Prophet of Doom's page

I took Necril which is supposed to be the language of undead. However, I'm half way through Hell's Vengeance and nothing so far has spoken the language. Some sources list Necril as just spoken by some ghouls, others limit to 'intelligent' undead, and others say undead with out specifics. Could low-level undead speak it?

The bigger question is this, can you just assume certain creatures speak a language if they fall in the right category, or do you have to follow what the Adventure Path says?

Gnorman, Gneil, Gnathan, Gnatasha, Gnatalie, Gnancy.

Rather than having to buy new Bestiaries, and new companions all the time. (Bestiary 6 is coming out soon!) How about a pdf subscription where new material just gets interpolated into the text every few months. Do you know how hard it is to find a particular monster when it could be in any one of dozens of source books, companions, gazettes, modules, or Adventure Paths? (Quick anyone, in which Bestiary is the Nightgaunt?) I would gladly pay a good subscription price to have everything in one place.

Really, even though I've bought all the Adventure Paths and all the hard cover books, half the time I just end up going on-line to find monsters, spells and items.

I wonder if the product description on the page length is a typo since the books are the same price as for Pathfinder. I wouldn't mind losing the the fiction section and the NPC profiles, but 64 pages seems awful short to squeeze in everything else, especially if there is no separate bestiary book being published. The Core Rule Book is only 500 some pages and it is going to have to squeeze in material which would normally form the Game Master's Guide, the Players Handbook, a Bestiary, and a world setting.

Also the product description didn't say what levels the the book is for. Maybe the whole 6 books will only go up to level 12 or so.

At first I was surprised that it was only coming out every 2 months, but I decided that's probably a good idea. I can't really see that I'm going to have time to play more than one Starfinder Adventure Path in a year.

Also, will there be a subscription option?

Nothing too complicated for the first AP, topping out at 14th level, or even lower.

The first volume at Absalom Station with each additional volume on mainly one new planet each, with a detailed gazetteer on each location which can be used for home-brew games. (Not the planets in the Golarian system.) A mixture of wilderness and urban settlings. At least one or two space battles. An epic villain for volume six.

Any word on when the first Starfinder Adventure Path will be published? Will it be at the same time as the Core Books, and will it be instead of the usual Adventure Path series, or published at the same time. I can't wait to run the first one.

Sounds great! I'm especially glad that it will have fewer supplements and keep all the essential info in the core rulebooks. Are we to assume that the Starfinder Adventure Path will be once a month with 6 book stories arches? Please, keep the first Adventure Path basic, I don't want to try to run a 16th level character the first time Also, please pay special attention to the game balance with lasers and pistols. Guns have always been my least favorite thing about Pathfinder, it never made sense that only high level characters could have powerful guns, but if you didn't have that rule, a low level gunslinger would be totally off balance.

What's the publication schedule look like, and are you going to be cutting back on Pathfinder publications I'm kind of at the max on how many monthly items I want to subscribe to right now.

One of my group wants to play a strix. I was going to let the character have fake diplomatic credentials to give him a bit more freedom of movement around town, since otherwise the strix are probably not going to be too liked by anyone. (Yeah, I know, diplomatic credentials may not be the exact right word since they live in the same province.) Any thoughts on playing a strix? Hopefully the section on the strix in book 5 will help.

Prophet of Doom wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

jedi8187 wrote:

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but it is at least relevant.

This is a fantasy world, right?
And 50,000 people per square mile in the Middle Ages actually sounds rather high to me. I would think half that, at the most, might be accurate, IMO.

Maybe, a bit high, depending on your source. According to Wikipedia, City of London and subsection Midieval Period which was 1.12 sq miles had 80,000 person in 1300, lower after the black plague. I've read other estimates, that only 60,000 were inside the 1.12 sq mile walls, and rest outside. Another site 222pair.com estimated 38,850 per square mile for an average city. rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ has good calculating generator and uses the 38,850 number. To picture it, Paris has a density of 55,673 today. Wikipedia said that Kalwoon Walled City in Hong Kong had 33,000 people in 6.4 acres (that's not a typo.)

So I'm looking at the lower dungeon (area D) and its underwaterness. I have some concern that so much underwater combat will be frustrating and un-fun for players. But I like the idea of needing to unflood the new lair. Anybody know ways of making underwater combat more fun? Or ideas for making it work better? Turning it into a shallow bog, perhaps?

Once you get the magical water pump working, the rest of if can be done with the room drained. Skull and Shackles has a lot underwater, it seems to work ok when my group did that. Of course, you can always rewrite it, but you would have to do something to make the monsters more powerful to balance it out if you do that.

jedi8187 wrote:

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but it is at least relevant.

