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Do the players just say "I'm searching the room" and then roll a perception check for whatever might be there? Or do the players say "I'm going to look through this desk" and roll for that?

I've always done the "searching the room" method, but I wonder if we're missing out on some of the fun of finding a thing behind a painting, or under a rug. But I'm concerned that if we start to do specific searches for different room features, it's just going to bog down the game when there's not really anything to find.

Hello all! I'm starting put some thoughts together on a homebrew campaign. Right now I'm playing in an Iron Gods campaign, so it's still 6-8 months minimum before I run a game, but I wanted to do a bit of work on it ahead of time.

I'm planning on running Pathfinder 1E, but I'm mostly looking for story advice, so I may post this in the 2E forum as well. I don't know the geography and history of Golarion as well as I probably should, so that's where I'm asking for the most help. But any and all aspects of the campaign are open to suggestions, so have it! Here's what I have so far.

I'm calling it the "Orc-pocalypse". The party starts out in the regular, normal world of Golarion, in a remote village somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A non-descript village of a few hundred people, probably a truck stop on the way to some nearby mines, logging camps, etc. The party will probably start out doing some small errands for some people around town, to get familiar with the village and its inhabitants. The story starts for real when a stranger emerges from the woods and asks the PCs, specifically, to help clear out a temple (Gozreh maybe?) that has been overrun by goblins.

The party goes to investigate this temple out in the wilderness and finds a small fort that is indeed overrun by goblins. They fight their way through and liberate it, and find that it's built around a giant tree, which is apparently the "altar" of the temple. Approaching the tree, it opens up to reveal a small cavern underneath.

The party goes down and finds a small room with a fountain. A statue, with a small jug of water, infinitely pouring crystal clear water into the basin below. Overcome with a feeling of peace and serenity, the party drifts off to sleep.

They wake up and find that the statue has changed its pose, and the water jug is now in their possession, functioning like a decanter of endless water. They wander outside, slowly discovering that months have passed. The fort is overgrown, the woods deepened. As they return to the village, they find it overrun by orcs! They must then work to defeat the orcs and free the village.

Over time, they discover that the entire continent has been conquered by orcs, giants, ogres, goblins, etc. They steadily increase their scope, starting with the small village and working their way up to larger and larger conquests. But how did this happen?

Eventually they discover that the water is the key to all of it. An orc shaman has cursed the source of all water, at the highest mountaintop in the land. The orcs are immune to it, but humans, elves, dwarves are all weakened by it. This weakness causes their weapons to break and their bodies to falter, allowing the orcs to easily conquer them. The PCs must eventually climb to the top of this mountain, defeat the shaman, and use the decanter to cleanse the source.

So... thoughts on this? I'm debating whether this should be the end of the campaign, or a midpoint. Climbing a mountain is not easy at level 9 or 10, but by 15 or 16 it's pretty trivial. Perhaps after cleansing the water, they still need to return and defeat the leader, and with it the army?

As I said, any and all aspects of this are open to debate. I don't know the geography that well, so suggestions for locations would be great. Perhaps some good milestone towns and cities to liberate as well? Some good groups to ally with along the way?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

I know this has been vaguely covered in a few threads, but I didn't find anything that addressed this specific question. Do the bonuses/penalties seem backwards in a certain way? For example, the character associated with Lust (he and Shayliss got chased out of the basement) would have a *bonus* to save against being dominated by Delvahine. This seems really backwards to me - he's clearly susceptible to being seduced, so I feel like he should have a more difficult time resisting such an effect.

I don't really like adding the damage from the two weapons together for Double Slice (or Flurry). The main point is how it interacts with resistances/vulnerabilities, but I think it's better to keep them separate for this exact reason. I think a big two-handed Power Attack should cut through resistances a lot easier than two smaller attacks. Conversely, I think multiple small hits should trigger vulnerabilities more than a single big hit.

As is, the flavor doesn't feel different for these two mechanics.

Is the Azlanti attack in Chapter 1 relevant to the plot, or is it just a random encounter? I suspect that my players will take it to mean that the Azlanti Empire is now interested, and somehow connected to the Stellar Degenerator plot. I'm thinking about replacing this with a monster-as-starship encounter instead, but I don't want to miss a key plot point later on by doing this.

