A really good, comprehensive conversion document when the 2E is finally complete. My group will be sticking with 1E, but I want to keep getting the APs and modules; but I'll need to convert them back.
I think Michael hits the nail on the head here. Our group has tried PF2, and it's not our cup of tea. I have, however, literally decades worth of gaming material with PF1, between scenarios and adventure paths, so it's not going to impact our gaming. My only ask along these lines would be for a decent conversion document so that I can continue my subscriptions to the adventure paths but be able to convert them back to PF1.
I remember an old Forgotten Realms novel where one of the characters had been hit with some level draining stuff (this was back in the old days of actually losing *levels*), and it was described as her having been shocked into a loss of confidence. She was nervous, suffering from the jitters when she tried to do something, because her experience had so shaken her to her very core. It wasn't a bad way of looking at it.
I'm enjoying it so far. They seemed to have toned back the puerile humour a notch or two in later episodes, and I can overlook the dick jokes that still occur from time to time (and episode #3 will probably go down as The Orville's "Code of Honor") It's pretty telling that with all that, it still feels more like Star Trek than Star Trek: Discovery.
I'm normally pretty good at being able to pull up music to suit the mood of an Adventure Path. The last four or five have been a piece of cake. But I'm absolutely stumped with RoA...has anyone had any ideas?
Something like this? :) The Tatterman CR 5
Hero Lab and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Just popping in here to offer my sympathies to my LGBTQI siblings. As the father of a transwoman (who is also an avid gamer), I'm terribly glad we live in Australia right now, because I fear for what is going to happen to everyone who is not a straight white Christian cis-man in America over the next few years. Take care, keep gaming, and keep happy. Phil
Gunslinger is only "banned" because none of my campaigns have guns. We have run a Gunslinger character, however, who used a hand-crossbow in place of a gun, and it worked fine. The only other class we don't use is Bard. Neither myself nor most of my players have ever been able to suspend our disbelief to envisage Sir Robin's Minstrels hopping along and playing during the middle of a fight - it just seems...off.
My tendency is to give Taldor a "post-Hellenic" flavour, and Cheliax a "post-Roman" flavour in my campaigns. But there's a fair amount of cross-over in there...
Let's see...a small group of rebels taking on an Evil Empire (TM)? An elderly warpriest who's been hiding out in a small village, watching over... A young, naive ranger who can multiclass into sorcerer later on... Teaming up with... A beautiful young noble rogue of the House of Thrune who has turned on her family, all helped by... A cynical gunslinger and his offsider, an enormous barbarian. Joined by two amusing NPCs - an aristocratic butler and a foul-mouthed dwarf rogue. Sorry...:) Just couldn't resist...
I use Hero Lab at the table, as well as a laptop. I keep all my books as PDFs - makes it a lot easier to lug around a laptop than 20+ books - and it lets me keep all my notes at my fingertips without having to shuffle through reams of paper. One of the handiest things I do is go through an AP (for example) and mark any changes in the PDF. I have a Word document where I keep all the change details (altered treasures, encounters, etc). I can also have all the links I need to music MP3s so that I can just click on the appropriate bit on the page. For example, as the characters enter the Fire Swamp, I can click on the hyperlinked text "Rodents of Unusual Size" and immediately start the music I'd pre-planned for that encounter. I can also have generic ambient music / sound effects ready to go with a click. I have all my maps and images in Dropbox, so when I want my players to have something, I just message them and they can access it on their tablets (handy for passing notes :) ). Also saves a lot on printing costs! Hero Lab is one of the handiest, things, though. As others have noticed, it allows me to keep track of everything character-wise, especially during combat via the tactical console.
I agree with Thenobledrake re: making the Beast more sympathetic. My players *loved* TotB and still consider it one of the high points of the AP. The main reason for this was that I went all-out in playing the Beast as a sympathetic, child-like character who loved poetry, was scared of being locked up, and began to cry at the mention of the murdered children. After a couple of meetings with him, he asked them if he could have a name, to which they christened him "Edward", and from then on, they fought tooth-and-nail to save him. In the final confrontation, I had him actually be critically wounded, and they linked hands, forming a human (well, a half-orc-human-dhampir :) ) chain to conduct a lightning strike to try to revive him. They were very low on hit points, and I warned them of the danger, and they still did it. That's how much my players loved Edward the Beast - they were *literally* willing to sacrifice their characters to save him. But yeah, it all comes down to a sympathetic Beast. Win them over with that, and you'll have them eating out of your hand.
