Silvative's page

That black background makes it really hard to see the pictures. I think something lighter is preferable. At least at the token selection stage.

The custom application has a light mode as well, it goes off of whatever your core Foundry theme is set to :)

Why does this get me so exited?

Oh man, a few questions:
- Will a noob end user like myself be able to add art to the gallery and give them tags?
- Can this module replace the art of any actor, even in compendia?
- On an unrelated note, how long is the GenCon Discount Code gonna be valid? *innocent-smile*

Looks great

Hi! While it's definitely possible for users to add their own art to the gallery, it's not something we currently have a UI for, so it does require a little bit of comfort with very basic Foundry VTT modding. Basically, it's a bit more of a developer feature at the moment, albeit a potentially powerful one. If you're interested in learning more about modding, it could be a good first project, though!

The module, like all of our other token packs, can replace the artwork of compendium actors with its own. However, unlike our previous token back, which was bestiaries-based and thus had a corresponding "stat block" for each piece of art, this one is NPC-focused. As a result, only about 100 pieces are mapped to compendium actors by default (mostly the GMG NPC Gallery actors). This is why we created the gallery application- the idea is that you use the compendiums when you need a specific stat block, like a merchant, and you use the gallery when you want a specific piece of art. That merchant could be of any ancestry, background, etc, after all, and conversely the art of the Poacher could work just as well for a hunter, or a guide, or a scout, or a ranger, or an explorer.

Also, this app would be a great idea to integrate assets from other modules on disk - so we can easily browse portraits from Abomination Vaults, Kingmaker, Agents of Alkenstar etc etc. This could work even without enabling them in the settings as the paths for each module are known. I hope even if not released this could at least be modded in

Hi! Yes, this is possible, though it requires the other module to provide a datasheet of its own, so that the application has the tags and other associated data that it needs to filter and display the artwork. We're planning to update our previously released modules, starting with the Token Pack: Bestiaries, with that very functionality as soon as this module is finished :)

AV impressed the hell out of me as my first AP from Paizo with Foundry support, but Outlaws has done the opposite and now has me on the fence about the quality and worthiness of other APs because of it.

Hello, I'm part of the team that worked on AV! I'm glad you liked our adventure. I wanted to speak up here to clarify on some points of misunderstanding that I noticed in your post and (hopefully) encourage you to continue making use of this content in the places where it can improve your game or save you some time on prep. I certainly don't mean to imply that your review was wrong, unhelpful, or rude- I actually find reading feedback on these modules very helpful when making decisions about how to approach future projects. What I'd like to do is shed some light on aspects of our development that might help to explain the differences you identified and "defend" the work of the Outlaws team a little. At the end of the day, people worked very hard to bring this content to light, and put in far more hard work and love than would have been necessary if they only wanted to bring a "bare minimum" product to market.

The main clarification I want to make here is that the team that made this module is different from the team that made the AV module. That's why you've noticed several procedural and stylistic differences- the teams comprise different people, working with different resources and different priorities.

On the specific points, there were two other things I wanted to raise:

Also, several NPCs just aren't there and have to be theatre of the minded.

Both AV and OoA pull from the system compendium for actors, so there should not be a meaningful gap between the two adventures in this regard. It may be that there are small differences due to the personal style of the person responsible, though.

Several scenes are missing that would have been useful to have (Longhorn Lounge, Hotfoot Hippodrome, Ryka's Reagents, something for the chase sequence in chapter 2) I had to find or make scenes for all of those.

I do understand why you feel this way, but I'd also like to raise some thoughts that might help you to see behind the curtain on this.

Firstly, with regards to scenes, AV has an obvious edge here- as a megadungeon, almost all of the events of the adventure are going to take place within the same ~13 maps. That resulted in an unusually low number of maps for us to remake, and it meant that- even if they are also unusually large- they always had a source to base our remake on. It's easier to remake a map than to create a new one from scratch, after all. While we did include a new map in one single instance, the graveyard, it's hardly something that AV did in spades- it occurred once across three books.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the graveyard was a combat encounter. In comparison, all of the scenes that you list are non-combat roleplay locations, no different from any of the locations of interest within the town of Otari. We didn't include maps for Wrin's Wonders or Odd Stories, for example, both of which are more appropriate comparisons. We never had a "chase" sequence to convert in AV, but if we did, I don't think that I would have chosen to do it by recreating the entire thing at battlemap scale. The needs of the challenge are not best suited by adding a 5-foot scale gridded map of several city blocks, since it's not a type of gameplay where precise locations are important.

