Therabyd's page

Looks good. One question, however, what character levels is the adventure for?

-- david
Papa.DRB

It starts at 10th and will probably make it up to 13th. The initial chapter is a set of small adventures playable in pretty much any order, but the rest of the adventure is one unified story.

Happy to answer any other questions folks might have!

Glad you liked it!

Also, while I'm here, a question: what are Incantations? I haven't seen those before, and I'm at a loss for how the rules work for them. Where can I find more information on these?

Thanks!

They came out in Unearthed Arcana - you can find the open game content here. Essentially they're spells for non-spellcasters, using rituals, skill checks, and possible backlash damage to achieve some game balance.

Ambrus,

Those are good points about the global Margreve powers. I'd look at them more as reasons for adventure, though, then hindrances. For instance, maybe the reward at the end of one of the later adventures

could be an incantation to "attune" the PCs' whole kingdom to the Margreve, allowing inhabitants to ignore one of the global powers. That would give the PCs a reason to return to the Margreve at higher levels and would make the forest feel like part of their kingdom instead of an interloper.

At lower levels, where the scale of the adventures doesn't quite match such a reward, siphon magic and aura of wildness are potential PC disincentives. Maybe you could reserve the global powers for deeper in the forest, so PCs on the outskirts don't have to worry about them ... but once they're drawn into an adventure they'll be motivated enough to put up with the issues.

Name any Mage of Power other than Slerotin.

Rellimirck?

Steven Robert has written some things for Open Design - he wrote one of the adventures in Tales of the Old Margreve, and he wrote a preview for the new Freeport project Dark Deeds in Freeport.

And it was a great fight. I credit the adventure designers for half and our fantastic DM for the other half :)

Thank you very much, but Rev deserves well more than half - it's a complicated encounter with a bunch of monster powers and terrain features, and she handled it with her usual aplomb!

I'm running my campaign out of Falcon's Hollow, in the Darkmoon Vale region of Andoran (just finished modules D0,D1, D1.5, & D4). My PCs just hit 7th (APL 9.5) and I'm wondering if I could swap this material in for Darkmoon Wood or Arthfell Forest. Does it lend itself to dropping into other settings? How much use can I make of these adventures with an APL 9.5 group?

The flavor matches Darkmoon Vale really well, and the two highest level adventures - both about right for your group - are really a lot of fun.

Damsels, dragons, and immortal witches - oh my!

Woot!

Great battle, all - my favorite bit might have been Dorvin coming back from dying to push Tarisaul off the ledge, but well done all around!

I hope it was as much fun to play and run as it was to read. :)

Thanks for the great reviews, everyone!

JBFort, while everyone was off at GenCon, a web enhancement for the "Hoard Magic" article - converting it to OGL/PFRPG - was posted at koboldquarterly.com. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 behind the links. Glad you enjoyed the article!

DRAW-midge

YOU-lek

BIS-el

DRACH-ens-grawb

HARD-bee

YEAH-til

FUR-yon-dee

Vesv

KEY-o-land

URN-st

and EE-uz.

Good stuff!

One of the advantages of letting the dice help tell the story is that readers can't rely on the genre conventions to guess who survives. Here I was in the dark until the end.

On the other side, if the characters never turn over the rock hiding some bit of plot, the readers never get it. I'm left wondering why the one juror was wearing a disguise and who drugged/kidnapped the jurors and PCs.

Still, an excellent read.

Moonbeam,

I just made it through the journal, and this is great, great stuff! Belessa is one of the best characters I've seen in campaign journals, and despite her somewhat depsicable methods, you've done such a good job bringing her to live believably that I'm still rooting for her. Murder isn't that bad, right? :)

Keep up the great work, sir! And if you ever wanted to bring mirror-world Belessa into Golarion, I'm sure there's a spot for your work in Wayfinder or elsewhere.

Now I'm off to check out Hangman's Noose ...

Well, that fight got a little tougher once the bad guys stopped hurting each other ... ;)

I've been having a blast following this, so I wanted to stick my head in and thank everyone for such a fun PbP. Keep up the fine work!

Rev DM,

A preview of the first four adventures in the anthology is up on the koboldquarterly.com website here.

Patrons are choosing the final two adventures in the next few days, so if you want a say in what makes it into the anthology, sign up right away!

