E Rank Luck's page

So long story short, Playing a Tiefling Magus in Strength of Thousands. Want to go unarmed and I'm unsure on how best to go about it. I like the aesthetic that comes with using my ancestry feat on claws, especially in conjunction with spellstrike. But I think the class feat for Arcane Fist is probably better. Unfortunately going Arcane Fist means I wont have expansive spellstrike which seems rather important. I dont believe they stack in any way either, since I dont think natural weapons count as brawling?

On the Strength of Thousands unique side of things, as an arcane boy I'm gonna end up with a Druid dedication. But have no earthly idea what feats to take from it. I like wildshape, so probably that order, but since i cant use magus stuff while transformed it would be more for scouting.

any help or advice would be appreciated. I know the *vibe* of what I want, its just makin things work im struggling with.

Like the title says, Im trying to find any image or description of whatever symbols or heraldry the ancient azlanti empire used. Most ive been able to find is for the Star Empire.

Theres quite a few NPCs in Ruins that have symbols on their outfits, but I think they are all for their respective dieties as they are all religious types afaik.

So I've been looking at the map of the Islands that is given by the AP and trying to match them with the map in Inner Sea World Guide, Aquatic Adventures, and even the 2e core book. And i just cant figure out where Ancorato is supposed to be within the mass of islands that is Azlant. Is it noted anywhere just where Talmandor's Bounty even is? I was wanting to add in some of the supplementary stuff from others books and flesh out the region some more in my game. Since my players are the type to want to explore and discover. I was wanting to include more than just 3 islands in my particular Ruins of Azlant campaign, but unless i can figure out which island is Ancorato i might end up having to take up my own cartography.

tl:dr is there a larger scale map anywhere that has Talmandor's Bounty/Ancorato on it or just a good map of Azlant's island chain in general.

Description: This jeweled skull resembles that of a Demilich, and was in fact created from the remnants of one.

The skull retains a small portion of the Demiliches devour soul ability. On Command, the skull can attempt to devour the soul of a dying creature (Fortitude save DC: ??? Negates) On a failed save, the creatures soul is stored within one of the 9 intact gems on the skull. Each gem can only hold 1 soul, multiple weak souls cannot be consumed to mimic a stronger soul.

Souls contained within the gems can be consumed in two different ways.

- The user is healed for 1d6 per HD of the creature.

- The user regains a spent spell slot, as per the use of a pearl of
power/runestone of power. The spell slot regained is equal to the creatures
HD/2. IE a creature with 2HD restores a 1st level slot, whereas a creature with
10 HD would restore a 5th level slot and so on.

Thoughts? I need to figure out a decent DC for the soul devour effect. But I run into the issue of making it free on low level enemies or impossible on higher level ones. I suppose I might have scale with the user, maybe a 10+Caster Level sort of thing.

Im also unsure as to how i would price this thing. Alternitively i could just slap "Minor Artifact" on the label and ignore the price issue.

So is it just me, or do the Infernal Boons feel somewhat unbalanced? In relevance to eachother I mean. I feel like when the time comes every single PC is just going to pick the Pride boon. That +2 inherent bonus is worth quite a lot. The Natural Armor one also feels like a great value. But the other ones feel like the fall flat in comparison. The spell like ones especially just seem lacking in both power and flavor.

Anyone who has gotten that far, what did your players think of them and did you change them up at all?

Ok so question about Aid Another. Does it have a type of bonus it gives? And how does stacking it work? I'm 90% sure you can stack aid another from multiple people. But what about someone who has swift aid and wants to use both their standard and their swift action doing Aid Another? Do they stack to give a +3? How do these interact with say the Halfling Helpful trait (2 becomes 4) or Order of the Dragon Cavalier (+3 which scales)?

