reveal what Drune's up to too early, they might divert their focus toward that and away from Nahum when the clock is ticking. Don't let that happen!
My advice would be to let the info lie for the time being and let them tackle Nahum. In my playtest, the Drune realization came in the epilogue/wrap-up to the campaign, with the PCs spotting the city's ships in the harbor recovering Moglathar, and the word that Drune's government post had been abandoned. There was kind of this wide-eyed "Oh S#*T" moment when they realized they were culpable for just shifting the power to another ne'er do well, I closed the book, and that was that. Good emotional impact, if you can preserve it.
But if you've already revealed it, or still want to go that route, Drune's actions are pretty straightforward. Once he's in possession of the membership rolls (your PCs have already delivered them) and the undersea sanctuary has collapsed (trapping the idol), he gets to work immediately. Before abandoning office, he has Cora round up and arrest as many cult members as she can find from the rolls, then Drune uses his influence in the courts to immediately exchange their freedom for loyalty and promises of immortality, building up a sizeable spider cult base within days of delivery of the membership rolls. He hires some of them as Korvosan Guard and immediately installs them under Captain Crandon, puts the rest of them to work in the city fleet, then starts working toward recovering the idol. He's going to be very, very scarce around the office during this time, so he's not going to just be sitting behind his desk waiting for a confrontation with the duped PCs. Cora, even, is going to get pretty busy with all this, and I'd start slowly withdrawing her interest in things. Their increasing absence will be the PCs' first clue something is up.
Drune, post-campaign:
Spoiler:
I want to do a whole thread on my follow-up campaign, but Drune does play a role (this sequel starts over at first level with new characters, a few weeks after the events of House on Hook Street). With his new gang of followers, Drune heads up the coast to hide out in his home town--a former backwater fishing community-turned-factory-town, Hallam. The name is a nod to one of my inspirations for the campaign follow-up, which is the "Mysteries of Unland" storyline from the Witchfinder series, and which is itself a play on Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Check it out (along with the two other co-mingled inspirations, Greg Vaughan's Wake of the Watcher and my own From Shore to Sea)!
In Hallam, Drune tries to reestablish Moglathar's cult away from the busy city, but falls afoul of another rising power there, and is swept up in the power struggle between the local Poole and Marsh families, which are themselves having a big impact back in Bridgefront with an aggressive gentrification campaign in the wake of the Dream Plague.
In short, there's little room in Hallam for a third, recently-disabled-but-recovering power (the Poole family worships Dagon, and the Marsh family worships a corrupt version of Desna that's actually Ghlaundar--see my module Feast of Ravenmoor for a similar arrangement). This power struggle takes place off-screen, with the Marsh family seizing Moglathar and slowly grinding broken-off chunks of the still-living idol into powder as an additive for this famous snake oil elixir the town factory produces, in hopes of harnessing the idol's immortality-granting abilities. During this gruesome process, the backlash from the tortured idol curses all of its nearby worshipers and corrupts them into hybrid-form-only werespiders, just because that damned illustration in Bestiary 6 is so damned cool. They pretty much become an enslaved workforce in the town dominated by hybrids and Deep Ones.
My PCs have just uncovered this weirdness over the last couple of weeks, and I'm not yet sure what the end result will be. Drune is around there somewhere, possibly held captive himself in some half-submerged cavern or just just chained in the factory trapped in the sad form of a werespider--I'm still trying to figure it out--but it ain't good, one way or the other.
But I hope that gives you some idea of where I was going with Drune and Moglathar post-adventure. Not a glamorous end for the pair, but maybe the PCs will have an ally in the oppressed cult members and Drune will have a *third* chance to realize his dream of immortality after being robbed of it twice before. ;-)
All that, and don't sweat the small stuff on running lucid dreams. Sounds to me that it's fun and exciting for your PCs, which is all that matters! If they got away with something once, mark it up to the chaotic nature of the dreamscape and course-correct next time.
Glad to see someone interested in continuing Feast of Ravenmoor! I don't have it open in front of me, but thought I'd share a few historical nuggets that might guide you in the right direction.
