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Wonderful, thanks for writing this up and posting it! Might use it in my campaign, they're soon to enter the hotel.
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Just so you know, if I Google her name this post is result #3, with the plaintext first sentence announcing her role in the Adventure Path clearly legible in the Google preview. That's... probably not good. Well, if players start Googling character names from an AP they are bound to run into spoilers. Kind of unavoidable. But if you have players that have a hard time not searching for spoilers it's easy enough just to rename key NPCs. I have done that anyway since I found many names in this AP to be overly British, which doesn't work for our table.
Someone suggested that the writer might have forgotten the change in denomination of PF vs PF2e. So it should be a tenth. That's how I will handle it when we get there.
Thanks for your feedback Orikkro! Seems you don't like this AP very much - no problem - tastes differ! I have read it, and I agree there's some work to be done, but all APs need work in my experience; if not because of plot holes/weak sections/broken stuff, so then to tie the story tighter around the player characters. Fortunately I have gotten lots of great tips from this forum and from Reddit, and also from jsled's helpful document (which kind of curates forum- and Reddit posts). And I will change the last book as well, to make it a more inline with the others, and to give the BBEG a better motive and plan. As for the tropes, I presented the ones above (and a couple more) to my players and they liked them as inspiration.
I've all the books, read through the first two and skimmed the rest (planning to run it in the upcoming months) and AFAIR she's not used in the AP.
Not sure how much attention this forum is still getting, but here goes. I’m prepping for a run of Agents of Edgewatch in a couple of months, and looking for a way to carry over some of our inter-player RP that we enjoy so much in our current campaign (a one-year detour of Vampire). To help with that I will present my players a list of guard clichés and tropes from film and TV, just as a jump start and to prevent them from falling into the “mechanics first”-trap. This is what I have come up with so far (I’m sure you can spot the inspiration for some!) Could you imaginative folks please help us with suggesting some more? Tropes: War-damaged You fought the legions of the Whispering Tyrant and for you the war is not quite over. Your S.O. has moved out, nightmares plague you, and the horror and trauma live on. You feel guilty because your comrades died while you, for some reason, survived. You are easily irritated, startle for no reason, afraid of dark spaces and drink too much. Some in the corps see you as a lethal weapon ready to go off at any time. The careerist Your mother was city watch, your grandmother too, and your first words spoken were “patrol route”. You’re focused on making a brilliant career and see yourself as district captain within a few years. Just have to graze off a few dog years first. You like to take the credit, lick superiors' behinds and position yourself to be "in the right place with the right people". But you don't really prefer to go first when the going gets tough. After all, you have a long career ahead of you, and Absalom needs you. Alive. The technician You are very interested in weapons, equipment, and technical methods of practicing your profession, and have (and carry around) all kinds of gadgets. You know all the rules and regulations and never misses an opportunity to recite them. Your equipment is in top shape and you'd be hard-pressed to choose between leaving a comrade behind or your LR-22 Tactical Baton (painted in night camo). The idealist You became a guard because you want to help people. Protect the weak and bring justice. You are always first in the morning line-up with sunshine in your eyes, and always sign yourself (and your unit) up as volunteers. You feel sorry for the criminals, always trying to give them a second chance and see the best in everything and everyone, even when there’s scarce to find. Retirement in sight You are a bit older, and don't have many years left until retirement. You had a comfortable desk job at the station and spent the weekends at your cottage up the coast, in peace and quiet. For some reason, and against your will, you're now back in a unit and out on patrol with a bunch of hot shots. Your back aches, the shoes pinch, the uniform has shrunk. You're too old for this s$+$. Mastermind You are driven by secrets, mysteries, riddles. And where does one find those, if not at a crime scene? You see your new profession as a game to challenge your intellect, and have little interest in the human aspect. Everything and everyone carries a secret, and you are the key. As long as you get some time, and people stop running around and bothering you, you will solve this. The softie If the sergeant is looking for someone to shout at, you are always their first choice. Soft spoken and timid, your parents thought guard academy would toughen you up. It hasn't, and you are still looking for your voice and your moment to shine. It’s out there, you hope. Somewhere.
