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Over on Reddit, a user named kklawm posted a post containing fan-made maps for every act of RotRL. They're pretty nice.
In the PDFs there's a fancy font used for the phrase "Tyrant's Grasp" on the front cover above the title of the specific adventure. What font was used to make that? I can't tell from the PDF because it's an image rather than actual text. I tried feeding the image into a font identifier, but it didn't come up with any matching results. I made slipcases to hold my APs recently and now I'd like to emboss their titles on the spines of those using the font from the adventure. I've been able to ID every other font that was used (at least in the ones I own), but this one has eluded me.
MAP INDEX
General Sandpoint Maps:
1. BURNT OFFERINGS:
Festival and Fire Glass and Wrath Thistletop Maps that couldn't be linked to individually
2. THE SKINSAW MURDERS:
Murder Most Foul The Thing in the Attic Walking Scarecrows Misgivings Chasing the Skinsaw The Seven’s Sawmill Shadows of Time Maps that couldn't be linked to individually
3. THE HOOK MOUNTAIN MASSACRE:
Many of these links are from the Hook Mountain Massacre Printable VT Battlemaps thread. I have linked the super high resolution versions. You may need to resize them to make them work for you, or you can download the lower res versions in the thread above. In the Hook's Shadow
Retaking Rannick Down Comes the Rain The Haunted Heart Harrowing the Hook Maps that couldn't be linked to individually
4. FORTRESS OF THE STONE GIANTS:
Stones over Sandpoint Journey to Jorgenfist Into the Valley of the Black Tower Under Jorgenfist The Ancient Library 5. SINS OF THE SAVIORS:
The Scribbler's Rhyme Seeking Runeforge Runeforge and the Abjurant Halls Maps that couldn't be linked to individually
6. SPIRES OF XIN-SHALAST:
Whispers in the Wood On the World's Roof
Xin-Shalast The Pinnacle of Avarice
The Eye of Avarice Whew. It took nine hours straight to get that all sorted out. Apologies if I missed anything.
It has been five years since we last had an updated index for this thread. And so, I have taken it upon myself to remedy this lack. I am profoundly grateful to GustavoMalek for having the foresight to record the raw BBcode for these posts. So to pay it forward, here is an updated template for this post. Many of the links previously marked "Unavailable" have been restored. A few of those were broken due to typos in the URLs. Others I found copies of, either elsewhere on the web or in the WayBack Machine. And a fair number were supplied by later posters in the thread. NON BATTLEMAP CONTRIBUTIONS INDEX CAST OF CHARACTERS
TOWN OF SANDPOINT
GENERAL
ARTWORK
1. BURNT OFFERINGS
2. THE SKINSAW MURDERS
3. THE HOOK MOUNTAIN MASSACRE
4. FORTRESS OF THE STONE GIANTS
5. SINS OF THE SAVIORS
6. SPIRES OF THE XIN-SHALAST
Unknown but cool
Permissions Issues The following links appear to exist but are not currently viewable by the public. I have sent private messages to their authors asking them to adjust the permissions. They may or may not work.
Hi! I seem to recall Paizo having a page somewhere on their site designed to show to print shop employees, to assure them that yes, I have the rights to print out copies of the maps from your adventures for personal use. But I can't find it for the life of me. My Google-fu has failed. Could someone please give me a link?
Found a few more new maps for the Seven's Sawmill from the same reddit user I linked before. Here's the post where he released them.
Today, at long, long last, I finished running Rise of the Runelords. The actual last fight was over a month ago on April 25th. I wrote up how our Karzoug fight went at the time. Today was the epilogue session, in which we wrapped up longstanding character arcs, and revisited a few favorite NPCs to see how their stories concluded. There's no particular reason any of you should care, I guess, but just briefly: Micah Valian Arneseph, half-elf ranger and the only PC to survive from level 1 to the end of the campaign, married his sweetheart Eri Valion at a fancy ceremony in Magnimar attended by all their friends (including Vernalia, a wyrmling copper dragon who did aerial cartwheels over the wedding party after the vows were exchanged). Zoe the android wizard reconnected with a former colleague, Kane of the Technic League, and returned to Xin-Shalast to conduct research on the now-ruined Leng Device. Wren Silver-Hand, the party bard, saved her family's tavern from being sold to pay off her father's gambling debts, and founded a bardic college of her own in a forest preserve outside Magnimar's walls. Skrag, the half-orc blood rager and cub reporter for the Urgir Herald, used his newfound wealth to buy full ownership of the paper just so he could re-assign himself from covering gossip in the human lands. Now he has returned home to Urgir, defeated his rivals in both the streets and the sheets, and become a prominent local newspaper magnate. Ronia, a cohort cleric of Ng, having managed to purge herself of her changeling ancestry and become a full human, is taking a long vacation to Aelyosos. She anticipates lots of swimming, tanning, and pool boys. According to my email Sent folder, I emailed links to the Rise of the Runelords player's guide to the group on May 20th, 2012. And now, nine years later (almost to the day!), we are finally, finally done.
I went looking for Tintagel's maps of The Misgivings recently and discovered that the site is off line. However, they're still available through the Wayback Machine on archive.org. The Misgivings, ground floor with environs by Tintagel
In related news, the Reddit user didido_two just posted maps of the Misgivings made in Inkarnate.
I think I'm done working on the defense flow charts. I just don't want to futz with them any more. However, here are the original, editable documents! Karzoug's Defenses Flow Chart (Draw.io XML) Viorian Dekanti's Defenses Flow Chart (Draw.io XML) I think releasing these is the way to go, so people can tweak them to taste. That's particularly important for Karzoug, because he's likely to get customized more than Viorian. For example, per the book he's got Spell Turning available. I didn't include it in the diagram, because dear god that would get complicated. But if somebody wants to, now they can. These were created using Draw.io, an online app for creating diagrams. You can just run it in your web browser, or there's a desktop app available if you prefer. In the web-browser-based version, you can go to File > Open From > URL and feed it the URLs above to open a new copy of the diagram. With the desktop version you'll have to download the file like any other and open it. When you're done just save your own copy somewhere -- either to your computer or to a cloud service. It's pretty straightforward to use. You can drag things around, draw new lines, etc. Go ahead and play with it -- if you mess up you can always load a fresh copy from the URLs above.
I'm running the fight against Karzoug tomorrow. One thing that makes high-level play difficult to run is that there's just so damn much to keep track of. In particular, I struggle to remember all the defenses of the monsters. And so, for Karzoug -- and a little earlier, for Viorian Dekanti -- I took the time to put together flow charts for their defenses. Just so I would not forget anything. Here they are: Karzoug's Defenses Flow Chart (PDF) Viorian Dekanti's Defenses Flow Chart (PDF) To use these begin at the top left box for physical attacks, or at the top-right box when the creature is targeted by (or in the AoE for) a spell. After that it should, I hope, be mostly self-explanatory. One thing worth noting, is that when dealing with miss chances, I tend to resolve those by having the player roll a d20 instead of percentile dice. In Viorian's flow chart, I have therefore made notes on resolving her 20% miss chance that way. If the PC rolls 1-4 on a d20, the attack misses. On a 5 or higher they have beaten the miss chance and can proceed. I find this is generally easier than reading percentile dice. And since we don't actually need the specificity of the full percentile -- a 17 and a 15 are both misses in this case -- we gain nothing from using them. The flow charts were made in Draw.io a very handy web site (also available as a desktop app) for making flow charts.
There have been a number of different spell search utilities released recently. Here is one more that I've been tinkering on for several years: The idea here was to use faceted classification to let you drill down to a subset of spells relevant to your interests. Are you playing an Eldritch Knight and desperately want a comprehensive list of Wizard spells that lack somatic components? Hit the plus button next to Wizard, and the minus button next to Somatic, then click the Search button. And boom, there you go: all the wizard spells that have no chance of arcane spell failure. Or perhaps your wizard has taken the arcane discovery Yuelral's Blessing, which grants +1 CL and +1 save DC to spells that appear on both the Wizard and Druid spell lists. Use the plus buttons to require both Wizard and Druid, then hit search. Tada! Occasionally you will see spells appear more than once in results. This is usually because it exists in multiple sources with slight variations. For example, the spell Brightest Light was printed twice, once in the Adventurer's Guide and once in Inner Sea Intrigue, and the two (AG version, ISI version) are not identical. It should work tolerably well on mobile, though I only have one phone to test it with. It is not compatible with Internet Explorer. If you are still using Internet Explorer, I urge you to move on to some other browser. It's time to let it go. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Tyler Beck from PathfinderCommunity.net, whose painstaking work building a spreadsheet of all Pathfinder spells provided the raw data that made this possible. And also to Paizo, for making their work available under the Paizo Community License for this kind of thing.
Glad I checked back on this! Thanks for pointing out those continuity issues. Those are helpful. I'm not concerned about inter-AP continuity in this case, as I will not be running another AP for this group. We cannot meet regularly enough to get through one in any kind of reasonable time frame. This Rise of the Runelords has been going since spring of 2012; I anticipate finishing next spring, which will mean it took eight years to run the AP. I had no idea it would take this long when I began, and I am not signing up for another stint. Going forward, I will not run an AP for a group that won't commit to meeting at least once every two weeks for four hours, rather than once every 4-6 weeks for 3 hours like this one. They're great people, I love them all, but either we're going to do homebrew where I can more easily control the length of the campaign, or we'll do shorter published adventures. I might cherry-pick individual books from other APs and run them as stand-alone adventures. Carrion Crown Book 4 looks like a good candidate, for instance, or Book 1 of Serpent's Skull. There was a good thread on standalone AP books on Reddit recently.
This past summer, Spotify introduced a "Group Session" feature that lets multiple people with Spotify Premium accounts listen to the same music at the same time. That would be *great* for playing background music during remote RPG sessions. Unfortunately, it only works on the mobile app, not the desktop client, which is far more useful for remote RPG-playing purposes. There's a suggestion in their "Idea Exchange" to implement it for the desktop version, but the Spotify team apparently won't consider it until it hits 500 votes. As I write this, it's sitting at 134. So ... if you have a Spotify account, please take a moment and vote to bring Group Sessions to the Spotify desktop client! It will make our gaming sessions better.
