Koleikos's page

Skip the first part of the campaign where the PCs drag their level 1 asses around, fighting the same-old goblins, orcs or bandits (or whatever it was. The same old level 1 s#+!). Go directly to the good parts.

In my opinion the first part of the campaign is interesting. The players get to know the land and its inhabitants. Besides that, in this case I use the first part of the campaign as a tutorial for myself and for some of my players. This is my first Pathfinder campaign being a GM. I prefer to take it slowly.

You had them meet Jelenneth before Milborne? Interesting choice. Don't you run the risk of making the kidnappings to centered on Jelenneth after the first encounter?

Run the risk? Well, actually that's just what my intention is. I want the kidnappings to be centered on Jelenneth. Knowing her gives the players an extra dimension in the story. They care about her, because she's not just a name, but a person.

Thanks Graynore. Although I'm not familiar with the kingdom rules yet, one day these stats might be useful.

By the way: I've had the first game session with my group. Six players were there, the other two were still on holidays. I used this first session mostly as a tutorial so I could get familiar with the rules. Luckily the players haven't noticed that. They had their own struggles with this new gaming system, and they had fun. The party has met Gordrenn and Jelenneth by now. In the next session they will travel with her, and the box, to Milborne.

I have also been working on kingdom stats for the surface towns if you are interested.

I certainly am interested!

Graynore, thank you very much for your reply!:D

To answer your questions:

First, you need to decide what world you wish to but Night Below in. The first couple times I ran it was in Forgotten Realms. The last time I ran it was in a generic world with pathfinder gods.

In my case it is also a generic homebrewn world with PF gods.

Second, you need to decide if you are converting monsters from 3.5 to pathfinder or just using pathfinder monsters. Mind flayers, grells, kuo-toa, and ixians were all converted to 3.5 in various books but haven't been converted to pathfinder. A conversion between 3.5 to pathfinder is rather easy, the difficulty is in acquiring the monster stats (if placed in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, then there is the additional issue).

My first idea was to use 3.5e monsters. Now I'm thinking about using PF monsters only. Still haven't made up my mind on this issue.

Third, how will you handle the multi-class characters? I have ran it the first few times with standard 2nd ed to 3rd ed rules (add 1/3 of lower level classes rounded down to highest level class). My preference in pathfinder was to use gestalt rules (from WOTC's Unearthed Arcana and in the SRD). Gestalt characters are roughly a CR 1 higher (pcs are ecl 2 higher or just use slow advancement).

I read about the gestalt rules. And have decided not to use those. PF characters are pretty powerful, why make them even more powerful? In my games I used to combine good roleplaying with a nice story and good combats. Hopefully I can achieve this as well in PF.

About the multiclass characters: most of the characters in book 1 are single class, so there will be not really an issue there. So far I have converted a number of NPC's to PF.

Forth, will you use psionics? The box set tells you to not use psionics as there is so much else going on. The first few times I ran it I played without psionics and it was fine. The last time I ran it in pathfinder, I decided to use the Dreamscarred Press pathfinder psionics and I really liked it (if you use psionics I suggest you replace the mind flayers' cleric levels with psion levels and the aboleth's mage/cleric levels with psion plus use the aboleth savant prestige class from Lords of Madness (wotc) if you have it).

I have considered using psionics. I even have offered the players the chance to play a psionic character. Nobody took the bait. So I will start the campaign without using psionics. Perhaps I will add it later, depending on how everything develops.

As most of the issues don't come up until book 2, I would suggest just focusing on the character development of book 1. It really is a great little sandbox to run the pcs through for a while. Once you are comfortable with the pathfinder rules, then I would make my decision on the above issues. Hope that helps.

I can't agree with you more. This will be my first PF campaign, so I still have to get used to the rules and to how strong the party (consisting of eight players) really is. The first session this upcoming Sunday starts with an easy get-to-know-each-other quest. After that, the story will gradually develop towards Night Below. I did make some changes however. For instance, Jelenneth will accompany the party during their first quest of delivering the box to Touster. This is because I want the party to get to know and to like her.

Hi there! This is my very first post here. I'm new to these boards and new to Pathfinder, but not to RPG's. Soon I will start my first PF campaign which will be... Night Below!

So I was hoping, instead of converting everything myself, whether there is a readily available conversion to be found somewhere? I tried various links in this tread, but unfortunately most of those don't work anymore.

Thanks a lot in advance for all help and advice!