Any chance Paizo is talking to Isaac Childres, the creator of Gloomhaven? It's currently the #1 game on Board Game Geek, and is an amazing dungeon crawler with long term legacy play. I've been playing it nearly every week for almost a year now, and I'm not even close to being bored with it.

I think Pathfinder would be a perfect fit for this game. A Pathfinder-flavored version would work great, using the Iconic characters. Any chance Paizo has contacted the creator to work something out?

I'm running Incident at Absalom Station right now, and we're running without xp. I'm going to level up the party at appropriate times in the story, but I'm not clear on when exactly those times are. The book provides some guidance, but it's non-specific.

They're supposed to level up to 2 some time while they're exploring the ship. But they never leave the ship, and I don't really like them just jumping up in level mid-exploration. Maybe after the ship and before the asteroid makes the most sense.

Are they supposed to be level 3 before the last encounter? I've heard some reports that it's pretty tough. It's a party of 5, and not 4, so maybe it won't be so bad? Should I bump them to 3 before the encounter? Or just let them fight through it at level 2 and then have them reach 3 at the end?

As a non-creative DM, I hate when my players go talk to an NPC that I hadn't planned out, and I have to quickly come up with a name, description, and persona for that NPC on the spot. So, I often try to generate a list of NPC names ahead of time, and use them as necessary throughout the adventure. Perhaps we can compile a list here, so we can borrow from each other's ideas?

The idea is to provide a very simple NPC with as little or as much detail as you want, even if it's just a name and race. You might have a specific profession in mind, or it might just be an average everyday citizen whose non-description job isn't important to the story or character.

So, some examples to get started:

Jerel Mordhel, the Human shopkeeper. Young guy who had dreams of being a Starfinder but was forced to stay home when his father became ill.

Merilee Trinnic, the Ysoki starship mechanic with a bum leg that keeps her from traveling too much.

Lorgen Wathier, the Human politician who's becoming increasingly frustrated with the red tape he needs to wade through to help the people of his home planet.

Greta Koripsky, the Vesk mercenary with a love of knives.

Thorien Mel'Akin, the Lashunta doctor with a soft spot for children.

Add yours!

I ran the Goblin Pyros encounter this evening, where the party fought three goblin warriors and the warchanter. I had downloaded the goblin song audio, and decided to play it (loudly) on repeat until the warchanter died. This drove my players nuts, because they were already sick of it by the second time it looped. They really wanted to kill the warchanter to make it stop. As soon as he fell, I turned off the goblin song, which they heartily celebrated.

This was exactly the effect I was hoping for! I recommend doing this if you're running this AP. :)

I've just started a RotL campaign, and I'm thinking about combining these two NPCs into one character. She'll attempt to seduce one of the NPCs, either failing or getting caught, and then turn up dead in chapter two. Any foreseeable problems with this setup? I feel like the murders will carry a bit more weight if the PCs know one of the victims ahead of time.

Hello! I'm about to start up a Rise of the Runelords campaign, and I've got a group of brand new players. One has played 3.5 extensively, the other three are brand new to tabletop RPGs. I let them choose their own characters, and they ended up with the following:

Halfling Hunter
Halfling Bard
Elf Rogue
Human Inquisitor

The Hunter and Bard are going to be bow focused, the Inquisitor melee. I'm worried about this party composition. They don't have a full caster (either Divine or Arcane) and they don't have a full BAB character. The Inquisitor is their main healer and tank, with the Hunter pet also soaking some attacks.

I'm worried about this party composition. I'm hoping to run the module mostly as-is. I gave them 20 point buy, and I'm using the optional Hero Point system. Thoughts? Should I try to talk one of them into switching characters?

This came up on the BGG forum, and I think the rules are unclear on the timing here. The question is, does Lem use his "swap a card for a card in your discard" ability before, or after advancing the Blessings deck?

On the "Turn Over" on the reference sheet, it suggests that advancing the Blessings deck is part of your turn. To me, this would mean that if Lem is going to swap a card, it must be done before advancing the Blessings deck.

