John Mechalas's page

It also gave them the opportunity to make it clear that the versatile heritages are open for any ancestry. Instead of the "original" elf/human and human/orc assumption.

This is the larger reason, IMHO. The implication that only humans could cross-breed was always a little rude. That, and it's unnecessarily reductive. People's ancestries are way more complicated than that, even in the real world.

First, make sure you know what the player means by "tank". The proper meaning is discussed on the thread, but a lot of less experienced players mean something like someone with a high AC that hits things.

Hard agree. We are assuming your player is working from the same definition of "tank" that we are using here. If it's not what they mean, then we need to know what goal they have in mind. If they just want "high AC and hit things", then that's a completely different build (and there are several different ways to do that).

The rest of this assumes a reach build is something they want to play. And for sure make sure they understand that this build sometimes means "standing still, taking up space".

Could I get a sample of a level 3 Bravo paladin who uses bladed brush with comat patrol / Trip emphasis ?

I assume by "Bravo" you mean "Virtuous Bravo", and that wouldn't make sense for a two-handed polearm fighter with reach. All the bonuses there are for light, one-handed weapons, and...

...if using a polearm it depends on bladed brush, which I would skip entirely. It's another feat, costs you a move action to swap between reach and close-in, and is built around the glaive which is a bad weapon choice. If you want to threaten the squares adjacent to you, use armor spikes. They don't require your hands to be free. (While you could do a spiked gauntlet, the damage is lower, and it could be argued that you lose AoO's with your polearm if you use a gauntlet to attack. See this FAQ on releasing and re-grabbing a polearm. Ask your GM how they would interpret this.)

You can't get Combat Patrol until your BAB is +5 so L5 is the min for a melee build with a full BAB progression. It's also rather feat intensive (combat reflexes and mobility are prereqs, and mobility also requires dodge).

With a 15pt buy array of (14,13,10,10,10,14) with +2 to Cha you get your min qualifying Dex of 13 for Dodge, and +3 to saves via Divine Grace. If you want an extra AoO then dump Int with (14,14,10,8,10,14) again with +2 to Cha.

Feats are: (L1) Dodge+Combat Reflexes, (L3) Mobility, (L5) Combat Patrol

For weapons, either a horsechopper (d10 dmg, 20/x3, reach, trip), a hooked lance (not actually a lance, d8 dmg, 20/x4, reach, trip) or a guisarme (2d4 dmg, 20/x3, reach, trip).

Use the hooked lance if you're crit fishing, the horsechopper if you like higher but swingy base damage, and the guisarme if you just want to be consistent. Eventually, you'll want to take it to +1 and add the fortuitous property to get an extra AoO.

You'll want to keep your armor light (suggest a chain shirt or studded leather) so you don't lose movement. At 4th or 5th level, you'll get boots of striding and springing, and graduate to chainmail or a breastplate.

Then add armor spikes to your armor.

This is just a quick-and-dirty basic build with no archetypes. Someone else might be able to do better.

Agree with Claxon that tanking in PF is difficult. And also with the choice of Paladin: when it comes to durability, they are S-tier.

You might consider nudging your player to an area control defender instead of a pure tank. A reach weapon with trip + the Combat Patrol feat (read the feat carefully and make sure you understand it) is shockingly effective, especially if the party wizard/sorcerer can hit them with Enlarge Person. Even if all you are accomplishing each round is slowing down your opponents' advance, the party is coming out ahead.

Well, the original request was "can a paladin lay hands on themselves as a standard action?", in which case a trigger of "when I get injured" would do.

An immediate action counts as a swift, but the reverse is not true.

Using a swift (on your turn) does not prevent you from using an immediate action after your turn is over.

As others have said, this is incorrect. The reverse is true, using your immediate action prevents you from using a swift action on your next turn, but your immediate action is always available(unless something is preventing you from acting)

OK. I definitely misunderstood the rule here, and this does convince me there's more rules leeway in this edge case.