We always need to consider that remaking the maps (and even moreso creating new maps) constitutes a considerable portion of a module's budget. Short of charging more or paying artists less, neither of which are attractive choices, there is a limit to how much artwork can be included. Sometimes, difficult decisions need to be made about which scenes to add and which to leave out. However, in all cases, these are still *extra* scenes- content being added in the conversion that was not present in the original adventure. Even remaking the maps at all is "extra" content.

To be perfectly honest in a VTT setting, everything should be there, no theatre of the mind, or very very little. It defeats the purpose of using the VTT and having to do alot of theatre of the mind. It also defeats the purpose of buying he AP from Paizo if I have to still build a bunch of scenes, download music, and build out NPCs defeats especially for $35 per entry. So not only is this a more expensive AP than Abomination Vaults, but its lacking as mentioned above.

I quite strongly disagree with this position, and I'd like to raise some counterpoints. Firstly, I don't agree with the premise- no VTT will completely remove the need for theatre of the mind. Even a CRPG will use abstraction- the Kingmaker video game has an overworld map rather than showing you exploring the world at 1:1 scale, for example. Even if it were possible to completely negate the need for imagination in an RPG, though, I don't think that a VTT that failed to do so would have defeated its purpose. In my opinion, the purpose of a VTT is not to attempt to replace the human imagination. Not even video games or cinema attempt that, after all. I could argue for several other potential uses of a VTT- allowing a game group to continue to play and interact remotely even after they are no longer geographically close to one another, or streamlining the process of playing a mechanically complex system- and I'm sure you would get the idea.

Again, I'm glad that you enjoyed your experience with Abomination Vaults so much, and I'm sorry that you had a negative experience with Outlaws of Alkenstar. Just to close off, I would like to again reiterate that these products were developed by different teams, both of which worked very hard on their modules and which have a lot of varied (and different) talents and specialisations. It may be that what you're identifying as discrepancies could more fairly be ascribed to a personal stylistic preference for the work of one group of individuals over another, rather than an objective difference in quality. Just as an example, I have seen AV be critiqued for not including the nifty "landing page macro" that many of the Sigil APs include. Perhaps to some people, that feature is more important than having some extra music, because they'll just use their own audio from Youtube anyway!

We play both PF2e and 5e, on loading I am seeing overhead tokens, not ring tokens.

The images and such show ring tokens. Has this changed? Does it load one type for 5e and another for P2e (which I don't have loaded to check).

Sounds like you haven't disabled 5e's default tokens! Make sure you do so in the system settings to use the ones from this module.

Saw the announcment notification on foundry yesterday.

High resolution maps is all I dreamed for, but have to say the extra stuff is really amazing too!

Just a little question about maps...

Is there by any chance the possibility to also get maps meant for "generic encounters" that were not added within the AP

To make a quick example, from EC BOOK 3
** spoiler omitted **

Hi! I'm one of the people working on the AV conversion as well as a member of the PF2E system's development team.

I haven't played or run EC so I may be misunderstanding your question, but I will try to answer:

- If you're asking about the generic "encounter maps" that are sometimes included (I recall an example from Age of Ashes), where they just have four maps that you can use for any random encounter in the AP:

While AV doesn't (that I recall) have any such maps, I can assure you that if we were to convert an adventure that did, they would absolutely be included. These encounter maps are a critical part of the adventure and would not be left out!

- If you're asking about encounters in the AP that have no provided map but would logically require one:

AV does have such an encounter- I won't mention where, because it may be a spoiler, but in this case, we are providing an entirely new map to play the encounter on which we hope maintains the feeling of the official maps. Of course, using it would be entirely option, and GMs are free to provide their own map, reuse another map, or pull from Foundry's huge pool of exclusive content to get an alternative that they like more!

I hope that answers your question!

Does anyone else find it strange that the "Corrupt Guards" are lawful evil? The description under False Arrest implies that Chiselrock has given them a fake conspiracy and has led them astray. I'm thinking I'll change them to lawful neutral.

That reasoning makes sense to me. I had the captain be a little more in on it than the others, but I played the guard more as conspiracy theorists that got suckered than actual fascists.

