Two Headed Snake's page

… when she ascended did she elevate her battle griffon into a servitor?

Nope, the griffon still lives in the Barrow wood. Check Hell's Vengeance book 3 "The Inferno Gate."

My players immediately despised Sethic and adored the Archcountess...I kind of figured that would happen, so I might have unconsciously steered then towards the choice by playing up both of them.

Ultimately, I don't think it matters at all, though

Ahhh man, I wish I had troop units in previous books! I've more or less done everything by hand, including manually editing (and sometimes even creating) stat blocks in Combat Manager. Lots of the time things like a potion of Bull's Strength is included in the block, but you start realizing how scary a unit of Paladins and a Cleric can be once they've all fired up their divine bonds, potions, buffs, etc.

sounds like an great battle!

How do you usually keep track of everything during large combats? My biggest gripe with the AP so far is that, especially in the last few books, EVERY enemy NPC has buffs and whatnot (Divine Bond, spells, etc), and the books do not account for these, despite the obvious use they will get.

I've been using Combat Manager for most things, but in the heat of the moment, or after an hour of real time spent in combat, I forget to track things, and feel like I'm doing myself a disservice, haha.

Also, thanks! To be honest, it was one of my players who gave me the idea. We're both big theorycrafting nerds, and the other week he goes "man, we could *totally* take on Heralds of the gods, they're only CR15!"

Challenge accepted.

So I just wrote up a speech my players will hear, issued by a town-crier. This will be either be just before or just after liberating the Qadata Nessusidia, since they haven't been entirely successful in their attempts to evade detection, and since the Glorious Reclamation's inner circle is distinctly aware of them. Mostly I'm just really excited that they've accumulated renown and will finally know it, since they've generally been acting as a black-ops team and leave very few survivors.

"Hear ye, hear ye!

Criminals at large in Westcrown! Open warrants issued by Her Righteousness, the Lord Marshall Alexeara Cansellarion, so divinely appointed by Our Lady of Valor Iomedae.

Six miscreants sent from the Nine Hells to plague our proud city; Westcrown, the City of Glory's Return! Six oppressors, sent by the Infernal She-Tyrant of the Imperial Throne to upset and degenerate out fair citizens:

A Dwarf, who without care belches the flames of Hell, and in whose wake stand reeking clouds of smog;
A mad Drow, whose honeyed words and empty promises bring only despair and ruin;
An Elf, grizzled and unforgiving. He feigns honour and instead deals only in bloodshed;
A woman, cloaked in false beauty, whose seduction leads only to depravity and murder;
A fiendtouched and bastard Tiefling, dispathced from the rotted heart of Hell to torment the Just;
And not least, a Drovenge noble of Old Westcrown and friend of Thrune, who couples with devils and is without remorse.

These individuals are wanted for the crimes of Murder, Coercion, Endangering the Public, Abduction, Blackmail and bribing of officials, Destruction of public and private property, Colluding with Enemies of the State, Resisting Arrest, Assault on a Public Officer, Assault and Murder of Justly Appointed Authority, Theft, Meddling in Just and Divine Affairs; and more acts too heinous and vile to mention.

Should you spot these criminals, report to the closest dottari or Glorious Reclamation official.

Inheritor bless us and our holy city during these times!"

This is definitely meant to be inflammatory, though not necessarily incorrect, and to stoke my players into an evil frenzy before they go about destabilizing Westcrown and ultimately removing the leadership of the Reclamation. I feel like the biggest flaw in the writing of this AP is that, despite all the PCs efforts and engagement, they are generally required to act with secrecy. I found that this really detracted from the role of players as major characters. Even though this is an "evil AP," the overarching idea is that they need to conceal themselves, since often it is far too dangerous to introduce themselves as the Wardens of Longacre; the Usurpers of Kantaria; the Devils of the Whisperwood; the Darlings of Egorian, Slayers of the Dragon Parnoneryx, the Liberators of the Hellknights, or the Scourge of the Reclamation.

Anyway, hope this inspires fellow GMs to give their players some much-deserved recognition!!

Edit: Just for clarity, here's my party, all lvl 15:

- male Dwarf Toxicant Alchemist
- male Drow Gingerbread Witch
- male Elf Skirmisher Ranger w/ fiendish cougar companion
- female Human Knifemaster Rogue/Velvet Blade Slayer
- male devil-spawn Tiefling Inquisitor of Moloch
- male Human Synthesist/Counter Summoner w/ shadow Eidolon

I just said screw it and made her a 20th lvl Paladin :x heh

Depending on how one-sided the final fight is (ie. if they've taken out all Alexeara's companions, how well-prepared they are), I'm considering sending Iomedae's herald, the Hand of the Inheritor, to aid the Lord Marshall

Can someone confirm that my understanding about Alexeara's AC and HP is correct. It does not appear that Heart's Edge is accounted for in her stats.

She has a starting HP of 271, increasing to 331 while wielding Heart's Edge.