Something about getting two swifts in a turn still does not sit right with me, even if you are sacrificing a standard via a ready action to do it. It still feels too much like trading a standard for a swift and using loopholes to do it. But it's not as shaky of a loophole as I originally thought.

A swift action not on your turn is indistinguishable from an immediate action. If you used your swift already, you can't take an immediate until the start of your next turn.

Again, we are in RAI territory. What is more likely? That the devs intended a double-swift loophole, or that what you describe is semantical rules cheese?

We're obviously not going to agree on this point, so I'll leave it there.

you need to explain how that is different for a standard action in which you also only get 1 per turn if you already used up your standard (as required by readying an action).

Again, specific overrides general. The rules for readying an action explicitly state you can ready a standard action.

But instead of thinking about it this way, think of readying as a way of delaying a pre-declared action so you can take it later, as a reaction to some event, with the risk being that if the triggering event doesn't happen, you lose the action entirely.

1. If you take a move and ready a standard, and the trigger is met, by the start of your next turn, you have: moved (move action), and taken your standard action out of turn (standard).

2. If you take a move and ready a move, and the trigger is met, then you have: moved (move action), and moved again out of turn (2nd move action)

Neither of these effectively break the rules around the action economy. You have done a standard and a move, or a double move.

If you take a swift and ready a swift, and the trigger is met, then by the start of your next turn you have done two swift actions.

What is more likely for RAI? That the intent is to:

1. Allow you to delay an action until some triggering event occurs, still effectively abiding by the restrictions on what actions you can take in a round.

2. Provide players with a loophole to allow them to double swift.

What you propose is rules cheese and an exploit based on ambiguity in RAW. If you are going to venture down that path, then use other rules to help guide you to RAI.

An immediate action is little more than a swift action taken out of turn, and if you take your immediate action, you can't take your swift action, and visa-versa.

Readying your swift to take place out of turn is indistinguishable from an immediate action.

If your GM allows this double-swift-in-a-turn interpretation, then, great. I would not.

While I agree that it doesn't change a swift action into a standard action, it would still allow you to spend a standard action to use another swift action.

The rules state you cannot take more than one swift action in a turn.

Swift Action: A swift action consumes a very small amount of time, but represents a larger expenditure of effort and energy than a free action. You can perform only a single swift action per turn.

Obviously, this is where the debate about "what constitutes a turn" comes in, and whether "ready action" cheese gets around the restrictions since it allows you to act out of turn. I am firmly in the camp that RAI is you only get one swift or immediate action from the start of your turn to the start of your next turn, no matter how the timing is altered.

YMMV based on your GM.

That interpretation can't be right

It is, though. Per the rules:

Ready

The ready action lets you prepare to take an action later, after your turn is over but before your next one has begun. Readying is a standard action. [emphasis mine] It does not provoke an attack of opportunity (though the action that you ready might do so).

Readying an Action: You can ready a standard action, a move action, a swift action, or a free action.

This is a "specific overrides general" rule. Readying is a standard action, but it lets you ready another standard action. The catch being, if your trigger condition isn't met, you don't get to take it.

So, you can move (move action) and then ready (standard action) a standard action e.g. to attack or cast a spell. But you can't attack or cast a spell (standard action) and then ready (standard action) a move action, because you already took your standard action.

I have to congratulate Tottemas for finding a RAW method for allowing a swift action to be performed as a standard action.

No, they did not.

Readying a swift action means you use your standard action to set a trigger on when you use your swift action. The actions haven't changed.

you can ready a swift action with your standard action

Readying a swift action doesn't replace your swift with a standard. You are just setting a trigger on when you use your swift action.

I think the issue with performing a swift as a standard action is that a character could take two swift actions in the round, which would be OP. There is no rule that lets you take a swift action as a standard.

No. Swift actions are very powerful, which is why the rules don't let you make substitutions like this.

In reality, it'd be much easier to see targets in the light from certain angles than from other angles, and the angle is even more important than the distance. We don't have rules for those angles.

