Fletch's page

This was tried way back in the 3.5 days in Second Darkness as book 2 ended at a lower level then 3 picked up with the idea that GMs could fill in the gap and if i recall correctly it was EXCEEDINGLY unpopular.

Oh yeah, I remember that. Heh. Good rebuttal.

And I'd love a more cohesive redo of Doomsday. The Aucturn Enigma and Dominion of the Black where a couple of the little Pathfinder seeds we'd gotten that intrigued me the most, and I was kind of bummed they got used up in an edition test.

But otherwise, that's exactly what I'm talking about: A long-running thread that characters keep returning to over their careers until the full mystery is solved.

A word of caution. Those caravan rules are not universally loved.

I've heard that. I honestly don't know much about it other than seeing it in th JR Player's Guide. I'm just old-school enough to really like a certain amount of resource management in my TTRPGs, and I miss it in elements like this where it's a long-term expedition, presumably with a bunch of support personnel. I feel the same about crew and cargo management in Skull & Shackles.

Will your party want to help Pathfinder Juliver once the feeblemind is dispelled?

My players have always been very good at following the carrot. That's never been a problem.

I haven't played SS, so I don't think my thoughts hold much weight, but I've wanted to run this AP for years.

By the reading, I liked the whole AP (minor nitpicks aside, which I think is normal for published adventures) except for Book 2. Ultimately it just failed to deliver on the promise of the title. I didn't see where it was an actual race. Like, where is the risk of another faction getting ahead of you? Where is the opportunity to eff with a faction getting too close behind? Were there any real gambles you could take to cut time off your journey at greater risk?

On a personal desire, I wanted to see something that made it feel like more of an expedition than a regular D&D excursion. Maybe somehow adapt Jade Regent's caravan rules to account for leading a train of porters.

So, on paper at least, I thought everything about Smuggler's Shiv and the actual exploration sounded great. It's just the "race" that left me wanting more.

I don't know that SWN has a range band map, so I'm going to assume you meant Star Wars and apologies if I'm sniping someone elses questions.

And I'm going to be very longwinded about it too.

The big error we discovered after our first space encounter was that we did in fact only use one band chart for the PC's freighter and I just placed the pirate raiders around it. I didn't keep separate charts for each of the enemy ships and just rolled their generic skills to move and attack relative to the PCs map. To be honest, it played pretty smoothly and is actually how I recommend it be used. However, there's obvious complications if the PCs have more than one ship, there's more than one side, or the enemy ship(s) are expected to make tactical choices beyond basic fight or flee type actions.

We didn't play with multiple PC ships, but I feel like the spirit would still hold up. The strength of the concept, to me, is that it boils the space melee down into just what matters to each ship: how many are out there and where are they relative to me. To be honest, I don't even think I'd include my friend's ship on my range template. It wouldn't matter how close you were to them, just how close you were to ships that were attacking them.

There are specific pilot actions that require skill checks, like closing range or shaking pursuit. There's also a check for avoiding hazards, although I'm not sure how hazards are intended to come into play. With no map, there's nothing that needs specifically to be flown around. I assume a pilot could choose to risk a hazard in order to force a pursuing ship to make the same Avoid Hazard check, but that's not spelled out in the rules that I know of. I could also see a game master deciding that an asteroid field, fer instance, might require a check in order to change range bands, but again, that's just a possibility and not a rule that I remember.

Not for nothing, moving enemy counters around the map ranged from tedious to fun for everyone. There can be a lot of moving parts, but sometimes the excitement lead to everyone grabbing tokens and moving them around. I don't think it was an intentional design goal, but it was a fun little extra point of engagement for other players around the table.

Attacks are just like basic combat, the size of the ship decides how far away you can attack (fighters need to get to point blank while cruisers can shoot farther (but notably NOT point blank)). There isn't any system targetting or anything nuanced like that, just blasting away.

Weirdly, now that I'm flipping back through the rulebook, I can't find any mention of what other crewmembers would be doing. It's weird because I totally remember them doing stuff. We must've dragged in some rules from another game, but the guy playing the repair droid was definitely making repair rolls and we had some sort of system damage going on. (I wonder if we cribbed from GURPS, one of my players had a huge library of GURPS books.) Anyways, unless it's hiding in some other chapter, that's definitely a shortcoming of these rules.

