SatiricalBard's page

The issue is that the phantoms in the Willowshore random encounters have a specific Vulnerable to Kindness clause that is intended to reward players/PCs who remember the exact part of the 1st of the 8 Practices that is missing from the players guide.

It's hardly a deal-breaker by any means, it just functionally removes that opportunity as if the phantoms did not have that vulnerability in the first place (or put another way, as if it was never part of that Practice in the first place).

Huzzah!

Can I ask what the thinking was with recommending medium & shaman over liturgist & seer as thematically stronger animist practices?

Over on discord a few of us have agreed we'd have said the reverse if pushed, but really they all work!

Just flagging that still neither the PDF nor the Foundry VTT edition of Season of Ghosts are up on the store page yet.

Soul Siphon (oracle bones mystery focus spell) grants temporary hit points with no duration listed, and the spell itself has no duration. There is no default duration for temporary hit points when no duration is provided, in the rules on temp hp in Player Core (p410).

Either the spell description, or perhaps more ideally the baseline temp hp rules (as there are probably other instances of this missing information), needs a duration.

Thanks again Tridus, and also NorrKnekten for your testing on pathbuilder.

I feel bad for redrazor (?) who is trying to make sense of the repertoire issue in Pathbuilder, but that seems like a coding bug.

The huge variation in curse effects is a whole other matter, of course, with ancestors arguably so bad it even needs an 'errata' (while cosmos needs an errata in the other direction!) - the fact it combines with a touch spell and a bad list of granted spells is just really unfortunate for what I consider to be possibly the most interesting mystery by theme.

I think if my player asks about playing ancestors for our upcoming Season of Ghosts game I'll just swap the curse for the related but much less punishing Time curse as a simple fix, and then think about whether ancestral touch should be turned into a 30' range spell, as burning a 2nd rank spell for 'reach spellshape' feels too big a tax on your core subclass focus spell to me. Ill Omens I already have house rule a 'success' effect for (-1 to first attack or skill check the target makes on its next turn).

SatiricalBard wrote:

Tridus wrote:

There's no true consensus. The majority view from what I've seen (and my own view) is that "match the table and the numbers in the text are wrong". That's based on the numbers originally matching before the first errata changed half the numbers in the text, which is what actually caused this problem in the first place. When it was a 3 slot caster those numbers lined up with each other, after all. That also matches how other spontaneous casters work, as "you have more slots than repertoire spells" would be the odd one out.

Thanks for your reply, but I'm afraid I don't understand your answer. Is it the same as one of my 3 options, or a 4th?

The two most common interpretations are both option 2, where the repertoire size is how many the player gets to pick. Any additional ones from mystery/divine access/mysterious repertoire are added on top.

The point of differentiation is in the size of the repertoire that the player gets to pick:
2a is 4, matching the table and the "each time you gain a slot, gain a repertoire spell" part of the text.
2b is 3, matching the numbers in the text.

The text supports both of those at the same time, and that contradiction created by the first errata is the heart of the problem.

There just isn't support in the text for any other option, including what Pathbuilder is doing now. If that's what Paizo intended, they left out the text to make it happen entirely and have left it that way for 17 months. Arguments I've seen for these tend to lean on RAI or assuming that it should work like Sorcerer does instead of working like Bard does, but Sorcerer has text to make that happen which Oracle lacks.

It's a hot mess, however you look at it, and it's frankly ridiculous that it's been allowed to go on this long.

Thanks Tridus, I really apppreciate you walking me through this, and your even-handed explanation of different views.

So let's see if I have this right:
2a, which I gather is your view, leads to a max repertoire of 4+mystery granted spells per rank, ie. either 4 or 5 depending on mystery and spell rank.
2b, which appears to be what pathbuilder is doing despite their own changelog text, is 3+mystery, ie. either 3 or 4 spells per rank.

(I really hope that is a correct summary, lol!)

