Devil of Roses's page

I had originally thought this campaign would probably end with a circus performance instead of a cinematic final battle, this seems like a good occasion to do so.

One note about Absalom having a competition is that there is a once-in-a-century "Radiant Festival" set to happen after the conclusion of this AP, deeply tying into the Agents of Edgewatch AP. Performing at that festival is mentioned in book 6 of Extinction Curse I believe.

Thanks, I remember seeing something about that, and with the recent release of the Absalom sourcebook, I think I'll be leaning toward that. Might even lead to running Agents of Edgewatch if the Players are interested.

I'm a bit saddened that Revenge of the Kobold King isn't included, but I am all for this!

Hello all! Hoping to dig into the hive mind's honey as it were...

I'm running Extinction Curse for my group, and want to do more with Mistress Dusklight and the Celestial Menagerie, while also making the main selling point of the AP for my players remain a bit more viable through the end of the campaign. I've heard the climax of book 2 being like a home invasion, a justified home invasion of a nasty piece of work, but one that might make all the build up done in book 1 feel rather empty. As such, I want to work out something that might better serve a campaign that wants to keep some attention and focus on the circus past book three.

My ideas thus far are such:

* 'defeating' Mistress Dusklight in Book 2 is not a goal, at least not martially, I can take or leave her being in league with the Xulgaths, but if so, I want it to be on a much deeper level that can play out throughout the volumes.
With this in mind, I propose something else, finding dirt on her to effectively give her the boot from the town she's been holed up in. Essentially getting revenge, not through murder, but perhaps humiliation, which leads to the next idea:

* The thought that the Circus, even by the time it reaches the final volume and characters are approaching level 20, won't be able to compete with anything in Absalom, is ridiculous. Making it the end goal, at least for a campaign that maintains the circus element rather than casting it aside, strikes me as fitting. Doing this while maintaining Mistress Dusklight as a villain and the Celestial Menagerie as a rival circus, strikes me as even better. So how?

* Well, Absalom is a huge city, real estate is scarce, and as mentioned, only the best and most prestigious shows can really afford the good and worthwhile venues. I figure, every ten years, Absalom has a grand festival that hosts a competition where the best shows get exclusive right to a ten year contract to perform in one of the largest venues in the city.

* Humiliated and kicked out of her comfortable home turf, Dusklight challenges the Circus of Wayward Wonders to to competition, but to even compete, they have to reach a certain level of prestige. So, both the Celestial Menagerie and the Circus of Wayward Wonders are traveling Erran and Kortos to build up their prestige with the intention of a final showdown in Absalom.

* This could feature sabotage attempts, performance show downs, etc. Maybe recruitable NPC's that the PC's don't get end up in the Celestial Menagerie, or a number of other things. The final showdown could be an excellent epilogue for the campaign.

Doing this would require that Dusklight, while obviously evil, hasn't quite gotten to the 'she must be murdered or imprisoned' point.

Anyway, I'm reaching out to you Paizo Hive Mind, what do you think, any ideas or suggestions?

I'm loving this book, but I'm curious, will the file per chapter PDF be properly reorganized? Right now it breaks up in a terribly unintuitive manner unlike the past lost omen books.

So, I'm just now diving into the playtest, and I'm having a hard time understanding a couple things.

Am I correct, that with the current rules, I can't essentially play what would have been a standard dwarf in previous editions because each separate racial ability that has been the norm, is now an ancestry feat?

Am I also correct in that a first level 'human' with a 'half elf' or 'half orc' ancestral feat, basically pays a feat tax and can't actually buy any of the racial traits at first level?

Maybe it's because it's late, maybe it's because I've been drinking, but I can't find anything saying otherwise, and if that's the case, I think I'm done with new Pathfinder before it's even begun.

But the thing Wizards gave us was choice. We were free to use and abuse, or to forbid and restrict as we ourselves saw fit. True, wizards was pumping out books like there was no tomorrow and some of the material where downright insane, but we had options and it was up to us to sieve through it to find the gold.

This is not a good quality. Wizards "one core a month" lead to crappy titles like Dungeonscape, it led to glut, it led to them running out of ideas too soon and too quickly. This also led to an incredible lack of fluff, an impressive amount of typos and mechanical errors, and broken mechanics that were never properly playtested. That is not an ideal to live up to, that is a mistake to avoid, and Paizo seems to be doing a reasonable job of it. They're coming out with books at a reasonable pace, sometimes I think they need to slow down a little.

