I did love giving a Recall Knowledge tidbit about a hydra as, "It's an invasive species from Iblydos." Or having certain monsters introduce themselves as "Sufestra Medusa" or "Xanesha Lamia", who can all trace their lineage back to the original.
Not an iconic, but I think Benedict Cumberbatch would make a good Xanderghul. He's got the high cheekbones and would have fun doing all the self-aggrandizing arrogance. I'd support this, but here's my fancast (picking actors from Whenever): Xanderghul: Jude Law Sorshen: Lucy Liu? Catherine Zeta-Jones, perhaps? Alaznist: Melissa McCarthy Karzoug: Alastair Duncan, as it turned out his role in Shadow of Mordor was how I always did Karzoug. Zutha: Tony Jay meets Tim Curry Krune: Bruce Willis (I imagine him over-enunciating, even savouring, every word) Belimarius: Ellen McLain (TF2, not Portal)
To be fair, Edicts and Anethema can exist outside of the world so I don't think it's nessercarily blasphmeny. I meant that, in-setting, Spiriters wouldn't have wanted information about their mystery cult to be publicly available; and that, out-of-setting, a fully-accurate explanation would be an AP Spoiler for PF1e.
My first reaction to this: Wow, after all that research, I'm impressed! Second Thoughts: I'd still like to see a statblock for Ghenschau. Ah well, omitting ol' Breezes-Still-and-Ripples-Cease does help simplify things a bit, which is a part of his faith. Third Thoughts: I would like to see Edicts/Anathema for the Peacock Spirit, even though printing it would count as blasphemy.
something like: EDICTS: Hone your body and mind, paint with vibrant colours, keep secrets ANATHEMA: Explain the Peacock Spirit to outsiders, become drab or boring, allow an insult to the Peacock Spirit or to yourself to go unaddressed.
Ooh, this'll be handy for updating the Dragon's Demand to the most current stuff! That poison breath attack got me looking for something that reduces poison damage. Other than two things that show up in an AP, all you get are things that give you a bonus on saves vs. poison.
I like how the setting's going all-in on the concept of, "Magic's an ambient energy you can manipulate with your bare hands and your mind."
Also, I can imagine half a party being disappointed over finding most of the magic objects in the dragon's hoard drained, with the other half immediately going to skin the dragon and see what they can do with all the gilded scales.
After two long years (about a third of which was full of session cancellations), the Sihedron Council managed to rebuild the Shattered Star and show it to the late Emperor one last time. (Due to adjustments I made to the AP, they also found that the Shattered Star was never actually shattered in the first place - Xin mailed a shard to each of his apprentices, with incomplete information on how to put them together. Instead of working together to finish it, they fought over which one would build it singularly, and worked together to send an assassin after him during a loss of the anti-teleportation ward in his palace.) Their names: Gaius Stormshield née Gaius Coruncanius Vettonianus (Chelish human Armiger Fighter/Hellknight) Vissaa Sewer Dragon, Absalom kobold Starsoul Sorcerer (Absalom's first kobold astronomer!) Torsten Ironbrew, Chirurgeon Alchemist with a dip in Fighter (The last remaining heir to some of Janderhoff's lost brewing secrets) Purrcible McCoy, Rahadoumi Amurran Wisdom Witch (who later, after having met the metzlan, decided to learn their ways by tossing his familiar aside and retraining into Oozemorph) Here is their denoument. Lockerbie & Liza Jane Brast remained as, y'know, sewer custodians. They made sure to only eat derro crawling up from the Darklands, which kept happening surprisingly often. The Tower Girls, under leadership of Ayala, helped people out of the flooding and made sure that people got their necessities while their homes were drying out. The reputation of the Sczarni as a whole improved in Magnimar, and the Nailers had to put that in their pipes and smoke it! The Order of the Nail, their sterling reputation polished further by their organized handling of citizens during the Rise of the Isle of Xin and subsequent repairs, served them well in their other pursuits. Not only shall they bring their hammers down on the remaining cultists of the region, but they shall soon stamp out the lawless Sczarni threat once and for all! The xulgath of these lands left the loathsome boggards and their hag friend to the Lady's Cape. Forced into letting bugbears offer their idea of help, they still rob river-goers in the south. Some went north, to turn to the World Thunder. The xulgath as a whole face hard times. Maroux