Curghann's page

My group recently finished VV before we took a little break due to one of our players moving away. They basically went to VH, then met the centaurs and immediately went for V's tomb. They did a good job of it, had some rough encounters but came away ahead due to solid planning and teamwork.

Since finishing VV, the player that moved was one of the ones most interested in the kingdom building aspect of the game. They have their kingdom pretty much on autopilot at this point and only can fail any roll on a 1.

The decision was made to go to the kingdom in the background model starting with B4B. We just ran the defense of TFord and the group did OK defending the town int he partial mass combat and then made a complete mockery of the trolls that attacked the village. I had forgotten how strong the party was and in general how hard to hit all of them are. I'll remember to throw the advanced template on almost everything going forward.

My real concern is that with such an obvious threat to their kingdom and a clear and precise plea from Kisandra the group is simply going to run over to Drelev, beat the bag out of the place and then do the same to Armag while completely ignoring the surrounding areas/encounters/etc.

Should I really be concerned about that? Hexploration was fun and cool when they were mapping out uncharted lands as lowly 1st/2nd level characters, but at this point I think they've lost the drive to stop and smell the roses.

Another B4B question in general, how well known have people made the Pitaxian backing of Armag and Drelev? I've read a few posts mentioning groups that would never go along with the intro to book 5 if the party knows Pitax has it out for them. I think it would be a tough sell for my group as well, so curious how others have played that out.

So my group recently finished up VV and it seems like the kingdom building stuff is starting to drag a bit. We lost a member of the group during VV who was very interested in it, and while the others are willing to do it...it's mostly just become a "what do we need to keep our rolls so we only fail on 1's while continuing to expand and then reach to events as the occur".

There's no real driving engagement in that aspect at this point and I dont want to damage the overall experience by forcing them to continue with the kingdom stuff if they dont really want to.

The books certainly have the "kingdom in the background" rules, but I'm more looking for any words of wisdom or simple observations from anyone who's run their whole campaign that way or perhaps even did a transition mid-game like I'm considering.

Thanks in advance.

So my PC's have finished VV and freed the 42 lost souls that were stored in Vordekai's soul jars.

The villagers pledged themselves to my PC's kingdom, but also asked them if they had recovered any of their missing possessions after taking stock of their ravaged town.

The PC's came up with the obvious coins that the Spriggan chieftan had in his bag of holding, but other than that they've kept everything else they looted from VH.

The scroll cache in the church of Erastil is mentioned as being intended for the PC's the take/use/keep, and with them having been hidden and the priest dead, no one would really be around to know they were gone anyway.

I'm feeling similarly about the potions of Waterbreathing in the blockhouse. The one I'm kind of stuck on is Maeghar Varn's sword. They saw his dead body in the feasthall and the party scribe immediately says "guess I'm moving that sword into the "sell" column". Similarly, the Folding Boat would be a somewhat noteworthy item than the town likely could make good use of.

I think the group is likely to keep the boat, but that sword is fairly notable and I think its sale would eventually get back to the VH'ers.

Should that trigger the 1d4+2 Unrest mentioned on page 24? I'm certainly not going to give them the +1 loyalty mentioned either way, but I dont want to hose them too badly. I already didnt gift them Skybolt because they simply freed Xamanthe and let her wander back home and the quest mentions "escort her back alive". I gave then the potions and the Stability bump, but Aecora didnt hand over Skybolt.

How did/would other DM's handle this? The sword is a fairly significant piece of treasure. I dont want to go so far as to have then VH'ers ask specifically for the sword as I dont like to lead my PC's around by the nose if I dont have to. I like to reward good thinking and ideas, but I also make sure poor decisions have ramifications as well.

My group has been delving into Vordekai's Tomb for the last couple sessions, having rescued Xamanthe the previous session.

Last night, they made their way through the burial chamber and decided not to go into the Hell Pool, but rather go to the Sacristy. They found the secret door to the Occulus Focus and hacked through the wall with the Samurai's adamantine sword. After identifying the magic of the wall carving as divination, they freaked out and went about destroying it until the magic was destroyed.

This triggers Vordekai's actions to buff and Dimension Door to the focus room.

They stayed in the room for a few more rounds so Vordekai and his champion showed up in the room with them and it was on.