Your character could be using the information he gathers as a PI to become a very successful blackmailer. That could either be Robin-Hood-esque, only blackmailing underworld kingpins and the like, or he could just be a bad guy.

My subscription seems to have skipped #31. On the subscription page it shows #30 as the last shipped with #32 as the next to ship, while on my account page there's no evidence of an order containing #31. I have received neither the "in the next week" email nor a shipping email.

Thanks for your help!

A thousand carbuncles are scratching it out randomly in the dirt.

Yep, still gonna buy it.

And now we've learned why you've been rehabilitating misfit monsters ... apparently you needed some cheap labor. :)

17th level!?! Two of Baba Yaga's daughters?!? Sweet!

I'd ask when we'll learn the author's identity, who am I kidding? I'd buy it even if you said a thousand carbuncles were scratching it out randomly in the dirt ...

I'd suggest:

Ashardalon (most notably from Bastion of Broken Souls, although he was referenced in several other modules of that initial WotC series);

Calcryx (from Sunless Citadel, although possibly misspelled); and

a blue dragon whose name eludes me, but lived in the moathouse in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. A real PC-killer, that one.

anyone have any thoughts on this setting? It seems interesting but I have not seen anything on it

I'm a big fan of the setting. It's got a much more Eastern/Northern European feel than most settings, and the titular city of Zobeck has a strong steampunk component. It also feels a lot more social and political than a lot of other settings - every location has several groups competing for power and influence, but in a much more nuanced way than just good vs. evil. All the factions might be neutral - or good, for that matter - but they're still at each other's throats. This depth and nuance extends to the gods as well, who are written as "demanding" certain behavior from their worshippers. That got me thinking about the whole deity-worshiper relationship in a new way.

The Imperial Gazetteer focuses on just one small part of the world of Zobeck - a human kingdom ruled by the undead and the Empire of the Ghouls which lives below the surface. This is really my favorite part of Zobeck, because it really looks seriously at what having a kingdom ruled by monstrosities would be like, taken to its logical conclusion. Or what an empire could accomplish if its soldiers needed no sleep, rest, or air, but wanted nothing more than to suck the marrow from their enemies' bones. I certainly wouldn't want to live there, but I loved reading about it. Plus Baba Yaga makes a great appearance.

More generally, Zobeck is the default setting of most of the Open Design projects, and it's mentioned regularly in Kobold Quarterly magazine. There are three other Zobeck supplements and one adventure available. The (OGL) Zobeck Gazetteer covers the iconic city of the setting, and the (Ennie-award-winning OGL) Tales of Zobeck is an anthology of short adventures set in that city. Dwarves of the Ironcrags (OGL) and the Iron Gazetteer (4e) take a look at the dwarven society who inhabits a mountain range not far from Zobeck.

Anyway, I'd highly recommend Zobeck in general, and this has been my favorite supplement for it.

(Full disclosure: I contributed some to the Dwarves of the Ironcrags Gazetteer and Halls of the Mountain King, its accompanying adventure arc. So I've got some vested interest in the setting. I didn't have anything to do with the Imperial Gazetteer itself.)

Tales of Zobeck is an (Ennie-award-winning) anthology of short urban adventures, two of which are even designed for 4th level PCs. There's an accompanying Gazetteer if you're interested in more information about the city of Zobeck.

But wait ... there's more! We're currently voting on which design essays we'd like to see:

1. Basic Design Principles and Philosophy
2. Campaign Structures: Building a Narrative
3. Design Failures and Recovery
4. Location as a Design Tool
5. Optimizing Design for Roleplay
6. Sandbox Design Core Principles

So if you'd like to get a peek into the mind of a designer, sign up now.

BRP all the way. Love Pathfinder, but a level-based system is completely ill-suited for Cthulhu.

Normally I'd agree, but I think this project might be an exception. Because it spans five adventures over a millenium, we have a chance to remove the expectation of levelling-up over the course of the arc (by reincarnation or some other mechanism). So I'm not sure there will be the same dissonant feeling of "We're getting better at fighting the Mythos!" that level-based systems can cause.

Though as Wolfgang points out, at the moment it's a moot point.

Congrats, Brandon.

