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Now I understand the intrigue element, mans the Phantom can’t be out all the time, but there is something to be said for hiding the Phantom in its incorporeal form and just producing its aura.

Also I think I'm missing something here; the phantom can hide in its' incorporeal form? How does that work?

you’re about to get Heroism and your Phantom is about to get an aura of fury and a base attack bonus buff and +1 to a stat, which could go strength.

Now I understand the intrigue element, mans the Phantom can’t be out all the time, but there is something to be said for hiding the Phantom in its incorporeal form and just producing its aura.

Also even without him out you’ve got +3 and I would seriously consider buying a cracked pale green ion stone.

Also regarding feats I seriously think that furious focus is note worthy with spiritualists who have no way of getting pseudo pounce to my knowledge.

Definitely consider working towards outflank with your Phantom

I also find it hard not to go for hurtful with anger spiritualists.

Been looking at cracked pale green ioun stone - had it mentioned to me.

I'll probably take furious focus as my next feat. Planning on Cornugon Smash at level 11 once I get the automatic ranks in intimidate (seems wasteful to put ranks in intimidate beforehand). Hadn't looked at hurtful before, but reading it now I'm definitely thinking it could be a good level 13 feat.

Spells-wise, it's hard for me not to choose heroism as one of my first few 3rd level spells, but haste and fly seem more pressing since I'm currently the only party member with access to either of those spells and we're fighting angels and the like - we just had a near tpk last session against a Balisse Angel due to a combination of terrible rolls from the party and the inability to get anywhere near it for the first few rounds. Need flight to keep up with that, and a dead party member is being replaced with a barbarian so haste seems pretty vital too.

Might be a toss-up between Greater Magic Fang and Heroism at Spiritualist 8, though I'm not sure I have the spells/day to keep both myself and the phantom strong with heroism.

So I'm playing an aasimar spiritualist with the anger phantom in a game of Hell's Vengeance. The DM is (I think) fairly tough, while the group's relatively optimisation-light, usually more roleplay focused but at least building characters who function (though a couple of us in the group with a bit more experience usually give advice for builds). So as long as it doesn't incapacitate a character we usually go for the thematic choice.

My current build is an archon-aasimar spiritualist 6 / ranger 1 (1 level dip for better proficiencies and favoured enemy (human) for thematic reasons). I do decent damage when my phantom is out, but since it's a semi-intrigue campaign I often have to keep the evil rage monster inside my head to avoid notice.

Due to character deaths, I've gone from being in melee alongside a barbarian to being the party's primary melee for the last couple of levels. (hopefully this will ease up as another character death is giving us some sort of melee martial, and we currently have a sniper rogue and a bones oracle).

I seem to struggle a lot with hitting the enemies. Part of this may just be that I have pretty bad luck, but I was hoping I could get some outside opinions on my build, see if there's something obvious I'm missing.

I know my initiative is weak, and AC needs some work. Current plan is to continue advancing spiritualist from here. Pick up haste, fly and mage armor at SP7 and greater magic fang at SP8, swapping out magic fang for shield and SP8.

Any recommendations beyond that?

So I've been running the campaign for a couple of years now, and one thing that has repeatedly caused a problem for me is that the villains in this campaign are quite mysterious about their large-scale goals. While I understand that part of the campaign is the process of figuring this out, it does mean that the party still doesn't have a real concept of what's at stake.

I've tried to address this through dropping hints at a larger-scale intent, including a correspondence between Lucrecia and Mokmurian that did mention 'gathering our forces' (as well as a few other campaign-specific adjustments I'd made). Most of the players seem to be content with the understanding that someone's been calling the shots with all this murder, and as of last session they've just found the note about the raid on Sandpoint. They seem to be mostly okay with the flow of information.

However, one player is planning to retire his character (he's playing a pacifistic druid, and all the deliberately going places to kill innocent creatures like ogres who lived here first doesn't sit well with the character). He wants to bring in a new character, but due to the fact that there hasn't been a lot of clear information revealed about Mokmurian or his goals at this point he can't find a strong character motive for joining the party, or caring much about any of what's going on. The opinion from this player seems to be that the villains so far appear to have been mostly of the mustache-twirling variety.

Have any of you had similar troubles with this AP, reluctant heroes not feeling like they had a reason to get involved? And how at this point could I help with that? My idea of a solution at this point is having Svevenka contact the players after Myriana is put to rest (one of the players had a familial tie to Myriana so I think I can sell it) and tell them about how Mokmurian travelled to Xin Shalast and returned, and that the city's been unusually active since.

Oh god, so many changes.

I started by going through a few activities at the Swallowtail Festival. Nothing too complex, just gave them the opportunity to have some fun at the festival.

I stole the idea of Ironbriar being Tsuto's father from this thread, so when the PCs dragged Tsuto in to be arrested Ironbriar had come back from Magnimar with the Sherriff to 'check on things' (actually he wanted to check in on Nualia, having put Tsuto on loan from the Skinsaw Cult) - so the party got to meet him early.

I trimmed down a couple of things in the Catacombs of Wrath after reading on this thread that from the entrance you can bypass the whole dungeon and go straight to Erylium. I decided to add something to the Runewell though - if a PC touched it, they were hit with visions of everything that happened when the well was awakened: The Chopper, Lonjiku killing his wife, and depending on how well they rolled they'd get various flashes of what happened to Nualia. Since one of the PCs was playing a sylph he felt a particular attachment to Nualia due to the outsider blood and they way he'd been treated growing up in Sandpoint. After the visions the person would have to make a will save or immediately attack the nearest person, so that was fun, it's made the entire party paranoid about any 'well' that they encounter going forward.

The party kinda snuck into Thistletop and made a precision raid against Nualia (who had kidnapped the love interest of the sylph arcanist after a dream sequence where he tried to redeem her). They succeeded and basically booked it after that, so the whole plot with Malfeshnekor didn't play out - he's going to show up later with the Shard of Wrath.

For the farm I had the daughter of the farmers show up, talking about how people had come in and started eating her family, and how her brother got bit. Otherwise ran pretty much as written.

Because the druid has a T-Rex companion I've added a whole subplot where dinosaurs and other such things are showing up across Varisia (for reasons relating to a crazy homebrew add-on). So the Lord Mayor's Menagerie was full of dinosaurs, and the party decided to stage a jailbreak. Cue Ironbriar showing up again, this time with Xanesha disguised as a political player in the city who is trying to become mayor, and the two offer to help the party by getting guards out of the way in order to make the Mayor look bad because he can't keep control of his Zoo. Serves to introduce the characters early, and remind the party of who this judge they met one time is.

The party is currently at Foxglove Manor, and just met Iesha. I added a little minigame element - because she's spent months trapped in what is essentially a memory of her former life due to the mirror, she had a few minutes where she could retain enough control to talk to the PCs about what had happened to her, basically making will saves with an escalating DC for every minute of conversation and every time the PCs mentioned Aldern.

I've also tried to hint more at the 'haunted' elements of Foxglove Manor by having Vorel occasionally manifest as a voice in the PCs heads when they do something he finds amusing or angering, such as collapsing part of the floor. This is leading into the final battle with Aldern, where Vorel's will is going to manifest through the mould patch and control Iesha into attacking the PCs alongside the Skinsaw Man - if the PCs manage to destroy the mould patch then Iesha will be free from control and attack Aldern, which should be a pretty easy fight, but if not then they're in for a tough battle against the Skinsaw Man and his Revenant wife. That's going to be tonight.