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I've just started playing a Slayer with the Witch Killer archetype (the GM's choice). As a Witch Killer, I have the “Superstitious” talent by default, which says I can’t choose from Ranger Talents, but instead get a choice of several Barbarian Talents. The one I had wanted to take is “Superstition”:

The barbarian gains a +2 morale bonus on saving throws made to resist spells, supernatural abilities, and spell-like abilities. This bonus increases by +1 for every 4 levels the barbarian has attained. While raging, the barbarian cannot be a willing target of any spell and must make saving throws to resist all spells, even those cast by allies.

However, there's ambiguity about how to apply the "while raging" part of the description to a non-barbarian. My GM's interpretation is that, like the save bonus, it's constant (based on the wording that goes with Superstitious). That would mean that my character would always have to save against all arcane spells cast by my allies. I'm guessing that would badly hamstring the party as we get to higher levels (Haste? Dimension Door? Teleport? Fly? Sorry - not me.)

I realize the GM is the GM, but was wondering if there's an official position on this or how other folks have handled it. Thanks!

I'm prepping to run CotCT, and I really like most of the AP - except for History of Ashes. Its cowboys & Indians theme feels really out of place, and the structure of the chapter is a railroad that I think I'm going to have trouble keeping my party riding.

So I'm looking for alternatives. I've seen other people mention Heroes' Blood; I haven't read the module, but the short synopsis sounds an awful lot like Scarwall Castle, and I don't want the group to get "haunted castle fatigue".

I've also started looking at House on Hook Street and Bloodsworn Vale. HoHS is an especially good fit for the setting of CotCT, but I see a couple of problems. One, yet another mysterious plague right on the heels of Blood Veil sounds like same old, same old. And bumping the module from 6th level to 11/12th would be a LOT of work. I haven't looked much at Bloodsworn Vale yet, but it would have the same leveling issues.

So ... has anyone else done anything like this that just worked brilliantly? Or failed miserably? Or should I just suck it up and play the AP as-written?

I'm confused about how to play Blood Veil in 7DttG. With the Anniversary Edition, there's no Cure line on the disease stats. So it would seem like once you've contracted the disease, it's inevitably fatal unless you get magical healing. You can make your daily Fortitude saves to delay the loss of CON and CHA (although they get progressively harder with each failure), but ultimately you're screwed.

Is this the intent? If so, it would seem like the death toll would be far higher. Assuming that the vast majority of citizens have a Constitution that gives them (at best) a +0 Fort, then every person who is exposed has a 75% chance of contracting the disease, and a 100% chance of dying from it, unless they have the money to buy a cure. Even then, recovery from the disease doesn't confer immunity, so they're just as likely to be exposed and infected again (and again).

It would seem like at the end of the day, they only people left standing would be the 15% of Varisians who have natural immunity.

What am I missing?

I'm struggling with XP in Edge of Anarchy. Unless the party fights their way through Eel's End (which they'd be stupid to do), there's no way they'll have enough XP to be at 4th level by the Dead Warrens, even with some additional riot encounters.

So to add XP, I've decided to do as some others have, and insert the Portent’s Peril module after All the World’s Meat, but with some modifications to make it fit better into CotCT’s scenario:
• Make the instigator of the assassination plot the Arkonas
• Change the target to the Chelish diplomat, Darvayne Gios Amprei, who’s going to show up again shortly
• Change the ethnicity of the apparent assassin to Shoanti
• Change the name of the owner of the Green Market from Foxglove to something else (she seems too nice to be one of the people trying to party through the plague in Foxglove Manor)

Given those changes, the rest of the module should play out pretty much as written. Here's the new introductory backstory:

Background

Vencarlo Orsini is not the only one who has learned that the Chelish diplomant Amprei is preparing to press his government to cut off trade with Korvosa; the Arkonas are also aware of his position. Such a move would hurt their business dealings, and Amprei’s plan to profit from Korvosa’s pain would create a new powerful player in the city’s politics that they’d prefer not to deal with.

The Arkonas don’t see any need to pussyfoot around (no pun intended) with blackmail when straightforward assassination will suffice. However, there’s no reason that Amprei’s assassination should serve only one end. If they can also use his death to provoke a Chelish war against the Shoanti, they believe they would stand to profit handsomely, as Korvosa would be the natural terminus for Chelish supply lines for a war in the Cinderlands.

And so Vimanda Arkona, in her guise of Meliya, approached a Sczarni swindler, Jaelli Goldtooth, who was living in Old Korvosa, and offered her a handsome sum to murder the Chelish diplomat while making it appear that the crime was a political assassination committed by the Shoanti.