finally got some peace and quiet. Screw all y'all! Kanya & Herifax lived a fast, carefree life, squandering all the stuff they were given. Eventually Fufu the Lurker ate them, but they were so overdosed, they didn't mind, or notice really. Despite having received little funding, the most of which had come from Korvosa, Windsong Abbey saw itself rebuilt, with the help of some penitent giants. There is now a chapel - small to a giant - dedicated to both Aegirran, the Sea Dreamer, and Minderhal, the stone giant god of justice. Pilgrims have begun to return to Windsong, including, bemusingly, at least one Groetesian. Worship of Lisalla, in any organized way, ceased in Varisia. Many former Lisallans, disillusioned or desperate, turned to other faiths. Soralyon, the Mystic Angel, took in some, while others heard Mhar's belching of smoke and molten rock. Others, however, were shown the uncaring light of distant stars, and began to whisper to anyone willing to hear of it, of the benificence of the Crawling Chaos. Their numbers are small, but in the endless length of time, the whole galaxy shall know the power of the Chaotic Evil side! Shasthaak, rune giant graveknight, returned to the world at large! Having completed his goal of killing Emperor Xin, he set about searching for any remaining presence of his lieges, to inform them of his success! The Sihedron Council was a brilliant idea from its very beginning, having apparently saved Magnimar twice over. Their former membership of the Pathfinder Society, and their renown throughout the city-state, inspired the people of Magnimar to new heights of literacy, making Magnimar, I daresay, even more highly educated than the backward outpost of Korvosa! They stand vigilant, ready to defend Varisia from dangers of its antiquity. They even managed to recover one of the Seven Swords of Sin, and used it in conjunction with the Sihedron to, well, that's another story. (Mid-Credits Stinger)
Here's the way I think of it, when I'm the GM (though it will never really be relevant):
He saw himself micro-managing the lives of his worshippers.
He went to Pharasma, and asked for advice. She suggested something along the lines of allowing his people to make their own future.
...He might have gotten a laugh out of watching Tar-Baphon blow himself up by accident.
As much as I like the look of the sketches, I'll most likely want to finally show to my players the sight of Xanderghul, fashionably late, in all his glorious, eye-blasting colour! Speaking of, I'm torn between him having made contingency plans for his own death, or of such an utter certainty that it would be unnecessary, that he's just rhetorically asking the rulers of the afterlife if they seriously know who he is.
I would like to see something about syrinx society. Ever since I first read the bit that said they "made the strix as a servitor race", I imagined syrinx landing on rocks in the Arcadian Ocean, sticking their heads in the water, and shouting at algolthu, "You stole our idea and you're doing it the wrong way!" Also, I'd like to see more about the geopolitics of the region, and how each nation dealt with/contributed to the fall of Razatlan. It'd get a laugh out of me if the fall of the empire was attributed to small groups of Concerned Citizens who, say, amassed unbelievable power and large groups of followers in months, only to retire in obscurity once the freedom was in the hands of the people.
My Rise group, due to problems all around, got the Bad End. They still wanted to play Shattered Star and complete the trilogy. So the search for the Shards began six months after the Rise of Mhar. So trade has been disrupted and routes had to be redrawn due to the presence of an enormous volcano with legs stumbling around the landscape. I've determined that there is at least one NPC capable of casting 9th-level spells, who basically has to request a Miracle of "Save us from Mhar" on a near-daily basis to keep him away from major cities. (Small villages, however, are in dangerous positions) Also, there has been a rise in World Thunderers (people who worship Mhar) who think they can gain favour by throwing sacrificial victims into Mhar's caldera. In other news, I looked up some "Worldbuilding With Food" ideas, and determined that potatoes were originally Varisian, but have been exported throughout the world via Absalom. Oparan chefs recently hit upon a dish of fried fish and potatoes! Also, tomatoes were brought over from Arcadia by Chelish sailors, and now they claim it was always a Chelish fruit. I also claim Golarion has some veggies that can't be found in the real world, but I haven't specified anything about any of them.
