Monkey Bars's page

It feels like this is the AP that should have followed Abomination Vaults. Right level range, also a 3-book AP, on Kortos, harrow deck ties easily to Wrin... I guess I know what my players are doing next.

This is why I added random encounter tables. I think I'm going to start rolling random encounters every time my party re-enters the dungeon, one check for every floor they "travel" through. That way we can still handwave traveling into the dungeon, but it gives an incentive to find the fast travel options and still preserves the flavor of delving deeper.

The GM's Guide has a decent list of Nhimbaloth cultist encounters you can seed on every floor. I roll a d6 for every floor they go through, and on a 1, they get an encounter (I don't duplicate them, so for example, the fourth floor encounter only happens once).

I don't see any reason why to not let them keep them. I'm sure it's something they could have fun with.

Quick question.

Now that all 3 parts are publicly visible, some for several years now, will they ever be made available for purchase to all at one point?

I'm going to guess it's a no, seeing as it's been almost a decade. Too bad, as I'd love to incorporate this into the game I'm running in Kortos, but it looks like it's not gonna happen.

Razcar wrote:

I played him as very bitter and vindictive. One of my players actually met him in their session zero in the forest outside town, looking for wolf trails (unsuccessfully, luckily for him). I would have him be very angry about it, close his shop and go out and look for Jaul himself, since he now has evidence he's about. And probably never come back.

Yes, this was more or less my plan as well! But I'm hesitant because it seems harsh on the players as they are left without a 'merchant'. Though I guess after several days competition could take over.

There are tons of merchants in Otari, by the book. Blades for Glades; Crook's Nook; Crow's Casks; Dawnflower Library; Odd Stories; Stone Ring Pond; and Wrin's Wonders all can sell things.

And yeah, he's a businessman. He leaves but he intends to come back--he wouldn't just abandon his shop.

As well, he is the owner and administrator of the market, but there are a bunch of sellers there. It's like a farmer's market. Someone or a group runs it, but they're not the only sellers.

I described the dock extending from Gauntlight island as being about 10 feet above the water level with the boat tied off to the pilings and a rope dangling from the upper level of the dock.

But how did they get the boat up there? I don't imagine high tide goes up 10 feet.

Quandary wrote:

That's why you have the Great Axe Barbarian Readying an Attack to motivate them not to fail.

Sorry, that does not play.

That's akin to games where players rob shopkeeper NPCs.

It just breaks the social contract of the game. Attack town NPCs and the only resort for the GM is to bring in a never-ending sequence of guards, and after the party TPKs, start a new campaign with new players.

Nah, set the number of guards, and if the PCs kill them, great. They have a town where there is no law, and they're the most powerful thing there. Are they gonna kill everyone in town? Are they gonna decide to run the town like tyrants? Are they gonna abandon it, and leave it to whatever decides to attack it?

"OK, what now" you ask when the dust has settled. They'll expect you, as the GM, to provide them with a new hook. You can't. Your hooks are dead, or terrified of them.

Players need to eat the consequences of their actions.

If you really want realism, the spellcasters should charge to cast the spell, whether it works or not, but offer "failure insurance" where they can pay an extra 10-50% up front to have it recast the following day if it doesn't succeed the first time.

If you want a fun game, just have it succeed unless having it fail leads to a story more interesting than whatever the characters were doing when they got diseased. Most players don't play the game to have an accurate representation of their diseased characters haggling with greedy priests, especially if the dragon they were chasing is still terrorizing the land.

So, I'm running Abomination Vaults right now. What's the point of having Ghoul Curse or Blueblisters as a potential affliction if they can just run to Vandy and get magically cured for less than 20 gp?

Sometimes a challenge is fun. Facing hardship is part of an engaging story. Suffering or even dying from that hardship, as failed attempts at healing just can't seem to save them? They suffer, tragically fighting until the end, despite their diminished capacity, all to help the group? That can make a character truly memorable.

James Jacobs wrote:

Nice! Makes me wish there'd been room for the version of this map that I created when building the 10 levels, but alas, there wasn't.

One thing to keep in mind is that level 1 is on a hill, and level 2 is closer to "ground level," though. Remember that the water surface level of the swamp is a few feet below the level of most of the floor on level 2, after all. (That bit got a bit muddled in the published maps, since the presence of steep slopes on the hills surrounding the uppermost level didn't translate well on the top-down view.)

I don't suppose you'd ever share that version somewhere? Now that the product is published, etc.