Leaving aside questions about RAW or RAI, the power difference here is minor but real. Given where oracles sit in that regard, does 'balance' lend itself to one ruling over another, do you think? I take it remastered oracles are considered at the higher end of caster power now, regardless of 'flavour' debates. (Perhaps if a player asks me about an ancestors oracle I could give them the generous option, lol)

There's no true consensus. The majority view from what I've seen (and my own view) is that "match the table and the numbers in the text are wrong". That's based on the numbers originally matching before the first errata changed half the numbers in the text, which is what actually caused this problem in the first place. When it was a 3 slot caster those numbers lined up with each other, after all. That also matches how other spontaneous casters work, as "you have more slots than repertoire spells" would be the odd one out.

Thanks for your reply, but I'm afraid I don't understand your answer. Is it the same as one of my 3 options, or a 4th?

So ... what should be the answer for oracle spell repertoires?

Option 1. I see Pathbuilder seems to have decided 'never more than 5 cantrips or 4 spells per rank' in an attempt to match their presumed RAI. But in doing so, this leads to some mysteries only adding 2 spells to their repertoire at level 3 and/or 5 because they don't get granted spells of rank 2 or 3. This option relies on ignoring a bunch of text in the oracle spellcasting rules, especially the part about adding to your repertoire however many slots you gain (otherwise surely all mysteries would get 3 spells of 2nd rank added to their repertoire at 3rd level). If Pathbuilder is right, some mysteries have an odd case of having more slots than known spells at multiple spell ranks. This wouldn't have been a problem if every mystery gave a granted spell at every rank, but they don't, so here we are [side note: perhaps that's the easiest house rule fix?].

Option 2. The other route is that mystery granted spells are on top of the baseline, so at any levels for which you get granted spells from your mystery (inlcuding cantrips and 1st rank for all mysteries) you will have a larger repertoire than you have slots, which if I'm not mistaken would be unique among spontaneous casters - not necessarily a problem, but a reason to pause before locking in that answer as RAI. If going down this route, we have to deal with the question of how many spells should be in the repertoire at level 1, since the table says 3 but the text says 2 - arguably the one time where the text is probably correct even though it appears to contradict the post-errata clarification that table>text.

Option 3. You always end up with the standard 4/4/3 model, but mystery granted spells become a required choice, ie. you're actually more free if you don't get a granted spell, although of course some granted spells aren't on the divine list.

(Pathbuilder side note: the patch notes for v103 in Dec 2025 actually suggest they have implemented option 3, but my v103 web version is right now showing me only 2 spells for a tempest oracle at level 3...)

I tried searching these forums and reddit, but I can't see an emerging consensus about RAI or even the best 'house rule' appproach.

(I'm deliberarely ignoring Korakai because that sheet is a mess and the level 3 and 5 versions don't even agree with each other. Although my sense is that the level 3 version is fine (if going with option 2 above) and it's only the level 5 version that is whack, at least in their foundry implementations.)

Maya Coleman wrote:

... and an original musical soundtrack to be released separately!

Point of clarification: the official 23-track Season of Ghosts original soundtrack, composed by the inimitable Filip Melvan at Michael Ghelfi Studios, will in fact be fully incorporated into the Foundry module! It will also be available separately on the Paizo webstore for your in-person and otherwise non-Foundry gaming needs, but if you buy the module, you'll already have it baked in and ready to go, as well as all of the other additional goodies, including a set of all-new digital maps that can be changed over the seasons (of ghosts), a snazzy new custom turn marker, and a full set of exclusive digital dice!

Thanks for clearing that up Andrew. The impact of a missing comma!

(Insert jokes about the 'smudge comma' in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution here...)

Oh, also, the price will be $64.99. We should be getting a page up on the webstore pretty soon!

Great, thanks for letting us know. That seems a very fair price point to me, given this is converting 4 modules worth of content rather than 3, plus the bundled soundtrack.

I'm really looking forward to grabbing this as soon as it's out, and kicking off my SoG campaign in February!

Cross-posting Maya's update on the Foundry and PDF editions from another thread since this is where people might look for it:

SatiricalBard wrote:

...

