Scythes are pretty nasty weapons. One of the reasons I kept her out of combat was because of the make up of my group...though it goes both ways in that combat, As seen in the group obituary here.
Even with the extended spells she didn't do all that well, until the second stage.
Something else I might recommend if you haven't run 7 days yet is this
Spoiler:
Switch domains on some of the priests to the Magic Domain...Hand of the Acolyte was extremely effective for 3 particular priests on the catwalks in area G8 of the temple. My group hated that.
If anything, with proper warning, she looks even nastier than her normal write-up even adapting her as a PF cleric. I should have thought of that when I was working on 7 days...
Though you are tapped out for feats, you forgot the feat "Extend Spell", she normally uses several extended buffs when alerted to the PC's presence, and she cast extended status on Rolth, Davaulus and a priest every day. 10 hour duration means she has to expend 3 more spells later in the day to renew the effect, or risk having no warning if the PCs invade at night. This is of course assuming your PCs can avoid alerting the entire temple to their presence.
When I ran 7 days, the pc's managed to pull off cleansing the temple without raising the alarm, it was that status spell that gave her the time needed to buff. Depending on your party mix, un-buffed she would be a pretty underwhelming encounter.
There are a lot of ways you could work around it though, including using the money gained from not having a +1 breastplate to give her extra scrolls of status, or trading in one of her item crafting feats for extend.
I would have a read at the CC Players guide. It answers a few of your questions.
It shouldn't be a problem if you keep a rein on player personalities, and make them adhere to the central reason for being in Ravengro, as associates and friends of Dr. Lorrimor. If your inquisitor was that kind of fanatic, Dr. Lorrimor would probably never have associated with him any more than necessary and not included him in his last will and testament.
Witches are also regarded as something of a necessity in Ustalav, especially in areas with a lot of Kellid.
As an inquisitor of Pharasma, his primary concerns are going to be undead, and the practice of necromancy. That said, some of the Pharasma's inquisitors, in Ustalav, are zealots who burn arcane spellcasters as "witches." It is noted that they are pretty much a minority, but a growing minority. As a dhampyr, your inquisitor should probably be afraid of them...after all he would be a walking blasphemy in their eyes, being half-dead, and strongly negative energy aligned. They might tolerate him, if they absolutely had to, but they would also probably be watching his every move for some kind of mis-step that would allow them to tie him to a tree and set him on fire.
I did want to add a note. In History of Ashes, when calculating Cinnabar's attack bonuses, you seem to be giving her the full off-hand penalty for two-weapon fighting, even though Sawtooth Sabre is a light weapon.
Name of PC: Lirai
Class/Level: Half Elf Conjurer level 7
Adventure: Seven Days to the Grave
Catalyst: Lady Andy and the Daughter of Urgothoa, ending one fight with a critical hit from a x4 weapon, and beginning the next one with a critical hit from a x4 weapon.
The party was fighting Lady Andy, fully buffed to the gills because they manages to knock Rolth unconscious, and kill Ramoshka. So, after a nasty fight in the plague vats, and another fighting the Luekodaemon, they went in to fight Lady Andy. She gave the party hell (even though I changed her domains and some of her spells, and increased her level a tad for a party of 5). Lirai had been doing the most consistent damage using a wand of scorching ray (well invested item for her) and a horde of summoned augmented celestial hawks. Lady Andy ended up focusing mostly on Lirai, trading spells, after trying to kill the very lethal bow-ranger with slay living. The Magus cast enlarge person on the scythe-wielding Hell Knight, who proceeded to lunge and score a lethal critical on Lady Andy while she was flying about out of reach of everyone else.
While the party was trying to figure out what next, the Daughter manifested, and proceeded to fly over to the other side of the fountain, out of immediate reach. She decided she wasn't going to play that game again, and immediately cast spiritual weapon on Lirai, and as the force scythe re-enacted a scene from Aliens (lethal critical hit), the mage was no long among the living. The bow ranger proceeded to take the daughter apart in 2 rounds. Lirai was brought back to life, as part of her reward for becoming a martyred hero of Korvosa.
