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Hey, I'm reading the Aura of Justice ability (it's very strong in our current campaign which has lots of undead and devils,) and I had a rules question; the ability seems to allow everyone to add the paladin's damage bonus for sure, but what about the CHA to AC and attacks against the target? Does everyone use the paladin's CHA bonus or do they use their own?
Hey everybody! My group just finished our Hell's Rebels campaign and are about to start Curse this coming weekend. I'm super excited, and in finishing my preparations I wanted to ask for some advice about my party's composition before we get started! Any help would be appreciated. My party consists of:
Is there anything I should be looking out for with a composition like this?
Hey everyone! I'm running the final battle for my group this week. We have a: Gunslinger 17 (Pistol style! Never misses)
Single enemies die so quickly to this party! Against the nemesis devil, rivozair, mangvhune, etc, I have had to almost double the HP of the enemies to give them a chance of winning. Also, every party member has a method of flying (carpet, boots, wings of the gargoyle, and Tengu wings feat for the monk.) From what I have seen, the final battle looks really easy, especially compared to our last finale (Rise of the Runelords.) It's worth noting, I am not familiar with Mythic rules and not comfortable with using them, so it's possible that the Mythic levels make Barzillai more dangerous than it looks on paper. It's also important to note, my group needs to expedite the finale, so I'm skipping most of the tower of bone's combat encounters and just doing the lore stuff, which might be why this fight looks easy to me; it seems like it's designed for a well drained party, which mine will not be in this case. I am currently considering rebuilding it thusly; Weakened Barzillai with the Advanced template, Rivozair (adult horned devil bound blue dragon but I've added the Broken Soul template,) Nox (Bearded Devil Fighter 10,) and 2 hounds of Kintargo. To compensate for upping the difficulty in case I go too far, I'm going to let my party maintain the benefits of the Song of Silver even in hell, and they will be going in at full resources (I expect they'll cast a few buff spells before as well, assuming they realize they are about to fight big B.) The lore behind it is that these two both signed a devilbound contract with Barzillai, and the meta reason for choosing these enemies is that these are the two villains my party hated the most, and seeing (and killing) them one last time will be a fun send-off for these guys. Do you think this is going too far? Is there something I'm missing about this encounter as written that makes it harder? Every time I've seen this fight mentioned, most people said that it was underwhelming.
Hey all! I'm reading through the adventure path, and something occurred to me while I was looking at the final battle and then item codex. Has anyone's party attempted to destroy the crown of fangs and spare Ileosa? Reading through it seems fairly difficult but not impossible. You'd have to remove the crown from Ileosa's head and destroy it with Serithial, and even without the crown Ileosa herself is still a reasonably potent enemy (and specified to still be evil), and backed by a Taniniver and her simulacrum. But as difficult as it might be, it doesn't honestly seem that complicated; grapple Ileosa, yank the crown off her head, and smash it. It's probably more complicated than just head on fighting her, but it's certainly doable; I don't see anything on her sheet that makes her immune to maneuvers. So I'm curious, has anyone done it? Or at least tried to?
Hey ya'll, going to start DMing Curse of the Crimson Throne within the next few weeks. I've been reading through and it looks like a great adventure! But I have heard down the grape-vine that chapter 2 can be exceedingly lethal based on mission order and a couple of seemingly innocuous decisions. So I'm curious, what is the deal with that? I've heard the sea hag encounter is really deadly, and it's the first one presented in the chapter. Are the party meant to go there later in the chapter? I've also heard that the vampire spawn can be really deadly if you approach the encounter the wrong way. Does that mean approaching at night? And the temple of urgothoa looks on paper pretty dangerous to me. Is it meant to be completed in a single run, or is the party supposed to fall back? At low level I prefer not to kill my party members, because they don't have access to revival spells. So I would appreciate any assistance in keeping them breathing (or at least, giving them a fair chance to stay that way!)
Hey all! My group ran through RoTR and loved it, and developed a huge love for Sandpoint. Now we are looking at running Return (we have been playing hell’s rebels between the two) as our next campaign. I was wondering if anyone has changed the first adventure path to take place in Sandpoint, and if so, how did it go? I know it will take some work, but it’s also only 1 adventure of 6 so I wouldn’t mind doing some bigger rewrites. Any help would be appreciated.