She has a starting AC of 35 (+14 armor, -1 Dex, +6 insight, +6 shield).

* Her AC increases to 41 (+6 sacred) while wielding Heart's Edge.
* Her AC increases to 49 (+8 untyped) versus a smite target.

I also can't figure out her stats. Her highest to-hit bonus should only be 29...BaB 18 + 1 from Weapon Focus + 5 from STR + 5 from Heart's Edge. Her combat block says nothing about casting Diving Favour, but that would make it higher than the listed +31. I also can find absolutely nothing that would provide her with ANY insight bonus, let alone +6.

Finally, has anyone played out this crowning battle with Alexeara yet? How did it go? What would you have done different and what worked well?

I just ran part 1 last night. It all went well; they did great on scouting/planning, as well as actually deploying the tathlum. I didn't actually end up running any of the mass combat in the aftermath of the bomb, since my narration of the scene was fairly long and detailed, and their placement of the weapon pretty much completely obliterated the army anyways.

re your quoted comment, I'm actually really worried that this last book will not in any way be challenging. During game last night, they had a caravan encounter on Rack Road, as well as the fight at the command post. Both times they absolutely smeared my NPCs. Like, snowball's chance in hell style. After a couple of rounds at the command post I was just straight up giving my NPCs +10 on attack rolls, on top of every NPC having a +1 advanced template. RAW I was completely unable to touch them in combat, and even with the massive fudging on my end, I hit maybe 2 or 3 times and did under 100 damage collectively. I'm worried that even the "super tough boss fights" in Westcrown will just be a total wash. I'm kinda at my wits' end on how to effectively challenge them without killing PCs outright -__-;

You definitely raise some good points, and I think this can all be wrapped up with "Pathfinder rules will never be perfectly clear and what the GM decides on is how their particular game goes."

This is actually my first time GMing a full campaign, so I am trying to stick as close to the rules, or at least how they are written in the texts I'm using, as possible. In hindsight I would not ever use a Vital Strike/CT combo again, as it is just too disgustingly lethal. Funny enough, that fight was the only challenging encounter the PCs have had in probably 2 books, the last one being the final combat in book 4.

Two Headed Snake wrote:

I will argue against your point, since Vital Strike says that it can be used as part of an Attack action, which is exactly the action you use with Corrupting Touch, despite them both being described as "special."

As quoted, Corrupting Touch describes it as a standard action, not using the wording of it being a generic natural attack. This wording is also the sort of thing that excludes a lot of actions from working with Vital Strike.

Vital Strike uses the Attack action, and Corruption Touch is a touch attack. The caveats around VS are for things like TWF, Spring Attack, charges etc., because they are specific actions beyond just Attack.

I will agree that it isn't the most well telegraphed fight either. It comes out of nowhere with an enemy type that tends to be much stronger without preparation. While it certainly creates a rough fight and a strong climax boss encounter, it does seem like bad design mechanically.

...also, I am pretty sure we ruled the bite attack was corporeal, as an aside. I think that was clear from the statblock, but now I am less sure.

I'm quite sure the bite is incorporeal. The bite comes from the Ghostly Fangs ability, and since no part of the creature is corporeal, would work the same as any other incorporeal attack (AC negation etc).

But yeah I feel the same. It was exciting at first to finally catch my party of non-stop destroyers with their pants down, but it felt like it got out of hand pretty quickly.

Having had a couple weeks to mull over the fight with ghost Parnoneryx, i really think it's too much for this adventure.

The AP assumes a 4 PC party with 15 point buy. I was "lucky" enough to have 6 PCs with 20pt buy, and i can only imagine how terribly hard this would have been otherwise. By the end of 5 books, they have fought _maybe_ 2 undead enemies, but only the Shredskin cleric in book 2 comes to mind. Most parties will have no real way to combat powerful undead, and any arrows of dragonslaying left over from the beginning of the book are useless since incorporeal creatures are immune to death effects.

As discussed in previous posts, Parnoneryx's Vital Strike Corrupting Touch is absolutely devastating. It will always hit, and it will basically always deal ~120 damage, which is enough to kill many characters outright. A Fort save for half damage is a small pittance if PCs start dying in the surprise round. The fight takes place when it assumes the PCs are low on resources and have their guard down, which tips the tables against them even more. Having a character who can channel positive energy would help, but is completely out of line with the general theme of the campaign. Even his bite attack bypasses armor, shield, natural, and force bonuses, so again will always be hitting. The breath weapon damage cannot be mitigated in any way except for a saving throw, and god forbid you decide to use spell surge and get Haste + 3 more levels of spells.

All in all i think the sheer difficulty of this fight is poor design. Why do I as a GM want to kill potentially a handful of PCs (thankfully not the case for me, but I did pull some small punches) at the beginning of the end of the adventure? The Master of Herasy + Hellknight Lictor was already a strong and dangerous end-of-book encounter. I really like the idea on paper, or from a story perspective, but really it is just too much.

