Gratz's page

Hi guys,

For a while now I've been thinking about running a high-level Worldwound campaign. The idea came to me quite a while ago, so let me give you some history about my campaigns:

I've been running APs with the same group for years now, starting with Kingmaker, then moving Iron Gods and from there we moved on, to the Hell's APs (Rebels and Vengeance), so there might mild SPOILERS for these APs.

In order for you to understand where I'm coming from, I think I need to tell the tale of Leonard Thompson, royal assassin of Lakecrossing:

For a long period of time, Leonard was a loyal soldier to the kingdom, often having to go on the most dangerous missions, behind enemy lines. But one night, during his sleep, the Kingdom's assassin got possessed with insanity, when the Nightmare Rook appeared in his dreams. He started killing randomly citizens of the kingdom, but after a few nights, he was identified as the murderer of dozens of people. He managed to flee the country, just before his party members closed in on him. In his exile, a Glabrezu (who was also spawned by the Nightmare Rook) came accross his path and offered him a deal: "I'll make you sane again, if you bring chaos to your old home, by killing the King!".

The Glabrezu was impressed enough to make him a new offer: If Leonard serves the Demon, his life will be spared and his affliction cured. Leonard, who saw no other option, accepted. Both of headed towards the Worldwound, to help to tip the scale in favor of the demon invasion.

Leonard Thompson's story is the reason I want to venture a campaign to the Worldwound. He has been a recurring villain through all of my campaigns over the years, even if only as a little side note. Either has he been chased by other Kingmaker PCs, trying to capture the traitor, or has he been seen doing work for the demons, helping them destabilise neigboring countries of the Worldwound, or has he been spotted stealing ancient tomes and preparing vile rituals, to first become a permanent hybrid-wererat orc (he was once reincarnated by his group) and later to become a half-demon hybrid-wererat orc.

I left breadcrumbs through all of my campaigns leading to the Worldwound, where I want to bring together different PCs from all of my campaigns, to chase Leonard Thompson (I imagined him having become a loyal adviser and mortal servant of Deskari, who worked himself through the ranks) into the Worldwound and then fight Deskari.

So enough backstory let's get to my questions:

- Does it make sense, from a story point of view, to run City of Locusts as a standalone?

- Is it feasible for five to seven, level 17, point-buy, non-mythic PCs to survive and even succeed in this book?

I know it's a long story, so thanks to anyone who is reading this and giving me advice!

So, as all of my players have decided what they want to play in Hell's Vengeance. One of them told me that he wants to be a Hellknight armiger of the Order of the Chain.

I'm wondering now if a Hellknight can swear the Hellfire Compact and later on could become an Agent of Thrune. To what rank do you think a Hellknight could rise, before the conflict of interest becomes to big to go on? Or is the concept of serving a noble house completely against the rules of being a Hellknight? Could this decision hinder an Armiger's path to becoming a Hellknight?

1. Feats

• Weapon Focus applies to groups of weapons, like Simple Light Weapons, Martial Two-Handed, etc.
• Weapon Finesse is removed as a Feat, but is applied to weapons automatically
• Agile Maneuvers is removed, but anyone who uses a Finesse weapon can apply his Dex to CMB
• Power Attack, Piranha Strike and Combat expertise have also been removed. Any Character that has a BAB +1 can use these, as if they had these feats
• Improved Bull Rush/ Drag/ Overrun/ Sunder have been replaced by a single feat called "Power Maneuvers"
• Improved Disarm/ Dirty Trick/ Reposition/ Trip/ Steal have been replaced by a single feat called "Sneaky Maneuvers"
• Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot are fused into 1 feat
• Slashing Grace, Fencing Grace, Dervish Dancer and any other feat that grants Dex to Damage in melee, is replaced by: "Finesse Mastery" Prereq: Level 3; Dex 15; You may add your Dex Modifier to any damage dealt with a Finesse Weapon.
• Leadership has been scrapped

2. Backgroundskills

Every character gets 2 additional skills per level, which can only be used on the following skills, to use on the characters backgroundstory:
• Appraise
• Craft
• Heal
• Handle Animal
• Linguistics
• Perform
• Profession
• Sleight of Hand

3.Misc

• Any type Rage grants temporary HP
• Wands and potions always grant the average amount of HP
• Automatic bonus progression
• Unchained Summoner replaces Summoner

I know the Dex to damage feat might be controversial, but Paizo has put in so many ways of achieving that over the years, that I don't see a problem adding it. Also I don't to hear any more conveluded "Dervish Dancer" backgroundstories.

