Loki_Thief's page

1. The final enemy is flying 10 feet above the water and is throwing knives or his cantrip. So there is bascially no chance to ever get into melee with it without using a reach weapon. And even with a reach weapon, you have to be either on one of the piers and very close to the Phantom, or use one of the Effervescant Ampules provided by the adventure. Unfortunately, those are Talismans, so you need 10 minutes to affix them. You get them before the Bear Dance, and after that there isn't really all that much time to take breaks, so I deem it unlikely that many groups will have had the time to even affix them.

Regarding the Ampoules, I don't think the issue is having time to affix them, given that things don't go south until after the Bear Dance, as much as the players not seeing a reason to. I'd recommend informing the players of their effects, and having Geltra nudge any PCs who might benefit them to put them on as part of her vague premonition.

2. The enemy is basically the same in low tier. That means 4 Level 3 characters can encounter a flying incorporeal enemy with ranged attacks, who specifically has the tactic to stay out of melee. It has a resistance of 6 against nonmagical attacks - so unless you have a true ranged character or spells, even your ranged backup weapons will have a hard time damaging it

If you truly end up with an Oops! All Melee! party, then yeah, they're gonna have a rough time as written. I'd handle that by adjusting the phantom's tactics to have them charge in to melee from time to time. Tactically sound? No... but very much in character for an unquiet vengeance-maddened spirit. Maybe describe its eyes glowing the same red as the rain just before it charges in for a stabbing frenzy. Combine this with the reduced "flight ceiling" if you feel more help would be warranted.

A similar issue that does seem genuinely ambiguous is Event 4: Vengeful Dead. The adventure text says that the "base" encounter for levels 5-6 is a hulk and two wights, while the listing for that encounter in Appendix 2 says the pre-scaling encounter has just one wight alongside the hulk. Some back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests to me that two wights is correct, but it's not conclusive either way.

The Secondary Initiation boon says:
"Special: You can apply this boon multiple times to the same character, but each time you apply it, you relinquish your membership in the previous group in order to join a different group. Before doing so, you must retrain any options that listed membership in your previous group as a prerequisite."
Does this also apply to memberships gained from other boons? My character (Aiuvarin Bard/Rogue from Kintargo) has the Specialized Training: Age Of Ashes boon to give her membership in the Lacunafex and access to its options. Can she take Secondary Initiation with the Firebrands and still retain her Lacunafex options, or would she lose access to them?
Secondary Initiation's text seems to be specifically referring to overriding earlier instances of itself, and Specialized Training: Age of Ashes makes no mention of its memberships overriding or being overridden by others, which makes me feel like it should work (and the Lacunafex/Firebrand pair specifically is a natural fit), but I can see the counter-argument, so I felt I ought to ask. Thank you kindly!

Poppet Commander!
Or even better, Tiny Poppet Guardian (Toy Poppet Heritage)... and it's Gom-Gom, Yoon's childhood stuffy (whose unique appearance definitely doesn't resemble any actual creatures), awakened to sentience!
(Yeah, not happening... but I can dream!)

Oh, this is brilliant! Super well-written in and of itself, and the process-of-elimination countdown idea is truly inspired! (Also, personally happy to see Pharasma confirmed safe, as she's one of my favorite deities; my beloved Duskwalker Tengu Cleric Zorii is of course relieved by the news as well)!

As someone who recently started taking his 10-year-old niece through the Beginner Box this is excellent news!

Please tell me the five difficulty levels are Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master and Legendary.

One last one. As mentioned, the original sixth letter implies that A can transform the Count at a distance, so the PCs have reason to pursue him to Gallowspire, even after rescuing Galdana. But that may not be necessary. Some groups may be willing to go to Gallowspire anyway, for any number of reasons: maybe they want to spare the Count the trauma of additional attempted abductions, maybe they're worried (as the book suggests) that A might be able to do something else with the Carrion Crown, maybe they want to prove themselves A's superior by taking him down on his home turf, or maybe they're just willing to go to Gallowspire because it's a more dramatically appropriate site for their final showdown. There's also the possibility that they *don't* rescue Galdana at Renchurch, either because the Grey Friar got away with him in the fight, or because they took too long getting to him and he was already gone.
So this is a slightly altered version of letter six, which skips the implication that the Carrion Crown can work remotely. Again, I'd only recommend using it if the Grey Friar got away with the Count, if you're *very* sure your PCs will be willing to confront A at Gallowspire anyway, or if you're prepared to potentially throw out Adorak and improvise the final portion of the campaign.

