Wouldn't it have been easier to come up with a story where the fair clean humans were actually in the right and where the ugly smelly monsters were actually in the wrong?

Yes.

It would have been totally unsatisfying and I would have checked out long ago. My players also would be annoyed because they wouldn't have anything to dig their teeth into.

I don't want stories where the "fair clean humans" were totally absolutely 100% right and the "ugly smelly monsters" were actually totally 100% in the wrong. It may work in more dungeon-centric gameplay where the gameplay is front-and-centre, but when the story has to (at least) share the limelight it just has to do a lot better than "GOOD HUMANS, KILL BAD MONSTERS!" and I keep suspecting a lot of the story problems do boil down to the lack of commitment of going far enough.

If they want Aroden depicted as kind of a colonalist who doomed a race to devolution to help bring life to the surface surrounding the Starstone, then that's actually a really interesting take. However, where it staggers is actually because the xulgaths, run as is, are just undeniably evil. You can't even say "well, because Aroden damned the race, they were exploited by a demon" because if you take the temple in Chapter 2's accounts of the events then the Zevgavizeb worship predates even finding the vault and if you don't then the temple to the deity was erected before the orbs were taken. Otherwise you're trying to justify the signs of steel xulgath weaponry in the barracks and advanced-for-their-era bartering system within said temple. I do try to run that line of logic, but Book 5 contradicted that strong enough that it's flimsy at best.

The druid thing does need to be fixed by doing something like saying the old druid order they were a part of actually broke the orb. That they had noticed it was dying and tried a ritual, but the ritual failed and the orb disintegrated. Then the group fragmented as the larger amount decided to vacate to other pastures under the orders of a guilt-ridden druid leader. A smaller group stayed behind, hoping to keep the tide of pestilence back despite senior members of the original order saying it was hopeless and that "maybe nature needs to naturally become what it really is under this interventionalism". Not tried this and does need some polish, but it does solve two problems in one hit. It not only means players don't observe the obvious problem of "why don't we get the original orb in Absalom?" and it ups the stakes because, as one of my players put it, the xulgaths actually never accomplish anything so there's so way of knowing the orbs are even able to be broken.

Then again, I suspect things like pacing problems (like the xulgaths never achieving anything, so there's no "raising of the stakes" before the finale) are born from Paizo's fragmenting the campaign into different books by different authors approach. That said, I'm going off topic now.

Generally though, if anything, I want more grey-scale morality adventures from Paizo. Something where the players really have to think about what they're doing and how they want things to pan out. It's definitely harder and would require a ton of planning (especially on an over-arching plot scale), but it would definitely make players pay close attention to what is going on in the plot and really engage with it. As is, and I do genuinely sympathise, the plot sometimes one too many times focuses on "players as heroes" rather than "players as adventurers". Maybe that's part of their writing philosophy though?

Whether a bug or a feature, Sympathy for the Xulgath is inevitable among both my players and their current (Book 1) characters, so I am proactively layering in options for how they might address the injustice.

Yeah, I've been seeping this in for a while. It's a point of frustration that was heightened when Ron mentioned the intent was you were just facing the bad evil Xulgaths and that there were some neutral/good ones (I believe it is book 2 where there's a chapter I dig about Xulgaths that describes some of them more like peaceful druids who uses natural occurrences as omens and signals), and yet if you run as is every xulgath is evil. I've already had a Cavnakash subplot (the boss from Book 1) where players converted on a nat-20 30 Diplomacy roll (it kind of made sense he was grossly frustrated enough to think there has to be a better way). He had a might-means-right mentality, but was trying to learn from the NG bard/champion about how sometimes protecting innocent people are good. When the bard died, Cavnakash went off the next day (canonically, likely to seek out a temple of Shelyn to work as a Champion, using his might to make things right while playing the drums in his free time as taught).

Book 5 I'm definitely going immensely deeper on this. I'm doing a side-plot involving one of the Cults of the Darklands called Tanagaar's Arrows, with hopes of using that xulgath to really underline "not all xulgaths are evil, really". Actually going to be involving a weird mix-up with the Cult of the Faceless Sphinx where the Tanagaar's Arrows ghouls will be trying to assassinate the group under the belief that they're working with the Faceless Sphinx (due to some weird mix up involving an Oracle who gets their powers from the dark tapestry and a Amnesiac rogue who was an assassin/thief for the cult).

Along side this insanity, I've already underlined that there's nothing to say they have to take the orb to the surface. The core mission is to just get the reflection. Willowside will rot without the orb, but maybe if Shraen has the orb and if the urdefhan and drow fighting is imbalanced enough to severely weaken both sides enough for Tanagaar's Arrows to swoop in (especially if word travelled that a city might get a certain shift in alignment)... Well, it could be a rare good-aligned haven in the Darklands. It's unlikely my group will go for that due to the sacrifice of Willowside, but I like it being on the table.

Both maybe a bit wild, but I'm hoping with things like this to really help give players options to do good things in a terrible dark place (already had one or two players really let down they had to let a prisoner die in the urdefhan camp) and to reinforce there are good xulgaths out there.

Today we offer thoughts to Jeremy, the last remaining member of the original party who strolled into the town of Abberton and first discovered a subterranean race was trying to spell doom to the surface dwellers. He has come a long way, from diving head-first into Black Puddings and allowing the circus to get burgled because the thief told him to go away in strong words all the way to level 15. We hope he rests easy now, since Jeremy spent his adventuring life as a fighter diving head first into fights with complete disregard to tactics, opposing force and even his own life.

This death wish came to ahead when, clutched within the maw of a transplanar being in the black irradiated desert below, he opted to trip and attack it instead of trying to escape. This was when the sinister being tried to suck his soul out like a child with a straw and cup of shaved ice and, as though his death wish had decided it was time, Jeremy was offered two bouts of “snake eyes” as Nivi would put it. While his companions are keen to bring him back from the boneyard, his soul’s reluctance to return to an existence he seemed to want an end to and questions of if his soul hasn’t been absolutely destroyed by the consumption of his essence do rest upon them like a dark cloud upon this funeral. We will none-the-less keep Jeremy's chalice of wine prepared for his returning, or merely respected as a symbol of his life if he isn’t.

If in doubt, go for it! If it's an idea you really dig, then you're bound to do something awesome within the category which I think is what counts. I think the hardest submission for me to write was when I was (happily mind, like I work best bouncing off things or working with an expectation in mind) specifically writing to an unpicked category based on the last count. I think Timitus would prefer just great content, and based on the theme of Tar-Baphon I think monsters would be a fantastic fit.

That said, sorry if I'm accidentally putting words in people's mouths.

No, we got them just fine, Riobux. I am usually pretty quiet until the last 30 days as to the current state of submissions, as most people don't even start writing until the last month.

If you are ever worried or concerned if we got your submissions or not, ask here or follow up with an email.

Lastly, we don't review submissions for accept/reject until after the close of the call, when we give all articles equal attention.

Oh, phew! I can live with the review not happening until after it closes, just was curious in case it needed to be spruced up in some way.

Lacking right now?
Weal or Woe

I had actually been toying with a Weal or Woe idea based in the Gravelands as the third submission. Considering that's lacking, I might gun for it.

Heck, considering the trivial consequence of critical failure, why didn't Helg just visit the Water Temple, and then did and redid the ritual until she scored a critical success to be ensured a full week of uninhibited travel?