Blood-red comets lighting the night sky ...Evil Denizens summoning an Elder God best left aslumber ... Seers driven so mad by their visions that they remove their own eyelids ... Heroes fighting a millenium-long battle to save an unknowing planet from the Red Eye ...

The best part - you get to decide the rest. The project is still looking for patrons, who get to decide the rule system, fill in the details of the evil threat, and contribute to the adventures themselves. Join early and ensure that the adventure is the one you've always wanted to run.

Sign up soon!

I agree that putting the AP on the Flanaess ties things better to previous GH adventures.

Ountsy works pretty well, though I like your original alternative of Dullstrand better. The Great Kingdom works really well as Cheliax, IMO, and my concern is that it if you set CoCT too close to the heart of the GK (in Ountsy), then there won't be room in later APs/adventures to go to Cheliax. Dullstrand is a little more removed, so could keep the feel of Korvosa as a distant colony.

Along the same lines, I'd go with a ruin in Old Medegia (or ruined Almor) for the undead keep, rather than going into the GK proper with Rinloru. Rinloru also seems too big/inhabited to really fit well.

The Shoanti are the sticking point, as you point out. What about replacing the central plateau on the Tilvanot peninsula with the Storval Plateau/Cinderlands? You'd have to move the SB headquarters somewhere else, but given the mystery and propaganda surrounding the order, that might not be too hard (unless your players have already explored the area). Anyway, that would keep the barbarians on a rarely-visited plateau without the PCs having to travel all the way to the Rovers of the Barrens or Stonefist.

As for SD,

My 2c.

Mr. Mona,

Personally, I plan to stay with 3rd edition (in some flavor), so from my perspective I'd prefer you to stay with 3.5 or release a 3.75/3.P/whatever.

On a more global level, would it be impossible to support both 3.5 and 4.0 for the next two years or so? To me this seems to have several advantages:

1. You don't lose half of your customers at the transition -- everyone can keep buying Paizo.
2. You can take the time to see if the terms of the OGL will actually let you make money supporting 4e. If so, you can leave 3.5 behind without losing much more than the time it took to produce two sets of statblocks, etc.
3. Whatever company continues to support 3.5 will have a captive audience, at least for a little while. While this audience might shrink (off topic slightly -- though not as quickly as some predict, because those of us who go back to the blue box now have kids, and they are going to learn the edition we play, so there will be some new blood coming in), it's going to flock to whichever company sticks with them. If you decide you can't make money under the 4.0 license, you've already got an in with the natural audience for Paizo's ruleset.
4. The main advantage (I think) is that you can wait until you have enough information to make the final commitment. It's more work in the meantime, but you can at least make an informed decision.

I guess there are a few disadvantages:

1. IIRC, James Jacobs wrote somewhere that doing two sets of statblocks would be nuts. I don't really have a sense for how much time that would take you, but if it slows down getting products out the door too much, I can see that being a problem.
2. You probably can't print the books in both formats, so I guess one of the versions would have to be pdf-only, a pdf add-on, or some sort of insert/supplement. I don't know how well that would work.
3. I imagine that continuing to support an older edition, even in part, might damage your relationship with Wizards.

Those are my thoughts, for whatever they're worth. I do appreciate the work you've been doing, and the fact that you're interested in our input. I hope whatever path you choose works out for Paizo.

Thanks for all the advice, folks. I think we're going to go with Sunndi, with W1 set in the Glorioles.

The Wild Coast is always a good starting spot, but I'm still burned out on it after starting every single one of my 1e adventures there. I set the initial Wizards AP in Ratik/Knurl/Bone March, so I don't want to do that again, and I'm thinking of saving Perrenland for the Sehan arc.

A trade route to Ull is a very intriguing idea, but it leaves us pretty far from Greyhawk, and I'm not sure how to set up a reasonable party background.

Rel Deven is a great idea -- it hadn't even crossed my mind. Thanks.

I'd agree that the most likely choice is Hommlet, though some other possibilities sprang to mind:

Solace
Bryn Shander (these two if they want to attract more fans of the novels to the game)

Brindenford (because it's by James Wyatt and featured in several 3e products).

I guess I'm hoping for Hommlet.