Ah, I see what you're getting at. Yeah, there aren't rules for things like "is the target backlit", etc.

I'd like to point out that you butchered what I wrote to make it seem like you were making a point.

There's no need to be rude. A simple "you missed my point" would have sufficed.

Just note that by these rules, you have a roughly -51,744,000,000 penalty to your Perception check to notice the sun, and that penalty is peanuts compared to ones for the stars in our night sky*: The general rules just don't cover every situation.

Well, remember that the sun is a light source and not an illuminated object, so you are correct there are no rules for it, and the perception check doesn't apply.

But if you want to apply the perception rules anyway? Easily solved! The sun is roughly 36 octillion lumens, aka 3.6 x 10^28 lumens. It's assumed in Pathfinder that you can just see bright light, and a cloudy sky is a good substitute for bright light, and it has roughly 1000 lumens. So using the inverse square law, you can just give people a bonus of sqrt(3.6 x 10^25) to their perception check to see the sun.

While you can see the light pretty easily from far away, you'd have difficulty seeing what is around that light. There are no actual rules for this

There are, though. Perception covers the DC to be seen at all. By default, a perception check to notice a visible creature in normal or bright light has a DC of 0 which is why you we don't typically roll for it. But the rules say that for every 10 feet you are from that creature, the DC increases by 1.

If the light source they are in is bright light, they are visible as normal. If the light source they are in is dim light, then they get concealment from attacks, and can make stealth checks to hide. You could also apply the "unfavorable conditions" rule to add 2 to the DC.

So if a creature is 300 feet away next to a bright light source, it's a DC 30 check to see them. If that same creature is in dim light instead of bright light, it's DC30 (or optionally DC32). If the creature is trying to hide using stealth, then the DC becomes their stealth check + 30 (or 32).

The rules on lighting define what you can see in an area that is illuminated by a light source, not what light sources you can see. There are no rules for the latter, and you'll need to use your discretion. In total darkness, a bright light source can be seen from a considerable distance.

"Additionally, disrupt silence can automatically counter or dispel any magical silence effect of equal or lower level cast upon the same target, such as silence."

Silence would be dispelled.

If you know the target of the original silence effect, yes. If you're just moving one emanation into the other, then no.

John Mechalas wrote:

Perform (dance)

There is no requirement that a bardic performance be auditory. As long as the party can see the bard, a visual performance is fine.

Actually, that is not true. Each bardic performance states what components it uses.

OK, fair. There are some performances that specifically require an auditory component. For those that don't, dance, act, and comedy work as visual-only ones.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/disrupt-silence/

Cast this.....

...but be aware of the limits. Silence is a 20' radius emanation, while Disrupt Silence is only a 10' radius emanation. So it won't completely cover the silenced area. Worst case, you end up with a donut shape area where sound works in the middle but still doesn't reach outside the silenced area. That's good enough for the bard to cast spells with verbal components, but sound still won't reach people "outside".

Perform (dance)

There is no requirement that a bardic performance be auditory. As long as the party can see the bard, a visual performance is fine.

Try deleting your cookies for paizo.com

We are playing Age of Worms as a PF1e conversion. Our GM substituted an entire dungeon in one of the AoW chapters because, many years back in their homebrewed campaign, they actually lifted that dungeon and used a modified version of it as a standalone.

I have no idea if we would have remembered it because that's going back about 17 years or more, but I understand the concern.

I played in our IRL group's Jade Regent campaign from October, 2015 to December, 2019, so a little over four years of monthly sessions. Our GM ran it mostly by the book. We took things off script occasionally, but by and large it was run as written, and the only thing we completely threw out was caravan combat for reasons that are well-documented.

My observations as a player in this campaign are here. I like to think there's some valuable feedback in there, including what worked and what didn't.

We've been playing since 3.0 in the early 2000's, encompassing 5 complete campaigns (one homebrew, and four published). It is my favorite campaign out of all of them to date.