My players are finally approaching the end of the campaign. They entered the Pinnacle of Avarice last session. The campaign has run very, very long, and so I am not eager to extend the campaign beyond the published material. Therefore, I have quietly eliminated the possibility of Mhar Massif erupting if someone activates the Leng Device. One way or another, the fight with Karzoug will be the end of the campaign. So after some thought, I decided to use it to offer the players an alternate end fight. They can fight Karzoug here and now, in the world where he has been studying them and preparing specifically to counteract their favorite tricks. Or ... they can use the Leng Device to travel backwards in time to a few months before Earthfall and assassinate Karzoug when he has no idea who the heck they are or even that they exist. Going back in time will make the fight easier; and they can undo all the damage Karzoug has done in their time. But at the same time, they would lose everything. They have friends, lovers, wealth, respect -- are they willing to sacrifice all that to undo all the damage Karzoug has done to their time, and to give themselves an edge over the most dangerous opponent they will ever face? In order to make this choice more difficult, I have carefully integrated time travel into the campaign. In the ruins of Crystilan, they met a Time Dragon who informed them that they will have been very late, and once they are not so late they would have been welcome to a ride. They were extremely puzzled by this cryptic declaration, but the gist is they can go find the time dragon in the past and get a ride forward to their own time. Alternately, the bard and her cohort (a cleric of Ng) did a short solo side quest in which they traveled two million years back in time in order to plant a fossilized tree seed at the confluence of two flows of gods' blood left over from a battle between Rovagug and Sarenrae. They traveled in time by entering the Season of Hungering Sun, one of the unused seasons that the gods decided not to include when they put together the final version of the prime material plane. It lies adjacent to every summer solstice in history. As demigod of lost seasons, Ng has access to this place, and sometimes sends his servants through it to undertake inscrutable tasks for him. As one of his highest level clerics, the cohort could ask Ng to let them use the Season of Hungering Sun to return to their proper time. If they choose to use the Leng Device, they'll pop out in Karzoug's throne room on the summer solstice before Earthfall, as he is in the midst of holding court. In terms of creatures, I'm thinking the following:
There will also be some non-combatants scattered around -- a delegation from somewhere, perhaps, and some courtiers. These will flee in panic as violence breaks out. I plan to remind them that they may want to figure out some way of escaping once Karzoug is dead, but leave it up to them how exactly they accomplish that. As for what happens once they're done ... as mentioned, I've provided a couple of different mechanisms to return to their own time. I'm still trying to work out all the consequences of killing Karzoug in the past.
It's also worth going through the Community-Created Stuff thread. There's a lot of cool stuff in there, including maps for non-canonical locations. I did one for the Hell Flume, for example, and another for the Sihedron Temple in Xin-Shalast. It is quite a bit of reading considering all the things that have accumulated over the years, and some of it has succumbed to the inevitable link-rot. But it's still worth the time it takes to go through it.
In this excerpt, the protagonist Randolph Carter has been taken prisoner by denizen of Leng, and flown to the heart of the Plateau of Leng on the back of a shantak. It may give you some ideas what a "monastery" is like in Leng. Excerpt from the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath:
But the shantak flew on past the fires and the stone huts and the less than human dancers, and soared over sterile hills of grey granite and dim wastes of rock and ice and snow. Day came, and the phosphorescence of low clouds gave place to the misty twilight of that northern world, and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence. At times the slant-eyed man talked with his steed in a hateful and guttural language, and the shantak would answer with tittering tones that rasped like the scratching of ground glass. All this while the land was getting higher, and finally they came to a windswept table-land which seemed the very roof of a blasted and tenantless world. There, all alone in the hush and the dusk and the cold, rose the uncouth stones of a squat windowless building, around which a circle of crude monoliths stood. In all this arrangement there was nothing human, and Carter surmised from old tales that he was indeed come to that most dreadful and legendary of all places, the remote and prehistoric monastery wherein dwells uncompanioned the high-priest not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and prays to the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
The loathsome bird now settled to the ground, and the slant-eyed man hopped down and helped his captive alight. Of the purpose of his seizure Carter now felt very sure; for clearly the slant-eyed merchant was an agent of the darker powers, eager to drag before his masters a mortal whose presumption had aimed at the finding of unknown Kadath and the saying of a prayer before the faces of the Great Ones in their onyx castle. It seemed likely that this merchant had caused his former capture by the slaves of the moon-things in Dylath-Leen, and that he now meant to do what the rescuing cats had baffled; taking the victim to some dread rendezvous with monstrous Nyarlathotep and telling with what boldness the seeking of unknown Kadath had been tried. Leng and the cold waste north of Inganok must be close to the Other Gods, and there the passes to Kadath are well guarded. The slant-eyed man was small, but the great hippocephalic bird was there to see he was obeyed; so Carter followed where he led, and passed within the circle of standing rocks and into the low arched doorway of that windowless stone monastery. There were no lights inside, but the evil merchant lit a small clay lamp bearing morbid bas-reliefs and prodded his prisoner on through mazes of narrow winding corridors. On the walls of the corridors were painted frightful scenes older than history, and in a style unknown to the archaeologists of earth. After countless aeons their pigments were brilliant still, for the cold and dryness of hideous Leng keep alive many primal things. Carter saw them fleetingly in the rays of that dim and moving lamp, and shuddered at the tale they told. Through those archaic frescoes Leng’s annals stalked; and the horned, hooved, and wide-mouthed almost-humans danced evilly amidst forgotten cities. There were scenes of old wars, wherein Leng’s almost-humans fought with the bloated purple spiders of the neighbouring vales; and there were scenes also of the coming of the black galleys from the moon, and of the submission of Leng’s people to the polypous and amorphous blasphemies that hopped and floundered and wriggled out of them. Those slippery greyish-white blasphemies they worshipped as gods, nor ever complained when scores of their best and fatted males were taken away in the black galleys. The monstrous moon-beasts made their camp on a jagged isle in the sea, and Carter could tell from the frescoes that this was none other than the lone nameless rock he had seen when sailing to Inganok; that grey accursed rock which Inganok’s seamen shun, and from which vile howlings reverberate all through the night. And in those frescoes was shewn the great seaport and capital of the almost-humans; proud and pillared betwixt the cliffs and the basalt wharves, and wondrous with high fanes and carven places. Great gardens and columned streets led from the cliffs and from each of the six sphinx-crowned gates to a vast central plaza, and in that plaza was a pair of winged colossal lions guarding the top of a subterrene staircase. Again and again were those huge winged lions shewn, their mighty flanks of diorite glistening in the grey twilight of the day and the cloudy phosphorescence of the night. And as Carter stumbled past their frequent and repeated pictures it came to him at last what indeed they were, and what city it was that the almost-humans had ruled so anciently before the coming of the black galleys. There could be no mistake, for the legends of dreamland are generous and profuse. Indubitably that primal city was no less a place than storied Sarkomand, whose ruins had bleached for a million years before the first true human saw the light, and whose twin titan lions guard eternally the steps that lead down from dreamland to the Great Abyss. Other views shewed the gaunt grey peaks dividing Leng from Inganok, and the monstrous shantak-birds that build nests on the ledges half way up. And they shewed likewise the curious caves near the very topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the shantaks fly screaming away from them. Carter had seen those caves when he passed over them, and had noticed their likeness to the caves on Ngranek. Now he knew that the likeness was more than a chance one, for in these pictures were shewn their fearsome denizens; and those bat-wings, curving horns, barbed tails, prehensile paws, and rubbery bodies were not strange to him. He had met those silent, flitting, and clutching creatures before; those mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep but hoary Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded night-gaunts, who never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who flop unendingly in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the outer world. The slant-eyed merchant had now prodded Carter into a great domed space whose walls were carved in shocking bas-reliefs, and whose centre held a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained stone altars in a ring. There was no light in this vast and evil-smelling crypt, and the small lamp of the sinister merchant shone so feebly that one could grasp details only little by little. At the farther end was a high stone dais reached by five steps; and there on a golden throne sat a lumpish figure robed in yellow silk figured with red and having a yellow silken mask over its face. To this being the slant-eyed man made certain signs with his hands, and the lurker in the dark replied by raising a disgustingly carven flute of ivory in silk-covered paws and blowing certain loathsome sounds from beneath its flowing yellow mask. This colloquy went on for some time, and to Carter there was something sickeningly familiar in the sound of that flute and the stench of the malodorous place. It made him think of a frightful red-litten city and of the revolting procession that once filed through it; of that, and of an awful climb through lunar countryside beyond, before the rescuing rush of earth’s friendly cats. He knew that the creature on the dais was without doubt the high-priest not to be described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and abnormal possibilities, but he feared to think just what that abhorred high-priest might be. Then the figured silk slipped a trifle from one of the greyish-white paws, and Carter knew what the noisome high-priest was. And in that hideous second stark fear drove him to something his reason would never have dared to attempt, for in all his shaken consciousness there was room only for one frantic will to escape from what squatted on that golden throne. He knew that hopeless labyrinths of stone lay betwixt him and the cold table-land outside, and that even on that table-land the noxious shantak still waited; yet in spite of all this there was in his mind only the instant need to get away from that wriggling, silk-robed monstrosity. Obviously the high-priest not to be described is Hastur, and that would likely be a bit too much for your players even at high level. However, a high level worm-that-walks might work.
Into the Nightmare Rift has a gazetteer of Leng, which may be relevant. For more on the source material, I recommend reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft. It's got a bunch of info about Leng and its Denizens. Be prepared for page after page after page of description, and very little dialogue.