Thanks. I'll try it one more time. Copy and paste has worked initially, I hope this photo site isn't temporary

space combat map

My first time linking an image on these boards, but fingers crossed.

https://ibb.co/tZxR5nH

That's the space combat "map" from the 1st D20 Star Wars version. Each ship (or fighter wing) would have one and use tokens to mark where the other ships were relative to you.

Maneuvering your ship would change where the other ships were relative to you (fer instance, turning left moved everybody one firing arc clockwise).

Opening the book again, I realize I'd forgotten that even speeds were abstracted too. "Attack speed" was faster than "cruising speed" for example, and each category is speed had bonuses and penalties for different attacks or maneuvers (and bigger ships couldn't reach the faster speeds)

I vaguely remember our first battle went pretty well, but then someone pointed out that I hadn't run it exactly right, and correcting those errors kind of bogged it down. I specifically remember the biggest frustration came when we couldn't figure out how to move out of a pirate frigate's firing arc, since turning your ship only affects your arcs and not theirs (as I remember it).

Looking back on it, though, it really did give a fun experience of a fast and furious space battle, but it needed to shore up some specifics.

I'd love a fighter squadron AP, but I wouldn't ask for that to be the default solution.

I like the direction Sanityfaerie is going in, especially not tracking map positions, just relative ones. I'd just been saying how much a fan I was of the 1st Ed WotC Star Wars space combat system in another thread, and that's what it's based on. I also like the idea of starship position feat trees, especially if they're like PF2's 'gain new ability rather than increased power' approach to feats.

SW's relative space map combined with Starfleet's "not enough power for everybody" and crew results that grow over the course of battle I think is what I'd be happy with.

I think the only other element I'd like addressed is to change the name of the Science Officer to Navigator. I don't have a great reason for it, I just like it better.

How were the threat bands measured, marked, or defined?

Vaguely. You'd basically do pilot checks to get into your attack range band while the other ship makes checks to move out of your target band and/or get into the attack range band of a different ship.

There's also a special tailing position that you can pilot skill into and gives you bonuses to attacks and you're harder to shake.

That's not a great description, but let my pull the book when I get home and I'll link a photo of the graphic.

I like a lot of what Bretl said, including my realization that it's actually not the Sci officer who controls shields like I'd for some reason assumed.

Reduced ship defenses, increased risk to crew, reduced energy resources. All really insightful ideas. The base level of a ship should be mediocre, with the crew making up the difference.

Where crew combat really suffers, I think, is that only the pilot (and maybe gunner) has decision points. The pilot is deciding where to go and how to get there, and the rest of the crew just makes that possible.

Now, I really don't have a good grasp of how long the average space encounter lasts, but I'd like to see something where a crewmember has to invest in an action. The more turns they spend on it, the better the results or bonus. Then there's some weight to deciding if they should, fer instance, sacrifice their +3 targeting bonus against one ship in order to start building up shields against another. An engineer can spend one turn getting a system working for two turns, or can spend three turns to fix it permanently.

Like, make the crew actions skill challenges, if that's still a term we use.

I might be the only person who liked the original, WotC Star Wars spaceship rules. Instead of a hex map, it used range and threat bands around each ship, and you'd maneuver to get into or shake someone out of different bands.

I liked it a lot. It felt a lot more atmospheric and chaotic like a real dogfight, and it's almost "theater of the mind" approach felt richer than trying to accept this 2D hex map as 3D space.

The rest of my group didn't care for it, though, and it was replaced in the 2nd edition with 2D hex maneuvers so they certainly weren't alone.

I get you can't include all of Absalom in a beginner's box or any adventure, for that matter. But where ever the beginner's box takes place it should have a starter location usable as a home base, even if it's just a tiny portion of a larger station.

It's from many years back, but one of the Dragon Magazine articles supporting Age of Worms was a small neighborhood in Greyhawk called the Midnight Muddle. It was the perfectly sized home base, with a number of shops and locations, and plenty of personalities and inter-NPC drama. No quest hooks, just flavor.

That's exactly the scale of "adventure setting" I've been wanting ever since.

I feel like this is the perfect place for Proficiency without Level.

Lower-level areas stay challenging a little longer, and wandering into a higher-level area isn't immediately fatal.

Removing alignment without at least providing an alternative descriptor process is a bad idea.

For my two cents, not that I think this has a chance, but if this remaster make the "Proficiency without Level" rules from the Gamemastery Guide the default, then I'm 100% in on this. Pipe dream, sure, and I'm probably in a minority of people who think that is what the game really needs to do, but just getting that thought out there.