I think I've mostly narrowed down to three possible routes, wondering if you lot had any thoughts on which seems most interesting. AOA book 4 spoilers for anyone else ofc

a) Ilssrah waits until morning, and uses Sending to tell the PCs to come meet her for a rematch. She isn't there. It was a ruse, and while they're distracted she goes for the king while Veshumerix attacks the city. They have to choose who to go after- if they pursue Ilssrah second, they arrive just in time to see her melting down the Armoured's plate into slag. She has some reinforcements from Vesh but is also weakened / low on spell slots from fighting King Harral. If they go for her first, perhaps they can save the armoured, but the king (when he returns) is weakened by the city's destruction, and "innocent" undead civilians die.

b) Ilssrah waits until morning, and uses Sending to tell the PCs to come meet her for a rematch. She's there, but it's a ruse- she's distracting them so Veshumerix can attack the city. She pretends to be willing to deal with them but really she's trying to extract info, especially about the Aiudara. If needed she fights them, and tries to escape alive if things go badly by revealing the ruse.

c) Ilssrah and Vesh don't split up- it ends up being a 2v2 battle. Players + Harral vs Ilssrah and Veshumerix. Obvious issue with this is it seems to have a lot of potential to be really deadly, and it also seems like a mess to GM, but it could also be kind of epic?

I see A as being a little more duplicitous and C being a little more overconfident, with B being a compromise between the two. Not sure which makes for the better story.

Other considerations:
- Can Ilssrah permanently kill the king without needing to raze the city? I should check if there are any level 8 spells that could help. Bind Soul? Consecrate?
- What if she didn't wait for morning, for C? She needs to rest to recover Sending for the mislead in A and B, but not if she's attacking directly. She's low on slots, but so are the PCs.

Either way:
- If Ilssrah survives, she can reappear in the Heist in book 5 and in the Red Pyramid, where she's in charge of the reconstruction of the Orb.
- If the PCs fail, Ilssrah can take them to Katapesh with her, which just leads the party into book 5 sooner. Perhaps the heist becomes a prison break instead or they escape along the way.
- If she has a chance, Ilssrah will steal the gate keys and try to extract information about the Aiudara.

Main risk is if she captures part of the party and the others run, but since I have two players with two characters each, we can survive a man down fairly well as they'll still have a character to play.

Overall... I think I like A or B best? It gives them a chance to get an advantage by refusing to fall for the bait. It's easier to GM. A has an interesting moral choice, while B could lead to some cool roleplay conversations

I just thought of another motivation for Ilssrah. She's also here to find/secure the gate, right? So maybe that's a reason she sticks around- the party are here so she *knows* one of the gates is confirmed active and that they probably have the key.

I would absolutely have her go to Veshumirix for help. Whether or not he does is up in the air.

There's nothing wrong with giving the player's a hard, even impossible game/fight if that's what they want. The game isn't about you, after all. It's about them. While I always try to play like I'm the coach of the Washington Generals, sometimes that's just not possible or desired.

One of the things I'm curious about is... well, I guess, Veshumerix and Ilssrah's plans. Maybe I need to re-read their chapters of the book...

Ilssrah:
- Hates dwarves, so if Kovlar suffers she wins
- Came here bc she wants the shard of the Orb (book says she already has it)
- Decided to get the dragon to destroy Kovlar while she's here, to get her more slaves and get revenge on the dwarves
- Is trying to cut a deal with the duergar on behalf of the Triad

Veshumerix:
- Wants to be really strong
- Wants to be rich

So I get why Ilssrah's here and why she's wooing the dragon to her side to try and get his help on things, but I'm less sure what's stopping them from striking already? What are they waiting for?

Since the start of the book, the players have
- Thwarted every attempt to slowly destabilize Kovlar
- Killed every Triad member in the Five Kings Mountains except Ilssrah herself
- Killed all the Duergar, ending chances of an alliance
- Killed Falrok, ending the Starved support of Veshumerix

Basically every single chess piece they had has been removed. Yet, even now as far as I can tell if they just strolled up to king harral's palace together they could kill him. They have to raze the city to stop him resurrecting but who would stop them with him gone?

The PCs, obviously, except Ilssrah just completely destroyed them. Why wouldn't she say to Veshumerix "Hey, while they're nursing their wounds, let's go finish them *and* that king off, then Kovlar will be defenseless."

But in that case, why didn't they move in on Kovlar before the PCs arrived? Were they just being extra cautious for no reason?

I suppose there's a chance this plays out and Veshumerix says "Nah your soldiers are all dead you're useless to me" and Ilssrah just leaves, as well?