In this AP I'm planing on playing a Chelish Diva. Now Kintargo has 11,900 population if I remember right and the Diva's Famous ability is restricted to an amount below that total number until 9th level. From what I read it sounds like there won't be much traveling to cities or towns out of Kintargo during the AP. So is there a way to make use of this class feature before 9th level during the AP? Like picking small communities within the city itself?

Based on what I've read about the density of cities in the middle ages, (about 50,000 people per square mile,) if you compare the size of Golarian cities to their population, they are pretty under inhabited judged from the city map. Would a town of 11,900 support an opera, several major churches, a university, a private school, a provincial government, a port, major military infrastructure, manufacturing, a museum, etc, etc? Realistically not, you just have to clalk it up to fantasy. A more realistic population for Kintargo would be maybe 40,000.

P.62. Barzillai's +2 gifts to the PCs. Being the locus of a locate object spell rather than tbere being actual magic on the items, are we to assume that it is going to be impossible to identify that the items are for tracking the players other than by conjecture? Is there some spell which would let you know if there was currently a locate object spell being cast on an item in your possession, or could they be warded from scrying? I can see my players attaching them to the figurines of wonderous power and sending Barzillai on a wild goose chase. (Wild raven chase).

I love the missions in Part 2 that the PCs are supposed to undertake. I'm not great a coming up with new content and am wondering if anyone has thought about other missions to include?

Here's a couple of longer side missions I once ran for third level characters in Riddleport.

1. You get a request to check up on someone who hasn't been seen for a while. The person pretends the man is her uncle, but he isn't. When you track down the inn he is staying at, you find that he he has died two days ago under mysterious circumstances and there is coded documents indicating that he was spying on someone. You can also locate his body at a temple where it is waiting burial and determine that he was killed. His body and and the codes indicate who he was spying on It turns out that the man was a spy from Magnimar who was trying to track down a wizard who stole stone golem components from the golem works. The wizard has a hide away in an abandoned catacombs outside of town in seaside cliffs guarded by low level undead. He only comes into town to buy magical components. If you find him at the catacombs, you fight him and the severed parts of the golem which wiggle across the floor to attack you. If you don't find him, he succeeds in putting the golem together which several weeks later he uses it to breaking into banks and make a clean get away by walking into the ocean and back to the catacombs. If near death, the wizard will teleport away to horses a half mile away in a woods and leave town to plot against you to try to get his golem parts back. Returning the parts to the golem works gives you powerful allies.

2. A rival gnome faction wants to humiliate a local gnome thief. The thief's weakness is gambling, and if your party can team up to defeat him at the faro table, you so humiliate him and discredit him it will make him lose his position among the gnomish thief guild. (Gnomes are all about street cred.) At the gambling dean, you find that the gambling room has wards against magic. Playing against the gnome you discover that he is winning by drugging his opponents to make them easier to defeat. If you defeat him, later in the adventure he kidnaps a party member in retaliation and he holds the person captive unless he is paid a large ransom. He commands you to meet him at a barn out in the country where he is holding the person. He is so angry with you, even if you hand over the money, he will try to slit the throat of your friend right in front of you. If he gets away he becomes a reoccurring rival. Either way, you get yourself involved in gnomish politics. (Extra experience points if you know the movie/book I stole that from.)

Unlike the caravan system (which had little interesting decisions to make aside from optimizing stats and clearly broken battle stats), this one appears promising. I have no problem with the rules being in the free handbook instead of taking up page count in module.

I agree about the caravan rules. They were useful for calculating carrying capacity, but did not make much sense for resolving combat. I just treated each wagon as a separate target in battle.

Any opinion on Nox? The only thing I can figure is that she goes to her boss, and says, "There are 6 PCs below a coffee shop, lets have at them." Any he says, "Don't bother me with little stuff, I'm planning bigger things. Stay out of my office until you find some enemy 9th level or above." I'm thinking of playing her as basically a good person who doesn't want to do her job for Mr. Evil.

Any thoughts on the rebellion rules (the rebellion sheet and rebellion advancement and rebellion event tables form the Player's Guide.) It just seems odd to me that the first time it is mentioned in Hell's Bright Shadow is to say that, well, you can use it or not <shrug> it's sort of up to you <cough>. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. There isn't even a printed version of the rules, unless you print out your own copy from the pdf. Was there disagreement about it among the authors? Why wasn't it included in Hell's Bright Shadow?

