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Yeah, there is no way that's from the Assassins. They'd just kill whoever their target is. What we need is four to six Pathfinders to go to Mediogalti Island and ask the Red Mantis Assassins for help in finding who did this. But who should we send? Why are you all looking at m- oh. Right.
So, it looks like all this mess started when our sticky-fingered friends stole something from a noble jann, and part of the requirements to avoid the final fight is to convince them to return it. All well and good. But, um... What did they actually *steal*? The "we don't really know" is really unsatisfying, especially since the jann wants it back bad enough to kill over it! The lack of any sort of description is super weird.
My GM added an encounter at the tower with three computer glitch gremlins and a security robot of some kind. After that, we had to fix the tower to stabilize the shield, using the Victory Point system. It felt much more satisfying and, hey, no reason not to do additional encounters, that's just more playtesting, baby!
I'm currently looking at adapting Curtain Call as the conclusion to the unofficial 2e Varisia AP I'm calling Remnants of the Runelords (Rusthenge to Seven Dooms For Sandpoint to Shadows At Sundown). That last adventure puts the PCs at 14th level, which is about where Book 2 of this AP starts. I'm currently looking at excising Chapter 1, since it exists mostly to remind the PCs of the Nemesis,and the first half of Chapter 2, right up until the fete. It sucks losing the encounter with The Final Herald, as I'm intrigued by The Ashen Man and his plots for Golarion, but c'est la vie. This is what I get for not following Paizo announcements as I should be, I guess! Looking forward to Mystery Varisia Hijinks AP, then! I'll probably still run the mods above since my players will have played Rise of the Runelords and Crimson Throne, so this kinda gives a look at what those places look like almost two decades on from the adventures themselves. I don't have any problems using new heroes to deal with demons from the past!
I'm currently looking at adapting Curtain Call as the conclusion to the unofficial 2e Varisia AP I'm calling Remnants of the Runelords (Rusthenge to Seven Dooms For Sandpoint to Shadows At Sundown). That last adventure puts the PCs at 14th level, which is about where Book 2 of this AP starts. I'm currently looking at excising Chapter 1, since it exists mostly to remind the PCs of the Nemesis,and the first half of Chapter 2, right up until the fete. It sucks losing the encounter with The Final Herald, as I'm intrigued by The Ashen Man and his plots for Golarion, but c'est la vie. As for the fete, there's verbiage about how each of the socialites match up with one of the persona traits, but there's only seven socialites! It looks like the Leader persona gets skipped out. Did the Leader's socialite get cut during editing?
I made a minor adjustment to the adventure - well, minor to me, but incredibly important. So, auction etiquette demands that attendees should be addressed as either Master or Madame. Makes sense, this is a swanky auction, so titles are important. And when it comes to the NPC list, this all tracks. Everyone identifies as either male or female on the guest list. Except PCs, possibly. And, in my case, two PCs are nonbinary - one of which is played by a nonbinary player. What do we do if neither title feels right for them? Forcing them to pick one feels wrong. I spoke with the nonbinary player ahead of time alerting them to the issue, and we came up with a solution that worked for our table. The three titles we have now are Master, Madame, and Mayhem. I'm still not sold on the nonbinary title, but the nonbinary player is happy with the answer. Also, I made a small adjustment to the bejeweling of weapons - the type of gems bejeweling the weapon also acts as a signifier of your preferred pronouns and title! I went with rubies for Master, sapphires for Madame, and emeralds for Mayhem. It all just struck me as odd - Paizo is usually pretty good about gender representation, so this binary titling felt weird.
Just ran this last night, and ran into what I presume is a small error. The Scouting The Laughing Jungle activity has Society as one of the listes skills, but Survival is not on there at all. I suspect that it got replaced by accident, as I can't really come up with a reason why Survival shouldn't be one of the skills in this activity. Also, more generally, I strongly feel like Lore skills should have slightly easier DCs if you're trained in them to reward someone who took Jungle Lore rather than pick up the more broadly useful Nature or Survival.
Okay. Here we go. Name of PC: Rorgus Thousandsons
Name of PC: Rorgus Thousandsons
Name of PC: Aerus
Which was quickly five again. Once of the party's familiars, a monkey named Five, had climbed down to heal Rorgus, and managed to activate a cure moderate wounds wand, bringing him barely conscious. He grabbed Serithtial for a third time, flew back up, and stabbed the blade into her back to the hilt, killing her with a single blow. It was an epic end to the campaign. Onto Shattered Star!
