Seren's page

Temporary absence: The player can choose between the character being in the foreground or background. If they're in the background, they're assumed to be lurking just 'off screen' but can provide out of combat healing or other support when the party isn't threatened. If they choose 'foreground', then they participate, but have hitpoints and run the risk of dying. If they choose background, adjust the combats. Removing one of the lieutenants / mooks from most combat will do the trick.

Permanent absence: Depends on where we are in the story, but there are lots of ways out that could work. Examples:

New player: Lots of NPCs can have a reason to join the PCs. Give them the overall view of the character and let them customize. For instance, if they like Trinia, they can come in with either Trinia the bard, Trinia the rogue, Trinia the Sorceress, or Trinia the multiclass fighter/rogue/enchantment specialized sorceress.

Which duel with Sabina is this? Is that part of the rescue? Or have I not quite read far enough?

I just re-read my notes from running the first book; that was something I added during the Blackjack rescue. I had Sabina and Blackjack duel each other to a stalemate as a way to force the PCs to take a side.

Additional background: I ran the Trial of Trinia Sabor over a session.

First, the PCs got the docket; a long list of obviously trumped up charges in addition to the murder.

Next, Xenobia Zenderholm was forced to recluse herself from the trial because it was discovered that her family's docks received the shipment of paints that Trinia had used to paint the King. Instead, a random Ileosa supporter was tapped to run the Trial of the Century. His previous posting was a lower court that dealt with violations of the rules about how fast carts were allowed to move (read: Traffic Court).

Then the PCs met Trinia's court-appointed attorney. It seems as though the Queen only gave a small donation to the temple of Abadar to pay for the public defender, and so they got Ishani Dharti. The church of Abadar will only supply a lawyer in line with the donation made for their defense, even when the lawyer in question is completely out of their depth. (forshadowing the severe dickishness of the Church during the plague).

The PCs spent most of a session running around doing things to boost their case: Tapping Zenobia to help shore up the defense (she was upset at the fact that she was basically forced out). Getting made up evidence thrown out, etc.

They got all charges dropped but one that carried a penalty of 30 lashes. It hadn't been enforced in years, but it was still technically on the books. So that's what Blackjack rescued her from.

One of my players is a travel domain cleric who got her hands on boots of striding and springing, so she just followed Blackjack after he rescued Trinia.

The party waffled a long time during Blackjack's duel with Sabina, before intervening, and so he was in rough shape and so in no shape to make her stop following him.

My players are also huge metagamers. As soon as I introduced Blackjack (via the Korvosan Post) and Vencarlo, they jumped on that and figured it out.

I'm in the process of creating an obsidian portal for my campaign. One of the things I'm doing is creating the archive of Korvosan Post issues that I've written, and I figured that others who are considering running might consider them useful.

What is the Korvosan Post? I wanted a way to do world building for the group without either doing a university lecture (which causes the players to tune out) or long winded e-mails (which get ignored). Hence the Korvosan Post. The most trustworthy newspaper in Korvosa!

The quality varies wildly; I have three children under the age of 6, so my prep time varies from "Barely enough time to get everything done" to "screw it, I'm just running this session off the cuff and we'll return to the written material after I've read it."

Of course, as the group heads into Kaer Maga and the Cinderlands, they may have to turn to other news sources....

https://wednesdaynightkorvosa.obsidianportal.com/files/Korvosan+Post/?

Do the Arkonas have any sort of protection against detect alignment? I envision my party's Paladin is gonna be pretty keyed off to him being an outsider or undead when I say Glorio has an overwhelming evil aura...

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/u/undetectable-alignment/

Second level spell, a rich noble house controlled by evil outsiders like the Arkonas should be getting a bulk rate discount of potions / wands of the stuff. Paraphrasing Kubota from Order of the Stick: "Do you think I would have gotten this far in life without dealing with that little hurdle"

If that's too cheesy for you, remember that the 'social' meetings between Glorio / Melika and the PCs shouldn't be surprises; based on the dagger that the PCs found in All the World's Meats, the Arkonas should know what they're up against, and would have prepared for it.

Hello,

Longtime lurker, first time poster. I was the GM during the one-shot that Erik described above (though it was more of a mutual learning experience).

Some thoughts on improvement that came to mind

• No rules for undead rowers
  
• When you are using both muscle and wind propulsion, who makes the check to see if you get the upper hand? Or do you just pick one of the two pilots?
  
• Broadside vs Broadside gets boring. If I run this in the future, I'll have the gunners make one damage roll for all of the ballista so that there is some variability (it's virtually impossible to miss a ship)
  
• Crew - If the SS Shrimp has 2x the full complement of crew, can they set about two different tasks, such as one 'crew' putting out the fire and another crew controlling the ship?
  
• Our wizard who spent some time shooting fireball after fireball into their sails felt underpowered when the gunner could just load up a chain shot and do much, much more damage. My future houserule would be that there can be one fire per mast.