Karolina Dean's page

So this is much, much later in the AP, so if you want this to be relevant RIGHT now you should use the other great suggestions here.

But in book 6, the Vekker brothers, whose notes lead the party to Xin Shalast, are dwarves from Janderhoff. If you haven't read that far ahead, they discovered Xin Shalast while setting up a gold mine in the area. They came back to Janderhoff and sought investors to help them start getting loots from Xin Shalast. Unfortunately, as outlined in the Spires of Xin Shalast, horrible disaster befell them and they died. Meanwhile, all the dwarves in Janderhoff hate them because their investments disappeared. Most people assume they were swindlers that got away with it.

One of the principle beliefs of Torag is that you must be true to your word, so you could construe this as sacrilege, especially if you tweak this so that the Vekker brothers borrowed directly from the Temple of Torag.

The main problem with this idea is that you might not want to be tipping your players towards Xin Shalast just yet. You can fix this by making it more vague, that the Vekkers only claimed to have found an "ancient Thassilonian dungeon filled with gold". This makes sense from their perspective since it would attract unwanted attention that they found a lost city. It also ensures your players don't get distracted from the main AP at hand to go seeking Xin Shalast prematurely.

The main problem here is keeping him on the trail AND with your PCs. Perhaps the Foxgloves (or Ironbriar) were investors too? Maybe... they even got a small trinket out of it? (A small Thassilonian vase or something, with the Rune of Greed inscribed on it.) You could then have the Foxglove lead branch off to a number of red herrings, to keep the PC as busy as necessary. Maybe get the PCs thinking the Vekkers worked for Karzoug, or Mokmurian.

When the time is right, you could set it up so that the Inquisitor pc is the one who finds the information from the handout from Redwing on their own, rather than getting it from Brodert Quink, through their investigation. This will reveal that the Vekkers didn't just find a Thassilonian dungeon, but Xin Shalast itself! Played right, it will feel almost like destiny, obviously this Torag inquisitor was meant to meet your party and get embroiled in all this conflict, because both roads lead... to the spires of Xin Shalast.[/dramatic]

You're in luck, because most of the book is a big ol' sandbox of optional encounters.

First up, to save time, hand-wave a lot of travel. Just a "Cool, you know where you're going and how to get there? Ok, X days pass. Now you're there."

I would keep the Vekker cabin stuff. It's a REALLY cool adventure, and should only eat up 1 session as written. It's also a refreshing breather from Thassilonian dungeons, after going through the runeforge, which is lengthy.

You can skip the "Queen of the Icemists". I would keep the measures they have to go through to get to Xin-Shalast (following the ghost river, fasting), just don't do this mechanically, just describe what's going on and move on.

Once you're in Xin-Shalast, you are in a big sandbox. Now you have some options:

A. Skip Xin Shalast and go straight to the Pinnacle of Avarice. Maybe some rune giant random encounters on the streets or something. Ignore the "occluding field" stuff.

I don't really recommend that since that can come off as anticlimactic, but if you're really in that time-crunch, it's a possibility.

or

B. Run some of Xin Shalast so they still explore the city.

Instead, I'd reduce all of Xin Shalast to 1-3 encounters. I recommend keeping the Gamigin, Ghlorofaex, and Hidden Beast encounters. You will need to decide how you deal with the Occluding Field.

As written, the group needs 3 rings to get through the field, and then they have to use their imaginations to figure out how to get the additional party members/cohorts through. You can reduce this to one "tuning fork" that the whole party can use together, or you can split the fork into 3 component parts (one on Hidden Beast, one on Gamigin, one on Ghlorofaex)

First, I'd alert the group to the fact that they need a key in the first place. Gyukuk or Morigiv both work for this. I'd go with Morigiv and run through the Hidden Beast encounter. It's pretty fast, and also your PCs get to be the saviors of a whole underground race of morlock-esque people, pretty cool! Then you can inform the players they need to hunt down Gamigin and Ghlorofaex in the Heptaric Locus and his Ghlorofaex' lair, respectively....or just go straight through the occluding field (depends on how many encounters you want in the Lower City)

I would probably handwave all the travel up Mhar Massif to the Pinnacle. Keep the encounter with the Leng Spiders, its kind of important. The rest is not important.

You can slim the Pinnacle down by getting rid of a lot of the extra giants. I would keep at least: Viorian Dekanti (because Chelian is a cool intelligent weapon), Khalib, Ceoptra, the Leng Device. Accompany each encounter with a rune giant, or a few cloud/storm giants.

The Shemhazian Demon and Ayruzi are also interesting but can be skipped, depending on time.

Then run Karzoug. The end!

Hope this helps!

The good:

Makes customizing monsters (adding class levels, templates, whatever) a breeze. Wanna pump up a villain so they're still relevant when they show up again 5 levels later? Easy peasy.

If you run Paizo adventures chances are someone has already made HeroLab files for all the encounters for you. Huge timesaver.

Encounter generator is a godsend when making an encounter on the fly. Calculates CR, gives you a searchable bestiary, excellent. Clunky compared to designing one yourself in prep time, but if you just wanna throw a random encounter with no prep its easy.

Character generation = easy! Pretty much a godsend if you have new players, especially when it is level up time.

Wanna print out a bunch of different character sheets for your barbarian's various modes? A snap.

Got a newbie to casting spells? Print out their spellbook for them. No more leafing through books/googling every turn.

You can use it to roll and track initiative for you, as well as track HP, status ailments, etc. Never have to keep track of 15 goblins' initiative again. You'll remember that Goblin #3 is dazzled while Goblin #6 is nauseated. And so on.

They are really on the ball about bug fixes and keeping it updated with the most recent Paizo content.

Really good at calculating how much stuff is worth. It's a pain to go through a bajillion tables to figure out how much that +2 impervious darkwood buckler is worth so the player can sell it. Herolab cuts down on that.

The bad:

Expensive, unless all you want is the CRB.

Also if you have a lot of devices it gets expensive, and even if you pay you have a limit to how many devices you can use a license on.

The mobile version crashes pretty much all the time (at least on my apple devices). I felt like I wasted my money on the extra license for my tablet since its pretty much unplayable for me.

Sometimes imperfect rules enforcement. If you're willing to just wing it and trust HeroLab (like I do) that's cool, but if you have a rules lawyer at the table and they find out it can be wrong sometimes expect stuff to get over-analyzed. Like 99% of the time it'll be right but that one time it is wrong that might be all it takes for everything to get scrutinized from that point on.

If you do a lot of house-rules or adjustments to the core game system it might have issues, or even 3rd party stuff that isn't supported. You can program in custom feats and classes and things but that stuff is too complex for me.... so I simply don't use a lot of 3pp classes/monsters that I otherwise would.

Don't expect it to be good at tracking inventory, gold, or encumbrance. It has features to do those things but it is clunky enough that simply writing stuff out on loose leaf is more effective. Making magic items (I groan at inputting stuff like +2 flaming holy adamantine longsword) , in particular, is tedious.

Not good at tracking status effects that aren't "normal" like slowed, or sickened. It will be tedious to input your custom "scarlet rotavirus" disease that causes -2 ini, -1 dex, -1 con and sickened for 10 days. Simpler to do that the old fashioned way.

If you use it to export character sheets, if the character is really complex (aka high level) the character sheet template will run out of room and stuff will simply be left off the character sheet.

Overall.... I recommend it. I'm biased obviously since I already bought and paid for it. But I couldn't imagine running a game without it now. I'm way more likely to fiddle with encounters with it. It has saved me a lot of time.

On the flipside, if you are more of a player than a GM then I don't recommend it. You can get equivalent character builders for free, or cheaper, online.

Seconding Tybid - if the player likes the idea, of course - planting the PC as a defected henchman of Nualia sounds great! (Perhaps the henchman PC is way in over their head, like Orik, and didn't expect to be working for a crazy Lamashtu cultist when they signed up). If the player is planning on the new PC to be a total goody two shoes they can be a double agent or something. Then you can have the "henchman" simply stumble across the sleeping players on a patrol, and roleplay out the defection/reveal of the double agent. The henchman PC can be given some private GM notes of backstory on Nualia, Thistletop, and the other henchmen (Lyrie etc) to disseminate to the players.

Of course that doesn't work if the PC wants to be a good-aligned cleric or paladin or something.

I also like the idea of putting the new PC in a prison cell. Assuming the PCs are close to OR are able to fight their way there with only 3 players quickly/without further death. They don't necessarily have to break out on their own, the players can rescue them. Just be sure to put their gear somewhere nearby so they don't have to run around defenseless.

Finally, if the players are too far away from the prison OR if you believe it will be difficult for the players to fight their way to the prison as a three man group, then I'd break character and tell the group to just go back to Sandpoint and rest and pick up the new PC that way. It really doesn't make sense to me to be resting in Thistletop if its still mostly occupied anyway. It's kind of like if a burglar broke into your house, wrecked the place looking for valuables, and instead of getting the heck out of dodge before the owners came back, decided to lock himself in a closet and take a nap. As if the owners would never check the closet in the next 8 hours! Kind of bumbling, eh?

First off, Hi Board, first post from me!

Hi! Oh man. The stuff you did was Nualia is amazing. What a wonderfully fleshed out character! Really love her kid and the ranger leaving over wanting to kill her.

I'm still a newb GM so... I think the most my players could tell you about Nualia is "Crazy half angel half demon chick who wanted to attack Sandpoint with an army of goblins." "Why?" "Dunno, she's evil?"

Ah, well. :)

So far there is one thing that I do regret adding and I'm considering ways to just make go away ...

Whaaaaat? That sounds great! Your player left but her character lives on in your game world.

What are you doing next Karolina?

Wrath of the righteous! With 2 mythic pcs and two normal npcs so hopefully they don't curbstomp it like what I've seen on the boards. But then again considering how often they die compared to other groups on these boards I think mythic might be what the doctor ordered... Especially since they've requested torun with no hero points this time.

And of course it will be "same universe" so they can take a little detour and fight mythic karzoug and reclaim varisia ;)

Finished Rise of the Runelords recently. I figured I’d contribute to this before I got too deep into prepping for our next adventure… I’m a new GM so this is more a list of regrets than tweaks, heh. Hope this is useful to other GMs. This ended up crazy long so I’m gonna spoiler it out, you can click on whatever section is relevant to your interests.

I ran the Anniversary version of the AP.

Book 1: Burnt Offerings

• “Festival and Fire” –
  Spoiler:

  My players were timid and new, and pretty unwilling to roleplay in this roleplay heavy opening scene. I should have been more forward in having NPCs approach them and chat them up to get them to open up more. I also should have gotten my players to actually talk to Ameiko Kaijitsu, since she became so forgettable to my players that they don’t even remember Tsuto kidnapped her.

  I wish I had known about the Swallowtail Festival events listed in the Community Created Stuff Thread (I think…) because all of those ideas were great.

