Cavian's page

I'll definitely be interested in how this develops.

Is this project on the horizon?

The party I am GMing for squibbed The Man's Promise and renamed it The Liar's Fortune. Simple enough name but after a few adventures things started to go off the rails.

The second ship became The Mystery Machine.

They recently just captured 4 vessels and have decided to name them:
Josie
The Pussycats (Always paired with Josie)
The Funky Phantom
Speed Buggy
Sense a pattern to the insanity?

If the character is supposed to be a Master Assassin, he likely has a good streak of paranoia running through him as well. This means things like running dossiers on the PCs, setting up traps, making sure the battleground is to his advantage, etc. What that means is that even by his lonesome, he'd never be facing more than 1 character at a time if he can and even when he's facing 2 or more, he's doing so in such a way that their numbers are to his advantage not theirs.

For part 13: The Frying Pan if the PC's somehow manage to take the Dominator do they get XP for all 120 marines and the captain (~50000xp) or just the ones they killed? Also do they get XP for the ship itself CR9 in addition to the crew?

The PCs should in no way be encouraged or capable of taking The Dominator. I know that there are others in this thread that have allowed it, but there are also numerous threads that detail the problems of letting that happen as well. We're talking about a ship that is an experienced and capable pirate hunting vessel. It's use is to present Cheliax as a threat, and is best used as a reoccuring villain. I strongly encourage you to not let your PCs take the vessel under any circumstances, given that as written, simply escaping The Dominator can lead to TPKs.

Definitely going to have to take a look at this. Mythic Solutions has been interesting me for a bit, might be time to take the plunge on that and Villains.

You have no idea how much I want an need this in my life.

DragoDorn wrote:

Prince of Knives wrote:

And then the longest Mourners update ever was written: LINK

I think the forum swallowed your post, and now I live in terrified anticipation of learning it.

I believe DragoDorn was just correcting your code to link directly.

One possibility is to make the Scrying Pools only truly useful to someone who is a cyclops. Example: Visions seen by non-cyclops are hostile and can actively hurt the PCs. This would allow you to either seed future story threads ("visions of things to come") or allow them to scry upon the village itself but have to face versions of what they see. This serves a dual purpose of making the scrying pools useful as both a story tool and allowing the PCs to see what they'll be facing soon.

If you take this approach though be certain to have it such that anyone who "dies" during an encounter with the pool is just knocked unconscious and suffers a negative level or two for a few days while they recover from the experience. It allows you to go whole hog on the danger without causing an accidental TPK on a side-quest.

So I wrote a thing...

It's a thing! A well thought out thing, and a well worded argument. The "bag of cats" thing never sat right with me but I understand why some people use it as a base point to compare mechanics.

That's actually a flavorful way to handle it ErrantX.

The only thing that is essential to play Skull & Shackles is the Adventure Path books themselves (in either print or PDF) and a couple of sets of dice. For longterm investment you'll want to pickup a copy of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, but when you're just getting started the d20pfsrd or Paizo's own PRD are just fine.

If you're planning on running it then having 3 (active) players is enough, but the APs are generally designed for a group of 4, having 3 is a slight handicap but you can help them out by either giving the players a slightly higher point-buy at the start or running a DM-PC to help them out (and the AP has a number of them available from the start). Get them started by directing them to download a copy of the Skull & Shackles Player's Guide and I highly suggest running character generation as a group to get an idea of what kind of party you'll have on your hand. Miniatures are in no way required for this game and it can all be run through the power of imagination, though the miniatures help out a bit.

If you want to just run the campaign as written you'll be just fine but there are a number of additional products that you can get that will help enhance it:
* Pathfinder Player Companion - Pirates of the Inner Seas
* Pathfinder Campaign Setting - Isles of the Shackles
* Islands of Plunder series of mini-adventures from Legendary Games (they slot right in)
* Pathfinder Module - Plunder & Peril (when it comes out)

After that, check out the various threads here in the forums for advice on tweaking the campaign or adding stuff to it.

