Matrix Sorcica's page

There's been a lot of threads about the single best/favorite installments (chapters) of the APs, but what is in your opinion the single best dungeon - be it an actual dungeon, wizard tower, bad guy HQ or whatever - from any AP, and why?

This is just awesome.

Sharing this here too, since this forum is also about "converting Pathfinder Roleplaying Game content to other system"

I'm generally a forever GM but one of my players took over for a campaign so I've been a surprised player for almost a year. And with the pandemic and a four-month layoff I had ample time to plan what I wanted to run next.

As a Ravenloft fan and a lapsed PF player I always wanted to give Carrion Crown a go. Especially as I paid for the physical books. Converting it seemed like a worthwhile project. Clicky

PF1 to 5e is tricky, and a lot of stuff just doesn't translate.
It's still a work in progress and I'm still probably six months away from running it...

This may interest you.

Anything with a Vancaskerkin.

Extinction Cure. That sounds pretty totalitarian and a lot more scary than Curse. ;)

Yes.
https://www.enworld.org/threads/age-of-worms-adventure-path.440668/

Matrix Sorcica wrote:

Artofregicide wrote:

Pnakotus Detsujin wrote:

There was a dungeon in a dungeon magazine book that detailed a fire giant cult of Mephistopheles inside an active vulcano. You may take a few maps from there.

Excellent suggestion, however, I don't have that book. It sounds like an awesome read though!

Heart of Hellfire Mountain, Dungeon Magazine 140.

Thanks kindly!

This really is perfect. Though I'm not sure how or if I can remove the numbers from the map.

Photoshop? GIMP? Paint?

Pnakotus Detsujin wrote:

There was a dungeon in a dungeon magazine book that detailed a fire giant cult of Mephistopheles inside an active vulcano. You may take a few maps from there.

Excellent suggestion, however, I don't have that book. It sounds like an awesome read though!

Heart of Hellfire Mountain, Dungeon Magazine 140.

Wow, this is great! I'd love to hear more. Should I PM you with a mail address?

So, the "mystery" of RotR is revealed (at least, the return of the runelords) is revealed pretty early?

Also, no follow up regarding Korvosa and Ileosa's misgivings?

Matrix Sorcica wrote:

Story Archer wrote:

How does it run as a semi-standalone, actually.

I have this truly phenomenal Runelords campaign that I've put together but I want to work in at least some of Return before running it again. It's centered around the shards of the Sihedron and uses Rise of the Runelords #1 - #6, Shattered Star #2, #3 & #6, Curse of the Crimson Throne #2 and a handful of Season 3 & 4 scenarios from PFS all cobbled together to tell one epic story. Lots of backstory has been re-written, NPC roles expanded to on-going subplots of their own and everything reordered to take place in the same timeline.

Please do tell us more!

Oh, geez, where to begin...?

I've been working on it for several years now and its really spectacular. My hope is to eventually have it written out in such a fashion that others might be able to run it, and then hopefully convert it to 2nd Ed.

I'll try to put something together and post it up on the appropriate forum soon, but even a brief overview would still be quite a read - in the meantime, what do you want to know?

Thanks.

Also, how do you keep the slowly unwinding mystery which is a big part of RotR, when chasing the Silhedron and all that that implies?

How does it run as a semi-standalone, actually.

I have this truly phenomenal Runelords campaign that I've put together but I want to work in at least some of Return before running it again. It's centered around the shards of the Sihedron and uses Rise of the Runelords #1 - #6, Shattered Star #2, #3 & #6, Curse of the Crimson Throne #2 and a handful of Season 3 & 4 scenarios from PFS all cobbled together to tell one epic story. Lots of backstory has been re-written, NPC roles expanded to on-going subplots of their own and everything reordered to take place in the same timeline.

Please do tell us more!

Off the top of my head youd have to rewrite the encounter tables

IMO, that's rather minor.

Temperans wrote:

Which is why many people are thinking of using 1/2 level bonus. It stops the flattening of no level but allows a wider range of creatures compared to full level.

Yeah, I tried that during early playtest, with all the math spread calculations to see what effects it would have had.

I dropped it.
It created more issues than I cared to fix.

Could you give some examples? I can't see why it messes with the game so much.

Matrix Sorcica wrote:

#1: Classes with high HPs (martials) gets hit harder than classes with lower HP (casters), without the latter suffering any hit to their class abilities.

As I've been reading it, most of the major scaling damage boosts for melee characters (such as Sneak attack, Power attack, etc) are also based on the numeric character level. As that caps at lvl-10, I don't see where that should become imbalanced as all classes tend to end 10th lvl with about 6dX dmg/round, plus static bonuses.

Is there something I'm missing? And if so, what might you suggest to correct this?