Alright, I've got some answers!

For Foundry, the team has let me know that it will be getting the same treatment as the Gatewalkers compilation from last year except even more, with custom dice, new maps, and an original musical soundtrack to be released separately! So yes, there will be a new single module. They did not give me any information on price though. To be clear, this is not because we don't want anyone to know the price? That would frankly be weird. A more likely reason (and the usual reason when we don't have prices for things listed) is that it just hasn't been determined yet by the team involved.

As for our PDF, that will be available on the street date release of the hardcover, and it'll be $39.99.

SatiricalBard wrote:

...

Alright, I've got some answers!

For Foundry, the team has let me know that it will be getting the same treatment as the Gatewalkers compilation from last year except even more, with custom dice, new maps, and an original musical soundtrack to be released separately! So yes, there will be a new single module. They did not give me any information on price though. To be clear, this is not because we don't want anyone to know the price? That would frankly be weird. A more likely reason (and the usual reason when we don't have prices for things listed) is that it just hasn't been determined yet by the team involved.

As for our PDF, that will be available on the street date release of the hardcover, and it'll be $39.99. Also I did not receive any emails from you, so I'm sorry your questions were not answered that way!

Thanks Maya! Great work once again! We'd be lost without you.

FWIW I sent the email to marketing@ as that's what the Contact Us page gave me for general enquiries. You've now answered the questions in that email though.

Hi Maya, I am hoping you can help.

For some reason that I cannot imagine, there is still no public information about the PDF or the Foundry module for the remastered Season of Ghosts adventure path, which is now just 3 weeks away.

I have tried asking about these on the relevant forum post about the remastered edition of the AP.
I have tried emailing Paizo directly, more than a week ago.
I have tried emailing Metamorphic, more than a week ago. But under the terms of their contract with Paizo all they could do was forward my query to Paizo. At least I got a friendly reply from them.

All avenues have been met with complete silence from Paizo, other than James Jacobs encouraging us to "make an assumption" [sic] in the above linked forum discussion that things will be done similarly to Gatewalkers, covered in caveats that he isn't in the relevant team, his comments are not official, etc.

Perhaps there is some genius 4D chess marketing strategy at play here, but frankly I am at an utter loss as to why Paizo does not want anyone to know what price the new Season of Ghosts PDF will sell for, and whether or not there will even be a new Foundry module or if the existing 4 modules will be updated instead. And if the former, which everyone discussing this basically assumes but (again) has never been confirmed, what happens to those who buy the 4 modules in January? Will those modules be updated? Or are they just screwed because they didn't pore over ever forum and reddit thread and discord discussion and then decide to wait based on a consensus assumption?

This is a remastered edition of what is by a mile the most highly-rated adventure path Paizo has ever published. Accoridng to the Paizo Store page right now, Season of Ghosts are currently the most popular Foundry modules, which means you're at risk of angering a whole bunch of people who bought the 'wrong' edition and will quite reasonably complain about it.

I am sorry about the harsh tone of this post. My ire is certainly not directed at you; indeed you have gained a reputation in the pathfinder community as basically our only way to get any information at all out of Paizo. But I am not the only person who is becoming increasingly frustrated by strange marketing decisions and terrible communication lately.

I am really looking forward to running Season of Ghosts, starting in February. I just want to know when and at what price I can buy your products. Please weave your magic and help me and many others just give you our money.

SatiricalBard wrote:

Lastly: is there any information available on whether the Foundry VTT version will be a new standalone product, or if Metamorphic (?) will just update the four existing modules?

When this was done for Gatewalkers, a new package was released that was the whole combined thing. The original packages are also still available. The new, combined version is significantly cheaper than the old versions ($55 vs $90).

In the case of Gatewalkers, the old ones were not updated, although the system itself has the remaster changes so that kind of thing will already happen (ie: pulling an actor now would already have force barrage instead of magic missile), and any NPCs that get updated are in the PF2e system and thus new versions would be available to use instead.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that it'll be different for SoG.