Long thread ahead! Thought I'd share my experience with the keep, since I posted a few days ago asking for advice. Feel free to share any experiences you've had, I'd love to hear how it went, and whether other parties tried a different approach. My group, for reference, consists of (all 8th level):
So they snuck into Menador by scaling the cliffs from above while invisible, and then disguising once they found a place inside to hide. Aside from a close call with the Erinyes because of truesight, they managed to scope the place out a good bit without drawing attention to themselves. Eventually, the Rogue snuck into Lucian Thrune's quarters and found the secret door, and the group decided that must have been where the Anvil of Unmaking was. So they lit a fire to draw attention (largely unnecessary because they were already unnoticed and so they only raised the alarm more, but it was fun at least) and headed down. There, they used silence to kill the Host Devil and steal the chest of potions, and then stumbled into the Wyvern den, and the monk got full attacked. Anybody else would definitely died, but his high AC (even higher, because of a mage armor potion) kept him in good shape. The rogue decided to try to climb on the wyvern, which promptly began to fly away to get Lucian, realizing it was cornered. As expected, the Gunslinger obliterated the wyvern before it could get there, but his roaring and the gunshots alerted the guards. They hurried upstairs to try and escape, and bumped into Lucian as he went to check on his beloved wyvern. I was at a bit of an impasse; they were terrified of Lucian, and though he was surely some kind of combat beast. From my perspective, even after I rewrote him (Ditched the NPC levels for Cavalier ones, swapped many of his feats for a better combat build, since I assumed he'd be caught on foot) he still wasn't able to take them all on at once, especially with surprise. Still, I didn't want them to feel cheated, so I had him follow his tactics as written, and thankfully he arrived before they could properly hide, so they didn't get a surprise round. Much to my amusement, half the party tried to fight and the other half tried to run away. The gunslinger used dust of disappearance and tried to slip past Lucian onto the balcony, the rogue hid and waited for Lucian to enter the room to stab him, the Monk tried to fight Lucian 1v1, and the bard cast invisibility sphere and tried to hide. Unsurprisingly, these disparate plans struggled against the organized defenses of Menador (Defenses which I had to organize myself, because wow is Menador Keep messy. The biggest change was swapping the soldiers for three Dottari Troops.) The rogue ran to the kitchen and tried to interrogate Zorumar for more information (a success, he told them about the secret door, but they couldn't act on it in the moment,) and then got pinned between a troop coming up the stairs and the Erinyes. The gunslinger relied on invisibility to sneak around, and then got spotted and tailed by the Erinyes (which saved the rogue's ass probably.) The monk, backed by the bard, actually handled the fight against Lucian pretty well, but when his troop arrived to back him up, they only escaped because of a lucky stunning fist that stopped Lucian from taking opportunity attacks. Through the whole fight, the bard kept running between the different group members, not sure who to help, and then getting turned around by some new threat (the troop from downstairs arriving, the erinyes leaving her room, etc.) They all eventually jumped over the balcony and high tailed it down the path. Before they could escape, they got hit by a bunch of volley attacks, since they never really tried to attack the troops (I think they were scared of the auto-damage mechanic): the volleys knocked the rogue to 1 hp, barely scratched the monk (evasion! only one failed save out of five) but he was hurting from earlier so he dropped to about 12 hp, the bard turned invisible to dodge the worst using their last spell, and the gunslinger was dropped to -22 and died. :O They picked up the gunslinger's body and fell back to their camp, and that's where we left off. They have one oil of life which they plan to use now, and one scroll of raise dead, though I don't think any of them can actually use it (no one thought to put ranks in UMD.) Then, they don't really know what to do. Some want to go back to Kintargo to get reinforcements of their own (either Vandelflek the fairie dragon, or the Hellknights) and some want to try to scale the walls with grappling hooks and just go full assault. I think they could definitely pull off an assault, as long as they commit to it instead of getting scared off. The defenses that are left right now are: Lucian Thrune, 3 Dottari Troops, 1 Advanced Erinyes, 2 Slithering Trackers. They didn't kill anybody in their escape attempt, though Lucian was reduced to about 4 hp. I'm thinking that Lucian will send the Erinyes to get reinforcements first, and then when that fails he might send her to scout the mountains. My biggest worry is Lucian getting blasted off the table anticlimactically because of his terrible AC; to combat that, I think I might stick the Devilbound template on him, and say he signed a contract to get revenge.