Another take could be having Volluk kill her. Tie it in to the subquest searching for Lasda (the dwarf Volluk is using as an anchor for the Gauntlight). The PCs get hired by Lasda's tavern-owning mom to find him, told that Wrin might be the last to see Lasda, and then they find her worm-eaten body (Volluk cleaning up witnesses). Asking around and someone might have seen a cloaked figure with a lantern skulking around her shop, in fact looking very much like the figure Wrin reported seeing walking away with Lasda awhile ago (they might find a note or diary in her shop). Where did they go? Well, they took the road to this old ruin just outside town.. Volluk is a great villain and using him as catalyst for the whole AP could be cool.
[Spoilers]
But I liked how the drow were portrayed here, and we had lots of fun RP between the party and the Yldaris denizens (especially the young impressionable elf in the party, and the stern old cleric). I played the drow as brash, slobby, butch teenage jocks. Also there's lots of great art that you would need to replace. I can't really see how replacing them just to stay 100% pure Paizo-ORC-kosher would add anything to this AP.
Your Gm has done their own spin on the lenses. The lenses give certain abilities when invested. And you can forcefully invest them into someone else, with a successful melee attack (with a set attack modifier depending on the lens, unless you have them in the lattice which then gives all the highest modifier). The lenses don't have the possession trait, however, the attack to forcefully invest them into someone else does. Any they don't give access to the possession spell, as written. Possession is a level 7 spell which is quite powerful to have free access to for a level 9-10 party (seeing as it is available at level 13 for a caster). Maybe your GM thought the lenses needed a boost to make them more attractive, or that your party needed one. The possession spell does have the incapacitation trait, but since it's a level 7 spell that won't really dampen its power much in this adventure.
There's no good explination IMO, so I made one up for my campaign (that in turn tied in to some other additions I made). In short, Zarmavdian was in cahoots with Belcorra (he tricked his way into the Roseguard after having Fallowglade murder the group's previous mage, and then approached them with "evidence" about Belcorra being behind it - which was kinda true). Belcorra's motive for getting in with Zarmavdian and having the Roseguard delivered to her doorstep was of course paying Urevian with Rajani. But Zarmavdian wanted the Gauntlight all for himself in his secret quest for lichdom, and betrayed Belcorra by fireball-in-the-back (when she though he would help her kill the heroes). Afterwards, a great fire broke out (which is in the book I believe) and when it had subsided, he lied to the others that he had searched for Otari's remains but had found nothing. He didn't want them meddling with "his" Vault or for them to find evidence about his real motives. Another, albeit smaller, inconsistency is that the Vaults weren't explored more by other adventurers during 500 years (the top floor was visited by the thieves in A15 Nhimbaloth Shrine). It's half an hour's walk from a busy little town, it should have attracted generations of intrepid heroes. So I made up a reason for the Vaults staying largely unexplored during all this time as well.
Very nice!
Now the Gauntlight is ready to light again, and I'm wondering what it should do I'm away from my notes and books ATM, but my "second" Gauntlight awakening, which I planned to use if my players did like yours do now, was to have the light sweep over the town, and then settle out in the harbor, a couple of hundred feet from the shore. Where a longship full of Ulfen raiders has been rotting at the bottom of the sea for 500 years. They were set to raze the small harbor that Belcorra had built for the construction of the Vaults, which quickly proved to be a less than ideal choice of targets. But now they can commence their interrupted attack anew, when the Gauntlight reanimates them as vengeful draugr.I was thinking to have them concentrate on the Dawnflower library, dragging screaming acolytes out to the sea with them - if the PCs wouldn't save the day. If you want the make it more serious Vandy could be one of the victims.