Thanks. I am aware of the Gatewalkers reference point, which James also mentioned earlier.

I do respectifully suggest that at this late stage, we should have more information to go on from Paizo than having to assume it will be handled similarly to Gatewalkers. If they have commissioned Metamorphic to do this, there is no reason I can imagine why that needs to remain a secret. And the absence of this clarity means it keeps coming up as a question here, across social media, the 2e discord thread, etc.

Thanks for answering! But why are you interrupting your vacation?! You get so ridiculously few over there as it is.

I was assuming there would be a pdf, but its absence from the Paizo store was giving me a tiny bit of doubt...

Hopefully someone else from Paizo in the relevant team can answer re: Foundry and release dates.

Champ Kindly wrote:

Hi James - very excited for this (and claiming FULL CREDIT for this release as a result of this forum post). If I understand correctly, having joined the adventures subscription service, we should be getting the new compilation PDF on the 20th of January... Will the updated player's guide be dropped separately at any point, or is it included in the adventure PDF?

I'm not sure when the released dates are actually happening, to be honest, but I suspect the WAY it'll happen will be no different than other ones, with the Player's Guide and the compilation PDF releasing separately.

This is the first confirmation I can see that there will actually BE a new PDF - so thanks for that! If a Paizo marketing person is listening in, might I suggest adding that to the Paizo store?

Also great to get confirmation there will be a new players guide. I assumed we would, but again couldn't find any information on that front.

Lastly: is there any information available on whether the Foundry VTT version will be a new standalone product, or if Metamorphic (?) will just update the four existing modules?

SatiricalBard wrote:

Looking forward to this! I will be fascintated to see how this compares and contrasts with Hell's Rebels, given the obvious parallels - and the huge popularity of that AP.

Please tell us how it does in your own words when you play!

Will do! Easy to promise this far in advance, haha.

I just finished Hell's Rebels in 2e, as the GM, and absolutely loved it. The best campaign I have ever been in, on either side of the GM screen. The kind you can happily pour your mind and soul (and countless hours thinking, prepping, scheming...) into, because the base story and structure is so good.

The general rule is "the PCs succeeded", no? I also checked the Inner Sea World Guide before commenting, and there's nothing there about a military alliance at all, let alone against Andoran. I therefore submit that at very least, the default assumption unless corrected by Paizo should be "no alliance".

Any word yet on whether the Battle of Hellknight Hill will be publicly released?

Cheliax has the option to call them in against Andoran, driving a rift between two states that have every reason to ally and no love for House Thrune.

This is not actually true, if the canon ending is that the Silver Ravens achieved the even partial success in each of the negotiations. With 2 Negotiaton Points (out of 3) of the issue of a Military Alliance, "Nereza agrees to place limits on the nations against which Ravounel will assist Cheliax. For example, the PCs may ask for an exemption on warring against Andoran or Taldor" (emphasis added)

Looking forward to this! I will be fascintated to see how this compares and contrasts with Hell's Rebels, given the obvious parallels - and the huge popularity of that AP.

I’m very interested to hear how well this would suit experienced groups but where the GM was new to the hot seat, especially in comparison to say Rusthenge.

Cingen01 wrote:

About how many sessions / hours of play is each the short adventures intended to last individually?

Hey there! This is meant to be played with each adventure taking up one whole session, so three sessions total at the very least. The lengths also vary! The second is the shortest, and the third is the longest! We don't have a specific length for each, but we believe you'll get more game sessions out of this adventure if you play all three than you will an Adventure Path volume, since this one has close to double the number of pages of adventure than a standard adventure path. Hopefully this helps!

Hi Maya, this must be an accidental mistake, right? Unless you like really long sessions! The first adventure covers 2 full levels of play.

2: I developed a whole bunch of Darklands encounters that flesh out the quest for sky background... monuments, sites that were once great battles, wandering NPCs to tell more of the story (grabbing from the timeline in the start of the adventure) a few microdungeons along the way too. If this is the darklands AP we should experience darklands.

