Spatula's page

I like the WotRK tie-in, especially given the PC levels. Another possibility is that Irovetti seeks out (and eventually uses) the Oculus to strengthen his hand against the PCs and/or Nyrissa. Maybe he doesn't intend to use it, just keep it in his back pocket, but as events progress he is no longer able to resist its lure... obviously he would use illusion magic to keep others from seeing what he's done to himself.

Another idea is that the thing is so evil that it starts corrupting the land around its resting place. Which lake did they dump it in? The one that their capital (I'm guessing) sits on the banks of and uses for trade and transport? Ooops. Maybe as things escalate the Oculus starts bringing in piscodaemons, which are, after all, aquatic in nature.

Yet another idea is that Nyrissa sends some powerful fey to find and remove the Oculus, because after all the land is ultimately hers and she doesn't want that thing hanging around polluting the landscape and attracting daemons.

Or heck, use all of the ideas! The Oculus is befouling the water/land, daemons are popping up in hexes bordering the lake, and while the PCs are trying to figure out what's going on, agents of both Pitax and Thousandbreaths are competing for the thing.

Doubt you're still looking after all this time, Tenebrous Sage, but here's a link for anyone who is searching for the same thing:

VTT Maps for The Thrushmoor Terror.

I had similar thoughts as you, denigruer. I had used small troll armies back in Rivers Run Red, and the trolls ended up sacking Tatzylford. When the town was rebuilt it was with an eye towards defense. There was no way the scenario outlined in the adventure was going to work so I envisioned something bigger using the mass combat rules. I wrote down my thoughts on the adventure prior to running it here, and a recounting of how it all turned out starts here.

Basically, I had Brevoy invade the players' kingdom shortly after the attack on Tatzylford and before they could properly invade Drelev (hit them when they're weak!). The PCs managed to beat back Surtova's initial foray and then immediately put Drelev on the backburner to deal with the bigger threat.

When the players later met with Irovetti, he claimed that he had hired a mercenary army to sack Drelev, not their kingdom. They must have fallen under the sway of this "Armag" character and gone rogue, he told them. And they mostly bought it.

In your situation, you have a nice opening with Mivon being an antagonist. Mivon and Pitax are at odds over this border town Sarain that's off the southern end of the map, and don't like or trust one another (hmm, I thought I read that the town changed hands between the two kingdoms somewhere but now I can't find the reference). You could have Irovetti approach the PCs now and offer an alliance against their southern neighbor. He can befriend them before the invasion, and perhaps the players will be more likely to believe him when he blames the attack on Armag.

Spoilers for Sound of a Thousand Screams, of course.

While prepping the last half of book 6 for my campaign, I was struck at how odd the setup of the Fable was.

It has 4 levels, with each level being reachable through a different gateway placed somewhere in the House. The first two layers are normally infinite spaces, but if the realm is uprooted, they become 20′ wide circular rooms. The other two layers are always 20′ wide circular rooms, which is an insultingly-sized area to fight an epic battle in. There doesn’t seem to be any method to move between the levels, though presumably Nyrissa can do so at will. Or does she have to exit the Fable and re-enter from a different portal? The adventure doesn’t say, or not that I can find.

The levels of the Fable are all pretty boring. There’s a pleasant field, an infinitely tall tree whose branches the PCs could fall from if they weren’t capable of flight for some bizarre reason, a room with a statue of Nyrissa and a scrying pool, and another room that’s her bedchamber. It’s not really clear what the purpose of the separate levels is in the published setting – Nyrissa is said to avoid the PCs, so they will have to hop in and out of the different areas of the Fable, as there’s apparently no way to progress through them, until they find the one that she is in. And the levels that are empty of Nyrissa are also empty of obstacles.

When Nyrissa is encountered – probably on the third level, from which she can scry upon anyone in the House – there’s not enough room to have a proper battle. She’s has druid spells and could theoretically summon gigantic allies – but there’s not enough space for that. She can fly – but the ceiling is 20′ high. She has area of effect spells – but she will be caught in their area along with the PCs. All in all, I find the whole design of this area very puzzling. What is the point of the different areas if the players are just going to pop into them, see there’s nothing there, and then leave? Why such a small area for the final confrontation?