Tangleheart
Description: Green light filters down through the thick vegetation above, filling this clearing with an eerie light. A pool of water lies at its center, still and dark, criss-crossed with vines the size of tree trunks. All around you enormous vines covered with yellow blossoms twine their way into the air, forming thick, verdant walls, and a round stone altar protrudes from the waters of the pool. Creatures: this entire clearing is, effectively, the Heart of the Tangle. The PCs enter from the south west corner. The vegepygmies erected a stone altar to their god here; for game purposes, the Heart of the Tangle is the clump of vines just north of that. Three more creatures are present, though not immediately obvious: the lamia matriarch Amarantha led a pair of stone giant minions into the Tangle not long ago to attempt to recruit the creature to Karzoug's service. She failed: the creature murdered her and her two minions, and turned them into yellow musk zombies. They drift below the surface of the pool now, waiting for their new master to direct them. The Heart of the Tangle knows Thassilonian, but cannot speak except to other plants. When the party gets near the edge of the pool, it causes Amarantha to rise to the surface of the water and negotiate with them, using her to relay its words to them through her rotting vocal cords. Though it is highly intelligent, the Heart of the Tangle is driven by its most primitive urges: it wants to spread, and has been stymied in that for millennia by the inhospitable climate surrounding it. It needs warmth and moisture to grow, but the dry, cold mountains around Xin-Shalast offer it no purchase. If the party proposes an alliance, it can provide yellow musk zombies from giants and other creatures that have fumbled their foolish way into the Tangle over the millennia. In exchange, it demands that the party take its seeds away from Xin-Shalast and plant them elsewhere in the world to grow and spread. If they accept this bargain, it wants sureties. It has learned how to create spores that influence the behavior of humanoids. If the party will agree to inhale those spores it will make pact with them. In game terms, treat them as bound by a geas obligating them to spread the Tangle's seed across Golarion once they have dealt with Karzoug. This is a non-magical effect and thus cannot be dispelled, but it can be cleared with a Remove Disease spell and successful DC 26 caster level check. The Heart of the Tangle will know if the party removes its spores. Assuming it comes to a fight, two fungal stone giants lurch out of the waters and it's on. Portraits: Fungal Horrors (formerly Stone Giants) Amarantha stats:
Amarantha CR 13
XP 25,600 Female advanced fungal lamia matriarch oracle 7 (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide 42, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 288, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 175, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 4 116) CE Large plant (augmented monstrous humanoid, shapechanger) Init +10; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +27 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 34, touch 16, flat-footed 27 (+6 armor, +6 Dex, +1 dodge, +12 natural, -1 size) hp 237 (19d8+140) Fort +13, Ref +16, Will +18 Defensive Abilities poisonous blood; Immune immunity to befouled liquid, disease, mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, polymorph, sleep, stunning; SR 19 -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft., swim 30 ft. Melee +1 scimitar +23/+18/+13/+8 (1d6+10/15-20 plus 1 Wis drain on first hit each round) or . . +1 scimitar +23/+18/+13 (1d6+10/15-20 plus 1 Wis drain on first hit each round) or . . touch +20 (1d4 Wis drain) Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. Special Attacks create spawn, poison spore cloud, wisdom drain (touch: 1d4 Wis drain) Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12th; concentration +19) . . At will—charm monster (DC 21), ventriloquism (DC 18) . . 3/day—deep slumber (DC 20), dream, major image (DC 20), mirror image, suggestion (DC 20) Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 6th; concentration +13) . . 3rd (5/day)—haste . . 2nd (7/day)—death knell (DC 19), invisibility . . 1st (8/day)—cure light wounds, divine favor, mage armor, magic missile . . 0 (at will)—dancing lights, daze (DC 17), detect magic, ghost sound (DC 17), mage hand, mending, prestidigitation Oracle Spells Known (CL 7th; concentration +14) . . 3rd (6/day)—bestow curse (DC 20), inflict serious wounds (DC 20), minor creation, communal resist energy[UC] . . 2nd (8/day)—augury, barkskin, calm emotions (DC 19), grace[APG], inflict moderate wounds (DC 19) . . 1st (8/day)—detect good, divine favor, endure elements, inflict light wounds (DC 18), murderous command[UM] (DC 18), obscuring mist, shillelagh (DC 18) . . 0 (at will)—bleed (DC 17), create water, detect magic, light, mending, read magic, resistance . . Mystery Wood -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 28, Dex 22, Con 25, Int 20, Wis 20, Cha 25 Base Atk +17; CMB +27; CMD 44 (can't be tripped) Feats Dodge, Double Slice, Extend Spell, Greater Two-weapon Fighting, Improved Critical (scimitar), Improved Initiative, Improved Two-weapon Fighting, Power Attack, Two-weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (scimitar) Skills Acrobatics +21, Bluff +23, Climb +21, Diplomacy +16, Disguise +13, Intimidate +29, Knowledge (arcana) +24, Knowledge (Nature) +24, Linguistics +6, Perception +27, Spellcraft +27, Stealth +24, Swim +21, Use Magic Device +30; Racial Modifiers +4 Acrobatics, +4 Bluff, +4 Use Magic Device Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Common, Draconic, Elven, Plantspeech (fungi), Sylvan, Thassilonian SQ change shape (fixed Medium humanoid form; alter self), fungal metabolism, oracle's curse (putrid), rejuvenation, revelations (wood armor[UM], wood sight[UM], woodland stride[UM]), undersized weapons, woodland stride Other Gear +1 scimitar, +1 scimitar -------------------- Ecology -------------------- Environment any land Organization solitary, pair, or cult (3-6) Treasure double (two +1 scimitars, other treasure) -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Change Shape (fixed Medium humanoid form; alter self) (Su) You can change your form. Climb (30 feet) You have a Climb speed. Create Spawn (Su) Creatures kiled by poison spore cloud rise as spawn in 24 hours. Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white only). Extend Spell Spell duration lasts twice as normal. +1 Level. Fungal Metabolism (Ex) Fungal creatures breathe, but they do not eat or sleep in the typical manner. Immunity to Befouled Liquid (Ex) Immune to the nauseated effects created by liquids your presence has befouled. Immunity to Disease You are immune to diseases. Immunity to Mind-Affecting effects You are immune to Mind-Affecting effects. Immunity to Paralysis You are immune to paralysis. Immunity to Poison You are immune to poison. Immunity to Polymorph You are immune to Polymorph effects. Immunity to Sleep You are immune to sleep effects. Immunity to Stunning You are immune to being stunned. Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in dim light, distinguishing color and detail. Poison Spore Cloud (1/day, DC 23) Fungal spores—inhaled; save Fort DC 23; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d2 Con and fatigued for 1 minute; cure 2 consecutive saves. Cloud lingers for 10 rds. The save DC is Constitution-based. Poisonous Blood (DC 23) Fungal blood or flesh—ingested; save Fort DC 23; frequency 1/minute for 6 minutes; effect 1 Dex and Str and nauseated for 1 minute; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based. Power Attack -5/+10 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage. Putrid Liquids in 10 ft. are fouled while near +1 hr., nauseate 1 rnd. if drunk. CL check to purify with magic. Rejuvenation (Ex) Fungal creature resting or doing light activity regains 4 hp/day as long as contact with moist natural earth. Spell Resistance (19) You have Spell Resistance. Swim (30 feet) You have a Swim speed. Undersized Weapons (Ex) The creature uses manufactured weapons as if it were one size category smaller than the creature's actual size. Wisdom Drain (Touch: 1d4 Wis drain, DC 26) (Su) Attack causes Ability Drain Wood Armor +6 (7 hours/day) (Su) +6 AC. Wood Sight (7 rounds/day) (Su) As a move action, you can alter your vision to see through underbrush and plant growth that would normally grant concealment, up to a range of 60 feet (though darkness and other obstacles still may block your sight). At 7th level, you can use this ab Woodland Stride (Ex) Move through undergrowth at normal speed. Stats for Fungal Stone Giants:
Fungal Horror 1 CR 5
XP 1,600 Male stone giant deathspore zombie (Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Horror Realms 33, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 151) NE Large plant Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 13, touch 10, flat-footed 12 (+1 Dex, +3 natural, -1 size) hp 133 (14d8+70) Fort +13, Ref +5, Will +4 DR 5/slashing -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 40 ft. Melee greatclub +14/+9 (2d8+13) or . . slam +13 (1d8+13 plus poison), 2 slams +13 (1d8+4 plus poison) Ranged rock +5 (1d8+9) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 29, Dex 13, Con 19, Int —, Wis 10, Cha 14 Base Atk +10; CMB +20; CMD 31 Feats Toughness Skills Acrobatics +1 (+5 to jump) Languages Common, Giant SQ deathspore toxin, staggered Other Gear greatclub -------------------- Ecology -------------------- Environment temperate mountains Organization solitary, gang (2-5), band (4-8), hunting party (9-12 plus 1 elder), or tribe (13-30 plus 35% noncombatants, 1-3 elders, and 4-6 dire bears) Treasure standard (greatclub, other treasure) -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Damage Reduction (5/slashing) You have Damage Reduction against all except Slashing attacks. Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white only). Poison (DC 14) (Ex) Deathspore Toxin: Slam—injury; save Fort DC 14; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; initial effect 1 Con drain; secondary effect 1d3 Dex; cure 2 saves Staggered (Ex) Make only a single move or a single attack action each round. The stats for the Heart of the Tangle are in the first post in this thread, above. Development: If they strike the bargain with the Heart of the Tangle, then you'll need to decide what kind and how many yellow musk zombies it can provide to the cause -- and how long it is willing to wait before it activates the spores obligating the party to spread it across the world. If they kill it, well ... the Tangle is still a lush, rich biome, and the rotting vines of the Heart of the Tangle will provide plenty of rich loam to grow new horrors ...
Tanglefen Hollow Map: Tanglefen Hollow by Neyjour Description: A village has been grown out of the tangled vegetation here. Houses made of enormous fungi cling to the sides of trees and squat on the moist ground. The occupants of the village prove to be short plant-people, who gesture excitedly to one another as you approach, but make no sound. Vegepygmies cannot speak, except for plantspeech. The party can communicate with them using Tongues, Speak with Plants or telepathy. Other than that, their only option for communication is to play charades. The vegepygmies worship the Heart of the Tangle as a god. The party's reception here will depend on how they acted during their first encounter with the denizens of the Tangle. If they were peaceful, then the vegepygmies welcome them, and urge them to meet their god (the Heart of the Tangle). If they were violent, then the vegepygmies flee before them, except for a handful who try valiantly to defend the path to the Heart of the Tangle. Creatures: a bunch of vegepygmies. Development: if the PCs opt to attack the village, there is no need to roll out the combat. These unmodified vegepygmies pose no threat to a party of high-level adventurers, who can easily slaughter the entire village without breaking a sweat. Most of them flee, scattering in all directions to vanish into the depths of the Tangle.