Learning about Proficiency without Level is why I even checked out PF2 in the first place. If it becomes core, great, but it's staying in my game regardless.

I think the only thing I really hate about PF2 is full-caster bards, but I'm not hopeful they'll be changing that.

But if you want to hear about real disappointment, when I first saw the name "Pathfinder Remastered Project" pop up in my YouTube, I thought it was an ongoing project to update all the old APs to the 2nd edition.

After that let down, finding out they're changing spell levels to spell ranks was kind of anti-climactic.

Ah, "recent" change in my setting, but there's a sizable portion of true neutral/chaotic neutral Rovagug followers in the darklands, that worship It as a nature god, much like Gozreh is worshipped on the surface.

That's worth copying.

Oh, and another note on races: I really dislike "humanocentrism" (something something Absalom of all places still being 80% human) and "race stereotypes."

This is where my fogey-ism shows through because I prefer humanocentric settings. I'm not sure I can describe it well, but I find racially-homogenized settings take away some of the fantasy feel. Like, if elves and gnomes are everywhere, they become mundane.

Buuuut, since Absalom is supposed to be THE metropolis, I agree that it should have a wider range of residents. That should be its special thing, like you walk in and are like "ohmygod, there's elves and goblins and mermen and..." Of course you only get that feel if all the other cities in the world aren't also like that.

Daemons have no satisfactions nor joy, their only respite is that they suffer a bit less when they make someone else suffer

That's pretty compelling.

I've only recently become a fan of Golarion (having formerly been all-in on Eberron), but I came on board with a few general mods in mind if they ever come up.

First off, it's not exactly a change,but I generally find the 1e setting more interesting than the 2e setting. Fer instance, I think Thassilon is better as an ancient empire to uncover secrets about rather than as a neighbor you can just ask. I've paused the setting so there's no Ravounel, the Whispering Tyrant is still a pending menace, etc.

As for actual changes, though, I find the timeline is way too long and have mentally compressed everything after Aroden's ascension by 75%. That lets the AR years roughly approximate our own AD years in a way my little brain can comprehend.

To specific points, though, I've eased back the hard sci-fi in Numeria to make it a bit more like He-Man. It's a fantasy setting where you can find people using tech rather than being overrun with it.

I also was very disappointed to find out the truth about Razmir, so have decided he's an as-yet-undetermined outsider who gives his followers actual spells (divine, psychic, or other) for unknown reasons. There are actual clerics of Razmir who are in the dark about his ultimate goals.

Finally, I've changed Velstracs to Neutral Evil and replaced Daemons with them. I couldn't easily see a distinction between demons and daemons, but Cenobites are something else entirely.

Oh, and I've replaced the Whatsit Consortium when mentioned with the Pact Masters because I just find them more interesting.

I think that's it for actual setting changes outside of adventure flavoring. I'm finding that I've softened on a lot of the elements that didn't initially connect with me back in the day, but these remain my sticking points.

Waaay back when, my favorite deity was Razmir. I don't remember where I read about him first, but there was a definite gap of time between when I learned of Razmiran, the Living God, and his masked missionaries and when I found out it was all a con and his priests were in on it.

In fact, I was so disappointed with that revelation that I decided to just kind of ignore it. In my home version of Golarion, Razmir grants divine spells. Who or what he is remains a mystery behind his mask and none are more deceived than his acolytes who have taken him at face value.

One thing I know they did do was genericize many of the subsystems to the Victory Points model in the GMG.

I don't think this is exactly what I'd be looking for in terms of mass combat or kingdom building. Tracking how the PCs' actions build up over time to succeed (or not) at something is one thing. Building something that, while it can be influenced by the PCs and affect them in return, otherwise exists and acts as a separate entity warrants its own subsystem.

The 2nd edition version of these rules instead presents the kingdom in a similar way to a character, sort of like how the Hell's Rebels rebellion worked, or how a starship works in Pathifnder, but taking full advantage of the new edition's rules.

I don't actually have any experience with either of those subsystems, but I'm not really down with the idea of kingdoms or armies or fleets or pirate havens just growing by default because the PCs advance.

I like my subsystems to play as sort of minigames where the PCs do get to influence it and be affected by it, but is actually a playable game.