Quote:
The players were already heavily cheating at Blood Pig by wearing their Bracers of Armor, Rings of Protection, and already had Bull's Strength and other spells active before meeting the Emperor. However, they never even talked to him, they entered the throne room and immediately said, "We're here to play Blood Pig."
The party never played blood pig with the emperor. The ranger was taking the condition of Old Korvosa very personally, and was generally having a bad day after becoming an "ex" member of the Sable Company...so when the Emperor proposed a game of blood pig, she said "I have an idea...how about we play a game of pin-cushion.." Higher initiative than everyone else, Fast draw, Rapid Shot, Many Shot, and human bane arrows really suck if you're the pin cushion...
I ended up with a large party for this one, though actually even when set to medium EXP for PFRGP, this has worked pretty well, and the party is on track with where they should be heading into "A History of Ashes" at this point. I only had to run a single in-between adventure, which was a short delve looking for Rolth (who got away in 7 days). They got him this time.
Some long stories with the background of these characters, so I attached a spoilers notes to each on if someone actually wants to read them.
Franczeska A human fighter, LN, (She has since become a Hellknight of the Order of the Scourge). She is in Korvosa investigating the disapparance of the son of her best friend she grew up with in Cheliax. Brute intimidation and sharp objects have since pointed her in the direction of a petty crimelord named Graeden Lamm.
Franczeska's Story
Spoiler:
Though she has always been an aspirant to become a Hellknight, when growing up in Egorian, she was best friends of a merchant's son. The two of them were good friends, even considering running away and getting married in a far off land...it was never to be, and the day came for them both to go their separate ways in pursuit of the lives their parents sought for them. She went to become an initiate in the Order of the Scourge, while he went on to marry the bride of his father's choosing, and become a merchant plying the sea lanes from Cheliax to Korvosa (and even Magnimar), seeking to expand his family fortunes. He eventually married, and had a son. It was a great tragedy when his son went with him on a trip to Korvosa, then disappeared. He exhausted his fortunes, and eventually his health, looking for his lost son, all to no avail. It wasn't until a chance encounter that the two friends met again, and she stopped to listen to a sad, tired beggars tale...She swore and oath upon her friends grave that she would seek justice, either finding his son or avenging his death...
Nuna Cracked-claw Half-Orc (Shoanti descent) Witch (Neutral Good), raised by a local hedge-witch after some of Lamm's thugs murdered her mother...
Nuna's Story
Spoiler:
Nuna's mother chose to risk everything, and leave her people to bring her unborn daughter to Korvosa, hoping that the cruelties she would suffer would be less than those she would suffer among the Shoanti. Nuna's mother was killed by a gang of Graeden Lamm's thugs after she beat one of them nearly to death for attempting to kidnap her daughter. Nuna was taken in by a friend of her mothers, a local hedge-witch who made a living selling minor potions and alchemical concoctions.
Lirai a very talented Half-Elf conjurer (Lawful Neutral), and Academae Graduate, (later turned Diabolist), she is recoving from an addiction to Shiver she fostered seeking to escape the pressures of being a student at the Academae, and a secret affair with a tiefling guard named Maelkus...
Lirai's Story
Spoiler:
Lirai always sought the easy way, the path of least resistance. Never seeking to assert herself, always preferring to make life easier on herself by avoiding problems, or acceding to the demands of others. Her mother was a well of merchant's daughter, who married young when she found herself in a "family way" after a dalliance with a member of the enclave from Mierani Forest. Lirai's step-father was never cruel, but always cold and distant, and expected her to behave properly, always finding fault in everything she did. When it turned out she had significant intellectual capability and a talent for conjuration, she leapt at the chance to get into the Academae, seeing it as an easy road to power, self-respect, and a way to get away from her family. She never once anticipated the truth. She was overwhelmed with the demands of academic life, the harsh instructions and criticisms, the rivalries with the other students, and the often bloody conflicts with the tiefling guards. Initially, it was into the arms of one of these teifling guards that she turned, seeking companionship in someone who would never be a rival, and could understand the hardships she was enduring. But Maelkus had needs of his own, and was never happy with this just being a fling, and as time went on, life at the campus only got harder. Starting the buckle under the pressures of the Academae, her own feelings for Maelkus, and the need to keep their affair a secret, she sought the easiest escape she could...and Graeden Lamm and his minions were only to happy to provide her with all the Shiver she wanted for the right price. In the end, it almost cost her everything, and it did cost her relationship with Maelkus....