  One idea I had was to introduce the Sczarni at the festival and have a side-plot going on about them through Burnt Offerings, maybe culminating with bringing in Jubrayl Vhiski. It would have been cool, also, to have the group meet an unpossessed Viorian Dekanti, to make meeting her waaay later in the Pinnacle of Avarice more noteworthy. A mysterious poisoning that could be tied to old Pillbug would be a good side quest.

  Finally, tailoring PCs to the campaign is so vital. I had two PCs – a goblin gunslinger and a half-orc fighter, mercenary buddies. The goblin was easy to integrate, since his need to go around disguised, and all the obvious goblin hatred in town made his character very relevant. (The Red Dog Smithy, the dogs went haywire at him, Shalelu, as well as the old goblin-hating stabler were good RP encounters). In contrast, the half-orc had no ties to the setting and a very vague backstory, and ended up getting kind of lost, and as a result very rarely interacted with NPCs, etc. I plan on being stricter about making PCs relevant to the campaign at large in the future.

• “Local Heroes” –
  Spoiler:

  If I were to run this today I would have gone back and ran the Brinestump marsh encounter on the boards, or at least come up with little sidequests concerning the other “goblin heroes”: Rendwattle Gutwad, Big Gugmut and Vorka. My players got derailed and wanted to go through and kill these guys one by one. Having nothing prepped, I panicked, and forced the “kidnap Ameiko” event on them immediately. I should have just let them go galavanting around Varisia for a little bit, but the notion of stating my own goblin heroes intimidated me.

• “Glass and Wrath” -
  Spoiler:

  Tsuto would have been more interesting had he gotten away, instead of getting killed at the glassworks. It would have been nice to explore the Tsuto/Lyrie/Nualia love triangle, and give the players an opportunity to turn Lyrie against Nualia out of jealousy.

  I also should have encouraged the group to leave the glassworks before heading into the catacombs of wrath. They were pretty unprepared for Erylium, so an opportunity to go to the library and research quasits would have helped. Ameiko could have held their hands through this process as a sort of “tutorial to prepping for an encounter”, since she is an experienced adventurer. (“What’s that you got there? Ah… -reads the note- Oh, gross, Tsuto, what have you got yourself into? This sounds bad. What’s this about a quasit under dad’s glassworks? I’m not sure what a quasit is, maybe we could look that up..”) and so on. The idea that you could use in-game resources to learn about an encounter ahead of time STILL seems to be lost on my newbie players, so a “tutorial” was probably needed.

• “Thistletop” –
  Spoiler:

  Gogmurt is more interesting to me as an unlikely ally than as an encounter. I’d have him a lot more willing to defect from Nualia’s side.

  Here’s something I actually changed! My group brought Shalelu to Thistletop. This gave my group a great opportunity to get to know her prior to her becoming a bigger deal in Book 3. She (+ the team) had an epic battle against Bruthazmus. I also had Orik, rather than being hostile, he was extremely eager to defect to the team that took Bruthazmus down. The players later got to know him pretty well and explored his whole backstory concerning the alchemist and the tiefling.

  The “info dump” Nualia research notes weren’t very elegant. If I did it over, I would change some stuff. I would keep the stuff about Nualia’s battle plans and Malfeshnekor in the research notes. Then I would end the book with the characters sitting down with Hemlock and Deverin relaying their adventure to them. When they mention Nualia, Hemlock and Deverin can fill them in on the backstory they are aware of. Deverin could be privy to stuff about the pregnancy, even (maybe she was the priest dad’s lone confidant?) The characters should be able to put 2 and 2 together and realize that she is resentful because of her rough upbringing, and that SHE burned the church down and killed her adoptive father.(if they don’t, an NPC can spell it out, but they should be given the chance to come to that conclusion).

  It is also difficult to tie together Nualia to the rest of the story. I would plant a note that says “In case you change your mind, Love Xanesha.” in Nualia’s things. The idea was the note came with the Sihedron Medallion, but if the players learn this, it can change the way they think about the Skinsaw Murders, so the note should be mysterious. At this point there should be no way the players can follow any trails regarding Xanesha’s name, but hopefully after learning more about her they could drag out that old handout and connect the dots.

  My group did not kill Malfeshnekor. I don’t regret that, he probably would have TPK’d them. BUT I regret not having them re-explore Thistletop to tie that loose thread. I should have waited awhile, alerted the players to Thistletop becoming re-occupied by goblins worshipping a mysterious goblin god, and had then take down the barghest. Buffed up some if theyre super high level.

Book 2: The Skinsaw Murders

• “Murder Most Foul” –
  Spoiler:

  So my group believed Hemlock was pretty much incompetent because all he seems to do is beg them for help, while simultaneously never giving any answers. I think in a new game I’d get rid of the “Hemlock = Quest Giver NPC” thing and have the players find the same information more organically, through NPCs they actually cared about (like Shalelu) as well as rumors and gossip. For example, Shayliss Vinder could have approached her lover in tears, saying her daddy is in jail and her sister was found dead! Ideally THEY approach Hemlock asking for HIS details he has on the case, making him seem less of a buffoon.

  Red herrings are vital for a good detective story, in my opinion. I would DELAY the Aldern obsession notes in preference of letting the players bark up the wrong tree for awhile. The Scarnetti angle, in particular, is great, but was not uncovered by my group.

  Also, the backstory regarding the Chopper is super interesting but did not get integrated into my game. When the Murders are happening, it seems only natural for townsfolk to claim that the Chopper has returned! It would make for a good red herring.

• “The Thing in the Attic” –
  Spoiler:

  This was a great, tense roleplaying session. I played up Habe’s paranoia to the max, having his behavior slowly grow more and more suspicious. Perfection.

• “Walking Scarecrows” –
  Spoiler:

  This should have happened at night, with some urgency to keep players from putting it off til daylight. Navigating the cornfields at night would have been super creepy.

• “Misgivings” –
  Spoiler:

  Prior to leaving for the Misgivings, I should have given the party some base information about Aldern Foxglove’s whole family, through Knowledge: Nobility checks or some other sort of detective work. As presented, my group believes that Aldern was the necromancer, not his grandfather, the idea that the house was haunted by MULTIPLE generations of the Foxglove family was lost on them. A good person to dispense this info is the old

  On the way to the Misgivings, the party was attacked by the Sandpoint Devil. This was a cool encounter to add.

  Finally, the house is still corrupted. It would have been nice to try and challenge the players to return and exorcise the house. A good hook would be that local contractors attempted to burn the house down, but were driven off. I don’t believe the idea that the house could be exorcised even entered their head.

• “Chasing the Skinsaw” –
  Spoiler:

  Good as is, liked how it alerted the players to the idea that the enemy can look like anyone, even themselves…

  Something I tweaked here was I had the players individually be stalked by the Scarecrow golem in hit and runs at night time while they explored Magnimar. This creeped them out.

• “The Seven’s Sawmill” –
  Spoiler:

  Kind of boring as is. I should have had the cultists abandon their tactics and use the environment more, shoving people into the log splitters and stuff like that.

• “Shadows of Time” –
  Spoiler:

  I loved the clock tower as is.

Book 3: The Hook Mountain Massacre

• “In the Hook’s Shadow”
  Spoiler:

  Shalelu was a big deal for my campaign. If your players take even a small interest in her, I would devote some time to a roleplayed out conversation with her where she confides all the drama about her, her mother, and Jakardos. Makes their reunion more satisfying.

  The Graul homestead fell flat for me in delivery. I couldn’t ad lib good dialog for the Grauls, and I wasn’t able to integrate any of their backstory about their hilariously dysfunctional family. I should have brainstormed some dialogue and wrote it down. I only succeeded at one snippet of dialogue, some stuff about ogrekin daring each other to poke “Big ‘Un”.

• “Retaking Rannick”
  Spoiler:

  Good as written. I used the excellent maps in the community stuff thread, they were very gorey and really added to the atmosphere.

• “Down Comes the Rain”
  Spoiler:

  I made an awesome miniature for Black Magga, there is a thread about it on this board! But the encounter didn’t work and it was my fault. So one of my players struck up a romantic relationship with Shalelu. This was the first time he ever showed any interest in roleplaying, so I wanted to encourage it. The bad part was that he kept splitting the party up to do this, to get some alone time in the woods with Shalelu. I used a number of random encounters to try and tacitly tell him to stop splitting the party up, but nothing got through.

  So when the rain started pouring down hard and the player elected to go hide in a cave with Shalelu, and the rest of the party trudged on to Turtleback Ferry, I was frustrated and just launched the Black Magga event on half the group present. The good news, the player learned his lesson and swore to never split the group up again. The bad news, instead of fighting Black Magga, the remaining player was too afraid to engage and had his character stand on a roof far away from her while she threatened a whole building of people like a coward. That didn’t endear the people of Turtleback Ferry to his PC, and the NPC cleric was so frustrated she left over it. This of course made everything even worse, as the “cowardly” player resented the fact that his decisions lead to the loss of an NPC party member.

  In retrospect, I should have sprung some other encounter on the split party, something scary but not TOO scary (like an ogre raiding party perhaps?) and saved Black Magga for when the team wasn’t split up. A teaching moment was sorely needed, but I was too harsh.

  Other than Black Magga, on the way to the dam my group encountered Razmus. He’s a quick little aside in the back of the chapter but I found him a fun character to roleplay with and am glad I included him.

• “Haunted Heart”
  Spoiler:

  A fun, short, adventure. I think a personalized quest for a bard could easily be integrated here with the treasure in the mysterious derelict. In hindsight, since my group had no bards, I could have swapped the derelict out for an abandoned alchemist’s lab to tailor it to my alchemist PC.

• “Harrowing the Hook”
  Spoiler:

  I portrayed Barl as cocky and overconfident, to the point of stupidity. I think it worked well.

Book 4: Fortress of the Stone Giants

• “Stones Over Sandpoint”
  Spoiler:

  What a great encounter! Loved it. For my game, Longtooth was more of an NPC than an enemy, and we had a good Bilbo Baggins-esque roleplay session with him later in the Valley of the Black Tower.

  In hindsight, should have printed a BIG map of Sandpoint with hexes, to make visualizing/calculating movement over the town easier.

• “Journey to Jorgenfist”
  Spoiler:

  Used the Storval Stairs map in the Community Stuff thread. Really helped.

• “Into the Valley of the Black Tower”
  Spoiler:

  This stuff was all a huge pain to prepare since I prepared SO much of it and the players only saw a little bit of it. That said, the idea that the players could possibly negotiate with the various giant camps fascinated me and it is worth keeping that road open for players, even if they go with the murder-hobo route like mine did. The Emerald Codex of the Therassic Order is kind of boring, considering all you do is roll checks to open it. Coming up with some sort of tactile puzzle for the party to solve physically could be cool.

