Hey there folks. I’m coming from Rise of the Runelords of which I was a big fan. I spent most of that campaign with a large, powerful party, and made frequent use of my own stat blocks as well as Joey Virtue’s Guide to Challenging Encounters for 4-6 players. While that guide ends in Book 5, I did my best to continue the guide through to the end with the use of rules my party adopted: Automatic Bonus Progression and Mythic Enemies.
Now that I’m starting Return, I’m faced with a different problem: I’ve only got three players, and my players aren’t interested in switching characters mid-campaign unless they really mess up (or die in a key fight). We’ve ultimately decided to tackle that via running Gestalt characters. As a result, I’m making alternate stat blocks for many enemies to keep up with gestalt PCs, especially key NPCs. I’ll be making these stat blocks available through my Google Drive.
Furthermore, where possible I want to provide a guide for how to scale encounters and dungeons for larger or smaller parties while keeping difficulty relatively consistent, as well as indicate how treasure hoards can be altered for larger and smaller parties using Automatic Bonus Progression. So, in essence, if you are using:
- Automatic Bonus Progression
- Mythic monsters
- Gestalt
- Wealth or encounter changes for different-sized parties
Feel free to make use of any of the resources I’ll be posting in this thread over the next few years.
Finally, I’ve set up a Discord for DMs for Return of the Runelords if anyone would like to make use of it. Discord is much friendlier for image and file sharing, after all.
So, back since Book 3, my players have been pretty much on the side of the villains, especially Lucretia (covered in detail here. As such, they ultimately sided with Mokmurian, slaughtered Mokmurian's branded forces as part of a farce of a siege, and now stand at Runeforge's entrance hoping to find the tools they need to kill any rival Runelord force that might appear. They don't know that Karzoug is alive, but they suspect it.
My players may or may not decide to kill Karzoug once they are certain how he plans to return, but they are dead-set on activating the Leng Device. It's the one goal every member of the party has personally shared and is preparing actively for. They've even all undergone the sihedron ritual in order to send their soul's greed to the runewell upon death because they believe in what they're doing.
Given the party's committed efforts to fill the Runewell, I absolutely plan to have that happen. However, I'd still like to give my players a climactic final conflict, and I think the obvious source of it comes from the Denizens of Leng and the Leng Device itself.
Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition pg. 354 wrote:
Anyone who attempts to damage or manipulate the Leng Device has a 30% chance of creating a small explosion affecting all within 5 feet and dealing 6d6 points of force damage (no save). This causes no noticeable damage to the device and has no effect on the portal—the device itself is a major artifact and cannot be destroyed without traveling to Leng, where its unknowable foundations lie shrouded in secret monasteries.
Before the runewell is entirely filled (and thus the Leng Device is activated, according to the Continuing the Campaign Appendix on pg. 368), I plan on giving my PCs the opportunity to visit the Leng Device to learn more about it - and learn that it has been calibrated to a totally different time, if they study it carefully). If they slay or banish the Denizens of Leng, instead of temporarily creating a hole in spacetime that a Hound enters through, they instead create a portal to one such "secret monastery" where the "foundations" of the device lie.
Assuming this is for a level 17 (if the party is fully aligning themselves with Karzoug) or 18 (if the party fought and defeated Karzoug without killing him), what could be suitable for cultists intent on bringing back Mhar, capable and willing to manipulate even a Runelord? I know the Denizens of Leng serve the Moon Beasts of Leng (and I've even build Moon Beast Cultist stat blocks), but I have no idea what sort of creature or set pieces to have at the center of all of this. I've read Book 5 of Shattered Star for inspiration, and while it gave me some ideas, the encounters and environmental details won't really do for a Monastery of Mhar.
I think my other option is to make re-calibrating the Leng Device to its intended target (Xin-Shalast 10,000 years ago) relatively simple, but taking enough time that another Runelord or their servants could make a play (Krune and the Cult of Lissala, or Thulos's army of giants). In those cases, I feel much more confident about filling out the forces and such, but less of a clear picture as to how to make a scenario out of it.