I'm kind of leaning towards the former idea but there's a few ways it can go and I'm not sure what's most fair.

- Perhaps Ilssrah, overconfident, confronts the party before they can finish resting, perhaps while the dragon begins levelling buildings or heads for the palace. They might win, but what do we do about the dragon? There's no way they'll be up for a second fight.
- Ilssrah and the dragon attack the palace together, meaning the PCs have the aid of King Harral and the Armoured faction. This one could be a real slog to run but also has some potential for heroic sacrifices from the king and so on.
- Maybe one group go for the king and one for the defenseless (undead) civilians, forcing the party to choose who to save. At least that way they can fight them one by one. Perhaps the baddies take enough time to negotiate their new alliance that the party (and Ilssrah) have time to rest? It could be quite a cinematic moment if they choose to rescue the "civilian" undead, and return to find the graveknights' armour being melted to slag by dragonbreath or something.
- What if Ilssrah uses Sending to ask them to fight her at a specific spot. She shows up and gives them a good fight, and if she starts losing, suddenly, the dragon's minions come in and cover her retreat and she has an Ozymandias type of moment- "The dragon blew up the palace thirty minutes ago. Better hurry if you want to save the king". Then they can chase or Harral gets roasted, again.

Though Ilssrah's at full hp, she's used a lot of her bigger slots (barring Font spells) so although the party losing a long rest is harsh, it may actually save them in the long run. On the other hand, I doubt they can fight her a second time *and* Veshumerix without a rest in between.

Anyway yeah, I think all of these make sense, reading it over. They all could logically happen. So I guess I need to decide what makes for the most interesting game. Ilssrah leaving could also be interesting, perhaps in book 5 she could in the Pyramid, in charge of the slaves repairing the Orb? It fits her skillset and deity. I could find a similarly fitting spot for Laslunn, perhaps out in the savannah raiding farmers or in the camel mission or something.

Gosh, I need help. Really badly lol.

So they cleared the entire Temple, except they nearly TPKed on Ilssrah. They only escaped because 3/4 characters have ddoor (two were down, one was literally handcuffed- she wasn't going for the kills because she wanted to take them alive, so they agreed to surrender then teleported out with <10 hp each. It was clutch as hell and they got super lucky on the handcuff flat check and on her attack of opportunity not being a crit.)

They didn't even knock out her golems- just ran- and now they want to rest one night and just... try again. No new gear or tactics or anything (barb doesn't have any property runes even though they physically own some, he just didn't transfer them)- they just want to walk back into the room. I think they just assume she'll still be there even though I've had baddies move after this sort of thing before. So... I'm genuinely not sure how this doesn't go horribly wrong. I mean, they're planning on amending their tactics (to things I suggested they could have done) but they're also not gearing up or changing their strategy at all. I mean I've literally told them "I don't think you're strong enough" and the barb player says "I disagree, I think we can do it".

Who tells their GM "I disagree, this fight isn't as hard as you are objectively OOC telling me"?

Ugh... not even sure how to approach this.

They're expecting her to not have moved her operation at all but like... why wouldn't she ? (I mean, I'm confident even if she didn't change a thing, she'd still win, but) she's obviously going to mix things up to keep her advantage over the party, whether that involves leaving or not.

I'm trying to understand what she would do with this time, though. I mean she could literally leave and just reappear next book if she wanted. That's what's probably happening with Laslunn (who they never met... at least Ilssrah's a returning villain). But if her entire operation is dismantled like that, why wouldn't she just leave and start over? Her plan kind of failed. If she really wants to salvage it, it's possible she goes down to try to get Veshumerix to help? But then what- she urges him to attack the city (without her forces or the Starved?) Or do they just find her down in his cave (makes that encounter Extreme probably, so... kind of makes the problem worse).

It seems like the "right" answer is to say "They've had enough warning" and just let them wipe but I like my players. And I feel bad for the other player. I genuinely don't understand where the barb is coming from here though. He keeps blaming the entire fight's failures on a single crit fail near the start even after I pointed out some of the tactical mistakes they made.

I offered to make the game easier and they refused and said they like the challenge but I think the barb is one of those players who likes his characters to die, rather than someone who enjoys risk but still wants to ultimately win?

