Caldor Brehgan's page

Been GMing for ages, but it's been a few years, and I've got a new campaign starting on Sunday (PF2). 3 players, starting at 2nd level. Party consists of a cleric (warpriest), a wizard (universalist) and a ranger (animal companion and ranged attacks). I'm trying to finish the 1st adventure for Sunday (the 14th), and have the rest of the campaign outlined in broad strokes.

As far as the campaign goes, it's set primarily in Ustalav, around Caliphas, and I've projected 2 shorter adventures and the a few larger arcs.

1st adventure (2nd to 3rd level): Party starts on a ship en route to Caliphas. A rogue wave upends it and they wash up together in the Gravelands. They have to flee a horde of undead and seek refuge in an (apparently) abandonned homestead just across the Path River. They're lured into the basement and trapped by a sadistic bugbear and a handful of goblins he's cowed into helping him prey on travelers and refugees.

2nd adventure (3rd to 4th level): On their way to Caliphas the party is hounded by wild animals (to hint at the next arc) The party has to wait outside of Caliphas for a while before being admitted through the gates. In the meantime, they get roped into looking into a rash of disappearances, which takes them into Nar Voth to foil a cell of Derro that have started snatching people from the surface to run expiriments on.

1st major arc (levels 4-7): I want to do something with a druid villain who is having animals start attacking the city (not just the usually dangerous ones, but also birds, squirrels, etc... becoming weirdly organized and aggressive). Eventually they'll have to enter the wilderness to deal with them.

2nd arc (levels 8-11): The Pharasman Penitence is the major villain. A "priest" (he's actually a witch but doesn't know it - thinks he's talking directly to Pharasma) uses the druid's attack on Caliphas to definitively turn popular opinion against Prince Odranti and effectively seizes control of the city in a populist uprising. Oppression of local elements he deems heretical or unsavory (especially the Kellids and their beliefs) gets turns up, and in desperation, they reach out to some sort of Lovecraftian entity for help. Party will have to deal with both the church and the results of the Kellids' desperation.

3rd arc (levels 11-16): Not certain, but it's Ustalav and I've always like Nosferatu, so I want one to be the villain for this arc. During this arc the party hears rumors of Razmiran invading the River Kingdoms.

Final arc (levels 16-20): Razmir invades Caliphas from Lake Encarthan, his forces bolstered by undead given to him by the Whispering Tyrant (of whom he is a pawn).

Obviously some of these need fleshing out, but I also could use another set of eyes on what I'm planning for my 1st adventure. Outline/questions to follow.

Want to ask here before I pull the trigger on anything.

So I just started at a new high school, and each teacher is supposed to sponsor a once-per-week club. Mine will start next semester and it doesn't have a tabletop club, so that's my strongest leaning right now. If interest is high enough enough among students, I may be able to get a little bit of funding for it.

I think it would be big stretch to get enough for a set of physical rulebooks (I would want to gauge interest of students and use either PF2 or Starfinder), but probably enough for PDFs. But I know that there would probably be legal issues involved there regarding sharing them with students, so I want to see what the situation there would be.

For example, a set of PDFs was purchased with a school account, could they be shared via a google drive with students? That way they would only have access as long as they are students, since they'd lose their school account after graduating.

I believe I'll be launching a, well, let's call it a "hometweaked" rather than a "homebrew" campaign that's going to be retooled to have a pretty heavy space western feel to it. Planning for a party of smugglers or outlaws or something, but one of their early (hopefully) recurring antagonist is going to be a hanging judge style Kasatha sheriff (who will join the Hellknights if he survives the early game), and I got an idea for a weapon I'd like him to have, but I want to keep it both cool and balanced.

Basically, he's going to use a pair of slug pistols and a cable lasso that he can use conventionally, or charge with electricity for stun and/or electric damage to subdue targets, create a laser edge around the inside of the loop for lethal attacks (which, in "cutscenes" could lead to some stylish executions).

But I am at a total loss at how I would stat such an item. Him being a boss level enemy, I don't mind if it feels kind of powerful or overbalanced, but I don't want to overdo it, and want to make sure it's useable and balanced if it ends up in the hands of my PCs.

I've been thinking about trying to launch a campaign set there that is either about Razmir doing his thing, or about the Ivory Labyrinth (loved those guys in WotR)trying to infiltrate/conquer Seven Arches to repurpose their portals to create a new World Wound, but the books that I've got don't have a ton on updates yet, and I kind of stopped following the APs around that one that had Xin in at the end.

So I'm just wondering if there were any big standout events in there? The world guide mentions that Pitax is gone (but it's still on the map), and that the kingdom that was established in Kingmaker is now a thing, but doesn't offer much more detail about it.

So this seems to be RAW, but I'm not sure if it's RAI and was wondering the thoughts of the forum.

The rogue's ruffian racket lets you do extra stuff when making sneak attacks with simple weapons. The orc weapon familiarity feat says that "for you, orc martial weapons are simple weapons." So that would mean that for a half-orc with this feat, the normally-martial orc knuckle dagger could be used with the ruffian racket, right?

I wanted to ask here because it seems that just about every other ancestry weapon familiarity specifically states that you count the racial weapon as one step simpler for purposes of proficiency. The wording on proficiency is absent from the half-orc entry, so I wasn't sure if this was an oversight.

Sorry, general question here - I just want to make sure I ask in the right forums. Where would the proper place be for threads regarding...

1)RAW with slight homebrew stats/mechanics, such as advice on building NPCs and creatures?

2) Suggestions for campaign macrogames or narrative development.

I'm about to start up a new campaign, but the setting as written is a little to shiny for my tastes, so I was wondering how you guys would go about making the setting a bit darker and bit rougher? Generally, I prefer setting in which there aren't really any "good guy" organizations - the PCs might meet good individuals, but the various institutions are generally corrupt or at least highly self-serving, and the impetus is very much on the PCs to be the heroes. So less like Star Wars, more like Dune.

It's starting at a local level on a town I'm making up on Akiton and we're going for a space western theme in the beginning, so I've got some time to flesh out what the greater system looks like, but here were some early ideas I had.

The Pact officially only extends to the Diaspora. Anything beyond that is not a Pact World. The Pact Worlds themselves each vie constantly for political advantage over one another, and sabotage and espionage are very common.

The Kasatha are a lot more militant, and the faction on the Idari that is crying for them to colonize (by force, if necessary) is more vocal and larger than as presented in the core rulebook.

Brethesda is the unofficial intermediary between the Pact Worlds and the Outer Worlds (going out to Aucturn - no one touches Apostae). They have a reputation for being skilled mediators and diplomats but a lot of people are weirded out by them largely because of their non-anthroporphic shape.

The Outer Worlds helped in the war with the Veskarium and against the Swarm, but refused to sign the Pact afterwards due to concerns that their distance from Absolom Station would lead to them being marginalized under the Pact.

The treaty with the Veskarium is tense as heck, and as the years have drawn on, it's starting to look like each side saw it differently. Many people in the Pact Worlds fear that what they felt was an alliance and a trade agreement was seen as a suzerian arrangment to the Veskarium.

There is nothing that even remotely resembles a Pact military. Forces are rallied on, at the widest, a planetary scale. Stewards have a lot of authority but there aren't very many of them. They have the right to commandeer resources and manpower in pursuit of missions when deployed, but they're usually seen as secret police or unwanted federal interference.

Androids are kind of like replicants that also have a fair number of mechanical components. The knowledge of how to make them is known only by the anacites and is one of their most closely guarded secrets. Their sentience and autonomy has been recognized on the Pact Worlds and using them as slave labor is illegal there, but not beyond the Diaspora. Whether or not they actually have souls is still a matter of debate for many people.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

So after watching a bunch of Dimension 20, I wanted to do something a little sillier for a game. So I'm thinking of starting up a starfinder game where the big theme is that the PCs are the red shirts on Starfinder Society vessel. This would definitely not be the RAW Starfinder Society - they're going to be bureaucratic and kind of callous and more of a caricature of the England's golden age of exploration.

But to start characters, I was thinking I'd just make a list of professions that a red shirt might hold. Ship Sanitation Specialist, Officer Refreshment Dispenser, etc. I want to come up with about a dozen of these, and each PC picks a profession that their character ended up filling on the ship (regardless of their actual expertise). Any suggestions for similar job titles?

So I'm sitting down to toss together a few ready-to-use characters for a potential game opportunity, and I'm starting with a fighter going for the Elven Curve Blade. Furious Focus at a casual glance seems like it would be an ideal compliment to it's Forceful quality, but when I actually try to figure out how Furious Focus works, I'm not 100% I'm understanding right. Does functionally bump the -10 of a third attack to -5 on the condition your second attack missed?

Cause I don't see them in the book, which seemed a little weird with a playtest adventure starting in Magnimar. I know that they're concentrated in Korvosa, but if I recall they had really spread out from there. Wasn't Magnimar founded but a group of Chelaxians that wanted to break with the old empire?

I've been away from these boards for a while, but when SF first hit, several "Solarians need a fix" threads were pretty active, mostly concerned over the fact that they were far more MAD than any other class, and as I look over them again, I can definitely see it. It's not so much that they can't be effective, but making one effective seems to call for a much higher level of system mastery than other classes (I mean it's pretty easy to optimize an operative totally by accident), and they seem to have far fewer viable builds than other classes. It still bothers me that their builds aren't really intuitive - I feel like if a reasonably smart person with little system knowledge sat down to build each class, going with what

That was my impression on going back to them, but I was wondering if the community had ever reached a general consensus?

So I'm about to start a campaign on Akiton that will eventually lead to the release of the King of Biting Ants and the party working with a half-senile Jatembe.

Obviously I need to create a Worm that Walks graft to make the BBEG, but I'm not THAT worried about that part, because the rules for doing so are pretty fun, though if anyone has any ideas it would be appreciated!

My bigger issue is that there is a technomancer in the group, and if they're working with Jatembe, I'll bet dollars to donuts he'll be interested at the prospect of learning from this archmage who has pre-gap magic at his command. I feel like just giving a flat out "no" would be kind of a dick move as a GM.

So if I wanted to provide a player-friendly option for "above 6th level magic," what would you suggest? I feel like just trying to copy/paste high level spells from pathfinder would be a trap option, but was thinking of creating a new archtype that causes their BAB to stop progressing at +10, and exchange they get the ability to spend resolve points to do something similar to mythic spellcasting to simulate uncommonly powerful magic, and maybe one or two conditions to refresh resolve (maybe that can only be used to power spells) to make sure they aren't too resource starved?

My party is going to be getting their first ship this weekend, and I decided to do a pokemon situation where they'll have a few different ones to pick from. I decided to emulate the ol' warrior/thief/mage dynamic in ships, and went with the general theme of a warship built mostly for combat, a research vessel focusing on travel, sensors, and labs, and a smuggling vessel that I guess is a little between the two, and also with the fastest thrusters. I just want to make sure I haven't made any glaring design errors before I hand these to my PCs. Ships are all tier 3.

I wasn't sure how important it was to fill all the weapon slots (I did), or how important it was to increase AC at low tiers, since it seems like a huge part of it is based on the skill of the pilot (I gave the gunship +2).

Warship
Medium Transport
Speed: 6, Maneuverability: Average (+1 Piloting, Turn 2), Drift: 1
AC: 12 (Mk 2 Armor), TL: 11
HP: 70, DT: –, CT: 14
Shields: Basic Shields 40 (15)
Attacks (F): Heavy Laser Cannon (4d8 – 10), Tactical Nuclear Missile Launcher (5d8, Limited Fire 5, Irradiate (Low) – 10)
Attacks (A): Flak Thrower (3d4, Point +8)
Attacks (T): Linked Light Laser Cannon (2d8 – 10)
Power Core: Pulse Green (125/150), Thrusters: M6 Thrusters (50) Drift Engine: Signal Basic (75)
Systems: Mk 1 Trinode (10), Mk 1 Defenses (1), Budget Medium-Range Sensors
Expansion Bays: Medical Bay (4), Tech Workshop (3), Escape Pods (2), Cargo Bays x2
Crew: 1/6, Good quarters

Research Vessel
Medium Explorer
Speed: 8, Maneuverability: Good (Turn 1), Drift: 2
AC: 10, TL: 11
HP: 55, DT: –, CT: 11
Shields: Light Shields 60 (20)
Attacks (F): Gyrolaser (1d8, Broad Arc – 10)
Attacks (P): Gyrolaser (1d8, Broad Arc – 10)
Attacks (S): Gyrolaser (1d8, Broad Arc – 10)
Attacks (T): High Explosive Missile Launcher (4d8, Limited Fire 5 – 10)
Power Core: Pulse Red (154/175), Thrusters: M8 Thrusters (60), Drift Engine: Signal Booster (100)
Systems: Mk 2 Mononode (15), Budget Long-Range Sensors, Mk 1 Defenses (1)
Expansion Bays: Science Lab (2), Synthesis Bay (2), Life Boats (5), Cargo Bay
Crew: 1/6, Luxurious Quarters

Smuggler
Medium Explorer
Speed: 10, Maneuverability: Good (Pilot +1, Turn), Drift: 1
AC: 10, TL: 10
HP: 55, DT: –, CT: 11
Shields: Basic Shields 40 (15)
Attacks (F): Coilgun (4d4 – 10)
Attacks (P): Micromissile Battery (2d6, Array, Limited Fire 5 – 10)
Attacks (S): Micromissile Battery (2d6, Array, Limited Fire 5 – 10)
Attacks (T): Flak Thrower (3d4, Point +1 – 10)
Power Core: Pulse Red (150/175), Thrusters: M10 Thrusters (70) Drift Engine: Signal Basic (75)
Systems: Mk 2 Duonode (15), Advanced Medium-Range Sensors, Antipersonnel Weapon (Azumith Artillery Laser)
Expansion Bays: Smuggler Compartment DC 30 (6), Tech Workshop (3), Good Guest Quarters (1), Cargo Hold
Crew: 1/6, Good quarters

So I'm in a party with generally new players, currently level 2, and I wanted to check the build I've got for my character. I am tryi n to build him to be the party's primary anvil, but I am also the most system savvy player in the froup, and I dont want to go for raw optimization to the point that players with lesser system mastery will be left in the dust. It seems like the mesmerist is pretty solid but the arctype is a little sub par, so thats a start. In any case, here is what I am working with now.