Without having seen the next three sections, it is hard to tell how well it is going to work, but it looks like the the rebellion events are pretty weak. It reminds me of the notoriety score in the second book of Jade Regent, which I fudged when I ran that adventure, because it was too random, too mechanical, and just too easy.

The main point of it seems to be to remind the players that they just can't go walking down the main street waving their arms and yelling "Woo-hoo, we're the rebellion, look at us!" Frankly, I don't understand how Nox if she can control minds hasn't figured out exactly where the PC's HQ is.

I'd really like to play up the converting the people to your cause element of the story, but more with roll playing than with using those rules.

Set, if you want to split hairs, the Bandu Bekyar according to the Sargava: the Lost Colony, do human sacrifices, which is not technically cannibalism, maybe you have some other source.

In Serpent''s Skull, the cannibals you actually come in contact with are descendent of survivors of a shipwreck who are white guys from the north. Think, 'Lord of the Flies."

Jade Regent got around making non-whites villains by having most of the evil Minkai actually be Oni in disguise. Although it does interestingly enough have some evil Inuits up by the north pole and more white cannibals.

Only 60,000 skulls! Those slackers, they didn't make the quota.

I was thinking of starting to run Hell's Rebels as soon as the first volume comes out. Is there any reason to believe that would be a problem, like there being a lack of maps for the town, or stats until for a key antagonist? For Skulls and Shackles you had to wait until I think the 6th book before you got the stats on the captain of the ship who kidnapped you.

In the adventures set in Mwangi and Sargava, Paizo has been pretty careful to only very rarely make the native dark skinned humans the villains. Even the cannibals were white guys. I totally get why they are doing that, but it might be a really limiting factor to a plot set in a pre-columbian setting if you don't have any native humans who are bad guys.

Justaworm, when you say a PC can't defeat the Gorilla King, I was talking just about the one-on-one combat as part of the 3 tests. He only has to get him down to 50HP for a surrender. Do you really think a listed level, he can't be defeated in that, or are you talking about a fight to he death to take over his whole camp?

I'd buy Curse Crimson Crown updated from 3.5 in hardcover. It seems to be a lot of people 's favorite. I don't think Second Darkness or Legacy of Fire are popular enough to warrant a reprint.

Other than that, keep cranking out the new stuff every month other than updates of old stuff. And please, something set in Casmaron and Vudra.

Could someone give me an estimate on how powerful a character has to be to defeat the Gorilla King in hand-to-hand? I've never been good at that sort of estimate.

I haven't begun running the Adventure Path, but I think one of my group is going to play a Gorilla-man. The background on the Gorilla King makes it sound like another strong gorilla could take over from him. That's going to make things interesting if the character ends up becoming King of the Gorillas.

Another question, the adventure path background says you can set up a trading system to get supplies from the outside. Does that make sense to anyone. The nearest town is weeks away at best, and who is going to wait weeks for ordering a +2 sword? I'm not sure there really are any +2 swords in all of Sagava that anyone would be willing to sell. The entire county only has 2 towns of about 10,000 people if you go by the Inner Sea Guide. One of my players has already decided to to get a spell as soon as he can to allow him to gate back to Magnimar to go shopping. The problem with that plan is that this adventure path per level has the lowest amount of loot available to sell or use that I've ever seen.

Thanks Tacticslion, I'm not sure that's where I want to take it, but you sure put a lot of work into it. I'm reading through the 6th book now, and they make it really hard to get the locals to support you in the final confrontation. You need a whole stack of 35 diplomacy rolls or higher. Realistically, you have to kick up the size and level of the factions or it would seem like you are leading them on a children's crusade where every one of them gets killed. The 6h book makes the 3rd book make more sense. You really need to read the section of book 6 starting at page31 before running book 3.

<spoiler> You all died in the crash, and this is actually purgatory.

Office of Mwangi Finance Minister
Attention: Adventure Party Leader

Dear Sir, Madam, Other entity either corporal or immaterial

Confidential Business Proposal

Having consulted with my colleagues and based on the information gathered from the Mwangi Chambers Of Commerce And Magic, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $47,500,000.00 gold pieces into your accounts. The above sum resulted from an trans-dimensional temporal-time shift. This action was however intentional and since then the fund has been in held in a stasis vault in Bloodcove.

We are now ready to transfer the fund to Magnimar and that is where you come in. It is important to inform you that as Clerics of Desna we are forbidden to operate a foreign account; that is why we require your assistance. That total sum will be shared as follows: 70% for us, 25% for you and 5% as sacrificial offerings to the local deity.

The transfer is risk free on both sides. I am an accountant with the Aspis Consortium. If you find this proposal acceptable, we shall require the following documents:

(a) your gold smiths' magical portal address and secret incantation.