The way i had been reading it so far, a Halfling Order of the Dragon Honor Guard Cavalier has been able to slap +8 aid another bonuses on his allies, and with combat reflexes is able to bodyguard almost any attacks I make in his vicinity for the same bonus. Which I'm fine with for the most part, its basically all he can do. But if he can use swift aid and start making it into +16s for one attack thats a bit much i feel like. Even the +8 he has currently is a little excessive tbh.

I want to add more notables to the AP but I've been having trouble finding details on other Chelish nobles, especially for House Thrune whom I would like my PCs to have stronger ties to. I imagine Abrogail would like to make certain that other noble houses to get to dig their claws into the PCs with how potentially dangerous and influential they can become.

Unfortunately, even with the extra party guests bit at the start of Book 4 I feel like there's not many NPCs that the PCs could really connect to. Some of them are interesting quirky characters, but the types that I feel like my PCs will really connect to or inspire much loyalty in the nation of Cheliax to them. I feel like most of the nobles engender more feelings of "Asmodeus Below, why are we fighting for these people" instead of helping them be the loyal Chelish murdermachines they are meant to be.

For House Thrune, there's a few (living) notables I know of that might be able to be worked in, though I'm not entirely sure how to go about it yet. As my table has yet to touch Skulls and Shackles, that leaves Grand Admiral Druvalia Thrune as an option. Her Armada might complicate matters for the GR and she could be an interesting person to interact with. There's also Ghislaine Thrune who runs some kind of Captain Cheliax Super Soldier Project. Other than those two, and Barry over in Rebels there's none that I know.

For non Thrunes, I'd love to find a way to incorporate the Grand High Priestess Aspexia Rugatonn as some of her more zealous followers become the antagonists of the end of the Book. Maybe find a way to throw Varian Jeggare in there even...

Does anyone know of any other Nobles or other Notable NPCs I could have the party encounter to make Cheliax seem more worth saving for the PCs. Or at least make it seem like the PCs arent the 4 only competent people in the entire nation?

As the title implies, I am currently running Ironfang Invasion for 6 players. Playing 15 pb with the optional rules for Unchained Skills, Hero Points, and Wound Thresholds.
My party consists of

1. Treesinger Druid
2. Cavalier who aspires to battle herald
3. Desnan Cleric (Luck/Travel)
4. Barbarian who aspires to Darechaser
5. Brawler
6. Sacred Huntmaster Inquisitor

Which as I'm sure you can tell, means that I basically actually have 8 players not 6 with the druid and the inquisitor being companion classes. This has kind of led to a small slew of problems so far even only 3 sessions deep.

1. Combat takes too long - Thus far I've been evening the odds by increasing enemy count. So far this has made combat still a challenge, but it has the downside of making rounds go so long that I've had players actually pass out while waiting on their turn. (doesn't help that we play late, but still)

2. Applying the Advanced Template makes monsters a bit too much to handle so far. This was the other method I've tried to make things a bit more of a match, but its turned combats into a long slog of constant near misses followed by the maiming of a PC who then retreats to be healed while the other 4 are able to defend the wounded and healer until they finally manage to take down the enemy.

3. Bosses. I haven't quite gotten to the point of boss fights yet. But when I do, I imagine the standard problem is going to be exacerbated quite a bit. That being action economy. Making an important enemy stay significant and intimidating is difficult to manage when they get 1 move per the party's 8 unless I buff them up to potentially unwinnable levels.

4. This one is rather unique to Ironfang I think. But the militia management is a lot bigger of a time sink than i think any of us expected. It being a big theme of the campaign I don't want to cut it. But ways to expedite it would be appreciated.

Here's some solutions I've been looking at and was hoping to get some advice on the viability of.

1. Troop Template. Ironfang does this one on its own, and even has quite a few in the books. Problem is I've never used them before, and was curious as to how balanced they really are. They put out quite a huge amount of unavoidable damage that makes me think they should probably be avoided until my PCs have a bit more HP on them.