I plan to run Return of the Runelords in the future, so I don't plan on involving
Return of the Runelords spoilers:
Sorshen, Xanderghul, or Belimarius in this regardless of what route I take, although the Cult of the Peacock Spirit seems like a fine addition.
TL;DR My players are dedicated to activating the Leng Device and are working with Karzoug's forces to do so. How do I make a climactic conflict that stands between them and success? Ideally level 17 or 18.
In brief, my PCs have been level 12 for quite some time, but have done nothing more with Jorgenfist than scouting its exterior. Meanwhile, they've done two dungeons, plenty of sleuthing, and have figured out the main hook of Book 5 - there is a place called Runeforge with the tools they need to defeat a Runelord and their servants. They've spent something like 6 of the past 12 sessions with Lucretia to some extent, and have pieced together a pretty good idea of what is really going on (to the degree that they anticipate something like the Leng Device is in play.)
They have finally, finally decided to go to Jorgenfist (8 weeks in-game since defeating Barl), although they're currently in a phase of downtime to destroy the runewell of wrath, enchant weapons, and so forth.
In order to simplify the path to Mokmurian, I want to say that the surface and first floor of Jorgenfist are cleared out, leaving only the remaining Therassic Monastery filled with enemies.
My question is: if Mokmurian's forces have been marshaled and begun to march, how can they be stopped, either before or after Mokmurian's defeat? My current thought is that Conna has remained in Jorgenfist as, essentially, a prisoner, and if the party brings her along with proof of Mokmurian's defeat, that could stop them.
Without Conna's help, I think the party will need to defeat Galemir, Seleval, and Zaelsar at the very least. Ideally, I'd like to include the earthquake that strikes Sandpoint to somehow be included, to mark the exact moment that the runewells are experiencing a surge of power. Additionally, if they wait long enough that Mokmurian's forces begin a siege, I would like to have them up against a Rune Giant Warrior, although I'd build this as a special encounter where different limbs have different HP...
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TL;DR
I'd really like some advice on how to handle Mokmurian's forces having marched from Jorgenfist without him, and how they can be stopped either before or after he has been defeated.
For those of you with the Pathfinder Campaign Setting Guide: Sandpoint, Light of the Lost Coast, I think this title will be pretty self-explanatory, but for those who don't, I'll give a brief background for context.
Hellfire Catacombs:
Underneath Sandpoint Cathedral, and accessible either through the smugglers' tunnels or through a magically-activated staircase beneath the cathedral's standing stones, there was a secure place for VIPs to stay when visiting the town (fortress?) Sandpoint was back during Alaznist's rule. It included shrines, sleeping quarters, an armory, and many un-labeled rooms, and, according to that setting guide, is largely populated by demons and undead. The demons there were able to survive the Cataclysm, similar to Erylium and Malfeshnekor, and the undead were either created from deaths during the Cataclysm, or from soldiers slain by the Hellfire Flume. It also includes the control system for aiming and firing the Hellfire Flume.
Now, I'd very much like to use this location, firstly because it's neat, and secondly because my party is already suspicious that there may be more un-collapsed portions of the Catacombs of Wrath. They've also been hesitant to head to Jorgenfist, so I've been whipping up an alternate Book 4 - the first half of which I've already designed, taking them into the Pit to discover the temple of Kabriri and the ancient cult of Urgathoa, as well as uncovering a pre-Runeforge fleshcrafting facility where Chellan was made.
My issue is two-fold:
1) There isn't a lot of narrative value as-is in the Hellfire Catacombs, as it mostly introduces parties to Alaznist and Bakrakhan, things my party is already familiar with. I mostly want to show off the control room, and I want to add an actual catacombs where Alaznist's agents harvested materials from soldiers slain by the Flume, but if anyone has any ideas for narrative devices to put in here to tie things together, that would be awesome.
2) As-designed, the Hellfire Catacombs appear to be CR 5. Obviously that won't do for my level 11 party, but I'm not that experienced at higher-level play. What are some thematic monsters - sticking primarily to demons, undead, and creatures with the fire subtype. Constructs also work, but I'm not familiar with any particularly appropriate ones.
