Just ran the first session today, we had to call it after the 2nd round of the skreesire. The party flushed out the skreelings and it showed up to ensorcel a few of them into protecting its offspring.
While not unique to this AP, the sarcesian sniper didn't make a ton of sense mechanically. It's an operative, but didn't have any equipment that would it allow it to use any of its abilities. I'd probably suggest changing its hand weapon out to something with the operative property and maybe giving it debilitating sniper. Otherwise it just seemed like it was built correctly.
It took me a bit to ferret out the skreeling pile on bleed ability. Ultimately, with the requirement to flank, 3 skreeling is an odd encounter. That seems like something that could've been built a bit more simply for something as tame as a bleed 1 or 2 effect at level 5.
The whole valley feels like it's going to be a bit of a slog fighting their way from one side to another, but we should get it knocked out and onto part 2 in fairly short order if the "suggested" fighter types don't wipe the party.
This Thursday is the final game for my group. This AP has taken 2 years playing biweekly and there is so much fatigue on my part and the players. Book 6 got condensed down to 3 heavy-hitting sessions which I think are playing out much more climatically than what is presented. I had the same issue in Carrion Crown and I think it's the nature of the AP format where the villain is never in any hurry. Well, he's in a hurry right now and the party needs to step on it.
The first session was all the events in Magnimar, no real changes. Part two was the exploration of the first level of the fortress with flashbacks, the flamma, etc and ended with them battling the clockwork dragon. The lower levels are flooded and full of constructs so I didn't incentivize them to go down there.
The final session is a race through the vaults to reach Xin before he can fully awaken. As they enter the vaults they'll see the Crystallises merge back into the vault walls pulling towards Xin's lab. Which makes sense given that there are some in the final battle. Constructs will fail to be animate as his spiritual essence is pulled into the reliquary. Battles will include the runelord statues, Belmedra, Shasthaak then of course the final battle.
If we get a late start then I'll try to encourage them to try bribes/diplomacy for the middle two battles. By the time they've emerged from the vaults they'll feel the fortress vibrating and hear the sounds of machinery. They've already seen the armies waiting to be reactivated so they have a sense of urgency.
I have 5 players consisting of murderous gnomes and one gender-fluid ebony aasimar about one level behind the AP at 20-point buy and they tend to destroy everything. The last battle may require waves of axiomites and crystallises if need be. Back in book 5 the demilich and dragon both got decimated with smites from our archer (the former in one round) so it's time to take the kid gloves off.
If they ever repackage it I suggest they call it Stuck in the Cathedral. Seriously, Race wasn't well received (it's sitting at 2.5 stars right now) and the sequel while being very exclusive and run only by 4 and 5 star GMs still wasn't particularly well-liked by anyone I know that played. I just checked and I've run part one 3 times which includes a party rage quit at CincyCon.
So I'd say these minis look pretty good. I feel like they look better than the last couple sets. There is one troublesome character. The City Watch which is a lady with a crossbow. We got 3 of her and 2 of them were bad. That's not a good ratio. I'm waiting to hear back on a replacement.
I wish some of the minis like the fire giant king and the hill giant in suspenders had been unique as I don't see my self needing the 3 of each that I got. I feel that overall there are quite a few more day-to-day usable minis here than from Reign of Winter which had all those weird 6-legged weasels or whatever.
The session played out more or less the way I envisioned though I always end up cutting more content. So basically we lost the elementals (which didn't fit in anyways) and the leng spider (which needed to be in book 4 and not 6). The trap on the stairs ended up killing 3 PCs. So at that point I basically gave them two options. 1. let's just say you can breath of life everyone and basically get the end encounter as-is or 2. dimension door out of here use resurrect rest up and get a tougher end battle
Everyone picked #1 as they felt thematically that retreating so close to the end would be anti-climatic. The end battle resulted in AA and 2 nightwings who circled the encounter throwing out channels and the occasional haste spell. Primarily they were ominous, but they seemed to avoid combat so the party dealt with the fact they were buffing AA.
