Champ Kindly's page

The SoG DM discord has been extremely active to the detriment of the classic forum format

I asked for an update on the announcement blog back in November and got zero response... Not looking good

Also Remastered should be a must by now :D

Well literally yes: any future Paizo publications will be under the ORC license as opposed to OGL and will need to be remastered by default. I saw James Jacobs mention elsewhere that part of the reason Gatewalkers got the remaster treatment was because it had relatively few OGL monsters etc that needed overhauling, and that the same bears true for SoG.

Some hastily cobbled together supporting evidence of SoG's popularity (although I'm sure Paizo will have by far the most important data - book sales):

GM and player surveys putting SoG as easily the most popular AP

The discord thread for SoG has over 33,000 posts - this is in comparison to most AP threads having an average of 1,000-2,000 posts. Abomination Vaults, a highly popular AP which predates SoG significantly, has less than half of the posts with 14,000 at present.

It's well documented by now that Season of Ghosts is a gigantic f~*$ing hit.

Given that it's now formally announced that Gatewalkers is getting the compilation/remaster treatment, can we expect the same for SoG? I would personally relish a fully remastered update of this amazing AP.

Any update on the Season of Ghosts soundtrack?

Champ Kindly wrote:

Having read over this, I also find that there is no mention of having 4 skills checks as part of each contest. Great to have clarification here though.

That's covered in the second sentence after "Traditional Contests" on page 62:

"Each of these games are resolved via four skill checks attempted over the course of a set amount of time to accumulate Victory Points..."

Hope that clears it all up! :-)

You are a gentleman and a scholar, thank you.

Having read over this, I also find that there is no mention of having 4 skills checks as part of each contest. Great to have clarification here though.

A little mixed feelings. Like you, I thought it was a little odd that it got tossed out in 2nd act.

** spoiler omitted **...

Ah, some very good points here. I hadn't read that particular stat block closely enough - the aura of past regrets is definitely an avenue for some interesting "flashbacks" hinting that all is not as it seems.

Looking forward to reading more about the mechanics of it all in book 3 so I can figure out how to plant some more seeds in book 1.

Aha, good to know!

And yes, definitely at risk of getting ahead of myself... Especially considering I won't be starting this until my group ends one of our current 1e or SF campaigns, which will likely be well into next year. Just getting swept up in excitement prepping this to be honest.

Have just finished reading through Let the Leaves Fall - delighted to see it's as well put together as book 1, really can't wait to start running it.

Wondering what people's thoughts are on Zhi Hui revealing the nature of

To me it seems somewhat anticlimactic to have such a fundamentally reality-altering reveal just be delivered in dialogue. Would be interested to hear if anyone has any thoughts on a more dramatic or cinematic way of revealing the information to the party.

As an aside: I can't overstate my excitement to start running this. Such an amazing AP so far.

Also very interested to learn this!

If you think keeping track of things will be daunting, I threw an Introduction onto the front of the the reputation sheet I made and you can find it here.

It's obviously not spoiler free and it doesn't look pretty, but I only really cared that it fit my use case. I tried to keep it as IP-free as I could (relatively vague on some of the reputation triggers, so you'd still have to read the adventure to know what's going on), but if anyone thinks it's not vague enough I can alter it as needed.

You'll have to do File > Make a Copy and get a copy of the sheet to be able to edit it. It comes with some simple scripts as well. You can read those ahead of time if you want.

Hopefully that helps sort through some of the fog of the reputation/attitude system in the adventure path!

This is amazing, will be a huge help to keep this campaign organised (not one of my strengths). Thank you!

Yes my mistake, the PCs are level 9. And to think I thought the encounters would be too easy as I had another friend joining to bring the party to 5 PCs for this session. Glad to see it's been equally lethal for other parties, I feel better about my GMing now!

An interesting point raised on reddit is that Black Lotus poison was initially DC20 in the CRB before being errata'd to DC26. So it seems like the AP encounter was written with it balanced around being DC20. Just something to think about for anyone else planning on running it.

Just lost 2 PCs on the Lizard Lounge balcony encounter. Did I do something wrong or is that Black Lotus poison way too potent for this level? Con track with accelerated progression and a DC26 Fort save at level 10? None of the PCs made the perception check to notice she wasn't drinking a second glass but is there anything else they could have done to avoid dying?

Yeah, I've looked through a few more of the Signal of Screams maps and sadly many of them are not square, but have rows of alternating length or height. It's a huge shame. It must be intentional, or at least in the knowledge that it makes life difficult for Roll20 users.

I'm having trouble using the AP maps for areas B, C and D. It seems impossible to align them to a grid on roll20. If I look closely I can convince myself that the stock grid isn't actually square - look at the bottom right corner, and compare the height of the row containing the words "B. The Blue Room" compared to the height of the row immediately above it.

It's not just me is it? Am I crazy or are the rows alternating in considerably different heights?

Importing the map into Roll20 has been a pain either way. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

The secondary effect of the fog of ghosts (which deals 4d12 negative energy each round to everyone in the room; Fort for half) happens every round until the apparitions have been destroyed.

Ah, I see where I was confused - I'd lumped that effect in with the "initial" effect of the Will save. That makes perfect sense now, thank you!

I have a quick question I hope someone can help me with - I'm a relatively new GM, getting ready to run my 3rd session of Diaspora Strain tomorrow.

I'm a bit confused about the tortured apparitions that appear in area G of the mines. I understand the sequence of events around their appearance: the concealing fog, screams, doors lock, the Will save against being shaken and the Fort save against negative energy damage. I'm just not sure how exactly it's supposed to play out after that. What does the trap do in subsequent rounds of combat? I know it has a combined HP pool of 120, Mysticism checks can harm it as well as other attacks. But after the first round, what "actions", if any, does the trap take? The flavour text says the apparitions claw at the PCs but there's no info on melee attacks or anything in the stat block.

Am I missing something?

I'm currently playing a level 6 infernal sorcerer through book 2 of Hell's Vengeance. I'm not hugely familiar with a lot of the lore/setting/mechanics (either this campaign or Pathfinder generally) so today I've just been looking ahead at ways to go with the build as I level, researching feats, prestige classes, and other such fun things. I'm thinking of going prestige into Diabolist and take a load of Damnation feats, for flavour.

I came across the spell Create Soul Gem and have been doing a bit of reading on The Soul Trade. It seems to apply exclusively to demons but it got me wondering about devils. Would a contract devil, or other LE outsiders, accept souls of defeated NPCs for trade? Or just as gifts to help gain favours? Would they value them at all?

Are there any other interesting uses of soul gems? I'm intrigued by the idea of taking the souls of all the LG Iomedeans my party will kill along the course of the campaign, and trading them to eternal damnation.