Hi! My group is really loving Hell's Rebels so far, but I'm having a bit of trouble. See, so far my party (Unchained Rogue, Bard, Unchained Monk, Gunslinger) haven't been having a very hard time in most of the fights They don't optimize much, but they do tend to angle for surprise attacks. Without giving them any extra treasure, or them really buying better gear, the Gunslinger/Monk/Rogue all have ACs around 22-24, and the Monk can get up to 27 with mage armor, so most of the enemies in this chapter can barely hit them so it doesn't matter that they all have pretty low HP (Menador guards, once I fixed the math on their statblock, have a +7 to hit) and they deal a lot of damage too, so nothing can really last long. They lack magic power, but I've found Hell's Rebels doesn't really require to much of that so far. After the aboleth and draugr in Dead in the Deep went out with a whimper (the Aboleth died in about 2 rounds of attacks) I have decided I'm going to need to boost the difficulty somewhat. However... Menador Keep is a scary place. ~50 guards, an advanced Erinyes and Host Devil, 2 slithering trackers, and Lucien + his wyvern mount. And the group is currently in disguise, sneaking around trying to find the Anvil of Unmaking. I know that individually they could take any encounter in Menador, but if they raise the alarm they are guaranteed to have everyone in the Keep on them in 2-3 rounds, given the speed at which some characters can reach them. So I guess I have two questions really. For one, is Hell's Rebel's just a really easy adventure path, and I need to up the difficulty across the board? And, does anyone have any experience with how difficult Menador Keep is in general? I can't tell if the group triggering the alarm would be a TPK (they seem to think so, anyway), or if the group would be able to handle it.
Hey guys, I'm reading through this adventure in preparation of running it after the holidays are done. I had a question about the later parts of the adventure for those of you who have already run through it. While reading part's 5 and 6 I liked the idea of having a timeskip after the negotiations where the group settles down a little bit (ideally for a year or so, but the time is flexible for sure), before Barzillai's influence begins to effect the city. Then, the group would reunite to track him down and kill him again to save Kintargo one last time. The problem, however, is that over the course of 5 and 6 the negotiations are kind of spread out, so it makes it difficult to believably take a break (if Kintargo is still in open revolt against Cheliax, why do they take a full year to open negotiations with them, for example?) The idea being that they get to describe their character's starting to settle down, and then they are forced out of "retirement" for the final parts of the adventure. So I was just kind of curious if anyone had run a similar idea, and if it worked or not.
DM here, we're coming up on the final battle. I'm reading Karzoug's tactics and it says that he
Any help would be appreciated, I want to pre-plan out as many rounds as possible so the fight goes smoothly.
Hey everyone! My group is currently on Sins of the Saviors (about to enter the Shrine of Lamashtu) and I need help! They have learned about Karzoug, but don't seem to realize exactly what they're up against (long story short, they've kind of trounced all the wizards they've gone up against so far, so no fear in that respect). I need to make them scared of him, or at least have some respect for his power, because right now they are kind of happy-go-lucky about the whole thing. I want them to realize the exact scope of the evil that he is, and just what he's capable of, so they know why it's so important to make the dominant/commanding weapons and stop him. Any advice here? I'm considering having the inhabitants of Runeforge refuse to speak his name and be generally hesitant to talk about him, since they can sense his (seemingly) inevitable return. I imagine the statue at the end of Saviors will help, but I want them to know how cruel and evil he is as well as his raw gamey power.
Hey all! My group is heading into Runeforge soon, and I've determined what their highest sins are each. Our Fighter is prideful, our Wizard wrathful, and our Cleric envious. Reading through I noticed that the halls of envy are the only parts not present in the dungeon, because of damage. However I feel like my Cleric is excited about the sins coming into play, and I don't want to disappoint her by wholly destroying the wing of the dungeon she would interact with most. So my question is, is there a way around this problem? Has anyone expanded the halls of envy (even just a bit, to make it less disappointing to see it destroyed)? Or is there another way to ensure everyone's sins come up? Like exacerbating their personal sins while they're in Runeforge. I'd appreciate any help you can give!
Hey all! I’m planning to run this adventure after my group finishes Rise of the Runelords, and they are huge fans of Ameiko. I wanted to indulge them in that, but because Jade Regent isn’t particularly to my liking, I had a different idea. I was thinking of replacing the petrified Shensen with Amaya Kaijitsu from one of the appendices. This is for two reasons; number 1 is that I can link the Kaijitsu family to the story (Amaya seems like a cool NPC, and it would be fun to connect it to Rise of the Runelords), and number 2 is that I can swap out Shensen. I don’t hate her, she seems like a cool character, but I kind of want to swap her out for the same reason I don’t want to run Jade Regent (that is, it seems like the spotlight will get stolen away from the PCs). So I was wondering, will this disrupt the campaign at all? I seems that Shensen’s main role in the campaign is that she is capable of bardic performance, and since Amaya is as well she should be ok on that front.
