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this came up at my lodge cause ranged characters would buy 10 admantine arrows. while i argued vehemently that the guide reqd u buy in full lots supposedly my vl talked to brock at paizoCon and he said special material arrows could be purchased individually. i assume he was honest in this as a venture officer that makes stuff up can get in alot of trble.
not all costs are covered. read ur scenarios, they will say "we arranged transportation by...." while some specifically state you must find your own transportation. as for feeds], bribes and tariffs im pretty sure u must cover these costs unless the scenario states otherwise, whether u buy or forage provided the environment allows it. until i see documented rule saying otherwise i will play it how scenarios write it.
I was at a con all weekend with Mike Brock. I asked him about this question and he told me Kazaan and I are wrong. I'm fine with that because I never thought it was the intended outcome anyway. so brock said u cant dual wield EB's or u cant use a large eb or both?
my andoran gnome beastrider, Niznix and his triceratops is no longer allowed in heidmarchs office.
Absently rubbing a huge scar on her chest as she listens to the tales.
while i personally see no reason to bring firearms anywhere if ur not plannin to use em. i do feel if its ur legal right, its between u and the property owner as to wether u can bring ur firearm onto the property. as for pfs itself if you have permission from the property owner then next step is makin sure the people you play with are ok with it. just remember pfs policy is dont be a jerk, and everyone is welcome to public events. my biggest concern is that people act like adults and discuss their problems locally as each area has its own laws and policies. the boards are for issues related to pathfinder not local/state/national policy.
so i went from -2/+4 with repo to no attack/+ 4 with repo.....worthless. now need to retrain 2 feats on my monk of many styles since crane repo will be illegal. with the req that style feats have u already paid for their good ability... i can think of a whole slew of other feats that be better to nerf....like cleave
making ur saves naturally does not count as finding the cure. i cant remember the cure dc but if i remember right the only way u could aid her was to do other skills to get rid of her penalty. standard aid another only gives a + 2. as for scenarios having independent rules get used to it], many do any other issues u gotta settle with ur gm/venture officer
i dont think that feat is legal. its not listed on additional resorces
Great ideas, everyone. Here's the direction I'm currently leaning:
Spoiler:
Neolandus tells the group that Ileosa stole something from the castle's secret vault, but he has no idea what it was. Tales passed down through generations of seneschals tell of some evil the Chelish found when they drove out the Shoanti. Only the Shoanti might know what was there, and what it means for the Queen's new powers. He points them to Thousand Bones, the Shoanti ambassador. When the party tries to track down Thousand Bones, Cressida Kroft tells them he's been imprisoned as a "foreign undesirable" in Deathhead Vault. She and Bishop D'Bear point them to the secret entrance. Inside, they'll find the Grey Maiden's HQ, but I'm going to remove all the Red Mantis stuff (for later). They rescue Thousand Bones, but he's not that keen on being helpful - he'd be happy just to let all the white men kill each other off. And he really doesn't know what the Shoanti were guarding before the white men came. But he does owe the party a debt, and the person who might know is a Shoanti shaman who's being held prisoner - by the Hellknights at Citadel Vraid. Hopefully, I can convince the party that a frontal assault on Citadel Vraid is a Very Bad Idea. If they try to negotiate for the shaman's release, Lictor DiViri will meet with them personally. The paranoia of the Citadel's foundations (see "Castles of the Inner Sea") is working on him, and he doesn't trust his own people. He needs the party to obtain a document - a contract, to be precise - that's hidden in the Hall of Wards inside the Acadamae. This will lead into part of Academy of Secrets (no Breaching Festival, but just the demiplane of Belzaragna). Assuming the party obtains the document in question (held by the Contract Devil), DiViri will release the shaman to the party. He'll also be so pleased, he'll throw in a little extra - the location of the Red Mantis HQ in Korvosa. (The Red Mantis will have been conducting a number of high-profile assassinations in Korvosa, as well as harassing the party.) The party will have a choice between immediately returning the shaman and Thousand Bones to their homeland for the ceremony to commune with their ancestors (to learn what the party needs to know) or first taking care of the Red Mantis. I may still have the Cinderlander attack during the ceremony, depending on how they're doing on the XP track.
Let me know what you think.