He was last in initiative, but fortunately had enough buffs up that he lived for a round. The party dimension stepped right on top of him and knocked out a few mirror images. AA paralyzed 2 PCs (hey I guessed that) for 1 round. He didn't bother with any telekinetic punches since they were all flying and/or using airwalk (again I know the party pretty well). Then he used maximized chain lightning and beat up the party. The wizard rolled an 18 on greater dispel and got rid of flame shield, stoneskin and true sight. So AA targeted him with his negative energy blast and killed him (this was the second time he'd died thanks to the previously mentioned trap).
After a few rounds they had all the mirror images gone and started doing real damage. The inquisitor did around 130 damage in one round. If he'd critted this would've been a pretty short end encounter. The rest of the battle was a bit of a haze and at one point the cleric (my wife) was ready to throw in the towel however they stuck it out and AA went down the with Horace Croon (our alchemist) landing the final shot.
It took us about 14 months of playing every other week, but we finally wrapped it up. We did a nice 'where are they now' and are ready for a nice break from Pathfinder. Up next -- Numenera.
Do any of you plan to alter the last fight? A CR 17 fight against a bunch of CR 15 players seems to easy for a boss fight.
** spoiler omitted **
With the above statements, I am actually making him easier because this is exactly what will happen. My PCs don't really get lucky with saves.
It's been a little over a year, playing once every 2 weeks, but mostly by coincidence this Friday (Halloween) is going to be our final game. I've trimmed and combined encounters to keep this final book moving along. The entire AP hints at a sense of urgency, but it doesn't really play out.
We usually can get through about 4-5 encounters. That translates to Marrowgarth, H1, 2, 3, 6. Some of the other encounters will be combined to accomodate my 6 players. They're also 1 level below the recommended level. We have a Pharasmin cleric with 2 breath of life spells that usually get spent, but they haven't had a real death since the 3rd book.
ACs for front liners range about 30-42 and they should be able to dish out 150+ damage without too much effort. In a full round it'd be equal to 100s. So I'm concerned about this last battle. However, I'm combining in as many nightgaunts as I can. I envision them just buffing "AA" with haste and channels. Lucimar is out there and wants revenge so I'd imagine he'll show up. If Marrowgarth gets away then he'll probably do some fly-bys as well.
Spoiler:
I read through an earlier post, but I just don't think this strategy is sound:
Undispellable 20% miss chance (immune to rogues without Shadow Strike). DR 15/bludgeoning and magic and DR 10/adamantine. Fast healing 20.
True sight will take care of that miss chance as well as seeking and various other things they have access to. Adamantine is meh considering the players almost all have stoneskin as well which AA can't even overcome himself with that stupid staff.
The fighting zone is 18x18 and his force punch can knock someone 8 squares. If he sticks to one side and expect a flank, he can, on a failed save, force punch someone off of the platform.
The DC isn't that hard, plus who doesn't have fly or a ring of feather falling at this point. I'm fairly sure the party will at least have communal air walk.
Assuming your PCs haven't bought much other than upgrading their own Big Six, and your group isn't the kind of group that pre-casts vital buffs like Freedom of Movement, the first round could go something like this:
1. Big bad swift action lines the heroes, hitting three, paralyzing 3 for 1d10 ⇒ 9 rounds.
more like 2 if you're lucky. This is high level play and the party knows how to stagger themselves.
2. He moves within 6 squares of the edge, and readies an action to force punch the first person to try to flank him.
as above assume flight and good saves
3. Someone tries to flank him, and he force punches them off of the edge. 16d4 + 20d6 ⇒ (4, 2, 3, 4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 1, 3) + (5, 1, 1, 6, 3, 3, 2, 5, 5, 2, 3, 3, 5, 3, 6, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2) = 103
4. There is now one person versus the "CR 17 wuss."
he's still a wuss
Round 2:
5. Dim door to the paralyzed heroes. Swift action line the person who wasn't hit earlier. They are paralyzed for 1d10 ⇒ 7 rounds.
