Kresblain the Merry Magician's page

1. I believe that would be the events of the PFS scenario Siege of Gallowspire. I don't know the details, but you can buy the scenario here and read a review with some description here.

2. I don't have much to add, but I am planning to replace one of them with a PC from our playthrough of Carrion Crown. A lot of campaigns wrap up in that level range, so you might consider doing the same if you previously had a relevant PC from the area.

During the opening scenes in Roslar's Coffer, I also included an encounter with the Coffer Crew from book 2 as a trio of local thugs and the young man who would become the Baffled Ghost in book 2's jewelry shop puzzle. As the party was leaving town to deal with the zombies, they saw the Crew outside the jewelry shop shaking down the young man. The party exchanged unpleasantries with the Crew and made an intimidate check to send them scurrying off. This gave the party an existing connection to the characters when they returned later on. I stole this idea whole cloth from another GM on Reddit's Pathfinder forum.

Here are some tweaks and additions I made when running this book.

The change I would most strongly suggest is to familiars and animal companions. The AP has them unavailable until book 2, but I would suggest instead having them come up the path join the party when they exit Roslar's tomb. Make sure you play up their cute interactions with the PCs during the rest of the book. Because the payoff at the end of the Dead Roads, when they reach the portal to the Material Plane and a breeze from Barzahk's wing passes over the familiar, causing their form to flicker into a ghostly reflection like the townsfolk? When the PCs realize that the familiar did not get an obol at their death and thus cannot return to the land of the living with them, and the party has to say their goodbyes on the very precipice of their escape? *Chef's kiss*. The John Wick school of character motivation really works.

Like many others, I had some scenes in Roslar's Coffer before moving to the Boneyard. The town guard was stretched thin escorting workers to the Bastion of Light, so the guard captain had to recruit the PCs for an unexpected incident. A merchant coming into town was attacked by zombies along the road; her wagon got stuck in a ditch and she fled into town. Unbeknownst to the party, a Whispering Way agent had directed the attack then hid the fragment of Arnisant's shield among the merchant's goods. After the party defeated the zombies, they saw two cloaked riders in the distance: one was the cultist who had been watching them, the other Arazni who was pursuing the cultist as part of her investigation. Returning to the town square for the festival (I had set the starting date as the Sarenite holiday Burning Blades), the guard captain death-flagged himself by mentioning his imminent retirement next week and took the occasion to have one of the PCs take the public oath of office as his successor. She had just finished swearing to protect the town and its people when they all exploded.

Down in Roslar's tomb, some people, myself included, found it weird the evil spectre in A12 seems to have been created when Roslar's tomb was duplicated in the Boneyard. I explained this as being an old Pharasman technique to deal with troublesome rejuvenating spirits; the magic circles surrounding the crystal contain runes for planar travel as well as binding. When a tomb is concsecrated and a duplicate of the crystal and runes appear in the Boneyard, the spirit's energy is slowly transferred to it over the course of years so that the psychopomps can deal with it. Using this explanation, I put a similar crystal in the Material Plane version of Roslar's tomb. Because someone had moved the crystal from its perch when the tomb was first ransacked, the Material version still contained most of the spirit's energy and gave a greater shock of negative energy when approached. This gave the party an additional weapon to deal with the rot grub swarm there, which many have found to be a troublesome fight.

I don't know why the Animate Hair wig on Roslar's bust wasn't a handlebar moustache to begin with. It should be.

The tile puzzle in A11 struck me as too nonsensical and videogame-y. I instead changed it to a statue of Arazni with a palm-down extended hand and an insciption on the base reading "Show your devotion." This coresponded to the mural in A9 below. Kissing hand caused a panel in the base of the statue to swing open revealing the usual armor and shield, as well as a small marble statuette of Arazni. Placing the statuette's round base in a corresponding depression on the altar caused the secret passage behind it to open. In book 2 this passage would be used to reach the Bastion of Light, but since only the tomb is copied in the Boneyard the passage ended in a dead end.

A15 seems kind of cramped for the Horn Caterpillar fight. I instead moved it and the gorgon shell to the spacious A16, and had it set up some web sheets to trap creatures as per the universal monster rules.