So two questions: Does anyone see any loopholes? And does anyone think this devalues Strength to much? And if so, how do I boost Strength a bit?

So as my Hell's Rebels campaign is coming to a close soon (we'll finish the AP after a Song of Silver) and I'm preparing the start of Hell's Vengeance, I've come across a problem:

I've encouraged my players to chose a higher goals for their characters, so the campaign doesn't become about a bunch of obedient Thrune henchmen. While some are rather easy to work in (becoming a Hellknight), others will be more difficult to make work (becoming a Lich, which I still need to figure out, because the PCs might promise their souls to Hell) and then there is one motivation that two of my players brought up separately:

Working for Thrune to get closer to the Queen, so they can try to kill or assassinate her. One wanted to be a demon worshipper, who wants to bring chaos to the land of law abiding devils, while the other one wanted to be a member of a fallen noble house, who holds a grudge against the first queen and wants to pay it back to her heir.

So can anyone see this working out? I see so far no possibility to make that work, without them dying no later than "For Queen & Empire" and with no real perspective of them reaching their goal. Any ideas or suggestions?

Hi guys,

I was planning to use the Evil Iconics in Hell's Rebels,
as I can't find much use so far for them in Hell's Vengeance, but not using them at all feels like a waste of great NPCs.

So far my ideas have looked like this:

- At first I wanted to put them into "Dance of the Damned", as they PCs and the evil Iconics would be around the same level range.
I wanted to put them at Ruby Masquerade, but I can't figure out where and why they would pop up, so I'm mostly done with that idea, unless someone comes up with something to work with.

- My second idea was to incorporate the Evil Iconics in the city Riots in "A Song of Silver".
They could have been hired to infiltrate the Silver Ravens, assassin the leaders or defend tactically important spots in the city (maybe like the bridge).
But so far I'm not exactly sure whom I would put where.

So any ideas to help me out would be greatly appreciated or even ideas to put the Iconics into completely different books of the AP, which I haven't thought about yet.

So where would your Iconics pop up, if at all.

So, unsurprisingly one of my players wants to play some sort of necromancer (may it be a wizard, an oracle, a cleric or whatever) and I wanted to know what the Cheliaxian government thinks about any kind of raising the dead and controlling the undead.

Hello dear people,

I'm in dire need for some advice. One of my players smelled that there was something fishy going on with the Victocoras, so he asked to play an exiled family member, preferably the son, because he wanted to have a more personal story going on, with the investigation of the death of his family. When he finds out who killed them, he wants to play it out like a personal vendetta against the people responsible.

The player said he found it suspicious that the fire seemed so targeted and that the Victocoras were the only major family missing from the Noble Scion list.

Well... a bit carelessly I granted him his wish, without considering the consequences and what repercussions it might have on the storytelling structures of the AP. I want to keep my word, but I need some advice and some outside opinions, to make sure I'll consider everything needed.

So let's start with the PC: He wants to play a male human in his late teens, who is ambitious, focused, but also close-minded. He wants to take the Ex-Asmodean trait, so my first thought is that his brothers sexuality and personality might have driven him to the church, to redeem his family reputation, but the church might have treated his brother very harshly, which pushed him to act against the church. Something along those lines... These events would have let to his expulsion from the church and our PC ended up in Varisia in military school, where he was trained in infiltration missions (Ninja).

I mostly need help with fleshing out the interpersonal relations between the family members, as we have not much to go from. I can see how the relationship between the PC and his brother wouldn't be the best, as his behaviour hurts his ambitions, but how would you see the parents reacting, especially as they were members of a secret cult. Also it isn't mentioned how the Victocoras became nobles or how they build their wealth.