Dim door ends your turn. No more actions.
6. Coup de grace, coup de grace, coup de grace, coup de grace.
it's a full round action to coup...nope
7. Lololololololololol
hopefully that won't be the players LOLing...but we'll see!
Edit: Just a few more thoughts. "AA" isn't going to be able to hit the Holy Vindicator at all. He might eke out a single hit on the fighter or inquisitor with ACs around 33. I'm guessing he can use disembodied strike with spell combat (because why not?) So that might be cool.
I've run one D&D Encounters (2 hour) as well as one Expedition (4 hour) and read quite a few more so I'm starting to see how they differ from what PFS is doing. I think it's fairly different and I tend to enjoy the changes. The first thing worth noting though is 5e runs considerably faster than 3.X/PF so you're going to be able to squeeze more content into 2 hours. I'm not sure how 4e handled Encounters since I never found 4e to be particularly quick.
One major difference is that the metaplot is spread throughout all the adventures. This season is about a dragon cult of Tiamat and every mission feels like a part of that regardless of which session you're playing. That gives the game more of a campaign feel vs the more randomness of PFS. As a player it's good/bad since you feel like you're a part of something, but you have more pressure to not miss a game. Having said that, it's not the end of the world to miss a game since XP is capped and you probably won't lag behind.
From a production value standpoint a PFS scenario, which granted costs money, looks quite a bit better than a Expedition which generally only has a single map in it. I haven't found the editing any better/worse though Season 6 hasn't been the strongest for that topic.
Locally, PFS is much stronger. We have a well-establish play base. We're in 5 or so stores just in the Indianapolis area. D&D is in 3 I believe. A PFS day is probably 2-3 tables with D&D Encounters being similar, but with Expeditions only being 1 table. I think there's something in both systems for everyone. If you want tons of crunch then I'm going to direct you towards PFS. If you're a new player or an older player (1e/2e/DCC or other OSR games) then I would probably point you to 5e. However, I don't see any advantage to being exclusive to one since they're both fun.
It seems like a lot of work was put into disabling the item that is alluded to several times throughout the scenario. I'm sorta kicking myself for choosing to run this because I think it's a bit of a hot mess. I'm going to encourage my players to come up with some creative solutions though so we'll see if they take the bait.
So, I played this awhile back and I'm GMing it in a few weeks. I just did my initial read through and I feel like the storage box should've been the key to this adventure. You're told several times that the items were dormant in this strange box that only effects technology (like an EMP I suppose). Then when you discover the box you find it's non-working with a DC30 Engineering check. The high DC alone seems to dissuade the players from using the box, but I can't see why they wouldn't at least try to bring it along. I'm also not sure that a mending or make whole still wouldn't work on it. It's not magical so I don't see why it couldn't work. Without a wizard/sorcerer the end battle is such a tedious resource suck I don't see why a creative party can't trap Blakros in the box, which shuts down the goo then use the wand to extract it. That seems like a much more tidy ending then the haphazard one we had which involved me handing out all my alchemist fires just to have everyone miss with them.
So is there a compelling reason to not let the party use the box if they have either the magical means or maybe someone who surprisingly has the technologist feat?
Any projector is a little less than ideal. Your better bet would be to use a flat panel that's rated to sit on its back. Top-down projection is going to have shadows/fan noise/heat that all sucks. Bottom-up projection will generally need a mirror unless you have a short throw projector (like for a digital whiteboard). Regardless of what you use make sure to cover it with plexi-glass of some sort and you should be good to go. Unless you're dying for one right now, I'd suggest you wait until you can get an OLED TV because it'll actually be portable.