As others have said, this AP was written back in the days when goblins were little more than violent xenophobes that delighted in killing and mayhem. Pretty much everything Paizo had written about goblins in those days boiled down to "kill on sight". If you read through the OGL version of Rise of the Runelords, there's a little sidebar that puts this into perspective:

the PCs should come to think of goblins with equal parts dark humor and worry; sure, they’re comedic in some ways, but they also eat babies. They’re vile monsters, and it’s no good to have the primary villains of an adventure be nothing more than a laughing stock.

So there you go.

Times have changed. Paizo is shying away from painting an entire species with a broad brush like this. So Goblins are now the Paizo mascot, and a lovable, playable race that no longer eats babies. All has been forgiven!

Note that the Hero job is not actually a job. Per the original rules:

Only PCs can serve a caravan as a hero, but doing so does not count as a job role—a PC can effectively serve as a hero and any one other job.

Eliminating Caravan Combat also makes the job of managing the caravan easier. You can drop all of the combat-related feats and statistics.

The players can then concentrate on making the caravan survive the journey across the Crown of the World by allocating their resources towards making it faster and more efficient (the two most important factors that drive total consumption and, in turn, the number of provisions they need to take with them).

- All passengers can do one job per day (can be switched once per day): Cook, Driver, Entertainer, Fortune-Teller, Guard, Guide, Healer, Hero, Passenger, Spellcaster, Trader or Wainwright. They have to fulfill requirements (see original rules).

I would change this.

Spellcaster is not really a job. It is a trait that lets you qualify for other jobs.

Wainwright is not a job. It is only needed when something breaks. There's no point to making it a job, much less a daily job that burns someone's job slot.

Trading is not a daily job. You only need a trader when you are at a settlement. See above.

Caravan Combat

I would just dump caravan combat entirely and replace it with regular encounters. Nothing can fix the fact that caravan combat is boring. There are no tactics, no strategies, no unique abilities. It's just one PC rolling attack and damage dice each round.

You might also find my parting thoughts as a player in this AP to be helpful. I talk about the caravan rules quite a bit, and how we made them manageable.

But note that "manageable" is a relative term. I was in charge of our caravan and it was an enormous amount of work. There are some suggestions and ideas in there that might help your players if you choose to use the caravan rules even without caravan combat (which you shouldn't try to fix, btw, because the published fix doesn't change the fact that caravan combat is boring: it is, literally, just one person in the party rolling dice every round).

Replace caravan encounters with regular encounters.

When do parties normally hit L 5 in this adventure?

Looking through my player notes, we hit L5 as a result of the funeral boat, and the next event for us was the attack on the Temple of Shelyn. Note, however, that we were a very large party at 7 PCs so our leveling was probably a little behind what a typical party would see.

This book is kinda sandboxy so our order of events may not match other parties. Going off the major events, I'd say that most will level shortly after the raid on Asvig's property and either before or during the funeral boat.

In this weekend's game, our characters were in a new city and were going to be there a while, so we asked the GM about renting a house.

It's a little thing I like to call AirDnD.

Anyone got any suggestions for making the final dungeon less of a slog?

As a player in this campaign, I just wanted this dungeon to end. IMHO eliminate two of the dungeon levels in the middle and call it a day. IIRC there was nothing important there.

Edit: I think the bonsai tree was in one of those levels. Just relocate it.

Hmm, a case can be made that the loaner weapons are forfeit, there is definitly a legal way to do that to the benefit of the party.

One of the other players has already solved this: "I am still borrowing it."

And I am OK with that. The loan was a little open-ended, so until they ask for the return of the weapons...they are still on loan.

The most fun needling I did to a Paladin in wotr was to spread, in Alyushinyrra, the rumor our mythic Paladin was a virgin.

OMG that is hilarious. And I would love this! This is what I'd like to deal with IC.