I ended up making a bunch of changes for my game so that it would make sense to me (see the above link) but I’d be curious to hear how this played out for other groups, or how DMs changed around the Fable for their own campaigns.

There is some traffic going from humanoid to dragon-like. For example a sorcerer with the draconic bloodline. Add on the Dragon Disciple prestige class, which gives one some dragonic traits. There's also the "form of the dragon" spells, which turn you into a dragon.

Maybe the bloodline has form of the dragon as an innate spell-like ability, or maybe Choral is a Dragon Disciple, or maybe he's managed to make his dragon transformation permanent, or maybe he's a dragon pretending to be human and his descendants are part-dragon. As Gargs454 says, go with whatever works for your story.

I thought energy damage wasn't multiplied on a crit. So it would be 9d6+90 + 3d6 fire, average 125. Which would still probably kill most characters at that level. But smart PCs will have breath of life handy, because instant deaths will happen around this point, and going forward.

War of the River Kings (#5) - the assassination encounter at Whiterose is not really designed with 12th-13th level PCs in mind. My players turned invisible when they got ambushed, and when Gaetane started to sniff them out, they flew or teleported away. Then they came back a little later and murdered Gaetane and the low-level flunkies after some prep and planning. Irovetti has this convoluted plan to draw the PCs to Whiterose, so that they can be ambushed by an archer that has no ability to handle any spellcasters, either to detect or stymie them, or to evade spell effects - it doesn't make much sense.

"You're a good guy, Andre. I hates to rob ya, I do! But I gotta pay my cut to the boss, yeah? So c'mon, hand it over. Don't make me an' the guys haveta hurt you an' your friends, eh? We wouldn't like that, on account a you being our bud an' all."

What I've been doing, starting with the players' encounters with the mites in Stolen Land, is to make it known that a powerful fey has an interest in these unsettled lands. All the fey know it, and talk about it (though they generally don't know many details), and evil ones see it as a reason the lands are "theirs." The players call the powerful fey "the Green Lady" but she has other names.

This foreshadowing has manifested in a few ways in my campaign (I no longer remember what I've taken from others on these boards or made up myself):

I would start with the sticky thread for the 1st adventure.

The kingdom building and mass combat rules in the adventure books have been superseded by the Ultimate Campaign versions, which are on the www.d20pfsrd.com site under Gamemastering -> Other Rules.

You can skim through the forum here, looking for interesting topics. There is so much additional material to be found here, but it depends on your interests. The adventure path is very malleable and can go in lots of different directions, depending on what your group wants to focus on.

I've incorporated some of the forum ideas into my own game, which I cover from a DM's perspective starting here. Some threads that I found very helpful are:

For book 1:
Fey pranks

For book 2:
Making the start of the kingdom much more interesting
Giving the PCs more of a unified threat in #2

For the whole path, but mostly book 2+:
Injecting more politics into the AP

For book 3:
Ideas for changes to #3

But there's loads more stuff here. Like I said, start with the sticky thread for the chapter that you're on or about to run, and go from there.

Let's try this: LINK.

The kingdom events can provide inspiration for incorporating the politics. Who is behind the reveal of an embarrassing scandal or an assassination? Which families are involved in a feud? Who is this famous noble who is visiting? Who is providing a gift to the kingdom? And so on.

Really, the important thing is in defining the players. Who are the factions, what are their goals, how will they generally go about achieving those goals. Once you have that, how they respond (or not) to outside events and the players' actions will tend to write itself.

I used the "players have to make alliances and enemies for their initial BP" option, which tied them to some of the Great Houses (and pissed off others).

Around RRR, they came into conflict with a nobleman ally of the Regent, who was really a fey bogeyman in disguise, which was a side plot tied to one character's backstory. During that time they attended a royal ball in New Stetven to confront the nobleman.

Before VV, the Regent forced Restov to cut ties with the PC kingdom, as per the book, but as they had diplomatic treaties with Restov that actually affected their kingdom numbers. And they had a pretty close relationship with the Swordlords, so communication had to be conducted via backchannels after that. Which came up a lot in VV as the Swordlords kept trying to get the players to wipe out the Nomen and the players kept trying to broker a compromise.