I'm prepping to run CotCT, and I really like most of the AP - except for History of Ashes. Its cowboys & Indians theme feels really out of place, and the structure of the chapter is a railroad that I think I'm going to have trouble keeping my party riding. So I'm looking for alternatives. I've seen other people mention Heroes' Blood; I haven't read the module, but the short synopsis sounds an awful lot like Scarwall Castle, and I don't want the group to get "haunted castle fatigue". I've also started looking at House on Hook Street and Bloodsworn Vale. HoHS is an especially good fit for the setting of CotCT, but I see a couple of problems. One, yet another mysterious plague right on the heels of Blood Veil sounds like same old, same old. And bumping the module from 6th level to 11/12th would be a LOT of work. I haven't looked much at Bloodsworn Vale yet, but it would have the same leveling issues. So ... has anyone else done anything like this that just worked brilliantly? Or failed miserably? Or should I just suck it up and play the AP as-written?
I'm struggling with XP in Edge of Anarchy. Unless the party fights their way through Eel's End (which they'd be stupid to do), there's no way they'll have enough XP to be at 4th level by the Dead Warrens, even with some additional riot encounters. So to add XP, I've decided to do as some others have, and insert the Portent’s Peril module after All the World’s Meat, but with some modifications to make it fit better into CotCT’s scenario:
Given those changes, the rest of the module should play out pretty much as written. Here's the new introductory backstory: Background Vencarlo Orsini is not the only one who has learned that the Chelish diplomant Amprei is preparing to press his government to cut off trade with Korvosa; the Arkonas are also aware of his position. Such a move would hurt their business dealings, and Amprei’s plan to profit from Korvosa’s pain would create a new powerful player in the city’s politics that they’d prefer not to deal with. The Arkonas don’t see any need to pussyfoot around (no pun intended) with blackmail when straightforward assassination will suffice. However, there’s no reason that Amprei’s assassination should serve only one end. If they can also use his death to provoke a Chelish war against the Shoanti, they believe they would stand to profit handsomely, as Korvosa would be the natural terminus for Chelish supply lines for a war in the Cinderlands. And so Vimanda Arkona, in her guise of Meliya, approached a Sczarni swindler, Jaelli Goldtooth, who was living in Old Korvosa, and offered her a handsome sum to murder the Chelish diplomat while making it appear that the crime was a political assassination committed by the Shoanti. In the meantime, as the riots in Korvosa have subsided, a local philanthropist, Sheena Wulfbüt, has begun dispensing food to the city’s starving masses. Her Green Market escaped the unrest almost unscathed, and she feels it’s her duty to give back to her city. When she was handing out vegetables in Old Korvosa, Goldtooth thanked her with a Harrow reading, with the surprise results described in the module. Sheena is a staunch believer in the Harrow, and has come to Zellara Esmeranda many times in the past to perform readings for her. Disturbed by the appearance of the Yellow Prophet and confused by the meanings of the subsequent cards, she hurries to Zellara’s house, hoping the psychic can tell her what they mean. When she arrives, she finds the party there instead.
I'm prepping to run CotCT, and I've got a couple of questions about the Shingles chase. The first is logistical: do you think you should lay out all the cards for the chase at the beginning, so the players see them all, or reveal them only as characters encounter them? The latter seems more "realistic", but the former allows players to get more tactical about when to try to move three cards at once. The second is a question about the DCs. I'm using the new hardcover edition of CotCT, and it seems like some of the cards are just going to be killers for 3rd level characters. Hell, I even tried to run a 10th level character I already had rolled up through it, and he couldn't get past some of them without half a dozen tries. At 3rd level, a DC of 30 is going to be all but impossible, even if you've put ranks in that skill at every level, and even a DC of 25 is going to be really tough. For people who have run this already, what's been your experience?
Our group is distributed all over the country, and we use a home-brew online tabletop that one of our group created, along with Skype. As a result, I need to have computer images for all the encounters. I couldn't find anything for the Danse Macabre in Scarwall that seemed to fit the bill, so I created one. Here it is, in case anyone else needs one, too:
I'm prepping to run CotCT. Since the Harrow Deck and Harrow readings are a key part of each chapter, I wanted a way to easily use the Harrow deck without buying one (I'm cheap). So I created an Excel spreadsheet that automatically draws a Harrow Reading. Just click the "Draw" button to select nine cards and lay them on the table, then click "Shuffle" to clear everything out for a new reading. Hope others find this useful.