People upset about sci fi elements in pathfinder don't have to buy or even use the material. I do not get the hate. It's part of the campaign setting. Use what you want for your own games. *shrugs* Couldn't agree more. I personally am not enamoured with the mix, but then there were plenty of people not so impressed with Carrion Crown, which I adore.*shrug* I promise nobody from Paizo is going to come to your game table and make you play Iron Gods, or even make you keep Numeria as it is canonically described. If you're like me and you don't like your sci-fi and fantasy hanging out together, then don't let them. Numeria can be something else...a blasted wasteland with an old crashed flying castle (you could throw in a Dragonlance crossover, for example) instead of a spaceship. Not that hard to change.
My initial reaction to RoW, I have to admit, was a bit *meh*. Without spoiling anything for anyone, I found the, err...*travel*...a bit contrived, and I decided to do my usual with an AP I'm not fond of: not run it, but plunder it for (Pathfinder's standard) the awesome maps, artwork, NPCs, beasties and alternate rules. But, funnily enough, I went to see "X-Men: Days of Future Past" on the weekend, and there was a trailer for "Malificent", with Angelina Jolie in the title role. I was watching it, thinking "Hey, she'd make a great white witch!" Then it hit me. I'd been looking at RoW all wrong! I was comparing it to "classic" fantasy RPG campaigns. But it's not that, and I don't think it was ever meant to be that. It's a dark fairy-tale. It's less J. R. R. Tolkien and more Brothers Grimm. As soon as I realised that, I started re-reading it and going through it, and it suddenly fell into place, and I think it would be an AWESOME campaign!! My suggestion, because I know there are a few people out there like me who weren't overly-impressed with RoW at the start: go back and read it, but think fairy-tales. Think witches eating children. Think "lost in the snowy woods". Put on Nox Arcana's "Grimm" while you're reading it. Have fun. :)
When I was tailoring Wake of the Watcher, from the Carrion Crown AP, for my group I read something on here by someone that resonated, and I hung onto the idea. I apologise to the person who came up with the original idea of ley-lines and how Tar-Baphon's imprisonment is linked to them because I can't remember who it was! But what I ended up going with, in terms of mythology, was tied in with the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones. Essentially, the reason the gods don't directly interfere with Golarion isn't anything to do with an agreement...it's that the awesome power of a god wandering around outside his or her own plane will run a grave risk of disrupting the ley-lines criss-crossing Golarion...and these ley-lines are the thing which stops the return of the Outer Gods. Nobody...nobody wants, say, Azathoth wandering around the world (except Rovagug, who couldn't care less, which is why all the others united to stop him). Sooo...bringing this rambling thing back on topic, I think I will have Iomedae explain to the characters precisely why she can't just go get her herald. A god, manifesting in its true form on the Prime Material Plane - or any plane other than her own - is likely to have Yog-Sothoth breathing down its neck in short order...opening the portal to the Outer Gods will make the Worldwound look like a girl-scout convention. That's why gods use heralds, and avatars, and intermediaries (and wish and miracle spells, for that matter). Her herald is gone. It takes time to manifest an avatar (and an avatar isn't actually all that much more powerful than the PCs anyway) and as far as intermediaries go...well...the PCs are it. Iomedae is essentially asking them to become representatives of her on Golarion. I won't be having sonic attacks or petulant divine temper-tantrums. Just a worried, saddened goddess asking for help from these heroes who have proved their courage, skill and devotion to good time and time again. There are none more worthy, and she hates to ask them, but if Baphomet keeps her herald evil, well, it'll be like the whole Darth Vader thing, y'know? :) Plus, as was mentioned upthread, the power she has invested in the creation of a herald is actually being utilised by Baphomet...he is draining a portion of her own power for his own benefit.
Tangent, one of the things I do is add all the buffs like Prayer and Bless, etc, (basically every buff the Cleric-equivalent has) to all the players. So it's just a matter of ticking the boxes on the electronic sheets, rather than having to manually add them each time. Admittedly, it still takes more time than having the players add them, but it's handy for our group - my wife has dyscalculia and finds keeping track of numbers extremely difficult, so she appreciates it if I can just say: "Hon? Yeva's attacking with her longbow? Yep, roll d20 plus 12" rather than her trying to remember all the values. Of course, that's just us - but you might find the "pre-prepared" buffs less time-consuming.