If you do want some help you can email your coordinator ahead of time and see if you can workthrough a character with them. I've done that a few times, but if you don't give them a heads up then they may not be able to accommodate you. As long as you're not wanting them to sit and tweak your character you can reasonably get something going in ~30 minutes. You might also want to try a demo of HeroLab since it'll sorta walk you through the process. I feel like you can't save the character, but that should be ok since you're just wanting someone to doublecheck your numbers.
In the Indy region we're in a bit of a deadzone in terms of specials since everyone played Bonekeep either at Winter Fantasy or GenCon. However, it's not usually an issue to run the yearly 4-star special a couple times to eventually get your required amount for 5-stars. I ran Day of the Demon a bunch of times locally or at least within an hour radius of home. If you're hellbent on hitting 5-stars in a hurry then I'd say you need to hit up some conventions and run the big PaizoCon/GenCon special.
Well hopefully this doesn't come up anytime soon, but using the "dead condition" example I'd probably rule the cleric would effectively die of the same mechanic as the other team member. (negative HP, 0 CON, etc..)
In PFS this is usually going to be HP damage. What that would accomplish would be the opportunity for someone in the party to finally pull out that breath of life scroll and get to the cleric within a round. That's a pretty handy usage.
In terms of "grappled" this ability requires touch so you can probably just have them swap positions. That's kind of a cool visual. If the cleric is smart they'll have cast Freedom of Movement on themselves ahead of time.
I have seen a presitigeous PFS GM, not allow a father and son to share an ultimate combat sitting at the same table.
Prestigious PFS GM is like saying celebrity bowler or sexy grandpa. It's not really applicable. My wife buys all our PDFs since our AP subscription is on her account and we get a discount. If I sat at a table and she and I (and/or my son) couldn't share resources I'd just get up and walk away. Though I'd probably drop some choice words for our GM. The real law thinks of ownership very differently than his interpretation of PFS guidelines.
Yeah. My GM just ruled the Remorhaz bite attack as having the heat factor. I contested it with him stating that it says that anyone touches his body takes damage, not his bite attack since it states that the players start taking heat damage when swallowed.
It's fair to argue that point, but the bite includes a grab (+21 to grapple) and if the remorhaz has you grappled you're going to be taking heat damage.
Scrying says you see everything in a 10' radius. He can scry everything he wants during the battle in his lab (there are about 5 combatants depending on the tier). Ultimately, this is just used for his resistance spells, but it's also a nice bit of flavor you might inject.
I treat the whole room, walking or flying as difficult terrain. I usually just say everything has partial cover. I've gone back and forth on how tall the birthing chamber is, but these days I usually put it at about 5'. I feel pretty confident that the expectation is that he'll start combat off with black tentacles then launch off some chain lightning. That's a 2-way street, but he might have the right protections up depending on the scrying he did.
Read up on those syringes. They have a bunch of notes on what area they cover and what the condition is that they'll fire. It's not uncommon that I've run the scenario and they never fire. Usually the combat is focused on the far side of the room until someone breaks free and starts softening him up.
I've got a ton of GM AP credits. To get the best bang for your buck I'd recommend applying it at the lowest level possible (3 in this case). You're going to be PA starved on a character raised on APs and modules so you might as well have some money.
I think the requirement generally has to do with con play or at least participation in big game days. When I hit 150 I had way over the number of specials since I'd run both Day of the Demon and Race for the Runecarved Key several times.
We started in May 2013 and we're starting book 5 tonight and have had the opposite reactions. My party would still be in Kaer Maga if they could. I've never had to roleplay through so many brothels in my life. My party is comprised of 5 gnomes and a full-height gender-fluid aasimar.
The first book was good until they got to the Crow and and it started to drag. Not to mention the size of the dungeon with 10' everything was a bear to draw. In a 1e D&D game it'd be fine since combat runs so much faster and exact placement isn't important. In Pathfinder it was a pain.
Book 2 was better quite a few of us know the author, Mike Shel, and like his writing. We got the curse and it's been pretty sweet since.