Before BFB, a Baron from Brevoy who was close to the Regent approached the PC kingdom and asked them to swear fealty to the Throne and be formally incorporated into Brevoy. The players demurred. They spent some time trying to find the missing Rogarvians to steam what seemed like an imminent civil war in Brevoy, but didn't get far. Then after Fort Drelev's initial invasion, before the players had a chance to strike back, they were invaded by Brevoy.

After that, they pivoted from trying to stop a civil war to instigating it. Currently they have allied with the Swordlords, House Medyved, and House Orlovsky and are attacking the gathered loyalist forces outside of New Stetven, just as winter is starting to arrive. Not really sure what will happen there, or what it will mean for the future, but... they might have broken Brevoy for good.

Hello all, I've been reading through this forum a lot lately looking for ideas on how to spruce up my upcoming Kingmaker campaign. I've found lots of good ideas, many of which I plan on implementing. That said, I'm always looking for new and better ideas. I've heard that foreshadowing is a very important throughout the game and needs to be added, but as it stands I only have the first (and soon the second and third) books in the AP, so I'm not certain of everything that should be included. What are some important things you would be sure to include in a new game of Kingmaker, foreshadowing related or not?

Related to the overall plot, if you're sticking with what's published, I would recommend (as do many others) adding mentions of the BBEG throughout the first 5 books. The DM is aware of her via background information, but most likely the players will not see that material. You don't necessarily need to know much at this stage, other than there is a powerful faerie who has an interest in the Stolen Lands.

Also I feel like the setup is a bit of a bait-and-switch for the players. The Player's Guide talks a lot about Brevoy, the noble houses, etc. and the actual adventure features almost none of that. So if you and your group want to get into the politics, keep in mind that you will probably end up diverging greatly from the published adventures. And if you don't get into the politics, the players should be aware of that because IMO they're set up to think it'll be a prominent feature.

Finally, I would say that the "bosses" of each chapter are far too passive. Many of the AP chapters start off with an attack, and then the final foe sits in their lair and waits for the PCs to come knocking. Make them proactive! They have goals (if not, give them some) and they should be trying to carry them out. The Stag Lord goes after Oleg's. Hargulka gathers a troll army to kill the settlers. And so on. Make the world a living, breathing place that responds to the PCs' incursion into this wild land.

Heh. When my players started messing with the secret eye room, V went right there before they had a chance to give him a 20% spell failure chance. Given the importance of the room, why wouldn't he alarm it and protect it? That didn't go so well for the PCs.

Prior to that, he animated the inhabitants of the city of Varnhold as a massive zombie horde and sent several soul eaters after the Ruler. Afterwards, he tried some scry & fries and animated the colossal linnorm skeleton. Fun times, fun times.

To the fellow GMs that have already ran this.

How did you make your players fear it? How do you make the horror part relevant? Unlike in the first book, I'm not feeling the mood here, maybe I'm missing something.

Haven't run this yet, but I plan on changing things around a bit and playing up the paranoia running rampant in the town. In particular, people are disappearing, disturbing strangers are arriving in town (cultists invited by Melisenn), the fort is locked down, and Lowls has disappeared. Pretty much everyone the PCs run into that doesn't recognize them from before is going to be unfriendly at best towards them, and if they are made to talk they go on and on about the town's woes.

People can't go out at night, there are strange lights across the water, anyone who gets too close to that pier either vanishes or goes crazy, there's a tentacled ghost that roams the streets, hopping figures are glimpsed in the shadows, the magistrate won't do anything, the Count is gone and no one's in charge, this bizarre ship captained by a foreign slaver brought these awful savages to Iris Hill, weird strangers are arriving in town, this winged head/torso was seen flying through the night sky, folks are disappearing night after night... There is so much going on that it's a little crazy.

Make the town's problems seem overwhelming. Hit the players over the head with the fact that they're not liked and trusted because people knew them from before or because they assume the PCs are with the cultists showing up in town and are maybe tied to all the vanishings. Make it known that people are being kidnapped just about every day, or it seems like it from the rumors. The place is under siege! People are scared - with good reason! Bring that to the forefront.