Edit:
I did notice that the Barbarian does get a 12th level feat "Spirit's Wrath" which may need adjustment, as it is a 1-action ranged attack dealing 4d8 + Con dmg. But bringing this down to 2d8 + Con should be sufficient to fix this, bring it back in line with other damage sources.

The only other issue I see is potentially with the Barbarian's static Instinct damage bonus once they obtain Greater Weapon Specialization, but seeing as this replaces the Greater Specialization bonuses, only functions while raging, and they get no real additional damage dice boosts past lvl-10, I'm not sure how much of a problem this would really be.

Am I mistaken, or is there anything else which I might be missing?

A fighter loses out on 120 hp plus con ifhit points are capped at level 10. A wizard loses out on 60 hp. See?

#1: Classes with high HPs (martials) gets hit harder than classes with lower HP (casters), without the latter suffering any hit to their class abilities.

You don't double the dice with a striking rune, you add one die. And then you double that on a crit.

Bestiary, p. 220.

Lich is stated as getting cold 20, physical 15 (except magic bludgeoning) resistances, but the example lich only has cold 10, physical 10 (except magic bludgeoning).

James Jacobs wrote:

Going forward we're hoping to have ALL the monsters in the Bestiaries play roles in the actual adventure. The transition from the philosophy from 1st to 2nd will take a few volumes to iron out though.

Wait, wait. Didn't you (or someone on the staff) mention Age of Ashes was supposed to have a ** spoiler omitted ** in the bestiary section?

...Are we going to fight a ** spoiler omitted ** in this adventure path?? :D

Don't think so. Pretty sure he meant the bestiaries in the AP volumes.

CRB p. 329

The heightened version of Dimensional Door states that "You are temporarily immune for 1 hour." but doesn't specify against what.

Bestiary, p. 112.

Ancient Red Dragons are Huge?

Is the adventure the same as the old Dungeon Magazine one, or the 3.x Empire of the Ghouls? I mean, it's obviously expanded, but is the adventure the same, just padded?

A larger company has both a lot more institutional overhead and different demands as far as their supply and delivery chain. I can't speculate on Paizo's numbers, but the gamble involved is substantial on an untested concept: will 5E players want to buy into a PF campaign?

That's what Kickstarters are for, is it not?

If it turns out 5E players aren't interested in an $80 Pathfinder book and they only sell 1,000, they don't want to sit with a giant pile of dead inventory in their warehouse.

5E players are asked to buy a $115 book, remember? If they really wanted to test the waters, they should make a full 5E version either its own KS or a stretch goal. What they will get now for the chosen set up (5E players have a considerable higher buy in price) will only be partial data, imo.

While you think that making the statblocks is the main issue, from what I learned in the last couple of years, making the layout is really just as hard. Now, in this case it would not only be extra work to make 3 versions of the layout with different statblock lengths, Paizo would (if they would do it) probably look to have the pages have the same content as to be able to reference by pagenumber and not have to worry that page 73 in the 2e book is page 70 in the 1e and 72 or 74 in the 5e variant.

They could just talk to Frog God Games, a much smaller company, who regulary has run and fulfilled Kickstarters for three different systems, including PF1 and 5E.

Very informative, thanks.

I've put my GS into the Forgotten Realms, and I'm doing a merge with the Ironfang Invasion AP as well.

That sounds extremely interesting, and I'd love to hear more on your plans and how you're merging the setting and APs.

SS is Serpent’s Skull. S&S is Skulls and Shackles. I've seen S* used for Shattered Star.

Legendary Games has a plug in adventure that I ran in tandem with History of Ashes that for the most part turned out pretty good. Something... heart... Not sure. I would definitely tone down one of the encounters if you decide to use it (The Tongue) but otherwise it was pretty fun for my players.

Hero's Blood, right?

There's a Vancaskerkin - Lullaby - in Roderic's Cove (Return of the Runelords) as well.

I’ll have to scan that book and see if I want to run it. The only flaw is that it kills ever running iron fang with this group.

Not really. Book 5 is very skippable or replaceable in IF.

That sounds awesome, Dosgamer. Congratulations on finishing. Could you tell a bit more about the conversion? Does the AP play better in 5e do you think? How did you convert encounters and treasure and so on?

Do you have notes ;-)

You use this excellent supplement: https://gurbintrollgames.wordpress.com/blackballs-treasure-2/

He's the logo of their subsidiary Necromancer Games, and is also the main antagonist of their Adventure Path, "The Slumbering Tsar."

He's not in that AP, only his temple-city. Go down the Well is you want to find Orcus ;-)

In addition to DragonChess' suggestions, you can skip part 4 and 5 of Curse of the Crimson Throne totally. Just ignore the need for Sarithiel. Or run "Mantis and Maiden" before part 6 from the hardcover edition and let the sword be found there.
You could skip Edge of Anarchy as well, just starting with the plague outbreak in Korvosa.