At the same time as asking for the game to stay hard, neither of them are really engaging with tactics at all. They're smart people and one of them does freeze up in the thick of things which I try to be forgiving with but that's a bit different to this. I mean, we're using every variant rule buff in the book that's not ridiculously overpowered- free archetype, relics, two PCs each (two player party) etc. On top of that I've been slowly realising I've made loads of small rules errors in their favour (giving them all resistances and weaknesses on a successful recall knowledge, allowing property runes on specific weapons, letting them keep hold of their weapons after they go unconscious, etc). They should be overperforming, not this, but there's basically no tactics to how they play. Like it's at the point where in this fight at one point the barbarian, on his first turn, used Rage and then moved twice to get within 10 feet of the golem. He could have moved into melee range but he didn't. So the golem could attack him, but he couldn't attack it. If he wasn't entering it's reach, why not go 15 feet away so it has to move??? They're level 14!!

Maybe what the barb genuinely wants is to die in a way that's permanent so they don't res him (which, double ugh. I don't want to f*#$ over his character's afterlife... unless Pharasma just says "two strikes you're out" or something) and then he'd be on a new PC he's more mechanically interested in (??) but that seems like a big leap to make on his behalf and I know if I ask him he'll say no...

I guess some of my issues go a bit beyond just not knowing what to do with Ilssrah lol. I'm kind of at a loss. I'm having a great time with the game one moment and then stuff like this just drains all the joy from it.

I really liked your last post, but this one's even better. If I had to pick a single implementation I liked most it'd be this one and it's the closest to the loose set of ideas I had been getting together in preparation for my next campaign. Now that you've done the work I'll probably just use yours instead- I might remove the flat check for destroying shields but I think I'd be happy to use it essentially as-written, without even tweaking it at all, too. You've hit the exact point I wanted to see hit (That we shouldn't bother with hp if shields are supposed to last a set number of hits).

Regarding the rune idea, I had been thinking of removing sturdy shields as part of this and adding a "sturdy rune" to add one "dent", but I wasn't sure what level to make it. A scaling option is easier to add levels to but also easier to make broken...

Just got up to this book! I'm amazed there's so little discussion here, it seems like it has so much to unpack. It looks like it's continuing the trend from book 4 of having the players become more important political agents, which is great!

I'm a little disappointed about the number of overpowered Triad goons in this. If they have this many disposable level 15 characters, why not send some after the Ring instead of Voz? Why's Laslunn the third in command? etc

You can explain a lot of this (someone suggested having some of the stronger Triad members be fellow Promise rejects which helps justify their fanatisicm too!) but I'm curious if anyone has tweaks in mind to help with that. I was considering throwing in a few of the lower level Triad stat blocks into every encounter as trash to get wiped by the party's AOEs, so they can really feel like they've outgrown this group and are a bunch of overpowered superheroes on a vengeful rampage.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Dahak's vision at the start of the book! What a powerful segment- I'd love to hear how it went for anyone that's run it. It seems so important to get right. Does anyone have any thoughts on moving it to the end of book 4 instead of the start of book 5? That might sell the idea it's *really* what's happened to Breachill (since it'd happen when they return) instead of being instantly obvious. On the other hand, where it happens right now mirrors where it happens for real in book 6 and I also don't want to make my players feel too pressured before they get their downtime!

Probably the most fascinating section to me in the book is the heist. Overall the book definitely does feel like a crunchier version of book 4 (which was my favourite so far by a long shot), but the heist especially is mind blowing and it seems so vital to get it perfect. Anyone got any ideas or thoughts or materials to share to help it go smoothly? It seems like such a fun idea and I want to make sure to nail it- I'm so worried the party will just feel confused.

Laslunn's still alive in my game so i'm debating where to put her in. I could swap an existing NPC for her or add her to the heist section somehow... If they do fight her I probably need to level her just a little bit so she can keep up too since she's from two books ago!

Anyway those are all my first thoughts on a quick read but I'm eager to hear everyone else's experience with this book c: I can't believe a book this interesting and different has so few comments!

Silvative wrote:

So my party want to cure Deadmouth...

I'd have thought it wouldn't work (perhaps that being made undead makes resurrection magic impossible) except the book explicitly floats it as a possibility. And since he's level 2, it won't even cost much. What I'm wondering is basically... what level do they need to cast it at?

You need to cast it based on his original level and time of death (time as a ghoul counts as time dead, not time alive). In practice, this probably does mean you need the 9th level version for this.

