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I think my players came up with some laudable solutions to some of book 5’s events. For the Duneshadow task, when the party met Prihayn, they set up a meeting between the simurgh & guildmaster Zulran. They suggested leaving Duneshadow where he was, under Prihayn’s protection, and the guild setting up occasional caravans of camels to bring potential mates to him. This was presented as furthering Duneshadow’s bloodline and bringing more natural beauty into the world and evidence of Shelyn’s will. And at the start of Chapter 3, when the party was approached regarding the kidnapping of one of the Pactmasters, they leveraged their successes into a demand that in return for their discrete help, this would be an ideal time for slavery to be outlawed in Katapesh, which is now canon in our campaign.

Thank you very much!

Thank you! That's an excellent idea!

Probably a stupid question - but the bloodseeker Attach ability states: "When a bloodseeker hits a target larger than itself, its barbed legs attach it to that creature. This is similar to grabbing the creature, but the bloodseeker moves with that creature rather than holding it in place. The bloodseeker is flatfooted while attached. If the bloodseeker is killed or pushed away while attached to a creature it has drained blood from, that creature takes 1 persistent bleed damage. Escaping the attach or removing the bloodseeker in other ways doesn’t cause bleed damage."

So how does one Escape the Attach? Is it just an Acrobatics/Athletics check against the bloodseeker's athletics DC? They're not trained and have a -4 str modifier - would it really just be one of those checks against a 6 DC and then you'd avoid the bleed damage?

I’m a little confused as to how to run the encounter with the Promise of Fire at the end of “A Desolate Vision” at the beginning of the book. It says to use the stats for an Ancient Red Dragon (I assume for its intimidate/initiative bonus, AC & the breath weapon damage.) It says the PC’s must do 80 points of damage before it acts to successfully resist the manifestation. Later it says the chances of the PCs slaying the Promise of Fire are “unlikely.” Unless the entire party rolls bad on initiative, isn’t 80 points of damage total fairly reasonable to achieve, especially if they’re tossing in hero points? Or does it have an ancient red dragon’s full 425 hp, and 80 points of damage is a success, but they still take the breath weapon? Or am i totally overestimating a party's chance of getting in 80 points of damage?

Thank you very much - I hadn't noticed that. That certainly makes sense. Although I wonder if Inizra would mention Uri if Emaliza is mentioned?

How did the initial encounter with Emaliza work out for most groups? In the end of book 5, the party finds numerous correspondence between her and Uri, wouldn’t that immediately make the party hostile to her upon finding out her name? Or is it best to remove her name from the letters found with Uri? In the groups that DID fight her, did they just dispose of the body, take the Orb of Dragonkind and proceed with it in their possession?

While I’m really looking forward to running the auction heist, I’m kinda confused about how it actually goes down. Under Awareness, it says: “Awareness Points go up by 1 at the end of each scene, as the passage of time makes it more likely the PCs will be discovered. If multiple scenes are happening simultaneously, Awareness does not go up until all those scenes are finished.” But what exactly is a Scene? Each PC must complete 2 obstacles to get into the manor house - is each 2-obstacle attempt a scene, with one Awareness point accrued afterwards, plus more for failed attempts? Or is the entirety of Phase 2 (entering the manor) a scene, earning 1 Awareness point for the whole phase, plus any additional ones for failures? In the Gamemastery guide, it says Awareness Points increase after every round - which to me kind of implies all players do one check (a round), Awareness Points go up by 1+1 for each failure, then anyone who didn’t get a crit success tries again - another Awareness Point +1 for each failure. So if everyone gets successes, they’ve gotten 2 APs overcoming Obstacles in Phase 2, plus another 1 AP after trying for the Opportunities? So with successes they end Phase 2 with 3 Awareness Points?

Honestly my biggest issue in PFS whenever I want to make a new character I almost always want to be some form of Charisma caster.

What I really like about a charisma-based class is maxing out Intimidate and having that as an option for your first action. Last PFS game I played in, I crit-succeeded to demoralize a Winter Wolf, which then led to its crit-failing the saving throw on my fireball...

I was playing a primal sorcerer in AoA (until his untimely death at the hands of a Vrock, you know which one).