So, Saturday night my gaming group finally got together again after nearly 6 weeks of not playing due to a number of unfortunate events getting in the way. The night started off with the introduction of newcomer Barclay (Ratfolk Wood-Oracle) who has been stranded on the island for a while and seen a number of the stranger elements upon the Isle of Empty Eyes but really just wants to A) get off the island safely, and B) help the couple of other survivors under his care to get better. See, in my tweaked campaign the Cyclopes are using the power of the dreamstone as a mind-control device to try to rebuild their ruined city and search for more artifacts, using the crews of pirate ships brave (or foolish) enough to come to the island as slave labor. The survivors Barclay is watching after are under the effect of the stone but are too weak/injured to obey it's call. And as fate would have it, the party's captain (who's player was conveniently absent for this session) has fallen under the effects of the stone as well. Barclay can make an antidote (part of his backstory is that he dabbled in herbalism before being shipwrecked on the island) but he's missing a key component: fresh wyvern venom.

As noted in my original post, I've add parts of Beacon Island from Razor Coast off the shores of the main island and seeing as how the main island is surrounded by reefs it made perfect sense that such a lighthouse would be there. The party had previously sent their sorcerer to take a peek at the lighthouse and so knew that wyverns were roosting there. Off they went with Barclay in-tow to acquire wyvern venom. Once there they discovered the corpse and journal of a Chelish officer. They have identified the officer as being the true captain of the Dominator and now are speculating as to who is running the Chelish dreadnaught while masquerading as Captain Lorvika in place of this dead woman! (Dun, dun dun!) In the end it was a fun session with rampant speculation, fun roleplay moments, and a dramatic death for the sorcerer which will set the stage for our next session to begin with bargaining with a fey for the means to raise/reincarnate the sorcerer! And wouldn't you know it, Sefina is a fey that's quite curious about humanoids but doesn't much believe in the value of currency.

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Oooh...I'm going to have great fun with this one, my PCs have an axe to grind with a certain Imperial state.

EDIT: I like Impaling Comet, Piercing Thunder, Crashing Lightning, Lunging Serpent, and Greased Lightning.

The last one may not be as valid a suggestion as the others.

Go grease lightning, you're burning up the quarter mile...

To make armor spikes appear you need to go to the armor tab, then select custom armor. Create your armor as it appears (masterwork/magical/etc) and then armor spikes are under "armor special abilities." After you've added that the armor spikes will appear in your weapon tab.

Hey guys and gals as the title suggests I have some concerns about Bonewrack Island in the first book of the AP. I have a group that is still relatively new to role-playing and I am worried that the island just might be to tough for them. Does anybody have suggestions on taming the island down a bit but without making the island a cake walk?

One of the best suggestions (and one that I used personally) is to change it so that Aaron Ivy is alive when the party encounters him at the fort. Give him a castaway vibe, but as a helpful NPC he will have knowledge about the island that should make it more survivable. It also gives the party a place to retreat to and rest, which is a plus. The other thing that should help (which the fort drives home if used as suggested above) is stressing that the party can run away from encounters without too much penalty. Bonewrack Island is a meat-grinder but only if the PCs approach it that way, besides, it drives the tension up a few notches that the PCs have a semi-deadline before Plugg & Scourge say, "Screw it!" and sail off without them.

My real concern is getting playtesters to not refer to it as "going super saiyan".

... you fool! You've sown the seeds of your own downfall within the minds of playtesters!

That is a very flavorful capstone ability and I like it. The wording of the alignment part is a bit clunky, but that can be smoothed out later.

Okay, I've glanced over the main body of the class itself and am working my way through the two new disciplines. I must say, I am very impressed with the work and really want to play a zealot now. I'll give more feedback if I get a chance, but my gaming group is currently in side-story mode, so I don't know when we'll get back to a position where I can play one of these.

I'll make you a deal; if I get one piece of new feedback on each of the current open playtest items (Guru, Daevic, Archetypes, Races) from at least 5 individuals in this thread, I'll put the Pharaoh out for public alpha as soon as the Empty Pyramid discipline is reviewed by Chris

Deal.