The Hunt Map: Haunted Forest Path, also from Gabriel Pickard's Cursed Woods pack. Description: The vegetation grows close together in this area, forming a thick canopy above. In the gloom below, you can make out phosphorescent fungi glowing at the base of the trees. Ahead, you can see short, humanoid figures armed with stone spears moving quietly through the ground, together with a pair of large cats who seem to obey their hand signals. Creatures: This is a hunting party from Tanglefen Hollow, consisting of a group of vegepygmies together with a mated pair of dweomercats. They seek to kill a monster that has been threatening their village of late -- a bizarre creature shaped like an antelope, but possessed of an enormous toothy maw that opens all along its chest cavity. This beast has been snatching and killing incautious vegepygmies for the past few months. The Screaming Antelope is lurking in the area. You can begin the encounter by having it pounce on something -- perhaps a vegepygmy, or perhaps a PC if one has strayed too far from the others. Vegepygmy stats (8) Dweomercat stats (2) Stats for Screaming Antelope:
Veins of some orange fluid pulse visibly through the thin skin of this enormous antelope. Its entire torso opens up into a gaping maw as it charges, screaming with a woman's voice ...
-------------------- Screaming Antelope CR 9 XP 6,400 Screaming antelope CN Large aberration (chaotic) Init +10; Senses darkvision 60 ft., scent; Perception +22 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 23, touch 15, flat-footed 17 (+6 Dex, +8 natural, -1 size) hp 119 (14d8+56); fast healing 5 Fort +10, Ref +12, Will +10 -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 60 ft. Melee bite +17 (1d12+25 plus grab) Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. Special Attacks screaming pounce, swallow whole (AC 14, 11 hp) -------------------- Tactics -------------------- Before Combat Screaming Antelopes use their keen sight and sense of smell to stalk their prey from a distance. During Combat At the start of combat, a Screaming Antelope charges its chosen target and screams immediately before leaping upon it, attempting to grab the target in its torso-mouth. On its next turn, it attempts to swallow the target whole and run away. Morale Screaming Antelopes are hit-and-run predators who hunt by singling out weak individuals, grabbing them, and fleeing to digest their meal. They immediately flee if damaged or if they fail to swallow their target. -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 32, Dex 22, Con 18, Int 7, Wis 12, Cha 5 Base Atk +10; CMB +19 (+23 grapple); CMD 38 (42 vs. trip) Feats Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Run, Skill Focus (Perception), Skill Focus (Stealth) Skills Acrobatics +24 (+28 to jump with a running start, +36 to jump), Perception +22, Stealth +33 SQ leaping pounce -------------------- Ecology -------------------- Environment screaming antelopes dwell in the Tangle, a mutated jungle in the lost city of Xin-Shalast. Organization solitary Treasure none -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white only). Fast Healing 5 (Ex) Heal damage every round unless you are killed. Grab (Large, Bite, Bite) (Ex) You can start a grapple as a free action if you hit with the designated weapon. Leaping Pounce (Ex) When a Screaming Antelope charges, it may attempt a DC 30 Acrobatics check. If it succeeds, it leaps into the air. It may travel an additional 30 feet during its charge and gains a +1 on the attack roll for having higher ground. Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage (the stats above include Power Attack). Run Run 5x your speed in light/medium armor or 4x speed in heavy armor and keep Dex when running. Scent (Ex) Detect opponents within 15+ ft. by sense of smell. Screaming Pounce (DC 21) (Su) When a Screaming Antelope makes a charge attack, it can scream as a free action once at any point during the charge. Creatures within 60 feet of the antelope must make a DC 21 Will save or be paralyzed with fear for 1d4 rounds. A successful save reduces this to shaken for 1d4 rounds. This is a fear effect. The save DC is Constiution-based. Swallow Whole (AC 14, 11 HP) (Ex) You can swallow smaller targets whole. The Screaming Antelope is based on a creature from the game Kingdom Death. For artwork and to get a sense of the flavor, check the Screaming Antelope article on the Kingdom Death wiki. I made up these Pathfinder stats for the critter, whose signature move is to pounce on an outlying or separated creature, swallow it whole in the gaping maw that is its entire torso, and then run away. Development: If the PCs assist the vegepygmies with their hunt, the village in Tanglefen Hollow will greet them with open arms. If they attack and kill the vegepygmies (or their dweomercats) they'll be hostile.
Tanglemere Map: The Drowning Pond, from the map pack Quick Encounters: Cursed Woods by Gabriel Pickard. Description: The still waters of this pond mirror the surrounding vegetation perfectly. Faint traces of greenish mist form and dissolve throughout the area. A female figure sits quietly on the north shore, gazing into the dark waters. Creatures: The advanced fungal nymph Oriuna rests on the moist earth of the pond's northern shore, dreamily watching the reflections in the water. Sometimes she will scry using the pond as her focus, but most often she drifts through her days in a long slow haze of lassitude. Oriuna vaguely remembers being a normal nymph, but cannot recall how she came here exactly. This is her home now. She watches the waters, and knows no fear. If the party approaches peaceably, she is willing to speak with them. She can tell them of the vegepygmies who live deeper in the Tangle, for they pass by now and then. She knows of the Heart of the Tangle, for truly, it lies all around them, its roots and vines entwining the entire area. If attacked, in round 1 Oriuna does three things: she activates her Blinding Beauty ability, uses her Poison Spore Cloud, and calls out for aid to the six will 'o wisps who dwell in the area. She is immune to fear, and has made them her allies. In later rounds she fights using her spells, retreating into the pond if possible. I used the stock art for Oriuna and the Wisps. Hey, that sounds like a band name. Oriuna Stats:
Oriuna CR 9
XP 6,400 Advanced fungal nymph (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 217, 288, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 4 116) CN Medium plant (augmented fey) Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +16 Aura blinding beauty (30 ft., DC 23) -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 30, touch 26, flat-footed 23 (+9 deflection, +6 Dex, +1 dodge, +4 natural) hp 100 (8d8+64) Fort +19, Ref +21, Will +20 Defensive Abilities poisonous blood; DR 10/cold iron; Immune disease, mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, polymorph, sleep, stunning -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 20 ft., swim 10 ft. Melee slam +10 (1d4+6) Special Attacks create spawn, poison spore cloud, stunning glance Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +17) . . 1/day—dimension door Druid Spells Prepared (CL 7th; concentration +12) . . 4th—command plants (DC 19), scrying (DC 19) . . 3rd—call lightning (DC 18), speak with plants, spike growth (DC 18) . . 2nd—chill metal (DC 17), flame blade, resist energy, summon swarm . . 1st—entangle (DC 16), faerie fire, liberating command[UC], obscuring mist, pass without trace, produce flame . . 0 (at will)—detect poison, guidance, resistance, virtue -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 18, Dex 23, Con 26, Int 20, Wis 21, Cha 29 Base Atk +4; CMB +10; CMD 34 Feats Agile Maneuvers, Combat Casting, Dodge, Weapon Finesse Skills Acrobatics +17 (+13 to jump), Diplomacy +20, Escape Artist +17, Handle Animal +17, Heal +13, Knowledge (nature) +16, Perception +16, Sense Motive +16, Stealth +17, Swim +23, Use Magic Device +20 Languages Aquan, Common, Giant, Plantspeech, Sylvan, Sylvan, Thassilonian SQ fungal metabolism, inspiration, rejuvenation, unearthly grace, wild empathy +23 -------------------- Ecology -------------------- Environment any ruins or underground Organization solitary Treasure standard -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Agile Maneuvers Use DEX instead of STR for CMB Blinding Beauty (DC 23) (Su) Blind humanoids in 30 ft if they look at the nymph (Fort neg). Can suppress as a free action. Combat Casting +4 to Concentration checks to cast while on the defensive. Create Spawn (Su) Creatures kiled by poison spore cloud rise as spawn in 24 hours. Damage Reduction (10/cold iron) You have Damage Reduction against all except Cold Iron attacks. Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white only). Fungal Metabolism (Ex) Fungal creatures breathe, but they do not eat or sleep in the typical manner. Immunity to Disease You are immune to diseases. Immunity to Mind-Affecting effects You are immune to Mind-Affecting effects. Immunity to Paralysis You are immune to paralysis. Immunity to Poison You are immune to poison. Immunity to Polymorph You are immune to Polymorph effects. Immunity to Sleep You are immune to sleep effects. Immunity to Stunning You are immune to being stunned. Inspiration (Su) Chosen creature gains +4 to Will saves and Craft/Perform checks while carries a mark of favor. Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in dim light, distinguishing color and detail. Poison Spore Cloud (1/day, DC 22) Fungal spores—inhaled; save Fort DC 22; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d2 Con and fatigued for 1 minute; cure 2 consecutive saves. Cloud lingers for 10 rds. The save DC is Constitution-based. Poisonous Blood (DC 22) Fungal blood or flesh—ingested; save Fort DC 22; frequency 1/minute for 6 minutes; effect 1 Dex and Str and nauseated for 1 minute; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based. Rejuvenation (Ex) Fungal creature resting or doing light activity regains 4 hp/day as long as contact with moist natural earth. Stunning Glance (DC 23) (Su) As a standard action can stun one creature in 30 ft for 2d4 rds (Fort neg). Swim (10 feet) You have a Swim speed. Unearthly Grace (Su) This creature adds her Charisma modifier as a racial bonus on all her saving throws, and as a deflection bonus to her Armor Class. Wild Empathy +23 (Ex) Improve the attitude of an animal, as if using Diplomacy. Blight Wisp stats (6 of these):
Blight Wisp CR 7
XP 3,200 Male advanced will-o'-wisp (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 277, 288) CE Small aberration (air) Init +15; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +19 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 30, touch 28, flat-footed 18 (+5 deflection, +11 Dex, +1 dodge, +2 natural, +1 size) hp 58 (9d8+18) Fort +5, Ref +14, Will +11 Defensive Abilities natural invisibility; Immune magic -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed fly 50 ft. (perfect) Melee shock +18 (2d8 electricity) -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 5, Dex 33, Con 14, Int 19, Wis 20, Cha 18 Base Atk +6; CMB +2; CMD 29 Feats Alertness, Blind-fight, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Weapon Finesse Skills Acrobatics +23, Bluff +13, Escape Artist +23, Fly +33, Knowledge (history) +13, Knowledge (nature) +13, Perception +19, Sense Motive +7, Stealth +47 (+67 when immobile) Languages Aklo, Common, Giant, Plantspeech, Thassilonian SQ feed on fear -------------------- Ecology -------------------- Environment any swamp Organization solitary, pair, or string (3-4) Treasure incidental -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Blind-Fight Re-roll misses because of concealment, other benefits. Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white only). Feed on Fear (Su) Any time a will-o'-wisp is within 15 feet of a dying creature or creature subject to a fear effect, it gains fast healing 5. Fly (50 feet, Perfect) You can fly! Immunity to Magic Immune to all spells and spell-like abilities that allow spell resistance, except magic missile and maze. Natural Invisibility (Ex) Extinguish natural glow as a move action, effectively becoming invisible. Development: if the PCs kill Oriuna, the Heart of the Tangle takes notice and alerts the vegepygmies that they are hostile. If they treat peaceably with her, the Heart of the Tangle tells the vegepygmies to greet them likewise.
