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We've had almost two books smooth sailing till we had three deaths within two sessions.

Character: Chad Baine
Race/Class: Human Savage Technologist Barbarian 6
Location: The excavator, Lords of Rust
Catalyst: Confusion cast by Hellion

The team was rolling over the lords of Rust so far, Nalakai and his acolytes were but a speedbump. Helskarg and the Chull were both almost one-shot by the Kineticist. The team went through the tunnels around the excavator instead if immediately into the interior.

After swiftly dealing with the first group of Dark folk the group of heroes spotted Tatterface failed ambush and took care of them within the first round. Yet Hellion cast a confusion near the end of round one from the screen overlooking the fight. Three of the four heroes failed their save; the Barbarian, Kineticist and Paladin got confused with the Magus unfortunately in between them.

What followed were several round of babbling, near misses and lucid rounds trying to spread out from each other to minimize the damage. Even a glitterdust cast by the brave magus with risk for his own life to prevent retaliation escalation by blindness when the first hit happened. Yet it did came to the Kinectecist who hit the already low Barbarian, a hit from the paladin's musket, with a devastating blast putting the barbarian in the negatives.

The magus did manage to save Barbarian Chad with the use of a Trauma Pack+

Character: Aronok Krush (Ron for friends)
Race/Class: Hobgoblin Earth Kinectecist 6
Location: The excavator, Lords of Rust
Catalyst: Kulgara

After having survived the 8 devastating rounds of confusion and continuous taunts and insults from Hellion the team of Heroes snapped back and destroyed the nearest screen. The party spending their attention halve on healing each other, halve on moving up and into the main room of the excavator to slay some of the Orc minions. This made Hellion/the Orcs summon Kulgara from her room.

Warned about the devastating ranged capabilities of the party with the Musket wielding Holy Gun paladin, Crit-happy Kinectecist and Pistol/Rifle wielding Savage technologist Barbarian, Kulgara moved up from pillar to pillar cover over several turns inside the Excavator. None of the party was happy to be the fist to encounter Kulgara with her obvious loud and dangerous weapon, yet the Kinectecist stood in front as so far his DR/Adamantine made him quite tanky in most encounters. Unfortunately Kulgara does most her damage in big chunks, and the 18-20 crit range didn't help as the Kinectecist took a big chunk of damage the first round and the full attack with a crit put him down.

Yet Kulgara did not survive the following barrage of attacks from the rest of the heroes including grenades fired from the recently acquired Grenade Launcher blessed with the Divine Bond of the Paladin. Kinectecist Aronok got raised by the Resurrection scroll gained from book 1, costly but worthwhile.

Character: Caroline Charlotte Kuzuryu
Race/Class: Holy Gun Paladin 5 / Gun Scavenger 1
Location: The excavator, Lords of Rust
Catalyst: Hellion's chassis destruction

The team of four managed to clear the rest of the excavator and went looking for hellion, halve expecting to find a fake poser behind a terminal somewhere. They finally found Hellion at the excavator's head, finding out he was an AI was within the betting pool, the giant robot scorpion body less so.

Finding out that Hellion's claims to godhood had some ground with his dual-initiative and mythic abilities/surges was the biggest surprise. The scrapyard-robot mooks in the fight were an annoying hurdle but easily ignored.

In round one Hellion stayed at range and threw a spell and fired his plasma beam, but got confronted that even his plasma beam was heavily outgunned by the party's firepower. Hellion switched for melee and it turned out that his Grab + Constrict on his claws in combination with two initiatives made it possible to juggle the dangerous Kinectecist and Barbarian to have them grabbed during their turn.

During the last round with everyone at very low Hit points, including Hellion, Caroline went down from a Plasma beam shot fired in-between claw attacks. The party knew about the arachnid robot's tendency to explode on destruction but saw now other opportunity as prolonging the fight spelled certain doom. The Barbarian Chad managed to inflict enough damage with the Construct-Bane ademantine dagger bought in Torch to kill Hellion.
The resulting Plasma explosion put most of the team very low or unconscious, Caroline who was already out got done in by the blast.

What followed was quick check if the fight was really over and a scramble to stabilize Chad the Barbarian who won the fight for the party. Caroline quickly got stabbed in the hearth with an Cardioamp and with luck or divine intervention made the save to return to life.

Now the party still has all the original members, yet with three of them having stood a short moment in line in the Boneyard. They have survived their first Iron God, and are abhorred with the knowledge that the adventure path is called Iron Gods and hints from Hellion that there are more like him.

You could siphon loot from another area to include in the Vault. Or as I played it, the Vault other treasures were looted with Baraket. The gloves were left behind because didn't detect as magic, appearing as normal gauntlets (artifacts can be fickle like that). Allow the players to find a well hidden message in Thassalonian that suggests these gloves are more than they seem. This message was overlooked by the previous looting party. Gave my PCs a nice hook to investigate this interesting item.

I didn't do this as I feel it completely goes against the story as it was set-up. In the end I just put the rod and diamond dust in there too.

Part of the story as set up is that Roderic due to a combination of sheer luck and skill was able to get into the vault, but due to setting off the traps he had to flee and barely made it out with his life. Narrowly avoiding death made Roderic never want to enter the vault again and made it so he only took Baraket. This is also what the Ghost of Roderic told my players, albeit a lot less coherently.

The vault being difficult to open is important to the story, I know my players well enough that they will start asking difficult questions and will start a hunt to this "mysterious 3rd party" that was able to crack this difficult vault and looted it but did not take the artefact.

"ornate set of gauntlets made from noqual covered in hundreds of softly glowing Thassilonian runes.

What genius would be able to crack this vault and loot it yet would leave the set of gauntlet behind? Unless you'd want players to be really paranoid about the gauntlets, which mine would probably be so we'd lose a lot of gametime while they try to figure out what's with the "cursed" gauntlets .