Bwahaha!
Published just in time for my first episode of Wake of the Watcher this weekend. I've already tossed aside the two Hounds of Tindalos and put in a Mythic Hound of Tindalos instead (the PCs all have one mythic tier at the moment). Can't wait to throw that Bilocation at them. :) Kudos to Legendary Games once more. Now...if you can just get a subscription system similar to Paizo up and running, I'll be signing up! :)
I would quote the genie's three rules about wishes to the player...with special emphasis on the first one: "No wishing for more wishes
The same principle applies...
Hmmm. Not my cup of tea. If I wanted fantasy-ish sci-fi I'd run a Star Wars game. That said, I'll still keep up my subscription, because I'll no doubt get some great ideas (maybe even FOR Star Wars :) ), awesome art and maps, as well as the fiction.
Rakshaka,
Seriously, this is friggin' awesome! My group are currently undertaking the investigations at Ascanor Lodge, so you couldn't have put it out there at a better time! Thanks a whole bunch...:)
There's a modified Golarion map which shows the human ethnic pattern, but it's on my laptop (I'm not at home at the moment). I got it from the Internet, so you might be able to Google it, or send me a PM and I'll email it to you (assuming it's not too big! It's a pretty sizeable map!)
And now, you're just not listening. Several people who have run the entire AP have already explained that your assumption that all the major stuff apart from Broken Moon being urban is simply flat-out wrong. You've admitted you're not familiar with some of the classes you're opposed to, and that's okay. You've made several fundamental errors in your interpretation/knowledge of the rules (incorporeal damage, crits/sneak attacks on undead), and that's okay, too. You neglected to mention that you're running this AP in your own game world after biting the heads off several people for making suggestions based on Ustalav and Golarion. And that's probably okay, too. But when you're making all these errors and mistakes and forgetting to mention important variables, it strikes me as the absolute height of obnoxious arrogance to then turn around and ignore the very advice you're asking for while demanding that people who did not simply stroke your own ego "drop it" and get out of "your" thread. Anyway, you can rip away at me and flag me to your heart's content, 'cos I'm done with "your" thread. Have a nice day...
Drop the snark. It only serves to sabotage your purpose. My irony-meter just overloaded...
If that CC map happens to be available, I would build a temple in your name! :) I've done a bit of stop-start with putting together a KM map in CC3, but I keep getting sidetracked, as it's a fairly big undertaking.
Has anybody expanded out the Ascanor Lodge part of the adventure beyond what the module says? It's even money that my group will end up stranded in Ascanor for the winter - I've been emphasising that this winter is far harsher than normal (a bit of foreshadowing, you know, the Whispering Way drawing the life from the land type of thing), and it's approaching fast. I'm sort of envisioning a bit of layover in Ascanor...to quote President Bartlett from the West Wing episode "Holy Night": "And now we're one-third of the way through an Agatha Chrstie story. 'Where nobody be goin' nowhere. The bridge be washed out.'" :) Anyway...I'm thinking of adding in a bit of a tournament of sorts - one of my players, Izaark, is a cavalier and his backstory involves some "issues" with the Knights of Ozem (largely to do with them refusing to admit him because he's a half-orc...never mind that he's Lawful Good and about the bravest, most honourable soul you'd find, but y'know, those Knights of Ozem? They're like that...:). So I thought, as part of Izaark's overall character arc, a tournament with some jousting would be fun. And of course, there being a Knight of Ozem present to make sure Izaark doesn't get too uppity couldn't hurt, and a bit of a fight between them would be fun. Now, I was also thinking that Ascanor Lodge couldn't possibly survive on its own. It would *have* to have some kind of life support system. It's a pretty hoity-toity place, so I can't imagine them serving beef jerky and pickled turnips for meals through the winter, so there would have to be a source of fresh food about somewhere. My solution is to put a small village nearby. Somewhere for the employees to live, somewhere from which to buy food and supplies. And, of course, somewhere to toss in a couple of mid-module adventures. Since I didn't get to use the mostest-excellentest Legendary Games plug-ins when I ran HoH, I thought I could level-up the "Murmuring Fountain" adventure and toss it in here. I was going to use the village of "Denton's End", from Raging Swan. It's a creepy little village with some, umm, *odd* practices, that should be nice and off-putting. Has anyone else done something similar to this? If so, what pitfalls did you run into, and how did the whole thing pan out? Cheers, all. And May the Fourth be with you, always...