This went fine. I wound up creating four areas and using three of them. I will post notes below on all of them in a moment, one post per area. I'll include which maps I used and creature stats. The maps are not free to download, I'm afraid, so you'll need to be willing to plonk down a few bucks if you want to use these exact ones. All of the maps were designed at 100px to the square; but in order to make the maps feel big and open, I reduced the number of pixels-per-square to 50px in my VTT, effectively quadrupling the size of the areas. The Heart of the Tangle can perceive basically anything going on in the Tangle, as its vines extend throughout the area. Feel free to modify any or all of this as you see fit. When my PCs entered the Tangle, I had them roll 1d2 to choose either Tanglemere or The Hunt as their first encounter. They rolled 2 (The Hunt), so the Tanglemere encounter never got used. They eventually met with the Heart of the Tangle, but were unwilling to accept its bargain; they slew Amarantha and the two yellow musk zombie stone giants, but opted to let the Heart of the Tangle live, reasoning that it would continue to be a hazard to Karzoug's forces, and they could always come back and finish it off later if they want.
I have just finished a new map of the Sihedron Temple from book 6. Here it is: The scale is 100px to the five-foot square, which should work tolerably well for VTT, and print nicely at 100 DPI. This area is not really detailed in the adventure beyond a couple brief paragraphs. If my players choose to venture there -- which seems likely to happen tomorrow, actually -- they will encounter the Immortal Ichor of Lissala and some yet-to-be-determined minions. Made in Photoshop with textures from textures.com, a few assets from dundjinni.com, and vector images I made in Inkscape for use as masks.
My Kingmaker (now concluded) was so heavily modified it barely qualified as Kingmaker any more. My player did Book 1, the Rushlight Festival, and Book 6. The rest was a homebrew adventure, and in all honesty by the time we did the Rushlight Festival and Book 6, those were merely episodes on the way to the resolution of the campaign's main plot, which we need not go into here. In working with Nyrissa, I needed to understand more about what drove her. How did she become the cruel creature that she is? What I came up with is, essentially, a short story about Ranalc and Nyrissa's romance, told from Count Ranalc's point of view. I thought I would post that here, in the hopes that perhaps some other GM might find it useful. The entire thing is predicated on that notion that in the distant past, before the gods abandoned the First World, Ranalc was Lawful Good. When they left, that shook him to the core. He became Lawful Neutral, seeking ever to reclaim the goodness that once came so easily to him. And this is the story of how he finally lost all faith in order, and bitterly embraced a Chaotic Neutral nihilism. Spoilered for length. Spoiler:
Neither Appointed nor Foreseen
I am Ranalc, a noble creature who loves the darkness. I was created in the long-ago by the Betrayers, the ones who left us -- those beings that the mortals of the Second World call "gods". I loved my creators, and offered them praise and obedience. For time out of mind, all was well. Then they left us. They abandoned our world, the First World, and went off to make a whole new world to replace ours, to supplant it. This was the First Betrayal. They did not destroy us. Oh no. That would have been a mercy. No, they left us to continue without guidance, without care, without any path in life or hope of death, for our souls do not migrate for judgement on death as those of the Second World do. No, they condemned us to eternal life devoid of purpose. This was the Second Betrayal. We lived. We adapted. And we, the Eldest of our kind, stepped forward to fill the gaping emptiness that the Betrayers left. If they would not give us purpose, we would make our own. If they would not guide our people, our races, then we we would do it ourselves. Time passed. Slowly, we established some kind of life for ourselves. I myself worked with darkness and nobility. Daring midnight raids for the beauty of daring! Noble self-sacrifice, for the beauty of martyrdom! I strove to ennoble my fellow fey, to give them reasons to work together, reasons to live and love. But always I was lonely. The other Eldest did not share my aims. They took refuge instead in other things. Magdh and Shyka in prophecy and foreknowledge, the workings of time. The Green Mother in endless, mindless pursuit of pleasure and intrigue. The Lost Prince and Imbrex in depression and detachment. The Lantern King in a constant stream of ridiculous pranks, and Ragadahn in equally constant destruction. And Ng, well, who can say what Ng is up to? Certainly Ng says nothing about it. Alone among the Eldest, I felt that we should work towards more than salving our wounds. I felt we needed some goal, some purpose to hold us together. I wanted to do good! To help our people to do good. That was what we lost most when the Betrayers left us -- a sense of good. And so I worked tirelessly to recapture that goal. A mode of life that respected our hugely varying needs and desires, and balanced them against one another so that no one got too little, and no one too much. It was rough going, I'll admit. And so, when I found her, my sweet Nyrissa, I felt that finally I had the strength it would take to see it through. She understood! She saw what I was trying to do, she saw how I wanted to make us all better. Freedom is wonderful if it is used for the betterment of all. She helped me. Between us we could have made it work. And so I gave her power. I taught her secrets, and showed her the hidden ways. She grew and blossomed, my sweet night flower, into a greater and more noble being, a true partner. And so I gave her my heart. All of it. I loved her so, so much. And she loved me in return. But ... something went wrong. Nyrissa perished in an accident -- and, in the manner of our kind, she returned to life the next day. Afterwards, she was listless. Tired. She spoke of the futility of going ever onward to nowhere. Though we lived in a paradise of riotous unending life, she spoke of it as hollow. Empty. Paradoxically barren for all of its fruitfulness, because there was no purpose or end. Though I believed her spirits would recover in time, her words struck deep. And so, I betrayed my people: I went to the gods to beg them to aid us, a thing that no other among the fey had attempted in the ages since it became clear that the Abandonment was real and permanent. This was the Third Betrayal, and I committed it gladly for love of Nyrissa. Specifically, I went to Pharasma, the arbiter of birth and death. I traveled to her realm under my own power, and requested an audience of the Lady of Graves. It was granted, and I made my case: "O Pharasma, Grey Lady, I have come to beg of you a boon for the people of the First World. Long ago, you and the other gods abandoned us and turned your attention to the Second World. Ever since, we have been trapped in an endless cycle -- condemned ever to birth, never to death, and between those to an unending existence devoid of meaning or purpose. I do not ask you to take us back, or to make us equal with the children of the Second World. I do not ask to join the great migration of souls that governs their lives. I ask only that you complete your abandonment: as you have already withdrawn the blessings of death, I request that you likewise withdraw the blessings of birth. When we perish, let us not be reborn. Let us end. Since you seem to have no interest in collecting or judging our souls, let them simply dissipate instead. You are the goddess of Fate -- give us fates once again, I beg of thee." Pharasma gazed at me dispassionately as I spoke, and when I was done she shook her head slowly. "This cannot be. Withdrawing birth from the people of the First World is the same as granting them death, and that has been forbidden." "But why?" I cried. "What does it profit thee to leave my people in this hellish state?" She merely gazed at me, and offered no answer. "Fine! Keep your secrets if you must," I spat at her, "But know that this refusal to aid my people makes mockery of your vaunted neutrality. I name you evil, Lady of Graves, for claiming neutrality while blatantly favoring the children of the Second World over those of the First." And I turned to storm out of her chamber. But she was there. Mere inches from my face, without having moved. Her eyes were blacker than anything else I've ever seen. I could neither blink nor tear my gaze from hers. I saw tiny purple spirals rotating in the depths of her eyes. "I give you a prophecy, Ranalc," she said. "Three times shall you stand before me. This is the first. The second was decreed by the Tapestry at the Beginning, and shall be your end. You alone among your people shall break the cycle of reincarnation and die -- but judgment you shall not have until the third time you come before me. Thus do I prophecy." It seemed to me that the spirals in her eyes grew larger and larger as she spoke, until I could see nothing but the spirals rotating lazily in space, and hear the sound of her voice echoing within my mind. And then I blinked and found myself back in the First World, in my own throne chamber. I did not know whether to rejoice or curse. I had a death coming! A real death. It meant that I had a limited time to accomplish my goals -- that one day I would be done, and no longer have to endure. But -- I had also learned there would be no mercy for my fellow fey. I would escape, but leave them trapped. And, whether it came soon or late, I would die the death and leave my Nyrissa mourning me for the rest of eternity and unable to die herself. I threw myself into my work once again, exhorting my fellow fey to use their freedom to do good. Nyrissa's spirits improved -- perhaps she picked up on the new enthusiasm I brought to everything I did know that my end might come at any time. I never told her about what I had done, or what Pharasma told me. She would learn in due course -- why force her to start mourning before I even died? But we loved one another more than ever before. It was a sweet time. Sweet -- but short. I do not know how it came to pass, but the other Eldest learned of what I had done. At first I suspected Ng may have found out -- secrets are his meat and drink. But if so, why would he tell the others? He never gives up a secret he has learned. No, it must have been one of the others. I don't know who, or how, but once it was out, they raised the Tane against me, naming me traitor for having consorted with Betrayers. The Tane were creatures designed as weapons of war, feared even in a world where death had no hold. I fought them. They came one at a time, crying their purpose aloud for all to hear: "Count Ranalc has betrayed the First World, and must be punished!" I fought them -- the Jub-Jub bird, several thrasfyr, a Sard -- and won. It was only when they sent the Jabberwock that I knew my time had come. As the Jabberwock whiffled and burbled its way through the grounds, I told Nyrissa "This foe is beyond us. You have stayed at my side through all the others, but now it would perhaps be better if you left." She looked at me in puzzlement. "Why ever so? The worst it can do is kill us. Surely, the pain will be unpleasant, and it is always so disruptive to form a new body -- but then why would I leave you to suffer that alone? I love you, Ranalc. Do not ask me to leave." And so I let her stay. And we fought -- and perished. But only I died. Nyrissa awoke in a new body the next morning to find that I was gone, truly gone, for when the Jabberwock slew me that day, my soul fled the First World and joined the river