Ron Lundeen's page

Thank you for this shout out! I'm so glad so many people have liked my contributions to the Infinite program.

This was so much fun to write!

Thanks for putting out this list! I'm really excited to see my products doing well!

It might not be enough to cause a famine across Avistan/Garund, but it would definitely cause some serious economic issues if Geb is attacked.

Food for thought. Though sadly, it's not all that often that authors tend to think on a large scale political/economic level for APs sadly.

This is, in fact, a *critical* plot element of this AP.

At the risk of disagreeing with someone far more knowledgeable about the adventure than I am, I actually really like the wrinkle of a PC having a personal connection with Carman Rajani going into the campaign. It gives his sudden turn a lot more weight and adds extra motivation to take down Urevian if the party cares about Carman. I finished running the campaign a couple weeks ago, and Carman wound up being one of the party’s favorite NPCs.

No worries--I can now see that this might make the ultimate decision about him a lot more poignant. So, yes, do as willfromamerica suggests!

I'm starting this adventure next month. I'm looking for some tips. I have the PDF / Foundry version of the hardcover and I'm reading through it now. Because these originally came out in a 3 part adventure some of the information is spread out about certain NPCs. Aside from just general tips and advice, what sort of things can you foreshadow early on for the NPC's in Otari that maybe weren't shown in the first book when it came out?

I recommend giving each hero a connection to one of the Otari NPCs. The campaign backgrounds they choose suggest good connections, but make one even for those without a natural fit based on background. You should make it one of the NPCs who gives out a side quest later on, and I don't recommend that anyone have a connection to Carman Rajani. This will make some of the side quests feel more like natural connections.

Sold. Our project will be here on the blog -- but it won't be the party you'll expect.

Oh, that's EXCELLENT to hear. I love what you guys do!

To manage expectations: Until we decide if or how we want to support play that uses stats for characters who are canonically mythic, we won't be providing those stats for them.

Kortash Khain, for example, is mythic in 1E. In his 2E entry in the adventure he shows up in, I built an Influence stat block for him, but not a "fight him" stat block.

I don't know what Ron's plans for Geb are, but I suspect they might be the same.

James is absolutely correct. Geb doesn't get a stat block--you meet him (several times, in fact!) but not in a way that ever requires his statistics. This is the "work for Geb" AP, not the "fight Geb" AP.

I’m super curious about the outset of this AP, in terms of how the characters are actually employed. Are the Blood Lords formalized and centralized enough to have an organization of troubleshooters at their command, or are the PCs working for a specific one? Is there a government agency in Geb with adventurers on the roster?

They're working for a specific one. She's on the cover!

Sidenote, I do hope this book does come up with small fixes like "encounter says refer to map markings that don't exist" :'D

We caught as many of these as we possibly could!

Patrick is a gift.

I am curious if this essentially ends the drift crisis or is more of "and if you don't succeed, it gets even worse!"

It doesn't solve it; this AP is not really about, "Here is a galaxy-wide threat that you wrap up!" it's about "You're victims of this galaxy-wide disaster and you are just trying to get home." If you succeed at this one--maybe you get home!

Well... I'm not mad at this news. I am loving Abomination Vaults in 2e, and am quite interested in seeing how the 5e rules might handle a couple things we've run into so far. I assume the 5e hardback won't have the maps included (not expected either)... so I hope both versions can use the same maps.

The maps are the same in both versions. Some of the denizens had to change because the systems work differently, but the maps, plot beats, key NPCs, and fun are all the same!

NECR0G1ANT wrote:

Will Paizo be releasing other 5E content in the future, or is Abomination Vaults a special case?

I imagine the answers depends on how well this does.

This is absolutely correct. We have no other 5E plans to announce at this time.

Hooray! I'm excited to see this one announced, it was fantastic fun to write.

Is Matten Cleave a reference to former Detroit Piston Mateen Cleaves?

Definitely not; I've never heard of such a person. But I can't know *every* name, so similarities are inevitable!

I gave each of my characters a connection to someone in town. Some of them are pretty casual roleplayers, too, and that ended up creating some of the fun.

For example, the fighter had done odd jobs for the captain of the town guard, just because he was a fighter. But the player was a chaotic good anarchist sort, and the captain of the guard is a real stick-in-the-mud, so he got to gripe in character "I totally hate my boss, he's a real jerk, so I'm off to bash stuff in the dungeon." But when they needed the town guard for something, that connection was there.

I'd also encourage you to have "the next time you come back..." moments in town between forays to the dungeon. Morlibint is going to look some stuff up in books, but it'll take him some time, so remind the characters to come back to him.

Wrin Sivinxi makes the best "the next time you come back..." character because she can read the stars and answer their questions every night, but only once and at night.