In Giantslayer, you could skip most parts 3-5, as they are pretty repetitive. You could skip part 6 and let the Fire Giant king in part 5 be the BBEG.
You could run parts 1-2 as a mini-arc, as they are very loosely connected to the other parts.

Reign of Winter: Skip the plane/planet/real world hopping.

For all of the above adjust encounter levels appropiately.

I threw you a link on the 5e and beyond board.

This may be of interest

I've been running parts of Shattered Star and Rise of the Runelords concurrently, so it's not like it's impossible to weave them together regardless of order.

Share the details about how you did and how it went, please.

Matrix Sorcica wrote:

SheepishEidolon wrote:

I miss the foreword a bit, despite knowing it's for a good case (more adventure pages).

I really feel this AP would benefit from a foreword, reflecting on the conclusion of the Runelords story line.

Instead they skipped the foreword but included four pages of advertisements. Why, oh why?

Well, like so many others, they love to make people ask questions. Because when there are those who cannot be satisfied with the viable reasons for why things are, at least they can still make those people ask questions. ;)

Great! Now all we need are the viable reasons ;-)

I miss the foreword a bit, despite knowing it's for a good case (more adventure pages).

I really feel this AP would benefit from a foreword, reflecting on the conclusion of the Runelords story line.

Does it have to be from Paizo? Because this sounds just what you're looking for: http://endzeitgeist.com/ezg-reviews-b18-faces-muse/

I'm currently running a grand campaign that primarily uses the Rise of the Runelords to tell the Shattered Star story. Its required a little re-work (which I love to do anyway) and it includes the six Runelords volumes as well as volumes 2, 3 & 6 of Shattered Star and volume 2 of Curse of the Crimson Throne, 'Seven Days to the Grave'. Its really come out spectacularly.

I'm really really interested in hearing more about the arching plot and how you have woven the storylines together.

Slumbering Tsar from Frog God Games is for level 7 -20. It's really great and comes highly recommend by others (haven't had the chance to play myself).
Turns out, it's half price these days:
http://froggodgames.com/pathfinder-clearance-slumbering-tsar-saga

To make an active link, you have to use the BBCode tags: {url=www.link.com]}Click here!{/url}. Only use the square brackets [ ] instead of the curly ones.

Thanks. Like any other forum doesn't require this, so anyone know why Paizo's does?

To the OP - there is a thread somewhere on best / favourite instalments

Like this one http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uey3?What-are-your-favorite-AP-adventures-and- why

Edit: no active link?

SD has a very strong story, some of the best set pieces written by Paizo to this day

I know about the rolling tower, what else are you thinking about?

Anything's possible, what I'm really aiming at is exactly the "not practical" explanation.

I'm talking about small-company, American kickstarters who manage to do the EU friendly kickstarters. If they are able to solve the 'practical' problems, I can't see why the Frogs with their huge KS experience can't - unless it's bacause they are not willing. Which in itself needs some explaining, imo.

I will get the ball rolling by repeating my request from the FGG forum for an EU friendly kickstarter.
I really think Frog God should look into doing the kickstarter EU friendly. The "Strongholds" KS currently running amok is doing it, seing a huge rise in international backers, other first time KS are doing it. FFG should be as well. I really can't see why all these kickstarters are able to, but the Frogs somehow can't.

I think the 5e version of RA will be a monster hit - an old classic updated and expanded for 5e in color. So something for consideration.

Orthos wrote:

those flaws and problems have - GASP - more often than not turned out to be actual flaws and problems that people complain about, often in very large numbers, after the official release. Sometimes this leads to errata. Most of the time not.

Perhaps the designers are aiming for a game different from what the armchair designers are.

But of course. That's why paizo stands firm and will provide tons of more mythic content, despite what the nay-sayers complain about.

Matrix Sorcica wrote:

ryric wrote:

I think the major flaw, such as it was, was simply that the adventure writers did not know how exponentially more powerful mythic would make PCs.

Or poor rules design.

If the rules are poor that's largely on the community since they were given a public playtest.

What Orthos said. For playtests to matter, the designers should take into consideration the input from the playtesters.

Now, some of the issues were brought to the designer's attention, which resulted in one of two scenarios:

A) Paizo completely ignored the feedback, making the playtests a marketing scam.

B) They evaluated the feedback and concluded the rules were fine as is.

I don't know which is worse.

I think the major flaw, such as it was, was simply that the adventure writers did not know how exponentially more powerful mythic would make PCs.

Or poor rules design.

It says one place Ochymua has the device set to central Avistan and the Plane of Water, another that it's set to Absalom and the Plane of Air?

Varisia plus lore (Runelords etc.)
Irrisen
Land og the Linnorm Kings
Lastwall in some form
Absalom
Gallowspire

And some other small individual elements.

All combined into a Sword Coast - Varisia - Linorm - Irrisen - Nentir Vale (from 4E) mash up setting. I love it.