I'm currently GMing AOA. In that Vrock encounter, the party wizard lured it to an ambush site with Ghost Sound, then cast Grease and Web in the next 2 rounds, which it crit-failed for both. The wizard totally Buster Keaton-ed the Vrock. I wish I could have pulled up some slide-whistle sound effects or something.

I play a blaster Angelic Sorcerer and I don't have this feeling at all. I periodically reach high damage making martial players stop for a second realizing how casters can be deadly (I play PFS, so I play with lots of different players).

I play a 5th level Draconic Bloodline sorcerer in PFS - currently, my favorite strategy for a boss fight is either a heightened Shocking grasp via Reach spell or Lightning Bolt, depending on whether I feel I should rely on spell attack roll or their saving throw. Dragon Claws plus +1 Striking Handwraps of Mighty Blows favorite way to deal with minions. I've played plenty of sorcerers from 3.0 on up, and this is by far the most fun I've had.

So at the quarry, my party opted to take the cave entrance to the side of the quarry entrance as opposed to confronting the shadow giant guarding the prisoners in the open - in our upcoming session they’ll be taking on the bear/ghasts, followed by Jaggaki and his guards. It seems odd to have them wait patiently while the party kills the bear/ghasts, and perhaps even stranger for Jaggaki to then engage them in any kind of conversation. Wouldn’t it be more likely for them to hear the conflict and the guards come to the doorway and perhaps throw rocks? And then as the combat intensifies, Jagakki get involved out of frustration over the interruption and stand behind his guards using spells? Or does that ramp up the combat too much?

Similar question regarding the snipers in J12. It seems they kinda only exist to aid in a combat with the shadow giant. If they see the water flowing into the quarry and realize that Laslunn has activated that hazard, would they then come running to her aid (arriving in a few rounds from J10)? Or once again, does that make the final encounter way too difficult? I’ve got a party of 6 which are pretty good at dealing damage, so ramping up encounters somewhat wouldn’t make them infeasible...

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 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 - I totally get they were working on the AP at the same time as the core books, so only had access to a limited number of monsters.

Kind of looking for ways to make this dungeon more interesting in general tbh.

I also found a map of a dwarven forge online that i might use instead - the final forge area is on a large platform held up with huge chains over a crevasse with lava far below. I'd also add some low-level duergar guards for the party to shove off the edge, and throw in some attempts for the Forge-Spurned to shove party members (with some hidden reflex saves they really can't fail just for the drama :)

Even though we haven’t finished book 3 yet, I’m starting my prep for book 4. Currently I’m trying to wrap my head around the grikkitog encounter towards the beginning, but failing miserably. The room the grikkitog is in isn’t overly large, especially for a huge creature - in fact the scale of the map in general seems too small for all of the large creatures living in it. I wonder if there would be any harm in doubling the size of the map in roll20 to make each square equal 10 feet? 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? If so, why does it lure the party into kitchen - wouldn’t it have seen the events in the first encounter with it’s Infestation Aura and start attacking there? How have others run this encounter? Come to think of it, I wonder if it would make sense to have the tribe of gugs kind of worshiping it, with Xevalorg as high priest/shaman, and they frequently offer it sacrifices as a means of explaining why it just hasn’t devoured enough gugs to drive them from this place?

My group is running pretty low on spell slots and haven't attacked the tower yet. I wonder if they will rest first. Kind of a moral conundrum. The Ice Devil fight took a lot out of them.

We just reached that point over the weekend. From the moment of completing Sunset Exports it's kind of one long extended encounter, with maybe some 10-minute rests. When the party discovered the tower, I tried to stress to them that they knew where their enemies were hiding - they could easily leave someone casing the tower while they equipped/rested for a night. Ironically, it was the party wizard, completely out of spells following the ice devil AND the raksashas, who argued that taking on a tower full of scarlet triads with only his cantrips was completely doable. Of course, that player may or may not have been doing some drinking :). Luckily, the rest of the party opted for the rest.