Silvative wrote:

I know all of this is totally up to me as the GM but I wanted to hear other opinions if there are any. I wouldn't want to set a precedent that'll come back to bite me or that explicitly defies PF2E lore, after all. The mechanics of spirits and undeath do confuse me a little. For example, do killed ghouls still get to pass on and be judged by Pharasma? What about vampires? Are their souls just being "delayed" while they're undead but not ultimately denied the afterlife? If so, then those diseases/undead don't seem anywhere near as bad as certain other fates. It seems like it has huge ramifications on creatures like liches and vampires- if they're trading away their souls' afterlives for immortality as undead creatures. But I suppose a willing lich would be evil, so they're screwing up their afterlife anyway by eating souls?

The souls of Undead killed do indeed pass on to Pharasma. Indeed, that's why she wants her followers to destroy them, so that their souls can pass on to her judgment, something otherwise prevented by their undead state.

Willing undead are usually, however, making a conscious choice to thwart Pharasma's will in a way that tends to hurt a lot of innocent people, which is not generally gonna result in going anywhere good for said afterlife. Not that she plays favorites, but it's the sort of thing that tends to make you Evil and Evil afterlives are universally pretty unpleasant.

Thanks for all the insights, especially for confirming my suspicions about Pharasma! So killing a ghoul is great, because you free their soul to pass on. And a Lich chose to become undead and fuel itself by death, so it's by definition evil.

Why do you think time as a ghoul counts on the clock? I agree that they're certainly "dead" in a sense (as in, undead). Someone else pointed out to me though that the time needed for the various resurrection spells is related to the soul's location, IE whether or not they have been judged, etc. If the soul is right next to you, even if it's in a ghoul, wouldn't that mean you didn't need to use the super high level magic to fetch the soul? What do you think?

So my party want to cure Deadmouth...

I'd have thought it wouldn't work (perhaps that being made undead makes resurrection magic impossible) except the book explicitly floats it as a possibility. And since he's level 2, it won't even cost much. What I'm wondering is basically... what level do they need to cast it at?

Specifically, I'm trying to understand if I should measure his time of death from his first or second death. The book suggests having him be a character of historical importance so if it's the former you'd probably need to cast Resurrect at level 9 (as he hasn't died in the last decade) which makes it a pretty difficult thing for a party to manage right now. On the other hand, if the clock ticks from his latest/second death, then even a level 5 resurrect or a level 6 Raise Dead would work.

Another possible interpretation I had considered was that, as a ghoul, none of the restorative spells could repair the damage undeath has done to his body. While he's "relatively intact", he's also a different species in a meaningful way- just looking at his art, he would never pass for a human being and the spells don't mention "undoing" that sort of cosmetic transformation. In that case the Reincarnate ritual could still give his soul a new body, though- so long as it counts his "second death" (since even at level 9, Reincarnate only works within the last decade)

I know all of this is totally up to me as the GM but I wanted to hear other opinions if there are any. I wouldn't want to set a precedent that'll come back to bite me or that explicitly defies PF2E lore, after all. The mechanics of spirits and undeath do confuse me a little. For example, do killed ghouls still get to pass on and be judged by Pharasma? What about vampires? Are their souls just being "delayed" while they're undead but not ultimately denied the afterlife? If so, then those diseases/undead don't seem anywhere near as bad as certain other fates. It seems like it has huge ramifications on creatures like liches and vampires- if they're trading away their souls' afterlives for immortality as undead creatures. But I suppose a willing lich would be evil, so they're screwing up their afterlife anyway by eating souls?

Huh, so here's a question. After we talked about the Grikkitog I'm curious if anyone's run into a similar question with the vengeful ruin in the Haunted Halls (King Harral's house). From what I can tell, this creature (not hazard) *is* the building? It takes damage when it collapses the roof on you, and it's resistant to non-adamantine?

Does this mean the players have to literally attack the walls to damage it? Because they are DEFINITELY going to think this is a hazard.

Honestly, the hazard/creature distinction always feels so confusing x) Like in Book 2, the drag pillars even had a perception score- why aren't they just constructs?

I guess I'm trying to work out how the players should fight this creature. If they demolish the house, it dies, but they're supposed to *explore* the building. Alternatively, I suppose a cleric with lots of Heal casts could be helpful but my party don't have one. The ranger has a spirit-sight crossbow, so he can see into the Ethereal- would he be able to see the ghost's "true form" and shoot it that way? I don't totally get how the Ethereal plane works in this game (it mostly seems relevant for creatures like hags) but this could make sense to me, except, what do the other PCs do? Honestly they're probably going to spend a few turns trying to work out the hazard's "disable" prerequisite. I could have the ruin not attack dwarves (there's one in the party) as a hint they should disguise themselves but I don't think that's in the lore at all- there's a reason Kovlar couldn't conquer the city.