I'm about to start a campaign that's planned to include W1, U1, Expedition to Greyhawk, and finally Maure Castle. We'd like to set it in Greyhawk, but although I'm the one who knows the setting best, I'm stuck on the player's side of the screen. I was hoping someone here who knows the module and Greyhawk could provide some suggestions without giving away any of the fun of the modules.

If it helps, the party looks like it will be:
1/2 orc fighter
human duskblade
dwarf cleric [Hanseath (sp?)]
whisper gnome spellthief/illusionist
grey elf abjurer/war weaver

I wanted to try out some of the Heroes of Battle stuff, so I was envisioning the group as a military unit on leave/detached duty. There aren't many places where such a racially diverse group would fit well together -- my ideas so far were Sunndi or Highfolk. Any suggestions for a good starting location, mountain range for W1, and a city for U1?

Thanks for your help. If I get motivated, I'll post a journal to let you know how the modules went.

Does anyone thinke that WotC is going to do this with the PHB and DMG too? If I remember correctly, they're planning to release core PHBs, DMGs, and MMs every year. By parceling out races, classes, and rules, they can keep sales of the core books up over the course of 4e, just as they keep MM sales up with a continuing trickle of iconic monsters. Plus, they're always ahead of the third-party curve, because they'll have time in-house to develop adventures, supplements, etc. featuring the new rules. And depending on the terms of the OGL, the core version could become the only acceptable version, thereby invalidating any third-party work which came before.

Plus, this could get around the problem of a need for 4.5e without releasing an official one. In 2009 we could see:
MM2 -- frost giants, metallic dragons, etc. + revised monster levels for MM1 monsters
PHB2 -- changelings, gnomes, monks, barbarians, + revised 4e paladin
DMG2 -- unarmed combat, grappling rules + revised 4e magic item costs

I'm just speculating, and don't have any evidence that this is going to be the case, but if WotC wants to keep sales of PHBn and DMGn up, this seems like an effective way to do it (though expensive for the rest of us).

(Finally, on a really paranoid note, DMG2 and PHB2 in 3.5e weren't OGL. So Wizards could release the first set of books with an OGL, but keep the subsequent ones completely in-house. If they do parcel out the "standard" monsters, etc., that could really hurt third-party publishers.)

Blue_eyed_paladin wrote:

I'm not insulted that the designers couldn't remember where guardinals came from. I couldn't do it on the spot.

"Insulted" is, I think, a strong term too. For myself, I'd say a better term is "disappointed." Whether or not Guardinals or the alignment of Bytopia are obscure bits of D&D trivia is irrelevant. The fact is these are the guys who are re-working a much beloved gaming institution and many people have strong feelings about that, particularly because of the paucity of real information combined with the implication of significant mechanical (and perhaps thematic) changes. In a situation like this, what you want is reassurance that the designers know the game and its lore at least as well as you do, preferably better. After those articles touting the long and deep connection between the designers and the D&D game, you'd think they'd want to show off that connection by being masters of even the most obscure game information.

Is this fair? Probably not, but it's a reality.

I think it's completely fair. Writing monsters is James Wyatt’s job. He spends 8 hours a day, 5 days a week doing it. I don’t take that to mean that he should be able to rattle off the hit dice of a cifal or the intelligence of a flumph, but I don’t think knowing the origin of a third edition core monster is too much to ask. And this wasn't just three guys talking over beers -- they chose in post-production to leave that exchange in the podcast, when they could have gone back and taken it out or fixed it.

That's what really "insults and infuriates" me. I want 4e to succeed. I want Wizards to succeed. But why do they keep going out of their way to offend people when they don’t have to? Is there really anyone out there who’s going to buy 4e just because there aren’t guardinals in MM1? If not, why lose even one guardinal fan? Just leave the critters you don’t like out of the 4e rulebooks, keep your feelings to yourself, let the (hypothetical) fans of guardinals (or very real fans of demonic succubi) home-brew them, and everyone’s happier.

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but Wizards badly needs some help with PR. Either give us full information -- let us know exactly what’s planned for 4e, down to the provisional mechanics, so people actually have something to which to react positively or negatively -- or keep giving us no real information but bring in some PR pros. Give polished presentations, edit the blogs/podcasts/editorials to take out parts which might piss people off without any corresponding benefit, put out a professional digital product, and get people excited. Just stop gratuitously pissing people off.

