Canarr's page

Yeah, they changed that for Ultimate Campaign, and I think it was a necessary change. Under the original rules, buildings capable of producing magic items were basically the only winning strategy, and I think that's boring.

You need to expand. Claim more Hexes and build more Mines/Quarries/Sawmills to increase your income, while keeping an eye on your Control DC. Claiming Hexes with Landmarks and buiding Roads to them will help you keep your Loyalty score up; the other two are much easier.

I ran two parties through that encounter.

For the first, the Baroness and her Councilor had a lot of fun debating him back and forth, and driving him out of her realm. He actually came back to warn them that his patron was dealing with whoever was riling up the trolls in the south to attack their lands. Seems like he actually had a conscience, and feeding helpless farmers to monsters was where he drew the line.

He was later captured by Hags working for you-know-who. They needed someone with the Perform skill to play a magic flute that would summon the Talonquake to the capital. Once he'd done what they needed him to do, they murdered him.

The second party had serious trouble handling him - nobody had the Diplomacy skill to take him on. We actually had a player get pissed I wouldn't let him use his Perform skill to argue against Grigorij in public.

They finally settled on doing the sneaky thing: have the Spymaster follow him, search both his room and his secret hiding place to discover Forgery implements and other incriminating evidence. Grigorij was arrested, offered what little information he had on his patron in exchange for exile instead of death, and was banished. I don't think he'll be back.

Continuing the saga...

Name: Davion DeGlade, Ruler

Cephal the wizard was also flying, until the PC wizard Archibald dispelled his fly spell, leaving the dread zombie caster standing in the bubbling tar. Davion, without a fly movement, took a long leap into the mud to engage Cephal in melee. He managed to hurt the undead caster severely, but several arrows from the Leukodaemon, and a boneshatter spell from Cephal against which Davion failed his Fortitude save, brought his HPs low enough that a final, Empowered magic missile dropped him into the negatives.

The rest of the party might still have been able to save their Ruler; but losing consciousness while standing in the muck caused him to fall prone and become immersed in the scorching tar. The resulting damage overcame the resist fire spell he was under, and Davion died.

After the battle, the party brought him back using the raise dead scroll they found while investigating the Vanishing.

Name: Ruby
Race: Kitsune
Class/Level: Oracle 6
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: Hills east of Tuskwater Lake
Catalyst: Hidden archer crit
The Gory Details: Hargulka's troll forces had attacked the PCs' lands, killing many and taking others for food stores. The heroes set out to punish these strangely organized trolls, and came across a small camp holding several of them. After a bit of buffing, they attacked.

The trolls fought like trolls do, no big surprise there. Only an unseen drummer that was boosting their strength and aggressiveness (Skald song of rage) seemed a bit out of the ordinary.

Ruby, as caster/healer rather than fighter, stayed hidden in the underbrush rather than engage the trolls. When the group's fighter, the realm's Ruler, she broke cover and moved out in the open to heal him. No sooner had she delivered her Cure spell, when the hidden Skald dropped her invisibility spell: a beautiful elven woman appeared and put two arrows in Ruby's back, one of them a very severe crit. She dropped dead immediately.

Ruby was later reincarnated as a human, much to the player's disappointment. They left the campaign shortly thereafter.

Name: Archibald
Race: Human
Class/Level: Wizard 6, Evangelist (Erastil) 1
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: The Owlbear's lair
Catalyst: Not healing between encounters
The Gory Details: After defeating the owlbear and clearing the lower cave level, the PCs discovered the web-choked chimney up to the ettercaps. Due to some too-hasty scouting, the group hurried upstairs, with the wizard neglecting to heal up properly.

He was killed by one of the ettercaps there, and later reincarnated as a human.

Name: Dak Kamore (don't ask)
Race: Half-elf
Class/Level: Magus 9
Adventure: Varnhold Vanishing
Location: Tors of Levenies, a few days north of Vordakai's Island
Catalyst: Graveknight
The Gory Details: One of the people who Vanished when Vordakai came to town was Roslin Varn, the daughter of Lord Maegar Varn, an accomplished Swordlord and Monk.

Using dark magics long since forgotten on the face of Golarion, the lich turned her into a Graveknight and set her to guard the mountain paths with a group of ghoul minions.

When the group of PCs entered her territory, she attacked them. Supported by ghouls, including a sorcerer with enough power to haste the monsters, the heroes were quickly fighting for their lives. Roslin, trained in the Snake Style, was able to turn her high AC and Combat Reflexes into a series of counterattacks whenever one of the martials missed her.