In the interest of pacing, I’ve decided to cut out the visit to Lady Docur’s , and just have a few Scarlet Triad agents show up as the party is wrapping things up at the coffee house, see the party, and run. This will lead to a rooftop chase scene (kind of a Crimson Throne callback.) And to increase the players’ suffering, every obstacle will be named with a horrible pun that I get to flash up on roll20. So far, they’ll be dealing with obstacles such as A Bad Case of The Shingles, DC 21 Jump Street, Clothesline is it Anyway?, Church and Destroy and a swarm flying out of a crumbling chimney known as Bat on a Hot Tin Roof. I’ll see myself out now.

Is there a DC for a skill action to end the effect? And does an action with the concentrate trait automatically do it?

Thank you again!

Thank you very much! That simplifies things greatly. So is it possible to actually cast "summon x" more than once to have multiple creatures under one spellcaster's control?

So summoning has evidently never come up in any of our games yet, and I'm kind of confused about how to run the encounter with Barushak Il-Varashma, and summoning in general. According to the encounter, he's already summoned 3 velstrac evangelists. If casting summon fiend is a 3 action activity, and it takes an action to sustain the summons, is it possible for him to have cast it 3 times in a row? And then in the encounter, is he having to use 3 actions every round to sustain it for each casting of the spell? Or is he just using 1 action to sustain all of them? His fiend summoner ability gives him an extra action to sustain, but if he does have to use 3 actions to sustain, it would only give him one actual action per round, which would make all of his other spells useless until velstracs start dying...

Draconic-bloodline sorcerer has always been my favorite class (going back to 3.0 when it was just plain “Sorcerer.”) And I think it’s finally done right in 2E - I finally get to do everything I want at least once in every combat. I’ll never outshine the party fighter with Dragon Claws, but I have a blast using them. I frequently spend an action Intimidating, and can’t wait to level up to take Bon Mot to really drop saving throws. At first I really missed the +1/damage die for a given energy type from 1E, but it actually cuts down the pick-your-dragon-type-for-pure-optimization feelings that previously existed.

That sounds reasonable - thank you!

I'm sorry - it looks like something similar was asked earlier in the thread but I couldn't find a complete answer: Does my group's Champion's Liberating Step apply against all of the NPC's that have efficient capture? Reading up on manacles, they impose a movement penalty/manipulate penalty, but it doesn't actually say it makes anyone Restrained or Immobilized unless they're attached to a stationary object. And if it DOES give them a free Escape check (or they spend actions doing it on their own) - is it just one check against average manacle's thievery DC of 17? If that's the case, it's way simpler to do that than the 2 thievery checks required.

I apologize if it's inappropriate to dive in on someone else's thread with questions, but is it possible to add wands of specific spells? If i try to add a wand, I see a list of Wands of Continuation, followed by some specific wands (like Wand of Slaying or Smoldering Fireballs), then a list of Wands of Widening. Is it possible to just add a wand of a specific spell, like Invisibility or Lightning?

In one of our old AD&D campaigns, our DM LOVED using some crit/fumble table from an old Dragon magazine. We were on top of a tower, losing horribly to perytons (of all things). My ranger with a 2-handed sword was the last standing - I was going to take one last desperate swing before backing through the door dragging the nearest of my fallen comrades. Of course, rolled a 1. Told to roll percentile - rolled a d20 for a natural 20. Rolled again - nat 20. 100 on the fumble table was self-decapitation. I managed to take off my own head with some wild flailing back swing with a 2-handed sword. I can only assume it was carried off to feed peryton young in a nearby nest...

I'm reminded of the gold box D&D series for the C64 back in the 80s. Azure Bonds and the Champions of Krynn series.

And Pool of Radiance. With the 4+ hour-long slog thru Zhentil Keep that wouldn't let you save at any point...

Thank you very much!

What benefit would they get on a success? A feeling that something is about to happen, and they can try to stop it before it manifests with prayers/disable/dispel magic? Or does it manifest anyway and they just kind of have the drop on it?

I’m sorry - I’m not entirely sure how to run the Vision of Dahak hazard. Granted, I never really got the hang of running Haunts in 1E, and it appears the tradition continues.

