Greg Wyatt's page

Thank you all for the excellent suggestions. We played last night and it turned into a 5-hour marathon where they narrowly managed to win after I threw at them a multiple orc fighters, orc rangers, trolls, orc sorcerers, orc witches, all on five separate islands connected by bridges, and on the sixth and final island I had the treacherous Council Chief, his Arbiter who was a Daughter of the Dead Inquisitor in disguise, a resurrected half-orc monk from an earlier adventure, the chief's pet Giant Bear, 3 Alips and an Adult Black Dragon, the mate of a younger black dragon they had killed in the first adventure. In fact, they killed the mate and the whole brood of hatchlings and this was one mad dragon. The Daughter of the Dead opened up on them and kills the NPC allies they brought, one of the party and two animal companions. I intercede with another NPC we've used as a deus ex machina before and bring them back with 10hp, but not the NPCs. The rest of the battle is a slog but they pull it off by the skin of their teeth and I don't have to pull any more punches. They seems realty pleased with the conclusion. Thanks for the great advice!

I'm going to have to throw *a lot* of enemies at them. They are 5 PCs and 3 animal companions. In the first adventure I ran for them I nearly TPK'd them with a three way battle between a young black dragon with 8 nestlings, and a rival band of dwarf treasure hunters. It took hours and they fell one after the other. If I hadn't made the dwarves good aligned and willing to "help" the PCs, and distracted them with 5 animated statues arriving at the end of the battle, that would have been the end of the entire campaign before we even started. Getting the CR correct is a delicate thing, and I'm sure the players knew I nerfed that encounter right at the end to prevent the TPK.

But yes, I'm going to throw everything at them in this final chapter. Lots of lieutenants, lots of spell and HP draining minions at the beginning, a few gauntlets, disadvantageous terrain, traps, and maybe something in the air to harass them.

This forum is the best.

Tarraced into the mountainside, across a narrow valley... rope bridges, "sky islands" on top of rock pillars rising from the valley floor, more rope bridges... switchback stairs carved into the mountain... lots of little camps with 2-5 huts around a firepit with tanning stands and various nonsense in each little camp...

That is an excellent suggestion. Unless one of them is reading Paizo forum posts. But I really like the idea of the rope bridges. Some of them have rings of Feather Fall, but that doesn't solve their new problem of bridging the gap. This is easily a starting point for the final battle.

Thank you!

Well, behind every great man, is a greater woman...

So, put the Orc Witch with the Chieftain... stack Dark Sister with Scarred Witch Doctor... give her 3 more levels (making her level 12), so she can summon her Night Hag... give her the Coven Hex, obviously.

Change the Chieftain to a Witchguard Ranger, or better yet, an Eldritch Archer-Hexcrafter Magus with a HornBow and the Coven Hex.

Add a Witchfire to Coven, and you have yourself a party!

That is brilliant! It will work perfectly for one of the Elders. I need to work out how the other two and the Tribal Chief will counter the party. And the Chief Arbiter. And the Leader of the Temple Synod. I just know they're going to murder them all.

Mind going into a little more detail on the fights you have had already?

A one on one fight with 2 crits and a hit(so pounce? didn't have to move up? ranged attacks?) to eliminate an enemy 3 levels higher before that enemy gets to act seems a little off.

No problem. The party comes rolling into the capitol of their former tribe. They are all outcasts of one form or another, only two of them are even remotely well known. In the center of the city is a fighting pit where all matter of disputes, challenges and criminal proceedings are dealt with. As expected, they want to see the quality of the challenges, so I have the pre-prepared opponent just finishing off some poor idiot he bullied into a challenge. They ask around and find out this guy is well known for challenging newbies so he can kill them and take their stuff, as in allowed under law. The face him down outside the arena and issue their own challenge - but only one is allowed to issue the challenge, so the loudest of the party takes him back into the ring. The Arbiter states the case, the challenge is deemed worthy and acceptable. The PC is level 8, the NPC is level 11. They are 5 feet apart when the Arbiter steps out. PC wins the Initiative roll, take his 5 foot step and does his full round action, all three hit with two crits. He does something like 140 damage. The crowd goes wild, the PCs go wild, the NPC has served his purpose of introducing the arena and the basic concepts of this Tribe's version of justice, challenge and honor.

After talking with two of the other clan leaders on the Elder Council, they figure out that in order to overthrow the sitting Tribal Chief they need to weaken his faction. They don't want to go after him directly, but they do want to weaken his clan, so they decide the best option is to assassinate the vice chief of the Tribe chief's home clan. I have not set up this exact encounter, so I pick a PFSRD NPC that fits the bill, whip up a NPC sheet in Roll20, drop him into a generic market map and let the PCs go at him. One of them rolls disguise check to mask himself as this guy's boss, the Chief of this rival clan. Others roll high stealth checks for the crowded market. The mark rolls very poor perception. They pounce upon him and after three attacks he's very dead. He was level 15. As they retreat with the body they disguised player shouts to the crowd something about that's how you deal with a traitor with a high bluff check. They have plausibly covered their tracks and I'm going to let them get away with it and see how the political ramifications land. The Chief they're trying to frame will, of course, have an iron clad alibi.