Dak, determined to press the attack on the Graveknight rather than withdraw and heal, was killed by one of her burning unarmed strikes. He declined to return from the Boneyard, and was buried in the realm's capital.

Damn. That is a truly aweinspiring peace of work there. Kudos - I'm definitely going to be stealing some of that for my KM campaign. While I love playing around with nobles and politics, I've never put together something this detailed, on so many different houses - I tend to just make things up as I go along. This is definitely something I can use.

I set up a banquet where the PCs could meet and negotiate with the different factions that are willing to supply Venture Capital to their realm. Varn and Drelev with their people were also present, and they had a chance to interact with them.

Varn was a friendly guy who was interested in cooperation, Drelev was a dick who humiliated the PC ruler I’m public. There’ll be exchange of information, news and competition, and anything else I can think of. Having their neighbors be active at the same time as the PCs adds to the fun, I believe.

I figure since Nyrissa sees the Stolen Lands as hers, she considers herself the ruler over all Fey living there. Of course, not all Fey will agree with that, so some will do as they please and in doing so, cross Nyrissa.

And Nyrissa just loves using mortal to do her dirty work. In the game I run, I decided to swap out one of the standard Quests, so I added one that secretly came from Nyrissa: an anonymous request to kill an evil Fey in the Kamelands. The PCs, always up to kill something evil for gold, did so without questioning.

Now the Fey living in the Stolen Lands can view her in a lot of different ways: some, like the evil Fey my PCs killed, will consider her a tyrant trying to keep them from following their nature. Others may see her as a stern but fair leader: obey her and you may live in peace, cross her and you die. Others again might even think her a protector as she uses her mortal agents to keep other Fey from preying on each other.

All will probably agree it’s better not to mess with her.

There isn’t really one, IMO. Don’t even think the rules use the word nation at all.

Very nice... I like it! Even if the players never find out, having a solid backstory and motivation for the NPCs makes them more fun to play, IMO.

If you have the time and inclination to listen to a long podcast, Sugar-fueled Gamers have a Kingmaker podcast. The GM is Reverse here on the Forums, and he‘s done amazing things with Quintessa.

Paladins rock massively against evil opponents, true.

Have you solved your Drelev dilemma? How to bring together a paladin with having a mistress?

Aside from the important NPCs already named, I suggest foreshadowing Malgorzata Niska from RRR and her cult of Gyronna. It’s just a minor encounter as written, but with some more background could be an excellent side story.

Very nice collection, thank you! I'll be over here, browsing your archives... ;)

He can, certainly. Depends a lot on what the PCs do - if they spend a lot of time exploring to the west or south before taking care of the bandits, it’s definitely a possible action for him to take.

In my game, the PCs went right after Kressle and her camp, so they took her out before she noticed her people were gone. That delayed any kind of response against the Levetons, and the Stag Lord was more concerned with trying to track down the armed interlopers in his area than going after the Levetons.

Ahhh, okay. Thanks! That doesn’t seem too bad.

My old online group used one extensively in Kingmaker to save on downtime/BP costs. Fortunately, the rules for doing so are a bit more codified.

Another necro...

Are there actually rules for the interaction of the Lyre of Building and the Kingdom Building rules? How are savings on BP through the Lyre calculated?

https://daddydm.wordpress.com/category/gaming/dd/kingmaker/

The lack of details on Pitax and Mivon especially is annoying, yes. There is way too little on political background in general - this aspect of the game has been woefully neglected.

Concerning a tool for recordkeeping: There's a blog on Wordpress by DaddyDM (Spatula here on the forums) who made a tool for Kingdom Management that works very well.

whether or not it's explicitly stated in the Tax rules, the Economy Check is still a Kingdom Check, and as such always needs to hit the Control DC, or it fails. It's entirely possible that when updating the rules for Ultimate Campaign, they felt it unnecessary to keep that sentence (because the basic rules for Kingdom Checks are already explained elsewhere), and thus omitted it, without meaning to change the rule.

When it comes to suspension of disbelief, remember the rules are largely abstract. It doesn't really make a lot of sense that all the farms in your kingdom produce the same return every month, whether it's August or January. And the Rule Of One for Kingdoms isn't more or less realistic than a Legendary Swordmaster(TM) still missing every 20th swing.

Doesn't mean it's not a good idea to place this in the context of the story. But any GM worth his salt is going to do that with any kind of random encounter or development.