Human mesmerist (vexing daredevil)
10 str, 16 dex, 14 con
12 int, 8 wis, 16 cha. Planning on incrwasi ng dex to 18 by level 8, then everythinh else into cha

Feats: Dodge, weapon finesse. Planning on taking Graceful Fwncer at 5. Leadership at 7 if the GM will allow it, otherwise spell focus. Not sure what else would be good.

Skills (all maxed): diplomacy, sense motive, bluff, intimidate, perception, acrobatics, knowledge ( nobilty and local), craft (alchemy). The last one is a lil out there, but I wantes to give him a memento from his time at Lepidstadt University before he was expelled for "lewd dueling."

Cant remember his 0 spells, but for 1st level he has Burst of Adrenaline, Mental Block, and Murderous Command. They all felt like spells that would remain very slot-efficient at higher levels. I avoided the low HD nukes so as not to step on the toes of our sorcerer's color spray.

Mesmerist tricks: havent picked it yet. I like the one that gives you disguise self for the utility and because it would let me drop an extra -2 to a target's will save for a roun, and was goinb to take compel alacrity for my next, probably.

Level I am plannin on the ability that lets me blind on feint, because it gives me some CC that isnt tied to will saves, and the slayer in the party will love it. Overall, I want to build a crowd controlly fencer who has potent single target debuffs and CC. Is this a workable concept for the class, and am I on the right track?

I first just want to say that I love this system. I've been having a LOT of fun tinkering with it. Little adjustments here and there to make npcs a little more unique. I'm in a place where I look at whether or not a guy's numbers add up to be CR-appropriate rather than if he's strictly following RAW (I gave a guy three bonus feats to make him really good at fusillade because I realized that, functionally, he was doing basically just using making full-auto attacks with a level 2 rifle).

But now I've got an idea that would really push the limits, and I wanted your thoughts on whether or not this would tip something too over-the top. I was fiddling around with theorycrafting some different characters and really fell in love with a combat-gear focused technomancer sniper, then decided I could plug such a character in as a bounty hunter after my party.

With the NPC arrays, though, someone using the caster array just isn't going to be any kind of good with a sniper rifle, or any sort of spec-opsy skills (from the angle of a PC this is easy, because a technomancer will probably getting 7-8 skills because of their high int). So I was wondering about nerfing the spells they have access to and using the expert array. I figured that this is the array for other 3/4 BAB classes, but the ones that "traditionally" would have better combat stats than a mage, so they'd have an attack bonus that better reflected "technomancer specced for weapons."

Since a PC doing this would pump dex and sacrifice a little int, I would lower their spell DCs by 1 or 2, and give them 1 less spell known and spell per day of each level. Thoughts?

I honestly don't know if they do need any kind of boost. I think that the fact that they let you consistently deal level-scaling damage that adds weapon specialization is awesome. However, they are a significantly worse option for dealing with a single tough target. While it is fine for this weapon to have this niche, I feel like a lot of people who would be drawn to "shotguns" would be people that would want to deal a lot of damage at short range, and I was wondering if there was a tweak that lets them fill this role with the weapon they want.

What if you gave shotguns the ability to toggle to a narrower spread as a swift action, changing its damage to about the same as a like leveled rifle, but it still has the same range increment of the cone attack (it can fire beyond this range, but in most cases penalties for range would stack fast). Any sort of cover provides full cover against weapons fired in a narrow spread (it's impossible to fire around people).

So in this case, the possible damage output for shotgun weapons would be the same as assault rifles, and they have the alternate option to deal lesser damage in a cone, at the cost of "you will often take a -2 to attack from range penalties, or else have to move and give up your full attack."

I'm finalizing the stats for the my party's first major boss, a CR 3 kasatha soldier with a bit of a gunlsinger thing going on, and I really like the fusillade ability for him, except fusillade seems a little underwhelming. The rules in Alien Archives mention a few times that stats can be adjusted or new abilities created as long as the fiddling is done responsibly, so I wanted to double check a couple ideas I had for giving it a little extra "oomph" here. I'm more concerned with how they work on this specific guy, being CR 3, than how they "balance" against other special abilities. I'm leaning towards making this his most powerful ability, since even though he's following the numbers everywhere else, he's also a soldier specializing in small arms (his shots deal 1d6+4 damage, and he will usually be making full attacks), which is a sub-optimal option, so I figured I could give him a teeny something extra without pushing up his de facto CR.

First idea - base it off of breath weapons As a full action, baddie can fire a volley of bullets in a 30 foot cone (rules say 60 feet, but that's even further than his guns' range) while wielding at least 2 small arms. The attack does damage equal to his weapon's attack, with usual modifier, and adds one extra damage die ("weapon specialization" and bullet barrage in this case, for a total of 2d6+4). This equates to better minimum damage and lower maximum damage than the RAW breath weapon's 4d6 at CR3. Reflex save for half, DC 12 (might make it a little higher? This is the RAW number, but it mentions it being okay to give a small boost to a combat array's biggest ability.

Baddie then uses two of his four arms to reload while he fights normal with his other two, taking 1d4 rounds.

Second idea - Give him an improved quick draw and a bandolier of pistols This would just be a free extra feat, which is a slightly improved version of quickdraw, letting him draw 2 small arms as a swift action. He could then wear a bandolier of like a dozen pistols, toss 4 aside after a fusillade, then start drawing more guns, effectivley allowing him to use it as often as every 3 rounds. Less damage than the first option, but getting the most out of it relies on his attack rolls instead of the party's ref saves, which seems to favor him.

I know that the rules don't mention extra gear, but I was also thinking about giving him jump jets for some extra cool factor.

Party is going to be level 3 when they fight him, and he'll have two CR 1/2 mooks backing him up. He has support from a sniper too, but full cover will be plentiful, so he's more of an environmental hazard that makes positioning important in the fight.

My party is going to find the first piece of a homebrew artifact this Sunday, and I've just about figured out what it does (besides being a macguffin), but I'm still tuning its mechanics.

So I'm still working out what exactly it will do as more pieces of it are brought together, but I've at least got the mechanics figured out for what the one piece will do, but I wanted to double check here to see if I was introducing that would be truly game-breaking into my campaign.

Basically, it's a modular artifact that any character can "plug in" to one of their major class features to give it a boost, but with a cost, and it's generally a difficult-to-control double-edged sword. Here's what I've got for the classes that comprise my party. Any ideas on effects for the remaining three classes would be swell.

So I'm potentially reaching the end of the first act of my campaign this weekend, and now that we've got the rules for statting npcs, I've been working on the climactic encounter. It also introduces what will hopefully be the first recurring villain - a kasatha soldier with a sort of evil space sheriff vibe - so I want the encounter to be memorable. I don't want to tpk these guys, though, so I was wondering if this would be too much for a level 2 or 3 party (haven't figured out which they'll be here yet. Currently level 2 - they may level up first.

Big boss - CR 4 soldier focused on lots of pistol attacks. Bullet barrage, sharpshot style, and I gave him multiweapon fighting and fusillade because I figured it was an okay tradeoff, challenge-wise, for him focusing on small arms.

2 mooks, CR 1/2 combatants. Shotgun mooks with a couple level 1 grenades. Basically there to do a little chipping to the party's SP before they die and maybe draw a little fire.

1 difficult-to-reach CR2 mechanic. He's got the exocortex, I took away heavy army proficiency and gave him sniper proficiency, and he's set up with a 1d10 sniper rifle that he charges with his overload shot for another 1d6. High accuracy and damage, but I'm going to make total cover available in several spots in the arena.

Party consists of...
Melee solarian. Solar weapon and heavy armor.
Healing mystic.
Exocortex mechanic.
Technomancer.

So I've got a solarian in my party in the game I am running, and I want to show the class a little love. I know the debate on whether or not they strictly NEED a buff is ongoing, but it comes up here often enough that I want to give them a tiny boost in my game, and was thinking about making two simple changed. Just wanted to check here to see if these would ameliorate their problems, or if i am missing something amd I'm going too far.

Change 1: 6 skill points per level.

Change 2: Their primary statis Con (a hale and hearty frame has an easier time channeling the power of the cosmos!) I saw there are no classes that use con as their main stat (though maybe that was an intentional choice) and this would be a stat desired by both weapon and armor-based solarions so a 1 level dip into soldier doesnt seem as optimal.

I'm about a week off from the third session of a game I'm running, and I've got them on a relic hunt. Plot-wise, it's the broken up pieces of the Cosmic Principle, taking the form of shards of what appear to be pieces of open space, complete with stars and galaxies swirling through them, and when put together, it's going to have infinity stonesque influence over the cycles of entropy and genesis. Its origins were a mystery even before its existence was lost to the Gap, but it was studied by the Kasatha (or perhaps the Contemplatives of Ashok?) and inspired the first Solarian. The party is going to be chasing the different pieces of it (haven't decided how many there are yet) and racing other factions who want it, but they're going to find their first piece (and really kick off the plot, because they're sort of stumbling across it whilst doing another job) so I need to figure out exaclty what sort of powers these things are gonna have, and was wondering if these boards had any ideas?

Party is currently level 2, and there IS a solarian in the party, so I was thinking, with a single piece, it sends them into cycling, uncontrollable zeniths? A solarion would immediately attune upon putting it into their mote, and on the following round, they become fully attuned (1 round early) but then immediately use their action for the round to activate a zenith revelation (supernova or black hole, in most cases), then they become unattuned. On the following round, they automatically attune to the other aspect and the process begins to repeat. Each time their zenith is unleashed, they must make a DC20 fort save or become fatigued (or exhausted). If they fail this save when already exhausted, they fall unconscious for 10 minutes and the artifact stops functioning. They also cannot easily turn it off voluntarily once they've placed it in their mote, and it requires a DC20 will save to do so.

Is this ability too powerful? Do you think there are other ways it could be made to be useful for other classes? What might it do when more pieces are eventually collected? Appreciate any feedback/ideas.

I just started a starfinder game, and it's going to turn into a relic hunt pretty fast. They party will find the first piece within the next 2 sessions, and I want them to do more than just be macguffins, so I want to make them into interesting toys for the PCs to use. Haven't decided on its final form yet, but it's probably going to be a crystal or something that's split into parts. Each part functions as an identical item that can be utilized differently for each character class, and as they find more pieces, they can either combine them to get a boost to the abilities they offer, or split them up so more people get access to weaker versions. It's going to be able to be split up and reformed at will, so they don't have to lock into either choice.

What I need to figure out is what they're going to do, and I thought I might pick your brain for ideas. I need to come up with options my PCs can use first.. Currently, the party is level 1 and consists of a Solarion (weapon option, and proficient with heavy armor. Melee/tank), an engineer (exocortex), a mystic (can't remember his source, tho), and a technomancer (might build towards a spells through sniper rifle gimmick).

For the Solarian, I figured it could function as a weapon crystal that offers bonuses based on their attunement. For a start, I figured one piece would give a +1 AC bonus with graviton attunement (with different defensive bonuses unlocked with more pieces, since it seems like the game is balanced by very few extra AC boosting items) and giving like 1d3 extra plasma damage when attuned to photons (getting a better damage die and crit ability with more pieces). Obviously would need to come up with something else for armor-focused Solarians.

I figured it could enchance the mechanic's exocortex in some way, maybe starting off by granting a bonus combat feat (and offering lesser benefits with more shards) or a damage bonus on his scanned target (or maybe the ability to use a trick attack on them)?

Technomancer I was thinking about having it let her choose a bonus spell of any level she can cast and add it to her spell list as long as she possesses it, and then it could grant more spells with more shards and maybe function like a pearl of power. Or it could just grant a +2 damage bonus with all of her spells, or something.

Mystic, I have no clue yet. Any ideas here would be most welcome, as would any tips on flaws in the above bonuses and ideas for remaining classes. I want to make sure they give the party abilities that won't be gamebreakers but that players can still get excited about.

I'm trying to put together an adventure for tomorrow, and, much to my dismay, there aren't even any placeholder guides for this in the core rulebook. I've been looking at the sample NPCs they have in the first adventure path and the core rulebook (like the CR 20 goblin), but I can't figure out how they're calculating a lot of things, especially hp.

For example, there is one npc who is a CR 2 operative. Okay, cool, she seems to have most abilities that a level 2 operative would, so I can work with that. Her attack bonuses seem to be in line with what you'd expect from a level 2 operative when her ability bonuses are figured in, but then I see she's got 23 hp. And then the CR 20 goblin technomancer from the core rulebook has 395. I've been trying to reverse engineer what formula they're using, and I can't figure it out. If we took all the hp and sp bonuses from class and race, the CR operative's hp is several points lower than it otherwise would be, while the goblin's is over 100 points higher.

Wondered what other people were doing till alien archive hits?

I'm probably going to be wrapping up a shadowrun game in a couple of months, and when it's finished, I want to run either a swashbuckling game (with Freeport) or a western. Problem is that I do not currently have any good systems or setting for a western RPG, and I was wondering what your suggestions for this might be? I freaking love Cold Steel Reign, for anyone who is familiar, and would like to evoke something similar, but all my books for it are back in the US, and the system was never really completed.

Edit: Would prefer something that I could find affordably either here as a PDF or on Drive-thru-rpg, since I'm living in China and shipping is kinda tricky.

So I had this game a while back (it's over now) where Tsuto had survived Burnt Offerings. One PC in particular made a lifelong enemy of him by taunting him with Nualia's severed head, so I had him escape from his prison convey en route to Magnimaar and was planning on having him become a recurring villain in the AP. I'm gonna be starting a new RoTRL game soon and still like the idea, so how can I preserve Tsuto for a fresh party, and how would you suggest bringing him back?