You can also take a look at these undead cyclops lieutenants I came up with. I gave them each a bunch of regular zombie cyclops for minions, and then ended up as decent threats. The graveknight was the most deadly, though, by a long shot. That is a killer template. Well, he was also riding the animated linnorm skeleton from hex "R", which might have contributed to the deadliness...

Vordakai's Heralds

You could adopt the changes from the 6-player conversion thread (stickied above, but here's a link) if they're really blowing through everything with no sweat and just 4 PCs.

A word of warning, though: the dread zombie cyclopes are pretty deadly in numbers. Flash of insight with a x3 crit weapon and power attack is almost a guaranteed PC-dropper, if not PC-killer.

Quinn's stat block after completion of Dreams of the Yellow King has been uploaded to Dropbox for your perusal!

Out of curiosity, how are Quinn's bonus/penalties vs. cultists/others being handled? Did his bonuses apply vs. nearly everything in book 2, or just the human cultists? Was there anything he could use the higher values against in book 3, or did he have to use the lower settings for "other targets"?

I have a few that I've picked up here and elsewhere:

brevoy-pitax-mivon-rough
kingmaker-regional-map
huge-riverlands-map

1) How the heck does one pronounce "Miacknian"?

2) I'm pretty sure Mun's homunculus Akie has the wrong hit points. 118 is over the maximum, even, for 9d10+20. The average of that range would be 69.

I was thinking maybe the priestess leveled up to 10th, and then got killed by the penanggalan. Since the manananggal can only rise from a 10 HD female, and was created when the penanggalan got to Thrushmoor, and I would think the disappearance of a 10th level NPC would be noteworthy in town.

Wow, that's great, Spastic Puma! What a memorable ending.

Still reading through, but I noticed a couple of things in the stats:

Captain Hinks Argup (the Razmiri guy) is listed as a "blackstrike" on page 9, but I don't see that in the NPC list. Is he supposed to be a Shadow Striker (F7/Shadowdancer2)? The CRs match.

The Priest of Bokrug on page 34 has the base Ib Shade ability scores, +1 Wisdom for levels, and doesn't use the Monster with Class Levels array (14/14/12/12/10/8). If one were to add 4 to Wis & Cha as part of that array, that would result in +2 to spell & channel DCs, +1 3rd level spell prepared, +22 hp, +2 AC, +2 Fort, +2 Will.

Dragons are immune to sleep, and still sleep naturally.

So Erasmus used more than the Champion spirit this time around?

A spiritualist with the fractured mind archetype (so the "phantom" is a manifestation of the character's broken mind, rather than someone else's spirit), skilled in healing, whose phantom has an anger focus...

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." - Doctor Brenda Banner

What markings are you looking to avoid, and how big do you need the images to be?

My aim here was to craft a NPC that has all of the abilities she demonstrated in the show, which means that she ends up with a lot of other abilities as well, because that's just how the system works. Hey, no translation between media types is perfect. Also, because PF is a level-based game and it prioritizes abilities differently than the narrative does, some of those abilities are high level, making her high-level as well. Surprisingly, to me, the highest-level ability that Eleven demonstrates in the show is mass fly - I thought it would have been disintegrate when I started.

I didn't care for the telekinetic builds I tried, since they didn't have any of her remote sensing abilities. I tried out a telekinetic with the clairaudiant & clairvoyant templates from the Advanced Bestiary, but in the end I thought a straight psychic with a focus on telekinetic and farseeing spells was a better fit. Kineticists are at-will "blasters", which doesn't really match what Eleven does in the show. Aside from cantrip-level tricks, she tends to hang back in a stressful situation until she unleashes some ability to devastating effect - acting much more like a spellcaster, in my opinion.

The one downside is that her abilities in the show are powered by fear, which is actually anathema to psychics and psychic magic users. She lashes out when she is deathly afraid, and generally not before. To that end I used the Abomination psychic discipline - her extreme fear in the show is represented by manifesting her "dark half", which renders her immune to fear and makes her spells more dangerous.

Huh, interesting that they went all the way to Caliphas instead of checking out Thrushmoor for resurrection services. IIRC the priest of Pharasma there is 9th level, although she has just vanished when the adventure starts. But the PCs (or Winter) wouldn't necessarily know that.