It can be a problem at the very beginning, yes. But that adds to the flavor of building a kingdom in the wilderness, so I wouldn’t change that. My players made sure to keep enough reserves in their Treasury to weather a lean month or two until they got things rolling.

Once you get the Kingdom going, it’s fairly trivial to keep your Economy score high enough to always hit the Control DC (unless you roll a 1). Remember, the players control both the DC (by limiting their expansion) and the score (by choosing buildings, terrain enhancements, or Kingdom leaders).

Unless, of course, your GM manipulates events to influence these factors. But he surely wouldn’t do that...

I do think that the Regent's plan was to let Restov/the colonies do the heavy lifting of pacifying the Stolen Land and then absorbing them through force or intimidation when the time seemed ripe. And then handing those lands over to the Great Houses that have been loyal to the Surtovas. Restov's ploy is the far riskier one - when push comes to shove, will the new kingdoms join the rebel cause, or would they sit out the conflict or even side with Surtova?

That is an excellent follow-up idea! Not only does it give good reason to bring in more Brevoy elements and agents of the Regent, but it also gives Drelev motive to have (actually) hired Grigorij to sabotage the PCs, and for further actions against them.

And yes, that makes Restov's position a lot more tenuous, but they don't really have a choice - they're the ones who need to secure their southern border in preparation for the coming civil war. And it's more plausible to have Surtova actually do something to influence the whole project, rather than let the Swordlords do that right under his nose.

You’re German, right? Using „eventually“ instead of „potentially“ is a trap we often fall into ;)

A lot of questions. Let me see if I can help.

Legitimacy of the Charter:

It means nothing outside of Brevoy. Since neither the Swordlords nor the Regent hold any authority outside of their borders beyond what they can take and hold by arms and magic, they have no legal authority to give any of the Stolen Lands to anyone. I read somewhere (don't know if it was in the AP) that the southern part of Brevoy, fomerly Rostland, was settled by the same Taldoran Exploratory Army that explored the Stolen Lands, and that they use this as justification why the land is really theirs. But that isn't any more legitimate than Robert Baratheon on the Iron Throne.

Mostly, the point of the Charters is to remind the PCs and NPCs who bankrolled them, and who they owe a debt of gratitude to if push comes to shove.

Fluff for the Charter:

I made it a political thing. Brevoy is on the way to civil war, but nobody wants to acknowledge that, because both factions don't want to really get going before they feel they have an advantage. So, they're playing a game of pretending not to realize what the other group is doing, and setting up the Charter worked the same way:
"Hey, Regent! We wanna organize some people to combat the monsters in the Stolen Lands. It's about fighting bandits and stuff, and totally not a ploy to secure our rear for that civil war we're pretending not to be preparing for! We have this guy who's perfect for the job, Maegar Varn."
"Hey, Swordlords! That's totally cool - fighting bandits has always been my policy. Really. And I'm not at all suspicious that you're choosing one of your own people for this job. As a matter of fact, I know the perfect guy for one of these Charters, myself, Hannis Drelev. He's a ruthless, opportunist bastard, but he's married to the daughter of one of my most staunch supporters. That's cool, right?"

So basically, the Swordlords appointed one guy for a Charter, the Regent appointed another, and they picked a bunch of fully neutral nobodies to place in the middle between their guys so nobody would have an advantage over the other. Both believed that their guy would be able to either conquer or influence those nobodies, if they didn't go down on their own.
There was a fourth party that was sent farther west, an experienced group called the Company of the Iron Shield, but I kind of glossed over them because they're more or less killed immediately.

It's mentioned that Restov cuts ties to the PCs, but I'm not sure, where. I'm thinking book 4 or 5, but they start withdrawing obvious support already in Varnhold Vanishing.

Title:

The title the PC ruler gives themselves doesn't matter - they're one of many Stolen Lands warlords. Baron is just the rank that other nobles are willing to accept from them, because that is what their realm is worth in their eyes. Once it grows beyond a certain size (26 hexes?), they can claim the title of Duke, and so on.

Factions:

I'm bringing in the River Kingdoms, who should have their own interest in those new upstarts. Mivon is the next, but several of the others should also be looking to build their own advantage.

I like them for the fluff - built a bunch for Varnhold, since they had mountains. Became one of their main argument for opening trade relations with my PCs‘ kingdom: we‘ll trade you the stone we quarried for the timber from your woods.

If you’re using Legendary Games‘ plug-in books, they have a few new buildings for your cities, one of which makes adjacent quarries cheaper and gives them a boost.

Glad to hear it went well for your group - sounds like you had a fun game!