Update coming this evening guys, including the long awaited revised Desire Passion for the Daevic! Since I know you all probably can't wait to get your hands on it until I have a chance to post it up tonight, here's a little sneak preview:

Desire Passion:

Desire: Daevas of Desire seek out servants whose lust for physical pleasures burns within them with an all-consuming ferocity. Wild hedonists, passionate lovers, men and women who make their living or spend their gold in houses of ill repute, even drug addicts and gluttons have all been known to attract the attention of daevas of this Passion. A Daevic who selects this Passion is almost never of Lawful alignment as their driving needs usually consume any consideration they might have for rules or codes.

Lust: Daevics who follow the path of lust often lack the commitment necessary to form a long term bond with a sentient being, but this makes them no less possessive of what they consider theirs. At 6th level the daevic may spend a standard action to grant either his wielded weapon the Called weapon enhancement, or his worn armor the Adhesive enhancement. At 11th level he may grant both of these abilities simultaneously, and at 16th level he may add the Spellstealing ability to his wielded weapon and the Improved Shadow ability to his armor in addition to the standard enhancements. The daevic may use this ability a number of times per day equal to his Charisma bonus (minimum 1), and its effects last for 1 hour per class level. The daevic may not have more than 1 instance of this ability active at a time, and the enhancements fade from the weapon and armor if they leave his possession for more than 1 minute.

I'm inclined to agree with Adam B. 135, the majority of the abilities there for "lust" don't really mesh well with each other. You should definitely go with splitting it into two: Lust and Avarice. If you're scrambling for ideas/inspiration for Avarice themed abilities I highly suggest you go take a look at Larfleeze from DC Comic's Green Lantern. Spellstealing effect fits right in for Avarice as does the Covetous Aura that Adam B. 135 tossed in further up.

And more for amusement than truly fitting in, but having the Avaric deavic being able to summon a Mad Monkeys effect composed of essence taking on the forms of his/her past victims amuses me to no end.

Stupid question with regards to the Warder's Defensive Focus ability.

Am I misreading this somehow? Since it's a full-round action to recover maneuvers with it, the extended threat region and everything that goes with it (movement), bonus against Acrobatics, difficult terrain etc... will almost never come into play. Right? I mean, the only time it would actually do anything is if an opponent had a readied action, I think. Because the full-round action is resolved entirely on the warder's turn, so nobody else actually gets to commit any actions that would provoke an AoO.

Maybe I'm sequencing this wrong in my head. I suspect I am but keep running an initiative sequence where X goes, Y goes, warder goes (recovers maneuvers), Z goes, and because "(recovers maneuvers)" happens entirely on the warder's turn, X, Y, and Z don't ever get to trigger any of its neat abilities.

I'm thinking that maybe this should be a one-round action, so all that pretty text happens every once in a while?

Think of it as the same way "Summon Monster" full-round actions occur. The ability is on-going until the beginning of the Warder's next turn, allowing it to be interrupted (or in this case trigger) until the Warder finishes it.

Next preview up, with a look ahead at Neil Spicer's latest collection of characters, NAUTICAL HEROES!

So, having never picked up one of these, how exactly does it work? Are they just pre-genned level 1 characters with backgrounds or does the collection also include their advancement at various levels? I ask because while the former is interesting the latter becomes much more useful as a GM.

Are the Warder's abilities like Antagonize or like the 4ed Fighter Marks? Or something in between?

They play more like the Fighter Marks: "You can choose not to hit me, you'll just purposefully be making a sub-optimal choice to do so."

That thing is terrifying.

Cavian wrote:

The other thing to note is that the mythic ability doesn't require a dispel check and allows the use of any spell of equal level or higher while the Arcane Exploit requires both a higher level spell AND a dispel check.

That's because the mythic one doesn't count as a dispel magic. You still have to follow the same rules for counterspelling (same spell/same school if you have the feat).

Also, mythic power is also a limited resource.

1st-Tier Archmage Path Ability - Flexible Counterspell (Mythic Adventures pg. 16)

"Flexible Counterspell (Su): Your mythic power enhances
your ability to counter others' spells. As an immediate
action, you can exp end one use of mythic p ower to
attempt to counter a sp ell. This ability otherwise works
like readying an action to counter a spell, except instead
of using the exact spell or dispel magic, you can instead
expend a spell or spell slot of a level equal to or higher
than the target spell."