If anyone's got any suggestions that would speed-up my own researching, that would be mighty helpful.
Particulars of my Campaign:
My planned lead-in for this section is to have Lucretia, who survived Book 3, contact the party and offer them a deal: confirm whether or not this particular Hellfire Flume is the resting place of Xaliasa and hand over any existing remains, and Sandpoint will be spared in the coming war (and the party's meddling in Hook Mountain will be forgiven). While I don't think they'll actually provide this information to Lucretia/Mokmurian, I do think they'll start wondering why Xaliasa is so important, given that they've heard his name twice now (as well as Anizorah's, the arch-mage who operated the Hellfire Flume).
(I then aim to connect the Hellfire Catacombs to the Underflume, which the party has already seen a fraction of in a previous one-off. And from there, a teleportation ring to a laboratory that lies under what is now Grubber's Hermitage, a prison for the legendary beast known only as the Black Maga... the patron of a hag's coven the party is vaguely aware of. I swapped ol' Maga for a Daughter of Oblivion in Book 3. This lab's archive will act similarly to the Therassic Library, and Maga will be able to tell the party just who Xaliasa was.)
Hi there. A friend of mine who is relatively new to DMing but not new to Pathfinder is about to be running Iron Gods for me and two friends. We know that Adventure Paths are best balanced for parties of 4 with a 15 point buy, as I recently re-balanced Books 1-3 of Rise of the Runelords for a rolled-stat party of 6, but this presents a different balancing puzzle.
Our current party is:
Human Priest (3pp cleric variant with wizard-like stats but 3 domains, more spell slots, and Bardic Knowledge) of Brigh (Fire and Artifice domains).
Tiefling Construct Rider
Human Transmuter (Shapechange) or Human Twinned Summoner (focusing on reach weapons).
We've been wondering about how to take this and make it a viable party. Our ideas so far have been:
- Increase our point buy to Heroic or Epic (this doesn't fix the action economy issue, so we're thinking probably not)
- Start at level 2 (same issue, but also we'd be hitting milestone spells and abilities early, so this could swing the balance off in both directions)
- One or two of us run second characters (I've proposed a melee Ranger for this). Our hesitation with this has just been the difficulty of roleplaying two characters in a scene and potentially slowing combat.
Do any of you have experience with this AP and small parties (and ways to handle that?) And what else do we need to cover for this adventure? I suspect we'll need an archer, preferably with full BAB, but beyond that I don't really know.
During my party's first session in Turtleback Ferry, the party started throwing Lucretia's name around to try and pick up rumors on her - and quickly found that she was the owner of the Paradise. Now, in my game, Lucretia has not sunk the gambling hall because of how smoothly things are going - she wants to keep people calm and greedy until her plans are complete. I also had a good set piece set up for a fight against a dire crocodile on the Paradise for when the party tried to ambush Lucretia, but . . .
Meeting Lucretia:
Half of the party went to go scope out the Paradise, and after about an hour of gambling, were invited to meet Lucretia in her lounge. She was initially very polite, interested in why they had come to Turtleback Ferry - and then she spotted Xanesha's sidhedron medallion on the witch's companion. When she asked about it, the party decided to be bold and claim to be recent recruits of Xanesha's. They failed a bluff check to say that Xanesha was 'fine, last we saw her,' but Lucretia continued the conversation to get an idea of how much they knew about Xanesha, Mokmurian, and their operations. They made some very accurate guesses about them harvesting greed for a runewell of greed and the return of Thassilon, although they left out the players' full guess, which is that they're trying to resurrect Karzoug (my players are. uh. attentive).
Eventually, she confronted their lie and asked who they really were and if they had killed Xanesha. They admitted that they did, and that they had been hired by the Lord-Mayor to retake Fort Rannick. They also said that they found a letter Lucretia wrote to her sister, and had been planning to come meet her to find out more since then - being hired just provided them more incentive. And she asked why they wanted to meet her. To my surprise, our witch said, "I just want to know more about Thassilon and how you could bring it back." Super sincerely. And our bloodrager agreed.
Now, Xanesha tried to figure out if they were sincere, and they explained that they killed Xanesha because she came after their friends and started a ghoul plague, but they didn't necessarily object to Thassilon's return.