The Churlwood druid may very well be alive and...well, maybe not well. Understanding why that is trespasses into a bit of freelancer faux pas where I have to talk about the original draft over the published version, but there's some key inspiration there, so here you go.
The original draft's corrupting influence wasn't a giant mosquito blightspawn-thing, but rather a blight ooze. You're going to want to check out the recently-released Bestiary 6 to see what Paizo eventually did with that idea, and Robert Brookes did a stand-up job bringing that idea to life. But for your purposes--and more CR-appropriate and relevant to my original intent with Feast--you should know that I recycled the discarded blight ooze idea into the Tears of Nuruu'gal for the Sun Temple Colony in Lost Cities of Golarion. Those critters are essentially the original blue-corn-blight antagonist of Feast of Ravenmoor given a fiery rewrite. So if you look those creatures up, you'll see that for as long as they inhabit their host, they effectively provide immortality. That's the great gift they offer, enabling them to spread their corrupting influence across the land through their humanoid host. And that's probably the sad current state of the Churlwood druid...
So, in short, if you want to recreate that creature, you've got a statblock in an official Paizo product that's pretty darned close to what I imagined that druid was dealing with in Churlwood, and can cover that 300-year spread and give you some nice tools to work with.
Lastly, my foundation for a lot of those Churlwood references were me imagining the aftermath of a scenario from an old published adventure from Dungeon Magazine #11--"The Dark Heart of Ulom," which is about a sentient forest that has been severely corrupted. And that was: "what if the corruption had a way to be mobile, and escaped?" Those kernels of ideas tend to get washed out and take on new life during the writing process, to where the homage might be tentative at best by the time it goes to print, but it does offer me a chance to highly recommend that adventure to you as a sequel of sorts that you might convert to serve the corruption theme as you explore the horizon beyond Ravenmoor. Have fun!
Still loving all of these updates! I think it's going great. One tip on the Mog-lathar confrontation:
Spoiler:
Remember that your out to call an end to the final conflict is the glass ceiling giving way. If your PCs get overwhelmed, get the water flowing in there as strong encouragement for them to flee. The adventure covers this option, so keep it in your back pocket!
GM- "Okay, <monster moves closer> he has 15ft reach and stabs at you."
Player- "How? I'm 20ft up."
GM- "And the (large) monster is also 1Xft tall. Coupled with his Reach, he can still hit you."
Player- You're making this s@~* up, aren't you?
GM- *disbelieving stare* Physiology, ever heard of it? He's not striking at you from ground-level. He is 1Xft tall, so [monster's] physiology depicts his arms are Xft above the ground....
I mitigate this in play by assuming that all creatures take up a 3D *cube* relative to their size, not a 2D square. It's never occurred to me that the rules might not address it in those terms.
Mr. Hodge, I find the idea of the Lantern Man (from the Bridgefront Gazetteer) really compelling. I'm happy fleshing him out myself, but thought I'd see if you had any thoughts or ideas about him.
Hello Andrew!
I'm a fan of the Lantern Man myself, and after many months of campaigning in my home game (which takes place in the aftermath of HoHS, which my group playtested, though the sequel started fresh with new characters at 1st level), he's set to return to the stage any session now. So here's hoping my players aren't reading...
The Lantern Man is Old Korvosa's most thorough--and most secretive--source of information. Although not particularly powerful in the traditional sense (see below), he has used his unique method of gathering information to assume this near-omniscient mantle of the ultimate information broker. He developed the divination spell that allows him to see through flames lit from a target pyre late in life, and weaved through the political structure of Korvosa to eventually manipulate the Arkona family into sponsoring the civic project to install street lamps in Bridgefront as a way to improve the quality of life for the poor citizens there. With the fall of the family (see Curse of the Crimson Throne), he was in a perfect political position to take over the infrastructure he had caused to be created, and steered it toward a private enterprise which he exclusively controls.