Because Helg only knows how to reach the caves via Willowside (she doesn't know about the waterlogged tunnel, this is heavily implied in her entire motivation). She needs the adventurers to get the statue out of the caves so she doesn't have to invade Willowside with the xulgath threat. Like, the reason is already baked in, but you're insisting there's this plot hole that isn't there.

Even saying about siege towers and how they work is built on the assumption the siege tower is built like siege towers as we know them and not as a glorified cart with more stable wheels (as Helg's intention is not to use the siege tower beyond as a cart to wheel the statue into the Darklands, so she could steer the creation of the cart to suit the purpose).

Knowing my group, they wouldn't spot this plot hole you're insisting exists. Even if they raised questions, you can always lean into "because Helg isn't as smart as you" because even if a player spots a hole in logic of a character it doesn't mean there's a flaw in anyone except said character's train of logic.

If you really need a ghoul to use the caves (who somehow hasn't consumed the inn-keeper in all this time and hasn't been killed by the elemental blocking the water tunnel leading to the sea), then by all means. Seems to be fixing a problem that doesn't exist.

Just as a heads-up, I find Helg's plans to use the siege tower to transport the Statue of Bogruk (and keep her exposed to the dangers of a whole Xulgath army) rather nonsensical.

There is no reason (at least that I can find) why she doesn't simply use her Statuette ritual only.

I'll bite:

She needed a mode of transport to put the statue on, which is why the "siege tower" was erected. She needed to do this because the ritual lasts for one day (and the ritual takes an hour to do) and travelling back to the Darklands (and to her intended site of worship) would take quite a few days. So rather than constantly redoing the ritual over and over, she wants the statue in the "siege tower" (which actually isn't intended as a siege tower in Helg's eyes, but disguised as one for the xulgaths). She can't sneak into Willowside to access the caverns below (she is unaware of the tunnel from the docks into the caves), which is why she is having the xulgaths siege the town (despite questions brewing of why they're not sieging the orb towers). The adventurers are more going to let her break the siege by giving her the statue by going into the caves she can't access, and putting it on the tower that will carry the statue. Once she has what she wants, she's disinterested in murdering the town and will just want to go back to the Darklands to set up her own cult. She'd likely go back underground under the idea of "we've done the task, time to report to our masters" (with xulgaths pushing the tower back) or at least just skimps off in the middle of the night back to the Darklands, "siege tower" carrying said statue.

It isn't just about "getting away", it's about getting to where the statue is in the first place and where she intends her statue to be without the chaos of constant ritual casting. The only weirdness to Helg's plan comes in the form that she is able to convince the xulgaths to attack the town instead of the tower, not to mention if they'd notice their leader is acting odd, which is kind of explained by one of the higher up xulgaths in camp noticing something is odd and confronting her about it soon after the adventurers attack.

All due respect, but this is in the book either explicitly or implied.

So, my sessions have turned a bit... Odd, and I feel like it might twist the campaign into a bizarre direction.

I'm GM. We have Bard Champ, Fighter, Ranger (who has alt-character Cleric she never uses) and Champion (who also dabbles into Monk alt-character every so often). A fight with a certain skeleton in a certain stable killed Bard Champ, so he rerolled as a Witch. Knowing what we were hitting, I joked about the idea in a veiled way about his new patron being Bokrug. He seemed to be into it, so he rolled CE (knowing him, he wouldn't use this to derail but rather to work towards his patron's goals) and we said that maybe his character was silently suggested to come to Willowside for an unknowable reason. The closest is Bokrug once in a vision suggesting that if it can overthrow Zevgavizeb (aided by this witch via the destruction of their worshippers and spreading of the faith), it can ascend into demonhood with its own plane.

Where things have gradually taken a strange turn isn't so much an unexpected area. I knew Witch player tends to be the leader/face of the party, so them being weirdly open to evil deeds (which includes, I wish I was joking, rescuing someone from a stone beartrap formation via the Regenerate spell, cutting the victim's legs off, carrying them to safety and putting them back on) could lead to other players also being open to it. I also trusted my player not to openly just recruit the party into being evil (as it would end badly for obvious reasons), and kept a watchful eye for open recruitment. I'm more astounded that Witch is slowly accidentally recruiting Ranger into worshipping Bokrug through Ranger's player's natural love of lizards and being enamoured by taking on more lizard features as a hobgoblin after a successful baleful polymorph saving throw (with the spell being cast as a trap by Witch days ago and accidentally being triggered by Ranger) left her with scales and a small lizard tail.

This likely wouldn't derail the campaign, as Bokrug's goal is still inline with the campaign (i.e. kill worshippers of Zevgavizeb) but may lead to a very odd subplot emerging involving recruiting people into worshipping Bokrug. This is especially considering Helg's motivations (i.e. share Bokrug with the Darklands) and the potential for players to reencounter her there in Book 5 which is in the Darklands.

I don't need advice of such, but it has definitely been a bizarre campaign.

And... another AP that's 'meh' to me on the face of it. I never was interested in Magaambya, though.

Generally my outlook. Age of Ashes was cool, Extinction Curse is pretty neat, Agents of Edgewatch seems to be totally my jam, the mini-ones don't appeal to me (not really into Eastern Fantasy or dungeon-crawls) and while faux-Harry Potter does seem it'd be ripe for a lot of fun and silliness (even if I didn't grow up with the books/films) I'm not really into the Magaambya at all. Each their own though, it's not exactly a put down but rather "not my cup of tea".

Funny thing is, I thought of Reign of Winter as well and it was due to how the Kingmaker Hardcover is doing just what RoW should have done.

Funnier still is slightly related to your recommendations and what I know of Reign of Winter, I actually nearly wrote "Curse of the Crimson Throne" as the example due to similar issues (i.e. you spend 3 books building up the queen and the descent of Korvosa into madness, you have her as the final boss in book 6 and then for books 4 and 5 you leave the city to go get McGuffins). I actually kind of wish you never left Korvosa at all because, like with how you'd fix RoW, it makes the villain still the forefront in everyone's mind. It makes your big bad a constant antagonist that is active, rather than this passive thing to, uh, maybe get around to putting down.

But yeah, RoW feels like it puts you on the railroads pretty hard and I'm not sure there's a good way to fix that without a total overhaul of the AP. Maybe it'd lose its classic D&D 1st style it was inspired by, but honestly it's one of those stylistic things that I'm happier without than with. It's a shame though, because I can count on one hand the amount of APs that sold me as quick and as hard as the phrase "one AP book is set in Russia during the Russian Revolution where you have to go kill Rasputin". That said, if it did get its railroads fixed and a more present antagonist like you're suggesting, I'd be totally down with trying to run it.

We gather among this sacred burial site to say farewell to Tavia who escaped the mortal coil at level 12 to frolic in the gardens of Nirvana. A bardic champion in the sacred name of Shelyn, she brought together the circus of Wayward Wonders and helped bring more performers into the fold, including some even Shelyn could not have predicted. It was then she helped guide them towards a more humanistic path that for one xulgath follower involved teaching him to bath, play drums and not cook meat to charcoal on camp-fires in enclosed spaces. Surrounded by less confident adventurers, Tavia similarly guided them through the methodology of diplomacy, Veil spells and face palms.

However, alas, the life of those enamoured by art, forgiveness and xulgath rehabilitation is a dangerous one and she finally succumbed to wounds after being swallowed by a giant skeleton who, without a stomach, still somehow consumed her whole. We can only suspect her fellow travellers were so overcome with grief as to misremember her demise details. It is on this grave her devout xulgath follower finally swore off his demonic god and sought to be a soldier for Shelyn and the voiceless dwarf of clay offered a single clay Lyre on Tavia's resting place. May her soul find peace, and her light-hearted cheeky paintings of misfortune of her allies be shared with the world.