of souls flowing to Pharasma's domain. I remember standing in line there, an awkward petitioner like any other, waiting for a few moments of the Grey Lady's time to discover my fate. I do not know if it was short or long, but in time I reached Pharasma's chamber. "This is the second time you have come before me," she said. "And as foretold, you have died in truth." Before anything further could be said, there was a great alarm. One of Pharasma's greater psychopomps rushed in and whispered something in her ear. "If you will excuse me, Ranalc, it seems there has been an incursion of daemons. I must deal with that. When I return you will be standing before me for the third time, and then I shall pass judgement." And so saying, she left. I stood in Pharasma's throne room, wondering what my fate would be, when there was a sudden sound of combat behind me. Turning, I found my beloved Nyrissa standing there, blade bloodied. Behind her I could see a swathe of destruction: fleeing petitioners, psychopomps struggling against entwining plants, or lying still in pools of blood. She held her sword, Briar, and her breast heaved with exertion. "Ranalc!" she cried, striding forward. "I have come for you." "Nyrissa!" I exclaimed as she flung herself into my arms. "But, I have died. What ..." "No time!" she said. "I released a bunch of daemons as a distraction, but they won't last for long." And with that she kissed me -- the Kiss of the First World. Life surged into me, and when I opened my eyes we were once again standing in the First World. "Terrible man!" she said to me. "Did you really think I'd be content to go through the rest of eternity without you?" "I wasn't given much choice in the matter," I told her. "The Lady of Graves decreed that my death was written in the Tapestry when I went to beg for her aid for the First World." And I told her the whole story of the encounter. "I fear no good can come of this -- Pharasma prophesied that I would stand before her three times, and as yet I have faced her only twice." "Let her come," said Nyrissa. "I have you by my side, and that is all I care for." I believe it was that night our daughter Yanamari was conceived. We kept moving, and it was nearly a year before Pharasma caught up with us. But in the end, she did. She emerged from the Boneyard to personally lead a host of psychopomps against us. They killed none, but none could oppose them. In short order, we were brought to ground. Nyrissa and I were both taken captive, as was our daughter Yanamari, then a babe of 3 months. "Well, Ranalc," Pharasma said, "I did not expect this." "Grey B&!+$," Nyrissa snarled, "Your kind abandoned the First World ages ago. By what right do you harass us? By what right did you steal Ranalc's soul?" Pharasma turned her black gaze on Nyrissa. "By the same right that grants me dominion over life and death: fate. It was written in the Tapestry that Ranalc would die the death. That has been fixed and set since before even the First World was created. His appointed time came, and he died." Then she frowned -- a truly terrifying expression on a face so known for its blank dispassion. "You, little green one, have undone the threads of fate. Ranalc's time came -- yet here he stands, alive and breathing once more. And the father of this infant, at that." Nyrissa merely spat at Pharasma's feet. "I care not for your 'fate'. We were written out of your fate ages ago. You have neither the right nor ability to judge us. You ..." then she suddenly stopped as Pharasma made a short cutting motion with her hand, leaving Nyrissa voiceless. "Pharasma," I said in fear, "Please, she speaks in passion. Let her go." Pharasma turned her gaze on me. "Passion -- yes. It was passion that drove her to snatch you from my domain. Love that led her to upend the dictates of fate. This I cannot overlook." Reaching out, she took Briar from Nyrissa. "Nyrissa, it was love that led you to defy my law. Love that cheated Ranalc of his original destiny. Love that led to the creation of this babe, whose birth was neither appointed nor foreseen." And so saying, she plunged Briar into Nyrissa's heart. I cried out. Nyrissa did not fall, though her eyes went wide with the shock. Then Pharasma withdrew the blade. No wound marred Nyrissa's chest. "Love," Pharasma said, "Is too powerful a thing to allow you. Thus, I have taken it from you. Go now. You are exiled from the First World." Nyrissa nodded her head, diffident. All the passion that had stirred her before was gone. "Wait! Nyrissa," I called to her. "Take me with you." But she merely looked at me coldly, turned her back, and vanished into the forest. "As for you, Ranalc," Pharasma said, turning to me. "You were motivated by nothing worse than attempting to aid your people. You sought to free them of what you saw as an intolerable situation. But still you have offended against the dictates of fate. You knew that you were doomed to die; yet you went with Nyrissa when she came. And you fathered this child on her. Now you stand before me for the third time, and as I prophecied, I pass judgement: the death that you sought will never be yours. You shall live forevermore, being reborn in the manner of your kind forevermore. Death relinquishes its claim on you. But I prophecy that you shall not long be permitted to live in the First World." My heart shriveled in my chest as she spoke. I had come so close to breaking free of that cycle. And now I was right back there once again -- only I would be alone, with neither friend nor lover. "As for this one," Pharasma said, turning her gaze to my daughter Yanamari. "She is an innocent in all of this. Yet her existence is nonetheless an affront to the ordained order of life and death -- daughter to a father who was dead before siring her, yet not. No pattern was woven for her in the Tapestry, and as I did not arrange for her birth, neither is it my right to stand in judgement of her end. She will always be apart from the cycle of souls. But I shall see to it that she is cared for." And so Pharasma departed, taking Yanamari with her, and leaving me alone in the forest. I wandered grief stricken for some time; but soon the other Eldest found me, and offered me a choice: depart the First World forever, or be killed over and over, each day a new horror. And so I left and took up residence on the Plane of Shadows. May they all rot. That gave me a better notion of how to play Nyrissa: cruel not because she enjoys cruelty, but because in her lack of love -- her complete and total absence of empathy -- she has no comprehension of cruelty or kindness. I got a lot more mileage out of this story than just understanding Nyrissa's mindset better; I also used it to set up a different way to retrieve Briar, which led to one of the best sessions I've ever done. I hope it proves useful to someone else.
On Khalib: I stand corrected. Where I went wrong is completely forgetting the Fly bonuses from Overland Flight and the maneuverability bonus it grants. On languages: eh, I guess that makes sense. It seems Hero Lab automatically assigns both Azlanti and Common as native languages for pureblood Azlanti characters, which accounts for it. I needed to tick the "Replace Common" box. On Karzoug's stats: that's an interesting approach to figuring them out. When I'm building up a Hero Lab portfolio based on a published stat block, I generally work backwards, but in an additive manner. That is, I leave all the ability scores at 10 and start adding things. First I add any listed magic gear that boosts stats, then I add any listed static bonuses (e.g. from templates, wishes, etc), then I add the racial modifiers. Once everything . Figuring out the level bumps is the very last step. It's easiest when the character is using the standard 15/14/13/12/10/8 array and a race that uses static modifiers. Figuring out where to put floating racial bonuses and what to do with point-buy based characters has always been a bear. Your method seems to work better for that. Also, sometimes Hero Lab is just wonky. For example in my copy of Karzoug it insists that he's supposed to have 262 skill points. Per the book he only has 260, and that math seems correct when I checked it: 2 base + 1 human + 10 INT * 20 levels = 260, keeping in mind that three points of his INT are from those ioun stones, and hence come with fixed skills attached rather than spendable skill points. I have no idea where Hero Lab is getting those two extra skill points from. It's weird. So I eventually just chucked on an adjustment to give him -2 skill points.
I've just spent an hour and half analyzing Karzoug's ability scores. In order to make them match the book values, they have to look something like this: STR 24 = 12 base + 2 racial + 4 inherent + 6 enhance (belt) DEX 24 = 12 base + 2 racial + 4 inherent + 6 enhance (belt) CON 28 = 14 base + 2 racial + 2 level bump + 4 inherent + 6 enhance (onyx rhomboids) INT 36 = 17 base + 2 racial + 3 level bump + 3 age + 5 inherent + 6 enhance (crimson spheres) WIS 15 = 8 base + 2 racial + 3 age + 4 inherent - 2 (talons of leng) CHA 22 = 13 base + 2 racial + 3 age + 4 inherent That would make his base scores before any modifiers: STR 12
But that's a 23 point buy, and the book says he's entitled to 25 points. He has 2 points left to spend. If you want the values to match the published ones, those can be spent in ways that get him no mechanical benefit. For example +1 STR/DEX, or +1 CON would get him nothing because the increase takes it to an odd number and does not increase the associated modifiers. 2 points are not enough to do anything with his INT, the next step would cost 4. Spending those two on +2 WIS (for 10 base instead of 8) would get him +1 on Will saves, Heal, Perception, Profession, Sense Motive and Survival. Spending them to bump CHA from 13 to 14 would get him +1 on Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Perform and Use Magic Device. When statting him up in Hero Lab I opteed for +2 WIS.
Khalib's hit points don't work. They're listed as 16d6+127 = 185. I am making the following assumptions: 1) He got maximum HP at level 1
That would make his HP: 6 base + (3.5*15) levels + (5*16) CON + 16 toughness + 15 false life 6 + 52 + 80 + 16 + 15 = 169 That leaves him exactly 16 hit points shy of the listed 185. Now, at this point, you're probably thinking "Favored Class bonus! 16 levels, 16 hit points, 185 total, boom!" Unfortunately, if you do that it messes up his skill points. When I was reconstructing his skills, I discovered he was 16 skill points short, even accounting for the bonus skill ranks from his robe's enhancement bonus. If he uses his favored class bonus to reach the 185 hit points, then he has the following skill points (2 + 1 human + 5 INT) * 16 = 128 skill points Plus two skills that he gets max ranks in for free thanks to his robe, effectively +32 for a total of 160. He has max ranks in the eleven skills that he's trained in -- but 160/16 = 10. He only has enough for ten skills. I can only conclude that the writers accidentally gave him both favored class bonuses: +1 hit point per level, and +1 skill point per level. In this case, his HP look like this: 6 base + (3.5*15) levels + (5*16) CON + 16 toughness + 15 false life 6 + 52 levels + 80 CON + 16 toughness + 16 FCB + 15 false life = 185 I see several ways to fix it. Option A: he loses a skill. Does he really need Knowledge [Nobility] considering that all the nobles he knew have been dead for millennia? Option B: he loses 16 hit points, making his new total 169. Option C: He keeps both his HP and the skill. Altitude Affinity gets marked as a bonus feat, and he uses the freed-up slot on Fast Learner. That grants him both basic favored class bonuses at all levels, in conjunction with Toughness it makes the numbers come out. I went with option C while statting him up in Hero Lab.