I don't have my laptop handy to reference the spell, which didn't make the cut into HoHS because I wound up diminishing his original role, but you cast it on a fire, and gain the ability to scry through it to see everything in a 10-ft radius through any other flame lit from the target fire. With multiple nightly castings, the Lantern Man can essentially spend his evenings staring at the source fire and shuffling through various visions taking place on the streets of Bridefront, as well as any homes of citizens that light their fires by his street lanterns. His Lamplighters, too, are well-compensated and exceedingly loyal young street rats taught to strategically light the lanterns and encourage citizens to light their fires from them, in what seems an overt act of generosity that is really nothing more than another mode of infiltration for the information-hungry Lantern Man.
In this way, he has grown exceedingly wealthy through blackmail, extortion, and information brokering. But it hasn't bought him improved eyesight--he is near blind from his efforts--nor has it improved his health or reversed the effects of his extremely advanced age. Though shrouded in material luxury in his concealed estate, his form is cripple, sickly, and exceedingly frail. His disposition reflects his resentment to being confined near-immobile within his residence, and he is sour and bitter at not being able to truly enjoy the fruits of his clever enterprise, which makes him a hard bargainer and shrewd negotiator that doesn't care for the money, but rather the power it gives him over those seeking his aid that he resents for their mere ability to walk, love, and see unhindered.
He is best used in a campaign as a last-resort, desperate effort to fill in any information gaps your PCs have faced. If they become stuck on a mystery or missed a vital clue, the Lantern Man can provide the information they missed, but at a steep price. It essentially gives an option for PCs to buy their way toward a solution if they have exhausted all other efforts where it doesn't make sense to otherwise backtrack to give them what they need to move forward. I leave the payment terms vague on purpose, because it should be adjusted for each group. Just make sure the payment is about more than money, and personally affects a PC in some way with a high collateral cost that makes the decision to get the information a difficult one.
That's how I use him! Feel free to ask further questions!
My laptop's away for repair so I won't be able to quote the relevant text while typing from my phone, but your second presumption is the correct one: Rasputin can calibrate the World Anchors from within the monastery and force it back to Earth, and does so occasionally, which is why some claim to have seen it.
The PCs *could* wait it out, but time is not on their side, and if they wait too long, Rasputin's efforts to absorb Baba Yaga's mantle of power will be successful. And he will certainly be able to accomplish this well before the Brothers Three's 12-day duration on their dominate effects wear off the soldiers.
Once Rasputin becomes aware of the PCs' intrusion, however, it is not in his best interest to return the monastery to Earth. He will have succeeded in his efforts before that becomes necessary. Should your party decide to wait it out, I'd let their divinations reveal a not-so-great-really-no-good-terrible future, have the tombstone fairy appear with a dire "hurry-up" warning, have the Hut become increasingly agitated over its master's pending demise, etc. Then not-so-subtly pull out Mythic Adventures, slap a few mythic teirs on Rasputin to represent the completion of his task (which is what he's up to--that book was just still in development when I was writing so I couldn't reference it), wipe the PCs' horseman mantle/geas away, and have an epic showdown when a newly-empowered Rasputin returns to Earth with his girlfriend and remaining minions. Assuming this doesn't result in the campaign's end with a TPK (and it really should), let the PCs' discover Baba Yaga's cracked matryoshka doll to reveal their failure, then you can figure out if there's any way to salvage the events of Book 6 for when they return to the Hut to try to get home, because the queen should be more free to act and more powerful as a result of her brother's efforts as well, if I remember correctly.
Could still be a total blast and an epic end to your campaign!
I don't know if you've resolved the initial question of hand use with the lashes, but as the designer of the archetype, I can share that in both intent and execution (I thought the latter was clear, anyway), the ectoplasmatist's hands are indeed taken up when wielding the lashes.
The Slayer class ability was meant to be folded into the trade-out of either the Sacred Word or Blessed Script abilities, but looks like it didn't make it in my final draft. So Brew Bird is correct here.
The good news is that the archetype is unaffected. Until fixed in errata, Living Grimoires will receive an ability at 17th level they can't use. From a design and mechanical standpoint, however, the trade-off in losing that ability at 17th was that level 16 is pretty front-loaded, and that's when Living Grimoires get their +4 enchantment for Sacred Word, an extra spell for Blessed Script, and 6th-level spells.
