Great Wyrm Red Dragon's page

Hello all,

I am currently playing in the Kingmaker campaign setting (Book 5), and was given the job of keeping track of the cities the group wants to build (I got the job, because I have a degree in Accounting, go figure).

As time went on, I have found myself having to go through everything and adjust all the totals, because somebody recorded something wrong, or I over looked something, or the DM should have given us this value instead of that value. I finally said enough was enough and built a spreadsheet to keep track of all of it for me.

Feel free to download it for your use, my group's kingdom is entered in the worksheet for an example. (Note: You can't edit it in Google directly, you'll have to download it.)

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_pCDbqrZ-R-S21HQUd4V0NFZ28

Disclaimer: This spreadsheet keeps track of up to 10 cities / districts and connects them all to the main kingdom sheet, but doesn't keep track of BP purchases (you'll have to do that on your own). The sheets are all protected except for the cells you would need to edit, so if you need to make changes, unprotect the sheet (it's not passworded). Also I'm a player in the campaign (Book 5), so I might not have everything accurate, but I think I do at this point. Feel free to point out anything that might be wrong and I'll do what I can to adjust it.

Enjoy

I've found that Souls for Smuggler's Shiv is appropriately challenging for a 4 person group with a 15 point-buy. You have a number of factors that can help balance encounters so they are harder or easier for your players.

For one, the NPCs are likely not going to be very helpful to your group, unless they have superior diplomacy rolls, as most of the time the morale checks are going to keep giving them penalties. You also (if memory serves right) only get one chance a day to improve their attitudes up, but if your group is surly, plenty of chances to reduce it. NPCs that flee from combat can set your group up to run into some of the traps, predator areas, etc. On the flip side, you can have the more helpful NPCs assist in combat, heal, shout out ideas, etc. if you find encounters too hard.

Heat stroke and the rain: Use these to your advantage in fights. Characters wearing heavy armor can easily suffer from the effects of the heat in combat, particularly if you steer random encounters towards that time. Likewise you can use the rain to reduce visibility (which has a penalty to perception) to launch surprise attacks. You could also perhaps cause people with reduced movement due to armor / weight to have a chance to slip. Likely a rogue won't have this problem, and would be more effective or able to flank foes.

Disease: This is going to be hard for players to deal with, but the ones contractible in travel won't kill the PCs (only Con damage can do that). So you can time encounters to hit players when they are weaker than normal.

Starvation: This is a very real threat in this module, that should not be taken lightly. 4 1/2 NPCs (the gnome is half for food), and a full party to feed makes monkeys and natives stealing food an evil tool for a DM to weaken his group.

Other methods: Several of the encounters involve multiple foes, and as other posters have mentioned, you have the option of them assisting others, trip attacks, sundering, grappling, and using terrain to their advantage. It also helps to not give out extra treasure outside of the module. Limiting their ammo for ranged weapons, draws them into melee more to conserve shots.

Some of the encounters though should be easy, especially in an area where the party will encounter multiple encounters before resting. This will slowly weaken your group enough to make a "boss" type encounter that much harder, and some of the "boss" fights can be particularly BRUTAL in this module.

It's easy as a GM in this module to add boons to help out the party if the module is too hard, but it's also easy to under-power them if it's too easy.

Name: "The 2 hour old dwarf."
Race: Dwarf
Classes/levels: Fighter - 1
Adventure: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv
Location: South of the starting crash site, past the first Dimor. nest
Catalyst: The glowing green haunted waters.

The Gory Details: This player managed to quickly push Ishirou to the point of hostility very early on, as the PCs grew loathe with the initial hopeless attitude of the NPCs, caused by the shipwreck. Ishirou challenged the PC to a duel and killed him, then summarily was killed by the PCs.
After quickly making up a new character, a dwarven fighter, who washed up against the side of a cliff, after the party watched his boat sink. The group rescued him from the waters and pulled him up to the cliffs they were following. The next night, I decided to run the encounter where the waters glow with a ghostly green light and he randomly got it on his watch. The dwarf saw a ghostly figure in the water and thought it was another shipwrecked victim and tried to climb the cliff down to save the person. Unfortunately he failed his climb roll, and the following check to grab a hand hold, and plummeted 80' to his death, as the party sorcerer watched in surprise.

His gnome would last a few sessions before being eaten by cannibals... but that is another story.