Basically, throw in some connections and keep a casual "next thing to do" between the town and the dungeon. When they go to the dungeon, they should have some reason to get back to town. And when they go into town, it should give them some reason to get back to the dungeon. I hope that kind of thing can keep up interest in the game!

Monkey Bars wrote:

In C2. Tunnel to Otari, it says:

Quote:

This passage connects to area 15 beneath the Otari Fishery.

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

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

I think its referring to beginner box

Yes, that's correct, it's a reference to the Beginner Box adventure.

Gonna share any Moose Tips here, Luis?

What, we didn't give you enough moose tips in the adventure? :-)

...'s location is confirmed in Absalom book for those who are interested in alternate course for fifth book :D

Yep! Our original intent was to have the Absalom book out much closer to this Adventure Path, so it wouldn't require so much waiting to find out, but *gestures broadly at everything.*

1. Give XP for winning fights ("winning" meaning overcoming, not always murdering) and also give XP for non-combat accomplishments, as indicated. Some chapters in this Adventure Path (like the first one) have almost no fights.

2. The Magaambya's student body fluctuates a lot, because so many students live off campus or even obtain their learning off campus as well. My sense is that the campus has hundreds of students at any time. This Adventure Path only focuses on a few of these (with more introduced in later books), but there's lots of opportunity to add in other students of your own invention, too.

Qaballa wrote:

Why does Jafaki have a wand of magic missiles heightened to 2nd-level? As well all know Magic Missile is a 1st level spell and it requires heightening by 2 levels to get the next iteration, so 3rd to get 2 missiles per action. As far as I can tell it shouldn't do anything more than a 1st level wand apart from be more expensive.

Maybe as a 5th level item it could be a wand of manifold missiles (1st).
What's the intention here, any ideas anyone?

I personally switched it to a 3rd-level Wand of Magic Missiles since I had the same thought, and it wasn’t too powerful of an item to hand my players.

Aah, it's too late for me to make a change to the hardcover version, but I would change this to a 3rd-level magic missile wand rather than a 2nd-level wand. That doesn't skew the treasure balancing by too much, and it makes more sense.

Perhaps Belcorra instructs the seugathis to send the destrachan from area C9 into the central shaft, so it can be beamed into town? That's a Severe fight for them, which you might mitigate by having townspeople help out or something. A destrachan could probably wreak some havoc in a town, blasting sound every which way.

It really **would** be a breath of fresh air if Paizo would ever embrace "less is more" and create an Adventure Path with interesting limitations on race-class combos or whatever.

We do that all the time; you're looking at it now.

True, we're unlikely to say, "don't play an android gunslinger"; instead, we give you the themes of the AP so you can play within the themes and find something that excites you. Presenting themes spurs creativity; presenting limitations stifles it. I'd much rather say that Strength of Thousands is "the magic school AP set in a school known for training wizards and druids" than "don't play clerics or bards." Here, we've said this is a caveman/hunter-gatherer themed AP, not "don't play alchemists, gunslingers, or inventors."

That's not to say we never present a story as "No X." Hell's Vengeance was the "no good characters" campaign, and The Slithering was a "no humans" adventure. We've learned from those that the better path is to encourage themes rather than mandate restrictions.

There are always people who enjoy playing against type. They want to be a paladin in the Skull & Shackles AP, or a hobgoblin in the Ironfang Invasion AP, or a barbarian in the Strength of Thousands AP. Telling them they can't play against type doesn't let them enjoy being an outlier; it tells them they can't play at all. We want to avoid telling people they can't play at all--rather, we want the social construct of the table to do that, as the table sees fit.

Guess Mr. Beak with phantom pain is now a thing officially :O (if I run this campaign again though, I'm going to stick with Mr. Break with worm's repast because I love foreshadowing that spell going to show up later at use of Mr. Break's creator x'D)

That's an excellent substitution as well!

Whew! I gave this its final approval pass on Friday, and it's off to the printer now!

There are a lot of tweaks in here. Some were just necessary for the revised layout (when a new piece of art made text on the page flow differently, for example), others are minor corrections and polishes.

We've got some new art for this, including the often-requested image of a certain ghost when she was still alive.

I want to thank everyone who weighed in on issues or fixes on these forums. I looked over lots of those and made many improvements based on those--thanks!

The hardcover is formatted a bit differently, as well. Instead of looking like three volumes between two covers, we rearranged this to have 10 sequential chapters, one for each level of the dungeon (along with a few other chapters for a campaign overview, the town of Otari, info about Nhimbaloth, the adventure toolbox, and so on).

People who aren't familiar with the three-volume nature of this AP are going to find the hardcover to be very accessible; people who already have the three volumes might prefer to have it in this more cohesive whole.

I'm proud of this, and it's going to look great!

Hey all. I had a thought and I just can’t recall if I’ve read this or not but does anyone in Otari know about the levels beneath they runs? Like, is this common knowledge or privileged to a few?