It has a stealth of +16 (Expert) - does that mean characters that are Expert in perception get a perception check before it manifests? If so, what does a success actually provide the player? Or is the stealth bonus purely for its initiative (in which case what does the (Expert) signify)?

Do the appropriate characters simply “know” that a Religion check can be used to disable it (or a thievery check or a dispel magic)? Or is there some appropriate recall knowledge check that has to be done first to give them this info?

Book of Vile Darkness is awesome. I used a lot of inspiration from that to up the creep factor for a necromancer in Age of Ashes.

Some of our group were frustrated at the lack of PF1-style static bonuses they could stack up. I'm slowly convincing them that those bonuses are still there, just not in the form of must-have feats. Intimidate, flanking, feinting, aid, tripping, etc. now swings the math of the game on a round-by-round basis, making combat more fluid & dynamic. They might not be PF1's guaranteed bonuses each and every time, but they pay off often enough to make things exciting. And since they're part of combat mechanics, picking a feat just because it sounds cool isn't a sub-optimal, wasted choice.

Know Direction's precursor, Private Sanctuary, used to do deep dives on each individual class. That might fall under the "build guides" you'd mentioned, but I would love to have something like that for 2E.

The first thing in PF1 I ever ran was Crown of the Kobold King, and the pair of kobold slave’s - Kibbo and Jarrgdreg rapidly became the party’s favorite NPC’s. By the end of the module they were left as co-rulers of the remaining kobold tribe. It only made sense, years later, to replace the two kobolds in the AP with Kibbo and Jarrgdreg.

In the lower level of the citadel, the party came across the door marked “Mitey Dragonz. Stoopid Frog Peeple Keeep Owt” and politely knocked. The kobolds responded with “Go away stupid frog people! Can’t you read our informative yet adorably misspelled sign?!” (in my campaigns, the kobold speech pattern is to always use at least 2 adjectives separated by ‘yet.’) Even after entering the room, it took a couple of minutes to convince the kobolds that the party was not in fact stupid frog people in an alternate form, and the mitey dragonz threatened to immediately Burning Hands anyone who looked like they might climb up on the ceiling and begin spinning a cocoon. Eventually the party won their trust. Kibbo and Jarrgdreg explained to the party that after many “glorious yet fiscally irresponsible years” as rulers in Droskar's Crag they were politely asked to leave on the “best yet friendliest terms” - certainly that’s what “exile” means. The other kobolds shouted and shook their weapons in encouragement as the pair left.

Currently the pair guard the upper level of the citadel for the party as they go off to the goblin caves. They hope that given enough room they will grow to be full-size dragons, sort of like how goldfish grow to the size of their environment.

I’ve recently helped a friend convert a 7th level 1E Life Oracle to 2E (APG playtest), using just the CRB and playtest pdf’s and printed character sheet. Took about an hour, including gear, picking spells, etc. - granted oracle feats pretty limited at this point. On a side note, even with dedicating most general and skill feats to Medicine skill stuff, it made the character a very effective healer, but still interesting and capable of a broader range of activities, instead of really getting to do nothing but be the party healbot.

Monsters also generally get a cool one or two action ability, so they frequently don't just do 3 attacks. In the hell hound example, they get a breath weapon that takes one action. It could use its breath weapon for one action, move for one action, then melee attack at its full bonus. It's also not too bad at athletics checks, so it could spend an action trying a combat maneuver instead of just a melee attack.

My favorite moment of the campaign so far:

The party captured one of the bandits at Guardians Way, and the group's very lawful fighter decided to question him:

PC: So what will you do with your life if we let you go?
Bandit: (long pause) ...I've always had a deep interest in agriculture.
PC: (menacingly) Then give us some useful information!
Bandit: (terrified pause) ... you should always use contour plowing around hillsides to minimize topsoil erosion... you should rotate crops every season to replenish nutrients in the soil...
PC: Right then. Off you go.

Nope - innate spells aren't prepared or part of a repertoire or anything, so Ralldar only "knows" them at the level listed. Barghests CAN cast 2nd level invisibility at will tho, as opposed to once per day like many innate spells.