Book 3 was the best, it was bite-sized dungeons, great for meeting every other week for 4 hours. I don't even have an RP heavy part per se, but I think they'd all live in Kaer Maga in real life if they could.
Book 4 filled me with dread on the amount of rooms. I cut out a ton of non-important encounters and rooms with history the players would never learn. I think it became 3 levels and after a rocky start we flew through the last session.
Book 5 reminds me a bit of 3. Bite-sized areas. My hope is we'll get on our way and knock this book out in about 4-5 sessions. We've lost a lot of steam for sure.
I'm excited for book 6, but at this point a lot of that is fatigue. We have a great group and tend to socialize too much. We were a home-pfs group for awhile so playing 4-hour scenarios fit well into our playstyle.
Tracy and I would love to see Kevin hit 5 stars! If you end up running 4-19 or 4-23 we'll come and play. Hero's Emporium is only a mile or so from our house so we'll try and get by regardless though.
And you inadvertently answered my question, you don't care that Mindchemists can overshadow others with Knowledges so well. So, then why do you care if Bards can?
I had a new-ish player tell me he was going to abandon his mindchemist after playing in a game with a bard using this ability. He didn't see the point of specializing in knowledge checks when he could be outstripped 2:1.
I am now at a total loss as to what this masterpiece supposedly does. If it doesn't let you make your int-based checks with bluff, what does it do? It lets you make a bluff check to fake knowing something at a knowledge dc of the actual knowledge rather than by using bluff rules vs a sense motive check? That's about the closest I'm getting to understanding the effect as you guys are phrasing it, and I'm finding it very hard to find where the rules are actually supporting that.
I ran an AP on Friday that allowed a knowledge (nobility) to interact with an NPC that otherwise would not be interested in an adventurer. Earlier in the same AP a knowledge (history) check allowed the PCs to engage another NPC that was only interested in stories about battles.
It's fairly common in published adventures to have knowledge skills used either as a bonus or a requirement to character interactions. I believe this ability distracts them in such a way whereas they might otherwise call out a bluff.
In PFS, I'd say anytime the adventure calls for a Diplomacy (gather information) or Knowledge (local) this would also be a good application. So really we're talking at least once an adventure.
Thanks all. My favorite scenarios to run are Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment, which I ran cold at Origins when it first came out, and The Golemworks Incident, which is what I ran for my 150th table. On the latter, I have a nice copy of the final map which is one of the coolest ones I've seen.
Other random trivia, Tracy started about a year after me and got her 5-stars about a year before me. I believe there is one other 5-star couple out there. The first game I ran was Mists of Mwangi, which was both the first and last PFS game I ran using MapTool. It was cool, but none of our current stores have displays.
Outside of Bonekeep 1/2, I've never subtracted gold from a player if they successfully completed the adventure alive and didn't actively try to skip past the meat of the scenario. Conversely I've had gold reduced from my own chronicles two times both of which were arbitrary, but I didn't say anything about it. Treasure is really abstract in PFS and I think the goal is to not spend a lot of time writing down 20 arrows or 3 tanglefoot bags.
I only know the Indianapolis area well, but basically I run games at Comic Carnival on the 3rd Sunday of the month. Saltire is every Friday. Game Time and a new venue, Hero's Emporium, alternate running games on Saturday. Danger Room is a newer venue as well and I don't believe it has a set schedule just yet. All of those are generally what I'd consider suburban areas, however Broad Ripple is near Comic Carnival and Hero's Emporium and is host to lots of restaurants and bars. Also, some music venues and a comedy club.
There is also a place downtown called Gamer's Paradise that doesn't host PFS, but does a lot of other games. It also has the benefit of being in Fountain Square which is one of our cooler neighborhoods. There's a meadery, a couple breweries, burlesque theater and a couple music venues.