Really, all the Monk class does in PF2 is make you good at unarmed combat, so anything from "I PUNCH BEARS!" to the most esoteric and spiritual martial arts is totally acceptable.

Totally agree. That said, if you're itching for what kind of monastic monk could be CG, CN or CE, I would start to look in terms of real world philosophies that could illustrate a disillusionment of societal structures with varying values upon life (from good's high respect for life, to evil's low respect).

So, for instance, I would think about Utilitarianism for CG (the greatest good for the greatest number, although this can veer into NG which is the humanitarian alignment to me), Social Darwinism for CE and maybe Anarchism, Libertarianism or Absurdism for CN (basically more focused on opposition to social structures than the argument about the value upon life).

I'm just pointing out that Ron's answer maintains the illusion NPCs follow PC rules.

Can PCs do this? Nope. Can monsters and NPCs do things PCs can't do? Yep.

I'm not sure if we read the same thing here.

Possible errata:

I'm getting ready to run the battle with Nemmia Bramblecloak and I'm a little confused. Is her sickle damage incorrect? It says she does 1d4+3 damage on a strike instead of 1d4-1 (based on a -1 STR). It wouldn't bother me that much, except that her staff DOES deal 1d4-1 on a hit. And, I assume that if she used the staff two-handed, the expectation would be that she does 1d8-1 (and not 1d8+3).

Okay, so, I might have tracked down the oddity. This involves giving some benefit of the doubt and a strong leap of logic. In the Gamemastery Guide they give you information of how you'd go about making your own creatures, and they have a chart of Strike Damage and Strike Attack Bonus. On the Strike Damage, for level 3 Low (which Low is intended for spell-casters), they list 1d6+5. In fact, the lowest they get is a straight 1d4. The key part is they don't actually go into minuses for damage. So it is kind of possible when they did the Staff they were using PC rules (i.e. strength determines damage) but when they did the Sickle which seems to be the main weapon they used the creature building rules (which back then were still in beta as the Game Mastery Guide, I believe, was released the following month). There does seem to be a bit of an aversion to having minuses to damage, instead just lowering the damage dice to as low as a flat D4 which at level 1 is kind of a laugh of a fight.

So, I believe what may have happened was a weird blend of PC building rules for the staff and then the in-house beta rules for strike damage for the sickle.

To your original point, my thought was less for "this is a good build" and more "hey, here we have the rules for tonfa, a relatively common martial arts weapon that somebody may want to build their monk around." And, who knows, maybe some day somebody will find a defensive tonfa monk build. :shrug:

And, to be honest, I also look at things from the perspective of "could this be an easy errata that would make sense for the game, long term." Having the tonfa/nightstick in the collection of monk weapons is a pretty easy thing to do that doesn't really upset the cosmic balance of the game. This feels more like an accidental omission than a deliberate choice.

I think you're right that it's just a quick and easy errata fix and I'd be surprised if it upset the balance. You may be behind the curve in terms of unarmed stances, but I don't think that's inherently a bad thing. I'd rather have a player who has made a sub-optimal character that is just fantastic and interesting than some power-gaming dullard who has the personality of a rock. I think in my ramble, where I was trying to get to was saying you'd want to check to see if players are aware of what they're doing, so you don't end up someone doing worse than the rest of the party and upset for it.

I suspect the reason for the lack of the Monk trait here is similar to why pois lack the Monk trait: They're designed with their respective APs in mind and monks aren't really considered much as typical protagonists. That said, book 2 did add a cool archetype that is basically a monk to lean into certain NPCs, so it's more aware now than in EC.

That said, my general spirit was "nice if they do, wouldn't be upset if they don't". Monks are in an amazing position right now, so while even more choice is fantastic (seriously, I'm game for even more), I don't think it'd be the worst thing in the world if Paizo waits until the next AP (or the AP after, forgot the order, sorry) and then releases a cornucopia of monk weapons like tonfas for their martial arts contest mini-AP. In the meanwhile, it's definitely something I'd almost definitely clear if a player asked because I'd be keen to see what they do with it.

So, I had a look on my boon section out of curiosity of how this will potentially look, and discovered I have a Chronicle Boon relating to an adventure (indicated by the name) I haven't done. I'm also not sure how it'll play out having to buy said Chronicle Boon before you play an adventure, unknowing who gained it and if it'll relate to the current adventure before you're at the table. I'm definitely curious and keen for a digitalisation of the Organised Play process, but looks like there's a few natural odd little kinks to things.

He definitely hit like Gaston,
Mouthed off like Gaston,
In the session was annoying like Gaston,
When he talks, he boasts of humility,
And players groan to hear of it,
Even as he takes down foes fatally,
And blames them for enemies,
Is that fair?
He doesn't care!

So, who didn't roleplay Ledorick as Gaston? Because he's totally Gaston, and I dig it a lot. Especially as Lyrt looks a little like Morshu from Zelda CDi, so I have this mental image of the Lyrt/Ledrorich possession sequence being like a YTP video that blends Zelda CDi and Beauty & the Beast.

Reading it, I think it's going to be a good deal of fun though, starting to run it tonight.

Ah, that explains why Sixty Feet Under hadn't shipped yet (which due to subscription service, meant I couldn't peek at the PDF), which I was baffled about yesterday when I realised what date it was and that I could just buy the PDF and get it instantly. Don't worry too much. I'm probably just a bit salty at delivery times to the UK (21 to 35 days).

So for any GMs who are trying to solve the whole Civil Forfeiture issue - just eliminate it. Give the PCs bonuses, rewards, and HQ-sponsored equipment upgrades.

So, I got to reading, and beyond my approach actually being a whole lot of "leave it as mostly is, because this is neoliberalism taken to its utmost level and doesn't reflect our world", I have toyed a lot with an Honour System. Give the opportunity to confiscate what isn't there's, to fine excessively or solve problems with force. However, the more they lean into that the more they'll lose Honour and become notorious in the neighbourhood. Leads will dry up, civilians will be unhelpful and problems will arise if it sinks low enough. On the inverse, if they are friendly, live off the wage more than via fines and don't take bribes, then their reputation will proceed them in the same way other authorities of the area's reputations proceed them. Muckruckers are notorious for corruption, like Sally Guards are known for their prestige, so why not approach the Edgewatch in a similar way? Maybe even more so as they're a new group and have a lot of empty space to fill with a reputation.

I am wary of this as it could lead to a lot of GM-projection of what is good/bad and Extinction Curse actually left a bad taste in terms of extraneous mechanics (the rest of the AP is pretty damn good, but yeah, the circus thing feels like a lead weight), but it would also mean turning this big criticism of the AP (i.e. police corruption) back on the players. Needless to say, this would need to be matched with a wage, that isn't so high that if they do end up corrupt they break the game with sheer fortune, but maybe every so often the watch gets a donation from the Council if the work is good which can be used to buy equipment?

I still have a good few months to plan this out, but that's my general approach to the chaos that has rampaged in this thread. I still think it's a pretty damn fantastic AP and would rank it above Age of Ashes and Extinction Curse if we did a Book 1 comparison across the board. It's just an amazing job.

I mean if I'm a player in a published campaign, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to realize that unique items could present spoilers. If you get spoiled expecting the GM to change major parts of the AP they weren't planning on modifying is a bit much. Also I'm pretty sure easy.tool has spoiler tags on all of their stuff.