I’d love to see what you came up with, if you’re willing to share?

Fantastic work, thanks!

I remember reading through your 2021 guide and choosing to run Hell's Rebels (in 2e) partly based off of the top-tier ranking and comments it had. It's the most fun I've ever had as a GM. So thanks for pointing me to it!

Is there any timeline for these to be Remastered?

Hey there, SatiricalBard! Thanks for all the kind words and understanding here! I had actually intended to do so, but all my tasks just got away from me at my end of day. Here I am at the start of my next one to say yeah, they let me know it was intentional and not a mistake! Sorry I didn't get to post it sooner. I just have lots to do! But, I appreciate your patience in this! I made sure to get that answer yesterday, and I was excited since it seemed like a lot of people have been wondering about this for a long time. It may not be the answer everyone wanted, and there may also still be a lot of people who just straight up don't like it, but at least they know it's not a mistake. I'm also hoping this is just the start of a line of communication here on out that works better for everyone. Please just give me time to post stuff as your Community Team is just one Leshy, me! ^_^

Thanks Maya! Really appreciate all you're doing - tell your GM you get a Hero Point on us!

SatiricalBard wrote:

Having said that, if I may: a private email to an individual player is the wrong place to communicate rules clarifications like this. Clarifications of rules intent should be done here, on the Paizo website forums. That (a) makes it official, and (b) means everyone can point to the one spot - including you in the email back to that person.

You're assuming she can make an 'official' post. I know in the olden days, even if someone from the company posted something, it wasn't truly official unless it was marked as such. There might be some process involved or they might want to only 'officially' post such things in the FAQ. Or she might want to make a larger post with multiple answers in it [easier to find a single collected errata post than a post for each and every answer].

In this case though, it's not really errata or a FAQ: it's literally, 'it's intended' and she noted that it was on the list for review but not to expect anything since it IS intended. By itself, it's a single liner.

I'm assuming nothing more than that if the Paizo Community Manager posted here that they have explicit confirmation from the game rules devs that this class feature is intentional, all reasonable people would treat that as 'official' unless/until demonstrated otherwise. Some people will still want an explanation for the change, but people will acknowledge the rule clarification itself.

Also, if they aren't ready to make an 'official' statement for any of the reasons you mentioned, they definitely shouldn't be putting it into an email to a customer either (or, to express that more positively: I would imagine that they ARE ready to make it 'official', given Maya has the go-ahead to write it in an email to a customer).

Swearing at people aside (I have removed the comment), thank you guys for making this thread here! Making threads like this is part of our new system where the dev team will see them over time and potentially address issues, if able, in future errata. Since it's been less than 24 hours since we started this method concretely, and since the errata was already posted yesterday, please give this some time to actually go into effect. But again, thank you! I asked you to do the thing, and you totally didn't have to do the thing if you didn't want to, but you DID do the thing, and for that, I thank you!

Hi Maya, firstly thanks for your responsiveness, enthusiasm, and commitment to increasing responsiveness about issues like this one. I hope we can collectively behave ourselves in return!

I see via this Reddit post that you have replied via email to another person, confirming that Rogue Resilience "is, in fact, intentional."

Thank you for securing this clarification from the game devs. However each of us may feel about that design decision (and as we can see here and on Reddit, there are a mix of views), having this clarity is extremely helpful, and will save all of us from wasting time and energy on endless debates about whether it was a simple mistake or not! People can now stick with the rule or house rule it away as they prefer, but do so in full knowledge of what the devs intended.

Having said that, if I may: a private email to an individual player is the wrong place to communicate rules clarifications like this. Clarifications of rules intent should be done here, on the Paizo website forums. That (a) makes it official, and (b) means everyone can point to the one spot - including you in the email back to that person.

I waited a while to write this, assuming you were about to also post the same response here. But I now see you have actually replied to the follow-up email from that person, who sent you a link back here, but still haven't posted the clarification here, and indeed did not indicate to them that you intend to do so.

With the greatest respect to you and your colleagues, I cannot understand why you would engage in rules clarifications via private emails, but not on your own website.