I think that about covers it. Thank you all so much for your kind words; I'm very flattered that these letters have been so well received, and I hope they prove useful.

A

Okay, that went faster than expected. Here's the sixth letter. If the party successfully rescues the Count at Renchurch, it's found (sealed) among the Grey Friar's effects, with a note instructing the Friar to leave it behind when he departs with Galdana. If they don't succeed, for whatever reason, he's already done so, and they find it waiting for them in the Necrotic Sanctum.

At this point, A is getting very worried about the party, but he's doing his best not to show it. The resolution I came up with to the dilemma I mentioned is that he's not (consciously) considering the possibility of them successfully rescuing Galdana, assuming that his minions can at least slow the party down long enough to let the Grey Friar finish prepping the Count and leave with him for Gallowspire. This (along with the fact that he would honestly prefer not to face the party himself) is why he doesn't stay at Renchurch to help defend it. But since he subconsciously knows they could succeed, he deliberately phrases the letter to imply that he doesn't need Galdana physically present at the ritual site (which may even be true, at the GM's option), thus incentivizing the party to come after him there even if they succeed in their rescue at Renchurch. He would prefer not to risk his neck by fighting them at all, but if it's inevitable, he's pretty sure he has the best odds if he can force the fight at Gallowspire.
So there you go. A few years late, but better late than never. Thanks for all the kind words and suggestions. I'd forgotten how much fun it was slipping into the mindset of an arrogant misanthrope like A to write these letters. I hope the last one lived up to expectations.

A

Okay, writing the sixth letter has been more complicated than I thought-- I remember now why I gave up on it the first time around. In short, the difficulty is that the logical place for the sixth letter is after Galdana's rescue, which is explicitly something that A doesn't anticipate or have contingency plans for. And if he writes assuming the PCs would arrive too late, that risks the PCs thinking there's no urgent reason to travel to Gallowspire to face him. I think I've come up with a decent solution, but it may take a little longer to put all the pieces together. Soon!

Just was prompted to come back to these posts by a PM (I don't frequent the boards much anymore) and am extremely flattered that this thread is still of interest to people, over eight years later.
My campaign did finish up, though it took a while. I don't remember if events transpired to cause me not to write a sixth letter, or whether I did and forgot to post it. I've switched computers since then, so if there was one it's been lost.
Since people still seem interested in these (and since it was kind of fun getting into A's head and indulging my inner villain) I'll work on finishing out the collection with a sixth letter. I want to refresh my memory of the campaign and try to match up the tone with the earlier ones, so it may take me a few days, but I've kept you waiting seven and a half years since my last post, so hopefully you won't begrudge me a few more days.
Once again, thank you for all the kind words, they mean a lot to me.

Given that multiple people have stated that they're not experiencing problems with any other websites, it's highly probable that the culprit for this issue is somewhere on Paizo's end. Even if it's not affecting everyone, it's happening for a large enough number of users to make it a serious problem. I understand that problems like this can be difficult to suss out, but even if they don't have a solution right away, they could at least say "we're not sure what's going on, we'll continue to look into it". That would still be better than complete silence.

I have also been having this issue for at least a few weeks now. Firefox 84.0.1, Windows 10 OS Build 19041.685, Spectrum, Kansas. Finally came on here to see if it wasn't just me and am fairly dismayed that it's been well over a month with no official response. Even if they're having a hard time rooting out the cause of the issue, a simple, "Yeah, we're aware of the problem and are working on it" would be nice.

Got it! Must've been getting the cached download before, but after closing the browser and turning off the computer for the night, I got it first try this morning.

I'm still not able to open it. I tried initially, then again just now. Either it hasn't been fixed or my downloads page is still linking to the broken version.

I have serious egg on my face. I looked back at the sequence of emails and realized that in my original email requesting the change, I gave the last four digits of my original card, not the card I wanted to change it to. That explains why it didn't change my card, it wasn't your fault at all. I sincerely apologize for my immediately jumping to conclusions regarding the issue, and my faith in Paizo customer service has been restored. Sorry again.

Got your email and responded. Thank you for taking care of things.