Like, while Kingmaker had a "kingdom in the background" section for those who didn't want to bean count, but otherwise there was a whole side-game of choosing buildings and setting policies and raising armies that was quite a bit of fun. All it really needed was a throttle on the easier-to-abuse aspects.

Conversely, Skull & Shackles treated the whole ship and piracy element as a side thought. I would loved to have seen more granulity in loot and crew morale and its effects on boarding combat and supply management for sailing out and looking for ships to pirate. Don't get me started on the fleet combat rules.

Anyways, it just sounds like they're going in the opposite direction from what I'd hoped, is what I'm trying to say.

I'm a little late to this discussion, but I'm inclined to agree with the original post. My old group has started whispering about trying some online gaming, and I'm really leaning toward PF2e. But when you're coming in new and fresh, too many new ideas feel like a distraction. Like, learning rules takes enough attention without also learning mini-games or trying to keep up with new locations or being told what kind of character you should play (sorry, you're all cops.)

I'd say shaking things up as a circus or all-wizards group is great when you're ready for something new, but we're not there yet.

Fortunately, the Humble Bundle I got came with Abomination Vaults which seems like a good starter AP: it can be picked up from the Beginner Box if we choose to do that, keeps to a single location for RP, and only goes to 10th level so it's not as much of a commitment. I only wish the 11-20 AP weren't on the exact opposite side of Golarion so we could continue if we wanted.

And, as long as I'm here, I'll add my vote to keeping XP. Milestone-based leveling feels even more like the story's pre-determined than playing an AP already does, but at least XP rewards allow for branching out in off-script directions that aren't just kind of pausing advancement until we can get back to the story we *should* be playing.

Fast advancement is an option I appreciate, because it'd let me trim encounters that feel repetitive or like padding.

Anything listed as uncommon means you can't have it unless your GM says so. Occasionally there are some character specific background options that might give you access to things that are uncommon.

Rare things are basically saying "This is exists, but you shouldn't ever get access to it except under really specific conditions".

So the assumption is that a player couldn't choose these uncommon or rare spells outside of a class trait or a campaign event? I like that idea. My son and I played the PF Beginner's Box and I liked the very limited spell listings in there as kind of a foundation to build on from exploring. That's for sure how I'd want to play it.

It's pretty cool, really, if you want a game with bounded accuracy ala D&D 5E.

Just between us, I've never played 5e either, but I really like the *idea* of bounded accuracy. I don't hate the idea of adding level to skills enough to want to head that way out of the box (even as it doesn't feel very simulation-y), but it's fun to know that's an option. (While understanding The Rot Grub's clarification of it).

To be honest, it didn't register that the "add level to skills" was also considered to include to-hit rolls. That doesn't seem weird to me, but I might have to re-evaluate what I consider a skill check if I'm misreading the rules.

Second edition is more down to earth, the struggle is real, more like Tolkein level action.

And that's the one review point that single handedly got me to even look at Pathfinder 2. If anybody remembers the old Pathfinder Chronicles Podcast, there was a point where everybody chases off after the badguy using a crazy variety of flying abilities/spells/items and thry describe it as feeling like a superhero game. Any fantasy game system that stops shy of 'D&D Avengers' is something I'm interested in.

As awesome as the SRD for the searching of specific rules, I have found being able to look at whole sections in the book to be invaluable.

You're no doubt right. I intend to get the rules and might've jumped the gun on my late-to-the-party notes.

I suggest jumping right in, and running a few short combats with your players.

Sadly, I've been without a group for a while now. Reading gaming books is really just, like, a mental exercise now. Does that make sense? I got a link to a supposedly good actual play podcast that I intend to listen to when work lets up.

Side thought only kind of related to the rules, I'm learning that none of the currently available or proposed APs for PF2 interest me. Out of curiosity, how easy is it to run a PF1 adventure in the new rules? Is it as easy as using updated monster stats, or do skill DCs and treasure amounts need adjusting too?

Similarly, is PF2 any flatter than previous editions? I mean, does it have the same power escalation that made it difficult to run an adventure for a wider range of levels, or is it more lenient in letting me run a 5th level adventure for my 1st or 10th level PCs?

Finding impactful uses for those extra actions tends to be the crux of martial strategy in my experience.

Having martial classes need to make choices sounds like a great improvement. I did see the penalties for multiple attacks (as well as the 'raise shields' action requirement) but I guess I hadn't thought through the impact of those.