There was a sanitorium in Rise of the Runelords, with part of the horror coming from it having been run by a man who was more interested in studying insanity than caring for its inmates as people. He'd made zombies out of previous patients, but he was the best defense in the area for a plot-related thing that was going on. It left my PCs in a moral dilemma. Similarly, I had a charcter once who was a LG Cult Master mesmerist, who I played as a magic psychotherapist. He was honest that his False Lay-On-Hands was a special trick he had learned and improved to ignore pain, and that they'd need some real healing or medicine later. The Leadership followers he would get would end up being staff for his eventual praxis, but I left the adventure before it got that far.
I don't normally think of "20 point-buy when the AP expects 15" or "roll for HP (reroll 1s) OR take half-hit-die+1" really count as boons so much as options. I do give PCs boons on occasion, by means of NPCs they help. If they get in a random encounter with reasonable/sensible people ("knowing when to give up" counts), they can get clues or information. Anything from, "you returned the golden locket to the baker rather than pawning it, so you get enough Baked Goods of Gratitude that you don't have to pay as much monthly rent for the next year" to "The orcs respect both your power and cunning, and some of them will want to spar with you the next time you pass by." Rewarding Good alignments, while still setting up dangerous fights. Similarly, if a religious PC goes out of the way to do something for a religion, they'll get a boon from that religion:
If you're irreligious, figuring out something important with no religious assistance is such a stroke of genius that you get to reroll the d20 once. Similarly, anyone who profanes a religious shrine or temple without being careful (using something like Desecrate or Hallow or a lot of Religious Water beforehand stops this from happening), gets a divine punishment. Taking a bathroom break on a shrine to Erastil might make any food you didn't grow or slaughter yourself taste disgusting, while toppling a statue of Abadar just because the temple staff were all LE embezzlers might end you up with a long, boring audit. Or defacing a temple to Razmir might result in the divine punishment of getting mugged by Razmirites. Basically, I like giving little one-time benefits to my players for doing something important. They get rewarded, and they can pull out those rewards in a dangerous situational circumstance.
The book does say to modify his tactics. Say, if GM & players agree more books than Core are on the table, you can give Karzoug Firey Body. 9th-level Transmutation that renders him immune to a lot of things, as well as healed by fire. Karzoug's Burning Glaive has 3 healing spells, but unlimited Fireballs. I'd also recommend a Wall of Suppression. He can goad non-flying PCs through it.
As for the Meteor Swarm, my idea was he'd prepare spells like Cone of Cold and Polar Ray for the Karzoug Holograms to use on the PCs. Hopefully, they'd protect themselves against cold, only to get blindsided by a pocket plane made of molten gold. Then, Round One: Meteor Storm
"Taken on the whole, the writing makes no sense. Looking at one character at a time, you can figure out that this one's from Aklo, that one's ancient Thassilonian, that one's either the schwah from Infernal or the 'zh' from Draconic written upside-down.
Graham made something hauntingly beautiful.
Plus, when you get to such dizzying heights of personal power, individual people tend to blur together. Though Baba Yaga does keep a bit of a personal touch, (what she seems to get up to involves "Being A Grump" and "Eating Her Children") it doesn't look like she has any destructive designs on Golarion (I mean, she did get helped out by people from there once). Of course, that doesn't mean she's wreaking havoc on some other setting with a Mythological Russia analogue, but she can't do that when she's on a lunch date with the Old Mage.
I've always thought of Old-Mage Jatembe as the kind of man who would - now that his glory days of spreading literacy back around Golarion, Ten Magic Warriors with him, are over - encourage small, subtle, yet much-needed acts of kindness and compassion across the many worlds of the Material Plane. Why not have lunch with Baba Yaga in some Taldan place, for old time's sake? This makes me want to run an RPG in a different setting, and have Jatembe cameo to offer a clue or some advice when the PCs are in a pinch.
Yeeeaaahh, even though I trust the people at Paizo to make an adventure where you get to actually help out the community and protect people from getting killed by other people, this is too touchy a subject. I'm glad there are lots of other things I can try, though.
