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Well this is probably not going to be very helpful but for the record: Option 1: 8/10
None of the options are optimal, I think, but I'd be happy to play in any of them. Since I posted this on Discord but Jelani can't see it, I should also say that I will only be able to post on weekends for the near future. I am getting reduced hours in November though so hopefully I will have more time then.
Happy anniversary, everyone! Amazing job of GMing you've been doing KC. Thank you to all my co-players for good roleplay and wonderfully cheesy tactics throughout the years. Tomorrow, my partner and I celebrate ten years together :) Funny that it is just two days apart!
In regards to getting around mirror images/displacement before the next spell preparation, shutting one's eyes and using an action point to grab Blind Fight is still allowed, right? Displacement is a flat 50% chance to miss, and mirror images make hitting even harder on top of that. But with Blind Fight and closed eyes you get that miss chance down to 25% and ignore mirror images.
Oh you have got to be s+@$ting me. Astraden has had 8th-level spells all this time? Did I just revert to an old character sheet at some point and forget to update her spell slots? Can't believe this.I remember looking at your character sheet while we were prepping for Harrowdroth, noticed the lack of 8th level spells, and just assumed that Soul Warden cost you a +1 cleric level. Then actually looked at the class when I started (massively over-) preparing for this fight and realized that wasn't the case. I assumed you knew you had them and just had forgotten to put them on the sheet, but... kinda glad I spoke up now. :-) Yeah, thank you for that. Unbelievable. We had access to 8th-level spells for at least three combats and Astraden didn't use any of them. (I have stealth-fixed the spellscar link, now.)
Ok, updated spell slots. And DankeSean, you CAN'T mention a spell like spellscar around Astraden's player and expect me not to take it.* Cleric spells prepared (CL 15th, concentration +19)
*Are these approved, KC? Remaining spells to be prepared after scrying.
Tactical discussion time- aside from the divinations and wind walks, what else should Astraden (or Carina) prepare overnight? I think we talked about the possibility of using her 8th-level spell slot to cast holy aura on us all, but another thought I had poring over the cleric spell list- spellscar looks like a pretty nuclear option way to mess up the day of a couple high level spellcasters (plus a SLA-using efreeti noble). Probably protection via holy aura is the safe choice, I just giggle over the potential chaos dropping a Oh you have got to be s!%$ting me. Astraden has had 8th-level spells all this time? Did I just revert to an old character sheet at some point and forget to update her spell slots? Can't believe this.
Please forgive Astraden for derailing any reasonable suggestions made here. Sometimes us not getting through adventures is because of difficult decisions. Sometimes it is because we actively work against making a relatively simple decision. (OOC, I do absolutely think the flower is the right way to go, but it doesn't really make sense for Astraden to push for it now after her dismissing it for comedic purposes.)
At this point I should probably record the greatest death of our campaign. Name: Fish's Serpent's Skull's Campaign
A moment of appreciation for all the characters who've passed through this campaign, and those who stayed until the end:
Pros of this AP:
- Sandboxes are fun if you have a clear goal - Lots of gaps for homebrewed material - A setting that is not medieval Europe can be very engaging and perspective-widening - All of the entries we played were fun; much of this comes down to having good players, but the skeleton for building fun and interesting stories is there (sandbox in book 1, travelogue in book 2, sandbox again in book 3) - Initial castaways are good fun - Yarzoth, Itombu and Issilar are very fun villains. Honorable mention to succubus in book 2. Cons of this AP:
- Shortage of fun/interesting treasure - Random encounters are only fun if they are woven into the scenery - ... which means LOTS of prep work for GMs - CoSS was not a complete adventure path entry - Historical and racial politics are not handled appropriately in the AP or in supporting PF1 materials - Swingy, mostly very weak combats with a few high power level monsters that can wipe parties in 3 rounds (aka normal PF1 fare) - RtR dropped the ball on the journey feeling like either a travelogue or a race - Faction interactions generally clunky - Eleder is a poorly fleshed out town, Kalabuto is worse - Scale of Saventh-Yhi too small I think in the end we just got tired of this AP. In the beginning of 2021, the group teleported to Absalom to do some side adventures there, and no one truly wanted to go back to Saventh-Yhi and keep up the discovery points grind. After a summer break, we decided to start Strength of Thousands instead.