No one related to the vanished house exists any longer. Unless you mean for that to be a plot point? Come to think of it, it would be kinda interesting if someone didn't disappear during the Vanishing. "Whoops, guess you were adopted."

Spoilers for VV!

So many of you are probably aware that the 6-player conversion posted in these forums adds a cyclops anti-paladin graveknight to the final encounter of the adventure. The anti-paladin levels never quite sat right with me, given the tomb's and the BBEG's heavy investment with Abbadon and the Four Horsemen.

Vordakai is a worshiper of Charon, the horseman of death, and I began to think that it would be cool if the graveknight was a follower of the horseman of war instead of a demon-lover. Then I started to think it would be neat if V had other lieutenants, for famine and pestilence. A complete set, so to speak.

Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary has templates for the different horsemen, but they are primarily mounted combatants, which didn't really fit into V's tomb. So I just went with some custom undead cyclopes. They are:

Cyclops graveknight (cold) fighter 2, herald of famine (frost/winter themed)

Cyclops skeletal champion cleric of Apollyon 6, herald of pestilence (disease themed)

Cyclops bloodknight kineticist (blood kineticist) 5, herald of war (blood themed)

Full stats can be found here, if anyone is interested.

Melisenn's gear is also very curious. She has about 11,783 gp's worth, assuming the scrolls are crafted by her. That's just shy of what a 10th level NPC would get. Her equipment is worth over 13k otherwise.

Assassins/rogues aren't good opponents for stand-up fights against groups. Ideally they should hit a group when it's distracted during another fight, or alternatively deliver a decapitating strike and disappear. With her wand of invisibility, Risi is certainly capable of the latter. Really she should be looking for opportunities to attack PCs when they're sleeping, like if they have individual rooms at the inn or the Agency. If her breaking into the room doesn't wake the target up... coup de grace with a death attack.

Aside from that, the sense that I got from the fort and the manor is that the encounters aren't necessarily static; combat in one area is going to logically draw out foes in nearby zones which could quickly become overwhelming for the PCs. This is made fairly clear in the fort - running across one id ooze alerts the other, which alerts nearby skum; the undead mercs reinforce each other, etc. In the manor, a fight with the living topiaries in the courtyard (which probably can't be avoided) should draw out the kuru from the kitchen (and the guardhouse, if it hadn't been cleared); entering the manor itself leads to getting attacked by the hound of Tindalos, which is going to alert pretty much everyone aboveground, etc.

The last encounter does seem on the weak side, but perhaps the expectation is that the PCs are worn down at that point? They also would have been hit by the glyph on their way into the room.

The gathered cultists - his family, his friends, his neighbors - and the Thing That Should Not Be "call" for him. He says he did not answer the call, and must have fled when they came for him. In between his refusal and his escape, he witnesses something so terrifying that it drives him insane and he can't remember what happened. Or maybe just finding out that all the people in his quiet, comfortable life are actually blasphemous cultists consorting with terrible things from beyond the stars, and that he had been part of it since he was born, broke his mind. What he does know is that his companion is never seen again, and that he can never go back home.

It's a very Lovecraftian sort of story - small town concealing dark secrets, protagonist having a cursed heritage, some final revelation that drives the protagonist temporarily insane and changes their life forever.

So, out of curiosity, since Deep Ones are in Bestiary 5, why use Skum? Lysie Brilt in the Smokehouse is even an obvious Deep One Hybrid expy, but with "skum-tainted blood" instead. Why not use the real thing?

Alright, here's a timeline culled from the first two adventures, up to the start of the campaign. Spoilers ahoy!

1. Age of Serpents: Flying polyps travel to Golarion and build Star Stelae on two sites. One of those sites is Avalon Bay in Lake Encarthan, near the mouth of the Danvers River. Serpentfolk drive off the polyps.
   
2. "Ages ago": Sarkonian druids trap a bhole in temporal statis under Briarstone Isle, a small speck of land in Avalon Bay located near the Star Stelae.
   