I'm also very concerned about the short timeframe of this adventure for many of the reasons above. I suppose the simplest solution is to lean in on this - have tournament officials mention that it's a grueling three-day competition, and that teams had best come prepared. I'd let them know that there will be ways to sell things this time around - the tournament has decided to find a legitimate way to handle equipment issues to avoid making it totally illegal, since previous experience has shown that making it against the rules only forces the treasure trade under the table. As proud Abadarans, they decided to make it legal and get a share of the profit!
I did a fairly exhaustive search through Book 1 for all the teams listed, and figured others would like a cohesive list of the canon teams. There are 18 teams listed, plus the PCs, which means there's 13 teams open for GM fiat. Winter's Roar (Lands of the Linnorm Kings outcasts)
There's also two teams that get eaten by the berberoka, but given that there's no timeline of events in this advenure, those teams could be part of the 13 undetailed teams, or two of the above that meet a terrible end.
Having recently completed the updated Scarwall, I'd say it went over better than I hoped, but was still a slog. We hit Book 5 just as lockdown started last year, so we moved the game to Roll20 to continue to play. It took right around a year to get through it, from start to finish. The biggest issue, besides our inexperience with online gaming, was the size of the place. It was difficult at times for my players to figure out how to get around one of the maps. Moving between them made it virtually impossible. There were a lot of fights, and most of them weren't exactly difficult. One thing I will give kudos for are the phantasms. They're not quite as good as the haunts in The Misgivings, but they're still good. However, they had to be adapted for online play - a lot of the advice is "roll something behind your screen," or "take the player aside and tell them something." Rather than trying to figure that out, I just told whoever was affected by the phantasm that they should mark down a "Castle Scarwall notice point." They slowly accrued them as the adventure went on, and occasionally wondered aloud what they did or represented. Of course, they represented nothing beyond player paranoia. Anyway, I learned a lot of lessons from Castle Scarwall, and Castle Korvosa is a much faster experience. In contrast of the near year it took to complete Scarwall, we are almost all the way through Castle Korvosa. Giving the players a map of the place has been a godsend - one of the players has taken to being the map guy, so they have a good idea of where they've been and where they haven't. Next time we play, they'll be fighting their way to the Queen herself.
Name of PC: Wilhelm
Then they went down to the third floor, and found a dozen Gray Maidens waiting for them. While the guards weren't a dangerous threat, enemies started appearing each round - Togomor and the Yallops arrived on round 2, and three of the erinyes in the castle appeared on round 3. It became a very confusing melee, with the dwarven fighter in the middle of the room dominating the fight with his ranseur, and others attacking around the outskirts of the fight. However, Togomor was a dangerous foe, causing grievous harm with a round 3 horrid wilting. Wilhelm was already grabbed by one of the Yallops for blasting his brothers with a holy bomb, and managed to barely survive the dessicating spell. That next round, though, the Yallop brother dropped Wilhelm to negatives, and while he made the Fort save against Togomor's second horrid wilting, he still died. The party had a clever plan to try to save him, though - the party magus cast dimension door to get Wilhelm next to the warpriest, and he intended to cast breath of life to try to save Wilhelm, but he absolutely biffed his concentration check. And so, Wilhelm died. The party made a quick retreat after that, but learned that Wilhelm had a will made out - he wanted to be reincarnated, as his relationship with Laori Vaus had deepened enough that he was already thinking about the long term with her. He was no longer human, but while becoming a halfling does lengthen the time he'll have with her, it's still nothing compared to that of an elf.
Can you tell me the rough idea of the shootist archetype and the level it's dedication is at? You're really good with repeating hand crossbows. The dedication starts at L2. Also, stats for repeating hand crossbows appear in this book.
A confusion spell actually worked? I think in all the years of playing a confusion spell has always been completely useless...so much in fact, when people cast it the group laughs. The first PC death in my Rise of the Runelords campaign was due to a confusion effect. The cleric/paladin in my game failed the save, and rolled "attack nearest target," which happened to be the rogue. The cleric critted with an inflict wounds spell, and the rogue failed his save. It took me another book to get a PC kill with one of my bad guys.