I had xp drains in the form of NPCs that players asked to bring along (if they participated in more than three encounters, and weren't one of the original Shiv castaways, then they started getting an equal share of xp), and deaths/new characters (new characters start at the starting xp for that level). But my party still ended up being one level higher than intended for most of the encounters. This stops being a problem in City of Seven Spears as Spoiler: Sort of a natural evening-out.
you're explicitly supposed to start Vaults of Madness when the party reaches 10th level. But my game, like so many others, reached the end of its natural life in CoSS, so I wouldn't know how it works in practice.
*erases the sign that says "2 years since last death"*
I wouldn't worry about the level difference. There's decent odds one of your PCs will die on the island which drags down the total XP a bit. My party was still APL 4 after making it to Eleder, though one PC might have made it to 5th shortly thereafter. I don't know if the question above is still relevant, but I recommend making the NPCs a bit easier to influence (but still afraid/injured/wanting to guard the camp), so the PCs don't dismiss them out of hand. Maybe crib 2e's system where Diplomacy checks only influence the NPC during the current encounter (unless the GM decides otherwise), and lower the DCs a bit. My party didn't dismiss the NPCs but didn't really know how to interact with them, and ended up killing Ishirou in a duel on the first or second day.
Ten years later, still scratching my head as to why midnight spores are not a poison or a disease in this book. Adventure designers seem to like to make things that can affect even the monk with perfect body or the druid with venom immunity, but I don't see the point. If you take those abilities you should get to use them. They're specifically a psychotropic substance, so my first inclination is to make them a poison.
I said this on the discord, but if everyone is on board with the "negate massive damage with action points" house rule KC suggested, I think that'd be a good solution that minimizes the need for reworking either encounters or characters. An aside: Do we have a list somewhere of the ways APs can be used? I feel like we had a GM decision regarding using APs to fuel limited resources like channels but I'm not having luck finding it.
Astraden: Save the world I have had a few side goals with Astraden, but she's about as disorganized as I am in real life so I don't know that she's been pursuing them that well: - fix up Diamond Lake, retire to Land house (post-campaign)- "stop death" on a macro scale (expressed during a conversation with Cuetzpalli, it's something she'll try to do if she gets her hands on miracle-level magic) - mend fences with all her siblings (I feel like this isn't the easiest/most entertaining thing to write about but it probably needs to happen on screen if it's going to happen)
IMO it is cool and good to make up/convert NPCs on the fly. Odds aren't great we're going to be interacting with them for more than 3 rounds anyways. But yeah, Pathfinder just has some incredibly glaring weaknesses. They printed rule 0 and the underwater combat rules in the same book! I like the streamlined and rebalanced nature of 5e but I do also think it is a frustrating system for building characters if you're used to the options overload of Pathfinder. Not that I had much system mastery but my archer cleric felt like real dead weight in a party with a fighter and a (IIRC) wizard. Has anyone here played Dungeon World or another Apocalypse game?
91. Custard puffs: Delicate yeast-based cakes fried in oil so that they expand to over twice their size, cut in half and filled with flavored egg custard. Popular in Absalom, where variants in the shapes of some of the city's most popular beasts of burden are common.
I don't think serpentfolk are particularly centralized in Mwangi Expanse(their capital is in darklands vault), but latter "world war with snake invaders from underground" would happen yeah. This confused me when we started the AP. I assumed that Ydersius (the empire) had controlled large swathes of Garund up until Ydersius (the deity) was killed in Saventh-Yhi. But Ilmurea was just a "hidden, fortified enclave from which to strike out and subjugate a mere single continent" (p63 of TTFB). As the Azlanti were not as well established on Garund, "Ilmurea grew into a mighty fortress-city and the serpentfolk were able to move into and conquer the jungle lands above" (p7 of TTFB). Ilmurea is referred to in several places as a "sister city" to Sverenagati. Battles between Azlant and Ydersius apparently took place in ancient Thassilon (at Viperwall) as well as on the surface of the Mwangi Expanse (p7 SotSG). So yeah, it might not be the Mwangi Expanse that is the center of the war - though it might be preferable to Varisia, being probably closer to Age of Serpents temperatures.
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