So, an annoying omission, yes, but by no means one that affects the function of the archetype in any way.
The Haunt Collector archetype from Horror Adventures lets you trade out entire suites of implement special abilities for those of the Medium's spirits' powers.
These things have been there for a long time and it must be well known among learned people interested in Vyrlich that teleportation just isn't a great option in that region. I think it is a bit of a flaw in the module that we GMs are supposed to be able to surprise PCs with this.
Unless you consider that everyone that's teleported in the past has never returned to report the danger... *twiddles fingers*
As for Renchurch's location, I suspect that given its origins, that is a much more accessible piece of knowledge, and I don't think I tried to imply it was particularly well-hidden. It's just dangerous as all hell, which is protection enough.
Also, to answer your original question: if PCs skip the Witchgates, I think the adventure suggests you place the encounters from the various locations in their path as they travel across Vyrlich.
Explore piecing together your own campaign with pre-published adventures and AP chapters. This will make your campaign more episodic (as-in: solve one problem (an adventure), break for downtime, take care of player-created plot lines, spell discoveries, magic item creation, etc, then seque to the next adventure) than a typical AP, which is *kind of* episodic, but carries greater risk of the overriding plot thread getting derailed.
You'll be amazed at how flexible things can be when you piece campaigns together this way, since you aren't tied down to that overarching plot, like, say, the awakening of a Runelord at a pre-set time or other such plot lines that are the necessary baggage of thematic Adventure Paths. You'll have the adventures--you'll just need to roll with the connective tissue between them, which your PC actions are going to help write...
I just got my copy of the Horror Adventures book and was looking at the new inquisitor archetypes (specifically the living grimoire). Well my question is thus, since they trade away all the judgement class features (for the Sacred Word ability), why do they keep the 17th level Slayer class feature that directly ties in with judgment?
Shouldn't they get something else to replace this class feature?
** spoiler omitted **
Well, that's a pesky oversight. The Slayer class ability was meant to be folded into the trade-out of either the Sacred Word or Blessed Script abilities, but looks like it didn't make it in my final draft.
The good news is that the archetype is unaffected. Until fixed in errata, Living Grimoires will receive an ability at 17th level they can't use. From a design and mechanical standpoint, however, the trade-off in losing that ability at 17th was that level 16 is pretty front-loaded, and that's when Living Grimoires get their +4 enchantment for Sacred Word, an extra spell for Blessed Script, and 6th-level spells.
So, an annoying omission, yes, but by no means one that affects the function of the archetype in any way.
I'm honestly thinking making a FAQ request regarding improvised weapons might be important at some point. It would be nice to get clarity, especially due to this new archetype.
I agree. I had a long-standing argument with my home GM over whether or not my grave-digging cleric of Pharasma with the Rough and Ready trait could enchant his shovel, and we went round and round. I imagine the conversations between enchanters and their pet magical energy going something like this:
Enchanter: "Hey there, Theoretically Sentient Magical Enchantment! I'd like to introduce you to this...axe! Make it magical, please?"
Theoretically Sentient Magical Enchantment: "No problem! Consider it +1!"
Enchanter: "Hey again! New week, new adventurer request! Looking for a another +1 enchantment out of you, this time on this druid's...sickle! Cool?"
Enchanter: "Hey yeah...so! This guy just brought me a stick. It's just a...you know...a big stick. Just a tree branch, really. Let's call it a...club. Wanna enchant it?"
Theoretically Sentient Magical Enchantment: "Yes of COURSE!"
Enchanter: "Soooo...me again. Just hoping you can help me out on yet another +1 today! You mind placing your magical energy in this...shovel?"
Theoretically Sentient Magical Enchantment: "What is the MATTER with you??? Hell no! I'm not going in THAT thing! Is an army of holes attacking the village? They getting damage reduction these days or what??? We are THROUGH!!!"
I based the mechanics on the Rough & Ready Trait, which my wizards always make great use of to whack enemies with their weaponized spellbooks. The Catch Off-Guard feat is another one in this same design realm.