They don't know much. Since level 1 has been picked over, and it contains about 4 ways down to a level 2, it's probably fair to say that specialists in the lore of Gauntlight Keep (like Morlibint, and maybe the mayor) know that there's a "basement" beneath it. They're probably wholly ignorant of even lower levels, though, and they don't know that Otari Ilvashti survived to stagger around within them for a bit before he finally died.

Having the townspeople react with shock and dread when the heroes come back with tales of horrid monsters on increasingly deeper levels is a great way to emphasize the hero's prestige, I think.

dharkus wrote:

Peenicks wrote:

Should the Mutated Sewer Ooze have a little bit more HP rather than 45? Considering it's level 1 variant has 40 HP this one has 45 at level 6? Was the intent for it to have 450 HP?

45 is def too low (it's low for a lvl 4), but 450 is def way too high (about right for a lvl 19-22 creature!)

Probably 145. Seems about the right ballpark.

I would go with 145, yes.

Do your player's characters all come from the Mwangi expanse?

So far it looks like my players want to play characters from all around Golarion. Do you think that is a problem if they can generate some plausible story for why they want to study at the Magaambya? (I just told them to read the Player's Guide and then check in with me.)

We don't assume that all the characters are from the Mwangi Expanse, so feel free to have them come from wherever.

Note, though, that virtually all of the campaign takes place *in* the Mwangi Expanse, so they'll end up being quite familiar with it, even if they start the campaign as outsiders to the region.

I have some feedback here!

All our Adventure Paths assume a four-person party, and the art throughout the AP show who we consider the "default iconics" that experience the AP. (Of course, the actual characters who experience are those at your own table!) For Abomination Vaults, those are the fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue--they're the four classes who appear in the Pathfinder Beginner Box, after all, and this is in many ways a continuation of that.

Your group of a cleric, ranger, sorcerer, and fighter/champion sounds like it would work great.

You don't need to necessarily add more monsters for more characters--they'll find some of the combats a bit easier and need to rest a little less often, but that's okay!

For reference, my own party consists of six characters: a bard, champion, cleric, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard. I sometimes throw in a fifth enemy when the encounter has 4 of them, or a fourth enemy when an encounter has 3 of them, but I otherwise don't modify the adventure much at all.

I was thinking of using the Deadtide as a catalyst for getting the PC's interested in going to Gauntlight. I was going to use the Founder's Festival as a reason that people are out in the streets and socializing and to showcase different NPC's and then, if things were to get slow, use the Deadtide event to draw attention to Gauntlight and spark chaos.

Can anyone think of a reason this would be a BAD idea? I can't think of any and I am wanting to make sure I am not missing something.

You'll have to tone down the fight that the Deadtide brings, including the follow-up fight, but sure!

Are there printed maps for this AP?

No, we don't have a map folio or map-pack for this AP. One exception: there's a fight near the second chapter of the first adventure that doesn't have a map in the adventure, and any map that depicts a

will work well for it.

Ohhh, my bad. I had only briefly glanced over the Ravener entry. Apologies, Paizowriters, for thinking you had made a mistake. Makes much more sense now.

That's okay. :-)

Ron, I get that there won't be many changes, but it'd great to have a separate illustration and handout section at the end of the book -- with maybe a few extra handouts and illustrations, if I can make a modest wish! :)

We have some additional art going into this (as of right now; it's not off to the printer yet, so nothing's final!). We haven't put them into an "art section" in the back like I've seen some RPG products do; that's not our style.

So we going to fight Treerazer in 2021/22 APs?

We're not going to stop you from putting Treerazer into your APs. He's right there in the Bestiary, after all.

From the Office of Expectations Management: we have no plans to produce a Strength of Thousands pawn collection.

zonum wrote:

I'm going through this book to prep some foreshadowing about how Gauntlight works, and I wondered about its power source being centered on the 4th level - after Lasda is removed from Lasda's Lament, Volluk is defeated and the Forever Stairs are opened, what's to stop any of Belcorra's minions "re-powering" the lighthouse from another similar Gauntlight location within one of the various chambers where the blue light runs from floor to ceiling within the lighthouse structure? I'm struggling to suspend my disbelief that there would be no attempt to re-activate Gauntlight on the enemy side between the time the adventurers make their way into the training grounds and the time they arrive at the final level. Would love a second opinion on the various ways that Gauntlight is powered, and why Belcorra would turn her attention elsewhere after the finale of Ruins of Gauntlight.

I think you should reactivate it and start attacking again. The only plot reasons Belcorra might not do it again is she is waiting until she can attack Absalom. If she invites too much attention, some adventurers might show up to thwart her again.

This is my thinking. The test firing at the start of chapter 2 is successful, in that it both animates the dead and successfully sends in an aberration. Once the PCs get into the lower levels, Belcorra can't help but face them, as she did the Roseguard: "Again with meddling adventurers?!? HOW DARE THEY!?!?!"