I still think the idea of him swearing vengeance for Nualia's death makes sense - I just need to make him a little less "my love will raise me" in his attitudes towards retreat or surrender. I figure that he might stalk the party and then try to ambush them later when they're already in deep s~$%, but not sure where. Maybe the Graul farm? Or maybe he shows up with some hired Sczarni thugs?

If he can survive a second run-in with the PCs, I want him to somehow fall in with Karzoug and start working for him for a chance to get back at the PCs. I have this image where he shows up for a final fight magically enhanced, maybe bleeding with fresh runic tattoos, but I can't find a template that would work for this. Any suggestions?

I'm watching one of those Planet Earth documentary series as I read over my Pathfinder library, and though I realize how unfeasible it would be, would kill for some sort of mock documentary series that examines the world of Golarian in the same style. Who else would pay to see something like this?

The Pathfinder SRD says that a skald's raging song lasts "for that ally's turn or until the song ends," and my GM is insisting that this means they gain no benefit from the song when it is NOT that turn, meaning that they gain no benefit from the boosted will save or the effects of the extra con (increased fort saves, hit points), or things like the superstition power.

I am inclined to disagree, as it specifically says "allies gain a bonus to will saves" and the very fact of Greater Skald's Vigor's existence. and he says that for it to work that way, I need to show him something concrete. Has there been any clarification on this? Can someone show me where?

EDIT: Also, can I grant powers I have gained from the Extra Rage Power feat to my allies?

So I'm starting to get bored of my skald, and thinking about talking to talking to the GM about arranging for his heroic death so I can bring in something new. I'm not totally sure what the party needs, though.

Generally speaking, I like to feel like I'm contributing in a meaningful way, and I don't really anymore. My raging song is nice, but we're level 10 and everyone's base proficiency is getting so high that my buffs start to feel like icing on the cake. I certainly have the lowest damage in the party.

More than that, I've always been a fan of trickster characters, and I do like to offer some sort of support, whether it's battlefield control, healing, or crazy buffs.

The current party is....
A barbarian/alchemist. Just focused on hitting stuff as hard as he can with his axe, and does it pretty well.

An investigator/monk. Dude has a crazy AC, and enlarges for some impressive flurries.

An arcanist. Occultist archtype. Summons a lot and is otherwise your typical arcane spellcaster.

A slayer. Dual-wields kukris. Likes to sneak and get crits.

This all in mind, what would you add to the party to both have a good time and round out the holes?

I'm going to be starting up a Razor Coast game tomorrow with 4 players, and I don't want to just drop them all off in Port Shaw and say "Alright guys, go nuts." This approach has been historically bad with this group, so I want a short preliminary adventure to get the party together, and maybe introduce them to some of the factions they are going to meet once they arrive in the city.

I'm moving Port Shaw to Golarion, and saying it's a former holding of Cheliax on the far side of the Eye of Abendego. PCs are all passengers aboard a merchant ship that stopped and took on a few passengers in Magnimar, Westcrown and Absalom, and now is on the way back. Noteworthy crew and passengers on the ship include a half-Tullita sorcerer who handles the ship's arcane needs, a few dragoons guarding a mysterious shipment (no clue what it is), and Shakes Montgomery, who is earning some extra coin as a laborer on this voyage.

So I got a setup, but I'm not sure where to go from here. Does anyone have any suggestions on a short prelude adventure, preferably one that makes sure they will not be leaving the port again on this same ship?

Exactly what the thread says. What are usually the best rage powers for a skald? I will be joining a very small 6th level group soon, that currently only contains an Investigator 4/Arcanist 2 and a Barbarian 6. A fourth guy might be joining, but I'm not sure what he would be playing I'm leaning strongly towards Reckless Abandon right now, since it will help me with my own power attack (and I'm guessing the barbarian will appreciate it as well), and for my other, I'm currently trying to decide between Good for What Ails You (APG) and Auspicious Mark (Ultimate Combat). The latter seems like it would be more useful for a party, but do you think I'd burn through my rounds of raging song too fast? Are there any other powers I should be considering with this party?

So I started this game a couple weeks back, and my PCs are hitting the Grey Garrison this weekend. So far, the adventure as written has been really easy, so I'm tweaking a lot of stats and combining a few encounters to simultaneously result in fewer encounters and more challenging ones (for example, the PCs will be fighting the oracle boss and the fiendish minotaur at the same time, with the oracle lowered to level 6 and tweaked to be more supportive). In any case, the adventure has already been pretty easy for my PCs, and I've heard it just gets easier after Mythic. I don't care about tweaking stuff - in fact, I welcome the chance to put a personal touch on the AP (and I'm going to be rewriting book four entirely to have the PCs going to Avernus instead of the Midnight Isles and allying with Barbatos). What have the biggest pitfalls of this AP and mythic PCs been?

In case it matters, here is the party I am working with...
- Paladin. Uses a greatsword (Radiance was changed to a greatsword in this AP). Player doesn't have the strongest system mastery. I am giving her some build advice, but not totally railroading her character.
- Investigator. Not sure what to expect from this guy. He understand the system better than most of my players, but likes to play jacks of all trades, and will probably end up spreading himself kind of thin. He also has a tendency to find a specific gimmick to exploit that makes him formidable, but usually not game-breaking. Shooting for Trickster
- Wizard, specialized in abjuration, with evocation and necromancy as disabled schools. Also likes conjuration and illusion. This guy probably has the strongest system mastery, and is usually the one I need to watch out for. He pretty much always plays a wizard, and likes to load up on save-or-suck spells and battlefield control. Obviously aiming for archmage.
- Inquisitor. This guy seems to know what he's doing, more or less. I'm not entirely sure what he's going for, but so far he's been competently versatile.
- Ranger. Favored enemy is demons, of course. Going for archery. This guy is a veteran player, but still tends to rely on more system savvy players for build advice. He's had hilariously bad luck with his attack rolls so far.

We are also using a handful of house rules. The biggest potential game changers is probably that we're using the Wounds/Vigor system from ultimate combat, as well as the expanded rules for called shots. I've tweaked a couple feats, most notably weapon finesse (the common house rule that weapons are finessable without the feat. In this game, the feat lets you use int bonus for damage, but it counts as precision damage) and precise shot (the feat doesn't exist. It's benefits apply within 30 ft if you have point blank shot, and at all ranges if you have far shot).

Finally, we're blowing through it a little faster than usual. We've cut out xp and PCs are just leveling at specific points. As such, I'm cutting out most combat encounters that aren't related to the narrative and don't include appreciable loot.

I've been getting more interested in the design element of Pathfinder recently, and am interested in taking a rookie crack at statting up the Archdevils. Before I go ahead with this, I was wondering if we had anything canonical (or close to it) mentioning their power relative to one-another? Historically, the level of hell they rule over has not been a good indicator of CR (which I like), so if there has been nothing official that states or implies their power levels, what would your opinions be?

For my own part, I am reading Belial and Mammon as pretty far down the rung. Geryon might be down their with them, or maybe a little higher.
Moloch, to me, seems somewhere in the mid or high range, but certainly not top dog. Dispater and Baalzebul seem like they'd both be CR 29 or 30 to me, and I get the impression that Mephistophelese is definitely up there. I love Barbatos, but I cannot for the life of me begin to guess at where he'd stand here. Thoughts?

First, let me say how much I love this AP. It just screams "cool" at every turn, and even if there a bit controversial writing (looking at you, Iomedae) most GMs should easily be able to alter those elements to better suit their tastes and those of their players. However, there is one for me that requires a bit more work, and I was wondering the boards might be able to offer any advice.

I hate Nocticula. Absolutely hate her. I think rivalry between demon lords can be pretty cool, but her whole "coyly helping the PCs for vague reasons" thing just seems so contrived, ESPECIALLY the whole redemption of a demon lord thing. Don't get me wrong here, I probably like the idea of redemption almost as much as Mikaze, but the way that Nocticula's potential redemption is set up just reads to me like she woke up one day and thought to herself "I think I'd like to be chaotic neutral for a change." Then there's the whole "she wants to become a deity of out outcasts, artists and midnight. I don't like the idea that a demigod can decide that being a demon lord just isn't working out for them, so maybe they'll try their hand at something else. I'm sure that's not how it's meant to come off, but as-written, the whole thing seems way to easy for her. Also, her name and appearance make her seem more like she belongs in a gentlemen's bar than ruling an abyssal realm.

So when I run this game, I want to move the Nahyndrian crystals to Hell, either into Avernus or Dis, and then either Barbados or Dispater becomes the party's potential fiendish ally. I want to add in a lot of desperate devil worship within the ranks of the crusaders earlier on, and say that the archfiend has so far allowed the demonic forces to harvest these crystals (pretending not to notice) precisely because the resulting conflict on the material plane steers desperate souls towards them. But now things are heating up, and they need those souls. They need mortals to live their lives so they can be corrupted, and they don't want everything swallowed by the worldwound. So they MIGHT help the party at this point.

I haven't gone through the 4th book in super excruciating detail, so I guess I am wondering how much of a rewrite this would be. Can I just reskin most of the encounters, or would I have to rewrite most of the adventure? I suppose I would have to stat up an archdevil as well, eh?

The sun rides high in the sky, its heat sending ripples through the air and painting the wave with glimmering light. To say the morning is hot would be an understatement.

The Tide district of Port Shaw, more commonly called simply "Tide," is where ships make weigh their ancors. Cargo is loaded and unload, and many passengers disembark, whether to wind loose for a night before returning to their vessel or to start a new life in the Razor. Others board ships for distant ports, and a few don't care where they're going, as long as it's away from here. Beyond that, Tide's roads are filled with inns, taverns, brothels, and anything else that sells services a sailor might need for the night, and no small number of merchants have set up shop here. Perhaps they sell wares of special concern to those coming and going, or maybe the hustle and bustle of Tide sends a great number of patrons their way than they would see in Bawd or Silk.

Whatever they may be, today you find yourself with reasons to be in Tide. All along the docks, fishmongers cry their catch, competing for patrons as they might for their last breath. Many distinguish themselves from the general din by mastering lilting calls, melodies, or clever rhymes. Casks of whale oil roll down gangplanks to the waiting arms of muscled laborers. Riding on broad backs, they find their way to any of numerous ships chandlers. Within the chandlers all manner of goods are for sale: oil and baleen, whaling and fishing supplies, rations of dried meat, casks of water, crates of oranges, the latest fashions from far off Akados, the finest black powder weapons from the smithies of the Stone Heart Mountains, and freshly carved ice from the Face of the Frozen God, used to cool a bottle of rare sylvan wine on this blistering summer day.

Ostensibly to ensure the safety of such wares, Municipal Dragoons from Fort Stormshield patrol the docks in number. Fishmongers and workers quickly move aside to let the blue-coated soldiers pass. While a greased palm can coax them to look the other way, they tolerate no disrespect and are known to punish offenders with extreme prejudice. The wide berth given to them by local merchants lends credence to their reputation. If rumors are true, the Commandant can hang miscreants on a whim.

Nevertheless, amongst the disorder, three men in patchwork rags strut like beggar-kings through a maze of cabbage-laden crates left to rot in the sun. Dirt and blood cling to the three, who appear to the novice eye as little more than footpads, but a sharper glance reveals black-handled daggers sheathed at their waists and the flash of fine boiled leather beneath their tattered shrouds of stitched muslin. A rat the size of a mastiff slinks along the shaded crate-tops nearby, scampering behind the men like a child struggling to keep up with its family.

And they are not even on the lowest rung of society in Tide, for not ten yards away from them a dark-skinned Tulita man stands like a statue shadowed by lopsided crates of clay flasks stacked carelessly on a pallet. Between his feet lie a clutch of broken eggs, the yolk running down into the mud below, and pooling around his bare feet like thick urine. His eyes, clouded by some potent narcotic, stare inland towards his ancestral home, where foreign-owned plantations roll towards the mountains. Tear begin to roll down his face and wet his tunic, probably giving the garment the first washing it has seen in weeks.

And out behind him, beyond the cresting waves, the green-blue Razor Sea extends to the horizon. The faint outlines of many mysterious isles lies barely visible, ghostly hints of dreams or nightmares. Who does not wonder over what treasures or terrors await on those faded brushstrokes of grey and brown at the edge of the sea's vast canvas? The ocean lies unsettlingly still. A thick blanket of warm air hangs above the shimmering surface of the Razor. It is the unmistakable calm before a great storm.

Alright guys, putting the gameplay post up in a minute here. Since we have one character, I believe (Ilorian) who is coming into the Razor from elsewhere as the game begins, we'll be starting in the Tide District, on the docks. There is presumably reason for anyone to be there, and a lot tends to happen there. As no one has said anything yet, we are going to assume that you are all currently strangers.

Please keep in mind that this adventure path is far more open ended than most published game. There are few rails here, and the story unfolding for you guys counts on PC action. The earliest parts of the game may seem largely inconsequential, but if something interests you, act on it. The more interest you show, the more you will get of the same flavor, and you will pull yourself towards certain story arcs. Without further ado, ask any questions and make any comments here, and I will get started on the gameplay thread.

Well gentlemen, I know that given my poor track record of sustaining campaigns on these forums probably means my name as a GM is worth roughly mud right now, but what the hell. It's that time of year when I have enough free time and enough unsated Pathfinder cravings that I start up a recruitment thread and pray that there are enough players willing to give me a fifth(?) chance, or enough that are just desperate enough to apply.

In all seriousness, though, I'm really hankering for some Razor Coast, and I've been taking my tabletops a bit more seriously lately. I've just started running an RL Razor Coast campaign, but I've got two problems.
1) I'm out of this area in about 6 months, and I'm worried we might not get to finish it. I'm rushing it and would love a chance to see the whole thing played through naturally.
2) I want to see how another group moves through the game. Replay value ftw, right?

Anyways, this here is the recruitment thread for such a game. I'm looking for 5-6 players, and recruitment will be open for 3 days to 1 week, depending on how many applicants we get (I usually see these fill up fast these days) I'll let everyone know 24 hours in advance when recruitment is closing, though.

So, character creation guidelines....