I took inspiration from Aloisus's gold wedding ring to introduce a side story about an Orpheus-like figure named Castrovella that the party would uncover over the remainder of the book. Shrunken for skipability in case it is tl;dr:

Castrovella was a fighter with the Red Shrike's and Aloisus's husband. She was unable to accept his untimely death at the end of the Shining Crusade and so made her way down the Dead Roads, seized his spirit from Roslar's tomb, and fought, trick and cajoled her way back to the Material Plane. But this unnatural method of bringing the dead back to the living turned Aloisus's spirit into a ghost as they neared the exit. In his confusion, he burnt Castrovella to blackened bones with his corrupting touch and ended up lost between the planes.

Throughout the Dead Roads the party found pieces of equipment decorated with the Red Shrike motif that had been lost by Castrovella during her journey. A masterwork longsword pinned the body of the celedon Number Two to the wall in the entryway to Roslar's Tomb. Number One describes a woman who grabbed a spirit and fought her way past them; Two first thought it happened last month, then remembered it was actually 889 years ago (time is difficult to keep track of as an immortal construct in the Boneyard). In the Palace of Teeth, touching a Headband of Vast Intelligence embroidered with a shrike conjured a ghostly vision of an armored woman battling three more of the stained glass angels. Up in the craft room, among the piles of cloth the party found a smashed skull inside a gossamer shawl; this was the remains of an ember weaver psycopomp, the previous keeper of that waystation who was killed by Castrovella. In Nine Eaves Manor, Kishokish mentioned that the shrike-embossed Shadow Falconer's Glove that the party looted had previously belonged to a clever woman who bested him at a game of Imperial Conquest to earn his stamp. Salighara remembers Castrovella using the Knowledge: Planes-imbued Headband to trick her into thinking she was also a planar scholar.

Before each of the waystations, the party had the chance to notice the hunched, cloaked figure of Aloisus weeping in the mists to the side of the road. At first he was distant, but as the party gathered more of Castrovella's items he was drawn closer. After the first two waystations he angrily shrieked and lunged at the party but vanished before reaching them. Right before reaching Deathbower the party found him in the middle of the road, hunched over Castrovella's blackened bones. He was confused as always, at first recounting how Castrovella died in his arms, then seeing her equipment he accused the party of taking her from him and attacked. Using a Shadow Conjuration-like effect, he produced a pair of ghostly warriors in the image of two of the Red Shrikes. Upon taking damage he called out for Castrovella to protect him and produced a third that looked like her. The party's obols mitigated the negative energy damage that his touches inflicted. Upon being defeated, he briefly came to his senses. He extracted a promise from the party that they would bury Castrovella's bones with him, then departed with some ravens that Barzahk sent to guide him to the Boneyard.

In Deathbower, Mictena thanked the party for helping find Aloisus and put him to rest, but explained that his case shows why those who have died cannot be allowed to return to the Material Plane. This story helped to flesh out some of Mictena's motivation, and reinforced why making undead is a bad thing.

In Roslar's Coffer, I changed the unfettered phantom's tactics to make the fight a bit more dynamic. Midway through the fight Arbella Tharmethion became frightened by Garrid's violence and ran around and into an adjacent farmhouse shouting for help. Garrid yelled that she was betraying him like everyone else and pursued, using his incorporeal movement to run through the building's wall. The party had to find their way into the building and get to him before he harmed Arbella.

I suggest referring to the Palace of Teeth instead as the Palace of Fairies. It provides a nice surprise when the party gets there and realizes just what kind of fairies they are dealing with. Both Prince Uspid and Queen Carnassial got a comical dropping cage trap in front of their thrones, which would have been enough to capture creatures the size of tooth fairies but only bonked the PCs in the head and could be easily lifted off. I had Barzahk provide a brief explanation of why he granted the fairies a waystation; when they slipped in through Salighara's gate, he realized they could be a difficult problem if they spread through the Boneyard and multiplied out of control. Being granted a throne to fight over, they have kept themselves contained to one place and limited their numbers through their annual regicidal plots and power struggles. Barzahk's laid-back approach to setting up situations so that they resolve themselves contrasted with Mictena's desire to actively intervene in all situations.

Nine Eaves manor was enjoyable. I had Kishokish give the party some extra gems as thanks, but awkwardly ask that they please not take the expensive tablecloth and glassware they had looted from his house. I know it is listed under Treasure, but do we have to steal every piece of silverware from a guy's house? The party spent the night playing Kishokish's copy of the wyrewoods' RPG, with Kishokish GMing a one-shot. I gave the player's pregenerated characters to play out the last rooms of the dungeon. They were unable defeat the overpowered unique variant hydra at the end, due to Kishokish having concealed its critical weakness behind inscrutable puzzles and cyphers.