Hello,

On July 5th, I received an email that my preorder for the Pathfinder Playtest was going to be processed in the immediate future. This was somewhat earlier than I expected, so the next day, on July 6th, I replied to the email asking them to change the payment method for my preorder. I got an email back that same day saying that they'd made the change and I would receive an updated order confirmation. Except they never made the change. I did not receive any new confirmation, and on July 13th, when I received notice that the preorder had shipped, my original payment method had been charged, rather than the one I had wanted it changed to. I sent another email the next day, on July 14th, explaining what had happened and asking them to fix things, and as of today (July 17th) have received no response whatsoever. In the past I have always had very positive interactions with Paizo customer service, so I'm a little baffled at the poor service I've received over this issue. Having this payment charged to the original card is going to cause me significant financial strain over the next few weeks, and I am distinctly unhappy that:
1) My payment method was not changed as I requested,
2) The customer service employee who emailed me *lied* to me and said it had been changed, and
3) I received no response to my follow-up on the matter
I realize that at this point it may be impossible to change the payment for an order that has now shipped, but I wanted to register my extreme unhappiness and bafflement with the way this was handled. As I said, I have always had very good interactions with Paizo customer service personnel, and this incident has definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.

I was going to post and say that the only place I'd be surprised to see is the Mana Wastes, because of how drastically that would affect arcane PCs, but then I got thinking, and I'm pretty sure with the right support, even that's not impossible. Never underestimate Paizo's creativity.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

Loki_Thief wrote:

Kalindlara wrote:

Loki_Thief wrote:

Very nice. I'm consistently impressed by the cool backstories of Paizo's iconics. It occurs to me that the Meet the Iconics series is still incomplete, though-- we've never gotten a story for the iconic Antipaladin! What dark events drove him onto the path of wickedness? What nefarious goals does he seek to accomplish? And most of all, what's the story behind the illustration on page 248 of the Advanced Class Guide? That poor pig's family deserve some answers!

I need an image macro or something that I can paste, which just says NOT AN ICONIC.

(No offense meant. ^_^)

None taken, I know what you mean. I just think that if the Samurai and Ninja can get official iconics, the Antipaladin deserves one too. :-)

A prerequisite of being a Paizo Iconic is a Wayne Reynolds illustration. Reiko and Haymoto meet this requirement, but the antipaladin doesn't.

So all we need to do is bribe the Antipaladin with (evil) cookies so he'll sit for a portrait by Wayne Reynolds. Or bribe Mr. Reynolds with cookies (which may or may not be evil) to whip up a brand new iconic Antipaladin. Either way, problem solved! ;-)

Loki_Thief wrote:

Very nice. I'm consistently impressed by the cool backstories of Paizo's iconics. It occurs to me that the Meet the Iconics series is still incomplete, though-- we've never gotten a story for the iconic Antipaladin! What dark events drove him onto the path of wickedness? What nefarious goals does he seek to accomplish? And most of all, what's the story behind the illustration on page 248 of the Advanced Class Guide? That poor pig's family deserve some answers!

I need an image macro or something that I can paste, which just says NOT AN ICONIC.

(No offense meant. ^_^)

None taken, I know what you mean. I just think that if the Samurai and Ninja can get official iconics, the Antipaladin deserves one too. :-)

Very nice. I'm consistently impressed by the cool backstories of Paizo's iconics. It occurs to me that the Meet the Iconics series is still incomplete, though-- we've never gotten a story for the iconic Antipaladin! What dark events drove him onto the path of wickedness? What nefarious goals does he seek to accomplish? And most of all, what's the story behind the illustration on page 248 of the Advanced Class Guide? That poor pig's family deserve some answers!

Ooh! The Shemhazian Demon promo fig! Can't wait to see it!

Nice stuff. Personally, the Investigator is far and away my most anticipated class in the ACG, so I'm very glad it made it in. The game is afoot!

I literally laughed out loud at the GM Tip. Which probably says something interesting about my alignment, but oh well...

@ scadgrad: I just sent you the PM.

For everyone: My campaign has been slowed down lately due to player absences, but it is progressing. My group is just now heading down to the lower levels of Renchurch, and I intend the next letter to show up somewhere in there. It'll probably be before the 'rescue' encounter, as opposed to what I thought previously. Expect it soon. Sorry for the delays, and as always, thanks for all the kind words.