(b) your animal totem —for confidentiality and easy communication.

(c) your letter-headed paper stamped and signed in your blood

Please reply urgently.

Eando Kline, esq.

I have to side with the people who are disappointed with The City of Seven Spears. Frankly, it is so bad it is almost a deal killer in my deciding to run the Serpent's Skull rather than some other Adventure Path. The main problem seems to be just a lack of forward motion. At the end of the day, activating the spears and getting random bits of info just does not seem interesting. Several other people pointed out that their players kept asking what it was they were trying to accomplish that had anything to do with the serpents. And there is just too little treasure out there for that to be a motivator.

Once they find Juliver, really, all the earlier stuff just becomes so much flavor text. The actual spears would be much more interesting if they conferred permeant benefits or if they each had some kind of key you needed to uncover to get to the next section. Maybe, I'm missing something?

I'm thinking of tossing most of it out, inserting some set quests that have to do with the players back stories, and then skipping ahead as soon as I can rationalize that they are now Level 10. Also, at levels 7-9 a party of 5 with any NPC back-up is just going to rip through the leaders of each district. Without some higher level henchmen for the district leaders, the trio of a big guy or gal with a big sword, someone to buff the fighter, and and an offensive spell caster will take down the district leaders in a few turns. Add to that a bard with high charisma to charm the ones they don't want to kill, and its a piece of cake. My players are just going to ignore the 2nd level mooks and go straight for the leader. They know that if they kill the leaders the others will just run away. I'm really surprised people keep talking about a high mortality rate of their characters in this game. Don't you use channel positive energy?

Having said my piece, anyone else have some interesting interactions with the other factions they would like to share? I have a feeling my usual group of players is either going to try to kill them or co-opt them.

Someone give me a reason why the party should have a caravan which is trailing behind them.

1. I've read up until half way through the 5th book, and so far I do not see how an extra 10 or 20 people and supplies would be of any use, especially since they won't show up at Tazion until days after the adventure party gets there.
2. The party never goes through a section were a mule load of supplies supplemented by hunting and create food and water spells can't get them though the problem.
3. Realistically, if a caravan of 1st and 2nd level NPCs is several days behind them, one of the other search parties is going to catch up to them and use their intestines to string tennis rackets. It seems like a bad idea to put the baggage train between yourself and the bad guys.
4. How do you keep the caravan behind you informed of where you are going without giving the same info to the opposing teams?

It seems to me that the only point of the caravan is it gets the party to wait around in Eleder for a week while the supplies are gathered and to give them a reason to care about the warehouse fire.

Another question, how much assistance is your faction giving the party? Money? Supplies? Magic items?

A general comment about the whole Adventure Path, I don't think I've every seen a champaign where there was less treasure and magic items per level. Add to that, once past Kalabuto, there is no logical place to add a market where you can buy magic items.

I'd read through the descriptions and see what floats your boat. Most of the paths are very concept specific. The only one most everyone seems to hate is Second Darkness, and don't play Wrath of the Righteous unless you can do god-like characters.

Having said that here are the one's I've played or run: Mummy's Mask is really fun, Runelords is classic old school, Jade Regent offers a lot of variety but needs a lot of filling in of missing bits, Reign of Winter is fun but will require the game master to do a lot of roll playing. Personally, I want to do Serpent's Skull next. . . because Africa.

. . . because what happens in Trunau, stays in Trunau.

I sent an e-mail on 10/8 and a second e-mail a few days later with pictures of the shipment which arrived mangled by the post office in a post office bag with an apology for what happened. (It looked like it had been crushed by a piece of equipment, the printing was scraped off to the envelope.)

Can I have a response. I had gotten a message back just before that on an enquiry about shipping costs, and got an automatic message that you were experiencing delays. Never heard on that one either, not that I need the info any longer.

Sounds like they wanted to do something which did not require new rulebooks or big new gazettes on Vudra or psionics or whatever. Cheliax wouldn't be my first choice for a location. But hey, I got 4 other Adventure Paths I really want to run right now, so that's ok.

My final guess is that it lead to the drow in the Dark Lands. Because Gygax.

It is all kind of subjective. If you specify what you are looking for in an Adventure Path you would get a better answer. I've played Rune Lords, Jade Regent, Skull and Shackles, and just started Winter's Reign. They all have good thing to say about them. Rune Lords is or course the base line in what most people expect.

Level 20th character?! All of the Adventure Path except Wrath of the Righteous end well before 20th level. Sorry, but really, if you are playing a 20th level character, what do you expect? its going to be "nigh-on-invulnerable" in any system.