Bolded part for emphasis, the mythic version allows any spell to be used as long as it is the same level or higher.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I've been compiling a list of iconics for all classes recently and I started work on this book. I did some research and found the following:

Lina, human Kineticist
Adrian, Xeph Soulknife
Nomon, Blue Aegis
Peywin, Elan Cryptic
Umbar, Noral Dread
Maikra, Half orc Marksman
Dukalti, Half giant Psychic Warrior
Illira, maenad Wilder
??- Dromite Tactician
??- Ophiduan Vitalist

As you can see, I am missing the rest of the Psion specialties and any of the prestige classes, as I heard some were done as well. The ones I have seen of those seemed fan based and not official. My question is, does someone know where to find a complete list of all the Ultimate Psionics Iconics so I can complete and clarify my list?

Thank you. I love the idea of Psionics and hope to include them in my next campaign.

The ones I know for certain are:

Dagiron, Half-Orc Metaforge
Eimee, Elan Mystic Archer
Li Mu Bao, Elan Psychic Fist
Lanis, Tiefling Metamind

Those are the ones in the "Ultimate Psionics Kickstarter" forums on the DSP site, but they might have been re-posted elsewhere.

The other thing to note is that the mythic ability doesn't require a dispel check and allows the use of any spell of equal level or higher while the Arcane Exploit requires both a higher level spell AND a dispel check.

I'd like to take a moment to do my 'mission accomplished' dance. The thing that's frustrated me for awhile since coming here is this perception that NE or CE characters must be these cardboard cutouts unsuitable for use as player characters. That frustration was part of Jewel's inspiration, and one of my goals for her was to demonstrate how you can create a party-friendly CE character. Jewel is chaotic and she is evil; she can be cruel, spiteful, hurtful, and murderous. She values her freedom above all other concerns and destroys things out of stubborn fury when people try to constrain her actions or tell her what to do. But she works with a group, with a team. She plans ahead, and she's just not interested in evil for its own sake. Evil ditched her like everyone else did. Why should Jewel care?

The definitions of NE and CE presented by Dragoon, above, are extremes that don't paint the full picture of those alignments. I know I won't change the culture in PF around E-alignments any time soon (or probably at all) but I do feel happy to note that I was able to get my point across.

Plus I just like Jewel, she's fun to write.

Awesome, so my post was eaten by the forums, I'll give a shorter version:

This is the kind of CE character that I would completely allow at my table as GM. Jewel's an interesting character and I like that she's not all "BURN BURN BURN!" Which is what Chaotic Evil normally gets characterized as, which fits more with certain demons than with a mortal who's not chained to their alignment. I'd like to hear more about Jewel, Ana, and the Rabble. Perhaps you can sneak them in during chapter break fiction pieces like Paizo does with the main hardcovers or the little blurbs in APs.

Adam B. 135 wrote:

Any chance of the Pharoah being a partial or full initiator with his own discipline? Laying down one or two Akashic Disciplines, with their mechanics built around essence, may make archetypes and other classes easier to make down the line.

I wrote this big in depth response and then the website ate it....

Long story short, yes, he will probably be an initiator and we'll introduce a couple Akashic Disciplines that work a little bit differently than standard disciplines and are only useable by characters with an Essence pool. Essence burn is going to replace expending and recovering for the akashic maneuvers and all akashic maneuvers will be supernatural by default, but most of the other stuff will probably remain the same.

I could get behind this, and as a fellow victim of spontaneous forum-post consumption, you have my sympathies. The support group meets on Thursdays, please bring dip.

Congrats to all of FGG!

I will also note that Islands of Plunder: Raid on the Emperor's Hand is coming out in early August, so you may have one more adventure to weave into your narrative plan. That is, if your PCs like plundering ships that have run aground in a dangerous spot, with a race against time to get their first and claim it for their own! Is that the Dominator on the horizon? I HATE THOSE GUYS!!!

Sounds like great fun! I know I want Scourge of the Steaming Isle to be the final throw down with the Dominator and its crew, but if I can have them encounter it a few more times before then I'm all for it.