However, the real thing stopping this in PF2 is that the way PCs level and gain skills is not how NPCs do so

Oh, that's new. I'd thought NPCs and monsters following the same progression rules as PCs was a hallmark of 3e and Pathfinder. I wasn't aware of a shift. Thanks.

Also, I confess that my old group might not have been the most efficient players, as swift actions etc. didn't seem to come up much? Maybe we were all just to ingrained with the 2-action actions of earlier editions and never deviated much from move-attack.

Thanks for the insights, guys.

Hey gang. I've been away from Pathfinder for a while since I've been without a gaming group and focused most of my RPG reading time on nostalgic vintage and OSR games. However, I've recently read some reviews of PF2 that made it sound appealing, so I started scrolling through the PF2 SRD to get a better impression.

Obviously the SRD is not the best place to absorb the rules, just spot-reading concepts that interest me before scraping together the 15 bucks for the PDF or maybe waiting for the new Beginner Box.

As far as I can tell, it looks like D20 adopted 5e and tried to raise it as Mama-4e would've wanted. And I mean that in a good way, because there's a lot of elements to those games I like.

Fer instance, I've never liked paladins and rangers as spell-casting classes (I know it goes back to AD&D, I didn't like it then either), so I'm glad to see them lose the spells and replace them with thematic abilities.

There's a couple points I'm already squinting at, though. Now, this is obviously unplayed and just a reading, but 3 actions per round seems like a lot. In addition to making a far more mobile game than I'm used to (that's a lot of PCs and monsters moving around the map), It seems like everyone having multiple attacks would take up a lot of time. Has that been the actual play experience?

Also, the Gygaxian Naturalist in me doesn't dig that skill checks increase with level and not just training. Like, if you spent a bunch of skill increases to become a legendary...uhh...carpenter, you shouldn't be out-carpentered by a guy with minimal training who has just killed a lot of ogres. Is that a realistic interpretation? Are there mechanics that reign that in, or is your city's legendary dwarven armorsmith always going to be outclassed by the Sandpoint apprentice who learned smithing from slaying a dragon?

My only other struggle so far is remembering that 'ancestry' means 'race.' I get the move to a more acceptable term (I remember old talks of why there was no "Ultimate Race Guide" for 1e), but I'm a fogey and we don't change quickly.

Next up I'll try skimming equipment, because the idea of "bulk" for encumbrance appeals to me (a similar approach is used in my favorite OSR game, ACKS), and spellcasting, because the idea of advancing spells through higher level memorization rather than just default level bonuses sounded smart when I heard 5e was doing it.

While I personally prefer reduced magic in my games, I fear that genie's long out of the bottle, and I would never call for a reduction in caster powers. However, I really don't want to see mundane classes elevated to mythical levels. I'd say absurd action hero movie is the most I'd want, with a heavy emphasis on survivability. Fighters who are made of hit points and rogues near impossible to hit. That ail sounds very passive, so maybe something like extra actions per round that allow them to do more per turn, especially when compared to the 1 spell per turn casters.

Essentially, a mundane character wouldn't be able to run on water or punch through mountains, but they could shrug off dragon fire and stab everyone in a 20' radius.

Here you go. Needs a bit of an update for the last few APs.

Well, guess that takes care of that.

I just had a chance to flip through a random copy of 'D20 Past' and was a bit inspired by the sections on the Age of Exploration and Pulp Adventures. They got me wondering how 'Skull & Shackles' might play in the Caribbean Islands of 18th century Earth, fer instance, or playing 'Mummy's Mask' in a 1930s Egypt.

Any thoughts on how you would change these APs (if at all) for a more Earth-y setting or other APs that could fit into an Age of Sail, Steampunk Victorian, or pulp '30s Earth?

While I'm not a big fan of Magic Mart, I do get that sometimes a player wants something particular for his character. In those cases, I encourage a search for a quest that will uncover such an item or at least commissioning it from a wizard who needs them to go get ingredients or complete some tasks while he makes it. They still get to select their items, but have to work for them rather than just picking them off a rack.

I've even found for simpler items that roleplaying the shopping, such as forging a good relationship with the temple for healing potions or having to put up with the insulting gnome enchanter for your wands, makes disposable items a bit more memorable.

Suppose you include a way in your game to transfer the enchantment on a found weapon or piece of armor to a different item? A spell or crafting feat might be able to accomplish that.

That's a pretty good idea. I'm totally adding this idea to the idea pool. Perhaps there's legend of an old, Dwarven forge that can transfer enchantments into a newly-made weapon.