20 point buy with two traits. All classes from the Core Rulebook are allowed, as are all classes from the APG and the Gunslinger. No ninjas or samurai, please. Classes from the Advanced Classes Guide Playtest are fair game, but you . Clerics and Inquisitors MUwill have to update your character when the actual thing comes outST follow a deity.

PCs begin at 5th level and with 10,500gp to spend on gear. No single item can be worth more than 4,000gp

Allowed sourcebooks are the Core Rulebook, the Advanced Player's Guide, Advanced Races Guide (for feats, archtypes, and alternative race traits only), Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, and the Freebooter's Guide (the player companion to Razor Coast)

I have a few house rules, which I am putting up in Campaign Info, along with essential info for the setting (human ethnicities, gods, altered prices on firearms)

I'd like to get players that can commit to one post per day. Combat will NOT use maps, since I'm in china and can't access most of the popular sites and apps for mapping, so be prepared for some visualization. I will roll initiatives for people when combat breaks out, and if your turn is up and you go more than 16 hours without posting, I will probably co-opt your character for that round in what I deem to be the most effective or realistic way I can.

I'd like to see some cool backstories for characters (you should decide whether you are native to razor coast - see campaign info for help on this) or if you're coming in from elsewhere in the world (in which case most of your backstory will stay in the past, but we get to do some pretty fun exposition). If you want to add in a paragraph or two of in-game text to give me an idea of how you act in game, that's awesome, but please DO NOT clutter the thread by roleplaying amongst yourselves. I feel it creates an unnecessarily competitive atmosphere that quickly degenerates into exclusive cliques.

As far as BASIC campaign info goes, this is a swashbuckling campaign of high fantasy set in what's basically Polynesia with colonialist and Carribean flavor. It's also highly sandboxy. There are several plots you may follow, and you definitely won't be able to take advantage of all of them, so react to what interests you, and dismiss what doesn't. Do it early. It gives me an idea of which arcs and NPCs to include later in the game. Because the campaign is highly site-based (you are coming into Port Shaw and spend basically the whole campaign there) pretty much everyone you meet is going to be recurring unless you or someone else kills them, so if you take an interest in the people that populate the Razor Coast, there will be consequences, some good, some bad.

I keep seeing the stat blocks for cities pop in in various APs, but I don't really know what they mean. I have looked through the Core Rulebook, the Gamemastery Guide, and Ultimate Campaign for the rules on these things, but can't seem to find them anywhere. Can someone please give me the product and page number where the system is detailed?

For years now, Aroden is mentioned as having been a wizard, and as far as I know, every time we see anything approaching crunch for him, it's suggested that he was a single class wizard, in spite of his preference to rock the sword and board. In an earlier thread, JJ said that he was a wizard that used a special type of magic that took advantage of a sword and shield. Alright, not quite my cup of tea, but I guess I'll swallow that.

Thing is, we've been getting more and more art of Aroden lately, and whether he's ready to plant a blow firmly upon Deskari's noggin or he's just swinging his burning sword towards the reader in visual soliloquy, most of the art we have of him is pretty much him using his sword like anyone else would.

Now I'm not saying that he doesn't seem like a wizard - we have plenty of lore to support his mastery of all things arcane. To me though, he comes across as someone who was a very accomplished spellcaster and a very accomplished warrior, and any way you slice it, that sounds like an Eldritch Knight to me.

As mentioned, JJ said that he is a wizard who found a way to use a sword with his magic, but if that means (as artwork would suggest) that he basically used a sword along with his magic, well, isn't that pretty much exactly what the EK is supposed to represent - a spellcaster who has also learned how use weapons?

So the name "Five Storms" pretty clearly implies that there should be five of these guys, right? I'm going through the books and I'm only finding four of them - Kikonu (book 1), Kimandatsu (book 2), Munasukara (book 4), and Anamurumon (book 6). At first I thought that perhaps the Jade Regent was supposed to be the fifth, but the lore seems to imply that they were the Five Storms well before they were imprisoned in the House of Withered Blossoms, and the Regent definitely wasn't in there with them. Is there something I'm missing here?

So here's what's up. I'm planning out a campaign in the River Kingdoms in which a Demon Lord has been placing minions (mostly Invidiaks) in the courts of various River Kingdoms in order to establish cults and sow instability, with a mythic glabrezu orchastrating things from Daggermark. Their ultimate goal is to summon enough demons into the River Kingdoms and exploit the instability to quickly conquer the land and then take advantage of the weakened planar boundaries to attune the arches in Sevenarches to the Abyss, effectively creating a second Worldwound. The PCs, naturally, are going to try to stop this.

My question is, which of the Demon Lords would be most likely to try something like this, and would be the coolest to use in a long-term game? (Rule of Cool trumps all, of course). For the sake of presentation to my players, who are newish, I want a demon lord who is clearly demonic, has a sizable presence on Golarion's surface, and has a diverse sphere of interest and minions. So far I've been considering Abraxas, Nocticula, or Haagenti. Thoughts?

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but if it has, I haven't been able to find it. Even though UM's Word Casting system is less powerful than the standard casting system, would implementing it universally in a game bring casters closer to martials in power level?

Just picked up this product, along with the supplements, and it's kind of blown my soul. I've been pretty absent from these boards for a while, but it got me thinking about returning to PbP, especially given that I don't have much in the way of a regular play group going on over here. My question is, given my poor track record for sticking with PBPs (just check my past posts, folks!), and given a few house rules (I shall post them later, if there is interest), would anyone be interested in playing in a Razor Coast PBP here? I'm spending the next few days reading the book cover to cover. After I've done that, I'll look at how this thread has progressed, and possibly try to start something up.

Not 100% certain if this is the right forum for this, but it seemed the closest. In any case, I'm thinking of starting up a psionics heavy game with Psionics Unleashed and Psionics Expanded, and given that the wilder and the vitalist classes both seem to be heavily reliant on manifesting, I was wondering why they had so few powers known? Would it be unbalancing to increase them by a bit? Has anyone who's played either of these classes ever had an issue with this?

I'm casting Razmir as the BBEG for a campaign I've just started, and even though Inner Sea Magic pegs him as a 19th level wizard, I'm going to run with a suggestion I saw on these boards a while back and cast him as a level 20 sorcerer with the Celestial bloodline, giving him sort of a divne feel. In any case, I'm trying to decide on his spell list, and could really use some help figuring out what this guy would have. The way I figure it, if he wants to pass himself off as a god, he needs spells that can represent the following...

Razmir is a provider. He must be able to demonstrate this to his faithful, since it's a big part of his relgions. I want him to have a few spells that can create something out of nothing. With a wave of his hand, he should be able to generate wealth or construct a tower.

Razmir is glorious. He needs to be able to look impressive, and to be able to give major displays of power. He needs a few spells that simply look impressive, or that have big, impressive effects that can affect a wide area.

Razmir is powerful. This guy can mess up infidels. I feel like he should have a few flashy attack spells that can level a small structure or a band of low-level adenvturers. Ties in closely to the previous point.

Razmir is divine. Razmir has the heavens on his side! I want to play up his celestial heritage and give him a way to summon idyllic-looking outsiders that scream "holy." He also needs to be able to keep them quiet on his true nature while they're working for him.

Razmir can turn a city to ash in a single night. I want to make sure to address this one, because it's a large part of his history. Pathfinder does not have a description for the "Zimbor" spell, so I want to account for how he pulled this off.

Any suggestions?

So I'm about to start a kingmaker game for a couple of my guys (only two of them, using gestalt characters), but I'm only planning on using the first two books. I'm looking for some help on how to expand it from that point. Here's a rough campaign outline so far...

Book one is going to be run almost as-written, save that the hermit Bokken is going to be replaced by a dwarven wizard with a bit of political savvy. My players are a little new, but this is the game I want. This guy will make items for them, and offer them political advice when they want it.

Book 2 is, once again, almost the same - mostly about the PCs developing their kingdom. I'm replacing the bard, however, with a priest of Razmir who's come to convert the populace. The party doesn't know this yet, but he's supposed to be making a beachhead for a later invasion. I'm toying with the notion of having them find an artifact in this adventure (especially one Razmir would want), but I'm not sure exactly what I could give them that could help drive the story and give them a bump in power without breaking the game.

After book 2, it gets complicated. I'm scrapping the whole plotline with Nyrissia, and instead, the PCs are going to be encouraged to attend a meeting of lords in Daggermark, as their kingdom is growing large enough to at least merit their presence. Assuming they attend the meeting, they will hear reports that the activity of Razmir's faithful has been increasing, and they look to be getting ready to expand again. All of the river lords are asked to begin shoring up their defenses and to be ready to put aside petty grievances and march to war should Razmiran invade.

PCs get some time to deal with that as they will. Need some filler here.

Sure enough, Razmiran invades the River Kingdoms, using sleeper agents to swarm over Lambreth. PCs are called upon to participate in the war, but at the same time in Brevoy, Issia gets wind of what Restov is up to and starts cracking down. The Swordlords openly rebel in response, and cash in all favors, calling on the PCs to aid them. So now the players have to choose which war they want to fight, and how, or they might use the opportunity to hunker down and build up their own holdings.

I could really use some input on, like, anything. Any ideas on specific adventure sites, on arcs that could replace one of the Kingmaker books, other plot elements I'll need to consider, or where to go after the wars break out?

I've been jotting down all of my house rules lately, and in general trying to tweak the game for the needs of my group with giving the system a complete overhaul. I don't want to gut any classes, nor am I driven to hit upon the perfect solution for caster/martial disparity (which I don't think is as bad as many believe), but I do feel it could be improved upon a little. Had an idea that, hopefully, will take a little bit of wind out of the higher levels spells without gimping casters early on, and was wondering what the community thought about it.

It's pretty simple - just altering casting time of RAW based on spell level. 1st-3rd level spells are unchanged. 4th-6th level spells have their casting times increased to a full-round action, if they aren't higher already (a special exception to the usual rules, Quicken Spell still makes these a free action). 7th-9th level spells have their casting times increased to 1 round, and can never be quickened.

Thoughts?

I feel we've got this guideline in spellcasting stats that tells us that arcane spellcasters use intelligence, divine spellcasters use wisdom, and spontaneous spellcasters use charisma. I think this is largely a relic of earlier editions, where we had 2 spellcasting classes (or at least spellcasting archtypes), one that always used int and one that always used wisdom, and then we got the sorcerer in 3rd edition. In any case, I was thinking about tweaking these classes a little, and changing their primary casting attribute to reflect the flavor of the class as opposed to the mechanics of it. I just have two questions for the community

1) Would this be relatively balanced?

3) Can you help me settle on appropriate stats for a few classes?

Here's my guideline for determining which stats to assign to which classes...

Intelligence is used when a caster's competence comes from their ability to understand a formula or grasp relatively academic concepts.

Wisdom is used by casters who depend on an understanding and interpretation of a philosophy or abstract power.

Charisma is used when a caster depends on force of will or strength of conviction.

Keeping these guidelines in mind, here's what I've got so far. I confess, I may be taking a few liberties with flavor. I'm not saying everyone needs to go along with it, this is just how I interpret them in my campaign.

Wizard: Intelligence. No change here. Wizards deconstruct magic and approach it from a highly academic perspective.

Magus: Intelligence. For the same reason as wizards.

Alchemist: Intelligence. They're "casting" is based entirely on formulae, equations, and ratios regarding ingredients.

Summoner: Intelligence. Their magic is tied to their understanding of a relationship of the planes of the Great Beyond, and of the outsiders who reside there. I see them as being astrologists and numerologists.

Cleric: Charisma. I want to play up that even though they must serve a god, the strength of their spells is fueled by the strength of their faith and conviction. Channeling energy still uses Cha, and the daily uses of their domain powers uses Wis, depending on a deeper understanding of a specific facet of their deity.

Paladin: Charisma. Fueled by conviction, even if they don't follow a deity.

Druid: Wisdom. The stronger their understanding of the natural world, the stronger their connection to it grows. They might develop different outlooks or philosophies regarding nature, but rarely are these academic in nature.

Ranger: Wisdom. For the same reason as the druid.

Sorcerer: Charisma. Their power is a manifestation of will and an understanding of themselves.

Oracle: Wisdom. Their power depends on their ability to understand and interpret their mystery. Revelations are also based off of wisdom.

I'm not entirely sure about the Witch, Bard, or Inquisitor. I'm leaning towards Wisdom for the witch (a similar change would also be made to their hexes), since I feel like their magic is based on folk wisdom rather than academic studies. Inquisitors and bards present me with a predicament of balance, because I'd LIKE to change inquisitors to Cha for the same reasons as a cleric, and I'd like to make Bards int-based casters (their magic, as in earlier editions, is just something they pick up haphazardly and learn as they go, not necessarily an inborn ability), but both of those classes have a number of mechanics that are tied to Wis and Cha respectively, and I feel like making them more MAD would be an issue.

Thoughts?

If you're using a lot of printed materials (like an AP or somesuch), it's going to be very error prone.

The tricky thing it is that you have the same terms in the source as well as the destination. If you made up all new terms, it would be less error prone.

Something like:
10 brass = 1 copper
10 pennies = 1 silver
10 mithrils = 1 gold
10 gil = 1 platinum

That way, if you see an "old" word (or even 'say' an old word in your mind), you'll know that it's from the old system, and need to be converted. But if you hear a new word, you'll know it's converted.

Otherwise, you run into a situation where you get the phrase "2d6 gold" in your head, and you don't know if it's pre-converted or post-converted.

---

Otherwise, potato potato, it doesn't make any difference.

Psionics is an exotic "other." The question is what type of other? Your player is saying that, in a vacuum of context, that is sci-fi. So give him something else.

In my games, psionics is the magic of the Orient. It's filled with Buddhist or Hindu imagery, and practitioners often look like gurus or yogis. That's my psionics, and it has its crystals and whatnot, but it's definitely not scifi. I've given it a thing to be.

You've got to give it a thing to be.

As a GM with a family, I finally have come to believe rules bloat is a real thing.

Back in college, or before I had kids, as a GM, I thought it was all fun and dandy and I was willing to stay on top of things.

And even now, when sitting in the player's chair, I like to buy books and try out new things.