• “Under Jorgenfist”
  Spoiler:

  In my game I tweaked Conna to make her younger and more adventurous. This was mostly to open her up as a party member, while in Jorgenfist, my group had no full casters and I was concerned for their well-being. Anyway, having Conna tag along instead of vanishing and reappearing at the end made her a more interesting character.

• “The Ancient Library”
  Spoiler:

  No tweaks here, a good, if straight forward, dungeon crawl. I added a side quest for the group to escort Brodert Quink to the Thassilonian library, once he learned of its existence. My group was happy to comply…once the Runelord they had just learned about was dead.
  
  

Book 5: Sins of the Saviors

• “The Scribbler’s Rhyme”
  Spoiler:

  In my game, prior to Sandpoint asking the heroes for help, they turned to a travelling paladin, Seelah. She lead a task force into the sinkhole and never returned. The soldiers all died, but Seelah was kept alive as the Scribbler’s prisoner. The players rescued her, and in doing so, recruited her. (Seelah was chosen specifically to help the group against Arkrhyst, who I feared would wipe my group.)

  In hindsight, I should have brainstormed a big list of questions for the Scribbler to ask the party, I quickly ran out of them.

• “Seeking Runeforge”
  Spoiler:

  Ran as written. The travel to Runeforge could be elaborated on if desired, but I just wanted to handwave it away.

• “Runeforge and the Abjurant Halls”
  Spoiler:

  My biggest regret here was not making a bigger deal of the Sin Point System. If I ran this again, I would tailor the different wings to each party member. Rather than the confusing opposition system (its not very intuitive that Pride and Lust are opposed to Greed, for example, my players ultimately never understood the meaning behind the random buffs/debuffs that happened in the Runeforge and it just felt like tedious book keeping) I would portray it as a feeling of extreme temptation to sin in the wing that corresponds to the character’s sins. So a lustful character might have a penalty to will saves in the Iron Cages of Lust as they fight their desires to join to succubi in their revelry. Exactly what happens would depend on that character’s history and behavior in the campaign so far. I think something like this would better live up to the title “Sins of the Saviors”

• “The Ravenous Crypts”
  Spoiler:

  My roleplay encounter with Xyoddin Xerriock was a little lackluster. I think it’s because I had him hunt them down. Maybe better to have the group stumble upon him feasting on the rotted remains of one of the Envy wizards.

• “The Vault of Greed”
  Spoiler:

  Had a PC spawn in after a permanent death using the goldfish here. It’s a good trick to keep in mind if you need new PCs in a jiffy in the Runeforge since it’s so removed from civilization.

• “The Iron Cages of Lust”
  Spoiler:

  I played Delvahine as too hostile, I think. A succubus should have at least tried to seduce them, or ally with them. Mr. Mutt, on the other hand, was great. It would have been cool for her to escort the group into the Shimmer Veils, also.

• “The Shimmering Veils”
  Spoiler:

  No changes. The mirror of opposition thing was a memorable fight.

• “The Festering Maze”
  Spoiler:

  I don’t know if this is explicitly stated, but for the parts of the maze that are just waterways, I made them pipes completely filled with water, so that the players would be forced to swim in the horribleness and couldn’t just cheese their way out of it by flying everywhere.

• “The Halls of Wrath”
  Spoiler:

  The Warriors of Wrath and Sinspawn Axemen fights are boring. Probably better to replace these with more powerful individals, like champions, accompanied by a few axemen/warriors . Athroxis on the other hand was fun.

• “Weapons of Power”
  Spoiler:

  Ran as written. The Karzoug statue fight was awesome.
  
  

Book 6: Spires of Xin-Shalast

• “Seeking Xin-Shalast”
  Spoiler:

  Ran as written. I appreciate that they gave multiple roads for the PCs to get the information, rather than relying on Brodert Quink to play quest giver. My group actually went to Janderhoff to get more information.

• “Whispers in the Wind”
  Spoiler:

  Ran as written. This was a great adventure. Only bad part: considering so much of the chapter is sandbox, it is hard as a GM to live up to the Vekker cabin while in Xin Shalast.

• “On the World’s Roof”
  Spoiler:

  Ran as written. The Icemists are treacherous if you keep up the survival checks. A character almost drowned.

• “Xin-Shalast”
  Spoiler:

  The huge sandbox part. I minimally prepped for everything, just prepping encounters, and planning to draw maps as we went if they explored the unmapped buildings. A more motivated GM could really bring this place to life and spend a lot of time in the Lower City, but I was not that GM by this part of the AP. If you are worried about your players getting distracted, what I did was gradually increased the visible numbers of giants in the lower city as time passed, to give the impression that Karzoug was nearing his goal. Then, once the PCs liberated the skulks, I had Gamigin and Ghlorofaex actively seek the enemies out as assassins, rather than having them sit in their lairs lamely for the players to root them out. I think this made the exploration of Xin Shalast more action packed, as enemies were constantly seeking the players out to kill them (sometimes when they slept!), rather than the other way around. I also straight up told the players (through Gyukuk) that there were three generals, so they didn’t waste unnecessary time looking for the 4th ring.

• “Scaling Mhar Massif”
  Spoiler:

  I didn’t want to use the cold weather/suffocation rules so… I didn’t. Since the players basically flew straight to the top (after using Control Weather to remove any chance of wind or treacherous flying conditions) it would have translated to a tedious amount of skill checks. So I ruled that the Elixir of the Peaks they got off Morgiv made them immune to high altitude conditions.

  Additionally, once the group was through the occluding field, I stopped keeping track of what the field did to people inside of it without a ring on. Didn’t want to have to keep track of more stuff.

  I didn’t prep anything for the additional towers except a lone encounter with a Mithral Golem since I figured they’d make a straight beeline for the Biggest Tower. They did.

• “Pinnacle of Avarice”
  Spoiler:

  The “gauntlet of giants” where all the giants rush to attack the heroes was tedious, and long, and hard to keep track of, but it was SO worth it. It made for an epic fight against a literal hoard of giants as soon as they got through the front door.

  I mentioned earlier that I regret not introducing the PCs to Viorian Dekanti, pre-possession, earlier, as it would have made the encounter with her more interesting. However, Chelian made up for it. I had the sword send telepathic messages to each player (using private GM-Player notes) egging them on to fight each other for the sword. The players took the bite and it made for great roleplay.

  Additionally, in the prison, there is a blurb that says: “If during the course of the adventure, a significant NPC escaped from the PCs (such as Barl Breakbones, or even an ally who vanished at some point), feel free to place that character in one of the two prison cells here.” I took the opportunity to plant my players original characters from the beginning of the AP (who died in Book 2) in these prisons… they were thought dead but they were wrong! That was a pretty cool surprise, I think.

  
  
• “The Eye of Avarice”
  Spoiler:

  Prismatic Wall was way more effective than I planned it to be. I don’t know if I would use it against my particular players again. At least not by plopping it directly on top of them like I did.

  My players also failed to understand the meaning of the Anima focus, the runewell, and the soul lens. I think putting some research notes in Khalib’s quarters would have gone a long way there.

  
  

@Gark

I'm planning on them happening concurrently. At some point during WoTR the new heroes will learn about Karzoug and will be given an opportunity to save Varisia. :) I haven't ironed out when will be an appropriate time, though, since mythic tiers are going to make these heroes more powerful more quickly. Karzoug, now fully reborn, will be given some mythic tiers to signify his increased power.

One of the major NPCs in our RoTR was Seelah, a paladin of Iomedae, who may make a small cameo appearance as a low lvl Paladin before embarking to Varisia. (When they met her she was already lvl 12).

I think you'll have a better go at it nerfing some of the encounters than buffing your PCs, and going with Tangent's idea of adding a GMNPC. I disagree that they necessarily have to be healing/buffing focused - I think that you should learn what classes your players plan to pick, then add a GMNPC of the class that covers their weaknesses. If they don't have a support-based PC already lined up, then a pacifist bard is a great choice. If they need, say, a big dumb fighter more, then that might be better, or an arcane caster with a very small spell-list. You should not need to alter the first fights in the game...likely not until

I did not like controlling GMNPCs either (I felt I was contributing too much to the fight, it was hard to keep PCs from metagaming based on my actions). So after GMPCing through the first book, we moved over to letting them control the characters in combat. If you are going to have to control them no matter what, make your life easy and restrict the kinds of options they have in combat.

I would consider using Hero Points to help mitigate death. Hero Points were pretty much essential in my game, but like I said, my 2 players were also new to the system on top of everything. Without Hero Points we would have had over 10 permanent character deaths across the whole campaign, a rather demoralizing prospect for new players, but with them we had 3. They are talking about attempting without Hero Points next campaign. I'd talk with your players about how they feel about the Hero Points system.

So this is my final contribution to these obituary boards. Hope you guys have enjoyed our contributions to this thread. I have really enjoyed everyone else's stories and they helped me prep for my own games by knowing which encounters were potentially more deadly than others.

We'll be moving on to Wrath of the Righteous (voted in by my players). ...Wish me luck heh.

Name of PCs: Crosis, Himmelsdorf, Seelah, Kyra, Ayruzi (TPK)
Race/Class/Level: Respectively... Human CG Bloodrager 7/Dragon Disciple 10. Elf CN Arcane Archer 4/Ranger 12/Sorcerer 1. Human LG Paladin of Iomedae 17. Human NG Cleric of Sarenrae 17. NG Planetar, Angel.
Adventure: Spires of Xin Shalast
Catalyst: BBEG
Story This is going to be crazy long but I kinda wanted to immortalize it for our group.

For Xin Shalast I used Flip-Mat: Mountain Terrain for most of the generic fights on the mountain. One side has some little towers on it that I could use as building depending on where they were. Like in particular they encountered the Leng Spiders near "the Teeth" and I used the towers as two of the towers of "the Teeth", size discrepancy be damned. It was the most useful flip-mat for the whole book since its almost all wintery terrain, and was pretty invaluable for the Vekker stuff...though it is out of print and hard to find, you can buy the pdf and print your own copy still.

For most of the lower city I used a generic "city street" mat I printed out and glued to posterboard that I use for all "generic city street" encounters in different campaigns. It has some random buildings on it that, while smaller than they should be (even when I made them 10 ft squares), get the point across should I need to have an enemy walk out a door and pounce the group. I think that there is a Paizo city street flip-mat but I don't own that one.

I used the Flip-mat "city gates" for the gates of Xin-Shalast (Krak Naratha) but I use that for pretty much all "you're at the gate!" encounters (also used for jorgenfist and fort rannick ha)

My group went up to Shahlaria. I used the flip-mat:watch station for that, because it has a courtyard, and they basically fought an army of giants that erupted from building into the courtyard. I told them the squares were 10ft squares (so it would be giant-sized) and that Shahlaria went farther than what the map looked, but it was mostly deserted except the rooms near the courtyard (aka what was on the map). They later opted to sleep inside Shahlaria, I switched to flip-mat: keep for that encounter (they were ambushed by the Ice Devil).

