Commander315's page

@John Mechalas:
That's absolutely correct! Thank you so much, I forgot about that rule!
That's amazing, completely washes away my dilemma for the encounter.

What about the other scenario?
Any thoughts/Suggestions?

@Eltaris:
I'm really glad I'm not the only one to have found the terrain too small in Shinju-no-Ie.

About the final siege, I wanted to leave the battle on the "background" focusing on the PCs.
I like the idea of the mass morale loss if the Big Baddies die, I'll use that too!

Hello everyone,

Next week I'm going to be the DM in this adventure.
The party is made of 4 players, 3 seasoned and 1 relatively new - he played d&d 3.5, 5E, but with few sessions and I believe with DMs that were less than reasonable.
The PCs are an Inquisitor, a Ninja -wields Suishen, follows the Bushido way regarding Ameiko as his master-, an Arcanist, and Magus.
This AP has got my attention since release, and I played it as a player 3 or 4 years ago. I live in Rome, and it wasn't translated up until then.

Now I'm playing it with another group on Roll20 because of the covid-19 pandemic, as DM.

This AP was on hold for too much time, but everyone remembers pretty much everything and I'm really happy and thrilled to start again.

Now off with the intro and let's talk about some things that honestly I want to customize and I'm curious about your opinions folk, I want to know if what I've in mind it's doable or I would just put myself in complicated situations hardly manageble.

Spoiler alert:

1) Shinju-no-Ie encounter with the Shadow mage:
The terrain in this scenario really puts at a disadvantage the caster(s). The boss here seems to be designed to be invisible pretty much all the time (he has loads of silent spells in his repertoire), dumping his spells while the Nue fella he bound fights the PCs -if it wasn't killed before, of course.
Now this encounter happens in a 6x6 squares room (every square is 5 ft x 5 ft) and my first reaction was: how do they move? how does everyone, PCs included, move here? The room looks incredibly small compared to the creatures involved and their level - I mean the shadow mage guy could create a labyrinth on the Shadow plane, curse a chessboard, summon countless dead and shadows, and retreats in a room barely able to support targeted spells?
So I want to at least double the size of the room in width and height, and add a Shadow Demon -conjured via Greater Shadow Conjuration- and another Shadow Demon conjured via Summon Monster VI. These monsters will be already there when the PCs arrive. The Shadow Demons will try to summon shadow Leopards as a first move - there will be loads of creatures in that way, risking to slow the encounter too much.

How does it sounds? Would it be "fair" or are the PCs going to face a challenge too high for their level 12?
How did you run this encounter?
How would you run it if you haven't already?

2) The siege of Seinaru Heikiko:
At the end of the adventure 2 atamahuta and a fire oni attack Seinaru Heikiko that is supposedly full of troops by this point (including the Nine Pawns, or what remains of them - I'll roll a d10 to see how many die in the Sennaka encounter behind the scenes).
3 onis, as powerful as they may be, in my opinion, are definetely not enough.
They're facing a fortress full of troops (let's say it's full of 2nd level warriors; sooner or later some of them will roll a 20, right?) so I thought to describe the assault as led by these onis that are the heads (hehehe) of a small army of Ettins.
The ettins will be the antagonists of the troops - I'll just describe them during the Initiative - while the PCs, Ameiko, Jiro and Hatsue face the fire oni and the 2 atamahuta.
Still the odds are against the onis in this ramped up scenario, so I thought:
first the atamahuta will be 3 not 2 and what if at this point Kaibuninsho shows up for a final showdown? It would be perfectly set in the mind of an evil Ninja to attack at this point and it would also give the players a real feeling of a final chapter battle, would it not?
What do you think?
Would it be viable or the appearance of Kaibuninsho could topple the odds in favor of the enemies? Do i risk a TPK here?

Thank you for reading this far.
Looking forward to your options and opinions.

Have a great 2021 everyone!

Hello everyone,

My question is very simple, really.
Does the Fatigue condition given by the frostbite in the Environmental Rules, jump to the Exhausted condition if the characters fails more than 1 save per hour?
Normally, i would say yes, and I played this as a yes. So, if one of my PCs doesn't dress properly in winter, he will fall for exhaustion frostbite or Hypothermia. This is because the fatigue condition "stacks" with itself, becoming exhausted condition normally.

My game life was fine, until I read the Frostbite spell. Now I know that it is just a spell, not a rule, but still the claws of doubt clutched my mind. The spell recites:
"[...]This spell cannot make a creature exhausted even if it is already fatigued."

And so I thought: there's nothing written in the books about fatigue from frostbite becoming exhaustion. When there's no explicit rule, I apply the general rule, where fatigue becomes exhaustion.

What do you say? Am I ruling this correctly?

Thanks in advance to whoever will help me with this silly doubt.
Have a nice day!

Hello,
My GM's not well versed in English, and those books are still not translated in my language I'm afraid. We use the books translated for this reason. I'll check if I'm mistaken; if not I'll try to buy the PDF version on the online store.

Thank you both for your kind answers.

Best regards and happy gaming

Hello everyone,

Me and my group are into this AP, Jade Regent. We recently completed Rise of the Runelords, and now we're at our 3rd session in this new AP.
We're about to travel with the caravan for the first journey, and we wished to increase as much as we can the relationship scores of the four main NPCs (Sandru, Koya, Ameiko and Shalelu).
In the Jade Regent Player's Guide, in the section "Improving Relationships", at the 4th paragraf, Gifts and Insults, it says:

"You can give a gift or an insult to an NPC once per character level"

I was wondering: can I give a gift to Koya, and another gift to Ameiko, in the same level? Say, as a Lv 4 character, I found a suitable gift for Koya, and I bought a good instrument, or piece of poetry, for Ameiko: can I give the gifts to them both in the same level?
The sentence doesn't sounds to me exclusive for different gifts to different NPCs, but my GM is not as sure, so I'm asking here. It may sound silly to ask for this, but in our language the sentence it's really unclear.

Sorry if this is not the correct section of the forums to discuss the matter in the topic's title.

Thank you in advance for your patience and assistance.