Unfortunately, even looking up those two abilities raises some of the same grey-areas issues: if it's a weapon for me, can I take weapon-specific feats for it or enchant my weaponized object (say, in another situation, the gravedigger archetype's shovel) as a weapon?
Tricky, yes. I wish I'd further clarified in the ability, but as it stands the questions of whether or not feats apply (personally, I'd think so, since feats are a personal thing requiring talent or training) or the ability to enchant the weaponized object (less clear, but does the energy of magic weapon enchantment cock its eyebrows and say "waaaaaiiiit a minute! This isn't a SWORD!!!" and run away from your book when you try to enchant it?) are going to have to be up to a developer or the FAQ.
Ah! So if I'm 18th level this spell would last then...6 rounds?
The longest the spell can ever last is 4 rounds due to max damage dice. In fact, it last 4 rounds in every casting scenario except 7th level, which, as a 4th-level spell, is its minimum casting level:
15d6 (max damage dice) > 7d6 (always round down in PF) > 3d6 > 1d6 = 4
Extricate Haunt's base ability (creating a haunt) does not have a listed starting level. The later additions are noted to start at levels 12 and 16, but the base ability has no text to indicate when it becomes available.
I'm going to re-post the main points from the main Horror Adventures thread (see more detailed post here) to demonstrate why this is a non-errata issue:
1. Extricate Haunt is not a direct 1:1 swap with a specific 2nd level ability and *also* trades out with higher class abilities (at 12th & 16th). The ability specifies that it is for use with haunted implements (accessed as soon as 2nd level), making listing the specific level of accessibility redundant (and possibly misleading; see below).
2. Since you don't HAVE to get a haunted implement at 2nd level, you might not be able to use Extricate Haunt at 2nd level. Haunted implements are a fluid option ("he can gain access to a haunted implement") you can take as early as 2nd level, but you don't *have* to. For this reason, the Extricate Haunt ability has to remain similarly fluid and level-unspecific. Because if you don't take the option to get a haunted implement until 6th level, you can't use Extricate Haunt until then, either.
3. The archetype already has an 8th-level replacement ability (Spirit Speaker), and if Extricate Haunt was *also* an 8th-level class ability replacement (as proposed in the other thread), it would be listed alphabetically, and come *before* Spirit Speaker. It does not.
But if you feel more clarification is in order, maybe mark that one for FAQ.
At what level is the Haunt Collector's Extricate Haunt ability supposed to be available? From its placement in the archetype description and the abilities that it replaces, I think it was intended to start at 8th level, but it doesn't explicitly say that.
I think it's always supposed to be there starting at level 2 when you can begin picking up haunted implements.
That was my first thought, but...
(1) Archetype features are normally listed in order of the levels when they are first acquired...
(2) Archetype features that replace other features are normally acquired at the same levels...
So I'm having an Occam's Razor moment...
Well that's another thing on the errata pile then.
I'm not in a position to give you an official answer on this, but there's also a few reasons its formatted as it is that might ease your concerns:
Extricate Haunt is the haunt collector's signature ability, and was designed to be usable as soon as the archetype is capable of gaining haunted implements, which is 2nd level. But since it isn't a direct 1:1 swap with a specific 2nd level ability and *also* trades out with higher class abilities (at 12th & 16th), and the ability specifies that it is for use with haunted implements (which, again, you get access to at 2nd), it felt redundant (and possibly misleading; see below) to call out the level the ability begins, since you can use it once you get Possessed Possessions. As soon as 2nd level.
There's some important parsing there: ALSO keep in mind that you don't HAVE to get a haunted implement at 2nd level. It's an option: "he can gain access to a haunted implement." It would be silly to take this archetype and not take advantage of all the abilities, but it *is* a fluid option, and for this reason, the ability that plays off this option has to remain similarly fluid and level-unspecific. Because if you don't take the option to get a haunted implement until 6th level, you can't use Extricate Haunt until then. So there's that.
