Hilton's page

I’ve been running this adventure for some months, now.
Roll20 helps A LOT when you’re quarantined :-)
We’re having much fun with RoA, and my players are well into the story, have some personal sideplots and loved Talasantri.
They’re leaving the Deep Safehouse and going to Lionfish Gallery next; I will make some changes here.
First, the last chance ambush; I will insert more enemies and allies, make a bigger scene and run the “go ahead, we take them” piece. Next session we will finish this book, let’s make a big fight in Talasantri and give the players more of an epic feeling. They really don’t need to kill each and every minion.
Next, the Gallery. The scene as written didn’t make much sense to me. The mezlan have more reasons to attack Naqualia than the player characters. I’m thinking along the lines of the players entering the Gallery and seeing a semidevastated place, and Naqualia AND some friends surrounding a spherical force field. She tried to intimidate Vallik, they got into a fight, the mezlan was holding his ground against Naqualia and his guys when someone threw a bead of force, trapping it. She THEN proceeded to coerce Vallik into giving whatever information it had, and the players will have a big fight against Naqualia and her minions, around an immobile mezlan (unless someone disintegrates it’s sphere - it lasts for 10 minutes).
After the fight, Vallik will say little more than the players already know, and offer this knowledge in return of it’s peace; it intends to get some new identity and be left alone.
I believe this will give the characters more foreshadow for Auberon.

I've already runned one adventure path before (Carrion Crown), and after our group ended another (Curse of the Crimson Throne), I decided to run Ruins of Azlant. We started two weeks ago, and today was our second session.

My players' characters are an archaeologist bard (Lara Croft - yes, I know), daughter of an dedicated azlant expert, played by my wife; an undine sorceress who is her best friend, called Erin; a half-elf (aquatic) bloodrager (secretely sent on the expedition by Lara's father to keep an eye on her), based on Momoa's Aquaman, named Torb; an ulfen Hunter, who doubles as survivalist and sailor, called Boris and his pet tiger, Little Vlad; and a halfling oracle called Guri, who is passing for a human child, but happens to be a pathfinder and infiltrated the Peregrine as a clandestine, looking for answers on his own past (he was found as a baby with the corpses of his parents on a lost boat some hundred miles east of Ancorato - like the end of Blue Lagoon, with halflings).

In the first game, they pretty much searched all of Talmandor's Bounty, except the ankheg tunnels, as we had to stop for the day. I allowed them to start today at second level, as they would go meet the Peregrine anyway and the ankheg would be a challenge - and good idea, as Torb almost died (jumped on a hole, the ankheg appeared, got him in a grapple, pulled him under the earth and gave massive damage). They also didn't deal with Silas, and decided to come back with the clerics for help with the Haunt and the Poltergeist. The oracle is pulling his punches, pretending he is discovering his powers during the adventure, as to not appear suspect as he is passing for a 9-10 year old boy with healing powers. They never noticed the clockwork spy (stealth roll was a 19 plus bonus, no one in the party had enough perception).
After killing the ankheg, they made their way through the forest, and I skipped the young boars - the hunter rolled high in Survival, and has a tiger by his side. He found some trails and they already had the incutilis encounter, after all.
I added a third echeneis to stop the Peregrine completely, and it was a tougher fight than I expected, they almost lost Lara.
The shellcracker cave almost killed the bloodrager with the rocks trap (3d6=17 plus some earlier damage from multiple grindylows - almost rocks fall, you die), and the boss challenge was... anticlimatic. Lara won initiative, casted sleep, Brinetooth lost her save, fight ended. They never even thought about interrogating her...
Actually, Lara was WAY more interested in the giant hand of the statue (my wife plays Lara as a fanatic azlant-obsessed archaeologist), so she said something like "we couldn't risk damaging the statue in a fight, so I put her to sleep".
As a group, they're cooperating well enough, and are probably the most charismatic group I've seen, as three of them have high Charisma (bard, sorcerer, oracle), and one have above average (bloodrager), leaving the hunter as the ugly duckling of the party. The social challenges aren't so much of a challenge...
We ended the game today after going back to Talmandor's Bounty and resolving Luetin - Harcourt fight, as we had to stop after some solid five-and-a-half hours.
We are having a really good time with this AP, and they're going crazy with conspiracy ideas about what happened with the first group.
I will add some things later to complement their individual stories (thinking about some halfling slaves running from a certain aboleth, and Lara's father is more azlant-obsessed than her, with much money and personal power, could appear later as another antagonist - someone with much interest in azlanti weaponry...).
Anyway, sorry if my english isn't perfect, as it isn't my first language (I'm from Brazil), and my autocorrect isn't helping me much now.
If all goes well, I will report again - and thanks for your insights and thoughts, they helped a lot in preparing the game.

I disagree.

IMO, the point at the "...only damage taken while wearing the ring is regenerated" part is to not allow someone to just use the ring as an alternative to cure spells, passing it around.

I believe the new book Ultimate Intrigue provides some new good options for getting around the detect alignment spells.

Do keep in mind, if your paladin uses detect evil (and not the move action single target version) it takes multiple rounds for him to know things.

Round 1 is only "Is there evil in this cone?". Round two "How many evil auras are there and what is the strength of the strongest I detect?". Round 3 "What is the location and strength of each evil aura?".

Not really;

As in Paladin:
"Detect Evil (Sp): At will, a paladin can use detect evil, as the spell. A paladin can, as a move action, concentrate on a single item or individual within 60 feet and determine if it is evil, learning the strength of its aura as if having studied it for 3 rounds. While focusing on one individual or object, the paladin does not detect evil in any other object or individual within range."

[edit] just saw you pointed the other usage of the spell, sorry.

I started playing some 22 years ago, and there were few women playing here at the time (Salvador, BA, Brazil). A few years later, we started LARPing (Vampire) and the number of female players rose A LOT (many were already playing, but in smaller groups). I met my wife around this time, a little over 17 years ago.

Today we play in a group that has as it's core two couples (including us) and our main Pathfinder GM, but we all have experience GMing. My wife runs Castle Falkenstein and WoD, I'm on Pathfinder and 7th Sea, etc.

We invite some other friends, male and female, for our games. We have less problems here than other major cities in Brazil; there are many complaints online of mistreatment and sexism in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, for example.

My wife already made some "girls only" games, and I often stay at home with our son so she can go and play (or simply go out with her friends sometimes - so she can keep her sanity).

Sorry if I have a flawed English, as it's not my first language and I'm writing this at work and have to hurry :-)

BBEG insanely strong for the subtier.

5 gp - Vermin Repellent

My group is playing Kingmaker, and at 1st level we found a spider swarm...
My sorcerer was the only one that could do something against it (burning hands), and thanks to this awesome 5 gp repellent the swarm couldn't touch me (lost every single saving throw).

I even saved the disabled and dying bard, just by entering the same square he was in (the fighter repositioned him just before, of course - if I entered a swarm's square I would be dead in a few seconds).

Liked it a lot!

Excellent way to reward GMing, and well balanced.