Ababars paladin code is, to be honest, pretty pragmatic, and its focus on anticorruption gives extra leeway when dealing with lawful but corrupt authorities.

And this fits the setting of our campaign pretty well, which is why I went this route. I felt like it was something I could work with, while having the added bonus of a deity that hasn't gotten much airplay in our games.

Let me guess, there was no session zero where the whole team would discuss how will a Paladin of Abadar work in a party of serial violators of law, and property laws in particular?

There was. We've been playing together for over 20 years. We're mostly an in-person group, but we use private forums to communicate between games. Here's what I posted when we were discussing character concepts for the current campaign:

I think the "betterment of society" angle gives me the ability to play a firm but fair paladin, while also allowing for flexibility for when the greater good is served by unconventional solutions. As a player, I can break these down into

* the greater good requires bending the rules (the needs of the many etc. etc.)
* willing to provide indirect vs direct support for actions
* willing to turn a blind eye, and
* won't tolerate

But old habits die hard. Some players look for every angle to get loot or whatever to advance their character.

The most recent problem was around loot. We were hired to do a thing, and we're low-level still and needed some magic weapons, so the person who hired us gave us some loaners. Long story short: we were being used, the guy who hired us got exposed and arrested. And a couple of players wanted to sell the loaner weapons. Gang, we can't do that.

Earlier it was around prisoners. We took a prisoner who surrendered to us. The timing and location was very inconvenient and potentially dangerous for us. Another player wanted to solve the problem by executing them. Come on. I've played characters who prescribe to situational ethics before, but I tried not to entertain that stuff in front of the paladin or the LG party members.

I am not even sure how much of this is "it's what my character would do" vs players just wanting to game the game. Though TBH, both are exhausting.

I am playing a Paladin of Abadar.

Look, I have no illusions about this. I know having a character in the party taking a strict moral high ground can be rough. And Abadar is not exactly a chill deity when it comes to, say, the law. But I try--I really, really try--to not get in the way of the party so that we can all have fun with the game. If the party comes to a decision that requires a little moral flexibility, and I can find a way to justify it without a bunch of mental gymnastics, then I make it work.

But my fellow players...some of them just seem to go out of their way to needle me, and while I know it comes with the territory I am just so tired of it. I shouldn't have to say things like "Can we please not brazenly steal s~## in front of the paladin?"

Certainly not more than once. :(

I am a player in Age of Worms, which our GM has converted to both PF1E and adapted to fit in Golarion.

Our group has been playing since D&D 3.0 in the early 2000-somethings. That was mostly a homebrew campaign. Then we came to PF1E and played Rise of the Runelords, Jade Regent, and Return of the Runelords in that order.

The latter started just before COVID and we ended up going from in-person games to virtual. Fortunately, our GM has used a VTT and some form of remote access since the late 2000's because players are occasionally out of town but still available to play. That made the transition easier.

Age of Worms we are doing as alternating in-person and remote sessions.

I'm also running 2 PbP games.

The first is Wrath of the Righteous which is on the forums. I started as a player, and we went through 4 GMs in book 1. Two had to quit, and two ghosted on us. After GM #4 vanished, I volunteered to step up and run the game. We're in book 2.

The second 1E campaign is just wrapping up Ire of the Storm, and we will probably follow that with Seers of the Drowned City.

I'd say the inclusion of the characters from the cartoon was definitely fan service.

OK, I'll give you that. What it comes down to for me, though, is whether it detracts from the story, or renders it inaccessible to others. And in this case, it did not.

Is there something between fan service and easter eggs? That's probably where I would put this. YMMV.

The showing I went to was nearly full and the families there all clearly enjoyed it - when the lights went up the faces were smiling and/or laughing and talking about it on the way out.

Same here, only add applause, too. And I am sure those were gamers, who left the movie feeling like it had honored the game and how we play it, while also being good in it's own right.

I saw it today and I was impressed. Based on the reviews I was expecting good, but I wasn't expecting it to be this good. They really pulled it off: it's a good movie in its own right, and doesn't need a "for a D&D movie" qualifier.

