Harlan's page

Thank you guys.

Huge help so far. One of my deficits I am realizing is though I've GM'd a lot I've never actually played am arcane spell caster to a level like this in an actual game so there are times I'm not thinking about how he's employing his spells because I am so busy learning what the Monster spells are plus abilities etc. So having your opinions helps.

These are all fantastic comments and suggestions. Thank you, everybody.

I think there's an art to challenging him without outright defanging him. Everything here has been great.

I've been DMing for a long time and this is the first time I've run into an amazingly cerebral (and great dude) who has used his first time playing Pathfinder to play a wizard. All you "build" folks have probably done right by him. It's been fun to watch him grow. The team is 10th level (I'm running Serpents Skull) and I am trying to figure out what to do with this guy.

So a couple of things

1. The wizard uses spells to great affect and has mastered which feats to take to get the most bang for his buck. He's using spells like Create Pit to make the monster's lives difficult (also entertaining) and has a few "save or die" spells like Ice Prison that really f%@& up grand plans and ALSO maxed his damage dealing.

2. The dude has taken the feats to allow himself to unleash summon monsters that can do a boatload of damage all at once (They did 155 points of damage in one round to one creature with 4 tigers and pounce)

3. He's using that swift move dimensional hop constantly to stay out of my way with combat, get out of grapples, etc.

SO....

On one level I feel like its my duty to make it hard on this guy, but where do you stop? What's your philosophy about handling a player who has the ability to end a climactic battle in one bad die roll by me (without lying and fudging dice; I don't roll behind screens and play the dice straight because I feel that's ethical) or just absolute massive damage. Entire big bosses have gone down in two rounds.

I'm tweaking monsters to have more silence, area affects, etc, to make his life hard, but is there a line where you just go "Congrats max/min'er , you've won pathfinder!" rather than blatantly metagame the hell out of taking all this dude's hard work and flushing it for the sake of drama, tension and story by neutralizing his obvious enjoyment of the game?

What's your approach?

I originally was just going to post my one major idea, but I'll pepper what my group has done to keep things tighter together. My players have appreciated it because it keeps the Whispering Way or locations in the main view from the end of Harrowstone.

Obviously don't read this if you aren't running the game

1 - I introduced Advion at the funeral in book 1. I made him an old friend of the Prof. After the Haunting he took Kendra with him to Caliphas to help her recover and to encourage her to explore her inner power.

2. Book 2, while I understand the Earning your Keep roleplay elements of your encounters in Books 3 and 5 with the Order of the Palatine Eye, it was more fun to induct a few players into the order through the Judge. It really gave the players a feeling of a home base, and it also helped when they got jammed in certain situations with info, it was easier to use the network to keep the party moving in investigations if there were experts they could call on when they failed a couple of rolls and fixed some of those 20 sider issues of MAKE IT OR FAIL.

3. I let Caromarc hint that the Whispering Way had contacted him about the Lich elixir, and that he believed part of this was about his refusal to work with them. I used Caromarc to pass on a bunch of the lore about Tar Baphon and the doom he might cause. I also had the Beast held as a Prisoner in Renchurch, I gave immunity to the Whispering Tyrant whispers and beefed him up by Book 6, so if there were some really bad saves you still had the creature to draw attacks or attention and die atoning.

4. When they killed Auren Vrood in Book 3 I let them see the visions as written but I let the players know there had been a double cross by the Mi-Go and that the Raven's Head, a key ingredient, was out there and available, making the haste to get to it and the direction of inquisition in book 4 that much more intense.

5. I eliminated Illmarsh entirely. I moved the encounter to the sewers and space underneath Caliphas because I wanted to spend a little downtime in the city and let my players build some roots. The Dagon worshipers became Cultists in the city, and everything still went as planned. I eliminated the ocean encounters, but I ran everything else as an underground lake/city. If they hadn't defeated the Spawn I would have had it pushing its way out from the sewers and devouring townspeople's souls etc. The Mi-Go that go undefeated stop using the inferior Skum and start collecting people from above, etc.

6. Instead of the bloodline for the Whispering Tyrant being Count Galdana,I made it KENDRA. That's right, Advion had taken her right in front of the eyes of the players. Lorrimor's bloodline is a direct tie to the Whispering Tyrant, which is why he was hiding his daughter in that small town and collecting what he knew. I rolled this out in a very James Bond Bad Guy style, with clues from the Vampire Alchemist leading them to AA in Caliphas, a house. They fight him but he's a shifter/henchmen/clone. But there are enough clues to piece together the direction. There was enough of my players in the beginning trying to forge relationships with Kendra and had fought iwth her in Harrowstone, to make the stakes even greater to save HER vs some guy you hadn't met yet.

7. I let the lich wolf be reasoned with, and turned against Advion in jealous rage. His personality was too much fun to just make him soething you tried to kill and though you would have to eventually, allowing the unease of fighting with it was more fun temporarily

8. Also, after defeating the dragon I let the Order of the Eye arrive to help (and I was open to them appealing to Ludvik because vampires vs would have been badass), letting them battle zombies and foot soldiers. I wanted the last rush on the tower to feel less like a final dungeon crawl and far more epic as if once again the world rose against Tar-Baphon. So when you had the large numbers of zombies, I usually increased it by double and had some other soldiers kind of fighting along. I let a few of the Eye solider seem really hefty and badass (maybe more badass than the PC's) so they felt comfortable moving on. It also solved a predicament I saw coming of....running away and into something worse. I also wanted to be able to toss a character sheet to a dead PC so they didn't have to sit out the dungeon crawl and could continue to support the group going forward.

These are just some mid-day work rambles, don't have much a way to put a bow on em. Use them and comment as you see fit :)

I've got a really great group of players, and I am looking to kind of string together the AP's.

So each AP with be generational. So I was thinking it might be fun to kind of put what we have in order not of release but of what FEELS like it should come before/after.

We started with Serpents Skull because it feels the most new-worldy...

But how would you order the AP's and then make book one about reconnecting the children of adventurers past.

Because my players got so heavily involved in Prof. Lorrimor, I am concerned that part of the drop off between Book 1 and 2 is the idea that we are "Tracking Lorrimor's killers". I appreciated the ideas in Book 6 about introducing Advion early and presenting opportunities for the players to keep holding on to the trail of the WW, but...

I would like to see some examples of ways to keep the WW in the foreground and as a motivating factor in what the players are doing and why, in the end. I love the story here, and I LOVE Frankenstein, but I am really looking for ways to make this less and less detour-y feeling.

Hints, help, appreciated.

I recently moved into a new place with my wife during the midst of a shipment of books I'd ordered. The Customer Service staff (Megan) was easy to work with and rather than give me a load of grief about replacing my books just took care of it.

Thank you, Paizo, for continuing to be about your customers, and a special shout out to Megan for being awesome.