Honestly the only way I can see them working this encounter out is if I flat-out tell them and they just fireball the house indiscriminately from 100 feet away until it's rubble, which doesn't seem very fun. Any ideas? What am I missing?

Marvelous Medicines and Major Staff of Healing are both level-appropriate and thematic items. I'm sure either of them would be fine. You can also make a staff that mechanically works as a marvelous medicine if you want- a gm can homebrew, after all! Just be aware it'll be weaker than a normal one since it can't be worn. I went with the staff and my druid loves it, she can prep more chain lightning casts if her healing is handled by the staff.

Ahh... wait, later in the book uses iron golems- there are two with Ilssrah. I suppose that's why they reused Stone golems instead.

Well, perhaps that and the lazurite golems mean I can just replace the encounter outright, like the Spiral Centurion suggestion- does a book really need three golem encounters? x)

I'll have a look for suitable candidates. Also, I suppose, even if I don't swap them Ilssrah could have the stone golems instead since she has the chisel- Iron make more sense in the Forge.

> I was actually thinking of changing out the encounter with a pair of Spiral Centurions from Bestiary 2, just because it seems like there's been a couple of stone golems already in the AP

Love the Spiral Centurion idea- and I'm really glad I'm not the only one who was having those thoughts about the stone golems!

> Also note that there is a Stone Golem encounter right at the beginning of Book 5, so all the more reason to put some variety in here.

My goodness, if there's a *third* stone golem encounter then I *have* to change this one!

Tempted to swap the two Elite Stone Golems to two Weak Iron Golems or one Elite iron golem (Either way it's a Low encounter)

I've not used the Weak tag as much as the Elite one but I imagine that it's roughly balanced. Is there any reason not to do this? They already fought a Stone golem in book 3 so I thought a new stat block might change things up, and this *is* a forge. On the other hand, well, it was like 4 levels ago so a repeat enemy might help them feel stronger (though... elite tag) and it'll still be a golem even if I change it.

Kind of looking for ways to make this dungeon more interesting in general tbh. It's a strange one, but there are a good number of new/unique stat blocks inside past the golems so hopefully it'll feel interesting. Was considering having the effects of extreme heat environment in the forge room to validate my fire Dwarf and Goblin.

The grikkitog is Huge, but it doesn't actually appear on the map. It's a really weird monster so I don't blame you for being confused about this- essentially it's inhabiting the stoneworks, IE the floor, walls, within 120 feet. On a VTT the players would never see the token at all, the Grikkitog essentially *is* the room.

> Anyway, the grikkitog’s Infestation Aura goes out 120 feet - wouldn’t it be literally sprouting eyes and mouths all over the entirety of the map?

As you say- this is a HUGE oversight imo that you basically *have* to make a judgement call on. I decided that the Grikkitog's influence only extended to the entirety of the room, but not beyond, because that was the only way it made sense to me.

> How have others run this encounter?

For what it's worth, this encounter went really badly at my table. Players had no comprehension of what was happening. From their perspective this looked like a hazard, not a creature, so they were trying to work out "defuse" actions and never would have thought to literally attack the ground. What's more they were badly injured from the Gug fights, and the Grikkitog downed two of them on the first round. I had to generously say that it stopped grappling them after they went unconscious (which it had no real reason to do) so they could be dragged away and just gave them XP for "surviving" the encounter as if it was a trap.

I really like your idea of reworking the dungeon so that the Grikkitog is being worshipped by the Gugs. I definitely think it's a path worth pursuing. Personally, if I could go back, I'd just have removed the Grikkitog entirely and replaced it with an appropriately levelled hazard or haunt.

I wonder if this is not the first time I've seen you post a question on these forums that is directly super relevant to me... I think I'm just a little bit behind your table!

I too want to know this. My players should reach Kovlar this week.

Well, good luck for you that I just finished the council meeting! :P

It went well. I think what was key to success was finding art for each council member to show my players, and making sure everything was rped so that they didn't just roll skills with no narration. Then I gave a +2 if their answer played to the regent's specific likes/dislikes (eg, +2 if your house suggestion to Torra is creative).