One of our campaigns is the Age of Ashes AP that I run (they just made it to 3rd level). This was actually just so that one of the other GMs in the group could see what running 2E would be like (he's feeling very bogged down by running a 15th level 1E campaign & is kinda wanting to end it for that reason). We had thought about making this a kinda alternate universe/possible dream sequence just in case it went bad.

But I do agree with what many have stated - our group has only played a handful of times in my 2E campaign & will quite probably fall back on their high-level 1E tactics, which would be frustrating at best. And with my own limited 2E GMing experience perhaps designing high-level encounters might be a bit of a reach for me. It might be best for him to just try running a low-level PFS scenario or something.

Thank you everyone for your advice!

Thank you very much. I could very well have missed things - I was just going by the wealth-by-level table, which indicated 1 14th level item, which I had used for +2 Resilient armor. I really didn't see much else to boost saves. I'll have to re-check things! Thanks again.

I apologize in advance for the ridiculously long post, but I had several inter-related questions so I kinda wanted to keep them together as opposed to breaking them into several more-reasonably sized posts.

We have several GMs in our group, so we have about 3 campaigns going on different nights - currently I’m the only 2E GM, and my campaign’s pretty low level so far. My friend runs a 15th-level PF1 campaign, but he’s interested in converting. So as an experiment I offered to come up with a series of encounters for his current campaign (a temple of Orcus, so kind of demon-y) for him to run as a one-shot, with everyone temporarily converting their characters. (I would play as well, but keep silent during any decision-making.)

So going by the encounter-building tables, it looks like a 17th level creature would make for a good boss fight against our 15th level party - I chose a marilith. I then used the Pathbuilder 2E app to convert a couple of our characters, just to see how things might line up (the party’s light-armored archer-fighter and my own draconic-bloodlined sorcerer.)

At first, numbers for our characters looked incredible - ACs in the 30s, saves in the low 20’s, mid to high 20’s for skills that you wanted to excel at. But then I compared the numbers with a couple of the encounters. The marilith (granted, boss fight so should be tough) has an AC of 40 - archer/fighter shouldn’t have a problem with that, but my sorcerer’s spell attack bonus of 26 needs a 14+ to hit, and its appr. +30 saves vs. my 36 DC seems kinda mismatched - although I totally get this is offsetting 2E’s lack of spell resistance. And I’m hoping a lot of spells with “take x on a successful save helps out as well. But its attack bonus of 35 seems to suggest LOTS of successful hits, as well as its own save DCs of near 40 means its damaging spells are extremely likely to succeed.

Does this all balance out in high-level play & I’m needlessly concerned? Is the idea that you do get hit a lot more, but you now have more HPs to cover it, and with 4 or more party members spreading out the damage taken and with numerically more actions it all evens out? Or am I totally messing up the character conversion and numbers for 15th level characters are generally higher? Or am I reading the encounter building table wrong and 17 is just too high?

I'm kinda working off and on converting Age of Worms to run after Age of Ashes - I think I was planning to start it in Kaer Maga, with the big city it then moves to being Riddleport.

Rise of the Runelords will always be number one for me. The villains were so incredibly awesome with such compelling backstories. Some of them were truly sympathetic stories of social outcasts & seeking acceptance. And for just pure evil, I don't think my players have ever wanted to kill bad guys more than the Grauls and the Kreegs...

Thank you very much! You've probably prevented me from destroying the party with a continual "Chilling Darkness" barrage! :)

Quick question about innate spells and monsters: In the CRB it says: “The ability that gives you an innate spell tells you how often you can cast it—usually once per day.” While in the introduction of the Bestiary it says: “Spells that can be used an unlimited number of times list “(at will)” after the spell’s name.” Does this mean if no number per day is given (or “at will”), it’s once/day by default? For instance, soulbound dolls have an innate 3rd level spell (levitate), plus an additional one depending on alignment - with no frequency listed does this mean they can only cast each once per day?

In our group, as for actual AP’s I’ve run ROTRL, Shattered Star and currently Age of Ashes. Someone else has run Mummy’s Mask. and yet another Carrion Crown. In Shattered Star it was fairly easy to omit the Pathfinder Society membership stuff, hence my hope with the upcoming APs.