Also note that the archetype already has an 8th-level replacement ability (Spirit Speaker), and if Extricate Haunt was *also* an 8th-level class ability replacement, it would be listed alphabetically, and come *before* Spirit Speaker. It does not.
Given that the created haunt's destruction shuts down access to important abilities for the day, I felt that was a suitable balancing factor for earlier level entry.
As the final text matches what I turned over with only minor edits (and Mark sharing some kind words with me on its design at Gen Con), I would think the developers agreed with this design decision and the formatting. But if you feel more clarification is in order, maybe mark that one for FAQ.
...the Occultist options aren't all terrible in their mechanical benefits, they're just laugh out loud bad in what you have to do to get and keep them. A fair universe would award you a couple of mythic tiers for pulling that stuff off.
The occultist archetypes have been pretty well received and the critique doesn't seem to match the mechanics. Are you sure you're talking about the right class?
Brandon, I've always been a fan of your work, especially since you shared your knowledge and expertise of occult topics at Paizocon '15. Once again, you show great talent and imagination when it comes to turning fantastical and mythological concepts into rules and mechanics.
Thank you for the kind words there, Axial. Between Occult Adventures last year and Horror Adventures this year, I've had a great time playing around with my favorite topics for Paizo, cross-pollinating my interests between esoteric history and game design, so it's been a lot of fun. It's awesome when the design team just unlocks the cell door and lets you roam the asylum to write things like Inquisitors who whack enemies with holy books and Occultists who collect haunted artifacts. Hahaha. I also had the privilege of collaborating with Alex Riggs on both the Environment chapter and the Dread Lords template discussed here, and we tossed that template back and forth a couple dozen times to dial it in just right to make that symbiosis with our Environment chapter and my Domains of Evil section work as well as it does. The template's Hit Dice-based Special Attacks menu was a particularly brilliant bit of design Alex envisioned that restructured how spell-like abilities can be awarded to creatures, and I think it will serve as the pattern for a lot of future template design. Great stuff, and I am glad to hear it's being well-received so far!
It's actually a pair of templates: the Dread Lord template and the more powerful (but imprisoned in its realm) Cursed Lord. As you'd expect, these creatures are deeply and intrinsically tied to a parcel of land that makes up their domain (which grows in size as their HD increases). I won't give the full run-down here, but they get some tasty defensive abilities, significant attribute boosts, and a fear aura while in their lands, and little goes on within the domain that they don't know about, whether through various speak with _____ spells or through other magical divinations they are gifted with. Their power and malign influence extends to the animals, plants, and even weather within their lands, and they can haunt the dreams of trespassers within their realm and possibly dominate them. Dread Lords can leave their lands at the cost of all that power (they lose all benefit when out of their realm), while Cursed Lords are trapped within their realm, unable to die and unable to leave by any means unless very specific conditions are fulfilled to alleviate the curse.
My favorite part of the templates, however, is the One with the Land ability, which allows the Lords to customize their domain to suite their individual natures by seeding them with a host of environmental effects and supernatural hazards you can choose from any source, including all the creepy and dangerous new threats found in the Environment chapter (it's 12 pages of godless voids, zombie-animating fogs, haunted battlfields, and sentient bloodthirsty forests!). Furthermore, the Environment chapter contains an entry for Domains of Evil, which morphs the land in other ways depending on the power of its lord, so that just as creatures taking the template change to reflect their lands, so, too, does the land change to reflect their corrupt master. This symbiosis between rules mechanics makes the template incredibly flavorful and thematic, with tons of options to get a lot of mileage out of those pages. And, yes, there's a dread fog supernatural hazard that will be eerily familiar to some folks.
Looking at the archetype itself again, I totally missed that you
could play some Lovecraftian tome wielder, not just a holy zealot of your god. Minor reflavoring, sure, but a very interesting premise for me. Brandon Hodge did a great job with that one! Fits multiple themes of the horror archetypes. Using the word of their god to smite foes or inflicting madness (and pain) with eldritch tomes!
Thanks for that! Excited to see this one out in the world. In my home games, I almost always play a wizard with the Rough & Ready trait that lets me use tools of my trade as weapons, take some ranks in scribe, and whack the hell out of opponents with my spellbook.
