Jack Stargazer's page

Looks great so far, I especially like your short explanation of social interaction.

I find the base traits to be a bit boring though, here's what I'm using with my group:

Athletic Champion: +2 to Escape Artist checks, becomes a class skill

Disgraced Noble: +2 to Bluff checks, -2 to all Social skills if target knows your true identity, Bluff becomes a class skill

Rising Star: +2 to Disguise checks while pretending to be someone important or famous, Disguise becomes a class skill

Senatorial Hopeful: +1 to all checks to Influence people in social combat

Taldan Patriot: +2 to Sense Motive and Perception when interacting with Taldan nobility

Young Reformer: +1 to Disable Device, becomes a class skill, can disarm magical traps like a Rogue

A flat +1 to a skill check is fairly weak for a campaign trait, which tend to do a +1 and other things, or a +2 conditional.

The Character creation section would be very large. I can suggest a few:

The following would be very good archetypes:

Empiricist Investigator
Urban Barbarian
Urban Ranger
Alley Witch

Any arcane spellcasting class (Wizard, Magus, Sorcerer, Arcanist) is going to be very well regarded in Taldor with their relationship to Azlant and arcane magic.

This might be the best game for a Vigilante since Hell's Rebels.

Race wise, human is obviously going to be the most well received, with Elves, half Elves and Dwarves close behind. Half Orcs and Tieflings are likely to have some social issues unless they can pass for human.

People of obvious Qadiran descent would be viewed with suspicion.

I suspect Ifrit would work well, not just because of their natural attractiveness, but because in Qadira they are often kept as slaves, and so those in Taldor might be the most fervent converts in comparison.

Obviously any other class focusing on a high Charisma or Intelligence could be fairly useful. You should emphasize how important social skills are in this game, and that probably nobody should be hard dumping CHA.

While yes, it is sort of a free product, it's free in the way that when you buy a car, the keys come with it free. But if they delay getting the keys to you by several weeks, it means you can't use your car for that time, and there's actually an issue.

Which is why a good quick-fix would be to release the traits in some kind of post. They have to be finalized at this point, since the printed book mentions and considers them, and there aren't really any excuses vis-a-vis downstream production issues which could get in the way. Would also let the people who paid for early access to the product, the adventure path subscribers - who are by all accounts the most loyal part of the fanbase - actually use the thing they got early.

In my car example above, this would be like giving them an old fashioned turn-key while the remote starter fancy key is still being manufactured. You lose some functionality temporarily, but you can at least get it started.

Even if the guide itself is a bit delayed, can we at least have a news post with the Campaign Traits, so my players can begin to build their characters? Right now we're struggling with background that will fit them in with Lady Martella, and an assumption that the traits will effect what happens in session 1.

You'd have to rewrite the entire last two books and probably a lot in between as Eutropia is canonically doing other things at the same time as the PCS are doing their thing. Most importantly though:

This might be a case where you have to say no to a PC idea.

I made a Google Doc that consolidates all of the canon ones you've posted here Gug, with a table of contents. Just thought others might want it, it's great and I'm printing it out to add it to my binder.

The only issue is how many more social rounds to give. The book recommends adding 2 social rounds per NPC, but as there are 13 here, that might be a bit unwieldy.

Of course, having choices is good too. I might put together a small list with some basic info about each to give to my players, so they can plan who to approach when (we'll say the guest list was leaked by Martella.

Really? You've never run an AP, then?

I have, but I've had to rebuild basically every encounter and opponent from the ground up for them not to be finished in a single round.

I don't even have players who optimize that much. The encounters just often flat fail because of how many of them are just single target big thing encounters who get one action to the 4 or more of the party.

And they are rarely in places where a charging barbarian doesn't get an attack off for 3d6+Ded.

Jack Stargazer wrote:

They are all terribly built, (everyone but the rogue has 13+ wis and cha. Rogue dumps all mental stats? Really? Wizard has 15 int? Who writes this!) and as said above, I can't see them getting together to start the AP.

They're all built with the heroic array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). Dhampirs don't have an Int bonus, so that's literally the highest Int she could have as a standard Dhampir.

And the Rogue has straight 10s, except a 12 in Cha. That's not dumping on 15 point-buy.

I don't disagree that they aren't super well made, but they're not actually too bad if you limit yourself to the Heroic Array.

Why were they made with the heroic array? Well, that is how NPCs are made by default...maybe they expect them to be used as adversaries.

But they are literally mentioned to be potential PCs. They should be built with PC creation rules at least.

I have honestly never used an array for named antagonists in more than 10 years of playing D&D/PF.

My main complaint is that there is basically nothing the PCs can do to slow down the rebellion. Every event they are gaining 3 or 4 RP, and at best they can take some very OOC actions for characters in their positions to reduce it by 1, every once in a while, or spend like 5000 gp for a reduction by 1.

Nothing that normally helps reduce rebellions actually helps here.

If Thrune was this ineffective at preventing or putting down rebellions, they'd have fallen a century ago.

They are all terribly built, (everyone but the rogue has 13+ wis and cha. Rogue dumps all mental stats? Really? Wizard has 15 int? Who writes this!) and as said above, I can't see them getting together to start the AP.