Paizo isn't perfect, by any means, but they're still moving forward and trying new things. Which Wizards wasn't exactly big on, WotC loved playing inside a nice save little box. They'd try new mechanics here and there, but they'd be tame, nothing like the creation of archetypes or the flexibility and variety available to many of the APG classes. Personally I think they need to overhaul their public playtest model, make it more like Green Ronins model for the Dragon Age RPG, which is a little more organized and doesn't seem to rely on who can yell the loudest on the forums (one of the reasons I left playtesting behind beyond the occasional perusal, it just got depressing to watch). That's just me though.

They're still making strides, each of their AP's features something new, a new mechanic they're experimenting with (exploration and mass combat in Kingmaker, the relationship system in Jade Regent, naval combat in Skull and Shackles) and they've been pumping out something interesting for Gen Con every year. Sure it might not appeal to everyone (I've a lot of friends who were not keen on the Mythic Rules for a variety of instance, I thought Ultimate Magic was their weakest entry to date, can't please everyone all the time), but they're *trying* they're still *inspired*. That they haven't gone to increase production volume or start rushing out new products by the truckload is a *good* thing.

You know what they did recently that was awesome? They took what is possible their weakest RPG line (the Modules) and completely revamped them. Before their modules were hit and misses with maybe half of them being easily written off and of a quality best described as 'Meh'(by my opinion, mileage may vary of course). They canned their old incredibly limited model and made a new 68 page model that has a phenomenal layout, a great story and design, and gave the writers room to play rather than the tight cramped space they had before.

They are "Big Boys" as you so condescendingly put it, and they are acting like it. They're growing their company, they're doing new and interesting things. Going back and polishing up flaws they could not take care of when they were smaller all while launching an awesome new card game, an interesting alternative to Epic rules (whether you like it or not, it is at least interesting, and give the mess the Epic rules were, quite better in my opinion) and more. Hardly call that hand holding.

I don't know what type of lanterns you've used, but if you can show me how someone can make the same oil in a lantern burn brighter, or the same torch for that matter, then I'll happily bow to your defense of what I will have once thought to be a ridiculous concept. Until then, I'm afraid I can't really take you seriously, I've handled torches and lanterns, I've not seen any amount of care or maintenance that would enable the same one to burn brighter. One that was better treated, one with a better oil quality, sure. Nothing that merits the specialized focus and training a feat would entail.

Not sure if threads like this are OK, since this is the first AP I'm getting in on from the start, but wanted to talk about the mod as I'm reading through it.

So far -- and I just got to the end of Act 2 -- I'm really enjoying it.

The intro material was great; I really want the whole thing right NOW. And the art's gorgeous, IMO.

I really like the advancement track they give us as well. I've only run Savage Tide, which was a bit of a different beast in its format, and Kingmaker, which was too sandboxy to do this, but as someone who doesn't really use XP, this makes my job easier.

Which this mod does a lot of. Each new area gives me the rules I need to deal with the snow, so I don't have to constantly go look them up.

I also like that it's so straight-forward, without feeling railroady. The players don't have to sit there and say "what do we do next?" The trail's literally there in the snow. I don't know, maybe that would feel a little too easy at a table, but at least in the PBP format (which is where I'm running it), I really like that.

Some nice traps among the encounters, and I like the inclusion of the haunt and the whole scene with Thora.

I really like the reward at the end of Act 2. I think players will love the boost they get and it's going to make them want to hold on to these characters. They get a nice bonus by being there from the start (of course, I may have to think about what to do if replacements need to come in, but I can worry about that later).

** spoiler omitted **

Really looking forward to reading the rest.

This is the first time I've been excited about an AP in awhile now. Jade Regent was interesting, but I felt I didn't have access to a good group at the time. The few people I knew locally were already playing it with another group. Shattered Star was... well, let's just say I've left my fondness for Dungeon Crawls in the past for good reason, so it was sort of a non-entity in my Pathfinder AP's. I really want to run this.

So you have a lot of tedious crap (Drizz't and Elminster for starters) that continue to stink up the new setting

Now there's a matter of opinion. Thing is you may say they stink up the setting but a lot of people are quite fond of those two characters, they have always been icons of the setting, and I, as a FR DM, never really felt they impacted my campaigns. I as a Forgotten Realms fan (and someone who has enjoyed the books about both characters) never really thought they were a negative side to the campaign at all.

Getting them to leave soon is unlikely in any event whether you love them or hate them. Drizzt and Elminster are both moneymakers for the Forgotten Realms novel line and I know people who downright hate the new edition and realms that still buy books about those characters religiously. If Elminster goes it'll likely be because Ed Greenwood passed away and I imagine R.A. Salvatore will continue to write about that Dark Elf that has inspired so many blatant ripoff characters until he runs out of ideas.

29. Not even close, as far as villains go the comparison would insult Dr. Doom.
30. If you ask another Ustalavian for candy I *will* have a Varisian caress your cheek and whisper "Thinner" and you *can not* make that save DC.