For the Golden Road (that leads up the mountain) I reused a fan-made map of the Storval Stairs...you can find it under the community made stuff sticky on the boards, or just by google image searching "storval stairs map".

So that's the stuff I actually used, now for the stuff I prepped but never took out. I was just going to use the flip-mat: arena instead of the Heptaric Locus corner map and have Gamigin up in the VIP seats. For the Tangle, I had the map pack "forest trails" that I was going to use, just randomly drawing tiles, with survival checks to avoid getting lost in the labyrinth.

During our sessions no other buildings were explored. I was ready to draw a generic looking temple/building/whatever on the back of a flip-mat if needed. I think there is a flip-mat: temple and flip-mat: warehouse that would probably cover most of the smaller Xin-Shalast buildings.

That basically covered all my maps so I didn't have to draw anything. If you wanted a really deluxe campaign a motivated GM could imagine their own maps and draw stuff out themselves, but I use these APs because I have limited prep time in the first place! So I shortcut that kind of stuff as much as possible. And for good thing too, I would have been bummed if I took the time to draw out an elaborate map of the Tangle only to have my group completely skip it!

Hey! How experienced are your players and what is your party composition?

I have a group at the BBEG (just had a failed attempt last night lol) of 2 players.

We went with 2 NPC aids. I make them go find NPC aids from the world through roleplay (they're running with the iconics Kyra and Seelah right now, Kyra who they met at the festival at the very beginning, Seelah was rescued in the 5th book).The point of them being external NPCs keeps the players from feeling like they're roleplaying 2 characters. They pretty much do what they want with the NPCs in combat (as long as they don't order them to do stuff outside of their nature) but they don't control the NPCs in any other way. The NPCs are there because their goals align, so if they drift off the path, the NPCs may leave.

At first I tried to run them just the 2 of them but with action economy + their choices of classes + being totally new the the Pathfinder system (Gunslinger + Fighter) the group wasn't going to stand a chance. However for your group, if they are experienced enough, and WANT to form a balanced enough 2 player party (can they heal themselves? is there at least 1 caster? is there a guy who can deal with locks and traps? how about knowledge checks?) they might enjoy the challenge, ideally with help from the Leadership feat. However, my players wanted to be a gunslinger and fighter and not obsess over optimizing to 2 powerful classes to cover the 2 players missing at the table, and I wasn't going to force them to play something they didn't want to play. YMMV.

I would ask your players what THEY want. Tell them if they are just two players, even with mythic or gestalt rules, they stand a good chance of struggling in certain areas of the campaign due to action economy. I don't know enough about mythic/gestalt rules with 2 PCs to know if that would yield a fun and balanced game. If they seem intrigued by the difficulty because they consider themselves optimizers/power gamers, then give them a chance, if the struggle becomes too hard later you can always introduce NPCs or DMPCs or additional PCs later. If they are all like "well we were thinking rogue + monk! Whee!" then just go ahead with additional NPCs to fill the missing holes in the party. A campaign is a serious time investment to go into, so I want my players to have a lot of independence in character design, and I'd be sad to hear if my players went "well...I wanted to be X but I don't know if that's powerful enough for our 2 player RotR so...".

I would say my biggest concern with having 2 OP gestalt/mythic pcs instead of 2 "normal" PCs + 2 NPCs would be the combat game devolving into rocket tag really quickly.

The Rise of the Runelords card game tipped our group over into trying out the Pathfinder RPG and playing the adventure path for the first time. We had been talking about trying a tabletop RPG for a long time but becoming intrigued in the story hiding behind the cards in the card game got us to commit to learning the core rules, buying minis, all that jazz. (I'm admittedly the only one in the group who has never tried tabletop, the others have played a small amount of D&D...but nothing like what paizo's APs offered).

I bought the entirety of the Runelords card game but we never got past adventure 3, since all of our game time has been switched over to tabletop time. We plan to play through the card game after the AP is finished (we're almost done, knocking on big K's door now). The card game is a pretty cool way to recap adventures, and remember fights that were otherwise forgotten.

As for S&S, the original plan was to beat RotR, then do the S&S AP alongside the card game. But now I think I'm going to let the group pick what AP to do next (I GM). The group is pretty enamored with the Varisian setting and seems to be leaning towards the sequel, Shattered Star. We like pirates but I don't know if we like pirates enough to commit another 1.5 years~ towards pirate games! If we do not go on to the S&S AP we will not be buying the card game.. not enough time to play the card game, and the card game has been more fun knowing the story behind it (something that could be solved with more flavor text maybe?).

So I guess TL;DR - we might not be spending money on S&S but that just means our group is spending money on different Paizo products instead.

Love it!

I probably would have ambushed the group with Aldern+some ghouls. Unless the group managed to wipe out like every ghoul at the farmstead and in the house. And unless that would have felt too lethal.

I really enjoyed how you kept the monk PC around rather than making them sit around for a whole session. That's really clever. Did ghost monk have to go sleep too? I would have imagined him a rockin' watch.

Offering some perspective: I'm running a group of newbies to tabletop, 20 pt buy. (it is 'supposed' to be 15 pt buy but since theyre new i upped it). They do not use the internet to build their characters, basically just the CRB and APG, and more recently, UC and ACG. I've directed them in the direction of some of the better feats and spells. We're at the very final dungeon of the game, and across the entire game we have had 24 deaths, 2 PCs brought back quickly with breath of life, and two TPKs. We use hero points, or else I would have started toning down all of the enemies (or at least the save DCs for some spells/traps) in an effort to stop the deaths. The hero points mean that we have only had 5 permanent character deaths.

In contrast, I've seen reports on here that more optimized players have breezed through with only 1 or 2 deaths across the entire campaign.

That being said,i'd chalk up about half of our deaths to poor player decisions. Splitting up the party, kicking doors in, forgetting about their own spells and abilities, and sleeping in the middle of enemy territory are all common things that have caused deaths. The other half are attributable to the innate difficulty of some of the encounters in the AP. (Or just bad rolls.)

I'll echo everyone else here saying that you need to give more info if you want help. I can't even tell you if what you're experiencing is normal or not without knowing how deep into the AP you are. 8 deaths woudn't be TOO strange if you told me you were in the middle of book 2. If you haven't finished the first book, though, it is very surprising.

There's seriously a lot of stuff that could be causing your problems.

>Poor party composition.
>Poor player builds
>Poor player decisions
>Legit difficult areas of the AP (there are a few encounters that are notorious player killers)
>Under-leveled PCs
>PCs under wealth
>GM playing the enemies as "too smart" (there are several encounters where enemies are given pointedly bad tactics to tone them down, if your GM ignores them this could be problematic)
>Bad luck

In any case, how do YOU guys feel about the amount of death in your game? If it is hurting your fun, you should bring it up to your GM. If you enjoy the adventure being especially deadly, then there doesn't seem to be a problem! (Maybe keep back-up character sheets around!)

Razmus was actually a pretty big part of our campaign and a major npc. The group encountered him on the way to hook mountain. I as gm alerted them that they suddenly came upon a valley of nothing but broken trees as far as the eye can see. The ranger in the group perked up and rolled survival, found hill giant footprints. They followed the prints. Since the trees are all broken, Razmus saw them from far away. He bellowed out a warning, demanding that they leave, in giant. The ranger happened to know giant. They tried to appease him in an attempt for information about hook mountain. Successful diplomacy checks later, and some role play, they learned a little about hook mountain and the Kreeg clan. He was openly hostile at first, but diplomacy got him friendly. I depicted him as mostly wanting to be left alone, inspired by the Incredible Hulk. Really angry but just wanting to be left in peace. About as smart as hulk too. I depicted him as pretty disdainful of ogres, being a hill giant and all, and he griped about the hill giant who thinks he's an ogre in particular. They asked why he's smashed all the trees, he said he liked seeing people coming in his new home. He mentioned he hates his new home what with him constantly being harassed by black rangers and ogres and trolls. They asked what happened to his old home and he told them an evil stone giant named mokmurian conquered his tribe of hill giants and took his home after Razmus refused to join his army. The group was immediately sympathetic, and thought they had stumbled onto a sweet side quest to get his sweet weapon. As gm it was cool to name drop mokmurian before they realized he was a major foe. They told him if he helped them take down barl break bones they would help him with mokmurian. He agreed.

It's worth mentioning I have only two pcs and they had recently angered their npc cleric into leaving them (disagreements over how to deal with the black arrow traitor, she's a cleric of sarenrae, not hard to connect the dots!) so I felt they needed the help. They're new to pathfinder and very unoptimized.. With a more experienced party I would have had him hand over the weapon instead. They ended up sorely needing him, and his ability to cleave effortlessly through waves of ogres endeared him to the team. He ultimately accompanied the group to jorgenfist (he was not at the battle of sandpoint for obvious reasons) and got to sink his hammer into mokmurian and avenge his whole dead family. I also was able to use him to provide some highly biased and amusing insight as to how other giants lived on their travels. For example he alleged that rune giants were obviously ancient hill giants, wasn't that obvious to everyone? In the end Razmus was permanently blinded at jorgenfist, and they personally escorted him back to his old home somewhere near the storval stairs in between books 4 and 5. The group still talks about him and they plan to cure his blindness after karzoug was dealt with.

My group is in the final dungeon of the game. Stuff is going rough, but I think they're gonna pull it through in the end. Three deaths last session.

PC Name: Kyra
Race/Class/Level: Human Cleric of Sarenrae 17
Adventure: The Spires of Xin Shalast
Catalyst: Disintegrate

PC Name: Crosis
Race/Class/Level: Human Bloodrager 7/Dragon Disciple 10
Adventure: The Spires of Xin Shalast
Catalyst: Inattentiveness (+ Viorian Dekanti)

PC Name: Kyra
Race/Class/Level: Human Cleric of Sarenrae 17
Adventure: The Spires of Xin Shalast
Catalyst: Rescue mission to save Crosis partially foiled by storm giants

Sounds like you have everything under control! Looks like a good turn of events to me.

I would assume that the group could use a sense motive check to determine he is charmed at any time they encounter him. I don't think I would prompt them to, though. If the bard thinks to use their sense motive, which they seem to have invested ranks into so they probably will, then they find out, otherwise the secret continues. Either way, all the group would find out is that there is someone else pulling Ironbriar's strings from the shadows, and will probably wildly speculate about what is going on. Sounds like fun gaming to me!

The group shouldn't be in a position of power at this point to really condemn him publicly in any way, at least without damning evidence.

The worst thing that could happen is the group gets derailed in order to investigate Ironbriar...which isn't really that far away from what they should be doing at the point in the game anyway. I would respond to this by initiating the Skinsaw murders to distract them. Either way, you seem more than capable of keeping the group rolling in the correct direction.

I don't think there are any rules that specifically allow that to happen.