I can't parse this, because there's a boat and a dock in the level 1 map that connects to the boathouse. So if the water level is that low, the dock must be like, 15 feet above the water and the boat is floating? Is my brain just not working here?

I have a rumours table that I roll every morning. There's an 80% chance nothing is happening, but there are 20 little seeds for some adventures around town, or things happening, or whatever. You can find these kinds of tables around. Look into the OSR for some resources on great random tables for towns and cities that you can use to spice up Otari. The Nocturnal Table is a good one that I've used.

In C2. Tunnel to Otari, it says:

This passage connects to area 15 beneath the Otari Fishery.

Should that be area 13? I can't find anything about an area 15, and the Otari Fishery is 15 on the city map.

Is this supposed to be area 15 (Xulgath Cave) from the Beginner's Box?

My players just hit level two, and I was planning on giving all of them Ghost Hunter as a free archetype.

Only the wizard and witch actually meet the prerequisites, but I was thinking of just handwaving that away for the two rogues and fighter, and just seeing what they do with it.

Any issues I'm not seeing here?

goodkinghadrian wrote:

Has anyone put together handouts for the partial maps given by Boss Skrawng or Graulgust?

I'm starting this this week, I'll likely work something up in the next couple weeks.

Any chance you're still working on these?

This is all great advice, thanks!

I'm not interested in doing random encounter checks for my AV game; I don't feel like (from what I've read so far--only the first book) that the dungeon nor PF2e really support that style of play.

But I do want to create some kind of time pressure on the players, so taking an exploration turn to search a room, or making repeated checks, or the like, has a cost to it.

Any ideas (especially from those who know the lower levels in books two and three) of what I could make happen at night? It shouldn't be an instant kill type of thing, but something that would chase them out and force them back to town, or at least to the first level. I'm thinking of something like a magical darkness flooding the area.

My first thought is the spell Darkness is cast over the area (heightened so PCs with darkvision are affected as well)?

Is there any reason this wouldn't work, or would create problems later--like they have to do something at night and aren't at a level where overcoming Darkness is more trivial?

I love the scenes where the hero jumps onto the big enemy and lands on its back and then stabs it with full power while the enemy attempts to make the hero falls to the ground.

My question is: What rules i need to looking for in order to recreate these scenes?

I already know how jumps and falls work in pf2e so i'd like to know what happens once i land on a creature?

Examples: What action the enemey can do in order to make me fall? What actions do i need to know in order to stay strong on the enemy's back or whatever? Can i use a two hands attacks? Is the enemy flat-footed?

I'd like to know your thoughts!

Athletics vs the creature's Reflex DC to get onto its back, assuming the creature is actively trying to avoid it happening. I'd give a -2 to the DC if they're flanking.

If the creature is unaware, a flat check (DC 5 if it not moving, 10 if it is moving, 15 if they're jumping off a cliff trying to land on its back while it's flying by or some shenanigans--use your judgement).

Staying on depends on the creature. If it can, it would try to grab them off, so I'd make it a Grapple, but the rider can use Fort (fight off the grab) or Reflex (shift around to avoid it) DC. I'd make the rider use their Reaction each round to hold on.

Otherwise an Athletics/STR vs. Fortitude DC to try to buck them off. Trying to buck them off can be part of a move action, treating it as difficult terrain.

Or the creature can just try to rub the PC off against a wall as part of its move, and the PC has to make a flat Fort (hang on and take like, d6 damage?) or Reflex (shift around to avoid the wall) check to stay on.

If they're knocked off, they take xd12 fall damage, where x=the number of size steps they are smaller than the creature. So a medium rider v. a gargantuan creature would take 3d12 damage? I'm just spitballing on that one.

Aura of Courage states:

Whenever you become frightened, reduce the condition value by 1 (to a minimum of 0). At the end of your turn when you would reduce your frightened condition value by 1, you also reduce the value by 1 for all allies within 15 feet.

Does this mean the Champion needs to have the Frightened condition to reduce the value for all allies?

My feeling is the Champion doesn't need to be frightened, since

• the Champion still would reduce the Frightened condition if they had it, and
  
• if the Champion needed the Frightened condition, it would say "At the end of your turn (when/if) you reduce your frightened condition value by 1..."

It just feels like very confusing wording, when it could simply say, "At the end of the Champion's turn, all allies within 15 feet with the frightened condition reduce the value by 1 (minimum 0)."

No Morlock Cultist art eh?

If are using a VTT and you set your VTT to show an approximate bar instead of the exact number of HP, you don't have to adjust the hit points.