In the meantime, as the riots in Korvosa have subsided, a local philanthropist, Sheena Wulfbüt, has begun dispensing food to the city’s starving masses. Her Green Market escaped the unrest almost unscathed, and she feels it’s her duty to give back to her city. When she was handing out vegetables in Old Korvosa, Goldtooth thanked her with a Harrow reading, with the surprise results described in the module.

Sheena is a staunch believer in the Harrow, and has come to Zellara Esmeranda many times in the past to perform readings for her. Disturbed by the appearance of the Yellow Prophet and confused by the meanings of the subsequent cards, she hurries to Zellara’s house, hoping the psychic can tell her what they mean. When she arrives, she finds the party there instead.

I'm prepping to run CotCT, and I've got a couple of questions about the Shingles chase. The first is logistical: do you think you should lay out all the cards for the chase at the beginning, so the players see them all, or reveal them only as characters encounter them? The latter seems more "realistic", but the former allows players to get more tactical about when to try to move three cards at once.

The second is a question about the DCs. I'm using the new hardcover edition of CotCT, and it seems like some of the cards are just going to be killers for 3rd level characters. Hell, I even tried to run a 10th level character I already had rolled up through it, and he couldn't get past some of them without half a dozen tries. At 3rd level, a DC of 30 is going to be all but impossible, even if you've put ranks in that skill at every level, and even a DC of 25 is going to be really tough. For people who have run this already, what's been your experience?

Our group is distributed all over the country, and we use a home-brew online tabletop that one of our group created, along with Skype. As a result, I need to have computer images for all the encounters. I couldn't find anything for the Danse Macabre in Scarwall that seemed to fit the bill, so I created one. Here it is, in case anyone else needs one, too:

Danse Macabre

Just starting to prep for CotCT, and I have a question on Scarwall and the spirit anchors. The text suggests that Belshallam in particular would be anxious to flee Scarwall without a fight (or at least a fight to the death) if he could be freed from his spirit anchor. But I don't see anything about how a spirit anchor can be removed other than by killing its subject. Surely something as mundane as a Dispel Magic or Dispel Evil won't work against such a powerful effect? Am I missing something obvious? How have other GMs handled this? Thanks!

I'm prepping to run CotCT. Since the Harrow Deck and Harrow readings are a key part of each chapter, I wanted a way to easily use the Harrow deck without buying one (I'm cheap). So I created an Excel spreadsheet that automatically draws a Harrow Reading. Just click the "Draw" button to select nine cards and lay them on the table, then click "Shuffle" to clear everything out for a new reading. Hope others find this useful.

LINK

Our group just completed the Jade Regent. This was our first Pathfinder adventure (after 30+ years of gaming together), and we had a great time. As the DM, I really appreciated the strong storyline from Paizo - I hate hack-n-slash dungeon crawls, and like for the players to have a chance to really develop characters. I kept a blog of our weekly sessions if anyone wants the blow-by-blow. I'll go through a quick summary of what we did with each book, but first some background.

We have a large group - 7 players. So I had to do a lot of modifications to keep the encounters challenging and to make sure everyone had enough XP to level up on schedule. I quickly found that just adding more bad guys made combat really drag out. I ended up making good use of the myriad of templates you can apply to buff monsters - it made the encounters harder but also added some additional flavor. As the party got higher level, I started adding Mythic ranks to the BBEGs - when it's 7 against 1, the economy of action can overwhelm you quickly, but throw in things like Dual Initiative, Sudden Strike, Block Attacks, etc., and it suddenly gets more interesting. In general, I think Mythic is way overpowered for players, but it's perfect for those end-of-level encounters.

We skipped caravan rules (broken) and relationship rules (too mechanical). I also dropped Shalelu from the story. This AP has a ton of NPCs as it is, and I didn't see that she added anything.

Brinewall Legacy
Since this was our first foray into Pathfinder, we started out with We Be Goblins to introduce everyone to the rules. It was perfect as the group approached the Licktoad village - everyone was worried about killing off their former goblin character. The Licktoad attack immediately devolved into a Blackhawk Down scenario, with multiple running street battles between the split-up party and the 2 dozen or so goblins hiding in the buildings. It was one of my fondest memories from the whole AP.

Heading from Sandpoint to Brinewall, we needed more XP. Rather than throw in random encounters, I added a side story based on Ameiko/Sandru's backstory. The party came to a town where the inn was on fire. After putting out the fire, the innkeeper asked the party to go after his daughter, who he claimed had been "kidnapped" by a local boy (neighbors said they'd probably run off together). Turns out the girl had been kidnapped by a necromancer allied with the cannibal clan that had killed Sandru's brother and Ameiko's teenaged love years ago, and the boy had chased after them to try to rescue her. They tracked them to their cavern, rescued the girl (it was too late for her boyfriend), and it was an emotional way for the party to get to know Ameiko and Sandru better.