My party has just started book 4 and at the end of last session they arrived at the island. I've made tweaks throughout the campaign, such as the regatta being suspended due to the revelation of the spy ring plot arc that occurs over most the proceeding book. I also truncated the alchemist shop portion of book 3 and replaced it with a slightly scaled up and tweaked Tarin's Crown. The Dominator is still looming around as a menace on the hunt for pirates and the party has a healthy respect/fear of the ship. This brings us to the actual body of the thread, how I'm tying the three Islands of Plunder modules together into my S&S campaign. I figured I would post them here so that others can glean this thread for ideas and/or give me insight on to how to tweak this more!

It should be assumed from here on out that everything else is Spoilers both for Island of Empty Eyes and the Islands of Plunder series.

One of the tweaks I made in Tarin's Crown to tie it further into the story was that Tarin was a pawn of the Chelish spy ring and the goal was to smuggle the artifact out of the Shackles into Chelish hands. The Dominator was supposed to be the ship to pick up the artifact from Tarin and his erstwhile navigator (stat block replaced with the alchemist from book 3). The crew of the Dominator is now more determined than ever to hunt down the party and I intend to give the party the chance to have a throw down with the ship at the end of the book in place of the feast, but we'll get to that in a second.

Now, my party has completed Tarin's Crown and returned to Port Peril to report their success to Tessa Fairwind, who in my campaign is acting as their patron. Given that the regatta has been indefinitely suspended until a council vote brings it back, the party is pretty pissed, given that: a) Tessa was going to pay their entry fee, so it looks like she weaseled out of a deal; and b) they were informed of this by Harrigan, who hasn't blatantly acted out against them since the Wormwood but has been hounding them through agents throughout, though the party has no definitive proof of this. Since the regatta has been canceled for the time being, their is no in game reason for the party to be given the Island of Empty Eyes as a reward for it, so I've decided that Tessa Fairwind went there to try to influence Bikendi on a Pirate Council vote. In my game Bikendi is a reclusive Pirate Lord that no one's heard from in a number of years, so there's every reason for Tessa to head there. After some sleuthing around the party has made it to the island and found Tessa's ship anchored in the main bay completely abandoned, and here's where the main tweaking begins!

Since I want the Island to have a better tie-in to the overall narrative arc of the campaign, I've expanded a bit on the "haunted" premise presented with the old Chelish fort. I've also added Beacon Island from Razor Coast as a little side adventure for the party since we use slow advancement. Now, the next session is going to begin with the party's haunted dreams, wherein they will play out a small scenario. I will have the party experience the downfall of Tessa's one true love at the hands of his first-mate and a certain sea-hag who will become more important as I continue on.

For this I'm using a scaled up version of the second half of Spices & Flesh. We'll be skipping past the slave ship part and straight to the small isle at the end, with the objective being to seize the hag's dreamstone in order to tie it back into book 4. I've scaled up the encounters and retooled the hag a bit (She's now a Divine Sea Hag Knife-Master Rogue 8). The intent is for the party to drive her off and seize the dreamstone from her for Bikendi's research and then to flash-forward through the power of dreams to her forcing the ship they're on to run into the reefs surrounding the Isle of Empty Eyes. Here the first-mate, a one Dwali Kepu, will betray the captain and rename his ship the Wormwood. See where I'm going with this?

Later once the party has reclaimed or destroyed the dreamstone from the Cyclops ruins, they'll have a visit from the good ship Dominator. The reason for the rebuild of the hag is it's going to be revealed that the captain of the ship is actually the alias Shayonna has assumed over the decade since her defeat and is using her resources to hunt down what she believes is hers. The PCs will have received reports of their various holdings and allies having been attacked by the Dominator and that's when I'll allow them to track it down to the Steam Isle and have a final throwdown with the Chelish marines and its monstrous captain, and that will set the stage for book 5!

So, if you've made it this far through my long-winded ramble, I thank you. If you have any suggestions, questions, or tweaks, I would love to hear them!

As long as we're talking about the psi-loving niche market, it would be nice to see archetypes for the ranger, paladin, and perhaps even the bard which swapped out their spellcasting for psi.