In Salighara's Scriptorium, I customized a few of the events for the PCs. The portraits in the Impossible Hallway became the wizard's teachers from magic school as the party all had the nightmarish realization they all had finals in classes they never studied for; they had to pass various knowledge checks to answer the portraits questions and proceed. The guardian scroll became a collection of notes about the population and guards of Roslar's Coffer that one of the PCs had sold to the Whispering Way, not realizing it would get everyone killed; after touching the notes, they became soaked in blood and flew up to attack him. In the sculpture garden, cutting free the face of the web-shrouded figure revealed a PC's husband who had been killed in the orc raid; he berated her for not saving him then exploded.

I changed the final fight with Mrs. Pedipalp. When the party found her, she grabbed the Dream Gate and burst into black smoke. The walls of the room burst into flame and collapsed, leaving the party standing in the middle of Roslar's Coffer on the night of the orc attack. The party got to relive some traumatic memories. Then the black smoke swirled together to form the PC's PCs from Kishokish's game, who each taunted their corresponding character for their individual failings before attacking. When the party defeated them the black smoke formed the overpowered unique variant hydra, but having learned of its vulnerability to cold the party was able to emerge victorious. When the hydra was defeated the party found themselves back in the room with the Dream Gate and Pedipalp slumped dead against the wall.

Following another forum poster's suggestion, I made the gardeners in Deathbower extremely corteous. Though they were insistent that the party had to be properly dead to proceed, they promised to make it painless and would give the party as long as they needed to prepare. They reassured the party that their fears were common and natural. They offered to bring a grief counselor, as talking about fears often makes them more managable. They pointed out the nearby statue of Ethariel and talked about the grace of accepting death. They offered to provide relaxing massages as they played relaxing music. The party did not take them up on any of their offers.

If you really want the players to hate the witchcrows in Deathbower, have one of them turn invisible then use Flyby Attack to steal the party's ioun stone and fly off. A monster trying to kill a PC is rude, but trying to steal their stuff is an unforgivable offense.

Oh, and Abdell. Cannot forget Abdell is also in there.

Oddly, book 2 actually says that Abdell isn't there. Pages 26-27: "Despondent over his mount’s death, the paladin had the horse’s remains cremated, and Roslar kept the ashes near his side for several more years before he perished. The architects of the tomb knew of Roslar’s adoration for his horse, and so they constructed this mausoleum specifically for the animal. Abdell’s ashes weren’t ever here and have since been lost."

I ran the Boneyard version of the tomb as a much more direct reflection of the Material Plane version; a copy of a tomb materializes in the Boneyard when the one on the Material Plane is consecrated, and a copy of a creature's remains materialize in it when the creature is interred. This helps guide the creature's soul in its journey along the River of Souls, as the soul is naturally drawn towards its body. I could not come up with a satisfying explanation for the tomb as written. It seems that a horse skeleton appeared in the Boneyard tomb with no Material Plane analogue because a skeleton is the more Platonicly ideal content for a tomb than cremated ashes, even though the room was built to hold the horse's ashes. Also the horse body showed up despite not being buried there, but Roslar and the Shrikes did not.

I am GMing my first campaign, an undead-heavy AP. As such, there are quite a few incorporeal enemies. I can usually justify a crazed undead flying out in the open and slugging it out with the party. But the fact that most of them have feats like Spring Attack, Flyby Attack and Blindfight suggests to me that they should be bouncing out of the floors and walls to attack. This sounds exciting, but in practice I find that it does not leave much agency for the players to make meaningful decisions and turns fights into a bit of a slog. Because the ghost is hiding in the floor outside of its turn, all the players can do is ready actions. Positioning is fairly inconsequential since they do not know where the creature is or where it will emerge; melee fighters will not even want to move since they need to retain their 5-foot step in hopes of reaching the creature.

When it gets back to the creature's turn, I can choose to attack from position A or position B, which determines which of the PC's readied attacks go off. Once all the attacks are resolved and the creature is back in the floor, all that is left for the players to do is declare "I ready again." It mechanically is not much different from a standard fight, but since it is my choice that determines which characters' actions go off and when, it can feel like I am playing both sides of the fight and the players are just observers.

What percentage of the time do your incorporeals usually spend hiding inside objects? How has your experience been with these encounters? Has limited player agency felt like a drag? Any suggestions to make more interesting fights?

Please note that I am not looking for advice on the best ways to defeat incorporeal creatures. I am after ideas for how to make encounters engaging and entertaining for a typical party.