Another thing I'd love to see, though realistically I know it wouldn't go ahead because it would only be bought by anally-retentive, map-obsessed people like me, would be a climate map of Golarion. Something like this: Koppen Climate Classification - World Map for Golarion. *sigh* Remember, I'm the guy who uses weather generation software to work out the weather a year or two in advance in my campaigns. Funnily enough, my players actually *love* the fact that often I'll ditch a random monster encounter (or even a planned one, which doesn't affect the storyline) and replace it with a "Man vs. Nature" scenario. My son (who is the only other GM in our group) has started doing something similar in his games, and *his* players love it, as well. Sometimes, it's much more fun for the characters to deal with a howling blizzard, or a sudden tropical cyclone, rather than yet another group of wolves or owlbears...:)
Oh, ho-ho! Neil, don't you DARE qualify the stuff you're doing at Legendary Games with anything approaching an apology, my friend! Seriously, if there was a subscription option at Legendary Games I'd be signing up yesterday! The only complaint I have is purely selfish - I keep devouring the stuff you guys produce and then whine because I WANT MORE, DAMMIT!! :) The things that really blow my skirt up, though, are the pregen characters - Gothic Heroes and Imperial Heroes are up there with bright copper kettles and brown-paper packages tied up with string - and the side adventures. My players had already blown through Haunting of Harrowstone before I got ahold of Murmuring Fountain and Fiddler's Lament, but I'm currently modifying Murmuring Fountain to run during Broken Moon, I love it that much! :) Keep up the good work!
The Letter from Adivion Adrissant to the PCs, which they received upon returning from Schloss Caromarc to Lepidsdt... "My dear friends,
Sincerely yours, Adivion Adrissant Set by my hand and seal, this Moonday, the Fourth day of Neth, The Year of Aroden 4711."
The Dream Sequence...sent by Alpon to the Beast, but "overheard" by the characters thanks to Poppy. A tall, slender man in his late twenties sat by a fireplace, his fingers steepled before him, a forgotten brandy snifter on a small table beside him.
FLASH… Alpon paced nervously, his hands linked behind his back, fingers rubbing against one another. He kept glancing at the large oaken door at the end of the balcony whose length he was marking out with his strides.
FLASH… “I do not care that this is your home, Caromarc!” shouted the tall, muscular man, leaning into Alpon’s face. “This is unacceptable for all concerned!”
FLASH… Alpon had returned to his normal size by now. The disfigured body of Henri Moritz lay on the tiles a short distance away, with Alpon refusing to look at it.
FLASH… The guard outside was unsure of what to do. He knew he couldn’t mention that his friend the Count was there – it would take too much explaining, and the Count could be blamed for something he had nothing to do with.
FLASH… The tall standing stones of the Spiral Cromlech cast haphazard shadows in the moonlight. Fog had rolled in from the swamp in the chill autumn morning, and Alpon had to keep wiping back his white hair to prevent water dripping into his eyes.
FLASH… Insanity is approaching…all I can do is send one single dream…the others have left, they have put me in this nightmare thing, this iron coffin from which I cannot escape. Waxwood is feeding me insects and rats, and giving me a little water…but I fear he is simply prolonging the inevitable.