Our group just completed the Jade Regent. This was our first Pathfinder adventure (after 30+ years of gaming together), and we had a great time. As the DM, I really appreciated the strong storyline from Paizo - I hate hack-n-slash dungeon crawls, and like for the players to have a chance to really develop characters. I kept a blog of our weekly sessions if anyone wants the blow-by-blow. I'll go through a quick summary of what we did with each book, but first some background. We have a large group - 7 players. So I had to do a lot of modifications to keep the encounters challenging and to make sure everyone had enough XP to level up on schedule. I quickly found that just adding more bad guys made combat really drag out. I ended up making good use of the myriad of templates you can apply to buff monsters - it made the encounters harder but also added some additional flavor. As the party got higher level, I started adding Mythic ranks to the BBEGs - when it's 7 against 1, the economy of action can overwhelm you quickly, but throw in things like Dual Initiative, Sudden Strike, Block Attacks, etc., and it suddenly gets more interesting. In general, I think Mythic is way overpowered for players, but it's perfect for those end-of-level encounters. We skipped caravan rules (broken) and relationship rules (too mechanical). I also dropped Shalelu from the story. This AP has a ton of NPCs as it is, and I didn't see that she added anything. Brinewall Legacy
Heading from Sandpoint to Brinewall, we needed more XP. Rather than throw in random encounters, I added a side story based on Ameiko/Sandru's backstory. The party came to a town where the inn was on fire. After putting out the fire, the innkeeper asked the party to go after his daughter, who he claimed had been "kidnapped" by a local boy (neighbors said they'd probably run off together). Turns out the girl had been kidnapped by a necromancer allied with the cannibal clan that had killed Sandru's brother and Ameiko's teenaged love years ago, and the boy had chased after them to try to rescue her. They tracked them to their cavern, rescued the girl (it was too late for her boyfriend), and it was an emotional way for the party to get to know Ameiko and Sandru better. Brinewall Castle was fun - well designed. Kikonu managed to steal our bard's voice then D-Door away, which made for some fun role playing. The highlight was when our monk tried to do a heroic leap off the cliff to try to grapple the flying Nidenzigo - and missed completely. This was the first of many "deaths" for our poor monk. Night of Frozen Shadows
Frozen Storm
In the Necropolis, Koya died. I had her recognize the dead tree as having formerly been one of the holiest relics in the worship of Desna. She believed that it could be brought back to life if the three clerics of Desna (herself, Spivey, and our party cleric) joined together to channel positive energy around it (literally tree-hugging). When the spectres started emerging, they all focused on Koya, and she sacrificed herself to return the tree to life. Her death really resonated with the players and their characters, and even though the module as a whole was just 'meh' for me, this was one of the high points of the AP. Forest of Spirits
With the XP from the tournament under their belts, I had them skip the upper levels of the House of Withered Blossoms altogether. I can't tell you how sick I was of hobgoblins by the time they finished the lower levels. As everyone else has said, that part of the module is a real slog (I just went back and counted - 15 sessions to get through it!), and it would definitely benefit from a greater variety of enemies. And Munusakaru, despite Mythic ranks, was anti-climatic. Tide of Honor
The Empty Throne
In the Well of Demons, I gave Maemi a different request for the party. Our infernal-bloodline sorcerer's backstory was that he was a minor Chelish noble whose father was secretly a devil (identity unknown). Maemi was in telepathic contact with the sorcerer from the moment he entered the Well, telling him to play along with her plan. Her offer was that she would gladly give Ameiko her blessing - as long as Ameiko would agree to marry the sorcerer! (The devil's plan was to put his offspring on the throne of Minkai, and also be in line for the throne of Cheliax). Ameiko actually reluctantly agreed (I had the whole party roll bluff, diplomacy, or intimidate against the sorcerer's sky-high charisma diplomacy to convince Ameiko one way or