Ah ha! That would account for it -- my eye skipped over the word "Dexterity" in the list of inherent bonuses in her stat block. Okay, that sorts it out. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the fight with Viorian. For most of Book 4 we only had 3 PCs, so I introduced a lower-level version of Viorian as a mercenary Magnimar hired to help the party out. I worked her into the PCs' stories -- she revealed to one the existence of a daughter he didn't know anything about resulting from a dalliance in his backstory, and helped another settle some scores with an old foe, and so on. Now they have a reason to try and save her. I think that'll be better story. Because let's face it, as written the party has no idea who she is, where she came from, or that she might be redeemable. They probably never even learn her name. She's a speed bump. The party walks in, goes "Oh look, another villain!" and stabs her to death.
I'm building up Viorian Dekanti in Hero Lab, and having a hard time getting her ability scores to line up. She has wish-based inherent bonuses to STR, CON and WIS (+5, +4 and +4 respectively), a +6 Belt of Physical Might (STR, CON), and a +6 Headband of Inspired Wisdom, four increases from leveling, and +2 to one ability score for being a human. I'm proceeding on the assumption that she started with the standard heroic NPC stat array (15/14/13/12/10/8, arranged to suit the NPC) because nothing in her stat block says otherwise. When I try to make the numbers add up I get something like this: STR = 15 base + 2 racial + 5 inherent + 6 enhancement = 28 DEX = 13 base + 2 level = 15 CON = 14 base + 2 level + 4 inherent + 6 enhancement = 26 INT = 10 base WIS = 12 base + 4 inherent + 6 enhancement = 22 CHA = 8 base But according to the printed stat block, she's got STR 29, DEX 17, CON 26, INT 10, WIS 24 and Cha 8. She's supposed to be getting +1 STR, +2 DEX and +2 WIS from someplace, and I don't know where. Is she supposed to be built on 25 point buy? Because the numbers work out if I give her 25 point buy and spend that on base scores of 16/15/14/10/14/8.
Whoops, double-post, sorry. I got distracted while composing the last one, left it sitting fully composed in the browser for a couple of hours before I found a moment to hit the submit button, and then didn't notice Jhaeman's response. So, to respond to Jhaeman: I think that the most likely explanation for this is that the players have forgotten the mechanics of Karzoug's escape. The campaign is taking a very, very long time, and it's been two or three years since the sihedron tattoos and the soul well were mentioned. Maybe three and a half. Book 5 alone took about 2 years, if I recall correctly. For that matter, it didn't occur to me that killing the rune giants would help power his escape until you mentioned it! So I can't blame them too much for forgetting. I think, in-character, they saw that killing off rune giants would disrupt Karzoug's control of the army of giants and cause chaos amongst his minions. That's all they're really going for, I think.
I'm pretty sure they can't get to the pinnacle -- the description on page 342 of the Anniversary Edition says "it creates a completely impassable barrier to creatures that are astrally projecting or who attempt to enter the region while ethereal or shadow walking." If I understand correctly, incorporeality comes from being partly on the ethereal plane, so I think that would hedge them out.
We're in Book 6, exploring Xin-Shalast. Last session my party finally managed to locate some reliable information about the city, in the form of some records from a survey the rune giants conducted shortly after waking. They then made a beeline for the Spolarium, where they announced that they wanted to set loose the spectres of slain gladiators with instructions to go hunt down and kill rune giants. I BS'ed my way through putting some challenges in the way of doing this, but amazingly, high-level adventurers have a broad range of powerful magic at their disposal. They handily accomplished each goal, and so there was nothing for it. They asked how many spectres they got, and I thought "well, these were in use for aaaages, so there should be a lot of them, so ... 1d100 per building." They managed two buildings out of a possible five and proceeded to roll 90 and 84 on their 2d100, for a total of 174 spectres set loose. And that's where we called session. It turns out that spectres are really good against rune giants. The spectres hit on a 2+ and inflict two negative levels. Rune giants have 20 HD, so ten hits means they die and become a fresh spectre. Meanwhile, rune giants have masterwork weapons per the default stat block. They're not magic. As incorporeal creatures, spectres take zero damage from non-magic weapons. The rune giants' Spark Shower ability probably counts as magic, so spectres would take half damage from it (on average 35), which is not going to be enough to kill one in one hit. Furthermore, spectres are intelligent (INT 14) and organized (LE). After the first couple of rune giants, they'll probably get smart enough to send in one spectre to harass the target until they use their Spark Shower ability, whereupon the rest of them pop out of the walls and swarm the giant before its Spark Shower can recharge. If they can arrange a surprise round, that wouldn't even be needed. The occluding field will probably shield the Spires. It keeps out ethereal creatures, and I'm pretty sure the spectres count as those, so they probably can't get up there. I'm trying to work out what to do with all this. My first inclination is, basically, to let this work. It's cool, and I don't want to trample their agency. But I also want to throw some complications their way. The players made it a condition of release from the spolarium that the spectres would only kill rune giants. They did not put any magical binding or enforcement of this clause in place, but since the spectres are lawful I'm inclined to think they'd honor that restriction. However, the party failed to specify that the same should apply to the spectres rising from dead rune giants, so the ones from the spolarium could easily exploit that loophole and send the ex-rune-giant spectres out to murder their way through every living creature in Xin-Shalast, slowly converting the entire place to a city of the dead. I don't think I really want to do that, though. I want to finish this campaign, which has been running since 2012. We're so close to being done. I don't want to introduce a major new problem at this stage. I just want there to be some consequences to using the shades of the dead as a weapon. Anyone got ideas for other ways this could play out? TL;DR: My players set loose 174 spectres on Xin-Shalast with orders to kill Rune Giants. I don't want to just convert the whole place to spectres. What other consequences might come of this?
Years after the fact and probably unimportant now that Pathfinder 2e has been out for almost a year, but the Leprechaun (p. 177) is listed has having a +7 on attack (2 BAB + 3 DEX + 1 enhancement + 1 size) with its club. Unfortunately, the club is not a finesse weapon, and nothing in its stat block changes that. So its melee attack modifier should be +2: 2 BAB - 2 STR + 1 enhancement + 1 size. Or you could assume that the designers intended to give the Leprechaun a racial ability allowing it to treat clubs as a light weapon. That would make the numbers work.
I came across a picture that I'm pretty sure was produced for a Pathfinder 1e product. Here it is -- the elf with the holy symbol of Abadar on her lapel. I think that's the original artist's site. Anyone know where was this picture used? Was she a character in an adventure path? An examplar of a an archetype? A spell illustration? It's a neat pic. I'm just curious.
Here is a small adjustment that GMs could make to Tyrant's Grasp in order to offer PCs a more compelling reason for the final suicide mission. Arazni is a lich; and she was obliterated by the Radiant Fire. Twice, in fact. The first time she re-formed. The second time is unclear. Certainly she hoped to die a true death, but the adventure leaves it open as to whether or not she succeeded. When she prepared her spells for that final battle against the Whispering Tyrant, Arazni abandoned her protections against divination. It was at that point too late for her graveknight jailors to stand any chance of stopping her; and she would need every spell slot for the fight to come. Thus, when she went to face the Tyrant, she did so knowing that anyone at all might watch her doing it. Perhaps she even voluntarily failed her Will saves against scrying effects. Let them watch! Let them see that for all their posturing, she was the one taking the fight to the Whispering Tyrant! She was truer to her vows than all those fools who spent these last millennia condemning her for things that were never her choice! And so, when the Tyrant invoked the Radiant Fire and wiped Arazni away, one of Lastwall's strongest diviners saw it happen. They saw the faint smile of hope cross her face before the white energy washed over her. They saw her dissolve away. The diviner was struck by a thought: "I am watching the dissolution of a lich. Her phylactery must surely be performing its perverted task at this very instant. But that weapon ... it's so powerful ... I wonder if ..." And so, in that moment, they cast: Discern Location targeting Arazni's phylactery. And it worked. No one has ever been able to find Arazni's phylactery. Arazni herself doesn't know where it is, despite being one of the most powerful wizards in the history of Golarion, and having it bound intimately to her very soul. But the concentrated burst of positive energy resonated along the magic threads binding her tattered soul to her phylactery, and the sheer power of it momentarily disrupted the protections that have for so long shielded it from detection. The diviner noted down this startling information immediately. When he tried it again, less than a minute later, the spell failed, as it always had before. Perhaps the phylactery was destroyed. Perhaps its protective wards reasserted themselves. Regardless, what that diviner learned was that when the Radiant Fire strikes a lich, it can reveal the location of its phylactery -- even one hidden by extremely powerful magics. This did not seem terribly important. Arazni was gone from the battlefield. The location of her phylactery -- while certainly of great interest -- seemed moot. And the diviner couldn't really think of a good way to induce the Whispering Tyrant to vaporize himself with the Radiant Fire. Surely he would simply teleport away via a contingency, as he did when destroying Arazni. But then the PCs return, with the obols gleaming in their hearts, and the assurance that the feedback will turn the Radiant Fire's power back on the Tyrant regardless of whether he has teleported away or not. And suddenly it becomes very relevant indeed ... That is what the PCs are buying with their souls: information. The location of the Tyrant's phylactery. The hope that some day, someone might be able to destroy it and finally put an end to the vile lich who has warped millennia of Golarion's history. Now, I don't know a lot about 2e lore so far, but I gather it presumes that the Whispering Tyrant is still around. If continuity with 2e world lore is important to you, then you can't just assume that all the armies in the world converge on the phylactery's location following the PCs' heroic sacrifice. There has to be a reason that can't happen. Naturally any GM can invent reasons for this; I think, in my case, the reason that it's impossible for people to just go there and destroy it is that it's not on Golarion at all. It's on Eox, buried deep in the heart of an airless mountain guarded by a ton of powerful constructs and warded by about a thousand layers of spells, including some unique ones of the Tyrant's own devising. When he reforms there, he has to prepare Interplanetary Teleport to get back to Golarion. He thought many times about destroying himself in Gallowspire just to get out, but wasn't sure whether the wards his enemies put in place would trap his soul there and leave him disembodied forever. If he tried it and it failed, what would that do to his connection with his phylactery? Would it even still work? He opted not to find out. Once they know the location of the phylactery, the leaders of Golarion may not immediately launch an expedition to go deal with it, especially if the Tyrant goes and sulks on his island, as per the default outcome of the AP. A failed attempt on his phylactery would instantly alert the Tyrant that his secret got out somehow, after which he can just relocate the phylactery. He can put up more wards to conceal its location, and this time there's no more Radiant Fire, so their trick for finding out its location won't work again. They get one shot at it, and so they're not going to commit until they've done everything they possibly can to prepare. In the meantime, the Tyrant can continue doing whatever he does in 2e lore, and all is well. So there you go. This little scenario gives you:
And it requires minimal adjustment to the AP as written -- basically, the addition of one high-level diviner NPC to cast Discern Location and later brief the PCs on just why it is that they're laying down their souls. I hope this helps future GMs.