But as a GM who has reached his 30s and sleeps less than 6 hours a night, and I've got my one night out a week with the guys, when a player or a published module says "I want to use weird thing X now", my only response is "ugh, I don't have time for this." Finding time to prep for game is hard enough. Staying up to speed on the latest whiz-bang and all the errata and tiering and forum-opinions on it (that my players will be leveraging) is a bridge too far at this point in my gaming life. I love the game, but I am sour on the meta-game.

Keep the modules coming. Keep the setting books coming. But please, for the love of sanity, stop publishing rules, and stop using them in your modules and setting. It really does cause GMs like me to refuse the run the game, and turn to other systems that are inherently self-limiting by virtue of fewer rule books.

- my 2 cents

Whew. What an adventure path!

I'm currently GMing this beast, right now we're deep into book 4, but I've been reading along and hungrily eating up these issues as they come out. And now it's over!

This is truly the best adventure path that I've had the pleasure of running or playing. (My #2 would be Kingmaker, my #3 is Rise of the Runelords, and #s 4&5 are a tossup between Carrion Crown and Razor Coast, if anyone's curious.)

I know that a lot of people want to wait for an entire AP to be out before they run it (and for good reason, I'm usually like that) but now it's out! So anyone who was holding back, check this sucker out. It's gloriously complex, and not for the faint of heart, but for an experienced group, with an experienced GM ... Wow. Tremendous payoff.

Oh, and, from what I've read of this particular issue being advertised here: it looks like it really rocks. It is truly reality-shaking epic, in the finest sense of the word.

I'm totally sold-out for Zeitgeist. :-p

Zeitgeist adventure path is super-duper cohesive and tells a very tight narrative, complete with recurring NPCs, and plot threads that mature over multiple adventures. If you get the whole thing, goes all the way up to level 20.

http://paizo.com/products/btpy99xp?ZEITGEIST-The-Gears-of-Revolution-Act-On e-The-Investigation-Begins

It's 3PP, but Paizo peeps have contributed to different parts of it (e.g. Liz Courts did adv #11).

I'm running it now for my home group, and I strongly recommend it.

Whew, it's taken us a long time, but last night, the blooms finally started to erupt across the kingdom.

The instigating incident was to cast a spell to grant the queen, an elf named Gloss Nim (look it up in Sindarin), the grace of ultimate beauty. Suddenly and unexpectedly, reflective surfaces nearby the queen warped and distorted, growing eyes to stare at her. A deeply jealous Nyrissa, watching from her Mirror On the Wall, unleashed her plan to consume the Stolen Lands.

The high priestess of Pharasma saw a vision of various blooms erupting through a map of the kingdom, and at the end of a month, the vines grabbed the map, tearing a hole out of the middle of it. (It allowed me to make sure the metagame rules and stakes were clear to the players as well as the characters.)

Meanwhile, the king, who had been imprisoned as a political prisoner of the Queen of Air and Darkness for the past three IG years (one OOG year), finally broke free as the Shadow Courts began to dissolve and be absorbed by the Fable. Falling through the clouds, he lands upon his wyvern and soars out to save the kingdom.

Meanwhile, the court magician (alt character of the player who also runs the aforementioned imprisoned king) notices a gigantic planar earthquake on his magical richter device while he's in the middle of teaching a class at the academy of magical arts.

I narrated back-and-forth cutting between the above vignettes while playing the opening song in Carmina Burana. A little overdone, but it got things started with a bang, and let the players know that things were about the get real.

...

We started playing this campaign on May 20th, 2010. Now, almost exactly five years later, the endgame is in sight. (Caveat: only four-and-a-half years of playing; had to take a 6mo break in 2014 for paternity leave.) It's been a long road, and now it's nearing the end. At the pace we play, I estimate wrapping up around Thanksgiving.

I decided to play up the blooms as of Biblical proportions. The whirlpool was 10 miles across, and I described the water elementals as being 5 stories tall with arms as long and thick as semitrucks. The mandoraga swarm was so rapid and self-replicating (inspired by swarms of locusts), that the only recourse was to hire out Corax's entire lumber company to secure a burnline, then use the mages to burn down two entire hexes of forest/farmland. That's 300 square miles! The Horned Hunter would go into small towns, slaughter 20% of the population, and use their corpses to make letters to spell out a mocking challenge to the king. We just finished up the Nightmare Rook (each PC jumped into a dream, and we ran them in parallel: some dreams were turning pretty deadly, but as soon as one PC scared the raven off, everyone work up). Now we're halfway through the month of blooms. The PCs believe that Nyrissa is sending the blooms in order to increase Briar's sharpness, so they are considering trying to dull the weapon or otherwise keep it away from the blooms so that doesn't happen any more. We'll see what comes next!

I made this somewhat rambling post because I don't see a whole lot of "book 6" posts on the forum, and just wanted to chip in and let people know that some groups do eventually make it this far. :-) It's a pretty fun romp!

In Ethiopian sacred art, which has a formal ecclesiastical foundation going back over a millennia, they usually depict Jesus with dark skin and other classic/stereotypical African facial features.

Virgin with Child

the washing of the disciples feet

Just sayin'

Yes, I did this quite thoroughly over the last year.

I kicked off the events similar to how it is presented in that module. Shadow Fey showed up to their capital city, acting like they had taken over, etc. Did the whole conflict with the Hidden Ambassador, etc.

Then they accessed the courts via the lantern ritual: which is to say, I put the Courts in another dimension.

Lots of fun was had at the courts. My players *loved* the ability to will people out of existence that were below them in rank. They climbed the ladders of prestige, going through Winter Court, then Summer Court, did the feast, the hunt for the firebird, the full nine yards. It was great! I did severely reduce the hedgemaze and moonlit tower parts though, as I had a different use for the King. (see below)

What it also gave me the opportunity to do was create some good, findable backstory for Nyrissa. I took a cue from Akyshigal's (the roachlord) agenda. I said that in the past, Nyrissa was a courtier that rose up the ranks of the courts, and eventually caught the eye of the Moonlit King. The King was deeply in love with her, and was prepared to divorce the Queen and marry Nyrissa instead. This, of course, drove the Queen to great jealousy, and it was *she* who ripped out Nyrissa's capacity for love and cast it into the material world (as Briar).

So while the PCs are rising up the ranks of the Shadow Courts, they can learn about "the last courtesan of the King" and otherwise get to know Nyrissa ahead of time. At least, that's how I used it.

What's your goal with including the mod?

I'm frustrated by the overarching plot in this one. It's very "Sorry Mario, your princess is in another castle!"

I'm totally fine with a trail of breadcrumbs. Going up the lieutenant hierarchy towards the archvillian is fine to do. (Which is what books 1&2 did.) But,

That's not really a comment on the value of this issue as a standalone, just how it fits into the whole. Though it's also starting to suffer from Carrion Crown's lack of recurring NPCs or locations. Not sure what to do about that.

Remember that by default, your character believes everything around him. He believes there is a floor, so he walks across it. He believes there's an orc in front of him, so he attacks it. Etc.

Simply saying "I disbelieve" without any associated action doesn't do anything. (i.e. doesn't give you a saving throw to disbelieve) You have to interact with the object. And you have to interact with it like you believe it doesn't exist.

So if you disbelieve a wall, that means you try to walk through it, which, if it's real, will cause you to bump your head and maybe tweak your nose.

If you disbelieve an orc, and thus try to wave your hand through it, and the orc happens to be real, the orc clearly deserves an AoO against you for dropping your guard like that.

Another extension: if an archer is shooting arrows at you, and you try to dodge (i.e. add your Dex bonus to AC), then you are believing in those arrows. If you willingly let an arrow hit you in the chest, then are you disbelieving it. (Via interaction.)

So that's why you can't (or at least shouldn't) say "I disbelieve everything." Because then you'd bump into a bunch of walls and then get killed from not dodging any monsters.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Great book. I didn't really process beforehand how big it was going to be. Rivals the Core. That caught me by surprise.

I was always looking for good PF replacement to 3.5's Spell Compendium. This isn't it. At all. This book has dreamt so much bigger, and gone so much further. It was the gift I didn't know to ask for.

I really enjoy the art and overall feel of the tome. It was a pleasure to flip through and explore in a non-linear fashion.

(A bit of negative feedback though: I find the tables/summaries pretty hard to skim; I would have appreciated more of a font difference between headers and tablevalues, and slightly more generous indentation.)

But content is king, and I am very impressed. The sense of arbitrary whimsy is exactly where I'd want it to be. It's not at all "cookie cutter" and magic feels like it should. Most importantly, many spells paint a strong visual picture so you "get" how the magic is unfurling in your mind's eye. That's huge for immersion, and something I have been seeing increasingly lost elsewhere in gaming.

I think I just accidentally wrote a review. *shrug* Anyway, very happy with being a backer on this one.

Give them more to work with. You presented three options (the genie, the princess, and the dragon) which all look the same. Don't let them look the same. Because if there are truly the same, there's no decision-making even needed.

Make one of them the "right" answer, but don't punish them much for picking the "wrong" answer. Talk about how the dragon is shoring up resources for a larger assault, and if he's not stopped soon, other towns will suffer. Then they have to decide: deal with the dragon *now*, or get the genie's help first? That's a more meaningful decision.

Alternatively, work it into their backstory. I know what you're thinking: they don't have one. That's fine: they sound like the type that would be okay with you dictating it on the fly. Let them know that the princess is a cousin of theirs, and give them a memory about a time they met her at a family reunion. Or tell another player how his uncle died trying to get the lamp: and it would restore honor to his house if the lamp could be reclaimed. Keep it simple, so the player can go "rar! my lost honor!", the roleplay might be simplistic, but it's starting in the sort of small-sized bits they can be comfortable with.

Hope that helps.

Just a theory: Perhaps the dropoff in difficult is an illusion, and perhaps all the AP volumes are indeed built to the same difficulty, and built with the "average group" in mind.

However, perhaps there's a strong correlation between "experienced players" and "persistent players", whereby a majority of players reaching book 6 happen to be the experienced ones.

Anecdotally, many low-experience players I know would quit a campaign if there was a TPK, and proceed to kick off a new one. If this bears through for many groups, then the only ones playing in the endgame are the players most likely to win combats.

Even moreso, I've found that low-experience players choose to end their campaigns when it gets too high level and the rules become too unwieldy for them. It's really only highly-experienced players that I see desiring playing double-digit levels.

All of this compounds the selection effect, and undermines the concept of an "average party" for any given book.

Therefore, perhaps it makes sense to raise the baseline skill assumption for higher level material?

I've often (tried) to use the same metaphor Torlandril, though I never elaborated upon it so formally. I view roleplaying/sports the same way as you do. However, also like you, I've found there's a lot of hostility to the idea. At best, I occasionally get on my soapbox when the laptop is out for the 3rd session in a row, and shame it away for a little bit. Always comes back though. *sigh*

I wish you all the luck and encouragement. (And, there isn't a chance you happen to game in the Seattle-area, is there? ;-))

My use of the term "LGBTQ race" was only to help make a contrasting point and help in my response to Jessica's post. It's not how I conceptualize the situation otherwise.

You indicate that I should "change what I think needs changing" and that would be "nothing; heteronormativity has served me well up through now", which I have been told by some well-reasoned points is wrong, which is why I am here.

And you hit one of points on the head when you said "doesn't affect you in ANY meaningful way". It clearly does affect me (or rather, my NPCs): if I am a king and a grandfather, and my come-of-age son is gay, and he decides not to take a wife, then that will break our dynasty. So I have every incentive, as a king looking to continue my dynasty's hold on the throne, to force my son to "take one for the team" and place familial duty over personal choice. Which is the beginning and essence of LGBTQ discrimination and closeting.

Since I see "duty over freedom" as an assumed component of most all cultural stories that I read (King Arthur, Thousand Arabian Nights, Viking Sagas, etc), and these stories are fundamentally what I'm retelling at my table, I seem to be at an impasse. One that I can't see a way across myself. So rather than give up and remain strictly heteronormative, I'm asking for help from those offering it.

Wow, what a book! I'm really excited about that Masquerade Ball adventure where you have to kill Juliet, and then have to rescue her soul from a netherwordly prison. That up-and-coming author really seems to have some neat ideas in there. I'd definitely buy it just for that one alone. ;-)

---

Now that I've gotten that shameless plug out of my system,
One thing I really like about the Midgard Tales compilation is that quite a bit happens in each adventure. Things just keep moving. There's very little grinding or filler, and the across the board, the pacing stays very high.

I'm running it right now for my Wednesday night group. The PCs just hit 11th level. We're having a lot of fun. You have to get into the swing of it: it requires a certain mindset to play.

It gives away a lot of treasure. And nonstandard treasure at that (my party recently found a belt of titan strength +8 and a ring of +4 will saves).

The encounters are tough (two weeks ago we fought a creature that, on top of his 3 strong physical attacks, could cast hold person twice per round as a free action, no daily limit). And the encounter design is pretty interesting: often relying on a large group of enemies, or a mixed group of opponents. It's rare to fight a solitary powerful creature. The CRs are wacky: you'll be on a level designed for level 10 characters, and one room will have a CR 2 encounter, then the next room a CR 13 encounter. It keeps players on their toes. (It's very interesting for the casters, as they have to keep sizing up the situation, never knowing when to nova or when to hold back.)

The dungeon isn't really driven by plot, nor by being completionist (ie clearing out a level). It's driven by the players deciding "this stuff is hard, let's stay on this level a little longer" until the players level up enough and eventually say "this stuff is starting to feel easy, let's go to a deeper level". They manage their own risk/reward. Therefore, you need a motivated group, who enjoys dungeons, just for the sake of dungeons.

Hope that helps!

Under the Pathfinder rulesset, it's very hard to have the PCs "lose" without "dying." There are many reasons for this, but one of the largest is lack of a "wound penalty" system to encounter PCs to give up while they still can. Consider adding such a thing as a houserule.

Beyond that, I've always had great success with maiming the characters. Cut off a finger. Put out an eye. Give a permanent limp. And arrange the situation so healing magic can't fix it. It's gotta feel permanent in order for it to feel like a true "loss". Since maiming is fairly underused, it retains a good shock-value, and it actually hurts the one thing players care about: themselves.

