A little mixed feelings. Like you, I thought it was a little odd that it got tossed out in 2nd act.
Spoiler:
On the other-hand, they are little things that hint at it throughout- The monastery specifically being dedicated to the Sangpotshi philsophy, and the presnece of Nindoru would likely cue folks into the Reincarnation/Anti-Reincarnation thematics, and Xinyue's cryptic remarks implying she's dealt with you before. Along her Aura of Past Regret's causing people to remember tragic past lives they may have had, most of which by far would presumably be lives they experienced in the Kugaptee cycles, there's enough to perhaps tip off genre-savvy players, along with alot of more minor hints I don't recall.
I will note that a key detail Zhi-Hui isn't able to give them is the particulars on how long they've been in the mindcycle, leaving less savvy players without a clear guess- Additionally, I don't believe there's any that specifies that time is still moving forward outside of the mindscape, with players perhaps inclined to guess that once they break the curse, they'll simply reconnect with the outside world, as opposed to effectively be flung a century into the 'future'.
Acknowledging Mr Jacobs encouragement to wait for Book 3 before deciding anything drastic, one angle you could take is for her not to know as much, or say it other ways. For example, I find Mindscape a very technical term, one that a Wizard might take, but perhaps not a more spiritually minded Monk ghost, and kind like the idea of communicating it to players more along of being trapped within "Kugaptee's dreams", or similarly mystically vague terminology. Though I guess that could feel too Lovecraftian? Although, it's not like Kugaptee's shadow picture doesn't ooze a 'Demonic otherworldly alienness".
As to alternate ways, well, I think Xin-Yue's past regets aura is a great visual way to put emphasize to it already, with it perhaps interrupting or beginning before combat to make players experience their past lives- be it just say an extended description of them, or even having them a roleplay a day in their past lives before dying horrifically, potentially at a past cycle Xin-Yue's hand. That way, Zhi-Hui's explaination will serve more as a clarification of what your PCs lived through whilst fighting her, instead of semi-random reveal.
I can't give you a full review as of yet, as my party is only three moderate duration sessions into it yet, but I can give you my and their first impressions. I'm going to assume you're asking from a DM standpoint, but in case you're hoping for a more light player-perspective, I'ma opt to spoiler my heavy in-depth insights in case otherwise. Short version? It's spooky, it's got a lot of interesting characters, and has a cohesive direction that makes everything feel like in sync- The plot, the atmosphere, and the encounters.
Spoiler:
More specifically, my players ended towards the end of chapter 1, in downtown Willowshore just after defeating Gray Butcher after successfully poisoning and slaughtering the Buso~
My players are loving the spooky atmosphere, as am I. While I'm a big fan of Paizo's classic spooky Haunt manners, having a village-wide horror atmosphere is a refreshing take, as it keeps the party guessing when and where the next spooky omen might manifest. The talking animals, the mischievous Jinkins, ghostly apparitions, and creepy-crawly swarms hunting for them all work well. In some APs, it can feel like you're throwing random creatures at the party just to somewhat diversify your encounters, but with Kugaptee's curse influencing everything, there's a sense of cohesive menace even towards the lesser non-important threats, at least to me. It gives players plenty of time to breath, recover, and think out their next moves, without every losing the sense of lingering anxiety- The fog and blood moon in particular do alot to color things.
This is definitely a game wherein NPCs matter- And the AP makes the right choice by giving you a bunch of sub objectives that encourage you to meet and learn the various locations in the village. Helping out say, Doc Dami at the clinic isn't just a fetch quest that has some immediate rewards to help you defeat the buso, but an opportunity for you to build relationships with the primary source of elixirs and drugs going forward. With the AP emphasizing him being the only doctor, rescuing him feels essential for keeping your village healthy in the long-run, even if one of your party happens to be a healer. I feel like in general the AP does a good job of having meaningful interactions with NPCs, both from a story and gameplay side with the regular item rewards. I assume this'll only expand later when influence properly comes into play. If you don't like having to play a bunch of NPCs that'll persist throughout the AP, this might not be a game for you to DM. If you love getting to play a wide variety of personalities for whom you can develop proper relationships beyond quest givers or momentarily villagers-in-distress, I highly recommend.
Another aspect I hear from alot of earlier APs is that they weren't the best balanaced for low-level characters, with alot of the early foes too strong or deadly. My party hasn't experienced this- Outside of stupid or reckless decisions, they've been able to handle most of the enemies, even the phantoms which can be relatively tanky- And they're not super optimal team, with one of the players barely knowing their spells and the rest opting more for flavor choices than power gaming.