the other), but our cleric took exception and launched a pre-emptive strike on Maemi before she could sign the marriage contract. The sorcerer actually sided with Maemi and fought against the party briefly - he later claimed she'd Dominated him, and the others bought it. At the Palace, the party used D-Door and Gaseous Form to enter the castle towers through the arrow slits, thus bypassing the gauntlet of fights leading up to the gate. (Good thing, too - I don't know if they'd have survived if the spellcasters had depleted their reserves before ever getting inside.) For the final confrontation, I'd given Anamurumon 5 ranks of Mythic Champion, and bumped the others up to max HP. During the fight downstairs in the Kabuki stage, our sorcerer had Dominated one of the Typhoon Guards. Since he was a kuwa oni, the sorcerer had him shapechange to look like Ameiko, and gave Ameiko a Potion of Disguise to look like a Typhoon Guard. The decoy Ameiko came in very handy in the throne room battle. The Jade Regent and his inner circle had heard the noisy battle downstairs, and were waiting for the party. Our cleric strolled in front of the open doorway and immediately was sucked into Renshii Meida's kimono Maze. The Raven Prince was lurking in the hallway with Greater Invisibility, and backstabbed the faux Ameiko. "She" ran away into the throne room, where Anamurumon made her the focus of his Chain Lightning, and then the Jade Regent used a flourish from his blade to finally drop "her". With no healer to help them, the party was hurting as Anamurumon and the Jade Regent started dealing big damage. Luckily our bard had cast Song of Discord and Renshii failed her save, so instead of casting battlefield control or healing spells, she was casting against the fighter battling the Jade Regent. Our sorcerer dropped her, and the cleric reappeared. Our rogue had min/maxed into an obscenely overpowered archer, and had the Daikyu of Commanding Presence, so she was able to dish out huge damage against Anamurumon. She dropped him and the fighter beheaded the Jade Regent (double 20 roll with Suishen) in the same round, and the Raven Prince decided they weren't paying him enough and vanished. Ameiko ascended the Throne, and the future of Minkai was assured.
This is another area where I don't think the authors really thought this all through. My group hit the granary challenge last week, and took a different approach. I was already prepped with all the stats above (thanks, everyone!), so they knew in advance the volume of rice they'd be dealing with. I also told them that the granary had a double set of Typhoon Guards posted outside (the AP doesn't say anything about external guards, but there's no way the granary wouldn't be guarded against a city full of starving people). After some noodling on how much they could move with the portable hole, how many D-Doors etc. they could muster, etc., one player asked "With all that rice, and the Jade Regent's troops consuming it, there must be people bringing rice in to replenish it, right?" A quick check on Google showed that rice has a 190 day growing cycle, so there could be two rice crops a year. That meant during the harvest season, there'd be a lot of rice flowing into the city. I rolled a d6 to see what month of the cycle they were currently in: month 6 - harvest! Assuming the rice comes in at a constant rate through a 30-day harvest, that's ~100,000 kg per day. "How many wagons is that?" they ask. Back to Google, where I learn that a civil war wagon could carry ~3000 lbs. Close enough. That works out to roughly 65 wagons per day carrying rice to the granary. Since it would take ~16,850 kg of rice to feed everyone in Kasai for one day, that would mean ~11 wagon loads of rice. (At this point, our adventure was starting to feel like a series of story problems.) So ... rather than storming the granary and trying to sneak many tons of rice out before the army arrived, they simply worked with Isao to "divert" 10-12 wagons to an "overflow" granary after they'd already passed the guards at the city gates. They paid the farmers for their rice (Paizo says wheat as a trade good is 1 cp/lb, so assuming the same price for rice, a full wagon would only cost 30 gp), and the farmers went on their way, suspecting nothing. In all likelihood, the people at the Imperial Granary won't even notice the shortfall for several days, giving the players plenty of time to move on to the Imperial Shrine and then storming the Palace.