After a horrible shipwreck, we came to the Eleder's Pathfinder lodge with our findings, eventually found out where the lost city was, we eventually managed to figure out what to do. Not only did we set out determined to stop a race war, we spent months after the final conflict working toward reparations. Here's who ended up calling themselves the Keys of Yhi: Ael'eraki Valiance, aka Aki:
CG half-elf half-Varisian human alchemist, worshipper of Desna. Crackerjack tinkerer, she made poisons, potions, and went on to learn about constructs. Her stuffed moth came to life and she made it her familiar. She eventually shrunk herself so she could ride Phoen, as it was called. The youngest member of the group, she found herself horrified at the realities of war, resulting in many spa days in Eleder. She went on to travel the world, stopping in Nex to design a giant beetle construct she could call her home. Abner Little, stage name Roqueforte Passendale:
CG ysoki bard, also from Varisia. A runt in his youth, he finally got to travelling, and ended up on the adventure of a lifetime. He wrote and performed an opera of his adventures, of which disguised serpentfolk insurgents saw its first few acts and expressed their displeasure. His mandolin was inhabited by a vulpinal agathion, who wanted to see where he'd go and what he'd do. After bringing peace to Savinth Yhi, as well as beneath it, he went on a world tour. Jijitimazoo, though there are some who call him Tim:
N Mwangi kobold monk/rogue/magus, breaker of cults, puncher of gods. He fled his home when demon-worship took hold, and held that violence could solve as many problems as it could cause. He kept asking to engage friends in sparring sessions, figuring he could learn spells that way. He eventually figured out ones like Longarm and Twisted Innards. (Think One Piece, only more body horror)
After having involved himself at the end of one god and the re-ascension of another, he returned home to fight the demon-worship with everything he could at level 17 (which was a lot). He never did stop throwing himself at any challenge that presented itself. Duvri Kounug:
NG vanara jungle druid, hailing from a small community in the Laughing Jungle. He just wanted to bring a bag of grape seeds and the holy text of empyrial lord Halcamora back home. Instead, he found himself a Pathfinder field agent, protecting people from fire, getting eaten, and jungle humidity. During his travels, he found himself able to make peace with the charu-ka he once thought irredeemable. His love of storms led him to control them, and even temporarily become one. His only 9th-level spell, Winds of Vengeance, even let him become a huge squall wrapped in a slightly bigger squall.
After the first dawn the serpentfolk were able to see in earnest after thousands of years, Duvri gave them a sun shower, followed by a beautiful rainbow. He then spent six months rebuilding damaged architecture in the cities above and below, only to find that he had too much power for any one person in his small village home. So he became Venture-Captain Kounug, set up his own lodge, and went on to pioneer the listicle. He even once became the grape tree everyone didn't know they needed. Wilfred Wezpol, Crazy Old Man turned Crazy Old King:
CN samsaran transmuter wizard, who cheesed his familiar so much that it ascended to godhood.
Actually, it turned out his familiar was the last vestige of Curchanus, who managed to regain godhood by cannibalizing the remains of Ydersius. He started out determined to see what Eleder was like because he spent most of his life ignorant of what the Mwangi Expanse was like. Shortly after getting to Savinth Yhi, he stayed put in the Artisan district, crafting like mad. During attempts to sort out everyone's problems, he asked them if they'd be okay with him keeping everything organized, and after everyone agreed, promptly declared himself king. He spent his rulership researching the Clone spell, then researching a method of achieving immortality so that his reign would last into the forseeable future (or at least until a bunch of psychopomps showed up and kept asking him when would he have all his affairs in order). On the whole, the AP was enjoyable (most likely due to GM edits) though I was hit hard with the Middle of Serpent's Skull Issue. Between getting swamped by so many sidequests at once and repeated spa days wherein my character, who had CHA 5 (rolling dice for stats makes it fun and exciting, and prevents dump stats!) couldn't really participate for a big chunk of it. Worse, one dungeon crawl had all the other PCs hiding in an expanded extradimensional dwelling carried by mine, who snuck around invisibly; this effectively had the same problem from the other direction.
This reminds me of the disappointment over the gravitational powers of Starfinder's solarions. When you use it to pull people toward you, it doesn't cause random unattended junk to slide toward you and stick to you. As for collateral damage, I just figure it's reasonable for players & GMs to be careful around fragile/flammable objects. Lightning Bolt through some debris, so you can step aside from the now-open charge lane? Sure, sounds strategic. Throwing a Fireball in the library? Bad idea. I guess the GM would just have to eyeball Table 11-4 and take it from there. (It's the Material Hardness/HP/Broken Threshold table, by the way)
Also: at this point in the AP, Tongues is easily available for people who don't want to put a point in Linguistics. Considering how this AP is all about learning about stuff from Thassilon, it's reasonable for PCs to want to learn the language so that they can read things like how to get to Runeforge. Of course, if they don't, you can always let the Scribbler cast Tongues on himself, or give him a sort of empathic communication where everyone around him gets the feeling he wants to know about/tell you something.