So far, my players are enjoying the mass combat rules. We're using the variant from Legendary Games' Ultimate Battle, and had a series of battles against Hargulka's forces. With the option of giving PCs either command of a unit, or adding them as heroes, every player gets to participate in the battle.

To me, commanding armies in battle is an important part of the feel of Kingmaker - having the PCs be more than just adventurers, but raising and commanding armies on the field of battle, with the fate of their realm and their people hanging in the balance.

While I like the basic premise of your ideas - have you considered simply asking your players how deep they want to delve into the politics of Brevoy and the Stolen Lands? I mean, why put in that level of subterfuge to gauge their interest, when you can simply discuss it?

Very cool ideas! While Kressle and her bandits are long dead in my campaign, having a few bandits fleshed out is always useful. Thank you!

A lot of good points. Also, Spatula has just finished his campaign, which he’s been blogging heavily about (thank God).

His final summation is here, but I recommend reading the whole enchilada.

https://daddydm.wordpress.com/2020/06/26/kingmaker-the-whole-damn-thing-pos t-mortem/

There are several older but still excellent threads here to get you started. Try searching „Venture Capital“, and check out any threads by Dudemeister, Spatula and Pennywit, for starters.

One more thing I remembered:

There is a thread on here somewhere collecting an updated list of Kingdom Events. Just check out those and pick one that seems fitting.

It probably depends on what you mean by "doubling the consumption". If you're talking about doubling the city's 1 BP consumption, that should be fine. If you're thinking about doubling the entire kingdom's consumption, that could be difficult.

Try looking at the cost of holidays or festivals in Ultimate Campaign, and use those as a baseline. Having 6 holidays per year costs 2 consumption, having 12 costs 4. Looking at that, I think having this cost more than 2 comsumption seems excessive.

You could of course add some Unrest (never wrong) and maybe damage or occupy a building where the festivals are taking place, adding to the mere consumption cost of the problem.

If I read the spell correctly, the PCs would get a Reflex save to keep their stones safe against the spell's damage. Depending on their saves, that may or may not be feasible.

If you want to tone it down, maybe give them a separate save for every ioun stone.

If you have the time, I strongly recommend to listen through Sugar-fuelled Gamers' Kingmaker Podcast. They made a lot of changes, especially in the later game.

What the GM - Reverse on these boards - does for a lot of army combat is move different enemy units towards the PCs' towns, forcing them to split their forces. You could do that, make it a little more difficult for them to defend their holdings.

Also, depending on what you're planning to do with Armag and his forces, you could simply increase the number of barbarian and troll mercenaties to give your players a good fight.

Concerning the PCs' counterattack against Drelev: I've built both neighboring realms from the ground up to give them more history, and even though I'm still years away from Book 4, Fort Dreleve is already racking up Defensive bonuses like there's no tomorrow. It's going to be really, really hard to defeat troops in a solidly built city. So if you build Fort Drelev right, the city isn't going to be a pushover - certainly not a case of just trampling over them on the way to Pitax.

That basically means your PCs will need to run through the Fort Drelev minigame in order to turn the population against Hannis Drelev in order to take the town without combat.

I'm still far away from Book 6, but the setup immediately struck me as odd every time I went through the AP. It's just... uninspired. And I couldn't work out the sense behind it, either.

While I haven't made any concrete plans for the final battle yet, I'm envisioning the different levels of the Fable more as different "mini-realms" with a lot more space, than actual rooms in a house.

Canarr wrote:

Yeah, I'm not too sure myself how long my players are going to be interested in tracking down generic crap for alchemists or other NPCs. Leaving aside their rising personal power, aka levels, they'll be more and more occupied with governing their lands. Well, we'll have to see.

I found the best way to deal with that was to restructure it a little. The local alchemist doesn't offer a reward for someone hunting stuff down for him as much as approaches the Councillor to say that he has a theory about Resource X being of use to the kingdom. If he can get his hands on samples it will benefit everyone, and of course would pay a suitable tithe to the crown. He's aware that the Lords are currently securing that part of the forest (or wherever), and so if they should stumble across the relevant mcguffin could they bring some back? It also helps if you have buildings that can tie into this. In my kingdom, Dr. Van Tan, the Alchemist PC who wound up getting dropped early on, became the proprietor of the Alchemist Building, which kept the sidequests nicely personal. It still runs out of steam after a bit, but it helped prolong the fun.

Seems like a good idea... I've already started to switch some of the Quest rewards to BP instead of gold, or drop some Quests entirely and simply add the wealth they should've brought to some encounter or other.