That's all I can really say at the moment until they delve deeper into things, but I haven't felt so excited to DM an AP since Hell's Rebels. Hopefully this helps those on the fence!
Thanks so much for the responses James Jacobs and Sen H.H.S! It's great to get insight and clarification from those whom were involved in the making of the book.
Swashbuckler is the quintessential martial face. Mysterious stranger gunslinger fills a similar role. The avenger vigilante also qualifies as a full BAB face type. There's also a brawler who can use bardot performances via charisma, the exemplar. The ranger also has the hooded champion archetype for those of you who feel Robinhood. So yeah- a lot of martial face options.
The Psychic Abomination discipline has a Dark Half ability that allows them to transform into a rage-like state during which they can gain DR, enhance their spells, and generally be scary :3
Well, passion, rather than lust, is an angle you can approach. Putting all of your self into the things you desire. Patience is another angle, as while Calistria is a vengeful deity, she's willing to wait along time to get to it. Being patient when facing evil or wrong doers is something you can play with. If you're AOO focused, you could argue that you're patiently waiting for an enemy to make the first move before retaliating,
Another point of note is that Calistira encourages survival- Vengeance is a worthy effort, but not if it ends your life. Wasps are creatures which survive after they sting, rather than die after the first blow.
Half-elves seem drawn towards being thrill-seekers, capable of looking through the eyes of other cultures and having little reluctance towards new things. This would be something Calistria would approve of I'd imagine. Additionally, she's a goddess of trickery, which could embody spying, harmless pranks, or leading enemies into traps type of combat style (Which, the whip lends itself to.) You can definitely play a Warpriest of calistria without being angry and lustful all the time.
This is less of a feat combination, more so just a cool feat trick. The Escape Route teamwork feat is a nifty feat when used with anyone who takes the Valet familiar, effectively granting both you and your familiar a decent amount of safe movement, which is useful for a spellcaster attempting to withdraw out of melee but still wanting to cast spells. Even better if you can get away with it counting when your familiar is on your person or in a bag! Also nifty for letting your familiar be touched focused, as normally tiny creatures provoke as they have to move into an enemy's square.
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I've a concern towards the resonant power of the Occultist. Specifically,
"Casting Focus (Su)
The implement empowers the bearer's ties to the worlds beyond, allowing his spells to maintain their power for a longer period of time. The bearer can add the implement as an additional focus component to any conjuration spell he casts that has a duration measured in rounds per level. If he does so, he adds 1 to his caster level for every 2 points of mental focus stored in the implement (to a maximum bonus equal to your occultist level). This increase applies only when determining the duration of the spell. Apply this increase after other effects that adjust a spell's duration, such as Extend Spell.
Base Focus Power: All occultists who learn to use conjuration implements gain the following focus power."
Here's my beef. The Occultist doesn't get any round per level spells it seems like in the conjuration school worth noting, at least from the quick skimming of the early level spells. He doesn't even get summon nature or monster spells at any of the levels which seems peculiar, given they literately give him a minute summon at level one as a focus power. So, is this intentional, to make the conjuration resonant so specifically useless? If I'm missing something or if they're a particular spell that this is meant for, please, let me know~
Most of my change so far have been incidental or personally flair- Having played through the first book before as a player, I was more or less mostly aware of how the adventure plays out, and did my best to stay true to the source material. That said, things have a way of coming out differently.
Firstly, I play my campaign online on Roll20, so there's been some shuffling of players as we went on. Only one person left has been in the group that killed Gaedren Lamm. Because of this, Zellara is only known to exist to her. This has left me to ask myself whether I wanna expand her influence to the whole group, or have her remain a mystic advisor to the single player. Other changes I've made are greater efforts to play the Queen as innocent and naive, and discourage assumptions that she's mad, evil, or especially selfish. She DID end up causing the demise of one of my PCs though. Going to the Castle alone, demanding a private audience with the Queen, ignoring guards saying they couldn't let her through, would've been what I describe as rail-roading too much. So, I let her have dinner with the Queen. Unfortunately, their character was female, had a charisma of 16, and took a trait describing them as "An unmatched beauty." So when the Queen asked her to join her in her personal chambers for a private discussion on art (Trinia's painting specifically), they had taken too many turns in my opinion for them to survive. Flatly put, I had the Queen murder them, though I made sure to have the death, a magical one, be too vague for them to decipher who did the deed. This, I know is something I could've avoided by just not letting them see the Queen, but was something that DEFINITELY deepened the plot. (And made sure the PC was alright with their death before finalizing it.)