3. 4024 AR: Kellid/Sarkonian wanderers settle amidst the Star Stelae, mistaking them for Sarkonian godstones. The settlers revere Pharasma, and three of her psycopomp servants: Dammar the Denied, Shadix Who Dreams, and Vonymos the Mourning Storm. They name their new community Thrushmoor.
   
4. "Early 4000s": Ariadnah, a follower of the Elder Mythos and Shub-Niggurath in particular, comes to Briarstone Isle, seeking the trapped bhole. She builds three Sarkonian godstones on the island, dedicating one to a servant of Hastur known as the Tatterman. The Tatterman is summoned and recruited by the witch. She then presents herself to the people of Thrushmoor and demonstrates her power to them. The town gradually abandons its previous worship in favor of the depravities of the Elder Mythos. Ariadnah becomes known as the Briarstone Witch.
   
5. 4050 AR: A Pharasmin inquisitor passing through Thrushmoor is horrified, and reports the town for blasphemy.
   
6. 4051 AR: A group of mercenaries is sent by the church to wipe out the heretics in Thrushmoor. The night before their attack, they see strange lights in the town. When they invade in the morning, they find the town completely devoid of human life. This becomes known as the Thrushmoor Vanishing.
   
7. 4288 AR: Thrushmoor is re-settled but acquires a reputation for being cursed or haunted.
   
8. 4315 AR: Construction of a fort begins on Briarstone Isle to protect the town and its fleet from pirates, but is abandoned when the Captain in charge is found gruesomely murdered. His death is blamed on the Witch.
   
9. ???: One of Thrushmoor's Star Stelae is covered by a man-made hill.
   
10. 4487 AR: Pragmus Lowls I builds Iris Hill, the Lowls manor home and seat of power for the county, atop said hill.
    
11. 4570 AR: The Sincomakti School of Sciences is founded in nearby Rozenport.
    
12. 4584 AR: (also listed as 4596 AR in book 1 but that doesn't seem to fit) Hasterton Lowls I invites the church of Pharasma to perform showy exorcism on Briarstone Isle and declares the curse/haunting to be over.
    
13. 4585 AR: Briarstone Asylum is built on the Isle on top of the abandoned fort with the help of the Sincomakti School.
    
14. ???: Dr. Henri Meritmane of the Sincomakti School leads an expedition to Qadira. One of his students, Ulver Zandalus, is kidnapped and traumatized by cultists of Hastur.
    
15. 4687 AR: Ulver Zandalus is brought to the asylum and treated by Dr. Eliege Losandro. The Tatterman, who had retreated back to the Dreamlands following the Vanishing, is attracted by Zandalus' connection to Hastur. The Tatterman torments the dreams of Zandalus, along with the asylum's staff and other patients.
    
16. "Decades passed": Zadalus' paintings of an alien city are put on display by Dr. Losandro, and his work gains some notoriety.
    

• The buried Star Stelae under Iris Hill is discovered and excavated.
  
• Hasterton Lowls IV publishes some shoddy academic work and is disgraced. This is likely the reason for the animus between him and Dr. Henri Meritmane. Lowls becomes obsessed with restoring his reputation and delves into occult research.
  
• Lowls sees some of Zandalus' paintings and recognizes the Star Stelae of Thrushmoor in the alien landscapes. He begins visiting with Zandalus and becomes convinced that dreams are the key to his research.
  
• Lowls begins embezzling funds meant for the crown, and Thrustmoor's Magistrate Padgett reports the crime.
  
• Lowls enters the Dreamlands and encounters the Mad Poet, who promises knowledge of the polyps' second site in Golarion in exchange for a sacrifice. Lowls brings some of his thugs to the Dreamlands and drowns them in a lake there.
  
• Lack of pay from Lowls causes Thrushmoor's armed forces to walk off the job.
  
• Royal Accuser Omari recruits Winter Klaczka and others to investigate Lowls. They travel to Thrushmoor.
  
• With the location of the second site in hand, Lowls prepares for his journey. He commits his now-amnesiac thugs to the Briarstone Asylum, and also gives Dr. Losandro an occult tome, telling her that it contains a ritual that could help Zandalus.
  