In Ultimate Psionics there's a paladin archetype called the Purifier that trades spellcasting for manifesting. The bard archetype doesn't lose spellcasting but gains a collective and I don't remember offhand what the ranger trades out.

I've picked this up and given it a look through, looks quite nice and well polished, looking forward to running it!

Yeah. But that's all it does, damage. Maneuvers come with defensive benefits (especially the stuff attendant with stances) and utility options that don't involved just doing more damage... while matching the damage benefits of psychic strike or being more effective. Plus it actually works on mindless creatures.

Just spit-balling here: Perhaps replace the blade skills learned at 4th, 10th, and 16th? It roughly lines up with when the War Soul would learn new stances and the lost blade skills are made up in utility from the stances/maneuvers.

Obtaining a revolver? That one gauntlet that stores weapons? Quick draw and weapon cords?

That problem already existed except their was no incentive to dual wield as such, so I don't see how it's a problem with the discipline.

I guess a stance to do that would work well enough, but a feat or text in the maneuvers would be prefered over having to use a stance forever.

Oh, I quite agree, there's not many ways currently to deal with the issue. I was just throwing it out there as how to accomplish it using either a boost or a maneuver. Really, the only incentive that exists right now to dual wield with a firearm is the Sword and Pistol feat, and that has a heavy feat investment to it.

Probably a special rule that gunshots used as part of the maneuvers/stances don't provoke AOOs.

Probably should just be baked into one or more stances to do that, no need to make a special rule exception.

This discipline could also work well for someone who wants a pistol in one hand and a melee implement in the other.

How would you handle needing a free hand to reload in this case?

Wow, it was actually pretty easy destroy it, we got the Alchemist into the powder stores and he blew it up, i'm guessing that was not supposed to happen and the Dominator was not played correctly.

Likely not, granted this is the only time as written that it shows up, but your GM has lost out on a number of possible opportunities. In either event, don't expect to pull the same trick the next time a similar threat shows up.

The Dominator as written does not call out that it has any spell casters as part of its normal crew compliment but that does not mean that it wouldn't have any. The stat block for the ship only details 136 members of the crew and then says there are 60 others, a minimum of 20 of which are faceless mook sailors. In either case, the Dominator is not meant to be taken, and the AP actually advises against allowing PCs to try as it can very easily lead to a TPK and end the AP right there.

I'm thinking that the encounter with Gamin "Half-Ear" Crystos will be more effective if the PCs have met him elsewhere first. I can easily seed him into some tavern encounter or something, but if any of you do anything more dramatic with him I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Well, how far in are you? If you're still on the Wormwood you could always have him be a helpful NPC on the ship so the PCs start to like the guy. If you're at Rickety's he could fill a similar role, or be a friendly rival during the downtime there.

I'm really on the fence about offering up a mythic tier. I know that a lot of work has already been done with regards to making Skull & Shackles mythic, but I hadn't decided to go that route. This is just so cool, though.

What's everyone else doing?

For what it's worth, when Mythic Adventures came out my group was near the end of Book 2. I didn't feel like having two books end with underwater dungeons, and my party wasn't really taking the hints to go to Mancatcher Cove, so I ran the adventure in the back of MA instead (with some suitable piratey tweaking of course). My players had a blast and really got to feel like big-damn-heroes there, but I followed that adventure's advice and took away their tiers at the end of it. As such, it's become a story for them to tell in taverns around the Shackles, and something they use to show how powerful they are when someone tries to mess with them. The mythic stuff can be very useful in that regard, but I don't feel it fits overall with the campaign as a whole. I think the suggestion in Spices & Flesh to give them a one-time boost is a fantastic way to allow your players a taste of the greater glory that comes from defeating mythic foes without actually having to change your campaign on a fundamental level. Mythic stuff is great if you're prepared for it from the start, but it really is a different play style that can be a hard transition if you're not ready for it.

Saturday!

Though we always encourage folks when possible to shop directly with us, getting more of your gaming dollar into the hands of the people who create the products you enjoy!

I couldn't wait so I went ahead and picked it up on the site. I noticed this one doesn't have a scaling up/down section like Tarin's Crown does.