Yeah my impression of Otari is that it is quite thriving with a lot of hustle and bustle, so such a nice spot would likely be occupied quickly. Or just have his brother-in-law/uncle/cousin take over.
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.
Well that's unfortunate. I use a TV on my table with minis, so low resolution maps are unusable for me. I know I am not alone in this setup. Looks like I'll be creating my own maps (or look to the community at large) if I run Abomination Vaults. What dpi would be "usable"? Like, the minimum. Not being facetious, just curious.
Yeah sure, haven't finished them all yet with their Major Gifts but this might make me do it :-) I'll try to have them done and linked this week.
Ok thanks Razcar No problem! There's a demo here that resets regularly, have them log on and test themselves https://demo.foundryvtt.com/join Password is foundry.
Will a Chromebook be able to cope with Foundry's resource requirements? I haven't tried myself, but heard that people can. The player will get the graphics dialed down quite much though and likely won't see things like soft shadows. The latest version of Foundry adjusts graphics automatically.
Fantastic news! Was dreading having to manually enter Blood Lords (our next campaign for my VTT group) after we finish AV.
So, we're halfway through Abomination Vaults. I guess the best way would be to import the new module into our existing, PDF to Foundry-game then. And then delete the "old" maps and assets, except the things I've modified. After a fresh backup :-) Ok cool, thanks.
I changed all the four items from the Roseguard into actual relics. The co-operative blade was remade into a scimitar with fire powers (since I have a champion of Sarenrae in my group). It has worked fine and my players are having fun with them.
From memory, I think he uses the Loot type actor from the standard PF2E module in Foundry. You can switch that actor from Loot to Merchant sheet type in that sheet's GM settings (which is to the left in the sheet). For treasure chests I think he just uses the same but as Loot type. I use this as well and have linked the merchants to Otari map icons, and then character art for the different merchants' sheets. I restock them some when my PCs level, and they enjoy going shopping this way. For treasure I use one default chest that employ random chest/bag graphics that I can just drag and drop and populate. If the treasure needs discovery I just hide it.
I require them to use two actions to disable haunts, but I often also require several successes to be accumulated for added tension and danger (and The Exorcist vibes!). (For your first q about the wall, sorry don't remember how I ran that one.)
I would like to really recommend Recall Knowledge's Abomination Vault GM Prep on Youtube for this. Especially the first episode which is an AP overview where he goes through the meta plot and the main points of all three books.
I can recommend the other five episodes as well where he walks through the first book - rooms, bosses, things to look out for etc. A goldmine for new GM's, and for veteran lazy ones as well :-) Sadly he hasn't made any for book two (yet), I hope he'll continue.
Late to the party, but I nevertheless wanted to voice my support for the UPW all the way from Sweden. I hope this effort will result in a better working environment for all involved, staff, freelancers and managers. You people make great things and I hope you will continue to do so, and in a just and fair manner.
I get the impression that you seem to think that people aren't allowed to not care about Strength of Thousands. I usually buy the first book of each AP to get a feel about the adventure and if it would be fun to play for our group. My impression was that the plot was scattered and lacked coherence and that the BBEG and conflict was uninteresting. The setting seems rich and fun, but that's I suppose more credit to the Mwangi book than this AP. I also think that the PF2E APs have lacked the oumph of many of the pf1 ones and been kinda lacklustre. We are however playing AV now that we are having a blast in, and I'm looking forwards to Blood Lords. My favorite AP-writer is Richard Pett and I'm hoping for some of that spooky and humorous magic (even though Mr Pett is sadly enough not involved nowadays).
It is. And I think your suggested reason behind it seems plausible, also I think it's such a given, such a major thing to have a description of the main villain - especially as she appears in a painting in the first book - that you can miss to include it just because of that. But Paizo's AP books, while generally good, are published once a month and are to my understanding seldom playtested (which would likely have caught this), so with that brisk production schedule you cannot really expect Mask of Nyarlathotep-level attention to detail. In my experience the errors/omissions are usually remarkable few. Not that that excuses not having a detailed physical description of your BBEG. Anyway, I said to my players that the painting in A22 was too faded to make out any details. I couldn't find any good substitute image myself, despise trawling Google image search and Pinterest. Then again I'm spoiled by the excellent art quality in Paizo's product and won't accept any old anime drawing, nor a photo. Did anyone find a "stand-in" image of Belcorra that they are happy with and are willing to share a link?