Maelkus Arkona a Neutral Rakshasa spawned Tiefling Magus, Maelkus was generated using the random talbes in the "Tieflings of Golarion" article in AP #25 Council of Thieves, the Bastards of Erebus. I love seeing those tables making it into the game, I was always a fan of adding randomness to the Tiefling since such ideas originally appeared in the Planescape setting's "Planar Handbook."
Maelkus is the other half of the Story of Lirai, or perhaps she is the other half of his, as both are tied in together. Seeking always to protect Lirai from herself and the help her with the rigors of Academae life, he was trying to put a stop to her drug addiction by tracking it to the source, when he found himself accused of murdering her drug dealer by a fisherman who eventually admited to framing him on behalf of Graeden Lamm, before turning up dead himself...It still cost him Lirai and his job at the Academae...
Maelkus's Story
Spoiler:
"A tiefling is always a bastard in the eyes of his father..." (kudos if someone can ID the original quote, which uses a word other than tiefling, and where it's from) A motto that Maelkus has learned to live by since almost the day of his birth to a minor branch of the extended family of House Arkona. In spite of all divinations indicating his mother had never been anything other than absolutely faithful to his father, Maelkus spent much of his young life at the edges of everything, hardly even noticed by anyone who was not part of his immediate family. Even the house servants felt free to ignore him when his father wasn't paying attention. When he came of age, he applied to the Academae to join the ranks of the Tiefling guards constantly patrolling and protecting the campus. A move his father and even Glorio Arkona supported, for once seeming to see some sort of potential in him, even paying to equip him with the best equipment worthy of House Arkona. He never expected to love anyone, much less meet the love of his life at the Academae. He first noticed Lirai while she was watching the usual conflicts between the tieflings and the students, but not really taking part. He decided he wanted her the moment he met her, suprised that she wasn't intimidated by him (not that he was exceptionally unusual looking, having really only a tail and a backwards left hand). For a time things went well, the two of them meeting in secret in quiet places on the campus, and an inn room they decided to share away from campus during shared time off. In spite of her lack of fear of him, he knew she was weak, and not really cut out for life on campus, and did what he could to protect her, even sometimes using his authority to bully some of her more dangerous rivals. When she started using shiver, though, he had no idea what to do. He was afraid that, more than anything, would garuntee her eventual failure as a student. He took matters into his own hands, attempting to find out more about where she was getting the drugs, and either doing something himself, or getting the Korvosan Guard to do something. He was getting close to Graeden Lamm when he was accused of murdering the man who was acting as one of Lamm's drug mules...in the end, no one could try him for anything, but the damage was done, and he was terminated from the Academae, told by one of the instructors that only his family connections kept him from ending up another experiment for the school of necromancy. Being in a position where he could no longer help her or protect her, and with her refusal to stop doing Shiver, Maelkus made the hardest decision of his life and broke up with Lirai; he feared she would fail at the Academae and die, either summoning more than she could handle, or ending up dead at the hands of a rival. He never knew that this was the final straw that caused Lirai to bottom out, and after nearly killing herself with an overdose and succeed at turning her life around; eventually graduating from the Academae. Now they have hardly spoken to each other without arguing, angry and bitter over harsh words and broken hearts.
Erin female human Urban Ranger, aiming for Sable Company....a lost little lamb...
