Lord Shark's page

I could see allowing bard as the free dedication, given both Celtic bards' and African griots'/djelis' role as lore-keepers and advisors. If I did that, I'd probably limit the dedication to either the enigma or polymath muses to emphasize the scholarly side, though.

I'd love to see some kind of skeletal option, just so you can play a character like Skulduggery Pleasant or Brook from One Piece.

Speaking of spoilers ... does anyone else think "Rumormonger" is a bit too obvious an alias for Reginald Vancaskerkin? I'd think it would be a big red arrow pointing at the NPC the players know who runs a gossipy tabloid newspaper.

Any thoughts? One idea I had was by perhaps having the assistant be the one who does the introduction or maybe introducing multiple 'potential suspects' at a table drinking with each other.

I'd probably just cut down his initial speech considerably. The PCs are there to deal with an ongoing bar brawl, they don't have time to stand around listening to this guy chatter away. At the very least, don't have him mention his occupation out of nowhere.

If I run this, I'd probably deal with treasure through a combination of better gear provided by Headquarters, contributions from grateful festival organizers, and letting the PCs' equipment level up as they advance. Definitely no looting bodies or pocketing arbitrary fines (or citizens slipping purses of gold into the officers' pockets).

Maybe add a supply officer NPC to the Edgewatch station who issues higher-level equipment as the PCs become authorized for it -- but only if they fill out the proper forms in triplicate, of course.

As for the new gear, it's a bit disappointing the nightstick is such a poor weapon. And I'm definitely not going to be using the blindpepper bomb and tube in my game, given the real-world issues around the casual overuse of tear gas and pepper spray. Maybe some sort of sleep/knockout gas alchemical weapon would be a better alternative?

Does the Sally Guard Neophyte background intentionally not get a skill feat?

Agents of Edgewatch Player's Guide wrote:

You’re trained in the Nature skill and your choice of Hunting Lore or Stabling Lore. You start out with a riding horse, as well as a suit of shoddy half-plate armor, a shoddy longsword, and a shoddy lance (see page 273 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook for the rules on shoddy items).

My initial assumption on my first past read was that the equipment took the place of the circumstance bonus to various charisma checks that the other backgrounds get but now that I'm importing it into Fantasy Grounds for my group it just seems odd.

It does seem like a pretty poor deal. Shoddy half-plate is, if I'm reading the rules for shoddy items right, AC +3, Dex cap +1, penalty -5 (unless you have STR 16+), and speed -10. And you can't sell it, so you might as well throw it away and buy medium armor out of your starting 15 GP -- you can probably afford scale or chain, both of which give you better benefits than shoddy half-plate.

Surrender? Then you have the whole prisoner problem. What to do with them? Most of the time the PCs have no way to hold a large or any number of prisoners and there is no place nearby where they can offload them. Letting them leave? See the problems with fleeing. So whats left? Kill them?

If the PCs are members of the city guard in this AP, presumably they can hand prisoners over to NPC guards to haul off to prison. ("Book 'em, Danno.")

If killing enemies rather than letting them surrender is easier and more profitable, many players will choose that route. The only way to change that is to make surrender a more attractive option.

In my games, if the players accept an intelligent enemy's surrender, the enemy gives up their weapons, may pay a ransom and/or provide information, and then just vanishes from the story. I don't worry about where they go, or whether they'll come back looking for revenge -- you beat them, they leave, they're gone.

Yeah, this is unrealistic, but it also incentivizes the PCs to accept surrender, knowing that they won't have to drag prisoners through the rest of the dungeon.

Yeah, I understand that more NPCs are likely coming... I have some reservations about that structure when a group of characters plays an important role in the first/second chapter, but I get that there are limitations.

People have different tastes, and it must be extremely challenging to balance them for an AP. The reason I'm commenting this time is because I feel like there is a bigger disconnect than usual between my expectations and desires versus what is presented.

I echo Zapp's sentiment- would have loved more portraits, side quests, soapy love triangles, petty rivalries, etc!

I was a bit disappointed myself that the second half of the adventure was basically straight dungeon crawling, with no involvement of the circus at all. Still, we'll see how it develops.