When Stephen asked me for some archetype ideas for the Inquisitor, I recalled my fondness for that trick, and said: "How about an archetype that imparts the word of their God in the most violent way possible--by beating it mercilessly into enemies with his holy book?"
Luckily, Stephen and Mark share my penchant for tome-based violence and holy-word hostilities. Now it's yours! ;-)
The relic hunter archetype for the Inquisitor obviously isn't a hybrid class, but there's such a wholesale swap of class abilities for occultist abilities that I can't imagine a hybrid class would be built any different.
It states that it works equivalent to "Searing Light" but mentions only a slow effect ... ??
Does that mean that the damage of searing ligt is disregarded? I'm confused ...
Hey Strato! Haven't cracked this one open in a while, but reading the rules here, you have two cumulative effects from the same action:
The flamma horaclcum is capable of casting searing light spells as a standard action and dealing damage as per the item's caster level (20th). And, in addition to that effect, creatures hit by the searing light are also slowed, as per the slow spell, for 1d4 rounds if they fail their save.
I rebased a bunch of cheap demonic action figs from McFarlane's Spawn line and think they look incredible. eBay is your friend for big loose figures...
What a fantastic resource! THANK YOU, Rob! I hope it will be put to good use by others running The House on Hook Street.
Thank you for the kind words (and great review!) as well. HoHS is indeed a complicated adventure, full of twists and turns and betrayals, and, like you, I believe it is worth the effort to run properly, and there's a lot of value in the gameplay of this one. I will note a couple of clarifications in your prep document: 1) Drune is not Myra's father. He was an early suitor (he lost out to Nahum) and her intimations lured him into using his family's funds to sponsor the expedition to the Mindspin Mountains, and 2) the dreamstone does not actually offer immortality, but rather power over the Dimension of Dreams, which is what Nahum's trying to claim. The immortality offered to *some* cult members (the most devoted leadership only, not everyone) is a power granted by the spider idol itself, and is part of the idol ruleset.
Hope that helps. Thank you for putting together this great prep document--wish I'd had it when I ran my playtests!
You guys just keep on ignoring Ghlaunder's write-up in this thread. By the time those bumps on the back of your necks start to itch, it'll be far too late... =-)
I'm not against the idea of troop rules per se, but I'm not convinced those rules are fully mature yet. More trial and error are probably needed to discover and work out all the major kinks.
With what's currently published, you might be right. Of course, for a long while, we only had the anachronistic rifle troop to use as an example to build new troops, and while we've got a few more statblocks fleshed out (officially and otherwise), I recognize it can still be tough to extrapolate builds from a relatively small data, though the advice given above on building to the CR-tables still stands.
Here at home, which I recognize doesn't help anyone but me, we use my complete system for full-blown tabletop battles royale with a dozen+ units all over the table and PCs right in the middle of the action, and have a lot more components in place that I'd developed over the years, from enhanced flanking and charging rules, a sort of bounded accuracy for troop-versus-troop combat (because attack rolls far outpace AC in high-HD builds like troops, and hits and misses are a necessary element of the randomness of simulated battle), morale rules, special feats for troops, the PC armor-bonus-as-DR rules, and even special units you can insert in troops to give them special abilities. I even have rules for advancing units as they gain battlefield experience. And most troops are built from a few base statblocks (infantry, cavalry, etc) with modular menus to pick and choose abilities from, rather than the ground up, so my players get involved with the troops under their command, too. But of course none of that was necessary for Rasputin Must Die, where the goal was realistic portrayals of real-world (i.e. low-level) Russian troops in a high-level adventure. But like I encouraged RogueMortal above, I encourage you to let your support for more troop stuff be known, because I'd like to guide Paizo's official troops ruleset to that maturity. ;-)
I don’t mind contributing a few pointers here for you, RogueMortal, if, in fact, that is your real name. ;-)
First, keep in mine that troops are not part of the official PRD because they have yet to appear in a Paizo hardcover. And that’s regrettable, because I haven’t had the chance to publish the actual basic troop statblock whose modularity would prevent us from having to work from scratch for each new troop. I invite you to head over to the Bestiary 6 Wishlist thread, the Armies of Golarion thread, or email our long-suffering editor-in-chief Wes Schneider and voice your support for the inclusion of more troops in future hardcovers!