There is humor in it--sometimes a lot of humor--but it's an adventure picture at heart, once that mines its material (and, in some cases, the experiences as players) for its comedy rather than playing the material for laughs. In particular, it avoids the camp of modern superhero movies by not winking to the audience, or lingering over its gags. You either get the joke or you don't, and it doesn't point them out. It just delivers them and moves on.

The movie takes itself just seriously enough to ensure the story has stakes, that the characters care about what happens, and that the viewer is invested in events as they unfold. But not so seriously that the comedy it discovers along the way becomes awkward.

I think the biggest laughs come from a side quest, and it's here that I believe the writers really understood the game, or rather the players that play the game. They find comedy gold in the exact sort of frustrations that we, as players, have in a side quest, and they just run with it. When the side quest is over, they dial it back.

BigNorseWolf is right about the action sequences. They are well-choreographed, and look like they were heavy on practical effects because most everything--including the CGI work--moves like it has actual weight to it. The fights have actual tension because you don't get that feeling that anything can happen. Characters are bounded by the laws of physics, except where magic intervenes and even there, it is clear they are following some rules.

I think the smartest thing they did, though, was ensure the D&D references were organic and didn't stick out awkwardly from the rest of the movie. There's really not any fan-service here. There are elements, names, creatures you'll recognize if you know the game and its history, but the movie is not pointing them out to you. It's just a fantasy setting, and the writers know it.

The whole thing is a fun romp. Best of all, it's totally accessible to anyone, even those who have never touched the game.

Telerin gestures with a hand as she summons magical flames to light your way, but the magical darkness smothers them completely.

You can tell the spell is active, but the light it emits cannot penetrate the darkness effect. If you move the light into the area illuminated by Darya's aura, you can see the flames.

Round 3
Telerin, Darya, Arloric, Alexa <---

>>> Combat Map <<<

The doors are unlocked and you don't see any signs that it is trapped.

Because dressing up like Apostles of Pain, kidnapping Belimarius's corrupt tax collector, burning down their home as their guards flee, interrogating them, killing them, then burying their body on the cultist's campus in order to frame them for the murder, so it would provoke a confrontation with the Emerald Guard and draw out captain Xoxl so that we could ambush and kill him in order to obtain the cooperation of the rune giants all seemed like the obvious course of action to me.

(Our GM suggested that we had, perhaps, taken the AP somewhat off the rails.)

The caravan rules were not well thought out.

That being said, consumption is the least of the problems. Players can buy a Ring of Sustenance for 2500gp and reduce their consumption to 0. Or use a Sustaining Spoon to reduce total consumption by 4. The typical hand-wave for the flavor text (HA!) of the spoon is to use Prestidigitation, or just anyone with a cooking skill, to provide flavoring to the food it produces. And they should buy or craft a Bag of Holding Type IV to store provisions.

Yes, this is a real "tax" on the players, but...this AP is also a crafter's dream. They will be able to spend so much time crafting magic items that it will more than make up for this up-front cost. The AP even hands them a Cube of Frost Resistance, which makes the environment a non-issue for crafters on the second half of the crossing.

If you throw out caravan combat, which you absolutely should because it is utterly broken and completely boring, players can spend their precious caravan feats on "Efficient Consumption" and "Faster" multiple times. These have a significant impact on consumption and range, respectively.

They should also be springing for enhanced undercarriages (which Ameiko can pay for if they are feeling the squeeze on cash), as increasing speed also increases the caravan's range, and increasing range decreases the amount of provisions that are needed.

The real problem with the caravan rules is that some of them don't even make sense. "Wainwright" is not a daily job. "Trader" is not a daily job. "Spellcaster" is not a job at all--it's just a designation that lets you qualify for other jobs.