Also, if you get the players fully on-board (and really, they should be) pause the game every now and again, and ask the PCs to describe what they are feeling right now. Have them narrate it to the group. By creating an explicit venue for players to think and share (rather than it just be conveyed through potentially poor OOG acting skills), it makes the feelings across the whole table much stronger.

...now what about magic items? Does a player have the "right" to any item in the CRB if he has the money as listed in there?

Nope, for several reasons.

#1: By RAW, there are rules about settlement size and the 70% chance-to-find issue. (Granted, this stops becoming an issue once the PCs get teleport and just start going to Absalom for everything)

#2: It's fine to say many items are simply "illegal" and cannot be acquired without appropriate (chaotic or evil) contacts. For example, I have a standing rule in most of my games that most societies have outlawed selling scrolls/magicitems of the Enchantment and Necromancy schools. (I let the PCs go on mini-quests to find a black-market broker, but they don't get it painlessly.)

#3: sSmetimes you want to run a "treasure only" campaign. Because there's a real pleasure and joy in finding and using what you find. You need to be up-front about this campaign-type, and you don't want to run every campaign like this, but once the PCs get accustomed to the constraints, they can start really having some fun with it (and if you do this, please give some appropriate deference to weaponspecialist Fighters)

#4: Sometimes I just ban stuff. Back in 3.5, I banned the spiked chain. "Because." Generally, I try to have a reason for it, but sometimes I don't. The key is being up-front. If you pretend that everything is allowed (because you are silent on the issue), and then a PC decides he wants something, and then you say "no", then you're the jerk GM.
However, if you say upfront "no Asian weapons are for sale in Magnimar" or "no merchants sell swords better than +2" or "anything over 10k isn't just sitting on a store-shelf, you have to custom-order it and then you have to wait for it to be crafted", then the PCs can plan ahead for it. And it even feels "part of the setting" and not just "the GM is banning things."

Basically, you want to set expectations. If you violate expectations, or change the game under the player's feet, they get justifiably upset, and may feel like they are being singled out. Come up with clear, fair rules.

Also, just a tip: I know in the world of email it's tempting to "resolve character build stuff between sessions." Don't. Have everyone get in the room, and everyone discuss, as a group what they want to do. You'll find that peer pressure will shut down the crazy ideas for you, and everyone will gel better. And if peer pressure turns against you as GM, well, maybe you should change, for the betterment of the group.

On a purely tactical level, I see "giving the GM deference" is a way to keep the game going. In my experience, GM burnout is a very real thing and real problem. Coming up with plotlines and investing the creative energy takes time and gusto. And if the GM loses interest in the campaign, then it tends to end in only a couple months.

Most people I play with nowadays don't want to play in a campaign that lasts less than 10 sessions. They want something enduring, and want to see something grow and flourish. And that requires work. It involves cultivation.

The way things have always worked in my circle of friends as we all sit around and pitch ideas for our campaigns. Then we all vote on which sounds the coolest, and we do that for as long as we can get it to last. Originally, we used to pick the campaign that sounded coolest or that we most wanted to personally play in. In other words, we used selfish logic. Then, as time passed, we realized something: the key determining factor in a game's success and longevity wasn't how cool the premise was, or how much we wanted to play it, but how enthusiastic the GM was about it. A passionate GM creates and amazing game. A burned-out GM creates a terrible game. So we learned: cultivate passion. And that means deference to the creative visionary.

Now, any good visionary lets other people contribute to the work, and create their own riffs and expansions on that shared work. But someone has to "be the keeper of the flame", and be the arbiter that decide what stays in and what stays out. Otherwise, you lose the vision, and you get a compromised work that isn't what sparked the passion to begin with.

Now, you could turn my argument around and say I play with "thin skinned GMs" if you wanted. *shrug* I personally don't see it that way. I just know that in my experience, creative passion is a hard thing to keep cultivated when you have a career, marriage, and young kids. So we all work together to keep it well-fed, no matter who it is we happen to be feeding. Because we want long-campaigns. (Thus none of my logic applies to one-shots or short arcs.)

ciretose wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

But how can I be sure he's reading the same chapter if he won't read my copy, won't buy his own, and won't use the internet?

And if you are going to force him to do so much work, why not just pick a player who is less of a pain in the butt...

I'm still not sure how "here read this and tell me what you think" is so much work.

Even if you're a slow reader it shouldn't take you long.

Depends on what you're talking about.

Usually, I run strongly thematic games. And everyone has to agree up-front to follow the theme. This doesn't require any time to "analyze" a strange race: I just know it will break the theme. But that's not the topic you are addressing.

Currently, I am running a game where I said "anything goes" and I would not put restrictions on the players. I had a player ask me the other day to play a Sorcerer who used the Words of Power system from Ultimate Magic. I started reading it, and realized that it would take me a very long time to learn the system well enough (which includes reading all of the FAQ pages and forum posts on it). Please note that I hold myself to a high standard of GMing. That means, I want to be able to quickly adjudicate combats, and I want to get it right, and I don't want to get into a rules-argument in the middle of someone's initiative round. Because then I'm not delivering a good experience for the group. And to learn all of Words of Power, so that I could consider how every effect works properly, it would have taken me several hours, which, unfortunately, I could not spare. So I apologized, and turned the player down.

In that same campaign, I have another player who likes to brainstorm. He would create a strange archetype-and-PrC laden build and say "how's this?", and I would begin to study it, so that I could adjudicate it quickly and fairly in combat. However, no sooner than was my analysis complete, but he would have come up with another, more interesting build, and say "how's this?" He would end up giving me half-a-dozen builds, because he wanted all of them pre-approved, so he could run DPR and other stats against them, and see which one won out and would be best to play. Eventually I had to say, "sorry, but this is an unfair use of my time. You are only allowed to send me one more build to review, and that's final. You'll have to pick from what you have."

It's easy to analyze an archetype that swaps out 3/4s BAB for extra d6s of Sneak Attack. But new spells, new feats, new systems ... those take a lot longer. And eventually, yes, it does become an unfair burden on the GM, especially when you multiply it times the number of players.

On 05/20/10 we held our first session of Kingmaker with 1st level characters. We played through books 1, 2, and 3, with copious additional material. Over the course of nine in-game years, the party founded a kingdom, conquered the Greenbelt area, and reached level 10. On 08/02/12, party TPK'd against Vordekai.

The following week, we rerolled new characters, starting at level 5, and advanced the in-game clock by 6 months. The kingdom was in shambles, the various cities independent or given over to bandits, and the remaining council squabbling over the scraps. The new party did not consist of rulers, but were merely adventurers, concerned citizens of the crumbling country. They played with these characters for eight months, and the new party gained 5 more levels. They eventually recaptured the imprisoned souls of the old party, returned them to life, and on 03/12/13, the combined two-characters-per-player party defeated Vordekai and his minions in an epic showdown.

However, in the time the king was gone, the inheritance passed to next of kin: his older brother of House Medvyed. So last night, on 04/11/13, in a deliberately brazen move, the king rode his horse into the throneroom of Medvyed, snatched the crown from his brother's hands, and placed it upon his own head.

Now, there will be war.

Is it too late historically-speaking for the new mystery to be Spiritualism in some guise? There's also been some mention of Aleister Crowley (Golden Dawn, etc.). Or could it be related to something like Theosophy?

*cue headscratching, as I try to remember what was in vogue around 1918*

Khlysty

Basically, the idea is that vanity is the greatest of all sins. Therefore, one must commit sins in order to break one's own vanity. This led to orgies.

I love the fact that this is a problem. Having magic mini-marts breaks immersion and breaks the fun of finding treasure. It also encourages entitlement mentality.

The fact that APs work to break this entitlement menality is great. For me, this is a feature.

However, my opinion does not invalidate yours, and it's interesting to see how the different APs get written to try to alternatively cater to both of us at different times. Not all APs have the issue that you mentioned. Some (like KM & CC, and especially LoF) do. Others (like CoT, JR, or ShS) don't. We each get to pick and choose our favorites.

Haffrung,

The Mouth/Gullet is neat. It's rather large and sprawling, but there's a lot of empty rooms. It gives a good "exploring" feeling. It has its own odd self-interconnectedness, and it makes for a good time trying to find your way around. There are some unique encounters and sinister traps, all that make sense for low-level. It'll be memorable, with the snickering door, or the slot machine of fate as two fun examples.

The Cloister has a lot of content. I haven't actually done the pagecount, but I think it has more than the Mouth/Gullet. I haven't read through it as closely, but the maps jumped out at me: they are very poorly laid out. It doesn't find the standards used elsewhere in the book at all. One dungeon floor will be spread across several images on several pages, with notes on how to link them. Another weird design is that the bottommost room is labeled as "CR 18+" and has 666 CR 1 killer frogs. Not a swarm, but unique enemies. I'm not sure what to make of that...

The wilderness content is by-and-large not low-level friendly. You'll want to keep them confined to the Zelkor's Ferry / Mouth of Doom region and not let them wander. You need to be about 6th level to interact with it meaningfully. Most of the outdoor stuff is in the CR 10ish range.

Zelkor's Ferry feels a bit like any of the towns from Diablo II. It's small, its quiant, the locals are weird. Nothing here to pull at the heartstrings. The innkeeper is a wereboar. There's a local necromancer that has a % chance of successfully raising you from the dead, etc. It allows for quirky fun, but it's not a place for heroes to save.

And the PCs will quickly grow beyond it. It's only a valid homebase for very low level characters.

Hopefully that was helpful!

A few things to remember about Detect Evil:

- it has verbal and somatic components; in the PF world, it is safe to assume that all humans can "recognize spellcasting when they see it", even if they can't figure out what is being cast (that takes ranks in Spellcraft). Many social situations can explode when the other group goes "DUDE! WTF?! WHY ARE YOU CASTING A SPELL AT ME!?!", they have no idea if it's a fireball, or a dominate person, etc. It's just not socially proper to cast spells in people's faces.

- the first round merely detects "the presence of absence of evil within the area of effect (a cone)"; in places like Feldgrau, of course that's going to trigger no matter what. This round of ambiguity gives the other person time to freak out or flee (as per the above bullet). Only on the second round can you associate an aura with a location.

- if a character moves outside of the spell's effect during this round, the spell must be recast.

- there's lots of valid reasons to detect evil. Carrying an evil magic item, being under the effects of an evil curse, etc. Especially in Ustalav, where curses abound. To drive the point home: Frodo Baggins would "detect as evil" throughout all of LotR, and you definitely should not kill him on sight (though you certainly would want to ask some hard questions).

- many characters that can detect evil have Lawful alignments or other codes of conduct. Killing someone in self defense is self defense. Killing someone who is in the act of committing an evil act is defending the innocent. Killing someone "because they looked wrong" is murder, and murder is illegal. Paladins cannot kill someone "just because they ping" - they need due cause. Petty criminals detect as evil: and "execution" does not match the crime of "petty theft."
Now, if it's a crazed CG Inquisitor, yea, all bets are off.

I am very enthusiastic about this.

As a Japanophile who loves horror gaming, I am squarely in your niche.

Ganbare!

The pace of leveling is uneven in the first bit. It feels rapid in book 1, then much slower in book 2.

In book 1, one of the players will take the role of the "moldspeaker" and becomes a bit of a special PC throughout the campaign. If he dies, the campaign loses a little something. Figure out ahead of time if you want the mold to be transferable on death, or if you'll follow canon, and have death be the end of that boon.

The expansion articles in books 1 and 2 should be used to flesh out exploring in and around the region. Use this material to transition gradually from book 1 to 2: don't just start book 2 after book 1 finishes. You'll have to write some of your own stuff though.

The Carrion King hits like a Mac Truck. If your party doesn't optimize, expect a TPK. If your party does optimize, expect a couple deaths anyway.

There is a way to go straight from the outside of the House of the Beast right into the Carrion King's throne room. (Through a chimney.) This bypasses most of the dungeon. Some call this a glitch, others call this awesome. Think about whether or not you want it to be possible before you get surprised be it.

Book 3 is a little underpowered. Enemies die a bit easier. Consider boosting the Jackel.

If you want to do any urban side-treks, do them during book 3. The format is loose enough to absorb them. Besides, it helps spend time while you're waiting for an opening to transition to book 4.

The transition between books 3 and 4 is rough. Very rough. Very, very rough. Plan ahead how you're going to handle this. Figure it out before your PCs even finish book 2. You want it to be organic. (Hence the suggestion of sidequests.)

Book 4 is great. Enjoy it.

Book 5 is a slog. First: it's a high-level dungeon crawl filled with many enemies that have no purpose other than to grind though. Second: your players will resent going from one prison to the next. Third: the plot is telling you to "HURRY UP" (after all, an army of Efreeti are trashing your hometown while you're here) and you can't do much about it. All this leads to player frustration. I would cut 2/3rds of the material. Figure out the few bits that let you know about Javhul's backstory, and leave the rest.

Note that there are no "towns" or access to markets throughout all of books 4 and 5. For old-school players who like using the treasure they find, this is fine. For new-school players, who tend to expect to be able to always sell their magic items and buy better stuff from the magimart: they will be very frustrated. Either way, consider modifying treasure to match what the PCs are specialized in, so as to mitigate.

Book 6 is neat. Figure out ahead of time how you want to handle the fact that Nefeshti is giving away Wishes to the party.

There's a few ways to "break" things in book 6. Let them. It's not that important anyways.

Sword of Islam
Aura strong transmutation; CL 14th
Slot none; Price 75,500 gp; Weight 4 lbs.

Description
This +3 holy scimitar is the blade of Allah, most majestic, most honorable.

Whenever the wielder of the Sword of Islam recites the Shahadah as a standard action, he receives the benefit of protection from evil at CL 14. If he sheathes the blade, or hands it to another, the protection lapses. This ability is usable once per Salat; thus, a maximum of five times per day, but certainly only once per encounter.