I had an industrious night and worked up Dalvyn's puzzle for English audiences. Check out the spoiler for the translation. Spoiler: Clue 1 is now "NOLEJJKFNYMEKNLHKSFMJOUZYQLUYXVEXZUSPKUNNEEKNGHEEXAMEZJLGALMVXOLJUAZKALLSX ECOFNDUCHEFANUCXE" Clue 2 is "...with timber." Clue 3 is "Then, replace jkqvxz..." Clue 4 is "First, remove flume."
No, they've said previously that the two APs are not at all written to merge together. The job of transitioning PCs from AV to FotRF is left entirely to the GM. Indeed - my intent is to run Abomination Vaults first, and then have the PCs be selected by the Pathfinder Society to represent them in this year's Tournament. They will have a training montage to retrain their characters for this new AP.
Wrin's a primal sorcerer, so she should have some signature spells. I'm leaning towards giving her charm and restoration, since those spells benefit from heightening the most. That is a fair point, and one I do forget from time to time. Quite a bit of unlearning from 1e, for sure. I think that giving her signature spells gives her additional assistance to the party, so it's worth a little extra difficulty.
Related - does the evoker Focus Power force bolt count as a magic missile for the purposes of getting past a wisp's magic immunity? By a strict RAW reading, the answer is no, as a wisp is only vulnerable to magic missile. I'm leaning towards yes, since the difference between the two spells is so small as to be insignificant, but it's a strange corner case that should probably be take into consideration.
I'd probably change it so Nhakazarin is either quickened on her next turn, or she gains an additional action that can only be used this round to make a jaws Strike or Cast a Spell. The former is more powerful, but comes at a delay, while the latter is immediately useful but ends up being a one-shot heal with no action loss. Both could be quite good.
My current plan is to have the PCs as new Pathfinders that have been sent to Otari as a favor to the retired agents that live there. Things have been busy in the town of late (see Beginner Box/Troubles In Otari), and when they get reports of weirdness at the Gauntlight, they respond by sending some green recruits to respond. They arrive in Otari, meet a few people, learn the situation, and eventually head off to Gauntlight. Eventually, this will lead into the Ruby Phoenix Tournament AP, as the Pathfinders have to defend their title against those who wish to claim it, and since the Otari heroes have impressed the Decemvirate, they're the ones that get chosen to represent the Society.
Cool! I'd definitely reward the PCs with some additional knowledge since they put the clues together on what's going on, while making sure they still have to rely on the Sun Shaman's vision to fill in the blanks. Something that involves Amarund returning to the Storval Plateau with Midnight's Teeth, and securing it in the Grand Mestaba. Followed by an unbroken line of Sun Shamans from her to the current one. And maybe once the Sun Shaman performs his ritual, he informs them that Amarund knows they're following in her footsteps, and warns them to beware her fallen comrade, Mandravius.
I recently ran a four player group through a quick adventure using both the magus and summoner. Since I figured many people would be doing L1 builds I went a bit higher and had people make L5 characters. The magus player made a human Sustaining Steel magus, and used her spell slots for Longstrider, Mirror Image, Haste, and Shockwave. The summoner made an angel summoner, supplementing his limited magical healing with the Medic archetype. To fill out the table, one player made an L5 rogue, and the other just used the L5 Valeros pregen. I used what I believe to be a pretty robust test of the party - four encounters, one rated Low, two rated Moderate, and one rated Severe. For an excuse plot, I had them tracking down the Son Of Freezemaw, and all of the encounters were wintry. Combat 1 was against two frost trolls (Low 5). Though they're rated at L4 monsters, they punch above their weight class, as I got off a Rend on Valeros. By the end of this first fight, the summoner had already used half of his spells just keeping people up. Valeros did 65 damage over three rounds (DPR 21.6), the eidolon did 110 due to two crits on the final round but missed entirely during round 3 (DPR 27.5), and the magus did 0, as her first round was buffing and she missed with her Striking Spell and ranged attacks in rounds 2 and 3 respectively. I don't have data on the rogue's numbers, but considering the