In my games, I house-rule to allow the players to resize gear using a magical crafter or blacksmith in town for a small fee. (Usually somewhere around 10-20% of the item's value, depending on who they're paying to do it.) Otherwise small races struggle to find gear for them, like captain yesterday states, and also a lot of otherwise awesome finds become unusable due to being large-sized or whatever.

Ahh, so it's a little rougher than I thought. I thought the saves were kind of benign for this late in the game, but if they go out once per minute for unattuned creatures, the low DCs make sense. Thanks for pointing that out. I don't know if I'm going to enforce that, I'll likely just house rule that if you got through the field in the first place, you're attuned, regardless of if you actually have the ring on or not. (Probably gonna chalk it up to the domineering weapons they're all carrying.)

I'll probably subject freshly summoned creatures to an initial pair of saves, or something, though.

Thanks for the catch!

Yes. I had a player take the campaign trait about the Sandpoint Devil, so I wanted to oblige him. I bought the Pathfinder pre-painted mini, and used it as a random encounter before the Misgivings, party was level 6. Probably should have waited, the goal was to make him deadly and dangerous, but not unkillable. My newbie group rushed in when I gave them the surprise round, didn't buff, failed the knowledge check, and the fighter got flattened. The rest of the group fled. They used hero points to resurrect the fighter.

Later on, the fighter died permanently to TPK, and his brother + step-brother were in the new team. They waited until during some downtime after Hook Mountain Massacre, so at level 10 they went out looking for him. The ranger/arcane archer tracked him down, and this time the Sandpoint Devil was flattened. They had him stuffed, used a Sihedron Medallion to keep his corpse from rotting, and displayed it in front of the church in Sandpoint.

Every time I put my players across the field I made them do the will save in the book. As written, the text only requires that you make the will save if you attempt to press up against the field without a ring. But I wanted to remind my players that there are other dimensions at work here to foreshadow the Leng stuff, so I lowered the DC by 3 and made anyone who crossed the field at all experience the effects.

No one failed the save, but it was enough to encourage the players to avoid crossing back and forth willy nilly and make saves over and over, for fear of whatever could have happened to them had they failed a save.

But no, as written, there does not appear to be anything to keep one person from crossing back and forth with 2 rings as often as they wish....I just personally as a GM wanted the field to be more dramatic than just that so I ad-libbed the finger stuff. (The players themselves voiced that they expected the character to lose his fingers...so I obliged.) ;)

Ideally, your PCs will wander town doing things they need to do (shopping at blacksmith etc) and you can organically introduce NPCs while they do so. Like if one PC decides to go to the blacksmith, as he leaves, have an NPC challenge them to the hagfish challenge. Or if they're responding to Sheriff Hemlock's summons, as they arrive at his office, have them catch wind of the tail end of a heated argument between Hemlock and his brother over Hemlock missing a Shoanti holy day.

If the PCs are just sitting there going "uhhh so what do we do next?" then give them a list of options to choose from. Like, "Well there are lots of things to see in Sandpoint. Do you want to go to the Fatman's Feedbag, the Pixie's Kitten, or maybe check in with Father Zantus at the new church?". The goal here is to keep the players driving the story, not you.

If that doesn't work, then just parade NPCs to the PCs and have them introduce themselves. They are the goblin slayin' heroes after all so they will be somewhat of a curiosity for those first couple of days anyway. You can have relevant NPCs approach the PCs with work. A "brutish" or roguely PC may be given an unsavory job by Jubrayl Vhiski and introduce the Sczarni, a bard could get a job from Cyrdak Drokkus, a ranger a job from Shalelu to clear out goblins, a priest a job from Father Zantus, an alchemist could meet Pillbug Podiker. These will ideally be quick encounters resolved in a few skill check rolls or brief combat, but will help introduce your PCs to residents.

At first, you will just want to introduce several NPCs and see which ones the players find interesting and want to learn about. For example my party ranger immediately was interested in Shalelu (they were both elves) and chatted her up, which eventually lead to romance between the two. Once you've narrowed it down to a few, then you can brainstorm ideas to try and weave their backstories into the overarching plot so that the players can learn more about them.

WARNING: SPOILERS

My group is about to wrap up this AP so I am full of retrospect when it comes to GMing rotrl.

So first up it is good that you are trying to bring Sandpoint to life. Sandpoint is incredibly important when it comes to making this AP shine. You want your PCs to care about Sandpoint and its inhabitants, since they will be called upon to save Sandpoint time and time and time and time and time again. If they don't like Sandpoint they may get frustrated at being forced to hang out there. The set-up in Burnt Offerings (basically everything up to the Erylium dungeon) is roleplay fodder to get your players set into Sandpoint. So here are some thoughts:

1. "Usually I just handwave a trip to the store." Don't do this in Sandpoint! That's fine in Magnimar or wherever else your team goes. But in Sandpoint the blacksmith's name is Das Korvut and he runs the Red Dog Smithy. (it is testament to how often my team has spoken to Das Korvut that I have this knowledge off hand haha). While in Sandpoint, roleplay out all your interactions with the populace. Make your players address people by name, to make them care, or at least remember the names of, the people whose lives they will be saving.

2. On that note, have you thought about Pathfinder face cards? These are decks of cards that have Pathfinder NPCs on them and blanks on the backs. You could probably print out your own if you can't find a copy online. They let your players see the game art, something that is hard to do unless you use digital aids like Roll 20. Seeing the faces of NPCs makes them more memorable and lifelike. Before every game, my players go through every face card, name the NPC, and say something memorable about them. Like "This is Mayor Kendra Deverin. She gave the opening speech at the festival last session!" and so on.

3. Print out a map of Sandpoint and have it available to your players to help them explore the town. I personally blew up a huge map of Sandpoint and glued it to posterboard. We lay the map of Sandpoint out on the table when the players arein town. Encourage them to obtain permanent player housing, whether its through an arrangement with Ameiko Kaijitsu, or buying/renting a cottage at reduced rates.

4. Ideally your players will want to wander around Sandpoint and talk to NPCs themselves. If they are shy, new to roleplaying, or otherwise just used to "adventure hook -> dungeon -> kill monsters -> loot/exp!" RPGing, this may feel like pulling out teeth. So bring this up out of game that you'd like them to take incentive and speak to NPCs more. But of course be prepared to have NPCs approach your party out of the blue and chat them up.

5. To start off with, narrow your scope to a few NPCs that you want your party to know a lot about. There are a LOT of NPCs in Sandpoint so don't feel pressured to include every single one in your campaign. Some of my favorites are "Pillbug" Podiker, Ven Vinder, Shayliss Vinder, Ameiko Kaijitsu, Shalelu Andosana. Make sure these NPCs show up consistently over several sessions to build a sense of continuity.

6. To convey NPC backstory, do it through dialogue and small quests, rather than infodumping. If it is part of a give and take dialogue, pcs will be more likely to remember the story. Encourage your players to take notes on NPCs if they don't already (this is another good use of the Face Cards I brought up earlier). One good way to get people talking is to have NPCs ask questions of the PCs themselves, such as by asking them questions like "Where are you from?" "Where did you get that sword?".

7. Encourage romances if your players will bite for that sort of thing with NPCs. Any high charisma players should probably get hit on by an appropriate NPC.

8. The players should direct the story, not you. This means give the players OPTIONS for how to interact with NPCs. Ask your players things like, "How does your character feel about this NPC?
" or "What do you think about that?". Try to find places where the players have to commit to a choice. For example, in Hook Mountain Massacre, in Jakardos' backstory there is tension between him and his step-daughter, Shalelu. In my game, Shalelu was openly hostile towards him and blamed him for his father's death. After the players know both sides of the story, force them to take a side and get involved in the resolution. Do they defend Jakardos or Shalelu? Do they have the diplomacy skills and initiative to maybe bring the two together? Another example is the dealing with the traitor in Hook Mountain Massacre. According to Black Arrow law, the traitor should be put to death. Challenge your players to have an opinion on this capital punishment. Will they interfere, encourage execution, or try to stay out of the way?

So to tie it together here is an example of how to try and weave story in with dialogue -

The group has just explored the Catacombs of Wrath and the town is abuzz with rumors about the monster-infested catacomb they found under the glassworks, and how the heroes saved Ameiko Kaijitsu, and her traitor brother. Have Cyrdak Drokkus, the bard behind the Sandpoint Theater, approach the heroes and ask them to recount their heroics so that he can compose a play about it. Have the heroes actually verbally describe all this in their own words. (Maybe some of your players will disagree about the usefulness of a certain party member..for example.) Describe Cyrdak as flamboyant, astonished at the heroes' story, frantically taking notes. Have this become an ongoing thing, every time the heroes come to Sandpoint after an adventure, Cyrdak wants to know the nitty gritty to add to his play. The second time they recount a story, have them come to the theater, where Cyrdak introduces them to his (female) fiancee. Have her be there the next time also, to reinforce her in the player's mind. Then, some time later, have a perception check to have a character catch Cyrdak with his lover, Jasper. (possibly leaving Jasper's home looking disheveled or something on those lines). Cyrdak comes up with some half-assed excuse, naturally, and begs them to keep this hush hush. Challenge the players to make a choice and address the "revelation" that he is in fact gay. Do they blackmail him? Do they tell his fiancee? Do they keep his secret?

If you have a bard in your group, they can become involved in Cyrdak's play. Eventually have the heroes actually come in to watch the play that stars themselves! Recount their adventures back to them...embellished, of course. Ask them afterwards how they feel... honored? Embarassed?

In this example your players are kept the star of the story, not Cyrdak, yet the players slowly learn more about him over time, rather than in an info dump. The best way to do this is the "over time" part - focus on a few NPCs and have them show up constantly. Ideally your players will naturally gravitate to specific NPCs (like through romances) so your players end up choosing which NPCs they want to know about, rather than you forcing it upon them.

Ideas all spoilered. Spoilers come from all 6 books so beware!

I don't think the area was ever fleshed out in any paizo official content. It would be up to you to fill in the blanks for your players! :)

Just read your updates - looks like everything is chugging along smoothly for you!

I played up the Sczarni as a "fantasy mafia" group also. Unfortunately my group did not become interested in them until they were pretty high lvl (10/11 or so) so a group of organized human thugs aren't as menacing as they would have been back at lvl 1, but it still is good roleplay. Jubrayl Vhiski has escaped them once so far!

To chime in, no I did not add any wealth. I have 4 PCs split amongst two players. No crafters. My players die a lot, but this is more due to newbie mistakes than anything to do with wealth. They have never complained about feeling poor, though this is also their first campaign. I feel that my players have good equipment and weapons but do not steamroll through every encounter, even in the sixth book combat becomes more and more swingy.

A lot of the wealth in RoTRL is missable, so if your players don't have the incentive to search every nook and cranny (mine sure don't) it may become worse. Personally, I would not tweak the wealth given by this AP unless the players themselves seem underpowered for encounters.

Alright, update time, as my group has just gotten through the barrier. Hopefully this helps someone who might find this thread in the future with the same issue.