This, coming from a party that has done everything they can to learn about Thassilon, including its many, many evils (slavery, sin magic, constant war, and weapons of mass destruction is most of what they've learned about), caught me off guard. We continued the Lucretia scene for a while, I pulled Lucretia's stock line from the book ("Mokmurian would love to meet you.") and they've agreed to give her a night to contact Mokmurian, during which time they'll put their plans to siege Fort Rannick on hold.
So, aside from this being unexpected, I want to come up with an idea of how Lucretia would respond to a group of adventurers who 1) killed her sister and 2) are sincerely interested in meeting Mokmurian and finding out what he has to say.
Here are my thoughts so far:
- Let's say she does contact Mokmurian. How would he respond? Angry at Xanesha's loss? Uninterested? Intrigued?
- If they find the party threatening, Lucretia could simply invite them to Fort Rannick to talk further. Of course, this could be a very simple ambush, but I think Lucretia might take a different approach - reveal her plan for the region, and gauge whether they're really committed to joining their Mokmurian's side.
- If they somehow surprise me again and are OK with sacrificing Turtleback Ferry, how can I continue the game? What complications could arise that push the party back on track? The threat of losing Sandpoint to the giant raid? Lucretia letting slip her complete contempt for humanity and her desire to see them in chains once again?
I'd appreciate creative approaches beyond "Lucretia turns on them and tries to kill them and becomes nothing more than a roadbump," but I'm struggling to see how to do so beyond a simple conversation with Lucretia.
Like many of you, I suspect, I'm a fan of Joey Virtue's old thread on making Challenging Encounters for 5-6 Players. I'm currently running a party of 6 players with rolled stats (avg point-buy value = 23), all of whom are using class options from after the Anniversary Edition was published. As such, I have been re-writing almost every single encounter in Rise of the Runelords, using Joey Virtue's guide as an upper-limits reference, through book 2.
Would people be interested in seeing the stat blocks / reworked encounters I've created? This would especially apply for people running Book 2, as I have actually reworked every single encounter in it.
Hey there everyone. As my players are currently in an extended session of downtime during Sandpoint's flooding season (Kuthona), I realized several holidays would be passing that potentially relate to Sandpoint, and I'd like to spend a session fleshing them out. I have some ideas for them, but I would really like to see if anyone else has done similar sessions in the past or if you have any creative ideas for how to approach it.
These holidays are:
Winterbloom (Kuthona 15):
- A holiday in commemoration of Naderi's (tragic) ascension to godhood. While this at best might be seen as a day of mourning in Sandpoint, Naderi's connection to lovers' suicides and claim of suicide locations might make Hag's Plummet an interesting location on Winterbloom. I plan on having Shayliss Vinder bring a PC here because she feels something calling her down the cliff (a member of her hag mother's coven - long story).
Candlemark (Winter Solstice):
- A Sarenrean holiday of forgiveness, and a celebration of longer days coming. I'm interpreting this in Sandpoint as being a day in which there is worship at dawn, followed by a day of both gifts and the cancellation of debts. I can't find much more about this holiday, so that's all I have so far (especially because few of my NPCs hold Sarenrae as a patron).
Crystalhue (Winter Solstice):
- A Shelynite holiday in celebration of art and romantic relationships, especially marriage ceremonies and the start of new relationships. There's a lot about this one on the Pathfinder Wiki, so I won't go deep into the details, but given that Ameiko Kaijitsu's patron is Shelyn, I think it would be fun to have her play matchmaker with some of the PCs and NPCs for this. The hair dyeing and creation of melaros just seems like a lot of fun as small details, and it would be a good opportunity to show lighter sides to a lot of Sandpoint's NPCs (Aneka and Arika Avertin come to mind, as well as rougher folks like Belor Hemlock).