They do, but when Easy Tool has who the Reaper's Lancet belongs to in the summary on the Specific Magic Weapons page, then the warning is just not as useful. My frustration is still not so much that I can't show the Adventurer's Tool Box because there's spoilers in the weapon description (that I still feel like I could argue should have been in the character bio, but I'm nitpicking honestly), it's that I've had to ask players to stay off of Specific Magic Weapons tables on online databases in case they trip over a spoiler. Accidentally exposing yourself to a spoiler seems just absurd.

Archives of Nethys having a spoiler tag is super useful on the page. It irks me there is even spoilers in item descriptions, but I can live with it as I trust my players not to hunt down spoilers (believe me, they could if they wanted to). It leaves me a little livid when someone just looking for gear can just trip on a spoiler accidentally, thus spoiling the adventure for them. Especially one where part of the draw is the mystery.

I'm also not impressed with having a spoiler in the book title, although luckily my players tend to pay less attention to book titles of APs.

If they do more hardcovers, really crossing my finger for Second Darkness or Legacy of Fire, but mostly Second Darkness ;p

Still hoping Carrion Crown is resurrected from the dead, especially if they want to help give new players context for The Whispering Tyrant. Love me some gothic horror.

The Reaper's Lancet is the Killer's unique weapon, why would you share it with your player's beforehand?

Because it's on the same page as non-unique items I would like to share, and like GayBirdGM mentioned I'm significantly more concerned that the spoiler is roaming free on AoN and other similar websites in a form that it's easy to trip on if you're gawking at unique weapons.

Nit pick, but kind of let down I can't share all the inventory items from the Adventure Toolbox because the Criminal Contraband page (p80) make reference to the big reveal of who the real killer is and the Reaper's Lancet description (p81) also talk about the real killer. I originally shrugged and shared the other toolboxes (i.e. Guard Gear, Nonlethal Loadout and Edgewatch Detective Archtype). It's nice lore, but makes sharing item information impossible.

Where my feathers are ruffled a bit is online databases of Pathfinder 2nd information like Archives of Nethys copy and paste the item description straight onto their websites, meaning players can potentially trip into the big twist/mystery of Book 1 when just looking up unique weapons.

Probably could have done with talking about how the sword relates to its owner in the owner's page honestly.

That said, based on a skim, the book definitely has me pretty damn thrilled to run.

In the nicest way I'm trying to work out how to phrase this: The concerns on this website often seem rooted in perceived problems of unreleased items rather than waiting to see how the material is, giving feedback and letting Paizo improve based on the feedback. I really could be paranoid in thinking it, but it seems it could lead to following a lot of assumed issues based on possible scenarios that are in reality non-issues or very minor issues. Paizo aren't perfect, far from, but I really trust them enough to release good products and take feedback of how to make great adventures even better then rather than randomly chase possible scenarios by posters based on scant details. They're a great publisher that I totally trust for a reason.

I read multiple parts of this, and my player did as well; in the end we weren't willing to run it.

We've done "PCs as circus troupe" twice before, so the idea wasn't novel; but it's a good, flavorful idea. However, we felt that the AP sets it up and then mostly abandons it after episode 3. It's hard to avoid this in a 1-20 advancement scenario, but I felt that the AP would run a big risk of the player going "I know I have to deal with the xulgath plot but I don't want to; doing so will force me to abandon the circus plot which I'm more invested in." (Like the problem many people had with Second Darkness: running the inn is more fun than going on with the main plot.)

So, I just want to update that very much as soon as we hit Book 3 we started to just skip things by handwaving "okay, we do the circus". It's very rooted in like I said: Only one person continued to stick with it and even then there wasn't ever any stakes once you easily beat the Anticipation. People are still invested in collecting the acts, but when everyone gets back to camp they're more invested in two characters I invented (one being the head clown Pagliacci and the other a cleric called Bex who was just there because the party wanted a NPC healer) and Cavnakash from book 1. That said, my group has shown a general aversion to RPing, so results may vary?

The quality that a previous poster described as "Are we the baddies?" really bugged both of us. Just at the moment, we are not up for "These folks are irredeemable, never mind what horrors our kind have committed, you shouldn't feel the least bit bad about wiping them out." It left a bad taste in my mouth. This was made worse, I think, by the very strong Aztec flavor of the pyramid in #5. If you want to be saying "These people are much more vile than humans" you probably should not model so closely on real-life humans.

So, there's a detail in Book 5 that I picked up on when my physical copy finally arrived that just absolutely kills me. So they have a list of cults native to the area, and one is run by a xulgath ghoul who is LG. This cult, from what I can tell, doesn't turn up in the adventure proper. You have this chance to illustrate "not all xulgaths are evil", and even the book features such information (and it's great information too, well done for that whoever wrote it!), but then it doesn't put said cult into the adventure for a sorely needed illustration there are good xulgaths. Generally, I'd recommend putting it in to any GMs, not only as it does fix the awkward feeling of "...Are we the bad guys?" but it also sets up an interesting fake-out that punishes players who attack all xulgaths indiscriminately and rewards those who pick-up there's something unusual about a group of xulgaths clad in robes with bird feathers and claws on them, maybe a high religion check notices references to an Empyreal Lord. With a really determined GM, you could happily derail the campaign for a few months as you work with them to help their plans come to fruition (which in turn would lead to a surface-place where good-aligned xulgaths may live, even if it is a desert hellscape).

This isn't really a knock against book 5, as I suspect the Cults part was written by someone different to the main adventure and I haven't read the proper adventure part, but it's definitely a detail that leaped out at me.

We offer our goodbyes to Manadrel Veil, known to his travelling companions as Roadkill, an elven sorcerer whose life was unfairly snuffed out at a young level 10. His companions fondly remember first coming upon him as floatsam gently knocking against the hull while his soon-to-be friends were travelling to the Swardlands from Escadar by boat. Every day since then he would share his warmth with the world, as he would respond to bandits, wildlife and distressed fey by flying 60ft up and covering the land below in fireballs. He was known to leave an impression, as his fellow travellers can not wipe the memory of him stinking of embalming fluid, sleeping with his eyes open and dislocating his jaw to swallow a cooked non-skinned rabbit whole, as much as they wish they could forget.

Unfortunately, as all things must come to an end, Veil offered to save his allies from an oversized bald rat by collapsing the rock underneath it with a fireball before it could attack his limping friends. As the ledge collapsed, the rat and rock came tumbling down upon him crushing both together. As the gods speaketh: Rocks fall, a character must die. In this case, Manadrel died so his friends may live. He will be gone, but thanks to his sleeping and eating habits will surely not be forgotten. May his body decompose so his body may join with the world, regardless of the embalming fluid aura of his body.

Quote:

A light-hearted fantasy

*reads Player’s Guide*

*tilts head*

So, you believe Pathfinder 2nd is not intended as light-hearted fantasy?

All the rule on non-lethal damage does is lets players keep on playing exactly as before, just without having to take responsibility for their actions.

How can that be considered an improvement?

Isn't that part of the point? Cintra Bristol made an excellent argument about how it isn't "exactly as before" and I totally agree with it. However, let's say it is exactly as before and run with it: In a roleplay system designed as combat-focused informed by modern day ethics (e.g. "Are players feeling comfortable about this or does it clash with their held beliefs?"), is it really within the purview of a light-hearted RPG system to force players to take initiative (and therefore total responsibility) for guard-on-criminal violence, assuming they don't go out of their way to inflict it?