The Sword of Islam can call a man to repent once per day. The wielder points the blade towards an intelligent target within 100 feet and denounces their sins before Allah, most glorious, as an intimidate check to demoralize with a +4 sacred bonus. If the target becomes shaken, then the visible judgment of Allah, most just, causes all non-Muslims that can see the target and hear the wielder to become shaken for the duration. Regardless of the success of the intimidate check, the Sword of Islam gains the bane special weapon ability against the target. Yet, if at any time, the target falls prostrate, confesses the Shahadah, begs for forgiveness from Allah, most merciful, and swears to submit himself to right teaching under the wielder of the Sword of Islam, then the oath automatically is sealed by a quest (no saving throw) at CL 14. The Sword of Islam loses the bane ability and will treat him as a pious Muslim (see below) for the duration of the quest.

The blade cannot cut the skin of a pious* Muslim. If the blade is struck against the flesh of such a man, the sword shall not pierce his skin, for it is the will of Allah, most peaceful, that no pious Muslim should ever shed the blood of another. However, Allah, most wise, knows that sometimes conflict must occur, and therefore permits the blade to be used to deal nonlethal damage to a pious Muslim, provided the wielder takes the normal -4 penalty to hit.

Muslims can prove their piety by running their open hand across the cutting edge of the blade and revealing an unbroken palm. Woe to the infidel who attempts such a ruse! If an infidel attempts to move his palm over the blade (perhaps by using Sleight of Hand to merely appear to touch the blade), the Sword of Islam detects the infidel’s trickery, and makes an attack roll with +18 to hit against him (if the infidel is not prepared for this, he is caught flatfooted, and likely does not receive his armor bonus either, as his hand would likely be ungauntleted). Allah, most vigilant, can see into the hearts of men.

*note: not all Muslims who profess the name of Allah and his messenger, peace be upon him, have the same devotion to the Qur’an and zeal for the faith. A “pious” Muslim is someone of Lawful Good alignment who is strict in his adherence to each of the Five Pillars, seeking to submit to the will of Allah in all things.

Construction Requirements
Craft Magical Arms and Armor, protection from evil, quest, creator must be a pious Muslim; Cost 37,750 gp

Emotions run very high right at the end of a gaming session when everyone is rushed. Now that you've all gone to sleep and had a day to digest, contact the wizard player (email/phonecall/whatever) and discuss the issue. There is a very good chance that he will feel very differently now than he did this weekend.

Tell him that you want to preserve the horror, but you also want to his decency. Ask him what he proposes. If he's being reasonable, go with it. If he's not being reasonable, well, you have an immature player problem, and you should propose that the basinet had toppled upside down, thus giving the baby total cover and thus immunity to the fireball. However, in order to preserve the horror, when they investigate the room, put a young lad (only you know how young you can go with this player) and have the lad be burned to death as well - a young convert to the cult that didn't know what he was getting into, or a big brother to the baby perhaps. Point is, maybe it's just "baby" that freaks him out.

I would start next session with reminding people to dissassociate with their characters. "Elric the Wizard" is not "Erik the computer programmer", and what one does and experiences is not the same as the other. Ask every player to describe how their character is feeling about the Undiomede House and how the creepiness is getting to them. Encourage specific 3rd-person description. It can help diffuse the tension.

Carrion Crown requires an extreme amount of buy-in from your PCs. They have to want to do a Gothic Horror campaign, and want to build PCs that will be outcasts and reviled while selflessly trying to save the world. You also have to take it seriously: it falls apart if you are too laid back. If the PCs aren't 100% on board with this, the campaign will fail. That being said, it's definately the better campaign overal.

Serpent's Skull doesn't care what you are. You could be good, evil, or just greedy. Your PCs can take it seriously, or treat it as one big joke. You're given a HUGE HUGE playground, and can do WHATEVER you want in it. There's nothing you can really do to break theme. Based on your group description, I would recommend this AP for you group. That being said, um, check out my review of book 3 if you have the time.

For those interested in a slightly stricter definition of "average party", previously the devs have described it as such:

- all four of the traditional party roles are covered in some fashion, though this is taken liberally (for example, a Paladin can count as "healer" and an Alchemist can count as "rogue")

- approximately 20% of all "character build choices" will be used to support backstory/flavor/RP or are otherwise "wasted" from a power point of view. "Choices" includes ability scores, feats, skill points, rage powers, rogue tricks, etc.

- characters will not be able to rest whenever they want to. There will always be some risk involved in setting up camp, getting back to town, etc. The party is never able to nova with confidence that there is nothing else coming at them that day.

- characters will not find all of the loot in the book (approx 75%, but heavily varies). The majority of a character's equipped gear at any point in time will come from treasure hoards and not from custom purchases or item crafting. Less than half of the GP-value of carried gear will be from purchases/crafting.

- in battle, characters will not metagame to gain an advantage. This means they will have to roll Knowledge(X) to know the weakness of monsters they fight, rather than simply know from system mastery that (for example) trolls require fire or acid to kill. It also means they will not engage in "excessive" tabletalk to figure out the optimum strategy to kill an opponent.

And, of course, given these are broad generalizations, they are voided often. But it helps establish a baseline to build against. If your players are better (or worse) than any of the above, you may consider tweaking point-buy or other variables to account for such.

Because if your goal is "to play a pirate game" then the PCs and NPCs all decide to stop casting teleport, because that goes against the goal.

Orlovsky is the single most powerful house, (even more powerful than Surtova) but it cannot move on its own, for if it were to, the other houses would have a knee-jerk reaction to defend the throne (out of fear that "the throne" would be the winning coalition, and each house wants to be on the winning side). That being said, Orlovsky is trying to shore up alliances with other houses. It is on favorable terms with Medvyed (for historical reasons), and has been giving copious aid&support to the floundering Garess, and so long as Garess is firmly latched to Orlovsky's teat, their loyality will remain unquestioned.

Surtova is the next most powerful house, and currently controls the throne. They maintain a firm grip over their northern (ancestral) holdings, but the grip over their southern holdings is weak (recently taken from Rogavaria). Many of the farmers within the old Rogavarian lands sell their goods at the PCs' capital rather than New Stetven (because it's closer, and their loyalties are weak). I have represented this mechanically as the PCs' Kingdom receiving bonus farm hexes without having to add to their Command DC. If Surtova ever notices that the PCs have been (ignorantly) stealing from them, there will be hell to pay.
To help keep a lid on Orlovsky's power, the throne has announced increased tax rates on all of the goods that historically come out of Orlovsky's lands (without explicitly referencing the house). The taxes have started to take a bite, and in a few years, Surtova may surprass Orlovsky in power.

Next in power is Lebeda, the rising star of the Brevic houses. Historically, it has been one of the weaker houses, existing mostly on the periphery, having only their robust cultural identity to fall back on. This cultural pride is so strong that even during the centuries where the craftsmanship of Brevoy was dominated by the Dwarves of house Garess, when all of the other Brevic houses shut down their competing industries, the fiercely proud Lebedans instead took to a "buy local" mindset, insisting that they would only buy Lebedan-produced goods, even if they were more expensive and of inferior quality. This uniquely positioned them for their meteoric rise, as Garess's downfall has been their great gain: with the flow of dwarven-crafted goods dried up, the artisans, jewelers and blacksmiths of Lebeda have eagerly filled the void, virtually redrawing the tradelines of Brevoy in the last couple decades.
As a GM, I needed a culture to model them off of (since culture is so key to them), so whenever an issue of food/dress/custom comes up in-game, I model them roughly off of the Rajisthan region of India (albiet Eastern-Europe-ified).

Defining the middle of the power-spectrum is House Medvyed. They are the hearty and durabe "heartland" of Brevoy. They enjoy a historical friendshp with their northern neighbor (Orlovsky). Much of Medvyed is rural or backcountry, and pockets of Erasil worship can be found there. All of my PCs are "from" Medvyed one way or another. The Ruler is the son of the vassal knight of Lord Medvyed. Our Treasurer is from the Mivon branch of House Medvyed (remember that the Brevic houses have corresponding houses in Mivon, depending on who fled when). And our High Priest is technically Surtovan, but has renounced her heritage and choses to identify with the common people, having grown up in rural Medvyed.

I haven't done much with Lodvoka yet in my campaign. They are the historically weakest house in Brevoy (however Garess has since sunk below them). They control the north, and are therefore allied with Surtova. They very loosely control some land north of the Lake of Mists and Veils (stuff I've pulled from the Crown of the World article in JR#3). Later in the campaign, I will reveal how Choral the Conquerer came to these lands first to do his final staging and preparations for the invasion of Brevoy, and how they, in great fear, betrayed the country of Brevoy to him, revealing all of Brevoy's defenses and weaknesses. In return, Choral gave them some reward of great power that I'll make important to the campaign once the PCs get to high enough level. Revealing this fact will essentially turn Lodvoka into a pariah state basically kick it out of Brevoy, leaving Surtova exposed with no real allies.

Finally, at the bottom of the totem pole is weak, pathetic Garess. They used to be so powerful, so dominant, virtually controlling trade across the country. Now, they are nothing. They were completely reliant on being the middlemen to the great and impressive trade with the dwarves. Their land looks like dried up earth.
GM note: the PCs visit the capital of Garess quite often, and in order to hit that "was once rich and is now impoverished" tone, I end up describing it a lot like Markarth from Skyrim. Lots of carved stone awesomeworks, but everyong living it is skinny.

---

The PCs have been dutifully holding Lebedan-cultural festivals in their capital every year since the country's inception. This has earned tremendous brownie points. Historically, it has been in form of gifts (read: GM-hand-picked magic-items from 3PP books.) However, just recently, Lady Lebeda proposed to the Ruler of the PC Kingdom that he should foster her son (and heir to the house) as a squire. (A la Theo Greyjoy from Game of Thrones.) "One rising star recognizes another." They see the growing factionalism in Brevoy, and want to create a southern-alliance to counterbalance against the Lodvoka-Surtova alliance as well as the Orlovsky-Medvyed-Garess alliance.

Orlovsky keeps their fingers in every pie, and was the first to recognize the PCs' Kingdom as a Noble House of Brevoy. They also provided far-and-away the most funds for when the PCs were first starting out.

---

Last night, the heroes finally opened the sealed gate that leads down to the long-last Garess dwarves, slew the evil inside (using a heavily modified Clash of the Kingslayers as an outline), and reopened trade with the outside world.

The political upheavel will be glorious.

My impressions are mixed. (Note: I've only read the first half of the module so far.)

I really like how each of the components are presented. There's just enough information to spark GM interest and get the ball rolling, without an overly drawn-out hand-holding like we sometimes see. It almost feels like a gazeteer-format. It really reminds me of the locations in Kingmaker. These are a ton of fun to GM, as it gives me enough space to "make it my own" without being crowded with too many details.

I like how Rickety Squibs is detailed out via Events that are all somewhat related. It feels very "lived in."

I haven't taken as close a look at Tidewater Rock, but I get the same vibe. It's "here's this area, GM it" much like we saw for the first half of book 1. Good stuff. Really tough for a novice GM, but lots of fun for a veteren.

What I don't like is the connection to Tidewater Rock. How are the PCs supposed to "know" to attack it? The excuse given in the module is flimsier than flimsy. Really? It's a good luck blessing? And therefore we should follow up on it? I can think of a million reasons why the PCs would either write that off or assume that it's a bad idea. (Or alternatively, they have no idea what they are supposed to do after leaving Rickety's, and decide to beeline there, out of a gamer instinct to "follow plot") This will require alteration.

This game might be difficult for novice players - it relies heavily (even more heavily than Kingmaker IMHO) on player-drive and player-initiative. I imagine a lot of players getting stuck.

Some of the encounters smell like trouble to me.
- The accidental-entrapment-scene with the Dominator has the potential to be a boat-TPK, and I really don't know where the campaign goes from there. Normally, if PCs die, you can just recruit others and the campaign survives. But what happens if the boat dies? Do you roll up a new boat? One that has an Infamy score of 0, doesn't know Harrigan/Rickety, but yet is still trying to earn enough repute to get into the Shackles? Seems contrived to me. Other APs don't seem to care who the PCs are, but this one does. And that creates unique problems.
- I doubt how the reappearing ghost ship will play out. Fighting it a second time is a great threat, but a chore to carry through on. I mean, who wants to run the same mini-module at the table twice in a row? The PCs and GM will go "argh! this again?!"

Those are my first impressions. Haven't read the final parts yet.

1) Be up-front about the purpose and tone of the campaign, and make sure the players are 100% on-board with it. Let them know this isn't a "raid dungeons, kill monsters, get loot" campaign. Mindset is key. Make the characters *want* to be sovereigns for being sovereign's sake, and for no other reason and for the pursuit of no other reward.

2) Let go of the reins. You don't run this campaign, the players do. This bears breaking down into two subpoints, so that I can make sure emphasize them both:

2a) The players will go wherever they want, ally with whomever they want, and prioritize whatever they want. You should therefore prep the setting but not the plotline. Think of yourself like the code behind an MMO server: your job is merely to respond to player's actions, not to cause actions yourself.

Therefore, be harsher than you normally would. Since the player's decisions matter, make sure they matter. Let them die. Let them lose territory. You should be much more of a "merciless DM" in Kingmaker than you are otherwise. Besides, unlike any other AP, Kingmaker recovers gracefully from a TPK: so long as the Kingdom endures, even a new crop of heroes provides a strong enough sense of continuity that it doesn't feel cheap or artificial.

2b) Give them GM-like narrative control during the copious off-time. Most groups follow the pattern of the PCs asking the GMs what exists in the world, and the GMs asserting that X, Y or Z exists, then the PCs have to choose between those three options. Break this mindset: train your PCs to assert what exists, as if they were mini-GMs. They're the rulers afterall. Let the king say "I host a tournament. This-or-that noble comes and visits. I beat him. The girls go wild over me." Let the high priest say "I hold a grand festival to my god. Villagers come from miles around. I give an amazing sermon, and cause a huge revival. Many women dedicate the firstborn sons to the church, and the ranks of my clergy swell." None of that required any die-rolls, or asking you for permission. They just said it, by fiat. It's scary and difficult to let go of control. But your will reap wonders from it.