I actually had something similar happen with one of your predecessors, who emailed me back about the now well-known Guldredge map errors in Sky Kings Tomb (one of only 2 errata to APs on the FAQ website). I had to repeatedly push them to actually publicly post the same information they had sent me in a private email.

Once again, I really want to thank you for your responsiveness to the community, and encourage you and your colleagues in this regard. And clarifying that what many in the community assume is an "apparent error" is in fact intentional is hugely valuable! I genuinely hope this is just the first of many such clarifications of 'possible errors' that are indeed intentional. I just respectfully urge you to do so here, on the Paizo website forums - the best place for official rules information.

So I have reached out to the dev team actually today about general rules questions like this since I saw several from over the weekend! I'm working on streamlining both our communication with all of you as well as how they receive and take feedback. We're still ironing the best path out as I've only been here just over two weeks, so I appreciate your patience since you've been waiting all this time! For now, what we think will work best is to please create a thread for this under Rules Questions. From here on out, those questions might be picked up and answered in the next round of FAQs/errata, but while you wait, you can discuss together as a community since there's a lot of helpful people around I've seen besides me who aren't even our staff! Hopefully with me also here with you guys, fewer things will fall through the cracks this way!

This would be amazing Maya.

To clarify the purpose of this, I propose this could be a post where the community flags longstanding 'apparent errors', for clarification by the devs about whether these are actually intentional (and we should stop expecting errata for them) or if they are something the devs will look at as potential errors for the next errata pass. For example, the unusual rogue fortitude save success upgrade, the blade ally rune question, amped shatter mind AOE choices both being cones, previously this would perhaps have included Live Wire damage scaling and Arcane Cascade's stance contradiction; but IMHO this should NOT just be a post where people note anything and everything we personally wish was different.

As well as the Rogue's saving throws, I see that Amped Shatter Mind's apparent AOE misprint ("your choice of a 30-foot cone or 60-foot cone" (sic)) survives a second Errata pass, preserving it as almost certainly the most OP spell in the entire game.

I guess this means it's intentional too?

(In both cases, I humbly submit that it would take Paizo 30 seconds to clarify that yes, these are indeed intentional, if that is the case).

I know you know this, but you lost a ton of money yesterday because your website is broken. I was among many people who actively and repeatedly tried to buy something on sale, but was unable to, because the website had crashed.

Hmm, does this seem like an odd choice of skill and skill feat for this background to others too?

EMPTY HAND LOYALIST [BACKGROUND] The orcs have had a long history of violence that brings some orcs pride, but for you it’s a mark of shame. You see the path of reconciliation that Ardax is paving and find hope in the chance to transform your people’s ways into one that moves away from stereotypes of brutality ... You’re trained in the Intimidation skill and the Belkzen Lore skill. You gain the Quick Coercion skill feat.

"Violence bad, but Coercion good"?

That makes perfect sense! Especially the part about "rituals as plot devices". Thanks for the response.

I understand that the famous Song of Silver gets a 2e conversion in this book! (Pathfinder Nexus link to the ritual stat block) As someone running Hell's Rebels in 2e right now and coming up towards that part of the AP, this is very handy.

But I would love to hear about the design thinking behind the significant changes you made when converting it to 2e. Most notably, having the teleport-countering and silvered weapon effects only apply on a critical success on the ritual, which would have a DC45 by my calculations (ritual rank 6 x 2 = level 12 = 30 + very hard adjustment +5 = 35 + 10 for crit = 45). An 11th level Bard acting as the primary caster will likely have at most a +24 Performance, meaning a critical success will only occur on a natural 20. Even at 15th level, which might correspond more to its use in Curtain's Call book 2, said bard will have a +30 mod, still only a ~30% chance of a critical success.

I definitely don't think we'd want to simply import this as-is into a 2e Hell's Rebels game.

Assuming 2 strikes/round for DPR is the ultimate in problematic white room math IMHO.