I played around with the trigger to get them to go to Schloss Caromarc by making it more personal, and I also altered Alpon Caromarc somewhat. Firstly, my players had befriended the Crooked Kin *extensively* - to the point where they spent their nights with the Kin, rather than in town. Secondly, when the Beast (whom they named "Edward") was acquitted, they realised that he probably wouldn't be safe in Lepidstadt, so they asked the Crooked Kin if he could go with them. Being quite accepting of those that are...err...*different*...they were quite accepting of him, and the surviving two girls and the Wolf Boy loved him. Then I ran into the same problem as the OP...how to get them to Schloss Caromarc? An idea came to me that I think was triggered by me starting to read the "Magician" trilogy again. There's a character, Ghamina, who can both see and project thoughts and feelings and images from and into peoples' minds. Poppy, one of the microcephalic girls from the Crooked Kin, was about thirteen in our campaign (I can't remember if that was canonical, or I just grabbed three ages two years apart when I was statting up the CK). Anyway, I thought..."Hang on. Freak show, carnival, sideshows...lots of 'odd' stuff happening all the time. Poppy hits adolescence and starts to manifest a similar ability to Ghamina, from 'Magician'. Being pretty simple, she can't get complex *ideas* across, but she *can* read feelings and images, and project them." So I had Alpon Caromarc have one last preparation that Waxwood could get for him: "Dream". He sent a dream message to Edward to help him...but due to his starvation and terror, the dream is fragmented, and contained a lot of extraneous "junk" from Caromarc's life. Still, it was enough to send Edward rushing off to the castle to help his "father. The PCs were at Judge Daramid's, figuring out what to do next when Kaleb shows up with Poppy. He explains what happened, and says that Poppy can show them Edward's dream. He had fallen asleep, and she had fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder, so she sensed his dream. I did a fairly extensive written scene which showed the dream like a series of flashbacks of Caromarc's life: the coup that originally exiled him to his castle, his anger over that, his wife begging him to stop his experiments and his excitement over getting closer and closer to creating life...then his wife's death during childbirth, and how this shattered him, and drove his obsession with bringing back the dead, and led to his creation of first the Aberrant Promethean (the "prototype" that didn't work properly), and finally Edward. I even got to throw in a little homage and have Caromarc standing in wonder, staring at Edward as he begins to stir on the slab, with Caromarc whispering: "It's alive! It's alive!" :) Finally, the dream showed Caromarc meeting Vrood at the Cromlech outside Lepidstadt, and how he was overpowered by the Whispering Way cultists, and taken back to the castle. It was a nifty way of delivering a fair bit of exposition, giving them the backstory, making the point that Alpon Caromarc was more of a tragic figure than a bad guy (which they had assumed up until this point), and giving them a look at Auren Vrood - who they think is the BBEG of the campaign. They think Adrissant is a friend and sponsor, and he is playing up to this by deflecting all *his* activities off onto a vampire noble called "Vladimus", who is actually the dhampir PC's "father". So, because they genuinely adored Edward, and wanted to stop the Whispering Way, as soon as they got the dream sequence, there was no stopping them. They headed straight for Schloss Caromarc, and an absolutely, gob-smackingly AWESOME finale on the tower atop the laboratory. :) When they returned, Adrissant had left a letter for them, explaining how he had to return to Caliphas to investigate rumours of a noble connection to the WW, but he feeds them bits of info and suggests that Auren Vrood is the key to figuring out where Vladimus is...this not only got the dhampir PC riled up (she *desperately* wants to kill Vladimus), but pointed them directly at Ascanor Lodge for the start of "Broken Moon" (which we're kicking off on May 5). I'll post the dream sequence and the letter...that'll give you a better idea.
Ice Titan, you have just *completely* revamped my Carrion Crown campaign! :) My group is just coming up to the trial in "Trial of the Beast", and I've already incorporated an arc centred around each character. Izaark, the half-orc cavalier/oracle, has an arc that involves the hate Thaum Gauntwood has for him. Gauntwood was a close friend of Izaark's father, and thinks Izaark should have been drowned at birth...the idea that he's trying to become a Knight of Ozem is just too much for him to cope with! His arc involves him ultimately becoming a Knight of Ozem, but it will be linked in with a final confrontation with Gauntwood himself. Yeva, the human ranger/rogue, grew up in Turtleback Ferry, and her father was killed at Fort Rannick during the "Hook Mountain Massacre" from Rise of the Runelords. Her mother was "leaned on" by the same criminal elements that had unsuccessfully tried to corrupt her father. With a young