I have long thought of this as the "too many cooks in the kitchen" phenomenon. Although they have gotten much better at managing it over the years, having as many as six authors working simultaneously on different parts of the adventure frequently leads to some jarring shifts in tone, awkward transitions, or occasionally continuity errors. I believe that the OP is correct in their assertion that such things are an inherent weakness of this production process. They can, and have, done a great deal to minimize it, but there's just no way to eliminate it altogether. That said, I would point out that the same process also offers some major strengths. For one thing, a single author necessarily thinks in just one way. Having multiple authors adds variety, and makes it more difficult for players to anticipate the plot overmuch. Also, it is invaluable to have other people to bounce ideas off as you are in the process of developing an adventure. There are other ways to produce adventures. The necessity of producing fresh content every month without fail or delay is a major factor in producing adventures in the way that they do. With a less driven time frame, you could produce an adventure using a process in which development takes a year or more and the entire thing drops all at once as a finished book-length campaign. That would likely make it easier to smooth out the transitions and make for consistent tone and so on. But it would also be risky. If you sink a year into developing a full-length hardback adventure and it sells poorly, well ... that could be a serious problem for the business. To make that model work, the stakes on any one product are a lot higher. You have to be Pixar, not Vogue. So Paizo has good reasons for using the process that they do. It offers them a more predictable revenue stream. It shields them, to some extent, from mis-steps: if one month's adventure is poorly received, well, there's always next month. For those reasons, it's baked into the core of Paizo's business model. At its heart, Paizo is still publishing a monthly magazine. Just as they were when they published Dungeon Magazine all those years ago. A tangent: As an aside, may I just remark that it is deeply weird to be in a hobby where you can't read most of the monthly magazine for fear of spoilers?
I came up with stats for the Root of the Tangle. Leaving a link here for future GMs who may need such a thing.
My players have decided to venture into the Tangle, in the hopes of finding an ally who can help them fight Karzoug's minions in Xin-Shalast. So I came up with a stat block for the Root of the Tangle, who does not have one in the adventure as written. RP notes: It knows Thassilonian but has no mouth and thus cannot talk. In order to speak with the PCs, it's going to puppeteer one of its yellow musk zombie minions -- a lamia matriarch musk zombie, I think -- who has the rotting mouth and vocal cords it needs to form words. Mechanical notes: It has Power Attack, but the stat block shows the values for when it is NOT power attacking. When power attacking, it takes -5 on each attack roll and adds +10 to each damage roll. Also note that it has grab, allowing it to grapple as a free action on a hit, and a unique ability that allows it to do an Awesome Blow combat maneuver as a free action on a hit. Obviously it has to choose between one or the other on any given hit, as you can't knock someone away while also grappling them. Still, this should make it possible to do things like move squishy casters closer and knock pesky martials further away and such. Oh, and it has 30 foot reach, so there's a good chance everyone will start combat in range of it, and Combat Reflexes so it can make 4 AoOs per round. Hopefully this will be useful to some other GM at some point. Stat Block for the Root of the Tangle: Root of the Tangle CR 19
XP 204,800 Unique yellow musk creeper NE Colossal plant Init +7; Senses low-light vision, tremorsense 60 ft.; Perception +42 -------------------- Defense -------------------- AC 35, touch 5, flat-footed 32 (+3 Dex, +30 natural, -8 size) hp 312 (26d8+104); regeneration 15 (negative energy) Fort +18, Ref +13, Will +15 Immune mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, polymorph, sleep, stunning; Resist acid 10, cold 10, fire 10; SR 28 Weaknesses vulnerability to negative energy -------------------- Offense -------------------- Speed 0 ft. Melee 6 tendrils +27 (2d8+16 plus grab) Space 30 ft.; Reach 30 ft. Special Attacks pollen burst Spell-Like Abilities (CL 26th; concentration +28) . . Constant—speak with plants -------------------- Statistics -------------------- Str 42, Dex 16, Con 16, Int 20, Wis 21, Cha 14 Base Atk +19; CMB +43 (+45 awesome blow, +45 bull rush, +47 grapple); CMD 56 (58 vs. awesome blow, 58 vs. bull rush, can't be tripped) Feats Awesome Blow, Combat Reflexes, Greater Awesome Blow, Improved Awesome Blow[ACG], Improved Bull Rush, Improved Initiative, Improved Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Skill Focus (Sense Motive), Skill Focus (Stealth), Toughness Skills Bluff +28, Diplomacy +28, Intimidate +28, Knowledge (nature) +31, Perception +42, Sense Motive +37, Stealth +30 Languages Thassilonian SQ create yellow musk zombie, lush vitality, pollen spray, whiplash -------------------- Special Abilities -------------------- Create Yellow Musk Zombie (Ex) As a full-round action, the Root of the Tangle can bore dozens of tendrils into the brain of a helpless creature within reach, such as a creature entranced by its pollen. This attack inflicts 1d6 points of Intelligence damage per round. When a creature is reduced to 0 Intelligence, it dies, and the tendrils break off inside its brain. One hour later, the creature animates as a yellow musk zombie. Lush Vitality (Ex) The Root of the Tangle receives maximum hit points for each of its racial hit dice. Pollen Burst (1/1d6 rounds, DC 26) (Ex) The Root of the Tangle may spray yellow musk pollen in a 60 foot cone once every 1d6 rounds. This functions as its usual Pollen Spray ability, but targets every creature in the area of effect. Furthermore, it can use its Create Yellow Musk Zombie ability on any creature within its reach. This is a poison effect. The save DC is Constitution-based. Pollen Spray (DC 26) (Ex) As a standard action, the Root of the Tangle can spray a cloud of pollen at a single creature within 30 feet. It must make a +10 ranged touch attack to strike the target, who must then succeed on a DC 26 Will save or be entranced for 1d6 rounds. An entranced creature can take no action other than to move at its normal speed into a space within the yellow musk creeper’s reach, at which point an entranced creature remains motionless and allows the creeper to insert tendrils into its brain. This is a poison effect. The save DC is Constitution-based. Whiplash (Ex) When the Root of the Tangle strikes an opponent with one of its tendrils, it may choose to perform an Awesome Blow combat maneuver as a free action.
Reading this felt seriously weird considering what happened to Shalelu in the RotRL I've been running for ... oh, god, nine years and counting. We're in Book 6 now. Rocks quietly in corner, muttering "The end is in sight. The end is in sight. The end is in sight ..."
So after the PCs defeat the Hidden Beast, a day or so later their new skulk friends find a hidden shrine and give them a Bag 'o Loot.™ My PCs just defeated the Hidden Beast, and I've decided on a mild twist: the shrine was deliberately hidden by Mesmina, the prophetess who foretold the PCs' coming. She knew that it would be rediscovered when the time came, and so she left a letter for each PC. The letters will contain cryptic hints/warnings about things in Xin-Shalast. Except for one: our ranger, Micah, is about as shallow as you can possibly get. He has basically decided that everyone in the entire world who's taller than about 6' 5" deserves to die. He has Favored Enemy: Giant, and just cannot get it through his head that some of them are rather nice if you can refrain from eviscerating them. He's firmly in the "kill them all and let Pharasma sort them out" camp, and flirting with an evil alignment as a result. So his letter is going to be: "To Micah Valian Arneseph: the true measure of a person is not whether they are tall or short, but whether they are small-minded. Be a bigger man. -- Mesmina"
Hi, player here. My party just reached Castle Scarwall, and my GM has expressed a heartfelt wish for some kind of prop he can use to point out features rather than trying to describe it all. He struggles with description, which has at times in the past has led to some miscommunications and frustration when the players fail to understand the scene. Some quick googling revealed a YouTube video of a Castle Scarwall model from 2013, probably done in Sketchup. That's already very helpful and we will be using it, but I'm hoping to find the 3D model file itself so that I can print out a copy on a 3D printer (small; say, about 5 inches side-to-side). The creator shared a dropbox link to the model in the comments on the video, but it's long dead. Does anyone have a copy of that model kicking around? If so, would you mind sharing it with us?
For a while I've been trying to figure out: how is Karzoug feeding his army of giants? It's been established that it's really hard to get to Xin-Shalast, even by magic, and there's not exactly a lot of arable land, and giants obviously have to eat a lot because they're big. Plus it's cold so they burn a lot of calories just staying warm. I thought about maybe putting goodberry bushes in the Snarl, or introducing a bunch of giant druids whose job is just to cast goodberry over and over. I thought about giving them lots of sustaining spoons. But what I finally settled on was: they're having their food shipped in by Denizens of Leng, who are of course famed as traders (and slavers). When the Rune Giants go out to collect new tribes of giants, they also kidnap any humans/elves/etc that they find, and trade them to the Denizens of Leng in exchange for vast shipments of curious fruits and unsettling meats, all procured in the distant dreamlands and brought to Xin-Shalast in the holds of the black ships sailing the dream-oceans that touch every mortal shore. This gives me a way to introduce new PCs in the event of permadeath -- they were captured and brought to Xin-Shalast to be traded to the Denizens of Leng.
For example, consider the now-defunct campaign called A Tiny Little Frozen Village. The campaign name gets printed into the document as part of the <main> tag, thus: <main class="ctf online campaigns - a tiny little frozen village-ctf subtier"></main> The entire contents of the document now have the class "tiny", a CSS class designed for use with the [smaller] BBCode tag. Thus, the fonts for the entire page render at size 0.8125rem, making them very difficult to read. I'm not sure why the campaign name is being added as a class, but to avoid this kind of unexpected collision, I recommend adjusting your code to replace all the spaces in the campaign name with hyphens. Or, failing that, just don't add it in the first place. Cheerfully submitted in the hopes that you will find this bizarre edge case amusing.
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