Will the original pdf receive the balancing updates as well?

We have no plans to do so, no.

Further, there's not a lot of balancing to do. We're tweaking some encounters that have proven a bit problematic, but beyond "give a certain soulbound doll the phantom pain spell rather than vampiric touch," there's not a lot of dramatic changes.

That said, if you've seen other huge balance issues, please let us know!

Ron broke me so hard. We do love the poppets Ron, rest easy.

Oh, whew!

Are there canonical birth dates for students by any chance? Or months of birth at very least.

No, nothing in canon I'm aware of.

I just want to jump in here to talk about my running of this game. My players saw the locked door in the lighthouse and later found the key, but they were too battered by the corpselights to want to use the key right away--they just retreated to town to rest.

In town, the players learned that Wrin Sivinxi can "read the stars" for them and the asked about whether they should ascend to the top of the lighthouse during the day (as they knows it glows at night). I realize there's nothing up there but a vampiric mist--no treasure or clues or anything else, so the answer is "woe."

So they avoid it, do a little more exploring, and they see the paintings with the ghosts coming out of the lighthouse. So they rush back to town the next night to ask Wrin about whether they should ascend to the top of the lighthouse during the night. Since the blood of Belcorra haunt is active at night, that's just more danger, so the answer is "more woe. Even more woe than the day."

Now my players are assuming that the top of the lighthouse is where some big climactic fight of the entire AP is going to take place and there's NO WAY they are going up there until they're way, way higher level. At which point they'll find...just a vampiric mist chilling up there.

This was a wonderful read! I'm glad you got such a connection to the current times out of it--if only magical solutions were readily available.

So, running through book 5 and I've noticed along with others that the level names are switched in the Blue Gardens of Tlil. Also, on the map pack, the top 2-4 rows of the map have been cropped out.

The module is more than two years old. I presume Paizo has no interest in fixing either of these errors?

The likelihood is indeed very, very small. If we revisit this AP in the future, though, we'll make corrections like this at that time.

Has there been any word of the Academic Calendar mentioned in the Academy Life section? It says it should be included with each book of the AP, but so far I've seen no sign of it.

That's a reference to the fact that each adventure gives express opportunities to use this system, with the "down time" built in to apply it.

I have to imagine that the statues on the map are meant to represent the ten terraced towers with mosaics.

They are towers with mosaics of the Ten Magic Warriors, but the towers are more ornamental than functional; from the top down, they could indeed be carved to look like people. But they are not statues, as depicted, they're towers.

My players immediately found the entrance to the tunnels under the Storage Barn. Does anyone have any advice about how their exploration of it should progress?

One player also spoke Undercommon and got a hint that the pugwampi were following some orders. They're now convinced the tunnels should lead to some bad guy.

They're a "maze of tunnels," and so would be tedious to explore. Plus, the pugwampis can squeeze through Tiny tunnels that riddle the maze--many of which are dead-ends--to get to areas the heroes can't reach.

One of the experimental pieces of this AP was starting an AP at 11th level. What do you think about that? I've heard neither the resounding choruses of "This is terrible, please never do it again!" nor "I love kicking off with powerful heroes, let's see more of it!"

So I thought I ought just ask directly and gather some non-scientific public opinion: should we do more APs that start at a level higher than 1st?

A scholar can exist outside of a library, and the Magaambya places a strong emphasis on ‘field work.’ Most Magaambyan mages are traveling the Mwangi Expanse, and many more are currently aiding on humanitarian missions up north in Avistan; they’re hardly huddled up in Nantambu. Staying in one place long enough to finish your early studies is not the same as settling down and betraying your oath to the wilds.

Heck, look at the shape of the AP; fully half of the books take place well beyond Nantambu, and even the ones set there leave the Magaambya’s halls.

I agree with all of this.

Two things that feel missing:

1. Symbols for each of the different branches.

2. Colors associated with them.

Has anyone done work in this area, or Ron, are these things going to be established in later books? I would love to see an article further detailing each branch, but know everything has been set for some time, so may need to be homebrewed by the collective now.

No, we've presented nothing further about them in this AP. That's not to say we won't do so someday, but not here!

How does the elevator/lift work between the end of book 2 and beginning of book 3?

The map at the end of book 2 shows what appears to be an elevator platform lifted up to the prison level. In the description for A17, it sounds like the lift is down on the ground and may not work at all.

Is there some way I'm missing that the lift can take players down to the farm level? Or are they expected to choose between jump/feather fall and clearing the stairs? (I know my players won't take Urevian's deal, so I'm ignoring that possibility)

There isn't a lot about how to operate it from above; I would take all the notes from area A17 in book 3 about how it works, and place the elevator beyond the forcefield in area D3 of book 2.