• Lowls skips town, leaving his trusted servant Melisenn Kororo in charge of Iris Hill. Kororo invites other cultists to come to Thrushmoor, and contacts a group of skum in Lake Encarthan.
  
• The skum and a summoned soulsliver murder the remaining forces at Fort Hailcourse, including Magistrate Padgett.
  
• Omari and Winter arrive in Thrushmoor. Winter is sent to Briarstone Asylum to find Lowls' thugs that were recently committed. Omari is rebuffed by Kororo at Iris Hill, and heads to Fort Hailcourse to talk to Magistrate Padgett.
  
• Dr. Losandro attempts the ritual, and it seems to free Zandalus of his trauma. However, that night, the asylum descends into madness.
  

Wow, there's a lot going on in this adventure. I feel like I need to make a timeline of events that happen, both independent of the PCs (more citizens get captured) and dependent (the ambush, the assassin).

One bit did stick out to me: several of the cultists have potions of vanish, with no caster level listed, so they default to 1st. Vanish is 1 round/level invisibility, which makes these potions seem rather useless to me. The cultist takes out the potion (a move action), drinks it (a standard action), and maybe takes a 5' step. Then the cultist's turn comes around again, and... the invisibility ends! The ambush writeup says they'll use the potions to get away, but it would need at least two rounds for that to work, no?

I'm more concerned about the unique encounters involving the dopplegangers, the nightgaunt and the Tatterman. Do I tweak their stats or do I include additional mobs as a distraction? What do you guys advise?

Either/or. In general, you should increase the total XP of a given encounter by about 7/4. So a CR 5 encounter (1600 XP) should instead be worth ~2800 XP.

The issue with putting all that extra XP into one critter is both that the foe may be too tough, in that it has abilities that the party can't handle, and too fragile, in that it gets the focused attention of 7 PCs and can only make 1 action/round in response.

So personally I favor spreading the extra XP around when possible. Give a single foe the Advanced template or another 1-2 class levels, and also add in some minions. Zandalus/the Tatterman could have some Apostle guards, for example.

I also give "named" foes max HP, because the focus fire takes them down too quickly for my tastes otherwise.

Huh, I didn't even know Dual Talent was a thing. Thanks.

The complete stat block for Alahazra after the completion of In Search of Sanity can now be seen in our Dropbox.

Enjoy!

Thanks for taking the time to put the character sheets up.

So it looks like the PCs were actually made with 18 point buy?

I am running this for 7 players, I know it's written for 4.

The party has two witches, two paladins, an investigator, an oracle, and a monk.

What simple and easy adjustments can I make to keep it fair and challenging?

I ran the 1st session with no adjustments, as they are still 1st level, and it was rough but fine. But I think in future sessions it may become too easy for them.

For groups of foes, increase the # encountered by x1.75. Add the Advanced simple template to single foes, or add in some mooks. Or both. Basically multiply the XP for the encounter by x1.75 and add in more levels/foes to reach the new XP total.

The complete stat block(s) for Erasmus after the completion of In Search of Sanity are now available for viewing in our Dropbox, check him out!

Maintaining one PC is enough work as it is... 6 related PCs, though? Ooof. I can see why you wanted to go with the relic archetype that let you stick with whichever spirit you wanted (Champion, presumably, given Erasmus' Spirit Focus feat).

The spirit-switching seems even more burdensome since some give weapon and armor proficiencies that the character doesn't normally have - is the Medium supposed to carry around a suit of plate for when there's a Guardian spirit and a greatsword when there's a Champion?

So, which spirits did you have access to during play? Was there ever a point where you couldn't get a spirit that you wanted? Did you switch much, or stick with one spirit throughout?

The play map is amazing. Both that you have a map that big (not to mention a table) but that you can fit the entire asylum on it. What did you do for the side maps? (the starting area & the upper floor)

I haven't seen the group's previous marathons, so maybe this level of thought and work put into it is typical for them but I'm kinda blown away by it all. And to produce a 55 page PDF on top of the game itself! I was disappointed that there wasn't an actual account of what happened during the play-through, but perhaps that's to come later? I saw that it was a "living" document, and I know from personal experience that such write-ups can take a long time to complete.