All I've done balancing wise is reduce the incoming Damage and HP of each enemy by 25%, and I typically only give non-boss enemies two actions instead of three. That's a smart way to do it and prevents the players getting overwhelmed by enemy actions (without cutting out monsters entirely). Maybe just give all bosses the Weak Adjustment to help with the math (which is very easy to do if you play via a good VTT such as Foundry, and not hard live either), along with 2 actions for mooks.
There is a great community map of the graveyard done by Narchy here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SojVbGhYe8BVjyIjMAccRb0TY-c4n60X (seeing as you are talking about the zombies). I haven't seen any community maps of the temple itself however (since there's no encounters inside the temple in the AP I guess that makes sense). The shape of the temple is a little special as well, being essentially three towers, and most battlemaps usually show a large, flat one-story building, so I haven't seen anything else somewhere that you could use as a stand-in, sorry.
Good luck with that. /s OK, it might work for you, I don't know your players, but if you've opened up the Pandora's box of free archetypes (aka 'the revenge of the grumpy PF1 munchkin') I suspect you will be fighting an uphill battle against more and more convoluted and far-fetched background explanations from your min-maxy players.I allowed background Traits in our PF1 group, as a way for my players to add to their PC's backgrounds mechanically, but it quickly turned into a bonus with no or very weak connection to the character backstory/personality. Most casters were bullied as kids (Reactionary) regardless if they were in their story or not, and very often melees were "born in a region where their faith was not popular" (Indomitable Fait), and so on. So I took them out, since IMV it was a story-enhancing feature that too often went totally against the story. Free Archetypes are in my view similar (no, not the same, similar). If they are free, everyone will take one, and the min-maxers will be very tempted to take one that's "optimal" - regardless of what it says on the tin. "My paladin has this cool archetype that gives a +0,43 bonus on X. What it's called? Uhhm Demon Snogger." So, my 2 cents: if you give them for free, let the min-maxers min-max how they want, or just let people buy them as in core. But of course, YMMV.
So, in my AV-campaign, the PCs got together because have recurring common nightmares. One of them is being chased in damp corridors by a laughing presence (guess who?). My PCs are now mostly finished in the second vault (servants quarters) and have stayed quite late, and it's getting dark outside. So I was planning for their nightmare to become reality and have a haunt chase them around (and hopefully, out, since they can't really fight it atm). This will be a mobile version of the Gauntlight with the same necromantic ability to damage as the one in the Gauntlight rooms, but to everyone in a 30 feet radius. The light looks like a pale blue-white woman, and should be accompanied by a scary laugh when I present it tomorrow in our Foundry VTT session. Well, I looked around on Freesound.com, but couldn't find a good one, so I took one and enhanced it, made it into an .ogg file and thought I might as well share it if anyone else want to do something similar (or just have a creepy female laugh as a background sound). TL;DR
Here are the files:
(For any audio nerds, I made three tracks in Ableton Live, one with reverb and delay with a slow volume envelope, track two with a pitch shifter with the fine frequency on another envelope and more reverb, and the last track just the reverb tail from track two reversed. And then drenched the master buss in even more reverb...) Attribution: The sound I based it on is this one: https://freesound.org/people/drotzruhn/sounds/405209/ under creative commons attribution license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
To give the PCs some sense of urgency, the impending doom from the Gauntlight is great of course, but you could use the Mayor as another factor. I've taken away the possibility for the PCs to find out when the Gauntlight can fire again, to stress them and the town out more, and I instead had the powers in the town set a deadline for the PCs for three weeks to find out what is happening, or they would send the contract on to the Absalom hunting lodges. (Could be fun to prepare a snotty group of adventurers from Absalom that will show up nonetheless and sabotage things.) As for the dungeon itself, I have no problem adding some wandering monsters if the PCs decide to sleep in there or tarry too long. I have made a small list of some vermin and oozes (I like to keep these unintelligent to not give the PCs any info about the rest of the place, and control the loot) that will start to fill up "unoccupied space" or wander around looking for prey after a while. It is in a spooky swamp after all. Just keep these kind of encounters at about Moderate difficulty and you should be fine. I you want to have the first couple levels be more dangerous at night a thing you could do is have the necromantic energy in the Gauntlight rooms (B35, C15, D9) fluctuate at night and strike out randomly. Or maybe snake around and chase the PCs in the corridors, dealing its damage per dungeon level (2d6 negative damage for level 2, 4d6 level 3, etc, with differing reflex saves as per the book) to denizens it doesn't like.