The PC's were well arrayed for the champion's AoE fire cone so he shot that off a couple times while Vordekai tried dispelling their buffs and and casting spells at them. The spell fail from breaking the Occulus Focus foiled 2 of his buffs and his Waves of Fatigue, and after that the PC sorceror cast Mad Monkeys on V's square and between the caster level checks for casting in the swarm and the monkeys successfully stealing his spell component pouch and the arcane spell fail he was pretty well neutered. He and the champion even ended up in a Create Pit at one point. V tried to Dim Door them back to his throne room but the failed to complete the spell due to the occulus.

The PC's certainly didnt come out unscathed, but they made quick work of V and his champ. They all had Freedom of Movement on after hearing Xamanthe's story so the couple times V did hit people they were unaffected by his paralysis.

The fight took a long time, and they seemed to enjoy it but I had figured I was going to likely kill at least one of them in the combat (and wasnt too worried about it due to the Raise Dead scrolls they got in Varnhold).

Just wanted to share an interesting combat.

For a character that gains an AC via Animal Ally, is it as simple to replace the AC if it dies as it is for a druid, simply spending 24 hours in meditation?

Relatedly, when you get a new AC do they show up with all of the tricks you want them to have or is there some kind of expectation of needing to spend time training them?

Answers preferably backed up with quotes if possible.

My group is going through Kingmaker and they just got to a point where they ended up fighting a couple bat swarms.

The Bard cast Ear Piercing Scream which clearly states:

Target: One Creature

This would seem to be very clearly covered by this section of the Swarm Traits entry:

A swarm is immune to any spell or effect that targets a specific number of creatures (including single-target spells such as disintegrate), with the exception of mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns, and phantasms) if the swarm has an Intelligence score and a hive mind. A swarm takes half again as much damage (+50%) from spells or effects that affect an area, such as splash weapons and many evocation spells.

We didnt have any issues here, seemed pretty clear and cut. Then the Sorceror cast Scorching Ray. Scorching Ray does not have a "Target: " line at all, but obviously requires targeting as part of the spell.

We let it go, and I think that's the right call here but I just wanted to check and see if we did it right for future such encounters.

3.5 has a 2nd level spell, Close Wounds, that is an Immediate Action and allows for healing 1d4 + 1/lvl (up to 5).

This is a great "oh crap!" spell and since discovery any caster of mine who can cast it has always had at least 1 memorized.

My group has recently converted one of our games to PF and I'm curious if there's anything like this in PF anywhere?

This spell reads,

An undetectable alignment spell conceals the alignment of an object or a creature from all forms of divination.

If you're an Evil person and you're trying to avoid detection due to that, wouldnt "not able to determine alingment" be pretty much just as damning as "detects as evil"?

So my group is rounding the bend on the second module and I think to keep things "fresh" and help speed things along they're going to be looking to utilize Exploration Edicts starting in book 3.

I'm not exactly clear on what you're sending these people out for. Do you only get to give them a single Hex to explore, or could you try and give them 3-4 to explore per edict? With the rules for mapping/exploring each hex is it assumed that you might tell them to spend multiple days per hex to check for hidden things? Also, it states that the explorers fully map each hex in a single day. This seems to contradict the Exploration Time detailed in the first module. Is this intended to streamline, or as the d20pfsrd rules are intended to be used anywhere should this be altered to fit in with the module's rules?

In looking further at the rules for these, there are no ways to account for the quality of the explorers being sent out. I'm imagining that in any group of people, someone is going to have a +0 Stealth mod so avoiding encounters will be very difficult. On the other hand, the Stability Check of 2*CR is a pittance for my group to make with their current Stability Mod of 39.

I see this meaning that any time the explorers find an encounter, they're likely to get derailed for an entire month and it potentially getting very frustrating for my group to not get the results they're looking for.

Did anyone have problems using these rules within KM? Any changes/houserules to the exploration edict that people would recommend?

My group is still in the beginnings of RRR, but they're almost 2 years into their Kingdom building.

They've had some rough goes with inopportune events, and a near TPK at the hands of the Dancing Lady so it's been somewhat slow going getting them back out into the world to explore.

With the continued rumors/threats of Trolls to the South, they want to expand their kingdom's borders to include Tatzlford. I read up on the stats for TF in the beginning of BfB, but that seems like kind of a lot to just "hand" to my PC's, especially considering that's what TF would look like in a module a half.

Anyone have anything similar happen with their group, and have any suggestions on a toned down version of TF to let them annex? Loy will certainly demand a position on their council, but that isnt too difficult considering they lost one of their members in the near TPK and that player decided it was a good time to stop playing in general. I'll likely come up with some other conditions, but nothing over the top to make annexation unattractive overall.