Erin's Story
Spoiler:
Erin was born to a Varisian prostitute working the Old Korvosa docks, a half breed Varisian, her mother went to great lengths attempting to keep her daughter from being taken away from her to the orphanages, even working really hard to make her look more Varisian than she is with an almost excessive amount of family tattoos. Still, her mother also worked hard to protect her from the nastier elements of the brothel where she worked, keeping Erin as safe as possible, relying on the other lady's and some of the Sczarni she could trust to keep a eye on her, and a knife at the back of the brothel owner. Unfortunately, Erin's mother was also a drug addict who was getting her supply from (you guessed it) Graeden Lamm. When her mother died, Graeden moved quickly to claim the orphaned child, saying her mother owed him a lot of money when she died, and made it clear that the brothel owner shouldn't interfere. When the Sczarni found out, it was already a done deal, and they did have bigger things to worry about. Erin worked for a long time as one of Lamms little lambs, until that is, a little crowd work at an event went awry. Working the crowd with several other lambs and one of Graedens goons acting as handler, Erin badly botched a hand-off in front of a Hellknight of the Order of the Nail who was having a really bad day...what ended up resulting was the death of her handler, and several of the other orphans who were working the crowd being rounded up and sent to the orphanages. Graeden was furious. Erin had cost him a skilled handler, and several of his other little lambs. When Lamm and his thugs were done with her, they left Erin to die on a midden-heap in Old Korvosa, assuming that the Otyughs or something else would eventually get rid of the body. Erin was rescued by one of the three remaining clerics of Aroden, who nursed her back to health, and she was soon adopted by a friend of one of the priests, an old ranger who had long ago retired from the Sable Company.
If a ranger at fourth level chooses Hunter's Bond with his companions, and does not choose an animal companion, can he still gain the feat of Sable Company Marine at sixth level?
No, he has to be able to bond an animal companion. Also check out the Paizo Blog here:
James Jaccobs suggests turning Sable Company into a ranger archetype, and also gives you basic stats for Hippogriff animal companions.
I ended up keeping it as a feat though, because the ranger in question had already taken the feat and gown down the Urban Ranger path for 6 levels when I found this link.
If your ranger really wants that Hippogriff though, consider allowing him to respec and change the group favored enemy to animal companion.
Definite thanks, you just save me a lot of work converting the last 3 books of the AP myself. I was able to do some quick dirty work with Escape from Old Korvosa, but I realized that wasn't going to work very well with history or skeletons. These look like great conversions over all, though I have some suggestions for others running Seven Days to the Grave below:
Spoiler:
One of the things I did with the Temple of Urgathoa was switch the domains of some the priests of Urgathoa to give them the magic domain instead of the battle domain. This was they could use the Hand of the Acolyte ability to "throw" their scythes at the party...this provided a more effective challenge from the priests standing over the plague vats in Area G8 of the Temple. I thought battle domain ability was too poor of a return for them to expend an action on for +1 damage to one attack. They lose the magic weapon spell from their domain spells prepared, but they get a better attack roll with Hand of the Acolyte.
There could be a number of reasons for it, considering the nature of the campaign trait selection, if the character was oathbound to do it (for example the owing Professor Lorrimor a favor) their own code pretty much required that they do it. Order of the Scourge might also be a good fit, especially with their ideals of justice, to investigate the suspicious nature of a good friends death.
You are right with that seeming to fall in to Abadar's creed. Have you let him read the article on Abadar in CoCT 2? If he is still unhappy with it, you could just embrace it as an abstract philosophy of order and greater good, and let him run with it, as long as you can keep him from running wild with it.
I am not as familiar with the lore on Aroden to really comment one way or another on it.
As for the Order of the Nail, as long as he is not dealing with abyssal powers, present himself as a threat to civilized order or their long term goals of crushing all of Varisia under the heels of civilization, I am not sure they would care one way or another about dealing with fell powers. To any with planar lore, it would seem more that he was channeling the will of the Inevitable or some other clock-work power of Nirvana. That is something a hellknight of any order (except perhaps Order of the Wrack) would likely be okay with.