Idle thought I just had: there's this massive linnorm skeleton a couple of hexes away from the necromancer BBEG's lair. What if, perhaps after the PCs have gone into the lair but had to retreat for to rest or for a kingdom turn, it got animated and parked outside as a guard dog? The only disappointment is that, although it's physically imposing, even a max HD skeleton is only CR 8. OTOH it's a pretty deadly CR 8 with all of those attacks.

I've seen at least one DM say that they started in Restov with the handing out of the charters, so that the PCs could meet the other groups.

I wouldn't have any sort of random chance whether the PCs get the charters or not, as that's basically opening up the possibility that some/all of them don't get to participate in the AP. Instead I would ask the players how their character ended up with the charter.

KM is a game of politics, nearly every encounter can turn political.

That might be going a bit far... *looks at Tuskgutter encounter*

Many a new DM has gotten carried away and tried to do too much, which usually results in the campaign crashing and burning. If you haven't already, you should talk with your players and make sure you're all on the same page: what do they expect from the campaign, what do you expect, that sort of thing. Unspoken, mis-matched expectations are another good campaign ender.

In the spirit of providing a more living world, it's good to think of how different groups will react to the PCs' decisions. Consider the PCs' likely actions and consider the likely outcomes. Book 1 starts with the PCs protecting Oleg's from an attack. If word gets back to the Thorn River camp, they go on alert and beef up their numbers (this is in the text). Now, what happens when the Thorn River camp gets knocked over? Does word get back to the bandit fort? If not, how long before they discover what happened? What happens once they know their northern base was wiped out? How long does it take them to respond? And how often do they change the fort's pass phrase, if ever, and will they do so once they know someone's after them?

You don't want to plan too far in advance, or the PCs' actions will render your work moot. But it's good to be prepared for events that you think could happen in the next session.

IMC, the bandits laid an ambush for the PCs at the Thorn River crossing, led by a new and disposable bandit lieutenant. Later still, Dovan and Auchs led an attack on Oleg's while the group was away. If my party hadn't hit the fort when they did, I was going to send the Stag Lord himself after them. And that's an ambush that probably would not have gone very well for them...

One thing I meant to add (but forgot to when the time came) was a journal of the Stag Lord's where he writes about dreams of the Green Lady and a sword, of her wanting him (the SL) to find the sword, that sort of thing. But he had no luck finding it and his despair in failing her was part of his slide into the bottle.

One bit that I did manage to add is that the SL considered himself the favored of the Green Lady, and told the players that in battle.

I use the map images from the adventures, myself. But if I was using the kingdom rules in a different setting, I would probably use Hexographer to make the maps. It makes pretty good maps, and it's free.

The Kingdom Manager application that I built (thanks for the plug, Bradley!) doesn't make maps; it takes a map image and allows you to add all of the other stuff to it (towns, encounter sites, etc.), and then use that to create and manage a kingdom. I did have a thought that one day it could be used to draw maps as well, instead of relying on a pre-existing image, but that will probably never happen.

You know, I tried that exact tactic at the start of the campaign. But somewhere in the middle of Stolen Land we just fell out of the practice.

IME, most players don't want to be bothered tracking rations, or ammunition, or especially encumbrance. I'm sure there are some players who are into that sort of thing, but I've only ever met one in over 3 decades of gaming. So I have to stay on them about that stuff, which isn't much fun for me. And I am juggling so many other things that I am bound to forget.

Also, to a certain extent the system is working against you. Once they have mounts, carrying the rations isn't an issue. Once they have a little bit of gold, buying the rations isn't an issue. And even if they ran out, it's so easy to get by with Survival checks and taking 10 that it still won't be an issue. Granted, using forage to get food & water slows you down, at least until their bonus is higher.

Other wilderness stuff, like getting lost, is also easily bypassed with a halfway decent Survival bonus. Temperature extremes are dispensed with a 1st level spell. And so on.

So I guess my advice would be to say, if they have money, and they have the carrying capacity, simply charge them X gp/day of being in the wild. If they lose their provisions but have someone trained in Survival, they can chose to starve or to move at half speed. The situation basically can't get desperate unless there's no one with Survival, but how often does that happen with a Kingmaker party?