2. Make Monsters Share initiative. Similar to the Troop idea, just make say X amount of hobgoblins act as a unit.

3. Stick to adding Templates or extra levels to the default enemies. Tried this one so far, and it seems to be a bit hard on the difficulty for my Players thus far.

4. Check which of my players have life insurance policies and go from there.

From my understanding, Aasimar are very oppressed within Cheliax. Would it be viable for an Aasimar PC within Hells Vengeance? If so, where can I find more info on their treatment and how people might react to an angel blooded servant of house thrune.

As the title says, I'm going to start Hell's Vengeance soon and I am beyond excited. However I do have a few questions about running it for people who might have already done so.

1) How did you find the difficulty balance? I know its got a heavy intrigue focus, but some of the combats seem like they would get really difficult if the PCs build too heavily in that direction

2) Whats the timeline like, in game time i mean. Book 1 kind of lays out a rather specific time frame that ends up being around a month in game time length. But how about the rest of it. Will I need to make changes if my Players like doing downtime activities like crafting or what not?

3) Book 3 seems to get some heavy criticism, Any suggestions on making the twist more of a surprise? The fetch quest aspect i don't think my players will have particularly much problem with. They'll have a more fun version of it in Book 5 regardless.

4) Book 4 has a nice Stat Block for Abrogail II, but unlike every other such stat page I've seen theres basically no info on her background, her motivations, or any real fleshing out of her as a character instead of a plot device. She has 3 paragraphs of text 1 about how she got the throne, 1 about how she treats traitors, and a 3rd that just says she tells the PCs what to do. Are there any other sources that flesh her out more?

4b) It does seem like she's young and single though. Anyone who's played this ever have anyone try to do anything with that? One of my Players
is a CK2 addict playing a Noble with very high aspirations.

5) The Hellfire Compact and its later expansions, how troublesome is it down the line if players dont want to sign on? I know come book 4 Abby kind of forces it on you at least in part.

6) I've seen some suggestions online to tweak the final fight in some way. Some Suggest giving her the Thorncrown in addition to her normal kit. Anyone try that? How did it work out.

7) Are there any thematically appropriate magical items/artifacts i might want to consider adding to spoil, i mean reward my PCs?

7b) I also have a player who is interested in taking advantage of the evil nature of the AP to explore Necromancy and maybe even Lichdom. However i dont want to open that door for only one PC. I dont consider Lichdom to be super powerful in this AP due to the primary enemy being Good Aligned Divine Classes. I do need to find options for 2 martials and an enchantment caster if thats the case though

8) Any other tips and tricks.

Thank you a bunch for your time and any help you might have to give me.

So the loot by the AP isnt exactly super fitting for my party. Just got past the first part of book 3 and it's just becoming more and more obvious that the loot is favoring very strongly a single party member.

I've got a Dwarven Cleric [hes fine. Hes better than fine. Never been more fine]

A Halfling Opportunist, giants sure do use a lot of daggers and light armor yep sure.

A Dervish Dancing Magus [I can't even throw metamagic rods at him cuz he needs a free hand.]

A Nat Attack Half Orc Barbarian [he also doesnt need much tbh. Hes just there to party.]

And a Half Orc archer ranger who will never replace her hornbow after the cleric slapped giantsbane on it.

Does anyone have ideas for items that my party would actually use that might be found in the possession of giants? Thus far theyve been getting along alright by just using the loot they get as basically scrap and having the Cleric do enchanting stuff on the gear theyve had since level 1.

I feel like the AP is kind of light on named NPCs for the party to interact with as they go from giant camp to giant camp and traverse the mountains. Does anyone have any ideas for making the world seem a bit less empty? I want to give my players more people to care about so that its more personal than just protecting the nameless masses.

I feel like the AP is kind of light on named NPCs for the party to interact with as they go from giant camp to giant camp and traverse the mountains. Does anyone have any ideas for making the world seem a bit less empty? I want to give my players more people to care about so that its more personal than just protecting the nameless masses.