In my group, our best campaigns have started off as simple adventuring parties. There might be siblings among them, childhood friends, sometimes total strangers thrown together by events, what have you. Everyone pretty much played whatever class/ancestry/background they wanted - the course of the AP or campaign might lead you down a given developmental path, but that’s simply a character choice to take or leave as you see fit.

Failures tend to be heavily themed campaigns (these are generally home-brew ideas). This has included the whole party starting off as city constables, campaigns where a few people had a “we should all be elves/dwarves/gnomes/what have you” idea, the party’s part of some military campaign, etc.

I think the problem with a themed campaign (at least with our group) is that even if you find something that 4 out of 6 people are ready to dive into, it kind of means that 2 people might feel that the character they’ve been wanting to play has to be put on hold for a considerable length of time. Thus, when I’m GMing for the group, I find the best way to avoid that is to keep it theme-light - you're certainly welcome to play an elf ex-constable with a couple of your fellow elf ex-constable buddies, and if life throws you in with a gnome barbarian, well, life does that sometimes.

Like I said - if we wrap up Age of Ashes before the next 2 APs are done & I’m still GMing for the group, I’ll just finish up my Age of Worms conversion. No problems!

Actually, with most AP's our best success comes from playing the characters we want, and kind of letting events of the AP mold them organically as we go along.

But no problem - worst comes to worst I just try my hand at converting 1E stuff for a bit.

Sorry to bother everyone!

Like I said, I realize I'm probably in a weird minority. My group has tried variously-themed campaigns numerous times (including city constables) - each with a varying degree of failure. I think the problem is coming up with a theme that all within the group find equally engaging enough to devote the next couple of years of gameplay to.

It's no problem whatsoever - worse case scenario overarching plots get used and encounters/individual elements get lifted/reworked. I was just hoping for maybe some sidebar advice within the APs to help in doing so - especially early on when it's hard to tell what given element you're leaving out becomes important in the 3rd book or something.

I know I’m probably in a weird minority on this, (really, that’s where I am most times in life), but I was just wondering if the next two APs might include sidebars on how how to run them NOT as part of a circus or as Absalom cops?

My characters all may have wildly different motivations, but at the end of the day, they’re all simply adventurers. They don’t have to get up at a given time in the morning, they don’t care about gluten or saturated fats or health care costs. They adventure. One thing they would never, ever do is hold down a real job - that’s exactly the kind of thing I play to NOT think about. I don’t want to answer to employers, or deal with unreasonable clients, or deal with anything that comes close to looking like actual responsibilities.

I certainly don’t mind the occasional AP that says you might not want to be a paladin in this, or a cleric of X might really do well here, but when it’s themed that you simply ARE real estate agents in Nidal or a crack team of building superintendents from Druma, it just kind of makes me hope there might be some tips on reworking things to make them suitable for traditional adventuring parties. Or am I just really weird in thinking this? OK, maybe real estate agents in Nidal has some potential...

I’m sorry - I’m still kind of confused on some matters of timing and motivation. So Voz has been checking out Alsetta’s Ring at the instruction of the Scarlet Triad for a few weeks now - presumably using the secret tunnel there, and then sneaking past the Bumblebrasher goblins inhabiting the level to the stairway down to the actual Ring chamber. So this goes on until the Cinderclaws reactivate Huntergate, collapsing the stairwell and basically starting the events of the whole book. At some point Voz uses the secret tunnel again to visit the Hall of Graves to find out about the Goblinblood Caves entrance - is she sneaking past the Cinderclaws trapped on this level? Is she working with them as fellow Scarlet Triad buddies? If so, why wouldn’t she just tell them about the secret tunnel so that they could get out? Or is she freaked out that they’re there and could potentially ruin everything, so she’s avoiding them?

I haven’t gotten book 2 yet, but are the Cinderclaws’ motivations for activating the gate explained there? Currently it seems like perhaps an accident, or an attempt by Malarunk to impress a superior - I’m just worried that if I go with either explanation, book 2 will contradict me & i’ll have to retcon or rework things. Hopefully I’ll have gotten book 2 before the party gets that far.

Thank you very much!