Indy also has the largest and "best" Children's Museum fun for all ages. We're also home to a nice art museum and zoo and a bunch of racing/sports stuff that I don't know anything about.
I played in a game last weekend where my character literally fought the same monster two games in a row, but apparently didn't recognize them the 2nd time. He must've been having some good times inbetween missions.
Just to jump in, I was updating my own venue today and thought I might be able to help. A venue only shows up when there's an upcoming game day in the system. However, there's nothing you have to do to add a venue per se.
So here's my venue:
http://paizo.com/events/v5748mkg0a82o
Before today my last event was in April so my venue wouldn't have shown up in searches for the last few months.
Also, you will want to make sure you have an event location entered, but that's generated by you and not Paizo. Lastly make sure you don't have the "Event takes place online" box checked.
I'm only down 1 (146 out of 147). I'm guessing it's GM101 or some other non-standard session. Hoping to hit 5 stars in about 2 weeks so hopefully it all comes together.
I made a deal with the owner of the store that if he ordered 10 issues of the comic book I would buy whatever didn't sell. So it looks like I'll be buying all 10. When did comic books get so expensive? (Not even my worst idea ever!)
Ours got 20, but we're going to try and do some follow up events to help move them. I feel pretty horrible about it.
I ran a table of 4 through both scenarios in just under 2 hours. Also, a very disappointing turnout. The tavern was brutal, but has a lot of wiggle room to give the players opportunities to survive. They eked it out in close to an hour and a half. The goblin encounter was more unique in general, but less inspired in terms of combat. We knocked it out in the remaining 30 minutes or so.
We were setup for a lot more players so the lack of participation was a let down. I felt like we did a pretty good promotion and our store made sure to send out a reminder to all their customers on Tuesday. If Paizo revisits this then I think they need more promotional material for in-store. At the least a poster or a bookmark with the date that we could setup by the register. Grabbing random people for a 1 hour demo is also a little tricky, it would've been nice to have some other draw for comic shoppers who don't know anything about Pathfinder. Something more in the 10-15 minute range.
I would imagine sales of the comic are up for this event, but I don't feel the sell-through in our area will be much different than usual.
edit: Also the one week delay didn't help in terms of long-term planning.
Looking at most masterwork items a good rule of thumb is they're relatively cumbersome and aren't used in combat.
The examples off the top of my head are healing kits(heal)/pathfinder chronicles (knowledge checks)/perfume (diplomacy)
They're situational and not particularly useful in a pinch. There are plenty of more expensive methods to get "always on" bonuses to skills so if you're concerned about failing UMD I'd look at one of those.
My wife and I have a pair of Taldan nobles. She's the rightful princess of Golarion and he's a an older, but wiser retired general. At some point they became Khaleesi and Jorah Mormont from Game of Thrones.
We also have a pair of half-orc barbarians that benefit from amplified rage. I think I'm going to have mine be a druid so he can turn into a mount. They're both GM PCs so we've made them, but haven't played them.
We played with another couple where she was a "summoner" (cleric maybe?) and he was her "eidolon" (barbarian/fighter?).
I'm thinking something like cavalier or inquisitor that gets a ton of teamwork feats would be good as well. More often than not one of us has to GM so it never works out quite as well as we envision.
So just for clarification this character is doing about 1d8+1 damage if they can even hit. Why is this even a concern? I have a level 3 tower shield specialist who is going a little less aggressively with the defense feats so he can at least power attack. Why would a villain even bother to single out a non-damaging opponent that they can't hit?
Anytime I've GM'd a pickpocket in-game they usually pocket the same amount of gold they end up needing to pay informants, tip bartenders, rent a hotel room or whatever else players don't record on their chronicle sheet. Fortunately, I've never had anyone pressure for more than some flavor. I don't bring the right minis to GM a criminal trial.
Pfffffffft, my idea for a retirement arc would blow your minds...
>.>
Like literally, there would be a psionic villain and he would just explode your head. First fight. Wait, scratch that. The combat would happen during the venture briefing.