I ran Dead Man's Dome this past weekend. I've got a 7-player party and threw out caravan combat before we even started, converting all caravan encounters to regular encounters. What with all the NPCs, they've really been a slog to play. The group has had several black monolith encounters already, and didn't find any of the regular undead very challenging (even with buffed up numbers, advanced templates, etc.). So for Dead Man's Dome, I hit them with a Zombie Horde. The story set-up was per the AP. When the scouts report they're being trailed by undead, the party's reaction was a sigh, eye-roll, and "here we go again". Then they found out it was an ARMY of undead - hundreds at least. That made them start to worry. Ulf pointed everyone to Dead Man's Dome as the only defensible ground for 50 leagues around, and the race was on, driving exhausted yaks for hours on end to try to get there in time. The scouts reported the army was gaining on them, until the scouts stopped coming back (no one thought to send one of the flying PCs back to scout). Meanwhile a blizzard was growing around them, cutting visibility to a few dozen yards, while the sound of maniacal feminine laughter could be heard in the clouds far above. They reached Dead Man's Dome, and I used the map from the AP. Arranged the wagons in a circle at the top, put Ameiko and Koya in the middle, and waited. The moaning of the wind morphed into the moaning of countless mindless voices, and then the horde appeared out of the snow. I counted the horde as one creature for XP purposes, but split it into four separate sections (N, S, E, W) with 50 HP each. I'm remote from the rest of the group, so we play on a home-brew virtual tabletop, and I created a really cool graphic for the horde that was something right out of Walking Dead. When the party saw all those undead approaching from all directions, they really did mentally shift into Custer's-Last-Stand mode. The party got one free round of actions as the Horde climbed up the hill, but most of them fired arrows, which ended up having no affect (Horde is half-damage from Piercing weapons, and DR 10/slashing). However, the sorcerer's Empowered Fireball and the cleric's Flame Strike did major damage to two of the four segments. When the Horde made contact, I played it as follows: The horde advances from all sides at full speed until they engage the perimeter of the party in melee combat. At that point, each side of the horde tries to overwhelm the defense against them. If that side deals more damage in a round than it receives, it moves forward 10'; otherwise it is checked. This gave the party a chance to keep the Horde away from the vulnerable NPCs in the center while fighting them off (although Ameiko charged out to engage as soon as the Horde made contact). Despite the fact that a Zombie Horde is a CR14 encounter, and that I nearly doubled its total HP, it wasn't much of a fight. The horde did do some significant damage as it overran the party's position, but between Fireballs, Flame Strikes, and Channeling from flying clerics, all four segments of the Horde went down pretty quick. As each segment of the Horde dispersed, I replaced it with a pair of Advanced Frostfallen Zombies as the final remnanats to be mopped up. However, from a game perspective, I'd call it a success. The caravan encounters have gotten wearying for all of us, but this was the first time the players really thought they were in trouble (the monk even wasted one round trying to disbelieve the Horde, because his player couldn't believe I'd put them in such a hopeless situation).
I'm also running a 7-player JR. Our group has been together forever (longer than most of you have been alive, I'm guessing!), so splitting the group isn't an option. We're currently in Hungry Storm. Here are some of the things I've been doing: - As mentioned by others, I dropped Shalelu altogether, and try to keep the other NPCs out of the action. Hard to avoid during most of Hungry Storm, but not too bad otherwise. Where the NPCs have to get involved, I have each assigned to one of the players, so they play two characters. You can get the HL .por files for them on line, although we're reaching the point where I'm going to have to level them up some. Oh, and I dropped the whole Relationship mechanic. - I've made liberal use of alternate templates to bump up enemies: see [url]http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/indexes-and-tables/templates-by-cr-adjustm ent[/url]. The simple Advanced template works well, but other things like Entropic, Runescarred, Dire, etc. can be a good fit for specific parts of the adventure (e.g. I made the Lonely Maiden in HS a "Broken Soul" (CR +2)). Sometimes I just throw 75% more critters at the party, although that makes for a lot of dice rolling. However, part of the balance comes from not letting the party gang up on a small number of opponents - even an awesomely powerful spellcaster can get overwhelmed if 7 people are focusing on her alone. Be aware that, in my experience, the CR/APL equivalency doesn't always work that well. More often than not, I find I have to make an encounter tougher than the math would suggest to keep it challenging for the party. - As almost everyone on the forums suggests, throw out the caravan rules. I converted all the caravan encounters into party encounters. However, I'm finding that many of the suggested enemies, like Frostfallen Skeletons, Zombies, and the like, are too wimpy to be able to threaten 7th or 8th level characters, so they need real upgrading. (For Dead Man's Dome, I'm going to hit them with a Zombie Horde!) - One thing I do to prepare for each session is to take the stat block description for each enemy and copy it into a spreadsheet. That makes it easier to apply new templates. I also go through each of the spells, spell-like abilities, unusual feats, etc. and add appropriate description for them to the sheet, so when I print it out I've got everything I need without wasting lots of time looking things up each turn (although I still seem to do that a lot!). |