At best, it'd be done so lightly that it's easy to be brushed over except by the most vulnerable, and at worst it's a mallet designed to make players feel bad. Either way is not a victory, especially as by making "should guards use lethal force on civilians" even a discussion you open it up to the immensely grim potential players may decide "yes, because it's more fun/easier". This is putting aside the power balance, as classes are built with lethality in mind so you have strange situations like Monks being better than Fighters purely because the former can do non-lethal without penalty.

A light-hearted fantasy where the focus is first on fun, then ethics and then engaging stories (albeit, parts 2 and 3 bleed into fun quite thoroughly), is just not the venue to discuss the very real reality about lethal force (and less-than-lethal force, which is the apt name given to nonlethal force) by police. There are better places than Pathfinder 2nd.

The focus in AoE is on investigation, on being a heroic common-guard saving their city for the better good and using the law to help people. "Non-lethal unless stated otherwise" let's the game keep moving without the fun being ruined. Which as someone actually interested in the themes is ideal to me.

That said, as always, it is your table. If you hate the non-lethal rule, then turn it off. The books are always recommendations, not a sacred holy text to be followed to the word. If you want to play systems that hold players up to responsibility to play law enforcement ethically and explore themes like police brutality, there are just better systems for it.

I have read all the posts, and I'm genuinely surprised this topic blew up kind of spectacularly. I'm sorry for not posting, but past a particularly point it was more crunch than my dimness would understand. However, figured I'd update my situation in an epilogue sort of way.

Fighter puts their character on the back-burner and trades it for a sorcerer. I talk to the cleric and convince them to trade it in for a ranger as they seem to enjoy caring for animals and straight-forward DPS than aiding-n-healing people. Still have Bard-Redeemer (who has tweaked their spells around) and Redeemer. The last session that had just been (and the one before) were a short dungeon crawl with a straight bandit fight, something to not really demonstrate raw power-force but just player enjoyment.

In this trading of roles, well, my party had a blast. In places, literally. The Ranger was gleefully running deep into fights with no shield, just a warhammer & knife, an AC that was either the highest or second-highest and a bucket of health. The sorcerer was using their ability to fly to cast fireball from above in ways that, in one case involving fleeing unarmed bandits, led to players with great mirth comparing it to the modern military (complete with happily exploding a team-mate, if it meant he could blow up one of the fleeing unarmed bandit). Everyone is definitely having fun now, even if I'm having that moment where I had to take a break from a fight due to how unexpectedly dark things had gotten.

Again, thanks for all the comments. I think it definitely helped to try to nit-pick the feedback each class offers and if that plays into what a player enjoys or doesn't enjoy.

Okay, read it through properly now and going to be throwing my thoughts into the campfire we have going here, as well as my party's reaction reading it. I'm just going to preface this as commenting I've been coming at this as fantasy guards being different to real world police and the former never intended to provide commentary on the latter (a paraphrasing of the Player's Guide). I really don't mean that to stoke arguments, I'm really sorry, but because I feel like it might contextualise some of my thoughts going in.

So the Absalom lore is splendid, the map immensely useful and I actually adore all the Backgrounds that, more than ever, tie themselves into the adventure tightly. It really aids RP, which seems to be the name of the game here. The Player's Book seems to really emphasis talking to quell disputes and only using force at the very last resort, and even then non-lethal always (unless if it's a beastie that can't take non-lethal, then go lethal with no penalties). I could lightly grumble it feels oddly bureaucratic for a genre filled to the gills with vigilantism; overall I definitely can dig it especially in the biggest city in the Inner Sea which are bound to have A LOT of policies about guards.

The non-lethal sidebar is neat and definitely plays into it, but yeah, I still feel like my suspension of disbelief is beginning to creak at the mental image of a fireball non-lethally knocking someone out (not to mention the carnage such a spell leaves). On the flipside, I do wonder at the absence of Incapacitation tweaking. It's a good way to just non-lethally knock someone out, but I sympathise it could lead to just one-shotting enemies. I wonder if there's a middle-ground where 25% health or less the Incapacitation rule no longer count, so you can fling around your more-lethal-than-you-had-hoped spells and then finish it with an Incapacitation spell. It fixes my weird disposition about non-lethal fireballs (which is to fix spellcasters being stuck unable to do anything due to their DPS being lethal normally) and leans into what I believe are the current non-lethal rules (i.e. if the last attack that brings a foe below 0 is non-lethal they are just unconscious).

So, I presented the Player's Guide to my group (who are about 25% through Book 3 of Extinction Curse) and 3 of my players were interested. In fact, me and one other player were excited about crime-solving investigation action which we have not been able to experience outside of Call of Cthulhu. A spot of fantasy-Sherlock Holmes pondering over clues and hunting criminals, with a splash of morally grey conundrum of what to do with the solved case (e.g. do we hand in the well-intended manslaughter to the gaol, or just let them go).

The 4th player, well, wasn't too pleased. Their dreams of classic fantasy of slaying the dragon and rescuing the princess (or is it the other way around?) was being smashed to the floor. They wanted to kill monsters, not non-lethally arrest trouble-makers in a Lawful Good manner. To be honest, if Agents of Edgewatch are even 1/10th of the quality I have in my mind, it's definitely going to be tough saying goodbye to one of my two reliable players to chase an AP I've looked forward to since announcement, and even tougher to find a replacement (I find online play prone to reliability issues unfortunately). I could go with Age of Ashes, but I know me and the other reliable player will be disappointed not to tackle Agents of Edgewatch and we left our last attempt towards the end of Book 1 before we quitted and moved on to Extinction Curse.

Good or bad, Agents of Edgewatch has definitely heightened positive & negative emotions in people.

Non-lethal fireball, boom!

So I've been a bit silent because the first session since this topic being posted is today (and there has been some rejigging by the bard and cleric), but thought I'd reply to one comment that stuck out and was directly to me:

So why stand up? ALL it does is a -2 attack penalty as well as flat-footed.

So, this is really down to a secondary AOO quirk. -2 from the floor is not too bad of a shake, even if it shuts down step-based manuevering (and therefore any other move actions on top to create distance) and often leads to easy positioning (e.g. flanking). The problem is spell-casting enemies who trigger AOO with spells (since it is a manipulate action), which if they crit (which if it's a spell-caster, their AC is going to be low enough that critting is more of a 50% to 25% spin) the spell fizzles and two actions and a spell slot just got wasted. It actually leads to me provoking by standing, just so I can cast any spell. The DPS is still firm, because I want to be able to cast a spell at all (and there is currently no way to cast a spell without provoking to my knowledge).

Basically, it leads to one character either inflicting a "stand-still" for melee characters or a near-to-total shutdown for casters. Just through tripping. It's kind of potent enough that I do get the feeling my casters do feel generally unimportant besides buffing and keeping up the fighter so they can keep this going. It is their job, but it's not a psychologically pleasing one for them and they can't do off-hand DPS due to an intense unreliability to hit or inflict.

Clerics only really have one offense in their spell list unless you are fighting undead, fiends, or are evil and that is harm. What clerics do incredibly well is keep the rest of the party fighting at full strength. At level 9 you have breath of life, freedom of movement, deathward, heroism (meaningless with the right kind of bard), Air walk, Dispel magic, basically way more great spells than they are going to be able to cast in a day. On top of having to provide all the party emergency healing.

Against Demons and Devils, dimensional anchor can be a real lock down ability as well.