The creatures still have the same HP though; it still takes the same amount of damage to kill them, so not really achieving what I want.

That must be a VTT-specific option as it is not something I am aware of being possible in Roll20

The Health Estimate module for Foundry does this.

I like the +/- 10%. Simple, quick, not as much of an adjustment as Weak or Elite, and no chance that you'd randomly roll a bunch of 1s and 2s for whatever Hit Die you determined.

I like the idea of having a bunch of 1s and 2s rolled. Sometimes there's just the runt of the litter. And with using the Con modifier, they still wouldn't be too weak.

Do you have your PCs with different hit points if they have the same die size and Constitution? Its essentially the same thing. 2E is standardized for simplicity and ease of play, but remember, all the rules are optional at the GM's discretion. If you want similar creatures to have different hit points, then just give them different hit points. The GameMastery Guide shows a range of hit points for creating new creatures which could be applied to existing ones. Good luck

Ah, I didn't even think of the GMG--good idea.

I'd still prefer an HD system where I can quickly roll them all up, but this should work.

Is there a way to randomly generate creature HP?

I don't like every monster of the same type having the exact same HP, but there's no Hit Die in this system so I can't just roll xD8 to generate them.

Anyone have any ideas?

In 1st edition Pathfinder, people complained about this as players were KO'ing themselves with the Kineticist class. They would spend all their hit points, then fail to take out the target. Personally, I don't understand why it was a problem.

The 2E Legendary Kineticist gets around the issue by having you stun yourself instead. Personally, I don't understand whether that's better or not.

I'm not familiar with Kineticist class, but if it was too weak that you had to sacrifice HP, I could see it being a problem. But in this case, it's entirely optional, nothing is changed about the basic character build math.

Dungeon Crawl Classics has a mechanic that lets magic users sacrifice HP/ability score/etc. to get a bonus on their spell rolls, upgrade the magic effect, or whatever.

Has anyone tried implementing anything similar? Seems like a fun risk/reward option.

Something like, sacrifice HP times the spell level to add to the roll/save DC, and you can choose how much HP you want to sacrifice. Casting a level 3 spell, you can sacrifice 3 HP to raise the attack/DC by 1, 6 HP to raise the attack/DC by 2, etc.

Players could also play with the different spell effects and what they could sacrifice to boost them. Like, how much HP (or something else?) would it cost to cast a level 3 spell when you don't have any level 3 spell slots left? How much would they have to sacrifice to fire two fireballs in a single spell? (it would be a lot!)

With all these addicted commoners, seems like the party would be at risk of tuberculosis as well if they start a melee with them.

Another very rough idea: give the PCs a magic item that allows them to get hints about what happened in the rooms of the dungeon back when Belcorra was alive.

Goals:
- give the PCs more agency about collecting information about the dungeon;
- get a way to convey information about the history of the dungeon that might be difficult to impart in other ways (the AP volumes often provide rich backstories for many rooms, but it's not always that easy to give this information to the players)

The PCs might have to construct the magic item themselves, since it needs to be attuned to the time in history about which they want to gather information. It might require some mystical components from the ghostly or physical remains of people who actually lived at that time. (Maybe Borbo's gem and a part of his preserved body - an eye? Maybe a more complex list of ingredients turning into a scavenger hunt through the first levels of the dungeon?)

The details for the construction of the magic item (the crafting formula) might be found in the notes left in Volluk's Worshop - though the notes might be incomplete and reference a few volumes stored in the library of the 3rd level. Taking Volluk's research topics into consideration, the magic item might be some sort of necromancy-focusing crystal lens. (Thus requiring interaction with the merchants in town, especially Gallentine Deliveries to get a special lens crafted in Absalom).

The magic item might be activated once/day. When it is activated in one of the rooms of the dungeon, it could create a ghostly, obviously illusory, image of a randomly selected event that happened in that room. (The random selection part allows the DM to reveal as much or as little information as they want, and incites the PCs to use the magic item several times in the same room if they want more hints about its usage back in Belcorra's days). In addition to this activated power, the magic item might also give a constant bonus (maybe low-light vision? or night vision? or a +1 item bonus to...

This makes me think of the heart from the Dishonored games, where you point it at people and it tells you a short snippet about them, in the voice of the heart. Maybe you could do something similar with Otari, and it's his voice and his experience in the space?

In case it's not familiar: The Heart

But I'm also wary about giving background to rooms, as it creates a lot of GM-driven talk that often isn't super interesting to the players and really slows play.