daughter, and no income, her mother ended up forced into prostitution, pimped by a local Sczarni "wise guy" (the Sczarni in my campaign are more-or-less the Mafia). Her arc will incorporate a new "witness for the prosecution" during the trial that will attempt to discredit Yeva's testimony (he will, of course, be her mother's pimp and the son of a Sczarni boss) Skarlia, the dhampir inquisitor, was the child of a vampire hunter who was tortured and eventually impregnated by a vampire noble called Vladimus. Years later, when Skarlia was in her late teens, her mother was killed by Vladimus' old friend, a black dragon named Autha-Bahor. Skarlia barely escaped alive. But the stuff you've given us? Wow, IT, just wow! :) A whole raft of stuff has popped into my head, thanks to your inspiration. I'm having Adivion send his simulacram to Lepidstadt to actually investigate the PCs after their efforts at Ravegro (and the destruction of a vampire minion of Vladimus en-route to Lepidstadt, which actually led into the Crooked Kin encounter). He will be a useful "pointer" to direct them towards a couple of things they've missed, as well as helping out with alchemical analyses (they don't have much Craft (alchemy) or Knowledge (arcana) in the group). I'm going to play the iAdivion as genuinely helpful. He doesn't care if the Beast is acquitted, but he wants the group to clear out Schloss Caromarc so he can check out the Bondslave Thrall device that Auren Vrood has told him about. Plus, he's curious about the PCs. (As backstory for Adivion, incidentally, he knows that the Adellas were descended from Tar-Baraphon, and he is convinced some are still alive - thinking they're probably in Taldor, actually - but he will learn during the adventure that Count Galdana is actually descended from them) I'm running with the whole Kendra is the adopted daughter of Lorrimor, and I'm going to throw in that Skarlia's mother was also a descendant, making Skarlia and Kendra distant cousins of sorts. I've gone with Drilling4mana's take that Kendra is the bastard of Galdana. I also like that Raven's Head is an intelligent item. I'm going with the idea that Raven's Head's "personality" was essentially ripped in half decades before in order to create Infensus Mucro, which explains why its memory is spotty. It needs to be reunited with the sword to regain its memories; which is your idea, of course, that Kendra et al are the last living descendants of Tar-Baraphon (no, it's not a misspelling - I just like the sound of the extra syllable. :) ) Soooo...they will discover, at the end of "Wake of the Watcher", that the Dark Rider wasn't going to be heading straight back to Caliphas. He needed to head back to the University of Lepidstadt, where Dr Crowl knew of a ritual to "reawaken" the dormant personality of Raven's Head (Crowl's not a bad guy - he's going to be coerced into helping the WW). The "Chronicle of the Raven's Tongue" is going to be the information from Raven's Head that the Adella line survived - they actually had Raven's Head until Galdana's grandfather died when his ship was lost in a storm in Avalon Bay (it was later picked up by the skum, as detailed in "Wake of the Watcher") At the moment, the PCs won't be able to do a lot with the information, except have a reason to head to Caliphas (which is precisely what I want, of course, to kick of "Ashes"). Following your lead, Ice Titan, at the end of "Ashes at Dawn", they will get the letter with the key. If they allied with Ramoska Arkeminos, it'll be from him on behalf of Hanoris Dellum, or if they don't, it'll be from Dellum himself, who will get a recommendation from the Order of the Palatinate Eye locals whom the PCs trust. Either way, there will be an extension of Yeva's arc at the end of "Ashes" which will see an assassination attempt on her - the Sczarni "godfather" is finally sick of her after she has either killed or humiliated his son (the "witness for the prosecution" in "Trial") - and has come to kill her himself, along with some nasty helpers (maybe a Red Mantis, who knows?). Galdana will actually die in this scene, hopefully sacrificing himself to save either Yeva or Kendra (who will be present in Caliphas, as you described :) I'm thinking of putting in a romance arc between Kendra and Adivion; it's not real from HIS perspective, of course - he's hoping to get information out of Kendra, thinking she might know something Lorrimor knew, perhaps about the Adellas)) While the Whispering Way is still trying to figure out what they SHOULD have learned from Raven's Head (that Galdana is of the Adella line), the PCs will travel down to Taldor to go through "Iron Tomb". Eventually, when the sword combines with Raven's Head, they'll get all the information, as you beautifully described above - I SO hope the scene plays out like that...I'm hoping for a "WTF??" moment from the players. Kind of "No, Luke, *I* am your father!" reaction. :) I'm thinking of actually showing the flashes of history eventually coalescing into a scene similar to Professor X's use of Cerebro in the X-Men movies...shadowy figures all over the world, homing in on a few colour figures that are actually Tar-Baraphon's descendants, from oldest to youngest. Of