Amateur. A quality scenario will TPK during the scenario blurb.
Why wait that long? The character sign-in sheet can be an infernal pact binding their PC's souls in servitude for all eternity.
So in our last game the party came across the absent-minded extra-planar catfish named Hummelgau. He's decided to stick around for awhile, partially because he seems to keep forgetting that he's getting ready to leave. My party primarily consists of a bunch of gnomes and the silly fish seems to be a good match. We even have a fishergnome alchemist in the party. Has anyone just left him in their group? My wife is playing a winged aasimar-gnome paladin named Eros that is currently riding around on him. For some reason this is a "thing":
There's a feat called Channeling Scourge that allows an inquisitors levels to count as a cleric to harm undead. That makes it easy.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/channeling-scourge
Hey, just bumping this since it's this weekend. If you're in the area this has to be one of the least expensive cons around. Plus you've got Vince, Mike, Russ...all awesome dudes! Plus, 5-star GM/Goblin Aficionado Tracy will be running Goblin Attacks.
We're halfway through book 3 and have only had one character death. We have 2 bards, barbarian, paladin archer, cleric and alchemist. The alchemist is the most headstrong and is the one death. I've kept them back one level and it's been fine (they're also 20 point buy). Paizo adventure paths assume your party is made of relatively new players and that they aren't optimized.
Name: Volamar
Race: tiefling
Classes/levels: magus 8
Adventure: Broken Moon
Location: Feldgrau
Catalyst: Vrood and Circle of Death
The Gory Details: Eesh, I felt really bad about this one, plus the battle took forever.
The party used Circle of Invisibility and darted through Feldgrau to assault the tower. They decided to attack the horde of undead in the town square which the promptly squashed with a fireball or two. As they approached the tower they were intercepted by Acrietia and her band of wights who were again defeated pretty quickly. During this battle at the foot of his tower, Auren sent out his crawling hands and instructed the skeleton archers to take care of any interlopers. Again, not a huge deal until Auren flew out of his tower to see who was giving his minions such a hard time. There he saw the party of 5 decimating his undead creations. He opened with an eyebite that sent the wizard fleeing, the next round the inquisitor followed suit. His cloudkill seemed to have no effect on the remaining 3 party members who were began flying up the tower to intercept him. That was when he dropped a circle of death and the battle ground to a halt. The paladin dropped at the top of the tower, the magus's body floated in mid-air, motionless. The cleric of Pharasma seemed to be the only one unphased. She spent the next few moments sparring with the necromancer until finally the wizard and inquistor returned to discover nearly half their party slain.
The battle took on a bit of a grind as the party did not seem to have any effective resources left to battle the still flying, stoneskinned necromancer who himself had used all of his offensive spells. Further, he had raised their fallen comrades as zombies to replace his crawling hands. Finally the wizard summoned a hound archon which lept from the tower and manged to grapple Auren mid-air. At this point Auren sunk to the ground under the weight of the creature and was slain by the living party members.
My 7 year old got an XL paizo t-shirt over the weekend. Is it fair to say he only gets a reroll at bedtime when actually wearing it? I didn't want to read another story, but I probably should've suggested he reroll his diplomacy check. Can we get an update to the FAQ on this?
Just play the game and let the GM know you've already prepped it. I GM more than play and I've almost always run games that I play. You will want to let the players know too so when they're stumped trying to figure out something they understand why you're not helping. It's often a great help because a lot of times players zone out during the opening text and you can get them back on track. One other suggestion is to have a couple characters that have a good reason for not being super helpful for puzzles, etc... Maybe break out the low intelligence fighter, a monk with a vow of silence or a deaf oracle.
My favorite is when you read an intricate room description full of detail then you have to follow it up with 'oh, and a bunch of monsters rush you the second you open the door'. In other words, I'd definitely recommend tying the inhabitants of the room into the description.