They're smart, they've been playing for decades, some of them have been GMing for just as long. They know the Pathfinder system better than I do. They're min-maxing munchkins who are loving this evil party of murder hobos and spend hours pouring through online source material to figure out the best way to make their characters more lethal. And the dice love them.

You were all so helpful with my last question (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43bgx?PCs-want-to-take-over-their-homeland#1) I was hoping I could get a little more advice.

My murder hobo PCs are running roughshod all over the NPCs I've created to challenge them so far. The first was a one-on-one arena battle that lasted exactly one round. Actually, half a round. The challenger, despite being three levels more advanced, was eviscerated by three attacks, two of which crit, leaving him disemboweled and very much dead. A full 20hp more than needed to render him unconscious.

The second battle was an ambush on a political opponent. This guy was twice their level. It took three hits from three characters, but he's dead, too. I had to make that fight up on the fly as I had no idea they would attempt an assassination of a second-in-command. They loved it, and I do mean all caps LOVED IT, but I think they would like a greater challenge even more.

Any ideas how I can make some Orc Chieftains last longer than one round, without simply cranking their AC and HP? I've thought about some tough animal companions, bodyguards and putting them at a tactical disadvantage with the terrain, I'm simply looking for some memorable and unique ways to make the targets less killable.

FYI, they have crazy high stealth, disguise and bluff, helping them get close to targets.

If you have the money spare and don't mind spoilers there's a few AP's that deal with rebellions you could buy and look those over for ideas on how to handle things

Which APs were you referring to?

You are all outstanding. Thank you so much for the great advice. I've got some thinking to do.

The biggest problem I have with this group is that they could literally do anything. They could murder hobo through all of the noble houses until there is no opposition. They could spend their significant treasure to buy loyalties. They could use their CHA PC to roll some ridiculously high Diplomacy on everyone. Or they could just barge into a Council meeting and challenge the current ruler. Or some combination thereof. I have had to do a lot of prep for this side adventure to prepare for any and all contingencies. I currently have Roll20 maps setup for random city marketplace battles, random manor house battles, castle battles, tavern battles, street battles, and the set piece catacomb battle which may or may not happen.

The last time I GMd the adventure was far too much on rails. I had a story to tell and they went along with it. I'm trying to make this far more open world, which means I have to be ready for anything. Which means that every week it keeps getting more and more insane. Please, do not get me wrong, and thank you for reading this far as I vent my spleen, but I really do love doing this. It has been invigorating to GM this adventure, it's just also been challenging, and making a cast of character - a High Council - each with their own motivations and relationships with all of the others, this will be the biggest challenge yet.

Come to think of it, if I do it right these murder hobos might actually have to pay attention to the plot hooks and character details. You know, that could be interesting if I set it up where each of the Council members has their own unique hook and if they ignore it and approach that member incorrectly the whole thing goes sideways on them. Add some last minute backstabbing and insert a NPC who knows what they did from last adventure and we might have something.

I've Gm'd myself into a corner and could use some advice.

Our regular group has been playing a homebrew world for quite some time now and the creators of this world needed a break from GMing. I offered to take the helm for a few weeks with a side adventure I had in mind set in this same homebrew world.

Everyone, including the creators of this world, are all playing as evil characters, mercenaries for hire, and they've had a lot of fun running around and doing odd heists for the big bad. What started out as just a few weeks has turned into a few months. We're now coming to the end of the adventures I had planned out and I'm at a crossroads in this side story arc. In our last adventure I had them finally meet their employer directly, not through the usual cutout, and on a lark I tossed out the idea of them returning to their homeland and challenging the existing ruler for control. They seemed to like that idea, but didn't mention it again. My thought at the time was that the group could decide to extend my tenure as GM with this side adventure, or return to the main story with the creators resuming their normal GM duties.

After the game I was running over the events and realized that if they decide to take up the challenge to take over their homeland there are going to be pitfalls that I am unaware of. As a fairly green GM I've never run a game wth this type of complexity before.

I think I can constructing the story, the characters, and the internal politics of their homeland. I don't need to worry about the complexities of raising an army and mass combat - it won't be that kind of takeover as we have established their homeland as a place where honor rules and challenges are common. I think this is going to be a situation where they will need to work the internal politics of the council of elders and build a coalition to stage a challenge.

My question is, has anyone ever run a game like this, what should I watch out for, and what kind of plot twists can I build into this to make it more interesting. It should all wind up culminating in a big fight with lots of backstabbing, just not sure what to generate to get from A to Z.