In my actual play experience, swashbucklers only have the *opportunity* to make 2 strikes in a round 50% of the time or less. Even fighters only do it maybe 67%-75% of the time.

Here's an incomplete list of known buffs to swashbucklers in PC2 so far:

* the huge buff to gaining panache even on a failure for actions with the bravado trait
* de-facto auto scaling acrobatics or style skill
* +1 circ bonus to any skill action with bravado trait when done in combat (+2 from level 9)
* Precise Strike is now a passive +2 damage buff (with same scaling as before)
* The buckler expertise feat gives you panache on a crit miss
* Swaggering Initiative now grants panache if you act first in combat
* Lots of feats open to any style (eg. Vexing Tumble, The Bigger They Fall, etc) now have the bravado trait, enabling you to gain panache with them, as well as the +1/+2 circ bonus to pull them off.
* A cool new 12th level feat (which also has the bravado trait) called "Get Used to Disappointment" with a free action Demoralise on a creature who failed an attack roll or skill check against you on its last turn - a Hero Point to whoever at Paizo wrote that one, for the fabulous Princess Bride reference!

According to Swing Ripper,

"Dirty Trick is a skill feat for Thievery that can make enemies Clumsy 1 (roll vs reflex DC) for 1 round or until they interact to clean up their distraction with an interact on a critical success... You also fall prone on a crit fail!

Dirty Trick IS an attack trait action so it works very similarly to disarm the more I think of it... Doesn't require the opponent to have a weapon though AND is a status penalty to AC that is repeatable."

SatiricalBard wrote:

On page 18 the Hellknight Order of the Torrent is described as "a mercenary group". Even with the ensuing explanation that "rumors abound that they’re considering abandoning their affiliation with the decidedly Chelaxian order to embrace an entirely new set of virtues", that doesn't seem like an accurate description of them to me?

To a certain extent, Hellknights are all mercenaries. They're not an official part of any government.

I suspect Lictor Sabinus would have a few stern words for you about such a sledge! :-)

With respect that is a very strange use of the word 'mercenary', defined in the dictionary as "one that serves merely for wages" or "hired for service in the army of a foreign country". I would have said that orders of knights bound by sacred oaths are the very opposite of mercenaries.

On page 18 the Hellknight Order of the Torrent is described as "a mercenary group". Even with the ensuing explanation that "rumors abound that they’re considering abandoning their affiliation with the decidedly Chelaxian order to embrace an entirely new set of virtues", that doesn't seem like an accurate description of them to me?

Something I haven't seen anyone pick up yet:

Our primary aim with the swashbuckler’s remaster was therefore to increase the consistency of the class to allow for more stylish moments. One way we’ve done this is through the new bravado trait...

(Emphasis added)

I am looking forward to seeing what other ways they will do this!

Obviously this could be via auto-scaling the style skill, but there are lots of other possibilities. eg. I've long thought that After You should become a free class feature.

Separately, I really hope swashbucklers get access to the new rogue disarm-with-thievery feat, or better yet, get their own version using acrobatics. Because if anything is core to the class fantasy of a swashbuckler, it is disarming your opponent!

Huh ._. I learn new things about english language, I thought that was prophet

It normally is! As a native speaker with nearly 50 years of life in the church including five years in ministry, I do not recall ever coming across the word prophesier. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was in popular use in the early 19th century, but is very rarely used today.

In my humble opinion, Sky King’s Tomb is a nearly great story-focused AP. It also does a better job than most APs at connecting the 3 books together, especially at seeding key information and secrets early in book 1 that will pay off at the end of book 3.

But it still suffers somewhat from book 2 feeling very disconnected to books 1 & 3, and it misses opportunities to fully set up the 4 key story & adventure beats of the AP early on in the adventure, during book 1.

Below are some suggestions for things GMs can do fairly easily to tie together the 3 books more closely together, and seize those missed opportunities to set up the story beats right from the beginning.

Book 1

Book 2 definitely does suffer somewhat from the classic 'disconnected side story book' problem - it almost feels like you could skip it and just play books 1 and 3 and still get the whole story - and this is likely a key part of your players' problem here.