A

Personally, I'm hoping we get another Runelord or two. Alaznist is probably most likely, as the border of her and Karzoug's domains ran right along the Lost Coast, but I'm personally pulling for Xanderghul.

I had the same issue in my campaign. Also, I dislike the disruption ability in general. Here's what I turned the Raven's Head into:

+3 undead bane heavy mace
In the hands of a worshiper of Pharasma, it counts as good, cold iron and silver for bypassing the DR of undead creatures.
Wielded by an inquisitor of Pharasma, it gains the following additional abilities:
Its undead bane ability stacks with that granted by the inquisitor class feature.
It gains the ghost touch property, and bypasses all DR possessed by undead creatures.
An undead damaged by the mace loses the ability to benefit from Fast Healing for one round. They also cannot be healed by negative energy or regain hit points via energy drain, ability drain or blood drain attacks during that round (other effects of those attacks still occur).
It can be used as a standard action to deal damage to a haunt. Haunts count as undead for the purpose of the bane ability.

(The last ability is deliberately there to make the last adventure a little less frustrating-- there's a lot of haunts in that book, and they're tough to fight without access to channeled energy)

Works well, I think. The players might figure out that it's a retcon, but hopefully they'll be understanding. And if not, you can always drop rocks on them. ;-)

To elaborate some more...

Here, reposted from another thread, is what I did to solve the problem:

Honestly, the werewolves are fairly inconsequential to A. He could care less about the power dynamics of the Shudderwood-- the lycans are only important because he needs the Packlord's Heart to achieve his goals. He might find the resulting turmoil among the tribes (and the PCs' entanglement in the mess) to be a source of mild amusement, but that's about the extent of it. Ultimately, A has bigger fish to fry.
Plus, he's trying to take a deliberately disinterested tone in these letters, to give the impression that he's not particularly worried by the heroes' successes. Glossing over the details of what they've encountered is one way he does this. (In the beginning, this disinterested tone is pretty genuine. As the campaign progresses, particularly once Vrood is dead, it becomes a facade, as A tries to mask his rising concern from both the PCs and himself.)
This is, of course, all based on my interpretation of A, which is ultimately subjective. Your mileage may vary.

A

Also, GeeSeeBee's letter is pretty cool, too. It's nice seeing other people's takes on A's interactions with the players.

Thanks for all the kind words, folks; they're very much appreciated. Sorry it's been taking so long, my group's had to miss a couple of sessions due to various thing (and we only play this campaign every other week to begin with). But, the fifth letter is here, intended for the end of Book 5. I recommend the PCs find it in a certain nobleman's chambers when they find him missing.

Note that this assumes that the PCs either cooperated with the vampires, or at least failed to destroy them all. If the PCs went to the trouble of tracking down and finishing the vamps, a slight revision is in order:

Note that whether they left the vamps alive or destroyed them, A is going to mock them for it. There may be a final letter at some point in Book 6, probably at some point after the rescue at Renchurch. I'll also post about what happens when the PCs and A finally come face to face. Until then.

A

Well, I was a bit worried about how well I'd take my own likely rejection. Pretty well, as it turns out-- I only slew three of my minions in a blind rage before regaining control of myself. ;-)
Seriously, though, big congratulations to this year's crop of honorees.

Thank you!
The best part is, my brain has decided to take that joke and turn it into the outline for a cool-sounding adventure. Inspiration lurks everywhere!

Very disappointed that this thread wasn't a call for adventurers to protect you from a Marut. ;-)

That video is awesome.

There absolutely no chance, however, of many of us Paizoians coming down with a case of sanity. Several of us just got our annual booster inoculation against it.

Touche. I said myself recently that I worry less about whether I'm insane, and more about whether I'm insane *enough*. So I can relate. :-)

True. Most people are good about it. There's just a few bad apples every year it seems. (And it helps that the mods keep a close eye on things-- posts that get too nasty disappear faster than a pickle in a goblin village.)

Yeah, it's natural to be upset if you don't make it in. That's human nature, and I'm fairly certain that the majority of entrants are in fact human. And, of course, everyone deals with that disappointment differently. I just hate every year seeing people flip their lids and embarrass themselves publicly over it. Even if your item actually was better than the top 32, and just got overlooked, I guarantee that insulting the judges and ripping your fellow contestants is *not* going to win you any sympathy points. And it may well hurt your chances of making any other inroads into the gaming business-- "Well, I would've hired this guy, until I remembered what he said about my mother on the messageboards after he didn't make it into the top 32 a couple years back". Deal with the rejection in whatever way works for you, just don't be a jerk about it.