I decided to try flinging all of my ideas at the group to see what stuck.

First up, to avoid unnecessary wandering around looking for a mythical fourth ring, I was straight up and clear that there are only THREE Karzoug generals in the city. This was stated by Morigiv the skulk, then echoed by Gyukuk. Gyukuk straight up named two of the generals as Ghlorofaex and Gamigin, so there was no confusion there. To make clear that the Hidden Beast was not one of his generals, but rather a third evil presence in the city, I placed a dead human transmuter corpse in his lair that the group could assume he stole the ring from. The group did not notice the corpse nor think about this hard enough to make any of that prep worthwhile, but that's GMing for ya.

Secondly, to keep the group motivated, I placed a couple of hard dates where the numbers of giants apparent in lower Xin Shalast would increase, so that Karzoug's army would steadily grow as the players lingered. I want the players to feel like they are in a race against time before Karzoug enacts his master plan.

The group realized the rings were the keys pretty quickly when I emphasized how identical the different sihedron rings they found were.

Next, I made sure the group had a couple of options available to them to make up for the fourth ring:

1. I planted a scroll of Antimagic field in Morigiv's "goody bag" of loot he hands out a day after the skulks are liberated. I don't know if it is intended for that spell to work but it seemed sufficiently powerful enough to cancel out the field. The group cleric is already high enough level to simply prepare that spell herself, but my group's low system mastery motivated me to plant this scroll as a "hint hint nudge nudge". Ultimately, the group still has this scroll and never thought to use it on the field.

2. The group assaulted Shahlaria and fought a rune giant there. On that rune giant, I placed a sihedron medallion. The group ultimately did not even think to loot a gargantuan humanoid. Had the group not decided to head to Shahlaria, they would have encountered a random rune giant somewhere anyway, who would have also had a sihedron medallion.

3. Finally, I decided that if the group was completely stumped at getting through the field, I would attack them with another blue dragon who had a ring. Alternatively, if the group decided to split up and send only 2-3 people through the field at first, the first enemy the group would encounter would have a ring. It did not come to this.

So how did it go down?

The group got the three rings and immediately headed up to the Spires of Xin Shalast. They reached the field, and tested the rings. I had all players, regardless of if they had a ring or not, make the will save against the field to play up/foreshadow the influence of Leng in this area. Two players crossed the field, one player carried two rings, the other only had one. The player then put the two rings on his fingers, and crossed only his two fingers over the field. There were no rules in the book to address this, so I had the field solidify when the rings were removed, cutting his fingers off from the knuckle. (I did not want the problem to be solved TOO easily!) I gave the player a reflex save to avoid this, which he failed. The player simply had his fingers repaired with a Regenerate spell, which the party had a scroll of, so no downtime occurred to repair the problem.

Ultimately, I gave the group a lot of options, but the players ended up with their own solution that was totally theirs. I'm satisfied!

PC Name: Seelah
Race/Class/Level: Human Paladin of Iomedae 15
Adventure: The Spires of Xin Shalast
Catalyst: Cone of Cold + Ice Devil

Shalelu is mortal enemies with Bruthazmus. My group bonded with her by taking her along to Thistletop, and the battle with the bugbear was more memorable because of it. I had Shalelu recount some stories of previous encounters with the bugbear.

There is tension between Shalelu and her step-father, Jakardos. In my game she pretty much blamed him for her mother's death. I challenged my group to take a side after getting to know both characters, as tension boiled to a head between them. From the moment they find the Black Arrows the story is pretty action packed, so Shalelu kind of simmered (ogres in Rannick were more important than their reunion) until there was an opportune time to vent her frustrations. They sided with Shalelu, and the drama associated with that made for good roleplay.

Shalelu was then promoted to a member of the main party, where she became romantically involved with a PC, another elf ranger. They plan to retire together and live out their lives patrolling the Sandpoint forests for goblins.

So really, Shalelu has a lot of room for roleplay if your players will bite for that sort of thing.

I blow the maps up to appropriate scale, print them out piece-meal using Posterazor, and then glue them to poster board with spray adhesive. Afterwards I cut the maps apart into their constituent rooms, and lay down the rooms on the table as the group explores. This has the advantage as, when we run out of table space, we can simply remove the peripheral rooms and focus on the closer areas at hand. However, this is a decent amount of prep work, as well as money to print.

For the really big maps, I simply handwaved the 10 ft square stuff and made them 5 ft squares for the extreme situations. Jorgenfist for example, the external part of the fortress, if printed to scale, would take up my entire kitchen. Even printing at 5 ft squares it took up the entire table, with no room to spare. (However this was worth how epic it made the place felt!) The external grounds of Fort Rannick are also fairly massive.

You can try using multiple dry-erase maps and just draw/use the parts that your adventurers are actively at. No need to have the entire map drawn out all the time and visible. Drawing in the middle of the game may be immersion-breaking though.

Thanks guys! I checked out Nobody'sHome's thread and it looks like he simply added a fourth ring. I think I'm going to go with planting amulets on some rune giants. The evil GM part of me wants Karzoug to possess someone and use their voice to monologue maniacally about how they're all walking to their doom and whatnot. ..At least once! Probably after they use them to get past the field.

I'll leave some feedback once they get past the field. I hate reading advice threads on here where you never find out what happened to the OP's game so I won't tease y'all like that.

Hey I am running RotRL with 2 players. Our group just started the final book, so maybe I could give you some insight. Like you, I wanted my players to dedicate themselves to roleplaying only 1 character instead of 2 characters a piece. I wanted my players to really feel attached to THEIR character instead of needing to split attentions between 2.

First up, just having 2 PCs will not work for all the reasons outlined above. Even if you buff the PCs with levels or mythic tiers, that will not fix the issues with action economy and you will find that you NEED a full caster of some sort eventually. I went with 2 PCs up until glassworks, which is where I added a GM PC. Even a 3rd wasn't enough, so we fleshed it out to 4 at thistletop.

My solution was at first the addition of a GM PC, but I decided I really wanted them to make their own tactical decisions and I felt uncomfortable as GM controlling one of "their" guys in combat. So I ended up with the following solution:

Each of my players controls one guy each. That is who they roleplay, that is who they level up, that is who they control. Then I tell them that they can "recruit" certain NPCs to join their group. I roleplay the NPCs when needed (though they generally stay in the background so that they don't steal the PC's thunder). These NPCs are mostly composed of the NPCs provided in the text, who have been buffed up with levels so that they are the same level as the PCs in the party. Possible party members that my PCs have had access to are:

Ameiko Kaijitsu, Shalelu Andosana, Orik Vancaskerkin, All 3 Black Arrows, Razmus (HP nerfed slightly), Conna the Wise (altered to be younger and HP nerfed slightly), that Thassilonian warrior dude who was imprisoned in the Iron Cages of Lust whose name I can't remember, Svevenka (on the condition that someone stays behind to watch the Ice Mists for her, with nerfed HP).

Looking through this list you'll note a lack of casters. So I supplemented the book NPCs with some of the pathfinder iconics - namely Kyra, Seoni, and Seelah. Kyra was in Sandpoint assisting with the festival, Seoni was found in a bar in Magnimar, and Seelah was found captured by the Scribbler. Each of these iconics was explicitly chosen to help with party composition.

The rules:

The players cannot roleplay the NPCs. The NPCs do not join the party unless the PCs roleplay with the NPCs and befriend them enough. The NPCs do not stay with the party unless the party's goals and actions align with the NPC's. For example, Kyra left the group when they refused to fight Black Magga out of fear, even though innocents were getting hurt. Another example is that Conna only joined on the condition that no stone giants save Mokmurian die. The NPCs also do not stay around if they are ignored. The PCs are expected to talk to the NPCs and include them in their planning, even though the NPCs generally defer to the PCs. The players do not level up the NPCs, though they do control prepared spell lists. I level up the NPCs intentionally to make them slightly worse than the PCs in terms of optimization so that the PCs always shine brightest. Each player controls one NPC in combat. The NPC always obeys combat orders unless they strictly go against their alignment or goals. For example, Orik Vancaskerkin will not heroically sacrifice himself for the greater good.

This method was well received by my players. They only identify with their own PCs and roleplay exclusively as them, but the group's composition does not suffer due to having only 2 players. The only thing that has not been well received is me leveling up the NPCs. They want to control what the NPCs do as they level up, especially feat and spell selection. I think I will concede this to them next campaign, on the condition that I have to approve their decisions.

Hope my experiences help you come up with your own solution!

Re: Thistletop Sihedron Ring - No, they did not figure out the puzzle with the gold coins, so they never got deeper into the area than Nualia was able to. Then I believe they straight up forgot about Malfeshnekor, due to doing the dungeon out of order and getting distracted (they went straight down to Nualia first, returned to Sandpoint to recover, then returned to Thistletop to dethrone Ripnugget and rescued the horse). I didn't really press the issue since I was so excited to start the Skinsaw Murders... and also because we're so new to tabletop RPGs I was pretty sure Malfeshnekor was gonna wipe the party.

Re: Sihedron Amulet - Early on in the campaign a PC made a really high spellcraft check to identify the Sihedron Amulet. I likewise did not want to spill the beans on the scrying/possession stuff so early on but I gave the caster a vague "feeling of unease" when examining the amulet. The party erroneously concluded that the amulet must have brainwashed Nualia and had it destroyed. Then later on, when the PCs found the sihedron symbol carved into dead bodies, this only reaffirmed their belief that the symbol is absolutely evil. So they have been destroying the necklaces ever since. I am a little worried that they might also want to destroy the rings for this reason...but they've gotten warnings about needing an artifact to get past the field from Svevenka, which I will then echo again with either Morigiv or that stone giant/ogre guy... so if they irrationally destroy the rings after those warnings I can't say I didn't warn them.

Re: Juggling rings - Haha, that works! Seems kind of anticlimactic though, right? The text makes such a big deal about needing a magical PC to come up with some other way to get through the field that I kind of assumed that simply moving the rings across the field to one another wouldn't work.

I like the idea of planting another amulet somewhere. There is a really good chance they won't even pick it up for the reasons I just outlined...but it will give them a fourth option.

I think that they'll understand that there won't be a bunch of rings... just that 3 is such a tantalizing number. And also there is so much to the Lower City for them to explore, it will be only natural for them to assume that they need to check out the Tangle or one of the other "this area is well beyond the scope of this adventure" places in Xin Shalast.

I guess I could have an NPC straight up tell them there are only 3 generals in the lower city. Eh?

Hey guys. First up if you are one of my players, stop reading now!

..

Alright, now that is out of the way, I am worried about the "3 sihedron ring" issue in The Spires of Xin Shalast. If you don't remember or haven't read that far ahead, basically the Spires of Xin Shalast are protected by an occluding field that is explicitly immune to a lot of typical magical ways to get around such a thing, therefore necessitating the use of sihedron rings. The rings are carried by Karzoug's most trusted lieutenants in the lower city....but the catch is the AP only gives you 3 in an effort to force the players to come up with a more...creative method for one or more of the PCs to get into the field.