PCs:
Location: The Pinnacle of Avarice (they hadn't found the Leng Device)
The party, all invisible with only one person able to See Invisible, scattered in an open area. They were fighting three Advanced cloud giants and one rune giant. With nobody else to attack, multiple giants surrounded Atropos and killed him faster than Koji could heal him. Akiko was under attack from an elemental summoned by the currently-hiding Khalib. I also crit like three times in as many rounds >_< Chellan was on its way (I wasn't going to announce Chellan's arrival until a round after the rune giant fell, but he didn't fall), the party had gotten itself surrounded, they'd forgotten some of their preparation, and were too spread out to attempt to D-Door to safety. So they surrendered. Khalib, Chellan, Ceoptera, and the rune giant marched them all up to the Eye of Avarice, where they reverently awaited the rise of the Claimer. A denizen of Leng burst in, arms flailing and head shaking, but nobody would be dissuaded. Karzoug stepped upon the Soul Lens. The Eye of Avarice activated. With a piggy-back from it, the Leng Device activated. The Leng Device broke. Then Mhar arose in a furious conflagration, instantly destroying the Pinnacle of Avarice, with a resulting pyroclasic flow that destroyed most of Xin-Shalast. The Ancient One then pulled itself up on legs of living ruby, and stumbled its way down the mountainside. At least Karzoug is dead, but the rest of Varisia has to contend with the Rise of Mhar. Seriously, though:
Two first-time players wanted to be kobolds, and wanted to be sneaky & magical. Instead of offering something else, I immediately helped them do that, by means of archetypes & prestige classes that were really complicated, and turned out to not be what they wanted in the long run. Also, having come into Pathfinder from hack&slash video games, they were unsure of just how much they could do in the setting. Since I forgot to extoll the boundlessness of TRPGs, they tended to take everything at face value, giving Karzoug time to prepare for them. I felt like I was being too "hand-holdy" at the beginning, but "turning the hints off" as I described it, went from too much direction to too little.
I'm still honoured that all the players want to go through Shattered Star, and they're already planning characters they'll enjoy more. I'm certain they'll do a lot less dying there. Shifty Mongoose's RotRL Death Count: Atropos: 2. Crushed by Barl/Mhar. Dreg: 3. Disintegrated by Mokmurian/barrage of Magic Missiles by Khalib/Mhar. Koji: 4. Azaven gave him the Finger/Killed by yetis & Khalib-as-yeti/Petrified by Khalib/Mhar. Nordramel: 4. Best Death Ever vs. Xanesha/Strangled to death by a mummy/Assassinated by Gamigin/Mhar. Akiko: 3. Vraxeris' simulacra/giants in the Pinnacle/Mhar.
Hero of the Hour sounds like a fun & useful way to refresh Hero Points. I was thinking of ways to get the players involved with them, since it'd keep them engaged when it isn't their turn, and it'd encourage cameraderie.
My guess is, the thinking went that PCs who get sick will try to get their diseases cured ASAP, so contagiousness was never really thought of as an issue.
On the plus side, RAW means you won't need to get quarantined and for plague doctors to get all done up and poke you with sticks; they can just touch you with their unwashed hands to cast curative spells, or smear alchemy disinfectants all over you!
The way I imagine a bottomless pit, it's more of an extradimensional pit that keeps teleporting people in it partway back up, so that it feels like you're falling forever. At least that way, climbing back up if you manage to Feather Fall to one side or something won't be boring or roll-a-1-and-it's-this-again.
My personal hypothesis is that Barbatos is a Qlippoth Lord who became Lawful. Instead of wanting to wipe out mortal life, he wants to punish, torment, and degrade it. His best bet for making that desire come true is to join the ranks of Hell, so he did. Him being a Qlippoth Lord would explain the friendship with Chaotic beings and eldritch appearance.Now I am picturing a Qlippoth Lord that became an Empyreal Lord (maybe going so far as to become LG) to better fight demons, and everyone was "we can trust this thing as long as demons exist, but they are ever defeated....." Wow, now I want to see a former Qlippoth turned Good. That'd just about be the ultimate redemption! Also, I wonder what one would look like...
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