3) Make it your own. This is your game. Every building should have something notable about it. If the PCs build a smithy, they have to describe what the smith acts like. If the PCs build a tavern, they have to tell you what the signature dish is. If the PCs build a shrine, they have to tell you what miracle it is commemorating. Etc. When running kingdom events, make sure to set the events at these locations. Have NPCs mention the famous local microbrew, let the protests happen outside churches they've built, etc. The more you lead by example and use the environment, the better it will feed back into point #2b above.

4) Make sure you use the expanded events table, and interpret the results. Do not run them rote, but flavor them and come up with cool ways to twist them in. See point #3 above.

5) Kingmaker isn't an Adventure Path, this is a toolbox of neat stuff. Use what you like, throw out what you don't, and throw in tons of stuff of your own creation.

Incidentally, I don't know a whole heck of a lot about Rahadoum. I get a sort of curry-flavored-yet-matriarchal-ish sense. Do we know what 'Man's Promise' means? I thought up a satirical saying - 'A man's promise is worth it's weight in gold' - which would suit a predominantly female crew.

Rahadoum is an atheist country. They deny the authority of all the gods, and all clerics/paladins/oracles are arrest (if not kill) on sight. They believe that religion is slavery, and that the Rule of Man guides their peoples. They use "Man" in many of their terms, talking about the Laws of Man, the Power of Man, the Supremecy of Man, and so on. All of them related to the idea of being against the gods.

It's a medieval-style, non-gendered "Man" (like "mankind") that refers to the whole race.

But hey, it's your campaign: you can make them feminists instead if you'd like ;-)

I envision such a conversation between Adivion and the PCs in his townhouse in Caliphas, or perhaps his estate in Ardeal, over tea, sometime between the end of book 3 and the start of book 6.

-----------

I did not write the "Carrion Crown" poem. It was Petros that discovered it, almost nine years ago, back when he was putting together the Order's records on the Whispering Way. We studied it together, him and I, and concluded that it was written during the lifetime of Tar-Baphon. Or rather, during his undead years, but before his destruction, if you can call that a "lifetime." It seems to describe a way to constitute a new phylactery.

We decided that such a treasure would be immeasurably tempting to any members of the Whispering Way. So I took advantage of the role I previously held at the Quarterfaux Archives, and I had it published under my name. I even joined the Whispering Way during this time. Disgusting organization, really, if you can even call it that. It is a shadow of whatever it once was, a fully decentralized mess of necromancers and other wretches with delusions of grandeur. It is not run like a sophisticated, modern organization should be run. It turns out obsession with dead people doesn't translate over into logistical finesse with living ones.

I digress. My role in joining the Whispering Way was to fish out any real threats within it, and keep tabs on them. The Carrion Crown poem was the bait. Petros had affection for this sort of opposition research, as I'm sure you are aware. All manner of necrophiles sought me out to learn more, or try to coordinate work on assembling the ingredients. Some even managed to get quite far under my guiding hand. Petros and I didn't feel any threat from having the poem "out there", as it had been in quite wide circulation for some time immediately after Tar-Baphon's defeat, and it gave him no boon then. However, as an added protection, I was there to mentor the would-be reborn-Tyrants to "guide" their progress. Sometimes this was straight into the waiting arms of Pharasmin Inquisitors. *smug grin*

So, the case of one Mr Vrood. The Order, as you know, has its fingers in many pies, particularly in the northwest. It was time for a change of power in the Shudderwood. The details and motivations for this, are, how do you say, "Esoteric." I gave Mr Vrood an invitation to Ascanor Lodge so that he could retrieve the packlord's heart for me. This plan, as you are doubtlessly keenly aware, was a complete disaster. Not only did the fool Vrood fail to actually deliver the heart to me, but the only worthwhile mind in all Ustalav had to pay the price of his crude insolence.

Why didn't you tell the Professor about your arrangement with Vrood?
You must understand, my involvement with Mr Vrood centered around Ascanor and the Heart. He did not reveal his other ventures to me, and he moved quite quickly to enact them. I first learned of Vrood's activities in Ravengro from Petros via pigeon, but before I could encode a response, I was already being invited to his funeral. This is where I gave in to vengeance and sought out your services. Vrood had gone too far, and he needed to be eliminated.

What do the other lines of the poem refer to?
Petros and I came to the conclusion that the stanzas of the poem do not each strictly refer to a specific object, but more generally refer to abstract concepts that were key elements in the life of Tar-Baphon. However, I would imagine for the poem to be successful, the bar would be quite high.

Where are the components now?
Doubtlessly with one of Vrood's lackeys who escaped your blade. Likely hiding in a hole somewhere. A hole, no doubt, blocked by divination magics. I am anxious to discover where they have gone. Perhaps you can help me in this?

I understand Hawkrin's Ghost, the Packlord's Heart, and the Feldgrau Skull are all part of the poem, but how does the Seasage Effigy fit into this?
It is clearly not a component that the poem describes. The Way often Whispers mysteriously. It is obviously very important to them. I will reach out to Professor Crawl in Lepidstadt to see what we can learn from him.

I am glad for the sharpened focus of this book.

A request: can you please spend extra pages on indexes? I imagine there will be an index that lists all Fighters, then all Druids, etc.

But can there be another index that lists things by conceptual categories? (Kindof a replacement for the "environment" section in Bestiaries.)

Examples:

"finesse builds" includes DEX-based Fighters, combat Rogues, TWF Rangers, etc.

"savages" that includes not just Barbarians, but shape-focused Druids, 2H-Fighters, and other outdoorsy ones.

"city gaurds" isn't just polearm-focused Fighters, but also battlefield-control Wizards, sensemotive-focused Paladins, lawfully-aligned Rogues, and the ilk.

As a GM, I often think first in terms of niche, then in terms of class. Providing an index to help me along those lines could really make this product extra useful for me!

SO!

If you miss the class/race breakdowns... let us know WHAT you miss from them that the new format doesn't do for you.

The problem is that players like to know "is my class OK?" People only want to play classes that have abilities that would be useful to the AP. Quick examples:

Rogue: are there going to be a lot of traps?
Cavalier: are enough fights outdoors so I can use my horse a lot?
Wizard: is there enough downtime for item crafting?
Gunslinger: is there enough firearm loot for me to use?
Cleric: what churches have a presence in the area?
Druid: will I be able to hate cities, or is this an urban campaign?
Paladin: is this a LG-friendly campaign?
Etc, etc.

The previous player's guides soothed those nerves. Now, players don't know if they have a "useful" or "safe" concept, and are skittish and need assurance that they are choosing a good character concept. Sure, that's my role as GM, but unless I've read through several issues of the AP already, that's tricky.

You say "all APs work for all classes/races" but that's not true. Paladins (as commonly played) don't work in most APs. Cavaliers don't work in hardly any APs. Item Crafting only works in half of APs. City-hating only works in half of APs. Dwarven PCs will never meet a Dwarven NPC in half of APs.

I don't think the lengthy writeups we've historially seen are needed. But a quick "this is okay" or "this will be more challenging" call for each class would be quite useful.

So, maybe we're Paizo-fanboys, or maybe we were just *that* anxious to get our pirate-on, but tonight we decided to play a oneshot focused around the new naval-combat rules in the S&S Player's Guide.

We can into a lot of rules questions. If anyone knows clear answers to these questions, please chime in! Maybe we can turn this thread into a clearing-house for figuring out the rules.

Without further ado:

Our ship was on fire, then we grappled and began shipboard combat; how do we now put the fire out? Can we take the "uncontrolled action"? Or is the crew too busy fighting, and we're doomed to burn?

We had lots of momentum (4 squares/rd), and start only 1 square away from another ship, so we attempt to ram. We fail the CMB check; do we end adjacent? Do we "slip on by" the ship and end elsewhere? The text says our "movement rate is reduced to 0", which implies that kicks in next turn - but what about this one?

We are now perpendicularly adjacent to the enemy ship (from the failed ram). We then initiate a grapple (and succeed!), do the ships move to parallel position? The text seems to say so. If this is the case, on which initiative tick? The exact tick matters, as now shipboard combat is about to begin, and the spellcasters are itching to try out their short-range spells.

When you do a mass attack from the broadsides, what attack bonus do you use? We eventually picked +3, because we figured they'd all be warrior 1, with a dex mod of 1, and they all took weaponfocus(seigeengine). But what should we have really done? Are there rules for getting a better crew?

The text says the sails become broken if "half the squares of sails are destroyed" (sidebar, pg 11). The enemy ship had 90 squares of sails, but we didn't have any ideas as how to correlate the damage we were doing to the squares that the ship had. So we just went with "half HP" instead to make it consistant with how other things get broken.

We attacked the enemy sails, they got the broken condition: what exactly does this do? We ruled -2 to Prof(sailor) checks to accelerate/deccelerate. Is this right?

How does "changing the heading of your ship" work? When we did it, there were three squares between our two ships. Then we successfully did a "hard to starboard" action. Because our ship was three squares long, this made us instantly adjacent. Is this correct?

Thanks!!

Haste doesn't give a bonus to ranged attacks? (Looking at 3rd sample card.)

Please, please, make extra, extra sure all these cards are completely error-free. The nature of the product really necessitates that.

I don't know why there's all the fuss over "conversions." The biggest change between 3.5 and PF are class-features. The impact on monsters and traps was minimal. I've run many 3.5 adventures in Pathfinder "off the cuff" without doing any preplanning. The only hiccup is coming up with CMD values for the monsters. Which you can just do on the spot if the PCs try do a maneuver. (And against huge enemies, they are unlikely to try anyways.)

Don't paint yourself into a box. Not that much changed.

Traps? Not a big deal. A few in books 2 and 6, but nothing too noteworthy.

This campaign uses "haunts" instead of "traps." So every bit of caution and obligation that makes you feel like you need a Rogue, channel those feelings into an obligation for a Cleric, however large or small that is for you.

Starglyte wrote:

What ideas are you guys planning to take the place of the gods articles you put into the other APs?

More god articles.

Once we do all the core 20, we still have dozens and dozens of other deities and demigods to play with.

I find this disappointing.

The god articles were only interesting when they important setting elements (like Sarenrae in LoF or Pharasma in CC). Otherwise, they just felt like a bunch of wasted space. Nearly all the book 5 dieties felt like wasted space.

I know the AP model is supposed to look like a magazine subscription, but I don't really see value in getting a diety article once every 3 issues and having random bits of general lore scattered through my collection.

The strict adherance to diety-article placement really bothers me. Why did we have Nethys in SS5, and then Ydersius in SS6? Why do we have Besmara in S&S1, and Torag in S&S2? Looks there there were some real easy fixes that could have been made, and not fixing them gives a really forced look to the way things are written.

APs have been hurt by it. The Gorum article should have gone in KM4, where the PCs fight the holy warrior of Gorum, and should not have gone in KM5, where the two support articles should have been on Pitax and Mass Combat. Instead, Mass Combat got shoved into an Appendix because the location of the Gorum article was dictated by this weird pattern that Paizo is forcing the APs to fit into.

My customer-feedback is to ditch the rigid pattern that you are following the the god-articles. I know that once you started the list of the 20 major ones, you had to finish it, but now there is a transition point and we have an opening. Let's not go down that path again.

After you statted out all the base classes in the back of the books, you dropped the pregens. Now that we've described up all the gods, let's move on to more AP-relevant content.

In my game Kendra Lorrimor was convinced by Adivon Adrissant to come stay with him in Caliphas to get away from "all this messy business" and allow her to get back on her feet.

She has retained the only original character as a pen pal and I've got plans for her letters to become increasing concerned as she develops a curiousity for Adivon(And I realize it's Adivion - I just like Adivon better.) and begins to grow worried about the things he's gotten into.

In my game Petros was Adivon's mentor as a youth.

I do all of these same things in my campaign too! (even the slight name-change!)

I fully and strongly advocate this route.

Oh, and in my campaign, they're getting married. 'cuz that's Gothic for you. Adivon's affection for his old mentor takes a creepy turn as he becomes devoted to "preserving his genius, and perfecting it by combining with my own."

There's a lot of unevenness in the item pricing in the CRB, but there's some ways to navigate through it. Here's some fairly specific advice I would have:

When you create an item, you have a pretty good idea what would be the ideal level for a character to own it. This is usually within +/- 2 of the CL of the item. Then, look up the most expensive "big 6" item that the character can be safely assumed to possess at that level. This sets a soft floor that you probably should not go below, simply because of the way big6 items tend to be priced.

Then double the cost of that big6 item. This sets a hard ceiling for how expensive your item can be. Reason being: if adventurers find your item as loot, and they could sell it to buy their next big6, they'll do that every time. You want to remove that choice.

The CRB charges a lot extra for unrelated effects, and we should follow that lead. If your item is capable of doing things that are revelant in different situations/applications, it needs to be near the higher end of the scale.
(An item that casts both Bull's Str and Enlarge on you would be "the same situation"; whereas an item that casts Bull's Str and See Invis would be "different situations.")

After all of this, put the PC spin on it. "If I found this as loot, and the magimart was nearby, would I hawk it?" Divorce yourself from how "cool" your item is, and just judge it on power and usefulness. Make sure to doc the price severely if it only has niche or situation-dependant usefulness. Look at a Paizo AP and ask yourself "what percentage of encounters could I use this on?"

Therefore, I would strongly advise of developing outside of your level range. If you only have depth of experience PCing (not GMing, but PCing) up to 8th level, then don't design an item for 12th level characters. You haven't developed the intuition, and your perspective is all wrong.

Hope that helps!

In my campaign I find the foreshadowing and sense of impending dread easy to build: I keep talking about Brevic history, the weak grasp that Surtova has on the throne, the Valley of Fire, how House Rogavaria was the real power before the pretenders, how the heraldry came to be, how the Rostlanders were decimated, how the Vanishing dramatically up-ended the economy, how Mivon was founded, how there's so many dragons in the mountains...

Wait, we're still talking about the same BBEG, right? Choral the Conquerer, right?