Thanks already, any input is greatly appreciated!

Hi guys,

my group recently finished Iron Gods and I'm preparing Hell's Rebels right now (this is my first thread about Hell's Rebels, but I'm sure many others will follow).

We wanted to start next week with the AP and the first character ideas have been coming in. Two of them want to play halflings, another an half-elf and another wants to be a dwarf. I have no problem with these choices, but I can't find much information about the status of the different races (besides the prejudices against tieflings and strix) in Cheliax (or just point to me where to look, I have most of the resources for Cheliax).

Kintargo is supposed to be more cosmopolitan and open so the dwarf and the half-elf should have no problems, but my 2 Halfling players asked me if they have to be by default slaves or ex-slaves, as they found a line on the wiki that says most halflings are slaves. I looked it up in the Inner Sea World Guide and I only found a throw-away line about it.

I'd like to know more about why all or most halflings are enslaved to so my players can come up with a solid background story and so that I can react properly to them in the Cheliaxian environment. Are all Halflings born into slavery? Are halflings considered lesser beings, so that anyone can enslave them? Can they get out if they fullfill some terms of a contract? Are most of the criminals so that they become temporary slaves? Do they have to survive (or kill) their master to become free (like one of the NPCs)? How would Chelian people react to a masterless Halfling?

Hopefully someone can enlighten me. Thanks!

Thanks!

Hi guys,

my Iron Gods campaign is soon coming to an end and as I'm revisiting the campaign I'm getting the feeling that there was to much dead space in the middle, which crippled the fantastic pacing of the first 2 books.

How does that lead to me making a thread about APs in general? Well my only other campaign I have run so far was Kingmaker, which had in my opinion, and I know it's an opinion many do not share, an unnecessarily tagged on villain in the last chapter.

Two APs with a similar problem still isn't enough to deduce a pattern, but Hell's Rebels seems to have markers that point in the same direction, as it says somewhere on the boards or in the books (can't remember where I've read it) that the end of the fourth book would be a good cutoff point, if you run a straight Rebellion based Adventure. I want to make clear that at this point I haven't seen or read all the books and it may be unfair to make an early judgement, but I'm simply a bit worried as it is the next campaign I'll be running.

So back to the threads title and back to my initial thought... Are APs to long? Or is it just my GM fatigue kicking in at some point or simply the inherent flaws of some APs (after all there are many other APs that I haven't read yet, let alone run or played...).

What are you guys thinking?

So this probably not the first time someone suggested some changes to the monk to make it more appealing to players, but I'll give it my try.

My players found the standard monk quite underwhelming and noted that archetypes which eliminated one of the stat's importance (like the zen archer) look way more interesting to them.

So I was thinking I'm giving my players their wish for the next campaign and let the monk hit and do damage via DEX (similar to 5e monk). This would also nicely differentiate the monk from the brawler and make both more unique.

But I have some questions: Will it be to strong? Should I keep some feat tax (like having to get 1 or 2 feats to make it work)? Has anyone had any experience with such experiment?

I would love some input. Thanks in advance!

From the PRD: "Before being thrown by hand, the grenade must be primed with a quick twist of a dial at one end and then armed with a click of a button at the center of that dial. Priming and arming a grenade is a free action; a grenade launcher primes and arms all grenades it fires. The grenade detonates at the beginning of the wielder's next turn, hopefully in the area targeted."

I don't like the way grenades work and I want to try to tweak the rules a bit and add another option, else I think my group won't use them to much. First off I want to make arming a grenade a move action, so you will still be able to arm a grenade and throw in one round. But, what I want to add is the option to keep the grenade in your hand until your next round, but the first step of your next round has to be to throw it or it explodes in your face.

So what do you folks think about that change? Would that change make grenades to strong?

I'm GMing next weekend the first session of Iron Gods and one of my players wants to be a Cleric of Brigh. The problem is, there isn't much information about the worship of Brigh nor Brigh herself. I know there will be a chapter about her in Lords of Rust and I will get the PDF as soon as it is released, but until then can someone help me out on how the clergy and worship would look like?