But the real, real problem with the caravan rules is that it doesn't reveal the rules of crossing the Crown of the World until right before the players need them. Which means they don't have the tools they need to plan properly (preferably between games so you don't bring a game session to screeching halt) before they start. The players need to know the cold weather rules that will apply, in advance. They need to know the distances, in advance. They need to know where they can resupply, in advance. These are things they should be able to learn even before they get to Kalsgard, or at least once they hire their guide.

But the real, real, real problem with the caravan rules is that they are too much work for you and for the players. Way, way too much work. Unless you have someone in your group who likes spreadsheets, and even they will find it trying.

I think that Nurah's redemption and turning away from evil is going to come down to safety. She was a slave who had a moderately powerful owner who was annihilated by demons. In the face of that kind of overwhelming power, what choice would she have but to serve them if she wanted to keep living?

I ended up using a lot of this, blending it with my own ideas. For those who are curious, this is how it played out.

Yeah, I got derailed from this. And then derailed from the thing that derailed it. And then derailed from that...One might say I am in a continual derailing loop.

I've been making slow progress. But it's very slow.

Thanks a lot for this insight. There are so many points I didn't consider here, especially the AP specific rules (As my DM never mentioned them...).

I loved this AP, but its handling of the caravan rules was a significant strike against it. The rules about weather, travel, and so on are kept from you until book 3, and you need to know this stuff in book 2. It's not like it's some huge secret, either. It just boggles me that it was done in this manner.

Worse, those tidbits are scattered throughout book 3, which doesn't help. If your GM isn't reading ahead and taking notes, these little details get lost. And that just causes more problems for players.

I feel for you. While your GM does have some responsibility here, the bulk of the blame lies with how the material is organized and presented.

OK a couple of things here.

First, your GM should drop caravan combat RTF now because it is absurdly broken. Point them at this thread. Or this board.

The caravan is your mobile base camp. It's where you put your stuff when you loot a dungeon. It's where you eat and sleep. It's where you keep your food and water. It's your shelter in bad weather.

As for Endure Elements, I have bad news for you: it's not enough. Endure Elements only protects you to -50 degrees Farenheit. The temperature at the Crown of the World during winter can be much colder than that once you are on the high ice. It ranges from -40 to -94 F, so Endure Elements only gets you so far. Which means, even with Endure Elements you are making Fortitude checks. But, the book for this part of the AP says that, as long as you are with the caravan and under Endure Elements, you are protected. This is an AP-specific rule. No caravan == continual saving throws against the cold.

As for travel speed, a caravan's base speed is 32 miles/day, assuming a 12 hour travel day with a break for lunch. A character's walking speed (assuming you all have 30' base movement rate) is 24 miles/day. Longstrider will get you to 40 feet/32 miles per day, but it only lasts 1 hour/level. And a caravan can use an enhanced undercarriage to add 8 miles/day to its travel speed. It's a cheap, one-time investment at 500/wagon that pays off indefinitely. You simply cannot travel as fast on foot even committing every spell in your arsenal, every day, as you can if you invest in the caravan instead. But even then, this walking speed assumes you are traveling unencumbered. If I were your GM and you said to me you were walking 3,000 miles, half of which is across the north pole (at 6,000 feet of altitude, in winter time) with all your gear, the encumbrance rules would make a sudden appearance.

And that is assuming your guide would even agree to such a thing. Which they would not.

As for food, you can get away with no food if everyone has a ring of sustenance, or you have enough castings of Create Food and Water to cover everyone.

So yeah, you could do it, if your GM bent the rules and so on, but...this is one of those zero margin things. If you lose a character in the caravan, you have the resources of the caravan to go back to. If you lose a character while you are walking, you could be royally F'd.

Unless you're planning on playing Pathfinder: Civilization after the campaign is over, so what?

Regardless, the PC's are solely responsible for liberating an entire nation from the clutches of demonic forces. They get all the fame, fortune, and political influence and power that comes with that. Or they should. If they don't, then your GM is a jerk, in which case it doesn't matter which AP you play.