Ritual of Stardust (Winter Solstice):
- A Desnan holiday starting at dusk on the winter solstice, during which celebrants share stories and sing songs through the night. A giant bonfire is central to this, making me think I'll set this even at the Pyre - the one celebration that has refused to relocate to Sandpoint even after the cathedral has been rebuilt. In addition, as the fire burns low, sand mixed with star gems is thrown over the embers to smother them (as the run rises, I imagine). "At this point it is common to make proclamations of love and friendship and of promised journeys to come" (PathfinderWiki). Considering the overlap with Crystalhue, I'm imagining this moment might be a big deal, especially for younger folks.
My Party:
- My party is hitting level 7 early, and it is during this event that I'm allowing them to take Cohorts if they take Leadership - the Ritual of Stardust in particular makes a very appropriate time for the start of relationships and the formation of partnerships.
- Lonjiku Kaijitsu and Tsuto are currently haunting the Glassworks, causing Ameiko to shut it down. I plan on having her visit them in the Boneyard on or before the Solstice . . . but then potentially get too angry to truly forgive them, and instead go and smash the Glassworks to pieces, giving up on the business until she can come to terms with her loss and put the haunts to rest.
- Shaylis started a feud with a PC a while ago by stealing hundreds of pages of research notes from them in order to figure out what the Sidhedron and the Runewell of Wrath were. I think I'll have her try and make amends as well.
- One of my PCs is foreign to Varisia, as well as raised by elves. However, he does worship Desna, so I want to get him involved in Varisian customs. This is especially important b/c he was Aldern's target and was largely ostracized by the Sandpoint community on the belief he was somehow causing the killings - several of the PCs friends have been trying to repair his reputation since, though he's mostly taken to brooding and going on wilderness treks with Shalelu.
Any other ideas, either general or specific to campaigns you've done / would like to do would be very welcome. I just find this triple-holiday day a very interesting thing in a small town like Sandpoint.
I started Rise of the Runelords with my Pathfinder group three weeks ago, on the autumnal equinox (to fit perfectly with the Swallowtail Festival). I've been looking all over the Rise of the Runelords forum and I've noticed this very neat thing that people do - create journals of their party's adventures. So, here's my attempt. I have no idea if I'll keep these up, but for the moment, I'm very interested.
The Party:
It was obvious from our character creation session that we were not going to have a very typical party. We rolled stats, then selected race, then selected class. We used a 24d6 dice pool, and it ended up like this:
Ithil Hin, a half-elven hunter with extremely typical stats (high dex, wis, str, mediocre cha, con, int). Took a wolf companion and the Primal Hunter archetype.
Meridia, a half-elven waves oracle who rolled crazy high Dex and Int and used their racial +2 to get a good Cha as well. No stats are lower than 13 (their Wisdom). Took the Wasting Curse.
Cordelia, a kyton-spawned (for flavor) tiefling witch with the Sea Witch and Coral Witch archetypes. Took an coral otter familiar.
Haast, a devil-spawned (also flavor) tiefling magus hexcrafter. Rolled fairly evenly, 12-14 in almost every stat.
Yllemsa, a merfolk arcane bloodrager with similarly balanced (and fairly nuts) stats, averaging a 15 post-race bonuses.
Every character is transgender and bisexual, as is basically always the case with my parties.
Ithil Hin:
Ithil Hin was born to a human mother and elven father. He was bonded to a wolf pup as a child and raised primarily by his father - exclusively after his mother died. At the age of twenty, he and his wolf (Cerberus) left his father's side and began to wander northern Varisia, making his way over the past five years down into the Lost Coast.
Ithil and Cerberus entered Sandpoint only a day before the Swallowtail Festival, stopping in to get cleaned up and restocking. However, he chose to stay after heroically saving Aldern Foxglove from the goblin commando Gresgurt.
Meridia:
Meridia is a Sandpoint native, although her family left when she was a child to seek their fortune as sailors. She returned to Sandpoint two years ago on a loan from Beleven Valdemar, indentured for five years as a dock worker in exchange for a house in Downtown and pitiful wages. Meridia took additional work as a shipwreck salvager in her spare time, eventually earning up enough money to purchase herself a bow and some armor (aiming to become a mercenary once her five years were up.