course, Stavian III will be in there...maybe a peasant or two scattered across Avistan...and finally closing in on Kendra, unconscious in a carriage with Adivion, telling "someone" (dunno who, yet) that it will take time to properly prepare her for the ritual, and finally to Skarlia. No doubt they'll be rushing back ASAP, at which time I'll kick off "Gallowspire". In that there'll be the final showdown between Skarlia and her "father", Vladimus, as well as Izaark's defeat of Gauntwood and the revelation that he (Gauntwood) is actually a bad guy, who ended up working with Vladimus in order to kill Izaark (I'm playing Gauntwood as obsessed with "purity" of the Knights, and he'd rather team up with a vampire than see a half-orc in the order of Ozem). For this, I'm going to heavily modify an old 3rd Edition D&D short adventure called "Harvest of Evil", which deals with a vampire and its cronies taking over a small village after being driven out of their castle. I'm going to place this somewhere in the Hungry Mountains as they're chasing after Adivion. Kendra will replace Galdana in "Gallowspire", and of course, Marrowgarth will be replaced by a now-ravener Autha-Bahor, the dragon that actually killed Skarlia's mother. Thanks to all, especially Ice Titan, for all these awesome ideas! Like I said...we're only halfway through "Trial", but I'm SOOOO looking forward to the rest of the AP! :)
Some of the most disappointing for me have been Timothy Zahn's "Empire" trilogy (post "Return of the Jedi"), which I found pretty bland, and the whole ysalamiri thing to be very contrived Spoiler:
("Luke's too powerful...how can I challenge him? I know! I'll invent ferrets that emit and anti-magic, err, anti-Force field!"), not to mention the whole business with Mara Jade killing "Luuke" and thus getting around her compulsion. (the stuff in the following spoiler may be found offensive by some viewers...) The other series was the "Song of Ice and Fire". I read 4 and and a bit of the books, finally giving up some time during "A Dance with Dragons". I kept holding out, hoping it would improve, and now I kick myself at the time I wasted with the bloated mess that it was. Not only is Martin a vastly overrated writer, but I keep finding myself squirming at his graphic descriptions Spoiler: of the sexual assault of children. I really should have listened to the warning bells right near the start when 13-year-old Daenarys was digitally raped by her 30+ year old new husband, and then started to enjoy it.
As Cordie said..."There's not enough yuck in the world." Add to that the fact that all his female characters* are either whores, psychopaths or morons (or a combination of all three) * Except Briana, but by the time she came into it, it was way too late. Martin's stuff reads like a creepy old man's fantasies...
Well, in my campaign, that paladin just became a fighter without the feats, and any god-aligned clerics lost their spells. Torture is an evil act because *it's an evil act*, not because of the subject.
Well, Paizo has had my loyalty ever since 4E came out. I could never get into 4E, whereas PF took everything I liked about 3/3.5 D&D, fixed the bits I didn't like and put it all in the blender, coming up with something I really loved. I can't see myself going back to WotC in future...
Well, I've been having a bit of a play in HeroLab this afternoon, messing about with some of the RHOD characters and trying to come up with something that seems to fit more in the Golarion mythos. While I agree with James (hell, he wrote the thing! :) ), I've decided I'm sticking with Tiamat being a distant and non-evil entity. Dahak is involved, but I found him too chaotic and wanton to be behind a big bad evil invasion. So my idea was that Azar Kul is a kind of "priest" of Hadregash, who is a barghest hero. Thing is, Hadregash is making a play for godhood, and the only way he can do that is to "buy" his way into it by "funneling" souls killed his name to Lamashtu, who will then elevate him to the position of a god. Azar, therefore, isn't a true cleric, but something similar. I first thought of making him a fighter/adept, but then I hit on something from the AGM book: the Oracle class. So I've converted Azar Kul into an oracle. Meanwhile, he has enlisted Hravek Kharn, whom I have made into a cleric of Dahak (and CE, not LE), to lead the armies of the Red Hand to cause destruction and devastation in order to "feed" Hadregash. I'm going to convert the Ghostlord into a witch, rather than a druid (a witch-lich? :) ), and therefore I made Ulwai Stormcaller a witch as well. Saarvith and Koth are the same (ranger and sorcerer, respectively). Oh, I've also increased everyone's level by +1 so that the CRs are the same as in the original module. Here are Azarr Kul and Hravek Kharn to have a look at - let me know what you think (there are a few minor changes to weapons and such - Kul using a flail and Kharn using a whip, for example, to fit with their deities. Kharn's whip is called "Dahak's Tail", and is a +2 whip of wounding...seemed to fit the notion of wanton cruelty and destruction). AZARR KUL CR 13
and... WYRMLORD HRAVEK KHARN CR 10
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