Hey all! My party just rebuffed the giant raid on Sandpoint. They are now licking their wounds and preparing to chase the surviving giants to Jorgenfist and rescue their captured friends. My only problem as a DM is that...to be honest, chapter 4 looks kind of dull as written. There's nothing wrong with the content (the dungeon looks fun enough, if a little old-school for my taste), but it seems to me like I'm looking at essentially grinding combat for the remainder of the chapter - not that that's bad, but it's not really to my group's taste and I know if we run it as written, everyone (myself included) will just be trying to finish it as soon as possible so we can move onto more interesting content. So my question is, does anyone have some advice for keeping this chapter fresh and exciting? For reference, my group had a fine enough time in chapter 3, but they were getting tired of continually attacking Fort Rannick by the end, and they decided to stealth attack/assassinate Barl Breakbones rather than trying to clear the Clanhold one room at a time. So what can I do to spice it up? I generally prefer to run fewer but more difficult battles as opposed to many simple/easy ones, which is essentially what I believe the dungeon will boil down to (room after room of 2-3 stone giants or similar guards, with maybe a trap or hazard). I love the potential to ally with Conna, so maybe I can twist the adventure so rather than raiding Jorgenfist on their own, they can do a difficult favor for Conna to prove they are trustworthy, and she and her Giants can help them burst through the defenses in a climactic raid? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated (my group is currently most invested in rescuing their friends (specifically Ameiko) from the giants, but they are also hankering for some retribution).
Hey all, I’m about to run the back half of Stones over Sandpoint, and my party is engaging Teraktinus at the beginning of next session (I’ve got about a week, don’t worry lol). While I was looking at his stats, I noticed some very strange things; I’ve been referencing the SRD stats because I heard that the book version has his attack bonus calculated incorrectly, but if I remember correctly these problems are present in the book as well; https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-10/teraktinus/ 1: His HP seems inflated. Normal giants have 102 HP, and he has 151, after only 2 levels of ranger. Where did these 49 HP coming from?
There may be a good explanation for these things! But I don’t know it (this is my first Pathfinder campaign). So, does the math check out and I just don’t fully know the rules behind it? Or is the statblock busted and I’m better off stating him up myself?
Hey all, I’m about to run the back half of Stones over Sandpoint, and my party is engaging Teraktinus at the beginning of next session (I’ve got about a week, don’t worry lol). While I was looking at his stats, I noticed some very strange things; I’ve been referencing the SRD stats because I heard that the book version has his attack bonus calculated incorrectly, but if I remember correctly these problems are present in the book as well; https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-10/teraktinus/ 1: His HP seems inflated. Normal giants have 102 HP, and he has 151, after only 2 levels of ranger. Where did these 49 HP coming from?
There may be a good explanation for these things! But I don’t know it (this is my first Pathfinder campaign). So, does the math check out and I just don’t fully know the rules behind it? Or is the statblock busted and I’m better off stating him up myself?
Hey all! Currently my group is playing a different campaign but I plan to, once we finish, start Curse of the Crimson Throne with them. One of my players is interested in playing a Vigilante (specifically a goblin Teisatsu, long story but he plans to disguise himself as a child for his alter-ego), and I was wondering what kind of experience the forums might have with this class in Curse. Have you or any of your group members played one? How did it fare? Were it's abilities relevant? My gut instinct says this campaign seems good for a Vigilante, but since it's such a niche class, I figured I'd double check before giving the concept the all-clear.