As the party is fighting a lot of evil people including fiends, they are theoretically able to deal tasty levels of damage. The reality is the cleric just keeps missing and getting more and more angry about it. Telling them "well, you know, you are important because you can heal" is, while true, still kind of unsatisfying for them. I suspect it's down to a feeling of "stealing the thunder" by the fighter (which I'll try to get to in a bit to respond to someone else's comment) as well as just missing over and over. Someone in my group did point out they can fireball as a Sarenrae worshipper, so things could get interesting soon.

I'm still figuring out Cleric, but as I noted my EC group needs a lot of healing love to stay on their feet, so I've got my hands full in many encounters managing that. Bless is boring but good (not with a Bard though), and Calm Emotions won an entire fight once in two actions! I think the Divine list is tough, because as a player I want to be impactful but its pretty low key.

The cleric definitely helps the fighter do some just insanely ballsy moves via dispelling effects and keeping them healed. I think certain gods give excellent spells with a lot of DPS feedback (e.g. fireball for Sarenrae worshippers), and I think that's what they're looking for.

It may sound silly but as someone who enjoys being the support,in real life, rpgs and video games, a way to help your casters feel better about their role is to actually have a word with your martials.

I did hint at this before to the fighter, but it might help to just remind again that they only got away with what they did because the cleric kept them standing. Like not so much "just be quiet with your glee" and more just "can you thank your casters?".

Finally, a GM needs to give something for all players to be good at. If a GM makes the fighter the best answer to every conflict then the fighter will be the best answer.

Yeah, unfortunately as forewarned in the original post, I am pre-genning through Extinction Curse. I can set up scenarios like things being out-of-reach of the fighter, but I can't really create entire fights with certain classes in mind.

If you add this all up this means that martials have an easier time to achieve "success" (I am not talking about effectiveness here, but about psychology)

This is kind of what I'm facing more than anything else. It isn't I think spellcasters are outright worse, but rather they feel worse for the players who constantly use two actions and keep missing versus the fighter who just simply has a higher chance-to-hit due to things like item bonuses. Also, while people are saying True Strike/Staff of Divination is just an excellent way to off-set this, it's an Occult/Arcane spell and the staff requires the spells to be on your repertoire to be able to use the staff. So, the Cleric is still kind of buggered.

Casters are expected to carry martial characters in any situation where mobility or the environment is going to be an issue, but doing so isn't considered "fun" by the players.

I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, and it's really starting to make me reexamine my approach to the situation, or at least confirm one or two possible way forwards. After all, if the player isn't enjoying healing and presenting aid to others who are getting that immediate feedback of damage, then clerics are kind of really unsatisfying to that player.

I did actually go back to my players a bit to rejig my approach. The current gameplan that might be done is the Fighter is already rerolling as a wizard/sorcerer, the Bard is rejigging their spell list to compensate for the potential for nasty rolls and I might talk to the Cleric about rerolling into something more martial and more...Immediate in payoff like maybe a Barbarian (although they're tempted to run with Ranger, which considering they seem to really adore animals in the game might be a really nice idea for a campaign stuffed with dinosaurs to "adopt", so that might be their positive feedback).

Genuinely, thanks for all the posts so far, it's been a lot to think on.

To phrase that differently, people are expecting to see all the different stuff a class can do rated from 1-10 and casters be 10 in every category they can do - so now that they have ratings more along the lines of being a little higher in this, a little lower in that, and maybe having a category or two of things a non-caster can't do (the literal picture of balance) it feels like an over-correction.

I want to believe this is kind of what is happening (and it definitely doesn't help having a Fighter who is REALLY good at DPS and action economy shutdowns), but then my players are at a loss: What are they meant to do then? The Cloisted Cleric is built with healing in mind, but her attack chance is so diabolical that any attacks like Divine Lance are unfortunately a joke that doesn't get funnier as time goes on.

Rules Forum is probably the wrong spot for this.

Sorry, it seemed the best place since I'm addressing rules concerns than the adventure path itself.

Bards are probably the most powerful class in the game... Clerics are extremely effective...

Yeah, unfortunately, it's those two classes I'm having a bit of a problem in my group in terms of feeling unsatisfied. Healing is there and songs are there, but to paraphrase my bard player "if my job can be done by a drinking bird pressing the enter button to continue song, then it's boring".

Something a lot of people miss on Spellcaster accuracy is that they are tuned the way they are because their spells often do something even if the target makes their save, so they have three success results (critical failure, failure, success) where they inflict negatives on their foes as opposed to a Martial only getting two results (success, critical success) with effects. This is intentional. Spellcasters really need to target weak saves, but when they do they'll have reasonable success and do solid work.

Spell attack rolls are less effective than Melee attack rolls, which should be accounted for - the Bard, at least, can use True Strike to mostly mitigate this.

Spellcasters also need to make sure they're understanding what they're accomplishing. Any spell that steals an action from a boss (Level +2 or Level +3 enemy) is an effective spell. Spells that add +1 to hit or remove AC from the target are extremely effective due to how the math works.

I think this is what I'll try putting to the group a little bit, but as someone juggling everything else they are going to expect me to answer the question of what they should be doing and I just don't have a good answer. Also, stealing actions can be really tricky in terms of spells as most of them mean if the enemy is over double the spell level then they get one degree better what they rolls (i.e. incapacitation effect). I'm genuinely less trying to convince people spellcasters suck and more trying to work out how to make my spellcasters hate me a little less as their build is frustrating them due to misses.

Just going to go through some wordy context, I'll put an asterisk (*) if you want to skip the meat and potatoes of my concern and get to broad strokes.

So I'm currently GMing through Extinction Curse (don't worry, no spoilers) and I have a party which includes a Fighter, Champion (Redeemer), Bard (multiclass into Redeemer) and a Cleric (Cloisted). All level 9. We've hit Book 3 and, well, my party is a mix bag of moods. On the upshot, the Fighter is goading me to bring it on as though he's unstoppable and the Champion is having an okay time. The Bard and Cleric though, well, their moods are souring hard and fast.

It's a balance issue.

The fighter has this build where he uses trip A LOT and then attack-of-opportunity on the way up. It actually happens to an incredible frequency, and really made me aware no stat block features an immunity to such a thing (even beings without an anatomy to trip, like a Gelatinous Cube) nor a way to get up without provoking. It has led to this monstrous powerhouse of DPS as he'll just use Knockdown, Advantageous Assault then Attack of Opportunity on the way up, presenting two attacks a turn without MAP, getting rid of an action by the enemy and an extra attack for good-luck. This gets just immensely worse if he's managed to Tumble his way past the frontline and get to the spellcasters where he'll AOO any spellcasting and keep tripping, keeping the action economy to such a point where they can't really cast spells and move away, nor can they cast spells and keep concentrate spells rolling. That's even ignoring how critically hitting them will disrupt the spell, which their AC versus his attack chance makes it very likely. Improved Knockdown at next level will lower this Knockdown to a single action, so more straight attacks and I'm sure there'll be more ways to increase the power of this tactic.

The inverse is the Bard and Cleric, which putting aside limited spells per day does lead me to a conversation about attack rolls. Fighters are able to enchant their weapons to hit more often, to my knowledge spell casters lack the capacity to increase their attack roll. So this leads to a Fighter with a +20 to hit able to swing all day, versus two spellcasters with a +17 to hit (and DC27). Again, could roll off my back, but with a creature they just fought having an AC30 and saving throws of +17 Fort, +23 Reflex & +20 Will, the chances are just against the casters. The creature makes the save at least 50% of the time, dodges spell attack rolls on a 13 or above and dodges physical attacks on a 16 or above. That's after levelling, which happened after fighting this thing.