rogue is not being tested this seems less of an issue. I can say that his rogue also had the alchemist dedication and brought alchemist fire to the party, which did off the trolls once they were down. Combat 2 was against two winter wolves (Moderate 5), which proved less of a problem for the party. The wolves were trying to flank the party, but only one succeeded. Valeros did 49 damage during this fight (DPR 16.3), the magus did 26 damage (DPR 8.6), and the eidolon did 55 (DPR 18.3). It should be mentioned that the magus also tripped one of the wolves during round 1 rather than attack, so they were more effective in the combat than their numbers should suggest. By this point, the summoner was down to a single spell. Combat 3 was against two ice golems (Moderate 5). This was somewhere between the prior two encounters in difficulty, but this was the magus' moment to shine. Valeros did 48 damage (DPR 16), the magus did 85 (DPR 21.25), and the eidolon only did 27 (DPR 9). The magus did miss with her first Striking Spell, but critically hit on the next two rounds, creating the damage spike that 1e magi are known for. By this time, the summoner was out of spells, and they still hadn't faced the dragon. Combat 4 was against the Son of Freezemaw - or, as the players would find out, the SONS of Freezemaw! They fought two young white dragons, one straight out of the book, and the other a spellcaster. Tactics were simple - brawly dragon would let them come to him and fight, while casty dragon waited for them to go into the cave from above and invisible, dropping down at the start of round 2. By a stroke of luck, the dice were with the party this fight - I couldn't really cause much damage to them, as they were rolling quite well and I was missing something fierce. I believe I missed Valeros with a full Draconic Frenzy suite twice on two consecutive rounds! Valeros did 125 damage (DPR 25), the magus did 57 (DPR 14.25), and the eidolon did 90 (DPR 22.5). I'll be tagging the magus and summoner players to chime in here with their experiences, but they reported that they enjoyed playing the classes. The Sustaining Steel magus does look weak on paper, but being able to get temp HP does help with the longevity of the class in a fight. Eidolons are strong, but the summoner themself doesn't have many ways to participate built into the class, so you might need to look outside for ways to shore up needs in the party. The side effect of the exceptionally limited spell slots for both meant that the summoner makes for a poor main healer in game, and the magus is likely to choose spells that buff them rather than lose spells due to the way Striking Spell currently works. We do hope to have one more playtest before the window closes, this time at a much higher level, somewhere in the 12-13 range. I'll report back if we sneak that in.
UGH. I wrote up the skeleton of my character, got most of the choices done beyond picking skills and equipment, and was trying to edit the character when I accidentally selected Delete instead. I'll start again tomorrow, but I can say this much - I have created a silicart psychic. From the future. More later.
Hey there! Thanks for the invite, DM, and my apologies for dragging my feet. I've glanced over everything and there's a lot of cool stuff going on here. I'm leaning towards a psychic, since I haven't done much with that class, but even that is up for revision. I'll probably make some more concrete decisions in the next day or so.
And so ends the Eight Year Labor! I had to see how long we've been playing this, and it looks like most of us started in March of 2012. Thank you, Bigrin, for putting up with us for all these years and helping push us through to the end of Second Darkness! Re: Aebliss game. I'm down for it! I wouldn't mind continuing on with you all.
The adventure can definitely play out with Gaedren surviving. It's not likely, naturally, but if enough characters want to take him alive, then it's a non-zero chance. Case in point, one of the background traits involves clearing the name of someone wrongfully imprisoned for one of Lamm's crimes. Dead men can't acquit someone - not easily anyway - so it's possible that a PC with that background might convince the rest to stay their hands and keep him alive until he confesses to the Guard. That said, once they take him out of the fishery, they're in for a rude shock - the city's gone to Hell, and the guard likely won't be able to immediately process him. What do they do with him? Where do they go? Does he try to escape? All sorts of fun stuff there!