I find it odd from a loot perspective that in Alaznist’s Vault players can "only" find the Runewarded Gauntlets, no other loot. For the most secure vault in a armoury made to supply the runelords best with suitable resources it seems lacking. Understandable Baraket was once stored here too but from a PC perspective I would find it to be underwhelming & lacking in practical immediately usable loot at the end of a dungeon delve.

My players are on their way towards this dungeon currently and I consider siphoning a part of the loot of area "E4. Barricaded Room" into the vault. For a side storeroom I find it odd how much loot is stacked in that single chest and lacking in the rest of the dungeon, probable most stuff has been taken long since by other travellers finding this location.

I plan to move the Metamagic Rod and the Diamond dust, my players are already prepared with glitterdust for any invisible enemy so I'm certain they'll find the chest. But I'd want to have the vault be more interesting that a minor artifact which will not see really much use except to suppress another artifact later.

I found the PC version and it's a great tool I'm going to use from now on. I have some great fun exploring the app and looking at the possibilities it presents. The way to search all monsters on type and environment is already something I've been missing.

I do notice that some of the last first edition content is missing, stuff like Ultimate Wilderness and Concordance of Rivals isn't in the app.
Is this coming in a future update or is there a way to import the stuff myself in a large quantity?

While currently reading the whole campaign as preparation to start running it soon, I came over a detail in the Godmind in this book that I hope is not much of a coincidence as it would be a stroke of genius if it was done on purpose.

In the digital divine real of Unity, one of the biggest creatures that stand guard is an ICE Linnorm.

In a lot of cyberpunk science-fiction, starting with the book Burning Chrome and Neuromancer both from William Gibson, the term ICE is used as Acronym for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics.

So we've got an Intrusion Countermeasure Electronic Linnorm.

Well best thing I have from experience is what you already found, the Shadowbound corruption.

You didn't see it fitting, but that is the corruption I used for my players when they came into a situation where there was the danger of turning into a Kyton.

There is the Apostle Kyton template from horror adventures too which references that creatures can gain this template by losing to the Shadowbound corruption.

Another option could be re-flavouring the Promethean corruption, as the flesh needing to be replaced and your body falling apart also sounds pretty Kyton like.

Gaze Reflection.

The spell Medusa's Bane seems to do that, complete immunity to gaze attacks and you can end the spell earlier to reflect a Gaze.

As a low level abjuration specialist, I found the schools innate resistance power pretty helpful. With resistance 5 against fire, it's decently harmless to just light yourself on fire to deter attackers and more.

With the fire resistance writing Incendiary Runes upon yourself becomes a good emergency fail-save and a form of fast self combustion. Write the runes on your arm, below your sleeves or so and in case of emergency flash it towards the enemy or a hopefully helpful teammate.

Are you grappled? Flash your Incendiary Runes, fail your own save on purpose and you're now on fire. There aren't much things at low level that would like to keep you grappled while you are on fire.

Annoying swarms to deal with? Have a teammate trigger the Incendiary Runes (from a hopefully save distance for them) or douse yourself in lamp oil and light yourself on fire. The swarm suddenly really won't like to share your square.

Need to intimidate some punks? It should be easy to convince your GM that lighting yourself on fire should carry a bonus to the check. What sane person would light themself on fire and then just stand there without flinching? (Just don't roll a 6 on the D6)

Ah yes, two things with almost exactly the same name but not really related.
I already got my group confused the first time by giving them blessing of Fervor, from all the times I've been using Fervor on myself they were disappointed that there was nothing with swift casting to gain for them from the spell.

HetBlik wrote:

Oh, I found a way for warpriests to cast this while paralyzed.

It requires you to have already cast Blessing of Fervor, which is a good spell so not a hard condition to meet.
Choose the bonus "Cast a single spell of 2nd level or lower as if it were an enlarged, extended, silent, or still spell." at the start of your turn for the silent spell.
Then fervor swift-cast Surmount Affliction, this removes the somatic and verbal components leaving the spell component-less, making the cast a valid action you can do while being paralyzed.

Nope. Still doesn't work. Allows you to cast silent OR still, not silent AND still. So you've only eliminated one of the roadblocks.

Nevermind the fact that making it a quickened spell turns it into a 6th level spell for this purpose, so no longer qualifies for blessing of fervor.

The warpriest class ability fervor already removes the somatic components when using it to swift cast, so the spell Blessing of Fervor is only needed to remove the vocal component.

Also I don't see why one would need the quickened metamagic? The whole point of the warpriest fervor ability is that you can swift cast spells on yourself, that is what the class does.

EDIT: To avoid confusion, there is the warpirest class ability called Fervor, allowing the warpriest to swift cast spells when the target is only the warpriest. There is also the spell Blessing of Fervor that is on the warpriest spell list but is in no way related to the Fervor class ability.

Oh, I found a way for warpriests to cast this while paralyzed.

It requires you to have already cast Blessing of Fervor, which is a good spell so not a hard condition to meet.
Choose the bonus "Cast a single spell of 2nd level or lower as if it were an enlarged, extended, silent, or still spell." at the start of your turn for the silent spell.
Then fervor swift-cast Surmount Affliction, this removes the somatic and verbal components leaving the spell component-less, making the cast a valid action you can do while being paralyzed.

There is Combat Advice that might be worth it depending on the rest of your party.

Would casting Mage Armor on the ghost help?

An invisible but tangible field of force surrounds the subject of a mage armor spell....Since mage armor is made of force, incorporeal creatures can't bypass it the way they do normal armor

Now just bind the forcefield around the ghost with restraints and it can't escape the restraints due to the forcefield.