Tragically, Meridia perished in a shipwreck a month prior to the Swallowtail festival, only to wash up on shore three weeks later. She was alive . . . almost. Her flesh is constantly partially rotted and dripping, and she smells of sea water no matter what she does. Hannah Velerin tended to Meridia after she washed ashore, claiming Gozreh returned Meridia to life for some purpose. Meridia remains doubtful of any divine intervention.
Luckily for Meridia, after her crew was officially confirmed dead, her contract to Beleven was destroyed, but the deed to her house was not by the time she returned, much to Beleven's displeasure.
Cordelia:
Cordelia's birth was a brutal affair. Her mother lived in Magnimar, a worshiper of Zon Kuthon who ultimately attracted the attention of an Evangelist Kyton. The tiefling she carried for several months magically sustained her body through months of deprivation and torture, dying pitifully once the twisted child was delivered. In order to preserve its life, the kyton brought the child with him back to the Shadow Plane.
Cordelia's soul was mangled from the beginning, and the beings of the shadow plane barely recognized hir as a mortal. Ze grew up nearly feral along the shadow plane coast of Magnimar, becoming fascinated with aquatic animals at a very young age. Coastal reefs, diverse and strong, kept hir attention the most, until at the age of 15 a whippoorwill, an avian servant of Pharasma, brought hir an offer: continue their study, their obsession with reefs, and they would be granted great powers, and brought to the material plane where other mortals could learn form them. They accepted.
Unfortunately, the 6'3" kytonspawn was not very welcome in Magnimar, and after creating quite a stir blaming the city for the pollution and destruction of its coastal reefs. They followed the Lost Coast to Sandpoint, where they began sleeping on the beach in a mound of trash beneath Junker's Edge.
Haast:
Haast is one child among many in a corrupted bloodline of a powerful sorceress. She corrupted her bloodline purposefully via a Sire Devil, who also sired all of Haast's siblings - a small brood of magically exceptional children raised under their mother's discipline.
Eventually, Haast set out to hone their skills, selling their services to a Magnimarian noble Keleri Deverin who needed help retrieving The Star of Desna, a family artifact, before the coming Swallowtail Festival. During this brief contract, they retrieved an interesting journal. The other adventurers they worked with were shortly thereafter inducted into a secret society called the Order of the Esoteric Eye, but they were less welcome, instead sent along with a courier to deliver the Star to Keleri's cousin Kendra, the mayor of Sandpoint.
Upon arrival, Haast decided to stay a time in the Rusty Dragon, interested in the tales they'd heard of the Sandpoint Devil - a fine monster to stake their reputation in a small, vulnerable village.
Yllemsa:
Yllemsa was a warrior in her tribe for many years until one fateful day almost a year ago. As she was scouting a new region not far from Varisia's Lost Coast, she came across ancient, sunken Thassilonian ruins. Therein she discovered a large, glowing well - and carved into it, a seven-pointed star. Irresistibly drawn to it, she touched the well and was overcome with a horrible, all-consuming rage while the seven-pointed star was branded into her flesh.
When her rage finally abated, Yllemsa regained her wits to discover another warrior, a friend of hers, dead by her hand. Soon thereafter, she was exiled, and she fled closer to the coast to avoid later being hunted by the people who had once been her family.
Over the past few months, Yllemsa has felt mysteriously drawn to the coastal town of Sandpoint, recently building up the courage to begin visiting the docks and talk to locals regularly. At first, the city guard was hostile to her, expecting that she was a spy or an enchantress, but after weeks of relative inactivity, they've stopped posting someone to watch her at all times. After defeating seven goblins, including a commando, during the raid on Sandpoint, Sheriff Hemlock along with many others have been far more welcoming to Yllemsa. They may know little about her interest or intentions, but she clearly shares an interest in killing goblins, and few question her presence now.
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In addition, I also swapped out several Sandpoint NPCs that I and/or my players found boring for OCs I've developed for previous campaigns. This includes:
Vorvashali Voon and The Feathered Serpent has been replaced by Skaadi, an elf-changeling white-haired witch who runs the local magic shop, The Haunted Broomstick. She is in her mid-fifties and is intended as a romanceable NPC, although her romance arc is complicated somewhat by her accursed heritage - and the fact that she has been actively ignoring her mother's Calling for several years now.