Secondly, we have to consider the actual role of creature types and subtypes in monster (and troop!) design. For example, the magical beast subtype doesn’t dictate how a gorgon’s breath weapons work, how much damage they do or if it’s supposed to be a cone or a stream. The rules for the medusa’s gaze attack are nowhere to be found in the monstrous humanoid type. Nowhere does the magical beast type dictate that a lamia (magical beast) gets a host of spell-like abilities, when a remorhaz (also a magical beast, also 9 HD) doesn’t’ get any at all. Who decided a will-o’-wisp (9 HD aberration) gets a 2d8 touch electricity attack when a chuul (10 HD aberration) gets two 2d6 melee claws? For that matter, why does the chuul have +10 natural armor and the will-o’-wisp gets no natural armor bonus at all, and why doesn’t the creature type spell those differences out for us?
The answer, of course, is that in creature design, types and subtypes dictate only a creature’s basic framework. Most of the questions you ponder have to be asked, considered, and resolved with any other creature type when designing new monsters. And most of those answers are found in the monster creation rules. So, you use those to build your ideas to suite, and compare to other statblocks to make sure they’re in the same neighborhood of other established creatures in the CR range and type, whether working with the troop subtype or not. As Mr. Compton posits: making seasoned veteran troops with plate mail and great axes? Increase your damage dice, bump their AC, and slow ‘em down. Want some light, mobile skirmishers? Reduce their damage dice to reflect lighter weapons, lower their AC, and increase their movement. Are they orcs? Make ‘em stronger and give them sunlight sensitivity…or even the ability to collectively rage. If the constituent creatures have some magical abilities at their disposal, create a special ability or two that reflects that (see below for an example). It’s incredibly versatile. If I had my druthers, we’d get a future Bestiary entry similar to dragons, with lots of modular options for troops. Again, express your support for that with the powers-that-be.
In short--the differences you yearn for in troops isn't an inherent fault of the subtype--special abilities (and even different weapon properties, like long spears set to receive charges) will be your key to adding versatility to various units.
I invite you to some previous discussions I provided on this topic. Here’s a nice pair of posts discussing how to use the monster creation charts to help determine damage and CRs of special abilities, for instance. I discuss here why you don’t see a whole lot of spellcasting troops out of me, though James Jacobs was nice enough to introduce an inquisitor troop in AP #100 that helps demonstrate how to create a special ability that reflects a troop composed of soldiers with the ability to bless and heal themselves (And hey! Bonus! The base damage chart missing on d20pfsrd is there for ya!). My friend Charlie Bell even did a troop of devils for Wayfinder #11, among others.
In my original rules here at home, troops have a to-hit score (you can see the leftover-artifact of that in the rifle troop statblock for Rasputin Must Die!), but only against other troops, auto-hitting only when engaged with single opponents. I also allow single opponents to subtract their armor bonus from troop damage to reflect that a heavily-armored knight can withstand just a bit more abuse when surrounded by a mass of armored flesh than a leather-clad rogue.
But mostly, remember troops are an abstraction, so when building don't get too caught up in the details--treat them as a big giant monster and let the subtype handle the rest, which is does pretty effectively.
There’s also a nice reddit discussion with some great ideas in it, here.
I hope some of that helps! Happy to answer further questions.
Lucky you! You've managed to catch the creator of the troop subtype, who wrote it for Paizo after years of tweaking in his home games, sitting around bored on a Saturday morning with nothing better to do than offer some messageboard advice and insight to his fellow gamers. I've used this incredibly versatile mechanic to create everything from roving hordes of bloodthirsty ghouls to bands of healing battlefield medics, from armored knights on horseback to packs of spectral ghost hounds. There's a secret to building effective and memorable troops, and the REALLY important thing you have to keep in mind is...