They ended up feeling like it went very well. I did my best to give hints of feedback of how they were being received by the regent so they could roughly have an idea of how successful they were being. On my end I had a spreadsheet of all the regents' likes/dislikes and their questions and so on to help not lose track of who had gone yet. Something that helped with the Deduce Traditions roll was also to grab not only the regent profiles from the council chapter but also the guild profiles from the appendix. This essentially doubled the info I had to lean on which is important in a highly RP/Improv focused sequence. Warning! Have a drink ready. Doing all these voices, especially some of the more gruff and grumpy ones, *destroyed* my throat x)

I'm continuing the sidequesting next game and so still would love some feedback if anyone expanded these at all. I'm changing the Archmage's from an escort mission to a fetch quest, since they didn't tell him about the portal- instead he's sending them to fetch a magical artefact from the caves for him, now that they've proven themselves against the gugs. I think I'm also going to give Kord a mission where she leverages her underground contacts to have the pcs strike a rival gang and take out some competition, which will be a good moment to have Chiselrock / the guard intervene to a potential misunderstanding. That can also throw suspicion on Kord, which I think will complement the similar sequence in the heist. Finally, I think I'll be shifting the deep terror mission to the physic guild and probably making a new monster hunting / patrolling mission for Hammersong, since the physic guild are more likely to be concerned about pollution in the lake.

The main goal of the above changes is to give every council member a sidequest- but again, any suggestions are welcome, because I'm happy to do more than that. The two we did so far (the walls and the fake swords) needed some expanding IMO as they're resolved by only one roll each! I had the players *describe* to me how they caught the fake smith and it was much more satisfying even if it came down to four rolls instead of one. From my experience so far, the key to these is the RP. Don't just run them as written or you'll be done with the chapter in half an hour and everyone will be bored. Of course reacting that dynamically is hard... but it seems to have paid off from the player feedback I got!

Good luck to anyone using this advice, of course! And I'd love any tips traded in return :)

Curious if anyone expanded the council / sidequest chapter at all- I really like this part and I'm eager to try to get it right. I'd love to hear what people got up to and how they organised their thoughts or the possible party directions.

I give them recipes for anything I think makes sense. For example the Ekujae shared with them the recipes for the boots and cloak of the elvenkind after being befriended. I also gave the crafter the recipe for magic wands because those are really powerful (you can make any spell's wand with a single recipe per level). He hasn't made any of them though.

At 8 people I'd consider just splitting the party into two groups of four... I can't imagine trying to balance the game around that many people, or dealing with the mess of people talking over each other etc.

Regarding crafting, I also have an alchemist. This adventure actually has LOADS of downtime so I'm surprised your player feels like they can't do anything. They should have up to a month or two between each book where they can do anything they like! Personally my opposite issue is my players get bored. They'll do a keep upgrade or something and then want to move on to the next part of the adventure, even though one took Magical Crafting and I've showered him in magic item recipes.

Having him be a recurring villain seems like an obvious choice, but I'm worried it's almost too big of a deal. I mean, assuming he keeps a grudge, a lich that wants revenge against you is a really nasty threat. The players are a lot better off if he decides to just ignore them and outlive them with immortality.

There's also the issue of fitting in the XP, of course. Presumably there aren't any large gaps in future books to fit in new arcs.

I do like the idea of having him partly be an RP encounter but I'm not sure what he'd need from the party. Also with Ralldar as a precedent my party will probably attack him on sight anyway (poor barghest didn't even need to show his true form to be KOS, so the rp stuff kind of was glossed over).

Loving the bok so far- party are nearing the end now.

I was wondering, did anyone do anything interesting with Jaggaki, the lich near the end of the book?

I feel like personally, unlike a rakshasa, a lich is too big of a deal for them to be a surprise room encounter! To me they need build up, since they're a classic BBEG monster. The issue is I never really found any opportunities to foreshadow him at all, or the giants in general.

I've been considering changing him to a Mummy Lord or a human necromancer just to avoid the fizzle of "Wait... that was a lich?" after he dies.

I know he can come back so it's not actually the end of his story but the fact that the book doesn't expect him to (and he has no loyalty to the Triad) make him almost feel like a loose end.

I'd love to hear if anyone else had cool ideas for how to use him better, he really feels like one of those hooks that was left in for GMs to expand if they choose (like the remnants of barzillai).