I love the idea of getting my PCs to come up with creative solutions to get around the field. The problem is, I know my players, and if they find 3 rings, they will assume that they simply missed the fourth one or haven't found it yet. This will result in a lot of time spent in the Lower City looking for something that doesn't exist....something that will be undoubtedly frustrating for everyone involved. I don't mind fully exploring the lower city, I do mind sending my PCs off on a fool's errand.

For context, my group just arrived at the Lower City, and have only encountered the lamia kuchrima so far before the session ended. I intend to begin the next session with introducing Morigiv; my PCs are heroes so they will undoubtedly help him out with the Hidden Beast. The PCs were tipped off by Svevenka about possibly using an artifact to get through the occluding field so they know that they need to look. They have destroyed every single sihedron amulet they have come across, so those are not options, as even if they found more of them they are likely to leave them where they found them or destroy them.

I'd love to hear your stories about how you dealt with this issue as a GM, or alternatively, ideas for solving the problem. Here are my ideas so far...

1. Simply give the PCs a fourth ring on some enemy they encounter while looking for it. Problem? This feels...unsatisfying somehow, but if you guys think this is the best way due to its simplicity, I'll consider it.

2. Give the PCs a sense of urgency to get to the spires NOW once they find the third ring. Have the giants mobilize for war, make the PCs feel like Karzoug is about to march on Varisia so they need to act now. Problem? This might fail, making the PCs feel like they hit a timer on how long they had to get the rings and they may feel like they just "lost the campaign" due to taking too long. Instead of trying to come up with an immediate plan to enter the spires, they may instead just redouble their efforts to scour or backtrack all around the lower city.

3. Plant a scroll (or 2 or 3) that contains a spell that could be used to get past the occluding field. My group composition is cleric, paladin, arcane archer, and dragon disciple/bloodrager, but they have good UMD available. Problem? I'm new to Pathfinder and have no idea what spells could be used here, if any. The text explicitly warns that teleportation, ethereal jaunt, shadow walk, and astral projection do not work. So what is left?

What do you guys think?

Hi! I am currently DM for an RotRL group that is in the final book of the campaign. This was originally my first foray into Pathfinder at all, let alone Golarion/Varisia, so maybe I could be of help.

To start off, you should read the Sandpoint appendix at the end of the anniversary guide, and possibly take notes on the NPCs there. Sandpoint is a fully fleshed out town with all kinds of backstory and really engaging characters. Sandpoint is the town where all of the events revolve around and the heroes will be called upon to save Sandpoint time and time again. This in mind, you really want your players to love being in Sandpoint and to become engaged in the characters, so pay attention to detail and don't skip over the suggested roleplaying encounters in the first chapter. Try to find a few key NPCs for your players to befriend or even court..that way you have good targets for your heroes to save in later chapters! If there is "homework" to be done with this AP, focus on Sandpoint.

The appendices also flesh out the environs near Sandpoint, and later with Turtleback Ferry. There are a lot of suggestions for side-adventures near town here if you want the AP to feel more sandbox, though obviously you would need to flesh these out yourself to be playable.

I also invested in the "Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Magnimar, City of Monuments" booklet as Magnimar will be the major "big city" that your players interact with. This will be likely where your players do a lot of shopping, though I would try to encourage the players to set up player housing in Sandpoint, not Magnimar, to keep them close to the NPCs there. The Magnimar, City of Monuments book gives good information on Magnimar's government and culture with an expansive list of buildings and NPCs to interact with. This book is extremely detailed, so I had to condense the information down to only a few key NPCs and buildings I wanted my players to roleplay with.

The other aspect that you will want to do homework on is the ancient Thassilonian Empire, which to modern-day Varisians is analogous to Atlantis. There are ancient Thassilonian ruins all over Varisia, so their existence is undisputed, but the nature of their culture is largely unknown to even modern scholars. Over the course of the AP your heroes will ultimately become some of the most knowledgable people about the Thassilonian Empire, so having a PC whose backstory revolves around uncovering their secrets would be highly satisfying for the player.

For fast reference, I rely on the pathfinder wikipedias if I need quick information to satisfy a knowledge check or something on the fly during a session.

The player companion gives you and your players a good run-down on Varisia as a region, but here is my cliff-notes version:

Varisia is a high-fantasy setting. Sandpoint has several casters in its population, and Magnimar is home to a few powerful casters. The natives are mostly humans, with a few elves, dwarves, and half-orcs. Halflings and tieflings are not uncommon. Other races are pretty rare and would stand out in a crowd.

The key thing to remember about Varisia is that it is largely wild and untamed. There is no central government, and people tend to be fiercely independent. The original peoples of Varisia are descendants of slaves of the Thassilonian Empire: the Shoanti and native Varisians, though that happened so long ago that it is not well remembered. Native Varisians are nomadic and have a culture similar to real-world Romani culture. The Shoanti are also nomadic and are more barbaric than the Varisians. Reading up on these cultures on wikipedia would be a good start, and would be good cultures for your PCs to draw from if they wish.

The city-states of Varisia, in contrast, were largely founded by Chelish colonists. Cheliax is one of the largest cities in the PF universe and is very influential and wealthy, though their interests are not central to the plot so homework is not necessary. They originally went to war with the native Varisian cultures when they first settled here but things are pretty peaceful now. The Chelish consider themselves more cultured and civilized than the natives, so there is still a lot of tension between these different cultures. Some of the Chelish colonists are refugees, others may still be loyal to Cheliax, it really depends on the individuals.

Finally, the major beastial races of Varisia are goblins and giants. Goblins are a constant nuisance near Sandpoint and the coastal regions and giants inhabit the northern regions. There are a lot of giants in this AP, so having a PC that is involved with giants in some way in their backstory would be interesting. This is because all of the giants were once enslaved by the Thassilonian Empire, and as Karzoug comes into power he moves in to re-enslave them. This is not common knowledge, though, and the players are faked out multiple times. First they find a group of ogres who are actually slaves to stone giants. Then you learn the stone giants are just pawns (and later slaves) of Karzoug. This could have interesting moral implications for your PCs, especially for one who may have hard-seated prejudices against giants.

Hope this wall of text was useful!

Name of PCs: Malanovka, Kyra (Malanovka perished permanently, Kyra brought back with Hero Points)
Race/Class/Level: CG Elvish Skald 16, NG Human Cleric of Sarenrae 16
Adventure: The Spires of Xin-Shalast
Catalyst: Decided to dimension door into the middle of four cloud giants
Spoiler:

Gameplay has been erratic for my group ever since school started back up, but we're making headway into The Spires of Xin-Shalast at last. Due to the big gap between playing it seems that my players were rusty... a lot of clumsy mistakes. My players are completely new to Pathfinder so picking up level 15 characters after a big break seems to have resulted in them forgetting important tricks that their characters are capable of. Paladin player forgetting about auras, cleric player forgetting what their highest level spells are, pretty much everyone forgetting how awesome Fly is, etc. This resulted in a couple of deaths, but thankfully with a high level cleric (and pockets brimming with gold from the previous chapter) deaths are not as permanent as they once were.

PC: Seelah
Class/Level: Human Paladin of Iomedae 15
Adventure: The Spires of Xin-Shalast
Catalyst: Flung by old blue dragon Cadrilkasta to her death.
Story:

PC: Malanovka
Class/Level: Elf Skald 15
Adventure: The Spires of Xin-Shalast
Catalyst: Splitting the party results in death via Frost Worm
Story:

PC: Malanovka
Class/Level: Elf Skald 15
Adventure: The Spires of Xin-Shalast
Catalyst: Wendigo picked her up and threw her to the ground

I love the new PC's clever decision and as a GM I like to encourage creative problem solving in my players. That being said, this can be a sticky situation. Played straight, unless the player has high diplomacy and/or bluff skills, the player has a high chance of being killed and the other players having no idea what happened.

Personally, I would want to reward, not punish, the new player for thinking outside the box. So as GM I would make sure that the player can actually succeed in this situation rather than immediately being found out and ganged up on and killed. That would be a good way to convince this player to never try diplomacy or espionage again.

So this is how I'd personally handle it, foregoing realism in favor of good story-telling. This is all with the assumption that the player has no way of communicating with the rest of the group now that they are separated.

- Gogmurt is disgruntled, and I'd play him as kind of mouthy. Make it clear that Gogmurt isn't happy with these new longshanks, though remember that he'd be smart enough to not spill everything immediately to one of Tsuto's allies. It shouldn't take much encouragement to talk him into a straight up rant about how unhappy he is with Nualia's control, though - he could provide some valuable intel about Nualia's plans and her allies. If the player has some high diplomacy skills, the player could even convince Gogmurt to defect!

- Gogmurt can escort the PC through thistletop to the second level. He takes the PC to Tsuto's room, knocks, and he isn't there. Nualia and her closest advisors are in the cathedral discussing Tsuto's (failed) attempt to meet with Erylium at the Glassworks.

-Gogmurt doesn't really want to intrude on the meeting - he doesn't like that freaky Lamashtu stuff they get up to in there. He'll mention how Nualia's demonic dogs give him the creeps! He'll ask the PC to wait in Tsuto's room for their meeting to be over, although he will say that this might take awhile, as him and Nualia "go at it like donkey rats" (AP's words not mine!) in the forest regularly. Gogmurt will then leave and head back to his place in the brambles - pretty bumbling on his part, but goblins aren't that smart. This gives the player a chance to stealthily escape. If you want to make it harder to escape, have Gogmurt post Tangletooth to guard the PC, or one or two goblin chumps. A fight would probably catch the attention of Nualia and her cronies, though.

-The player could have the option of listening through the door on their meeting. I would reward this if the player thinks of it with intel on Nualia's progress with finding Malfeshnekor.

-I'd probably put some small windows in the hallways near the stairs on the upper floor. The player could sneak out that way and come to the back of the island. I'd also put a rowboat and rope pulley (I put that in for Nualia and her goons to have an escape plan in case of the bridge getting burned down in my game) towards the back of the island, maybe hidden in some bushes so its not immediately obvious from afar. Otherwise the player stands a slim chance of crossing the bridge without being seen - it is pretty well fortified.

-By the time the PCs come to Thistletop as a group, Nualia and her henchmen will have returned to their normal posts. Fighting all of them at once would probably end in a TPK unless your group is min/maxing.

The goal here is to reward the group with some good intel and roleplay, without killing the player for making a clever decision, while keeping the player's decisions autonomous. This route would hopefully give the player a few good options of what to do without railroading them too much. You also want to keep the whole thing relatively brief - your other players won't be doing much while this going on, so you want the group reunited ASAP.