Canarr wrote:

Sounds like a fun final battle! Having Munguk go turncoat is a great idea - my players never made it down to the area where he was hanging out, so he didn't make an appearance in my game.

Hexploration gets less and less relevant and appealing the more the game goes on. I kept the players going with it into Book 3 without too much difficulty, by suggesting that NPCs could either miss important stuff or die. But by the time they were able to command armies it just got a bit silly. In books 4 & 5, the only reason the PCs have done it themselves is when they're hunting for something very specific.

Yeah, I'm not too sure myself how long my players are going to be interested in tracking down generic crap for alchemists or other NPCs. Leaving aside their rising personal power, aka levels, they'll be more and more occupied with governing their lands. Well, we'll have to see.

Sounds like a fun final battle! Having Munguk go turncoat is a great idea - my players never made it down to the area where he was hanging out, so he didn't make an appearance in my game.

Definitely an interesting development - I like the way you broke the stalemate. Well played...

Very nice developments! Well done! Always an exciting read here.

I really regret not checking out the Kingmaker forums before running the AP - I missed out on some quality foreshadowing, and some excellent add-on ideas. Ah, well.

Don't know if I've already recommended it, but there's a podcast by Sugar-fuelled Gamers out there that runs through a modified version of Kingmaker. It has a lot of great features, but the developments around Malgorzata Niska and her cult are my absolute favorite. It's just phenomenal.

Canarr wrote:

But I'll need to get through the end of Book 2 first - we've managed to kill Hargulka, after a few solid Mass Combat battles against goblins, orcs, and trolls. Now, the heroes just need to finish the owl bear - and decide how to deal with a few hundred orc civilians...

The age-old problem of D&D and it's ilk - are there 'evil' races, or are you just being racist? My players have hit something similar in books 4 & 5 with the Orc tribe I put in the southern Narlmarches. They're a brutal, might-makes-right society, who make raiding a way of life. But they're also willing to negotiate with a stronger force, and once someone is willing to sit down and talk it's very hard to argue for the extermination of their species.

A lot of that, yes. My players do tend towards negotiation when they believe they're talking to someone who might appreciate it, so I'm kinda hopeful for these orcs. I'm also veering away from "all orcs are CE always" so there is actually some room for discussions.

Cold Mountain is very good, but like most published adventures it puts in too many loops and fights for me. I don't mind this at all, I want to be clear - I'm much happier to buy an adventure which gives me too much and then prune it down, rather than bare bones I have to spend time adding to.

Seems like a sensible list of changes - a lot of Cold Mountain seemes like filler to me. But I'm of the same mindset as you: it's always easier to trim away stuff than to add more, so I'm fine with the details.

But I'll need to get through the end of Book 2 first - we've managed to kill Hargulka, after a few solid Mass Combat battles against goblins, orcs, and trolls. Now, the heroes just need to finish the owl bear - and decide how to deal with a few hundred orc civilians...

:D

You know what they say: stealing from one source is plagiarism. Stealing from many sources is research!

Canarr wrote:

In the end, Grigorij was abducted and murdered by the remaining two members of a Coven of Hags working for Nyrissa (an idea I stole from DaddyDM, I believe). The PCs had killed the third Hag, and they wanted to summon the Talonquake to their capital in revenge, but they needed a bard to play the magical flute to do so. They made him play the flute, then murdered him.

Ooh, you used the flute, too! :D Love what you did with Grigori there, it seems like a suitable end for such a person.

...annnnd I forgot that I stole that from you, too. Sorry about that - didn't mean to hog the credit.

Yeah, I liked the flute idea. The concept that the Owlbear is just randomly enraged miles to the south and then happens to stumble across the PCs' capital never sat well with me. The whole plot part with some bandit being tricked by Nyrissa seemed fairly contrived, TBH.

So in my game, while Nyrissa made the flute ages ago, and definitely used it repeatedly, this time it's just the Hags being pissed about their sister getting killed.

I found that a fitting end for Grigorij. Here he is, just barely having discovered something like a conscience, then gets murdered by creatures much worse than he is.

The Ultimate Campaign book has a bunch of downtime and background rules, among them updated versions of the Kingdom Building rules introduced in the Adventure Path. It's a good investment, if you want to pick it up - there's a Pocket Edition version that's fairly cheap.

A quick round of Google brings me to this link, seems to have all the rules. At least the part you asked about.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/kingdom-building#TOC-Kin gdom-Terminology

From all checks - Economy, Stability and Loyalty. Check the Ultimate Campaign book if you want updated figures, but this information is pretty consistent throughout all the books.