Nisk Tander's Bottled Solutions has been replaced by Vivianne, a half-elf, half-orc (called a vashtar) vivisectionist who assists in teaching Magical Theory at Turandurok Academy. The locals are extremely nervous at her presence, and the only way she manages to keep her doors open is through significantly up-charging adventurers and paying well for harvested monster organs.
Savah's Armory is now the Polyarmoury. In addition, Savah is in a romantic relationship with Ameiko Kaijitsu, who is also in a romantic relationship with Shalelu Andosana. As my PCs are mostly very young, these three have been acting sort of like surrogate moms for a lot of them (especially Ithil and Cordelia, who are very young and haven't had mother figures for most/all of their lives).
Shalelu is also exes with Daviren Hosk. She pretends it never happened, while he's still bitter if she's mentioned at all.
Lastly, I've added class levels to some random NPCs and charted out possible paths to them becoming adventurers. This so far includes:
Aneka Avertin - The party really took a shining to Aneka after she was attacked by a goblin during the raid (and later gave Cordelia free bread). Aneka is currently a Commoner 1/Rogue 1 looking to become a "monster hunter" in order to get out of a potential courtship with Aldern Foxglove, who has started sending her mother letters to inquire after her daughter.
Shayliss Vinder - Shayliss and Ithil really hit it off after meeting during the Swallowtail Festival hide-and-seek game. Shayliss will be appearing in Book 2 as a Vigilante in order to prove her father's innocence in the Skinsaw Murders.
Besk Magravi - After several of my players gravitated towards Risa's place, I started fleshing out Risa's children a bit more. Besk is just a commoner, but she has the ability to use mage hand at-will. She may, with a bit more prodding, become an Evocationist.
Session 1 details to follow (trying to recruit my players to participate in journaling).
So, I've been playing Pathfinder for about the past two years and I've seen and played a mighty handful of rogues, and all of them played either the TWF style or Greatsword style, and then one ninja who focused on shurikens and poisoning. When it came for me to build my second rogue, I came across the Scout archetype, and I thought 'Hey, this seems . . . really good, actually.' So I searched the internet a fair bit, and haven't seen a single other example of building the Scout in the same way that occurred to me, and wonder if it has been mentioned and disregarded for some reason that I missed.
I'm in a mid-level campaign of 10th level right now and I built this as an alternate in the event that my current character dies.
20 point buy, Rogue(Scout), PF-only, level 10
Race: Half-Elf
Base stats:
Str 14
Dex 16 (+2 Racial)
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 12
Cha 8
At this level, I would probably have him equipped with a +2 Agile Elven Curve Blade (Adamantine, for DR).
With the Skirmisher ability, as long as the Rogue moves 10'+ in a given round, he treats a foe as flat-footed for the purposes of dealing Sneak Attack damage. So, on an ordinary Spring Attack, his strike looks like (assuming Dex 24 by this point)
+16 Elven Curve Blade Vital Strike + 1.5x Dex bonus + (+6) from Power Attack +2 enhancement +5d6 sneak attack +5 bleed
+16 ECB (2d10+18+5d6+5 bleed/phase) for an average 46.5+5 bleed/phase. Meanwhile, he's maintaining an AC of..
+4 Armor (Darkleaf leather or Robes of Mage Armor)
+7 Dex
+5 Dodge (Offensive Defense)
+1 Dodge (From feat)
+4 against attacks of opportunity
And, with other gear likes a Ring of Protection or Amulet of Natural Armor, he gets an AC of ~ 29 to 30 (34 against attacks of opportunity, which are a likely problem with how much he moves).
His Bleed, Sneak Attack, and AC bonuses will continue to scale simply due to leveling. He does not need a flank or the element of surprise. His HP is rather sturdy. His saves, admittedly, are rather shoddy, and will need to be bulked up in the future as possible (starting with Slippery Mind, for instance). A dip into Fighter wouldn't be too-unwelcome for feats like Devastating Strike and Improved Vital Strike when the time is right, but I overall don't see why I've never seen a build like this previously proposed.