Food for thought -

My players really like Brodert Quink, and towards the end (starting with the library in chapter 4) the players gain access to their own ways of researching Thassilon. There was an interesting encounter where my players asked him for help finding Runeforge but ended up learning that they now are Thassilonian experts themselves thanks to their adventures!! It was a pretty cool moment that really let the players feel like mighty adventurers/explorers - the guy that used to be their go-to for knowledge is now asking them for their input as well! They even ended up agreeing to escort Quink to the library after they deal with Karzoug and he literally wept with joy at the idea.

One of my players loves being the "book smart" character and always goes out of his way to research and learn what he can so it probably hinged a lot on him as well, though.

So my point is - don't just leave your players in the dark to slow the story down, purposely keep information hidden from them for them to uncover themselves later.

The big exception to that is learning Thassilonian. Your players should show an interest in learning Thassilonian in book 2- make sure they have a way to learn it - otherwise there will be a serious language barrier between the NPCs in book 5 and your PCs that will hurt any possible roleplay with those characters. I wouldn't go so far as to let a fresh character get the language from leveling up, I'd still make them go through Quink (or some other teacher) but keep the opportunity available to them.

Echoing Brodert Quink - He would be the simplest way to get your characters on course for the adventure. If the players don't think to seek him out themselves (although they should know him by now!) have him seek them out inquiring their finds in the catacombs. If he is dead, make up a new NPC that has interest in Thassilonian Ruins that effectively replaces his role...maybe an apprentice? (since you'd need a replacement NPC to direct them in the 6th part anyway)

I would personally let them squirm a little first though. New players should learn that it is sometimes up to them to figure out what to do next in the adventure and not expect the next destination to be spoonfed to them ;)

If they're having serious problems have a nice OOC talk with them about it. If the group has never thought of capturing and questioning a prisoner, let them know OOC that they can do that. My group is new also and sometimes it is hard for them to think of all the options available to them in a tabletop game.

If you use exp, it is a good tool to reward players for doing stuff other than walking into a room, killing the monster, repeat, murder hobo style. Award exp for solving puzzles, questioning prisoners successfully, and good roleplay that advances the plot.

Second TPK in Sins of the Saviors so far

Name of PC: Himmelsdorf, Seelah, Conna (permanently incapacitated), Zoltar
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 3/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1, Human Paladin of Iomedae 13, Stone Giant Sorcerer 8, Peri-blooded aasimar Arcanist 14
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Prismatic Spray
Story:

Name of PC: Kaiju (feral mutagenic alter-ego of Blendafiss) [Permanent Character Death]
Class/Level: Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 4
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Disintegrate (via Ordikon, the Mithral Mage)
Story:

So last week my group near TPK'd but we realized afterwards that Himmelsdorf, with some rest, could open the doors to Runeforge on his own using a combination of prepared Ranger spells and Sorcerer spells. So he did, and then used the group's last Resurrection scroll to save his brother, Kaiju. Since he didn't need to take the month long trip to Magnimar, Azaven never resurrected to kill Seelah and Conna, that was all retracted out.

This week the group, after destroying Azaven's phylactery, chose the Vault of Greed as their next target since it seemed like a logical choice. They fought the stone golems, which caught the attention of Ordikon. Ordikon rounded the corner to investigate shortly after they cleared the last golem, and per his tactics, opened with Disintegrate + Quickened Mirror Image on Kaiju, his closest target. Kaiju failed the save and was disintegrated into dust. The rest of the group rolled really well against Displacement and forced him to dimension door to safety.

This is the third permanent character death so far in the campaign. The new character will be an adventurer who was turned into a goldfish at some time in the past, then (accidentally) saved by this group of PCs.

This weekend my group suffered a near TPK in the Ravenous Crypts of Gluttony in the Runeforge. Honestly, the only reason the group did NOT fully TPK was dumb luck as we will see...

The deaths were a combination of lazy/bad play and bad luck. The "bad play part" - I feel that we're deep enough in this campaign that I didn't really feel bad about it even though my group is new. My group is extremely indecisive and one of my players has a "go go go go" mentality- so when there is a lag in the action, even if it is due to debating a course of action, this player begins to kick doors in and generally play poorly, endangering the group. Hopefully this is the lesson they needed...

In any case I feel that this chapter is markedly more difficult than Fortress of the Stone Giants and aggressively punishes poor play. I communicated as much to my group beforehand so I don't think there were any bad feelings ;)

Name of PC: Seelah and Kaiju (feral mutagenic alter-ego of Blendafiss)
Class/Level: Human Paladin of Iomedae 13 and Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 4
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Thassilonian Mummies and Xyoddin Xerriock
Story:

Name of PC: Himmelsdorf and Kaiju (feral mutagenic alter-ego of Blendafiss)
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 3/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1, Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 4
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Azaven + Save or Die

Story:

Name of PC: Seelah and Conna
Class/Level: Human Paladin of Iomedae 13, Stone Giant Sorcerer 8
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Return of Azaven!

Story:

Name of PC: Himmelsdorf
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 2/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Arkrhyst
Story:

Adding on to the numerous Arkrhyst obituaries on here...

My group made it to Rimeskull this weekend. Having deciphered the Scribbler's Rhyme they immediately went up to the stone circle and activated the Karzoug statue, waking up Arkrhyst. He showed up as they moved on to tinker with the statue of Krune, and the Master Chymist failed his save against Fearful Presence, marking the beginning of a lot of Arkrhyst related misfortune. The Sorcerer was simply unable to beat his Spell Resistance, and Arkrhyst focused his attention on Seelah, the group's new paladin that they saved from the Scribbler. Himmelsdorf, wielding a Staff of Healing, saved Seelah, which drew Arkrhyst's ire. Arkrhyst snatched him up, flew up 200 feet in the air, and breathed on him, killing him, then dropped his lifeless body to the ground. Afterwards the group finally pulled it together - Seelah dispelled Arkrhyst's Displacement, the Master Chymist stopped freaking out, and the Sorcerer started beating Arkrhyst's spell resistance, successfully driving the dragon back into his lair, and ending this week's session. Himmelsdorf was brought back with a Scroll of Resurrection the group found back at Jorgenfist.

Name of PC: Blendafiss
Class/Level: Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 2
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: Mokmurian + 6 Stone Giants
Story:

So Mokmurian ended up hunting my heroes right away in the library, grabbing a platoon of 6 stone giants with him. The group focused the stone giants down but Blendafiss (who was out of mutagens for the day) went down to an unlucky crit. I figured this was the deathknell as Blendafiss was the only one who stood a chance at dispelling Mokmurian's considerable buffs - the group was having a lot of difficulty hitting him. And indeed, most of the group went into the negatives. But with some quick thinking, the group realized there were a few unused potions of cure serious wounds on Blendafiss' body, and that was when the fight turned around.

Himmelsdorf, the arcane archer, finally used all those spells that he has never used before, and after a few crits with gravity bow/enlarge Mokmurian was toast! Himmelsdorf leveled up from the experience, decided to spend his skill points on Use Magic Device, and used the scroll of Limited Wish to cast Raise Dead on Blendafiss. And then the group immediately started looking up buffs that are effective against wizards, after realizing that their next destination, the Runeforge, would surely be full of wizards. Hurray!

A paladin? I would remind the paladin PC that acting as "judge, jury, and executioner" without any outside support with local law enforcement is pretty unlawful. In the real world if you suspect someone is up to no good, you report it to the police, and in a tabletop RPG it is no different... adventurers are not above the law. If they go with that route, it should become quickly apparent that other than the tattoos (with every single person in town having the same story of how they got said tattoos) there is no proof that these people are the cultists that your players think that they are. Even if they were right, and the whole town was an evil murder-cult of Lamashtu, that doesn't mean they can just run in and slaughter them unprovoked without some proof first...so do your best to get them thinking that this is a BAD idea.

I personally would have given the paladin a BIG warning for having executed Kaven without even questioning him first...there is nothing lawful good about executing an unconscious man that has been tortured to near-death by "the hills have eyes" ogrekin, and if he/she goes along with killing off the town a fall from grace would be in order. Assuming the paladin follows one of the main Golarion gods you can look up what happens when they are upset with their followers. For example - Iomedae shows her displeasure with flickering lights, shattering weapons, and turning metal dull, and if a paladin of Iomedae turns evil, their cloak turns black and their armor and weaponry turns to dull lead. Or you can make something cool up. ;)

If they go along with it despite your warnings I would play up the horror of what they are doing. Describe crying children screaming while they watch their parents die before their eyes. Describe the schoolteacher trying to bravely protect her kids with a frying pan or pitchfork. Make the townsfolk extra ineffectual- don't even write up stat blocks for them, just assume your level 8 or so PCs can just slay each one with one hit. And describe those kills with relish, so it reeeeally sinks in.

The PCs being wanted criminals by basically all civilized people in Varisia leaves you with few options. A lot of the future adventures start off with friendly NPCs asking the heroic PCs for help...so with your PCs no longer being heroes the adventure is derailed. You can totally embrace the dark-side and take the campaign down an evil path, with the PCs working for Karzoug - because hey, your PCs succeeded where Lucrecia failed in sacrificing that whole town for his return, so why not recruit them (this would require a lot of work on your part to alter the AP) OR you can inform the group that everything is derailed and that it is time to reroll new characters. Maybe have the new PC's first act of heroism by claiming the bounty on their old, evil PCs. Then come up with some adventure hook to get them to Hook Mountain and resume everything from there.

In the future, with infrequent play sessions it is a good idea to run brief recaps of what has happened before so that people don't get lost, especially if your players are poor note-takers (like mine).

Turtleback Ferry is a protected vassal of Magnimar so they would probably become wanted criminals once the word gets out (this might take awhile depending on how Fort Rannick is doing in your game since the town is isolated and on how thoroughly they murder everyone). This would lead to open hostility from Magnimar, likely Sandpoint (also allied with Magnimar), and Fort Rannick (if the Black Arrows are back in control of the fort) - and would likely derail the campaign. Any further heroics on the group's part will pale in comparison to the mass-murder of innocent people.

I would encourage the group to use Sense Motive and detect alignment spells to determine that the majority of the town are good people, if a little greedy. Do they have the note from Lucrecia to Xanesha found at the end of the second book? If so, encourage them to read that again...this may make it more clear to them that these people are sacrificial lambs, not evil minions.

If that doesn't work, try distracting the players with the Dam event + Black Magga, to try and get them back on track. If any of your players are the religious type, maybe a prophetic dream from their favored deity might be in order? Or have the wisest character think about trying to find proof of what they suspect before going on a serial killing spree.

I feel sympathy for you- my group nearly attacked the (half-dead) Black Arrows when they saw Kaven's tattoo, thinking they were all aligned with the enemy. Kaven blubbered that his tattoo was just for admission onto the Pleasure Barge, but they didn't believe him (they did not try to oppose a Bluff check). They decided to prepare Detect Evil to clear their names, but before they could Kaven fled in the night, making it extra obvious that he was the lone villain here.