Regarding too much complexity. Maybe Paizo needs to issue a basic game with striped down rules and options for newbies.

(Minor spoilers)

Considering how long it takes to play each Adventure Path, I would not worry about the order. Just pick the ones you want to play. Other than Jade Regent and Scattered Star which are supposed to be after Runelords, I wouldn't worry. I did Jade Regent and Rune Lords and the overlap is very small. Both start in the same town, but don't stay there long. Our GM on Runelords did not even use the couple of NPCs in Rune Lords which later appear in Jade Regent. I don't know the details of Shattered Star. I hear it is mainly a dungeon crawl. I hear rumors that Giant Slayer is also supposed to follow Rune Lords, it starts out in the same area as the end of Runelords.

Side note, the APs I am familial with tend to have an over abundance of NPC, a lot of whom you can sideline if you want.

Belkzen is right in the area which was the setting of the end of Rise of the Rune Lords series. Some sort of tie-in with Rune Lords would probably make the GIant AP a bigger seller. Someplace in Varisia would be an obvious starting point for a trip to Belkzen. Or Ustalav or Lastwall perhaps.

I'm waiting for the fall 2015 AP. I hope it is more experimental. I don't like all the APs, but half of them being interesting to me is still a pretty good ratio. If last time is any guide we should know the fall AP within a month or so. Anyone have a definitive date on that?

Pathfinder Wiki has what looks like probably a comprehensive list by level, location, series and type. It even seems to have all the Pathfinder Society adventures. Its not in a graph though.
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Portal:Adventures

Ok, here's my elevator pitch if I was alone with the Paizo design staff. "The Saffron Throne: Our fearless party is hired to re-establish the long lost overland trade route from Taldor to Vudra. A 3000 mile trek though barbaric desert wastes and icy mountains to arrive in the middle of a war in Vudra as to who will become the Great Raj. There is no clear good-guy claimant to the Saffron Throne, our party can chose to support whomever they want. New rules for psionics,and a side portal trip to the First World to recover a long lost artifact. The plot structure of Jade Regent in the setting of Conan."

Did Rise of the Runelords as a player. Our GM edited out a lot of the NPC backstories, because it was just too hard for the group to follow, and all those lengthy backstories didn't really add much to the game.

Ran Jade Regent, took 13 months of about 3 sessions a month. Most fun I've ever had gaming. I added a lot of side adventures for on the road north from Sandpoint until the party reached the arctic. (Except for one big castle, there are almost no significant encounters for a thousand miles of travel.) The players were a bit over-buffed, just 4 plus a pair of weak NPC as support finished it at only 11th level. (I really don't get how some people think the adventure paths are meat grinders They must run really weak characters, or have a GM who is really cruel.)

Currently playing the 5th book of Skull and Shackles, and on first book of Reign of Winter. Trying to do Reign of Winter with really weak characters (16 attribute max) seeing how well that works. Been having fun with a few character interconnections between the games. My paladin in Reign of Winter is a follower of another player's cleric from Jade Regent.

Is it too much to hope for at least one glaringly obvious 'Expedition to the Barrier Peaks' reference?

In case you haven't seen it, this is the release schedule of the Mummy's Mask from the 2013-14 catalog.

Osirion: Legacy of the Pharaohs and People of the Sands in December should give us some good clues as to what is going to happen. They did Osirion Land of Pharaohs in 2008. I wonder if it is going to be the same stuff as last time.

I really wish they could release the pawn collection sooner.

Mummy’s Mask 1: The Half-Dead City (February 2014)
Mummy’s Mask 2: Empty Graves (March 2014)
Mummy’s Mask 3: Shifting Sands (April 2014)
Mummy’s Mask 4: Secrets of the Sphinx (May 2014)
Mummy’s Mask 5: The Slave Trenches of Hakotep (June 2014)
Mummy’s Mask 6: Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh (July 2014)
ASSOCIATED PRODUCTS
Osirion: Legacy of Pharaohs (December 2013)
People of the Sands (December 2013)
Mummy’s Mask Item Cards (February 2014)
Mummy’s Mask Poster Map Folio (July 2014)
Mummy’s Mask Pawn Collection (September 2014)
Mummy’s Mask Face Cards (October 2014)

I for one am really excited about an Osirion themed Adventure Path. I think this would be an excellent adventure to add a time-travel section to the adventure where actions in the past change the present. Any chance you think that they could publish a pawn collection for The Mummy's Mask next year? And please, leave a little space in the plot line for side adventures.

Maybe after The Mummy's Mask we can get an Adventure Path with a voyage to Vudra, sort of like Jade Regent.