My group is in the early stages of kingdom building, their first 4 turns went fairly smoothly as we got familiar with the mechanics of the turn sequence.

But last night, they had the Continuous Event "Inquisition" during their 5th turn. They had not done anything to improve their Loyalty to that point and failed the initial roll, taking the -2 Lore, Loyalty, Productivity, and Stability along with the +1 Infamy and Law.

They did some shuffling around, reassigning the Spymaster's bonus to Loyalty and built a Jail and made the second roll for the event, this time only taking an additional -1 to Lore, Loyalty, Productivity, and Stability.

At this point we had a discussion if this was the correct way to interpret the continuous event and led to a further conversation to what happens when/if they finally finish the event.

One of the players thinks that the way the Continuous Event general text reads, that when they beat the event the penalties that came along with it would go away.

Continuous Events: A continuous event's effects continue each turn during the Event Phase until you resolve the event (as explained in the event description, usually by succeeding at a kingdom check).

I'm of the opinion that the decreases in Loy/Stab/etc work just like they would for a non-continuous event. I can see where he's coming from with the "effects continue each turn during the Event Phase until you resolve the event" section, but I see that meaning that you no longer have to contend with the Event, but that any penalties/kingdom stat decreases that were incurred (that do not have a specific duration listed) would remain after the Event has been passed.

We've exchanged a bunch of emails and we're both well situated on our side of things. I respect his opinion, and I've certainly been wrong on rule interpretations in the past so I wanted to get the consensus from people who've run KM games more, and possibly even from any of the people involved in creating these rules on the topic.

This is our first use of the KM/UCam rules so I dont want to simply pull any "well I'm the DM so this is how it is".

Sorry for the wall of text. Thanks for the attention.

My group killed the Stag Lord well before ever meeting up with Mr Nettles and his predicament. After killing the SL, they strung up his body along with the rest of the bandits at the fort before making their way back to Oleg's.

Once there, they sent word about the SL's demise and waited a couple weeks for the envoy from Brevoy to appear. They then spent the next 3 months starting their kingdom before heading back out into the wilds to finish exploring their chartered area.

Davik presented his situation as its written in the books, and the group headed back down to the fort to gather what might have remained of the SL to bring back. Unfortunately for them, scavenging animals had 3 months to pick through the bodies and there wasnt much left of any of the bandits. But, being enterprising adventurers they gathered up all the bones they could and brought them back to Nettle's Crossing and dumped them all in after the undead creature appeared and once again implored them to bring him the body of his tormentor.

I decided that the partial remains they provided were not enough to satisfy Davik's hunger for revenge, so he continued asking them for the rest of his tormentor's form. The group decided that this undead thing needed to be cleansed from the world (cleric of Sarenrae mostly) and one Greater Turning later Davik was destroyed and melted back into the waters from whence he came.

I rolled randomly to determine if the druid who had originally received a vision about the blight on the river where Nettles haunts or the cleric would receive the Nightmare and the cleric got it.

But I now realize I didnt really think of a way for them to get rid of Nettles completely. There's no way for them to get the full remains of the Stag Lord, and Nettles appears to be completely immortal otherwise. I dont want them to have to save vs Nightmare every night for the rest of their lives, so I'm curious if anyone has any ideas on how the group could get rid of Nettles permanently.

I've managed to at least tenuously link a couple of my PC's to the Surtova side of things in Brevoy, while linking another somewhat strongly to the Orlovsky/Medvyed/Garess faction. Another was strongly linked with the Aldori Swordlords, so would have leaned anti-Surtova, but he died fighting the Stag Lord.

The other 2 PC's are fairly neutral in their views.

The first PC linked with the current Regency is an ex-noble (Rich Parents trait) who renounced his claim/inheritance to go an spread the word of Iomedae. He's a Knight/Paladin (homebrewed feat like Daring Outlaw and the like allowing for easy multiclassing and some class ability level stacking) that was approached by an emmissary of the Regent at the party's "going away party" in Restov and asked to send messages with the group's progress via bird back to New Stetven. He somewhat grudgingly agreed, and sent a few messages back to the throne during their adventures in the Greenbelt. He's not too fond of nobility, but really has no reason not to take orders from the rightful ruler of his homeland.