The only thing I've managed to work out so far is home-ruling some trip immunities for creatures lacking the antatomy to be tripped, which is about 3 or 4 fights in the last five months. Beyond that, I have a fighter who is definitely chuffed, a redeemer who is enjoying things fine as long as he remembers to Glimpse of Redemption and attack of opportunity people, two spellcasters who are vaguely annoyed at their inability to do much (ignoring the times the campaign offered ways to Feeblemind their already pathetic spellcasting into oblivion) and me who is just frustrated at seeing fights play out the same way over and over.

*

So, after all that, I'm kind of left wondering if Fighters might have accidentally displaced spellcasters. If clerics are no longer the dominant powerhouses they were, and now are actually behind the curve. While Fighters can get to just an insane degree that I'm left actually triple checking to see if there is a way to increase their amounts of AOO outside of the level 20 feat because they less control the battlefield but rather dominate it with big flashy DPS.

I adore the Success effects, as it generates significantly less all-or nothing and offers an olive branch for spellcasters who do miss. I also like that spellcasters aren't just trashing everything on-sight like they could in 1st. In addition is how I've found melee-classes like Monks and Fighters are in just a great state now and are no longer cap-out or just underwhelm. However, I've just hit this point where I have beleaguered and upset spellcaster players who feel unable to do much while the fighter of the group steamrolls everything, and I don't know what to do or say besides "well, reroll?".

I genuinely open this discussion (which I'm sure has been done before but I couldn't find it at a glance, I'm really sorry!) less out of player frustration their favourite class isn't the best in the world any more, and more because I'm just growing increasingly distressed by having players feel just totally powerless and annoyed their build doesn't work for reasons beyond anyone. That they keep missing with a limited pool of spells. I'm just really not sure what to do any more. I'm really open to advice, with the caveat that I'm running through Extinction Curse so it is pre-gen material.

Just hitting the third book now (got it read, and books 4, 5 and 6 skimmed) after being the GM, I feel I might start with my conclusion and work back.

So, I enjoy Extinction Curse a good deal.

Beyond this point, going to be digging into light spoilers but trying to keep it vague.

That said, overall, I'm definitely enjoying it and Book 3 just has so many notes that have left me excited to run it. Book 5 also looks incredibly atmospheric in a wonderful way, so I'm sure that'll be a good time too. If we're playing with numbers, I'd give a neat 7.5/10. Most of my personal adjustments were in the form of adding more flavour and lore to the circus performers, with the rare tweak here and there of other parts.

Just let me know if I'm being a bit of a moaner, and I'll trim it to the cliff notes. I don't really mean to be too critical.

So what should GM's do if the heroes fail to stop Sarvel and want to do agents of Edgewatch? Wouldn't that AP be ruined or how long does each plague take to happen?

Absalom turns into a more cosmopolitan version of Alkenstar for the months it takes for AoE to play out: Tall secure walls to keep beasties out, heavy controls of who comes & goes from the rest of Isle of Kortos and food & water is imported. They may be able to find an alternative way to keep Absalom aloft, but the rest of the isle would be going underwater (which the government may or may not allow entry into the city).

It's something to have gently rolling in the background, but it does risk distracting players since it's easy to move on from a murder-mystery when the fate of the entire city is in trouble.

So, my group had a wildly different experience with the Black Pudding.

Player: I cross the log.
Me: Okay, can I get a reflex save?
Player: Okay, I rolled badly. Can I hero point?
Me: Sure! ...Yep, that makes it. So you see the log break-apart to see a writhing black sludge undernea-
Player: I dive in.
Me: ...Wha-...What?
Player: Yeah, I'm going to dive in.

I had to fudge dying rules and equipment damage rules to make sure that the character survived (albeit with constant dying checks) and I didn't just break several hundred gold of equipment. I don't think even the player entirely knows why they literally dived into a Black Pudding.

So what about backgrounds that have nothing to do with the next AP but only deal with the changes the soon-to-be-finished-AP has had on the world? What about a background like “Willowside Survivor”? That would give players a feeling of accomplishment and world growth but could work with any adventure or AP.

The Age of Ashes Backgrounds I was referencing before really played into that. Not picking one of the more spoilery ones, there's a background called Legendary Parents where: "One or more of your parents (either biological or adoptive) were heroes of the Age of Ashes Adventure Path. Others tend to treat you with a bit more respect, or perhaps fear your connections to people of great power.". There's three others that lean more into the events and lore, and I kind of really adore that grounding and sense of impact.

I do agree that I think any more than one background that directly leads from EC to AoE (and even then, released as just a blog post rather than any published material), is kind of a bit much due to the very naive assumption of what APs people will even play through since it'd demand EC to be played before AoE. I'd really prefer just a handful (maybe four like AoA) of general legacy backgrounds that people can generally use in any other adventure as call backs of prior APs.

Are there xulgaths who are noble and seek out their people's lost lore to better the lives of themselves and those around them? Sure. But this story isn't about them. It's about xulgaths who are doing bad things, and must be stopped.

I think why people kept suspecting a strong race element rather than what they're doing tying into alignment was the lack of any xulgaths who weren't devil worshippers and evil. Cavnakash was a wonderful exception in my group, but that was more a player doing an astoundingly good roll towards a character who was in a bad situation and me wanting to just roll with it. Especially when it comes to races that are very rare to even know of player-wise (let alone characters), it can really help to have examples of xulgaths who are noble or at least not demon worshippers to prove it's not a race thing. Unfortunately, run as written, all xulgaths are demon worshippers and evil after Aroden ruined their home, which makes their revenge motivation kind of awkward in a Mitchell & Webb "...Are we the baddies?" sort of way.

Honestly, Cavnakash is probably some of the most fun I've had RPing a character in Extinction Curse. He's just a joy.

If you loved the background feats, I'd like to know how you use them. Or maybe even if you don't plan to use them, but *knowing you could* is a neat enough trophy to have.

I genuinely use the Background lore as kind of a helpful part of creating who the character is roleplay wise, which has helped a few players in my group (especially the weaker roleplayers) to help build their character's personality, motivation and history. With regards to how I really enjoyed the added legacy backgrounds of Age of Ashes (which regretfully never finished), I'd use it as a GM as a two-fold use.

Firstly I would use it to reward players who actually hit the end, as finishing an AP is kind of a monumental event. You're totally right that it's not really credible to assume players or even GMs will play every AP, but it's just so nice to have that reward/trophy for managing to finish: Added content that can be utilised in future campaigns due to referencing events the character may not know of but the player does.

Secondly, it helps create this ongoing canon of not only Golarion (e.g. the excellent Lost Omens World Guide that updated the world to reflect all the APs) but also adventures between the GM and the players. One weird example is:

That said, I kind of really admit I'm really nitpicking. It's less a bad thing and more of a "this awesome thing I was genuinely excited to see" didn't happen. I also totally get that a Player's Guide for a campaign is better at grounding in that specific campaign, just legacy backgrounds offer some really nice grounding of the longer run while rewarding those who actually did do it.

The milestone feats have been generating a little buzz in my group, as my players are curious at how the campaign reflects the characters and vice-versa. That said, since they don't really transfer well over to other campaigns it tends to be something as a GM I easily over look, but my players do enjoy it so there's that cool touch.