I'm in a pirate-y mood again and am casting my eye back over Skull & Shackles. One of the things I'm looking at is to apply some granularity to the crew and ship roles rather than just handwaving their impact.

I have some familiarity with kindgom building and mass combat from Kingmaker (and the more recent Ultimate Campaign Guide), and I'm looking to lightly adapt those rules to the running of a pirate ship.

The ideas are still vague, but I wanted to sound them off the boards in hopes of getting some feedback from those of you with more experience than eye, or with just a different perspective. Or in some cases maybe just a point in the right direction if a rule already exists which I missed.

Here are some key points I'm aiming for (spoiler tagged to manage space):

Those are the areas where I wish to add some complexity. Any insights, counter-arguments, or suggestions?

I'll admit, I'm more familiar with kingdom building and mass combat than with the pirating rules (I've never used the latter in play), so if there are already rules addressing some of these points, or I've misunderstood what the rules say, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks, all.

I'm also thinking of somewhere around the border of Aundair and the Eldeen Reaches. There's something about being a rustic border town linked up with a Xoriat observatory that makes me think of this area.

I do find it interesting how setting expectations have progressed through the editions of D&D. It's almost like campaign worlds passed from Middle Ages through Renaissance and are now breaking into a sort of Victorian era.

And I'm not saying I regret that evolution, just that I'm feeling nostalgic enough that a less magic-prevalent, lords & ladies style setting might be my current ideal.

Frankly, I miss the "Middle Ages" premise of early D&D.

I'd like a rock-solid setting with kings and knights, the occasional court or village wizard, and a whole heap of the unknown both within your own borders and in vague realms off the map.

Speaking as a frugal gamer who can only afford select pdfs, I'd sell plasma to raise the money to buy a product like this.

I'd even sell my own plasma if Threeshades' Kaer Maga hexploration box set were also on the market.

According to JJ, no Dominion of Black or countdown clocks. :(

In a page-and-a-half of posts, my interest in this AP went from "never heard of" to "must have" to "zero interest."

I hadn't realized how much I wanted a Dominion/Aucturn AP until it was teased in front of me and then taken away.

If you wanted to get really gonzo...

Start with Curse of the Crimson Throne. In the Sunken Queen, they discover the first of the sihedron shards which lead them to Shattered Star. After these two, your players will have experienced Korvosa, Magnimar, Kaer Maga, the Cinderlands, and heaps of Thassilonian ruins.

If you want to spread out from there...

After dealing with Xin, the PCs are motivated (somehow) to hop a ship to the former Chelaxian colony of Sargava where they participate in Serpent's Skull. From there, their alliance/conflict with the Shackles Pirate faction leads them to take to the seas again and claim their own fleet in Skull & Shackles. As they settle into their new domain, they receive word that their old friend Amiko is looking for companions to travel to Minkai in Jade Regent.

I'm not too familiar with Jade Regent, but I've heard there's a possible outcome of one of the PCs becoming emperor there(?), so you could conceivably end up with PCs acting as king of Korvosa, Hurricane King of the Shackles, and Emperor of Tian Xia. Assuming a standard party of four, your one remaining non-ruler PC could set out to find his own kingdom and decide to claim some land in the Stolen Lands for Kingmaker.

Don't tell anybody, but for as much as I like Paizo's APs, I don't care much for Golarion.

What I do like is Eberron, and I've been keeping an eye on what APs work best in that setting. I'm not opposed to fudging the setting a bit to taste, though, and with that in mind, these are how I'd adapt some of Paizo APs to fit in Eberron:

(some spoilers involved)

I think those are the only four I'm considering. Carrion Crown or Council of Thieves might work, but I don't know enough about either of them to really say for sure. Second Darkness, Legacy of Fire and Jade Regent are too Golarion-specific to want to even try adapting to another world.

How about y'all? Any other Eberron fans have any thoughts or past successes in adapting Paizo's APs to that world?

Which is why I loved "Savage Tides" until one started changing planes:

And even then you could play up the inter-dimensional sailing as the PCs take their boat onto the River Styx.

But I will say Skull & Shackles was my least favorite AP, possibly because I went into it wanting so much to enjoy it. I've a lot of small little problems with the volumes I have (I confess I stopped buying halfway thru), but I think the biggest handicap is that the Pathfinder RPG concepts (wizards and trolls and plate armor) don't map too well on a campaign trying very hard to look like a 17th century high-seas adventure.