A

Okay people, just over 24 hours remain until the top 32 get revealed. If it's anything like in previous years, here's what's going to happen:
Everyone who submitted will rush to see if they made it. In the vast majority of cases, the answer will be 'No'. Then they will look at the items that *did* make top 32. Most of these hopefuls will admire those selected, sigh in disappointment, and hopefully try to take away some lessons for next year.
Some people, however, will get angry. Very angry. They will treat the fact that *their* item wasn't picked as a personal insult, and go into full-on, Hulk-smash, rage mode. They will post on the boards ranting and raving about how the idiocy of the voters, the bias of the judges, and most of all, about how every single member of the top 32 is a steaming pile of hodag dung next to the shining brilliance of their own overlooked masterpiece.
Please, for the love of Cayden, don't be that person! If you're angry about not being picked, do yourself a favor and stay off the message boards until you've had a chance to cool down. The only thing that you'll accomplish by posting your rant is to make yourself look petty and childish. Keep your cool, let the top 32 have their moment in the sun, and don't be a jerk.

Thanks,

A

Yeah, there are spells that can work (and even if A can't cast them himself, he has minions who can). I don't stress the details, because my players are fairly tolerant of that sort of hand-waving. If you want more detail, charmed messengers (or disguised, unintelligent undead) can easily explain direct deliveries.
I also like the idea of A being smart enough to anticipate where the PCs will be next, and leaving letters there ahead of time. That's what I did with the most recent letter-- the characters found it waiting for them in the empty safehouse. High Intelligence isn't the same as precognition, but they can look a lot alike from a distance.
An even more hilarious idea (suggested by F Wesley Schneider in the same editorial that inspired these letters) is that A pre-writes the letters and gives them, sealed, to his minions, so that the PCs find them while looting the bodies. Helps maintain his illusion (and it *is* an illusion) that the PCs' successes against his minions are all accounted for in his plans. I used this tactic with the letter at the end of Book 3-- the characters found it on Vrood's corpse. (And if Vrood had escaped, or defeated the PCs, well, no harm done, A would just reclaim the letter. Since noone else knew what was in it, his facade of omniscience is preserved.)
As for how A knows what the PCs have been up to, the right spells can simplify this, too. Directly scrying on the PCs is chancy-- they might make the save, or worse, have detect scrying up. (Remember that Divination specialist wizards get constant detect scrying at 8th level, too!) But scrying on his own minions, or innocent bystanders, can indirectly learn of the characters' actions, and other divinations can also fill in the blanks. In my game, he has access to a variant of the spirit planchettes described in Book 1, which lets him interrogate the souls of his fallen minions to learn about the party. Something similar should work well for most campaigns, since it's entirely reasonable for the head of the Whispering Way to have access to powerful necromantic magic that isn't widely known.
Ultimately, you only need as much detail as your players demand. But even if they're sticklers, it's all workable while still playing fair.

Funny, I'm usually pretty good at proofreading myself. Just pretend that the second-to-last sentence says, "...in time to reach me...". The minions responsible for the error have been... dealt with.

A

As I was printing off the latest letter to hand to my players, I noticed a couple minor details that were less than perfect. Obviously, this was unacceptable :-) , so here's a revised version of the fourth letter:

And scadgrad, those look awesome! I may have to print them out myself, so my players have a more awesome-looking version of the letters to look at. Very cool.

...and here it is, the letter from near the start of book 5.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. ;-) My players just started Book 5, and I should have an appropriate letter done fairly shortly. My intent is for them to find it...

A

Something else I forgot to mention that is highly relevant to A's attempted recruitment of the party Sorcerer-- it's possible it might succeed. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't treat this as a realistic possibility, but as it happens, life circumstances may result in the sorcerer's player moving away in the semi-near future. If he ends up having to leave before the campaign is over, I may work with him to see if he's up for having his character exit the party by switching sides. It would certainly be more interesting than having his character retire after taking an arrow to the knee.
So like I said, it's unknown whether he'll actually be moving, so this may all come to nothing. But if it does happen, I've planted the seeds for something potentially awesome.