Post

I say this as someone who has kind of been on board with Extinction Curse, that depicting a large group of Xulgaths (who in Book 3's Zevgavizeb chapter feel more like they're just being used to an ulterior end like a demon's sadistic entertainment, often with Zevgavizeb but sometimes thrown between other Demon lords) as evil with the potential for a tiny minority to be more neutral and druidic (and again, Cavnakash was converted in my group, and it definitely worked for the best):

What you just describes just sounds eerily like Colonialism, and you think this is good story telling. Which is definitely just a really creepy interpretation.

I confess I'm not really in agreement with others' takes which can feel like over-analysing inoculate situation at times, and I think that classifying a large group of a race having their fury used by evil outsiders to enact more carnage (especially factoring in that book 2's Xulgath chapter suggests a significant drop in technology, civilisation and intelligence, favouring a might-means-right approach) can make for interesting story telling. My group is trying to kind of coax a Xulgath into looking beyond violence for the sake of violence and that wanton vengeance for a dead god onto a species who benefited but are unknowing to it is likely not going to be in his species best interest (factoring in all the mutations and murder meaning a very brief, chaotic and painful life). It's absolutely fantastic, and I suspect immensely savvy GMs could set up a reparations subplot by book 5 or 6 (as humans benefited on Xulgath misery).

That said, while I adore the hell out of utilising grey-scale morality to set up subplots, interesting scenarios and complex conundrums, past a particular point Adventure Paths do tend to take a very straight forward approach to things. I can't hold the game up as I dwell on how awkward it is the Xulgaths are on a vengeance drive and the humans are in the wrong. Nor can I pause the session to postulate on the morality of being the judge, jury & executioner in law rather than going through traditional criminal proceedings. Past a particular point, Pathfinder is a game about heroes with swords, magics and silver tongues. It's also a game intended to have fun. If my players can't having fun because I feel awkward about some content feeling offensive or crude, then that's not good. In a similar way, if my players aren't having fun because I drew too much real world attention to what is a simple fantasy trope, generating an awkward and unsatisfying atmosphere as court proceedings have to be used on a Lich rather than a tense fight then that's also not good.

In light of the weird tightrope I'm referencing above, I did make changes. I try to view the Xulgaths as beings whose horrible history has been exploited by a demon deity, with a few outliers, rather than a straight evil race. That they can be redeemed, but it's always in the context of "vengeance will not fix our race, only damn it further". That they're not interested in just going back to the radioactive Varsk or in the Darklands, but actually staying on the surface as their own communities. They still likely carry a might-means-right, but are also aware of feudalistic technological ideas like "we need farms so we have animals and crops so we don't starve". The surface Xulgaths being more druidic influenced, looking to nature's symbols like cloud formations for religious guidance, with a rare few still persuaded to worship Gorum with the glee of independence of their might and fighting for their own causes than demonic influences. That said, convincing the Xulgath race to abandon their demonic worship which has corrupted them is a long road that Absalom would need to aid with, in recognition of their city existing due to Aroden's actions which led to the Xulgaths ending up the way they are.

The paragraph likely comes off as a major tone shift, but it's more like certain scenes playing out slightly differently to the book and likely a different epilogue to the AP that'll emphasis Xulgath cohabitation in Kortos rather than the likely pushing back of the race. I do think large groups of the surface invading force are evil (demons using Xulgath's fury and resentment of their living conditions to encourage massive deaths), but it doesn't mean the race are evil.

I still think Cavnakash is just fantastic though.

Could a solution be to introduce the info nugget "there is a small tribe of Xulgath trying to live in harmony with nature", and then have the players adopt this "pet" tribe.

...Well, my group ended up adopting Cavnakash...Soooo...

I think you can spin it to be more about the Xulgath's eternal vengeance being the wrong way to change things for the better (and therefore work an angle of xulgaths trying to integrate into the surface dweller's society) rather than just stopping a race trying to murder everyone, but past a particular point you kind of have to be on board with the idea that at least a vast number of Xulgath are downright evil. Based on the Xulgath section in book 2, it seems to suggest they overwhelmingly worship Zevgavizeb with a tiny minority being more into nature worship. That their entire species have been affected by this, complete with physical mutations and mental derangement. You can make some xulgaths more druidic and more into trying to fix the mess one person made rather than vengeance, but the desire of a large amount of demon-worshipping xulgaths to obliterate mankind with the one thing they stole from their people is kind of a lynchpin of the AP.

That said, there's a bit of a warped humour in how the xulgath plot is rooted in destroying the aeon stones to destroy the human land, and yet if the xulgaths stayed at home there's a decent chance the aeon stones' power would run out and render everything outside of Absalom a wasteland anyway. I got the feeling the people outside of Absalom only begun to notice the stones because the xulgaths drew attention to them, but that's just me.

I'd really like a 6 book AP inspired by a weird blend of Curse of the Crimson Throne, Victorian England and Gangs of New York set in Alkenstar. In said AP, you are tasked to grow your small gang from a vague collection of ruffians who answer to other gangs, into something more akin to the Underworld Police (or unofficial police) as you unravel why the official police has been so powerless to deal with the many many gangs. Complete with an ongoing side mechanic where you grow your gang via gang activities such as trafficking/delivering gunpowder outside Alkenstar, getting into scuffles with rival gangs (akin to the opening scene in Gangs of New York) and organising bare fist boxing competitions. Basically utilising the Circus mechanic from Extinction Curse, lowering payout per "event" but increasing frequency you set up "events" (the AP equivalent of EC's circus events).

I don't see it happening unless if I personally had to build it for my group, but it would blend a lot of things I kind of really adore.

Help?

So the first thing to consider about Nemmia to me is she is coming from a position of her frustrations used against her to turn away from traditional druidism into a more misanthropic form. So I'd be tempted to look into a lot of interviews involving those who joined extremist groups and then left to see how their own frustrations were used against them as a recruiting tool as well as how they mentally reconciled with that upon leaving the groups. After all, a lot of this is coming from druids seeing the land slowly die but all except one have no idea why. Redemption is still possible, but it requires working through these frustration of watching your object of worship (i.e. nature) slowly fall apart for reasons you don't know. This could lead to the end of Book 1 giving her a chance to save the nature of the isles: By united the orbs with the heroes/circus. It's definitely not an easy roleplay and not an easy fix, but could lead to some real powerful roleplay.

With regards to wanting to avoid dangers: Just because they're aware of the dangers doesn't mean they should avoid them. After all, any dangers not fixed by the players are dangers the village folk could stumble upon later (e.g. the hostile boar). It also doesn't mean Nemmia has to be totally forthcoming, as she could be feeling a lot of shame for what she has done in the name of demon worship (especially if it comes to light the person who corrupted the hermitage was the succubus the players meet in chapter 4). So maybe some things like convincing the boars to attack people, she may not want to say because she feels so guilty as to want to cover it up.

Again, it's not an easy roleplay, but the redemption arc could be really powerful with research and preparation.

A narrative question. At the start of the book, Unakite tells the party "it has become clear to us that your task-bringing together the energies of the five aeon orbs in Aroden's sanctum in the Kortos mountains-is of dire importance".

But I don't recall this task (or Aroden's sanctum) having been mentioned before. Am I missing something?

I can actually answer this because I literally just hit it. In Book 2 Chapter 3, there's a book you can find that talks about the deeds of Aroden. At that point a ghost commands you to find the each of the reflections and take them to Aroden's throne in the mountains. Page 35.