Now, my gaming group is physically incapable of completing an Adventure Path, so my opinions are only half based on practical experience. Still, we had a great time *starting* Age of Worms and Rise of the Runelords.

That's an interesting observation...

Can I sneak in my own thoughts? 'Savage Tide' remains my favorite AP because of the variety of types of adventures contained within it. Pathfinder APs have a narrower focus than the old Dungeon Mag ones, and I find myself wanting to take a break half way through so I can experience something different.

Fer instance, 'Rise of the Runelords' basically boils down to excursions into ever-larger monster lairs and 'Skull & Shackles' is 15-ish levels of sailing and islands.

ST, meanwhile, included dungeons, sailing, city-building, wilderness exploration, politicking and so-on.

That's why I'm one of six people who actually really liked 'A History of Ash' in Crimson Throne. It was a really nice change from three volumes of different city encounters.

For what THAT'S worth.

The Githyanki "Incursion" described in Dragon 309 serves as a good over-arching plot to tie together a bunch of Dungeon adventures and culminates with "Lich-Queen's Beloved" at level 18.

Picking one Dungeon adventure per level (or so), here's what I'd string together:

1 - Mad God's Key
2 - The Devil Box
3 - Unfamiliar Ground
4 - Fiend's Embrace
5 - War of the Wielded
6 - Tammeraut's Fate
7 - Forsaken Arch
8 - Vile Addiction
9 - Spawn of Sehan
10 - Dread Pagoda of the Inscrutable Ones
11 - Touch of the Abyss
11 - Shadow of the Abyss
12 - Wrath of the Abyss
12 - Death of Lashimire
13 - Interlopers of Ruun-Khazai
14 - The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb
15 - Seekers of the Silver Forge
15 - Chambers of Antiquities
17 - The Greater Halls
18 - Diplomacy
18 - The Lich Queen's Beloved

So, I'd start the campaign in Saltmarsh (as described so well in Dungeon Master's Guide II) and have my PCs go about their adventures, encountering signs of Githyanki as described the Dragon article.

Per that article, at level 7-ish, the Githyanki make their full first invasion, which would make for a nice surprise when the PCs return from the distant lost city in the 'Seeds of Sehan' series.

Lashimire, Ruun-Khazai and Silver Forge are all Githyanki-related adventures and could be tied in easily.

At level 13, the Githyanki begin consolidating their power. The PCs have been doing the same while gaining political power in Sterich in the 'of the Abyss' series.

Maure Castle is too cool NOT to include, so it needs to have some purpose in this campaign, and Diplomacy can serve as a "gathering allies" phase before the big assault on the Lich-Queen.

Reading Tempest Rising reminds me why I gave up on this AP in the first place. Lord this is awful. It's so bad I actually had to look at who the author was to find out who was at fault.

The good news is, I no longer have to make a list of things which annoy me in published adventures. Instead, I can just offer up this title and be done with it.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS LIKE A SNOW HILL!

I was about to go blow-by-blow on everything I hate about this adventure, but decided to just sum up instead.

I hate the false barriers to meeting the Hurricane King and becoming a Free Captain. There's no way they can NOT achieve that, so even if they lose the card game or don't impress the council, they achieve their goal anyways. Best I can offer here is that the card game rules can be used back during their time on the Wormwood.

Next, I hate the convoluted yet railroady spy investigation which fills part 2 of the adventure. I can tolerate one or two of the "before I'll help you, you need to do a task for me" scenarios, but I honestly had to make a flow chart to track them all here.

Just for fun, I've enclosed my notes for one path here:

I did get a chuckle out of the pirate princess asking them to investigate because she was too well known and then offering them a pennant to fly showing that they're part of her fleet. Durp!

In comparison, I'm only slightly bothered by premise for the regatta. It's actually salvagable. Basically, I find it odd that they hold an annual race to add a new Lord to the council to the point where the winner gets an island to rule over. I would think it'd work the other way, with a pirate proving his worth by creating a successful port and being invited/demanding a seat on the council.

So...Fletch-Fix #5*: The Regatta is just a race. For fun and a big sack of cash at the end. That way, the PCs can legitimately lose without the GM having to handwave Harrigan's disqualification to keep the AP on track (boo!) Instead, the upwardly mobile new free captain politics a bit and figures the best way to get promoted to the council is to found a successful port (better than the one at Tidewater Rock), which leads to them learning the best opportunity is a the Island of Empty Eyes.