We just played through this set of quests in our home group, and had the misfortune of having only 4 players. I concur with Poit - Q4 needs a 4 player adjustment badly. The shortcomings of the Pegasus are well-known by this point, and we couldn't punch through the enemy ship's shields. We ended up letting them escape once we were at half HP and almost no shields, and they were sitting pretty at full HP and basically full shields. Part of the problem, I believe, is that they made the enemy ship a bit too good. Two enemy gunners is rough - it means that the captain action to debuff gunnery is half as effective, since the gunners would have to do push actions less often. Additionally, I loathe the fact that enemy ships replenish shields in combat - starship combat is already a death spiral, and low tier ships do so little damage that a single hit is often replenished in a single round. The ship that punches through shields and creates the first critical hit is likely to be the ship that wins, which is why you see the Drake get chosen nearly exclusively at SFS tables. So, how to fix this in scaling for 4 players? The usual practice of giving the baddies a -2 doesn't seem appropriate here, since the problem is more with the fundamentals of the fight rather than scaling. I'd look at reducing the number of gunners to one, and maybe even suggest that the Cult of the Destroyer admires entropy so much that their engineer doesn't bother with replenishing shields. If the party is successful at convincing the skittermander to abandon the Cult, then maybe part of the solution is that the party is able to pick up the missing engineer before battle begins, freeing up someone to fulfill another ship role.
Agreed - if there's someone in the party who is Seeking, and they beat the DC, then they've spotted the quagmire before anyone falls into it. If not, then the quagmire activates as its statblock states. If someone has spotted the Hazard, to what end would they go to the trouble to Disable it? Rereading this, I'm pretty sure I ran this wrong - I just had the party go around it. In retrospect, what I think happens is that if someone spots it, they see tell-tale signs that they're about to walk into it, and can stop everyone from falling victim to it unawares. After that, someone can try to make a Survival test to show exactly where the border between the quagmire and safe treading is, and walk around it. If a group were making their way through the area where this Hazard was located and the person(s) who were Seeking missed it on their secret checks would everyone fall victim to the Hazard or would the first person in marching order fall in and everyone else immediately stop moving [assumes a single file]? ...or would you use the marching order and arrange it so that the first in a line/area fell in? I had people create a marching order and explicitly went over the Exploration mode activities. That portion of the game is new to most old hands, so making it clear what options players have is a good refresher, and also makes it clear what everyone's doing while things are happening. Assuming that all PCs that are Seeking miss the quagmire, then whoever is in the lead sinks into the quagmire - possibly more, if they are going two abreast! I'm pretty sure the intention is not to spring the quagmire on the entire party - narrative quicksand is all about the people on the outside trying to save the people on the inside.
My party just encountered Cinnabar, and did in fact manage to get through to her. They know most of her story now, and Ishani is taking it upon himself to help rehabilitate her after his own conversion to Sarenrae's faith. I'm currently debating a romance between the two of them off-screen to add extra weight to his eventual terrible fate.
I believe I had the same issue when it came to this as well. My solution was to have them interact with the Pathfinder Society lodge in Magnimar, and agree to chaperone some agents into Thistletop for research. After all, there's not many known Thassilonian ruins that are more or less safe to explore that haven't been explored already. Also, it helps set up that the Society is a thing in the world, and that they aren't necessarily adversarial to the party. Indeed, in my campaign, the Society treated the party respectfully - they were exponentially growing in power, and the Society rightfully reasoned that it was better to stay on their good side. Besides, they seemed to keep stumbling across Thassilonian ruins, so being in the party's good graces would probably end up paying dividends later on down the road - and by Shattered Star, that's definitely the case!
I'm planning on having a Chapter 0 where the PCs meet all the NPCs the night before the performance en route to Abberton, and they get to know all of them before things get rolling. It also helps give weight to the murder - now the ringmaster isn't just a dead man, it's the guy that gave them a shot in his circus.
Awesome! Thank you!For the Caustic Wolf's jaw Strike, if it is successful do I have to expend another action to do Knockdown or is it all done in one action? Yep, Knockdown requires an action. Improved Knockdown does not.
Quick non-mechanical question - roughly how many wagons are in Bort's caravans? There's at least two, since the PCs ride along in the "last wagon," implying there's a first. I'm thinking three, since Bort is a moderately successful legitimate businessman (and whether he's a successful illegitimate businessman is left to your discretion), so I can't imagine it much larger than three. Any thoughts?
This brings up something I hadn't really pondered until now - primal casters are more welcome in Rhahadoum than divine casters, meaning druids get a pass that clerics don't. I don't anticipate that being a distinction every Pure Legionnaire to make, but it's a distinction that didn't exist before 2E. |
Pathfinder Society GM. Starfinder Society GM. 2,234 posts (8,830 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 25 Organized Play characters. 45 aliases. 