If they thought he was channeling the power of the Godclaw, I might have them try to recruit him. This would present an interesting challenge if your player is up to it. Order of the Nail is not anymore difficult to work out with a paladins moral obligations when compared to most others, but Order of the Godclaw would be very difficult with their level of zeal.
To DrDew, that would work pretty well for jaguars. I might still give them strength 18 though.
As for Tigers, the stats are based on Siberians and Bengal tigers, with male Siberians often reaching 400-500lbs. They have been known in the past (50 years ago and longer) to get bigger than that but trophy hunting and poaching for the 'medicine' trade has pretty has pretty much selected those out of existence.
Gorillas have nasty looking teeth, but they generally don't use them to fight, they are for intimidation display. Their jaws are also too small to bite as effectively as many creatures with a muzzle.
Set wrote:
The poison rules are similarly just nutty. They exist as rules to add to the game, not to simulate real-world poisons.
yeah thankfully, if poisons were as lethal as they are in RL, no one would want to play...diseases are another good example...take rabies in the dog entry: In RL once you ARE showing symptoms, you don't get better, and there is no cure.
A a note on the very first post, your stat block on the Jaguar ability scores looks almost right...I would make strength 18, maybe 20 though, and probably put con at 15...lions and tigers con is as much a function of their size as endurance. Bite I would make 1d8, I would keep claws at 1d4, their real forte is that bite. 4HD sounds about right.
As a primary suggestion I would scale the damage down on those. What you are seeing is only a drawback of determining attack damage purely by creature size. All creatures of the same size have the same base damage for a natural attack. If you want to beef up animals like jaguars and crocodiles, try giving them improved natural attack instead of one of their other feats, or even give it to them as a "racial" feat. Also for some you could just house rule that certain bite attacks are also 1 1/2 x strength, even if the creature has more than one primary natural attack.
This post is getting too long, so debate/arguements are attached if you want to read them.
Movie plot spoiler:
Keep in mind, damage scales were originally based on how easily something would kill a level 1 human npc (and I mean going all the way back to AD&D). A great axe (1d12) is going to remove limbs. Even a leopard (1d6+3 as mention) is going to maim, cripple, and possibly kill your average level 1 commoner. Maybe not in one hit, but actually, animals rarely outright kill anything in one shot. A crocodiles bite strength is massive indeed, but while it breaks bones, it doesn't often amputate limbs, and the majority of victims either drown during the death roll (grapple checks and drowning rules) or from blood loss. Sharks for example do more damage from a bit than almost anything else, even the small ones (a 1-3 foot black tip reef shark might take your hand or foot off outright).
I wouldn't alter the Strength, and here is why:
Movie plot spoiler:
As for the strength scores, I wouldn't mess with those based on pure numbers. This would have the opposite effect of what I think you are trying to achieve. The encumberance tables don't quite reflect accurately what you would consider an "average". While the lift and lift overhead information is probably pretty close, the x5 to push/drag is only under ideal conditions (9000lbs for the tiger), but I would bet you could safely say that dragging a 3000lb animal across uneven ground, with your teeth, is not ideal and can apply penalties (as suggested of 1/2 or even more) to that number, bringing a strength 23 tiger down to about 4000 to 4500 lbs of drag. And a jaguar trying to climb also has some limitations, I believe that the checks get much more difficult if you are carrying anything more than a light load.
You also run into the issue of having to augment combat maneuvers on behalf of the animal, or you are going to get your 18 strength fighter easily wrestling your jaguar to the ground and into submission. Not that he couldn't do it now, but if you want realism, that should be a very dead fighter.
This one is a role-playing challenge, but a great one to mess with your pcs that have high sense motive checks and/or detect lie...An NPC who *always* tells a lie with every statement, using just enough truth and lie mixed together to make it impossible to tell either way.