So my group only found Malfeshnekor after they finished Hook Mountain. When they came back to Sandpoint, they returned to finish investigating Thistletop and well exceeded the DC ~25 perception check to solve the puzzle, and thus made their way in to the back chamber. Now that they are level 11, I'm worried that Malfeshnekor is going to be a pushover, and I'd rather not turn one of Alaznist's lieutenants into a joke. So I'd like some advice for making this fight a bit tougher; one CR 7 enemy isn't going to pose much challenge at this point, even played well, especially since they have full resources. The composition;
So I was thinking of applying the Advanced Template, but I can't think of a good way to make up the remaining CR. Maybe some wizard or barbarian class levels? What would you all recommend? I've already described the room layout and contents, so I can't give him additional allies (at least not ones who aren't hidden). Thanks in advance :)
Hey all! I’m running my group through chapter 3 at this point, and we’re coming up on the end (currently in the Hook Mountain Clanhold). I’m now trying to think of how to run the raid, and I have a few questions. (I’m also going to put below who my PCs are): Halfling Fighter 10 (TWF Critical Kukris) (Might be multiclassing into ranger going forward)
Question 1: The way I’m setting it up, I want to give them a little time to prepare, and they may try to recruit allies. Did any of your PCs try to recruit help from Magnimar or the Black Arrows, and if so, how did it go? What did you do? I think Jakardos might be willing to come along to help his daughter, but they aren’t exactly in a position to reinforce anyone. Question 2: Are there any NPCs who would help fight that aren’t the obvious listed ones? I plan on having Hemlock, Ameiko, Zantus and Orik (who has become a Paladin in our campaign, after being redeemed by the cleric) assist in the battle one way or another, (I’ve buffed up their HP and/or AC without altering their offensive abilities, just so they don’t get killed off without a fight, but they’re no higher level than before). Are there other NPCs in town who might volunteer to help fight? Question 3: I’ve heard Teraktinus is kind of a pushover, and I’ve seen a lot of people say their raid was easy (for example, I’ve heard stories of Paladins wiping Longtooth in one or two rounds on their own). But my group has pretty low optimization (they focus more on Fluff than on Crunch, to the point where sometimes I have to force them to equip new magical items), so I’m worried they might not be able to keep up. How hard do you consider the raid to be? Question 4: Last one! Sorry, this chapter is kind of stumping me. Chapter 3 was pretty odd for my group, because most of their friends in sandpoint (excluding Shalelu) have been absent for ~15 sessions, meaning they haven’t had a lot of RP opportunities. Should I send along some friends for them to hang out with when they go on the adventure? Shalelu will probably tag along, but she’s already fulfilled her character arc, so it might still be boring. Should I have a new NPC (Orik maybe?) who they don’t know everything about for them to get to know on the adventure? Thanks for the help all!
My Party;
So my party has been going through Rise of the Rune-Lords, and have arrived at the Nualia boss fight. They snuck in through the tentamort cave on the side of Thistletop, and in order - Killed Bruthazumus (before he could raise the alarm), turned Orik, and kidnapped Lyrie. Then, tired out from the fighting, they climbed out and returned to Sandpoint. The next day, they infiltrated Thistletop again, this time sneaking past a couple of goblin patrols and heading to the bottom floor. They brought along Orik and Shalelu for this part, although Orik has been reduced to ~16 Hp by the trap (they had him take the lead, and I thought I remembered he didn't like going downstairs, so I decreed he didn't know about the trap). They caused a lot of noise to draw out Nualia, but she sent out her hound to investigate - they ambushed it and killed it before it could bark, but she knew when it didn't come back that it had been killed, so she cast her buff spells and waited for the enemy to show up. Eventually, the party crept up to her room and burst in, and that's where we called it for the session. My question is, how do I make this fight satisfying for the group? Nualia, even buffed, only attacks twice a turn, and she hits pretty hard, but the party has a good amount of healing and managed to get to her without using much of their resources - I'm worried they'll steamroll her. I suspect the party is going to try to talk to her to find out her motivations - I plan for her to talk long enough to get a feel for their abilities and make a plan, and then she'll attack them while they're on the backfoot. I have also toyed with the idea of her executing Orik "cutscene" style, to frighten the players and simplify the battle. I've also considered some backup showing up if the fight doesn't go her way - the party made a lot of noise, so some goblins or the yeth hounds from upstairs might come down to her rescue. Alternatively, I have considered her focusing on escaping using her spells and abilities, and having the party confront her later during Skinsaw Murders (maybe she breaks Tsuto out of prison before his hanging). Ultimately, I just don't know what's the best approach; I don't want her to die unceremoniously (after all, the party managed to sneak past the first floor of Thistletop, so I want them to really earn this win), but I also don't want her to wipe the party, or bail without a fight and cheat the party of their confrontation. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? I'm open to any ideas.
Hey guys! I'm a high school senior looking to meet other players around my age. Specifically, I'm looking to DM the Rise of the Runelords adventure path in Pathfinder, and I need at least 3 other players for it, but I can take up to 5. Beginners are welcome, of course! In terms of my style and influences, I'm a big The Adventure Zone and Critical Role fan, and my favorite show is probably a toss up between Avatar: TLAB and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. I personally like to try and balance role playing and combat, so there will be plenty of both. We're LGBTQ+ friendly, everybody's welcome at our table! If you are interested please email supermax17@gmail.com or post here.
Hey everyone!
If you're interested, you can contact me here or on my reddit, I check my messages a couple times a day, so I won't take too long to get back to you! |