Beyond that, most of the core story has remained intact. The more I read ahead however, the more I feel inclined make changes. I'm comfortable with the base foundation the first book has provided, but I'm not sure about the path for the future. There alot I'm looking at in terms of character progression and plot premise that I'm thinking over on how I can do it to make more cohesive and coherent.
I've been reading over some of the online topics, and I noticed that some people aren't in love with chapters 4 and 5. I've heard two could use some logic fixes, and three might need to be more cohesive (Both challenges I'll happily mend as I go), but I heard that book 4 is just a rail-roaded quest chain for the shoanti, and that 5 is just eldritch horror after horror?
I've only just completed book 1 with my group, albeit quickly, and getting started on two, but I'm wondering ahead of time if there are any adaptions I can make to better manage those books. I'm open to smaller changes to more drastic ones, such as perhaps combining the important parts of book 4 and 5, and then perhaps having the 'new' 5 be focused on a more drawn out rebellion. Buuut, as I've yet to read them in detail yet, I'm just fishing for some preliminary advice.
Well, having downloaded the two books and been very impressed with what I've seen, its a little depressing to hear such stalls and lack of communication regarding this particular title :x Especially since, despite concerns towards how much effort and dedication is put into this, both Throne of Night and Way of the Wicked as far as I've heard are REALLY good adventures. Hmm. Shame.
Well, anyway, since the second book failed to elaborate on what book 1 mentions, I was curious if anyone here had any suggestions on how to go about running two parties, Explorer and Overlord alike, through the first two books, which seems a little challenging to scheme together.
For those of you unaware of what the Fate/Stay Night Universe is, you probably won't care or will be unhelpful towards aiding me in this thread, but you're welcome to discover it and/or read the topic all the same! Random comments are alright too, though preferably helpful ones!
But, to get to the substance. Hello friends. I've been mulling this one over for a long time now, more than a year, and have been wanting to create a custom campaign inspired by the Visual Novel/Anime/Video Games that the Fate Universe, which is a part of the larger Nasuverse, and use the mechanics, ideas, and maybe characters of this mythologically inspired fiction and insert them into Pathfinder, which similarily is inspired by real world countries, myths, folklore, and legends. Seem to me the two would make a great marriage, eh?
Now, before anyone suggests to me that another system, such as the FATE game system or another might work better, I love pathfinder, and I'm using Pathfinder rules. In fact, after paying great attention to the Mythic rules, I believe that having Servant be Mythic characters is perhaps the best way to produce the awesome epic level prestige that is a Servant, without tearing asunder the space-time-continuum. Generally, I prefer to work within the rules or adapt existing concepts to my ends then build something COMPLETELY from scratch. I feel both cleverer and more organized when doing so. The fact that the Mythic system has six different paths that work for a variety of classes, many awesome, cheatish abilities that make sense for servants, and even have rules for Legendary Weapons (Hello Noble Phantasms~) makes me quite in love with them, even if I'm personally reluctant to ever dive into the madness that is Wrath of the Righteous.
Anyway, what I'm wanting to do specific is incorporate the Holy Grail War system of the Fate Universe and fit it into Golarion in a flavor satisfying way. Rather than changing Golarion to fit Fate necessarily, I wanna do vice versa. And this for me has proven surprisingly easy. Ancient artifacts capable of doing things on the level as the Fuyuki Holy Grail is fairly feasible, and I was actually thinking of convering the Holy Grail to a chalice made of part of the Starstone, and infused with the legacy left behind by the Fallen God Aroden. Any meteor capable of turning people into literal Gods must be capable of bringing back heroic badasses that are less than gods back from the grave in a pseudo spirit form, right? This parts open to change, as the object need not even be a cup or small, but I figured it'd be a way both to pay homage to the actual Holy Grail and pay respect to pathfinder's Fallen God of humanity.
In the terms of the Servants themselves, I haven't quite figured out how exactly I want their relationship to the ritual or artifact to be established, whether I want them all to have a Saber-esque relationship, willing lending their soul to their artifact when at Pharasma's gate so as to obtain a chance to accomplish some regret in their previous life, or to make them all forced into it, shoved into the role of a servant reluctantly like a still living tuna into a small tin can. I definitely don't wanna make the artifact itself evil like the Fuyuki Holy Grail becomes, but more of a neutral force. I'm not even sure if I want it to grant wishes, or for the Grail war to be a multiple contestant test of the star-stone. I'll probably put alot of early mystery into it, as I plan for the party members to stumble into it accidentally or without much planning or idea of what they're getting into.