I'll give further impressions when I have a chance to sit down for a longer read through but it looks quite interesting so far. Wish I had it back in book 2.

Islands of Plunder: Spices and Flesh now available!

P.S. If you've enjoyed Tarin's Crown, please do take a moment to write a review, like or share post about it on FB, and otherwise spread the good word however you can. We certainly appreciate your support and hope you enjoy this adventure as much as the first, if not more!

Done and done, any clue when Spices and Flesh will be up on the Paizo store?

Bought Tarin's crown a few days ago, looks cool, and this was the question I had, just out of curiosity.

I like Tempest Rising, but one thing I wanted to change was the fact that the two opening leads for the spy ring investigation conveniently have the information that the other is seeking. I think instead I'm going to have Tarin's crown sculpted to depict Besmara and Calistria embracing and it was made as a gift for Tessa Fairwind (who is a worshiper of Calistria but, I think, would still have a healthy respect for Besmara). My destruction conditions would require a pirate captain devout worshiper of Calistria having to forsake his/her life of piracy, choosing to retire in anonymity, take a spouse, and work the land. Upon his or her uneventful death of old age, the crown dissolves.

Tessa doesn't have the time to personally go and retrieve it (investigating the spy ring and all), and she disdains crowns anyway. But she recognizes that her rep will suffer if she doesn't get the crown back, so she sends the PCs to get it. Upon the retrieval of this sacred object, Tessa asks the PCs to aid her in her efforts to find spies. The church of Calistria is willing to impart some info they've heard about the spy ring, especially to the people who just recovered the object sacred to Calistria.

I actually ended up using Tarin's Crown as the culmination of the spy-ring arc. I had the pearl be an object that the spy-ring was trying to smuggle out of the Shackles. The stealing of the pearl became a heist from a Besmaran temple, and being the fickle and easily angered goddess she is, I declared that Besmara was angry at the whole of the Shackles for it. Tarin and his crew became Chelish naval deserters that were attempting to use the pearl as a means to buy pardons from Cheliax and House Thrune (it also allowed me to bring the Dominator for Book 2 back). Lots of double-crossing involved, and the alchemist battle in the shop was saved til later (she already got away and was used as the navigator for Tarin's ship). It also allowed a handy way for there to be a reason for the PCs to care about Tarin in the first place and another test for Tessa.

Cavian wrote:

Running Tarin's Crown right now for my Skull & Shackles group and so far they're enjoying it. Can't wait to try the rest, they're a little high level for Spices and Flesh but the other two will be right up their alley, any hints as to when those will be ready to go?

Artists just started work on their parts of those two, but maps and writing are getting close to done. Hopefully we can get both out in July.

Still waiting on final layout of Spices and Flesh, but should be available soon.

Looking forward to it! My group finished Tarin's Crown last night and I must say that the final series of encounters can be fairly brutal. I switched it up a little bit from what was printed to further an on going story thread vs the Chelish (specifically the Dominator) that my party has but they greatly enjoyed it all and are looking into the logistics of the island to either raze it (Vegepygmies are creepy!) or do something else with it.

Running Tarin's Crown right now for my Skull & Shackles group and so far they're enjoying it. Can't wait to try the rest, they're a little high level for Spices and Flesh but the other two will be right up their alley, any hints as to when those will be ready to go?

I made changes to the Combat Psychic, and it is now called the "Awakened Blade". Give it a check over and see if it looks a bit better; I made some substantial changes to Situational Awareness and such.

-X

Just from a quick glance over, the formatting of the maneuvers table looks a bit weird on there. I know from the text of the abilities they gain maneuvers at even-levels but the table does not convey that easily. Just a thought.

Cavian wrote:

I would certainly be a supporter of a hardcover Kickstarter.

Plus, odds are good that I'd be dropping the kind of Kickstarter cash that forces them to let me write my own PrC and/or archetype for the final release :)

Chris and Jade know how much I want to play in their playground, lol!

Not going to go for the iconic/cover level there Ssalarn? ^_-

I would certainly be a supporter of a hardcover Kickstarter.