The second PC kind of linked to the Dragonscale Throne is the replacement for the one that was connected to the Swordlords. He is a cleric of Sarenrae and his backstory is that the Dawnmother does not have a very strong presence in Brevoy, and that the church petitioned for permission to expand it's presence. The Regent gave them a mission to investigate "The Vanishing" and decreed a decision would be made depending on the success of this assignment. (I have decided to link Nyrissa's doings with The Vanishing for the time being so that the new character's goals would somewhat line up with the existing party's motivations.) He was found as a prisoner in the Stag Lord's fort and provided some very useful (to the DM and the players) background information on the SL and a small foreshadowing of Nyrissa's involvement and plans. He was included in the kingdom charter by the crown on the hopes that he would be an ally for them on their ruling council (He is a Rostlander by trait, so he is not terribly inclined that way, but I'm hoping pressure from the church to do right by the thronw will add some interesting politicking).

The character staunchly in the non-Surtova camp is a gnome from House Medvyed who was taken on as a Ward when a minor noble took a liking to him (Noble Born - Medvyed trait, but being a gnome not actually a "blood" noble). He's a worshiper of Erastil and I've determined the Medvyed's still hold to the "old ways" of Erastil, which I've established is less refined than most other "modern" religions. His patron has given him some insights into the Brevic political issues, explaining that the original plan for the exploration charter was for Brevoy to settle the lands, but that neighboring factions communicated this would be an act of war. He has also communicated that Garess is listening to what Orlovsky/Medvyed have to say about the Surtova's, but is not willing to make any public declarations of support.

Rather than deal with a a vacancy penalty for a Magister, they decided to hire out the job and received qualified offers from both Restov and Brevoy proper to fill the gap. They chose the representative from Restov via vote.

What I'd like to do is present some opportunities that are beneficial to their new kingdom as well as Brevoy and Restov, but with some personal motivations for the new nation's leaders, that perhaps might carry some small, difficult to see negatives for the other political body if accepted. I'd like for these decisions to have lasting impacts on their nation, both for the good and for the bad depending on what they choose.

We've just started RRR, only 3 turns into their initial year of kingdom building at this point. I've been reading through the next few modules trying to get more details on the growing issues between Issia and Rostland, but I havent really seen much yet. Does anyone have any ideas on some small things that I can present to the new kingdom along these lines?

Not sure if it matters/helps, but I'm going to be using Hargulka's Monster Kingdom in RRR as I really like the changes introduced there.

Thanks for the time.

I'm running a 5 player, generous point buy, max hp KM game. I've been using the 6 player conversion to keep things balanced against what the party brings out the table. We're using 95% 3.5 rules with a few house rules about skills and a couple things taken from PF (Power Attack most notably).

The players have reached the SL's keep after clearing/mapping all of the forest and the majority of the swamp, but they completely bypassed Nettles' Crossing, the mites, and the kobolds.

They're 3rd level currently and the party consists of the following:

Human Knight 1/Paladin 2
Halfling Druid 3 w/ Riding Dog
Gnome Rogue 1/Wiz 2
Human Bard 3
Human Warblade 3

Their first attempts to scout the fort showed them the lazy patrolling/watching anywhere but the path leading to the front gate. They tried sneaking up with some ideas to try drawing out some forces to whittle down the SL's numbers and ran into the zombies. They eventually dispatched the 6 zombies before another 6 came out, but they did attract the attention from the guards in the watchtowers and above the gate.

With the PC's getting max HP, so too do the npc's/monsters, so the 24 HP zombies took a while to kill.

i had the guards start sending out flaming arrows every couple rounds to try and see what was going on out there and eventually Akiros was summoned to the gate and yelled some challenges to the party. They shouted at each other from the darkness for a while, but the party was smartly not willing to get too close, and Akiros wasn't sending anyone out there. Mexican standoff occurs and eventually the SL was awoken and he came out to see what is making allthe darn ruckus. He starts slurring about the questionable heritage of the PC's and what professions their mothers might have, but again the PC's can't be drawn in. The Knight/Paladin tries a long shot from the darkness at the SL that comes close enough that the SL fires off a couple arrows into the darkness but then slinks off back to his room to drink more.

Akiros stays a while to make sure the PC's don't try anything funny, and eventually the Knight/Paladin offers up a challenge to him. Akiros eventually has the gates opened and slips out under cover of his archers in the towers and asks if the K/P wants to settle this the old fashioned way. (At this point, the party has killed off a lot of the bandits, routing the river camp, and the few that have returned to the SL's keep told tales of how strong these adventurers are, so Akiros sees this as a bit of an opportunity). They discuss the terms of the duel a bit, the Kni/Pal ensures his comrades won't help, and as they come together to start Akiros mouths the words "flat of the blade" to the K/P. They start fighting, and unfortunately the K/P just can't make a single roll. The -4 for dealing subdual damage certainly didn't help, but after a few rounds of really bad rolls Akiros decides he needs to save face and "finishes off" the K/P, taunting his friends and strolling back to the keep.