In fact, I can smooth over the whole "working for another pirate" aspect of the spy chase by having Tessa offer to sponsor them as council members in exchange for the work and advising them on the best way to go about it.

* I'll have to get back to you on Fletch-Fix #4, 'cause basically it involves re-scheming the spy chase. If it's that frustrating to read, I can't imagine actually trying to play it.

Finally a Player's Guide that's a Player's Guide and not a board game manual!

I understand they had to cut the goblin sing-along mini-game for space reasons. The karaoke rules at the Rusty Dragon are now a bit more free-form.

#1 Savage Tide

Without a doubt. Savage Tide hasn't been topped yet in terms of cohesive yet varied adventures, recurring villains and comrades, exotic locations and epic quests. Plus, the support material in Dragon's "Savage Tidings" articles are unmatched.

I'm a freelance author and an attorney. I'm participating in the playtest. I find the terms and conditions to be well within the realm of expected and reasonable.

Welby, I'd like to reward your reasoned thinking by reading your book. Are you published?

And while we're comparing WotC's beta model with Paizo's, I wonder how much of Paizo's beta scheme was impacted by the rules SRD already being publicly available.

They've definitely jettisoned a lot of the unique 4e mechanics, so I guess it feels 3.5 by default. The playtest rules are scaled down to just the core, though, and actually comes across feeling more like 2nd Ed. or even Basic D&D in the way it's presented in broad strokes.

Frankly, as much as I've come to love 4e, I really have to say I'm pleased with how much it just feels like Dungeons & Dragons, edition number be damned.

In fact, I'm convinced this adventure could be run with a mix of press-ganged PCs and established crewmember PCs (at least dating back to the recent battle with Cheliax ships which lead to the Captain needing to press gang new sailors in the first place).

Nothing will be broken, per se, by letting the PCs have a sword on day 2 rather than day 20, but there are some story and mechanical things you'll have to adapt to.

James, is there a company policy on how closely you stick to a theme for an individual AP?

I mean, I sat out Carrion Crown because I'm not interested in horror adventure enough to sit through a whole campaign on it. Conversely, Savage Tide remains my favorite AP because it had such a wide variety of adventure types (including dungeon crawling, city building, sea voyaging, wilderness exploration, etc.)

Is there room for a Pathfinder AP to include different adventure types like this, or is there a preference to sticking to a narrow premise for each path?

This isn't from experience, but my future-running of CotC will include changes and additions to get the PCs more connected to the city of Korvosa before things start to turn sour.

SPOILERS FOLLOW (of course).

SERIOUSLY...SPOILERS.

I'd delay the King's death for a couple adventures, so I'd delay the anarchy parts of 'Edge of Anarchy' and replace them with the Golden Goblin scenes from Second Darkness' 'Shadow in the Sky.' Not only does this give the PCs a chance to live in the city under the king, but the inheritance of the Goblin would give them a connection to the city and a reason to care about its wellfare.

My second major addition is to add 'Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale' to the AP after 'Seven Days to the Grave.' Mostly because the adventure's awesome, but mostly because I want to see my players' faces when they succeed at their mission, return to the city to receive their promised grant of nobility, and discover the city in chaos after the death of the guy who was going to knight the lot of them. Heheh.

There are some other minor changes to help this make sense. I kind of want to use the king's brother Venster as the scapegoat for his murder rather than the painter, and I'm pretty sure I'd want the final showdown to be at Castle Korvosa rather than outside the city.

Anybody else looking forward to S&S as an opportunity for some Spelljamming or maybe even conversion to a science fiction space setting?

I'm definitely going to be looking at this with an eye to making the seas into ether, islands into asteroids, and the Eye of Abendego into a black hole.

Seems feasible from the basic description, and I've been looking for a good space fantasy AP for longer than there have been APs.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. The existance of a mutli-national organization of professional adventurers bugs the heck out of me. It makes the PCs' adventures seem common and reduces them to the role of errand-boys to the more experienced, famous and successfull Pathfinders.

I suppose it's pointless to rail against something so integral to the game system that they named it after them, but I've been wanting to say it for a while.

That's all, really. I'm hoping either enough people chime in here with enthusiastic support of the Pathfinder Society to change my mind -OR- other people who share my distaste join me in a public confession.

Or both.