If you want your players to have a reason for activating the portals, I think a better approach is to tie a character reward/rare or uncommon character option/treasure to activating them than letting them be activated from one side only. Well, they get 30 xp per portal, so it is easy and free xp (apart from them adding to the atmosphere and whatnot). But I like your idea of a reward - maybe there's a footnote by the ritual saying something like "I had Volluk take a break from brushing his hair to reactivate all the portals these past weeks, just to be sure they are in perfect working order, and after he was done he said something peculiar happened: when the last portal was activated he felt a strange tingling, and he now thinks he has acquired some minor teleportation power. Could this be the Light affecting the portals somehow, or has all the perfume that drow drenches himself in befuddled his senses? Need to investigate this further."
I've listened to the first three episodes, and I think it's excellent! Great atmosphere and role-play, fantastic production quality (great sound and editing, love the theme song), fun gang of people with good chemistry. And a superb AP, of course ;) Looking forward to the next installment!
Interested to know what people think![/URL] Looks really good! I'm thinking of some rooms on the other maps that would really benefit from some webs or roots hanging down... But as you say in the video, the fog in the swamp is a bit overkill. What would be really cool would be the roofs of the outlier buildings showing from outside (and maybe a bit of the keep's roof as well). But I understand that would be a lot of work. My players had some trouble getting a grip on what their characters were actually seeing when they first arrived, with Foundry just showing a giant black blob in front of them. (I did explain it, but when using a map or a VTT people tend to focus more on what they see than what they are told they see...)
It cannot do it three times per round. Hazards dont get 3 actions, they get their routine. Ah ok, thanks, that changes it quite a bit then. Reading the rules again it actually does say they can have several actions (p. 522), but the number of actions the routine says it has (1 action in the case of this haunt) isn't how many actions the routine costs, but how many actions it gets in total for repeating it. I should have read up on complex hazards better, but also kinda bad development IMO by Paizo to set a standard (things costs x actions out of a base of three) and then abandoning it for the hazards while still keeping the terminology.
Hmm, thanks folks, some different takes here though. What confused me was looking up persistent damage specifically, on p. 621, and reading "Persistent damage comes from effects like acid, being on fire, or many other situations. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” (emphasis mine). As PF2 is so "strongly typed" I assumed that it should always say persistent when it is persistent. Also, in a quick look through the Bestiaries for creatures that cause bleed (https://2e.aonprd.com/Search.aspx?Query=bleed&Filter=111111111111111&a mp;AllTerms=True), it seems most specify "persistent bleed damage", "1d6 persistent bleed" and so on, and that was also the case for all bleed-causing monsters (looking at you, mass-murdering Bloodlash bushes!) in the prior PF2e adventure I GM:d (Fall of Plaguestone). However, as pointed out above, if I had checked bleed specifically (p. 452) it says "This is persistent damage that represents loss of blood". Ergo, bleed is always persistent in PF2. The damage this haunt causes with this attack which it can dole out three times per round (DC20 fort, success(!) 1d10 bleed, failure 1d10+6, critical failure 2d10+6) seems wrong though for a "Moderate 1" encounter. Sure, it only comes out at night, but that should not affect the danger rating of the encounter itself. I'll probably keep it as it is with the bleed but I'll move the success result of the saves one step.