Brinewall Castle was fun - well designed. Kikonu managed to steal our bard's voice then D-Door away, which made for some fun role playing. The highlight was when our monk tried to do a heroic leap off the cliff to try to grapple the flying Nidenzigo - and missed completely. This was the first of many "deaths" for our poor monk.

Night of Frozen Shadows
Ninjas and vikings - what more could you want? I really liked this module. The detective work part of the module kept the group engaged, and they were really guessing about who was really after them and why (they'd "claimed" the raiders' boat after the attack on the road and sailed it into Kalsgard expecting a reward - ha!). The battle at Asvig's farm was appropriately epic. At Ravenscraeg, our sorcerer (Chaotic Chaotic) ended up facing 5 Tengu ninja on the stairs by himself after the giant wasp paralyzed the figher (and the rest of the party was still arguing among themselves a mile away), but survived.

Frozen Storm
As DM, this was my least favorite module, although the group seemed to like it. As I said, I scrapped the caravan rules, and turned the caravan encounters into real encounters. I mapped the whole trip out ahead of time, deciding when and where they'd have "random" encounters. It took them a full 6 months of travel time to complete the crossing. As others have mentioned, they kept trying to figure out how Katiyana's plot was tied into the Five Storms - which it wasn't. That was a bit of a letdown. I staged an epic battle with a Zombie Horde at Deadman's Dome - I described it in detail in another post on that topic, so I won't repeat it here, but for the first time, the party really thought they had no chance of survival (which is just what you want when they're facing the zombie apocalypse!)

In the Necropolis, Koya died. I had her recognize the dead tree as having formerly been one of the holiest relics in the worship of Desna. She believed that it could be brought back to life if the three clerics of Desna (herself, Spivey, and our party cleric) joined together to channel positive energy around it (literally tree-hugging). When the spectres started emerging, they all focused on Koya, and she sacrificed herself to return the tree to life. Her death really resonated with the players and their characters, and even though the module as a whole was just 'meh' for me, this was one of the high points of the AP.

Forest of Spirits
As others have done, I inserted the Ruby Phoenix Tournament here. I had the Prince kidnap Ameiko and Sandru, and coerce the party into competing in the tournament as Hongal's representatives to win their release. To add pressure to the party, Suishen informed them that the Ruby Phoenix had held an artifact in her vault that would allow Ameiko to control an army of terra cotta warriors when she reached Minkai - but the Prince was insisting that when (not if) the party won, they turn over their prize to him. So they not only had to win the tournament, they had to figure out how to trick the Prince into accepting something other than the prize they claimed from the vault. Our bard and wizard teamed up to con the Prince admirably (they made him think they were giving him a Ring of Resurrection that had kept the Ruby Phoenix alive so long), and the party skipped town before he learned their ruse.

With the XP from the tournament under their belts, I had them skip the upper levels of the House of Withered Blossoms altogether. I can't tell you how sick I was of hobgoblins by the time they finished the lower levels. As everyone else has said, that part of the module is a real slog (I just went back and counted - 15 sessions to get through it!), and it would definitely benefit from a greater variety of enemies. And Munusakaru, despite Mythic ranks, was anti-climatic.

Tide of Honor
Minaki at last! Now things start to roll again. The party enjoyed working the various factions, and as DM I liked the sandbox effect of letting them off the rails to make their own decisions. I gave Kaibuninsho some Mythic Tricskter ranks, and he truly terrified the party. His hit and run attacks had them jumping at every shadow before they finally took him out. They sold his coin to one of the ninja clans for their support, and conned another that they still had the coin, but that its disposition was a decision best made by an empress, not a princess. The Shadow Maze nearly took out several of the party (they were down quite a bit from their encounter with the Dragon Turtles when they started into it) before they figured out the (very) inscrutable clues from O-Sayumi's inro.

The Empty Throne
The module describes having to sneak past the "gates" of Kasai, but the map of Kasai shows no city wall and a wide-open waterfront, so I just had them smuggled into town on a ship, but then they had a free-for-all with the Typhoon Guards inspecting incoming ships. They rescued Hatsue handily, but left Ameiko safely hidden away. The granary proved to be a story problem (see the separate thread about how to steal the MANY tons of rice required to feed a city the size of Kasai) but they solved it by diverting incoming wagons of rice from the countryside to a rebel warehouse after they were already inside the city.