I'm guessing this is simply a mistake in translation.

He could still have a caster available who can cast Teleport, if him escaping and making his stand elsewhere would make for a better story.

It's a bit of a tradeoff. If the PCs start taking their army into every dungeon, then the dungeon crawls aren't going to be much fun in the long run. On the other hand, depending on the Mass Combat rules you use, someone like Irovetti is going to be a formidable army of one in his own right.

This is something you should discuss OT with your players - what do they expect, what do you expect, how should this game be played between all of you.

The compromise that Sunderstone suggested seems fair if they want to keep using their armies in attacking the castle (which is something that does make sense from a narrative point of view). Let them roll their armies against the castle guards using the Mass Combat system, or just narrate it until it comes the time for the PCs to meet Irovetti's last stand.

Alternatively, the PCs' army takes the castle, but Irovetti and his closest allies manage to escape - because the mooks simply aren't up to stopping someone of their caliber from getting out. Then the PCs can track him and defeat him on a different field of battle, without any armies involved.

In my game, my PCs managed to Out-Diplomacy Grigorij when he first showed up. The dwarven cleric of Erastil won enough Diplomacy checks against him to drive him out of the town for a while.

However, Grigorij wasn't a big hit with my players. They found him annoying, and not in the good way, so I decided to switch things up a bit. A month or two after he disappeared, a letter from him arrived for the baroness on a ship from Mivon - he'd relocated to there for the moment. In the letter, Grigorij warned them that the people who paid him - a fixer/troubleshooter for Baron Drelev - were also in cahoots with the trolls troubling their realm.

Basically, Grigorij stated that he didn't have any qualms in taking gold from one noble to harass another. That was fair in his book, but he drew the line at letting innocent farmers get eaten by trolls. So, he'd ducked out of his contract and was laying low somewhere else, until the PCs managed to deal with the trolls. Or the other way around.

In the end, Grigorij was abducted and murdered by the remaining two members of a Coven of Hags working for Nyrissa (an idea I stole from DaddyDM, I believe). The PCs had killed the third Hag, and they wanted to summon the Talonquake to their capital in revenge, but they needed a bard to play the magical flute to do so. They made him play the flute, then murdered him.

In Reverse's Kingmaker Podcast, Grigorij was hired on by Drelev in an official capacity, ended up his Grand Diplomat, I believe. Continued to be an annoyance to the PC(s), but they couldn't really touch him without provoking an incident.

Canarr wrote:

I figured that was just the kind of sign Akiros would be looking for to convince him that these people might be more worthy of his service than the Stag Lord, so he surrendered. "Don't know who you people are, but if you'd rather heal an enemy than let a friend die, you have to be better than this."

How did you approach his crimes? They're pretty serious.

I believe if he actually raped the woman,they would never have accepted him. But killing two people in the heat of the moment didn't seem to strike them as overly severe. I suppose being adventurers and used to killing things for gold makes you take a different perspective.

I'm planning to steal a scene out of Reverse's Kingmaker Podcast (Sugar-fuelled Gamers; if you haven't heard it, I strongly recommend it) where a Paladin of Erastil comes up with an arrest warrant for Akiros. Should be interesting...

Glad to see you brought in Cold Mountain. I've been considering that myself, but was wary of extending the already long AP by even more story. What parts did you trim off to shorten it?

12th Session - 18/05/16

Akiros Ismort is one of the more interesting NPCs in the Adventure Path, to me anyway. Since the PCs weren't going to have any non-combat interactions during the adventure, I decided to have him be inspired by them and join the fight against the other bandits rather than just be killed. Put it down to the hand of Erastil.

He was a big hit with my players, as well. The PCs had been drawn apart a bit during the fighting in the fort, when Akiros came up from behind and went for the sorceress and the barbarian protecting her. The cleric came up to support, with one reformed bandit NPC they'd been lugging around (War-1) at his side.

Unfortunately, when the bandit saw the kind of damage Akiros could dish out, he failed a morale check I made for him and tried to run, but got cut down by Akiros' attack of opportunity. The cleric saw him bleed out, but couldn't get past Akiros to administer a healing spell, so he decided to use Channel Positive Energy in order to prevent their ally from dying, even if that meant healing the enemy in the process.

I figured that was just the kind of sign Akiros would be looking for to convince him that these people might be more worthy of his service than the Stag Lord, so he surrendered. "Don't know who you people are, but if you'd rather heal an enemy than let a friend die, you have to be better than this."