SpiderOrc's page

Hello hello,

Spoilers follow!

This past session, my players reached LLAOE ARAE, a very spoiler-ific location for multiple reasons.

I had been planning for this part of the story for quite some time and was very excited.

But I neglected to properly foresee my players' possible actions.

FIRST: due to their high level of paranoia regarding the Dycepskian menace, and the very real threat that their foe Nevintsi poses to BRETHEDA, they immediately started hounding random patients and staff regarding any recent experimental treatments, who had done what, and were literally THIS close to figuring out that a random Barathu patient was in fact a Dycepskian, per the book.

SECOND: They rooted around in the janitor's closet a little more closely than I'd anticipated, and found the knocked-out Doc, woke her up, and proceeded to quickly interview her.

I had to do some seat-of-my-pants delaying tactics on both of these issues, cuz I seriously thought it was all about to devolve into one big shooty mess before Nevintsi could spring his trap properly. Players, man.

So, my party is still in Book 4, about to set out to raid the Gamut Bio facility. It'll be a dozen sessions or more until they beat the final bosses in Book 6. But I wanted to see if anyone else had given some thought to designing a follow-up adventure arc?

One of the story ideas given in the back half of Book 6 is confronting a Vesk admiral who's actually a Reptoid, and who has launched a preemptive strike on a Pact Worlds-allied colony world. It's a cool idea, suggesting a starship blockade to run, a frenemy situation with some Veskarium secret agents who also want to defuse the explosive situation, tangling with brainwashed troops, and the Reptoid themself, whose plan for this conquered world are unknown.

Alternatively there's the general story hook of finding the remaining PC doppelgangers, all Reptoids who are surely up to nafarious deeds. In my game, those surviving doppels would be a biohacker in a high interstellar medical post, a Starfinder captain exploring ancient ruins and making first contact, a celebrity chef on an opulent cruise, and a celebrity wrestler-turned-corporate shill for a deep space mining project.

So who's gotten that far in the story yet? Or who's thinking about what might be a good adventure for when your party does get there?

Serious narrative spoilers below for THE THREEFOLD MYSTERY adventure path, AND the SIGNAL OF SCREAMS adventure path.
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REALLY spoilerific.
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Ok, here goes. In THE HOLLOW CABAL, our brave heroes encounter a 3rd faction of the Unseen: the fungal parasitic Dycepskians, who have not only corrupted a number of Reptoids who'd already infiltrated a major Steward precinct on Roselight, but also finally developed the necessary genetic adaptations to take over Barathu bodies as well. They use the latter to completely correupt the upper administrative and middle-tier scientific staff of GAMUT BIO, a small biotech startup.

The main narrative centers on learning of Gamut Bio's new HepatoDyne implant, which is in final testing phase, and is actually a secret Dycepskian infection tool. The PCs have to raid Gamut Bio's HQ, then follow the trail of their CEO, a Barathu, who flees to a moon around Bretheda, infecting some folks at another research facility, then onward to a Barathu hospice for victims of the Brethedan blight.

I've been wondering...the book makes it clear that implanting one of the HepatoDyne devices is likely to cause infection by the fungal tissue, and take over the victim, but what about a more subtle, growing threat? In another AP, Signal of Screams, the characters have to deal with a form of slow-growing corruption caused by the twisted energies of the Shadow Plane. This is measured with Corruption Points. I'm considering doing the same here in The Threefold Mystery with "spore points", but am still struggling with the exact exposure parameters (e.g. save DCs), and the overall cumulative effects of the spore counters, which in theory, should threaten to culminate in effectively destroying their identity and making them one with the fungal mass mind.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Feedback? Are you too already one with the Dycepskian mass mind? Glub glub glub? *mushroom sounds*

No significant spoilers here, just a question about one of the maps in The Hollow Cabal, Book 4. In the back of the book is a map for a Roselight Oracle, a type of patrol ship the PCs may or may not encounter (but possibly will in the next book?). However, I can't figure out how one deck leads to another. It might be that it simply implies an open vertical space, seeing as Barathu can fly, but the map still doesn't show exactly where an opening would be from the room below into the room above (the bridge), and there are obvious mapped stations on said bridge, implying a floor. Thoughts?

Feel free to post other map questions below, any other GMs of this AP.

I have a melee-focused soldier character with whom I thought I could find a way to make more effective full attacks. The plan was to pick up the "Multi-Weapon Fighting" feat at Level 6, followed by the Feat Boost "Multi-Weapon Versatility" at Level 7. This would mean that I "treat all one-handed melee weapons as if they had the operative special property" and is RAW intended to function with Multi-Weapon Fighting feat.

However...does my now having all my one-handed melee weapons count as "Operative" weapons reduce my normal Weapon Specialization to half-Character Level?

Hi there,

Running a Threefold Conspiracy campaign and one of the players has a Qi Adept character with the Aesthetic Warrior alternate class feature. He also has Natural Weapons.

We have some questions about the Plasma Blast ability he gains in a few more levels. We've looked at the COM Errata already, where it specifies that this ability is "a special ranged unarmed strike that targets KAC, requires one hand, is not archaic, has a range increment of 30 feet, deals lethal electricity and fire damage, and has the stunned critical hit effect".

Question 1: is this attack made with DEX or STR?
Question 2: Is this 100% defined as a ranged attack, and thus, NOT a valid candidate for making AoO against opponents? i.e. it doesn't "threaten" at a range of 30 feet, like some sort of super-reach?
Question 3: Based on the Errata'd text, it would appear that only this "special ranged unarmed strike" deals Fire and Electric, and NOT all of the PC's unarmed strikes, as in the original COM text. Correct?

Would appreciate any insight on these applications of the ability.