I think both the Court of Ether and Hagegraf are intended to be interesting and fun locations for social encounters. But if your players aren't jiving with the encounters in the Court of Ether, I'd recommend cutting short the skill challenge and jumping straight to the upcoming cave worm summoning ritual. You can similarly abbreviate Hagegraf to just be a couple of short encounters to get the basic feel, and then take them to Narseigus' house.

These locations, as well as the encounters with 'monstrous races' (sic) such as the ulat kini and the ghouls to some extent, also serve, perhaps too obliquely, as opportunities for the PCs (and players) to to not simply fight everything they meet, but to see these creatures as people. This can be a chance to foreshadow one of the key story beats of the whole AP, which is the history of war (and war crimes) between dwarves and orcs, and how the Quest for Sky has been used to foster renewed hatred of orcs and also the duergar in every generation of dwarves since. Hagegraf can be tied into this disruption of the Quest for Sky myth by showing at least some of them as sour but certainly not evil people, and by having the duergar rail against the 'abandonment' by their fellow dwarves, and indeed even by Torag! From their persepective, it is after all the surface dwarves and Torag who are the evil ones.

Several pieces are not described in lower Guldrege. When will you fixed that we are waiting for the page with G5 G6 and G7 descriptions!!!

They have put out a rare AP errata for the Guldredge maps.

What about Torag? Perhaps in a rage, the New Orc Goddess kills him for what he did to her people, inadvertently kicking off a war. But that would go against Torag's development in the last AP.

Yeah, I really don't think it will be Torag. On one hand, he was one of the gods whose edicts and anethema felt most tied to legacy ideas about alignment and ontologically evil orcs, etc. But that 'lawful genocide' anathema just got edited in the Remaster, and SKT developed Torag (or perhaps better put, Toragdan theology) somewhat, especially on (spoilers for Sky King's Tomb AP)

Lastly, his death would surely have to have a massive impact on dwarves, one of the most common peoples on Golarion, just after we had a Lost Omens book and an AP about their history, religion and culture. Killing him just after SKT would be weird timing.

GorionGolarion. wrote:

Is it any clue about this coming to FoundryVTT ?

Yes a Foundry module has been confirmed. Shouldn't be too far back in this thread.

Looks like the Foundry module is now available!

SatiricalBard wrote:

Holy moly, this will be the PERFECT sequel to my current Hell's Rebels (shortened to 4 books, ending at level 11 or 12) campaign!!!

Not least because we literally have a bard whose background was that they worked in stage management at the Kintargo Opera, before a certain villain turned up and shut it down!

If you ended your Hell's Rebels game at the end of book 4, then 100% that is the all time perfect choice, guaranteed! My suggestion would be to aim at ending it at level 12—the first chapter of Curtain Call, where the PCs are 11th level, are mostly about setting the stage and rolling right in from the end of Book 4 of Hell's Rebels (with a "your party spent several years relaxing in retirement" interlude to give Ravounel time to recover) would be a pretty elegant match. I'll have to remember that when I create the Player's Guide for Curtain Call. Good point!

Thanks for the response! I think we're likely to finish around when book 3 comes out, which is the best time to make a proper assessment of the AP, so that timing is perfect too :-)

So it covers 4 levels of actual play, versus 3 levels for every previous adventure (except Crown of the Kobold King, which had a different genesis). I wonder why the change? And can that please go up top in the product description, as has long been promised?

But more importantly, a full adventure for Red Mantis assassins!!!

xroot wrote:

Is this set in a particular area of Golarion, or meant to be flexible on location?

It's mostly set in Ravounel, but has excursions elsewhere.

Holy moly, this will be the PERFECT sequel to my current Hell's Rebels (shortened to 4 books, ending at level 11 or 12) campaign!!!

Not least because we literally have a bard whose background was that they worked in stage management at the Kintargo Opera, before a certain villain turned up and shut it down!

LOVE the holiday card by Kent Hamilton!