In the Well of Demons, I gave Maemi a different request for the party. Our infernal-bloodline sorcerer's backstory was that he was a minor Chelish noble whose father was secretly a devil (identity unknown). Maemi was in telepathic contact with the sorcerer from the moment he entered the Well, telling him to play along with her plan. Her offer was that she would gladly give Ameiko her blessing - as long as Ameiko would agree to marry the sorcerer! (The devil's plan was to put his offspring on the throne of Minkai, and also be in line for the throne of Cheliax). Ameiko actually reluctantly agreed (I had the whole party roll bluff, diplomacy, or intimidate against the sorcerer's sky-high charisma diplomacy to convince Ameiko one way or the other), but our cleric took exception and launched a pre-emptive strike on Maemi before she could sign the marriage contract. The sorcerer actually sided with Maemi and fought against the party briefly - he later claimed she'd Dominated him, and the others bought it.

At the Palace, the party used D-Door and Gaseous Form to enter the castle towers through the arrow slits, thus bypassing the gauntlet of fights leading up to the gate. (Good thing, too - I don't know if they'd have survived if the spellcasters had depleted their reserves before ever getting inside.) For the final confrontation, I'd given Anamurumon 5 ranks of Mythic Champion, and bumped the others up to max HP. During the fight downstairs in the Kabuki stage, our sorcerer had Dominated one of the Typhoon Guards. Since he was a kuwa oni, the sorcerer had him shapechange to look like Ameiko, and gave Ameiko a Potion of Disguise to look like a Typhoon Guard. The decoy Ameiko came in very handy in the throne room battle. The Jade Regent and his inner circle had heard the noisy battle downstairs, and were waiting for the party. Our cleric strolled in front of the open doorway and immediately was sucked into Renshii Meida's kimono Maze. The Raven Prince was lurking in the hallway with Greater Invisibility, and backstabbed the faux Ameiko. "She" ran away into the throne room, where Anamurumon made her the focus of his Chain Lightning, and then the Jade Regent used a flourish from his blade to finally drop "her". With no healer to help them, the party was hurting as Anamurumon and the Jade Regent started dealing big damage. Luckily our bard had cast Song of Discord and Renshii failed her save, so instead of casting battlefield control or healing spells, she was casting against the fighter battling the Jade Regent. Our sorcerer dropped her, and the cleric reappeared. Our rogue had min/maxed into an obscenely overpowered archer, and had the Daikyu of Commanding Presence, so she was able to dish out huge damage against Anamurumon. She dropped him and the fighter beheaded the Jade Regent (double 20 roll with Suishen) in the same round, and the Raven Prince decided they weren't paying him enough and vanished. Ameiko ascended the Throne, and the future of Minkai was assured.

At the beginning of book 6, it makes a big deal about making the party have to "infiltrate" Kasai, about how all the gates are guarded, the difficulties of trying to fly over the walls, etc. However, when I look at the map of Kasai in the gazetteer, I don't see any signs of walls or gates. What's more the city has a very long waterfront, and it seems like it would be easy-peasy for anyone to get into the city, let alone high-level magic-capable PCs. (Also, having the palace complex at the very edge of town seems like bad design, from a defense point of view. I wouldn't be surprised if my party just decided to blast into the palace first thing, bypassing all the rest of the city.)

I know there are ways to work around this, but I'm just curious how other DMs handled this part of the adventure. I know if I tell my party they have to "sneak" into town, they're going to want all kinds of details about the city's layout, defenses, etc. and then will come up with some improbable strategy I'd never have dreamed of.

I'm looking for a way to make a non-magical item appear to be magical, or a magical item to appear to be something it's not. I know Magic Aura will do this, but only until some low-level MU does an Identify on it, at which point it comes down to a Will save. What I'd like is something a higher-level MU could use that could have a reasonable chance of fooling experienced spellcasters. Any ideas?

My group's spellcasters have gotten very quick to throw Fireballs and other area of effect spells, counting on their ability to precisely aim them such that they fry the bad guy, but have no effect on their buddy a couple of feet away who's banging on it with his sword. I know that based on RAW, this is perfectly legal, but I still have a problem with the idea that, in the heat of battle, with everyone lunging around, possibly impaired visibility, etc., you can position a magical blast a long ways off with pinpoint accuracy. Meanwhile, an archer shooting at the same target suffers a -4 penalty.

So here's what I'm considering for a House Rule: When a spellcaster wants to precisely aim an AOE spell (i.e. when he needs to avoid hitting something adjacent to one or more targets), he needs to make a Reflex save (DC 15?). If he fails, the spell origin gets offset by 5' in a random direction. If friendly fire isn't an issue (enemies off by themselves), we'd forgo the checks. Feats like Precise Shot would also add bonuses to precision casting rolls.

Thoughts?

Are Omoyani's Earthfire Shuriken a single-use weapon, or can they be reused with their full fire damage by the party? According to the rules, I think shuriken are supposed to be treated as ammunition, and not be reusable (although that never made sense to me even for normal shuriken).