I think that people who work at Wizards should know the rules, should not piss off the fans gratuitously, and should put out quality products. Right now, they’re 0 for 2 with one still up in the air. It’s getting to where I hope Hasbro sends in some adult supervision, and that’s something I never thought I’d say.

And I don’t even like guardinals.

Therabyd, a replacement is on its way! The time for US subscribers to request a replacement has come. As for the subscribers in Europe, hang in there!

Thanks much.

Therabyd

We are just now getting reports of US subscribers having received their copy of Dungeon 148. Evidently the Memorial Day holiday has delayed the arrival of this issue for many subscribers. Therefore, we will need to give this issue more time to reach you. Keep me posted on it's arrival.

Thanks,
cos

How much longer should U.S. subscribers wait before requesting a replacement?

Thanks.

Therabyd wrote:

"Grog's" tankard is from Dungeon 4's "Trouble at Grog's", though if you're going to go to the trouble to reference Dungeon 4, why not use "Fluffy Goes to Heck"?

Probably because "Grog's" is a well-loved and oft-remembered adventure, whereas "Fluffy" was a farce and a satire that I don't consider part of any canon but itself.

Touche.

(another attempt at humor)
"Any canon but itself" -- does that mean we should expect an April 1 press release touting the Fluffy Goes to Heck Adventure Path(TM) hardcover?
(/another attempt at humor)

I've been enjoying the classic adventure references too, but a couple have eluded me and are driving me up the wall. Can anyone help with the half-cow-head in V2 or "L. of G." in V3?

Here's what I've got so far:

K8: Sea Ghost was in U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.
St. Asmod's Hope was the "alias" of the Rabid Dawn in Dungeon 111 ("Strike on the Rabid Dawn").
I'm guessing T...M...AUT is from "Tammeraut's Fate" in Dungeon 106 -- Greg Vaughan got a reference to one of his adventures and still sent assassains! -- but I don't have the issue in front of me.

V2: The Earth Dragon was from A1-4 (the slavers series).
I'm stumped on the cow head.

V3: The card is from S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks -- I think it was even the commander's card.
L. of G. has me beat.

V6: Is the badger-like creature an aurumvorax (sp?), also from S3?
V17: The tasloi is from I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City.
The worm must be a worm of Kyuss from the AoWAP.
I'm stumped on the one-eyed bat.
The Carcerian Sign was from the SCAP.

V26: The signet pins are house insignia from D3: The Vault
of the Drow.
"Grog's" tankard is from Dungeon 4's "Trouble at Grog's", though if you're going to go to the trouble to reference Dungeon 4, why not use "Fluffy Goes to Heck"?

Anyway, the ones I'm missing are bugging me, so any help would be appreciated.

Therabyd

Chris Wissel - WerePlatypus wrote:

However, this feat's balance is called into question by the use of charnel touch, a class ability that does negative energy damage agaisnt living creatures as a touch attack. Against undead, this touch heals 1 hit point +1/4 levels. . . which we both feel he sould be able to use to heal himself.

. . .

Nevertheless, both he and I and concerned about the future and high level play, and neither of us want an unbalanced build that's going to cause problems for the rest of the group. Does anyone see a reason why this shouldn't be allowed? If not, what would be a better ruling for charnel touch combined with tomb-tainted soul?

I've built a couple of Dread Necromancers, though sadly I've never had the opportunity to play one. I always figured that since the Charnel touch is negative energy that already exists in the Necromancer's body, it couldn't be used to heal them. It seems somewhat like trying to donate your own organ to yourself. It's already there, so you can't very well take it out and put it back in for greater effect. Negative energy spells draw the energy from somewhere else, presumably, so using them to heal yourself makes sense.

I'd be inclined to go along with this logic. Run-of-the-mill liches, who are healed by negative energy, can inflict d8+5 in negative energy damage by touch each round. So if liches could use that ability to heal themselves, they'd essentially have fast healing on any round they didn't use the touch attack. That would make liches enough more powerful that presumably the ability would have been mentioned in the monster description. In any event, the simplest solution to me seemed to be to rule that the touch attacks draw on already existing energy and so can't be used for self healing.

I do like the idea of donating an organ to oneself, though. :)