I have a question about the Blood of Belcorra haunt in A11 (p.13), and I'm wondering how others handled its Routine action. For the Routine action, the haunt does "bleed damage", from none to 2d10+6 depending on how the save goes. It doesn't say its persistent bleed damage, however. Which makes sense, it's dangerous enough as it is, with a save DC of 20 and 1d10 damage even on a success. But then the critical failure text says "The creature takes 2d10+6 bleed damage and is enfeebled 2 as long as it’s bleeding.", implying that the bleed damage actually is persistent. Or maybe it means that if the character has persistent bleed from another source they also get enfeebled 2, but that seems really far fetched to me.
As for you bonus to your bonus, I think so.
Schweeet, thanks a million Narchy! Just the right amount of additional detail (some redone maps - by others - can be too cluttered för my taste) and just beautiful. Well, gritty and dark and gnarly but beautifully so :)
Hi Runelords! A forum user named Davion made a little homebrew addition for The Pit in 2011. I made some additions to it when we played RotRL 2015, some maps. As those links seem to be dead I've taken the liberty to put it up on a Google Drive, seeing as I get PM:d about this now and then again. Hope user Davion won't mind (if he's even still around). Enjoy:
Well, firstly, if you want the town and its denizens feel more alive, I would recommend an alternative way to start the AP than just starting at the gates of the dungeon. There's several great suggestions already in threads around here for alternate starts that involves the town. Second, one thing I found that helps pull players in is to make the adventure more about them. That's not something the writers can do, since they have no idea who will play it, but a GM can do it easily. Make (or help) the players come up with backstories for their PCs involving the NPCs mentioned in the Player's Guide, tie subquests around specific PCs, have them be related to various movers and shakers in town etc. Run a Session 0 with each player just you and them. In my version, the PCs will be unknowing (except in one case where the PC is a Menhemes) relatives of the Roseguard, and have all had nightmares that led them to Otari. They don't know why they are having these dreams, but that strange elf lady might know something...
Not to sound greedy (they are so nice!), but will you make them for the other two books as well?
Yay! Great move Paizo! Now, let's get the upcoming AP into Foundry as well... =D
Gorgeous maps, all of them! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Ron, good to know! I'll do my due diligence and make a list of my own (with my player's personal sidequests added). Maybe that will even teach me how the XP-system in PF2E works... :-)
Things like "Award the heroes 30 XP for reactivating this portal." on page 28 of Ruins of Gauntlight, and sidequest XP. There might not be that many, I glanced over that info when reading the book the first time.
Thanks, great tip! I'll think I'll make a list of all the "set" XP awards myself, as if find them hard to catch when GM'ing.
Hmm yeah that's probably the smartest, thanks. I'll just turn up the darkness on the whole scene a bit when they'll go inside.
Has anyone made an XP list summary/spreadsheet for this AP and is willing to share it? I've decided to use XP for this AP because of its sandbox nature and to reward exploration. We've used milestone levelling for years but I don't think it's a good fit for this AP. But I'm not used to the XP system of PF2 and honestly find it a bit arcane. So if anyone has made a summary that would be super helpful.
How did you folks light the top floor, with the keep and the outside area on the same map? I've had some problems with it, as Foundry (it seems) lacks a good setting for "daylight outside, darkness inside". My current setup is darkness on the whole map, with a lot of local lights outside representing daylight, and darkness inside with sporadic local lights representing holes in the roof. It doesn't look that good though, at least in the outside areas which are kinda hard to see. Anyone found a better solution? I have the Perfect Vision module installed but that doesn't seem to do anything with this problem (besides helping with GM vision).
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