However, on page 9 it says "Before your turn, flip the top card from
the blessings deck faceup onto the top of the blessings discard pile." This suggests that advancing the Blessings deck is not actually part of your turn (although this paragraph is under the "Your Turn" heading on that page). That would mean Lem can advance the Blessings deck, see what's at the top, and then swap that blessing out of his discard into his hand, assuming he has the appropriate cards of course.

Which is correct?

Picked up this spell on Lem, which is fantastic. It raises a few questions in terms of timing.

The spell gives a +3 bonus to Charisma checks for the rest of the turn. The question is how this interacts with other spells. Now, you can't play more than one spell on one check, so if you encounter a monster, you can't use Glibness and then use Force Missile. But what if you've already used Glibness? Some use cases, and how I'm interpreting them:

1. I encounter an Ogre. I cannot use Glibness and then Force Missile to cast Force Missile with a +3 bonus. This violates the rule preventing me from playing two spells on the same check.

2. I encounter an Ogre. I use Force Missile to try to defeat him, and succeed. I then use Glibness to make my Recharge attempt easier. I get a +3 bonus on my Force Missile recharge, then a +3 bonus on my Glibness recharge. Since I still have a +3 bonus on recharges, I go ahead and use a Cure spell while I'm at it, and recharge that with a bonus as well.

3. I use a Cure spell. For my Cure recharge, I use Glibness and gain the +3 bonus on the recharge for both spells. Then, on the same turn, I encounter an Ogre. I use Force Missile to fight it. I still have the effects from Glibness, so I gain a +3 bonus on my Force Missile attack. This might be questionable, but my interpretation is that I didn't play Glibness on this check - I just still have the bonus from a previous play.

4. So if #3 is correct, then how about this? I encounter an Ogre. I decide to play Glibness immediately, before any checks occur. I play and recharge at +3. Then, I use Force Missile to combat the Ogre, gaining the +3 bonus from Glibness, which was played prior to this check.

Having a lot of fun with the game, but here are two suggestions that I think would make future versions of this game even more fun.

First, I'd add one simple mechanic: if a character encounters a card, but then fails to acquire/defeat it, he suffers the appropriate consequences as normal. However, another character at that same location can attempt the same encounter if they choose, before it gets shuffled back into the deck. So, let's say Lem encounters a monster. Unfortunately he doesn't have any attack spells in his hand, so he's defeated by the monster and takes damage. However, Seoni happens to also be at that location, so rather than returning the monster to the location deck, Seoni attempts to blast the monster with her Force Missile. She succeeds, and the monster is banished.

I think this would have a number of positive effects. First, it makes the game feel more like a party-based game, just like Pathfinder. Second, it would allow for some interesting abilities that can modify these situations. For example, maybe Valeros has the ability to step in and face a monster instead of the character who drew the encounter. Or maybe Merisiel can evade a monster, but leave some sort of poison that reduces the monster's effectiveness for a followup attack. Maybe Harsk has the ability to dictate who gets to face an encounter, or use his ranged attack to encounter a monster at another location. All of these would require a significant rebalance, but I think it would add a lot of fun interaction to the game.

Second, I'd like to see something different with the villain. I don't particularly like the villain running away from location to location. I'd love to see a "big bad guy" villain deck, using his deck for hit points the same way players use theirs. Maybe the characters have to explore various locations to find "keys" that unlock the final showdown with a villain. The villain is his own deck of powers that he uses against the players, but as players do damage, the villain is forced to discard them. Having a nice "boss encounter" like this would be a lot of fun, and would also add to the party experience.

So, we were playing the other night and my friend had an armor card in his hand. He felt that he didn't need it at that time, so after a victorious combat he wanted to recharge it to "reduce" the damage that he took, which was 0. We weren't sure if that was allowed.

Ultimately we decided against that, and he instead discarded it at the end of his turn.

I was playing Seoni in a game yesterday, and I acquired the Acid Arrow spell during the scenario. This is an "Elite" card, so I was excited to acquire it, but it turns out the effect is nearly identical to Force Missile and Lightning Grasp, which are both Basic cards. Same amount of damage, same recharge, except it's Acid damage instead of Force or Lightning. Is this really an Elite upgrade?