The bard and Warblade rush out of the darkness to drag their friend away and eventually realize he's just unconscious.

They go back to rest and heal up again and watch for another day to see if any patrols come out. None do as the SL is down to only about 8 bandits in the fort along with his lieutenants and Auchs. (I had bandits with Ranger levels tracking the party the week before and they finally caught up to them a hex away from the SL's hex a few days earlier. I also had the SL send a force against Oleg's because the party was taking a really long time getting down to the fort even after a couple not so polite nudges from the sword lords saying "hurry this up!".

So after nothing comes out the next day, they come back the following night with a plan to try to burn the gate down with flaming spheres. Unfortunately while getting close enough to cast the spell, the Druid triggers more zombies and another big fight occurs, again drawing the attention of the guards. They do manage to deal a significant amount of damage to the gate and the nearby wall, but they are forced to retreat when the SL again is drawn out by the noise and starts shooting at the humans in the party for heavy damage.

The K/P tried to hang back to keep the illusion he was dead going but eventually needed to run up and provide another target.

The party retreats, but they seem to have no plans for how to get into this place.

Per the 6 player conversion, there should be another round of zombies if they try more of the same, and the party is convinced that with it happening twice in a row that the zombies are either being recreated every day, or they just regenerate every night.

Part of me wants to sit back and see what they do next, but I get the impression the group is getting frustrated. I'm tempted to have Akiros defect or something, but I don't want to just hand them a solution. And if he leaves the keep, then he's much less likely to be able to swing the fight than if he was inside and it came as a surprise to the bandits and the SL.

I'm kind of stuck as how to let this play out.

Thoughts?

I thought I had already posted this, but I cant find the thread now. Apologies for any duplication.

I could have sworn I had orignally found something in either the Quest text, or Jhod's text, or the site's text explaining what mechanical steps were needed to cleanse the Temple of the Elk after the guardian is defeated. I seem to recall that if the party isnt capable of doing it, that Jhod certainly can.

Can anyone refer me to where that's spelled out, or am I dreaming again?

When the PC's find the stash of booze in the Thorn River Camp, the AP briefly mentions another page describing the effects of drinking the alcohol. My party has no thoughts to use it to fake their way into the SL's camp and are downing the stuff like it's water.

Try as I might, I cant find anything describing what happens if you drink the hooch. I'm guessing the AP only means the effects on the SL from being a complete drunk and not that the stuff has any immediate effects.

Just curious if I'm assuming correctly or if I've missed something about a save or other mechanical impact from drinking the stuff.

I'm running a group of 5 through KM at the moment. We just had our second session and the group successfully routed the Thorn River camp.

They're using a 32 point buy in 3.5 rules and I gave everyone a bonus campaign trait and regular trait along with aome other player friendly house rules. To that end, I'm running the full 6 person conversion for them.

I havent been doling out XP after each encounter, instead going with a "I'll tell you when you've leveled" mentality to help avoid the "hey we're close to leveling, let's go find another encounter".

So I'm calculating the XP and so far it seems like the XP in the module itself and in the 6 person conversion is slower than it should be. I have read that it's intended for a "medium" leveling pace, but I'm not exactly sure what that is. Also, when looking at the NPC's in the book and the conversion the CR's seem lower than what one would expect from a 3.5 game. In the book, Happs is level 1 and is CR 1/2, in the conversion he's level 2 and CR1. Similarly, Kressle is L2/CR1 and L3/CR2 in the book/conversion.

For people who may have run 3.5 conversions or run it straight, do you think it would be better to dole out XP as it's written or use a 3.5 encounter calculator and give out XP that way?

I really like the tie-ins the first module has with Erastil between the hidden temple and the Stag Lord's helm. Unfortunately, none of my players are playing eorshippers of Erastil, so it seems like a decent amount of good plot is going to me mostly wasted.

I havent read much beyond the second module, but I'm considering changing the Erastil references to be ones for Gozreh instead to better suit my party.

Was curious to get opinions on if this would have more impact on the AP than I'm looking to introduce from those who may have gone through the whole thing or most of the way through..or heck anyone who's got an opinion on it.