But, I do know that I wanna go with 'Real' world heroes rather than using Golarion's own rich ones or making them up on the spot. Why? Well, partially its because I don't know seven heroes of different lands of Pathfinder that I would happen to like and all fit into the seven different classes. But also, because I like the mythological references of Fate, taking the original legends and spicing them up or twisting their flavor. As such, much like Golarion itself is heavily based on real world cultures, what I want to do is use unused (Or lightly used) Heroic figures of our world and place them within Golarion. I feel that using actual earth heroes will also make them more 'Real' and fearsome to my party of players, who often don't read as much as me into the Golarion universe. But Hercules? Even high school drop outs know about hercules for example. Creativity Liberty is the name of the game!
An example? Well, for example, if I wanted Siegfried as my Saber Class servant for my war, I'd want to place him most likely in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, a very much norse inspired region, and also fitting perfectly thematically with Siegfried who he himself was a dragon slayer who gained a form of immortality upon killing the great dragon Fafnir. But, I'd take it a step forward from their by altering his legend so as to make him have an impact on Golarion. Specifically? Easy. Siegfried was the FIRST Linnorm King in Golarion, the first of the Ulfen to slay a Linnorm, thus establishing the tradition, which, makes sense, given he's probably the real world inspiration for the idea in the first place! But, as you can see, its not hard to fit Earth world heroes into Golarion, which is why I aim to do that, while avoiding some of the more obvious or overused ones. (i.e. Arturia Saber)
So, clearly I've alot of ideas here right? I've very much got an idea of how I wanna go about it. But there's alot of rough edges and stuff I'm still mulling over or wanting to muse. And since I'm not a Golarion expert quite yet, there might be lands of cultures or figures within Golarion I know little about but much do much to add to my campaign. Oh, and for context, I will be starting it out in Taldor (Because, coooome oooon England is where the Holy Grail SHOULD start), but open to it spanning across the whole world. While I feel mythic rules goes leagues towards making Servants feel authentic to Golarion, I'm not sure on how else I should mechanically work them out. For example, Mana. I don't want to force every master to be a Mage for example, and even if I did, how would I represent mana? Pathfinder Magic is less point based and more spell slot based, and given that servants are mythic as is, I'm not sure I wanna have to force the master to give up their own abilities in combat. I do want to limit Servant functionality to some degree, at the very least to keep them from going all out all the time. Mythic Points are good for this, but I'm not sure if I should expand upon it or not.
Other stuff I'm mulling? Servants to a degree, although I've a good idea of the ones I'm leaning towards at the moment. I wanted to avoid ones already used in an adaption of Fate, but found Siegfried and Vlad the Impaler from the apocrypha novel too awesome not to use, especially since they won't be recognized by my party. And trust me, god KNOWS it was hard not to use original Fate Archer, though its becoming difficult. I swear, Archer and Assassin are the hardest to imagine heroes for, the former due to most archers not having much in ideas beyond shooting an arrow, the latter because assassins inherently tend to be subtle. (And yes, I am disregarding the "Only original assassins qualify" rule.) Input or ideas on how to incorporate nasuverse style play or themes also welcomed. I don't know when if ever I'm going to do this, but when I do, it SHALL be epic~
P.S. I thought Homebrew would make more sense for this than conversation, due to the fact that I'm not so much converting a single thing or even many things, as much as I'm taking a whole system, shoving it into Pathfinder, and then looking to make my OWN original story with it. (Which I'm not going into detail this moment, mwahahaahhaa.)
A young woman from a far off-land, who through a twist of fate escaped death and received teaching from a man who taught her the meaning of power, and how only those who receive out and take what they desire can gain anything. A bandit until an offer of wealth and prestige comes before the woman, who finds the local thieves becoming increasingly murderous towards her. In the River Kingdoms, she sees an opportunity unfolding, her masters word's echoing in her mind...
In order to conquer your fears, you must first conquer the world
Faore is a LE Hungry Ghost archetype monk. Stats on profile, hopefully nothings an issue. Included drawbacks in her stats since you didn't say no to them yet. As aforementioned, I have yet to play Kingmaker. Her build has her as an aggressive striker, but she's also capable of being a scout and is geared towards enemy disruption, specifically trip play~ My first monk.