So. Regarding Parnoneryx and Vital Strike... how?

So Corrupting Touch is a special standard action and should not be able to be used with Vital Strike. It shouldn't even be able to be used as part of a full attack as is listed in the statblock. It seems like a pretty big rules error - especially when you can let something throw out 34d6 attacks with a DC 28 Fort save for half.

Edit: I'm not arguing that NPCs can't break the rules mind... or that the huge attack isn't inappropriate for a nasty boss. But I am stating that if you break the rules, you should be clear about it in the statblock for prospective GMs.

I just ran this fight last week, ended up killing the PC who slew the dragon. Fitting.

Anyways, it was a really really hairy fight. Half the PCs ran or hid for the first 4 rounds. I will argue against your point, since Vital Strike says that it can be used as part of an Attack action, which is exactly the action you use with Corrupting Touch, despite them both being described as "special." It is really scary, and as predicted, I did ~120 damage per hit. The Ranger ended up critting and killing the ghost using the demon lord's sword they found in St. Ilnea's shrine, which I also found very fitting!

All in all it was stressful, tense, and fun.

Regarding Parnoneryx's use of vital strike, don't forget that PCs can make a FORT save for half damage against the corrupting touch attack. PCs with a decent (+15-ish) save for this level will fail it more than half the time even still, but it does blunt this somewhat.

Regarding what qualifies as a "corridor" in St. Ilnea's, only the corridor leading from B1 to B2 contains the fog/webs from Guards and Wards. With respect to that spell, the rest of the complex is otherwise normal with the exception of the suggestion effect on the fake fountain and the various arcane locks.

The more troublesome thing, at least for the party I ran through it, were the Forbiddance effects in each major area. The inability for them to dimension door or summon critters altered combats dramatically, and Ambrihama proved a serious challenge that found them teetering at the edge of disaster.

Yeah, about half the party has good Fort saves...the Battle Oracle who landed the killing blow, though...He's really tanky, but if he's not at full health when the ghost spawns, he's probably going to die. And he's the one with Breath of Life >__<

I overhauled Part 2 and the fountain pretty hard. I really dislike how the book just throws the dungeon at you, all but literally saying "nothing else about this is important except doing the Macguffin." The fountain isn't even super isolated or anything. Instead, I told them that the exact location of the fountain was a secret, but that it was likely someone in Taggun Hold might know the way. We spent about 2 hours IRL gathering information about the town, making checks, roleplaying, exploring the town, finding and NPC, etc etc etc. And whaddya know, it actually brought some life into Part 2, instead of just teleporting them into another essentially meaningless dungeon. I even got to hype them up about possibly finding an ancient sword wielded by a dead Demon lord.

I actually forgot about the elder water elemental like a genius, so they fought it inside the cavern, which I think turned out to be a more interesting and intense combat than it would have been otherwise. It was loud and drawn out enough that the guardian joined in at the end, so people were starting to sweat a bit. I forgot about several Forbiddance effects, but got enough in to stall them a bit. I totally removed the shield archons and couatls because they felt unnecessary. All in all it worked out pretty great. We just finished up at Barleybridge after about 5 sessions of hilarious RP. All crows dead.

so has anyone actually run this book? We haven't played CoT and won't be any time soon. 99% of the discussion here is not relevant to anyone wanting to GM the adventure.

Any real input? I'm looking forward to opening the book by dropping a tactical nuclear warhead on the GR siege, but am curious about some ways anyone has either run or imagined the Nightwalkers/Warsworns as PC-controlled, without getting bogged down with too many dice rolls and statblocks

Has anyone ran the fight with Parnoneryx's ghost??

I'm confused about him "using Vital Strike with his corrupting touch."
The Corrupting Touch entry under his attacks lists 17d6, and using Vital Strike on top of that brings us to a total of 34d6 rolled on a touch attack that's only going to miss on 1-2.

I ran 10 Vital Strike-Corrupting Touch rolls through a dice sim (so 20 rolls) and got an average of 120 damage/attack, though it has a maximum of 204. That is insane, I really hope that I'm misinterpreting this, and that the 17d6 in the entry is already accounting for Vital Strike, even though that's not really how the feat works.

so it is, in fact, 34d6 rolled for a Vital Strike Corrupting Touch, as a creature with a Ghost template gains Corrupting Touch with a number of d6 equal to their CR. Insane. RIP my party

Regarding the Wings of Legend encounter ...

First, truly disappointing that there is no art for the mythic and legendary griffon that served as Iomedae's own steed. How did this get passed over? This tragic oversight is worsened somewhat further in that there is no art, either, for Ironwing's current battle-mate, Vlasko the Fang.

Second, regarding Vlasko, his tactics reads, "When Kazi swoops in for an attack, Vlasko attacks foes with his scimitar using Death From Above and Vital Strike."

This is possible? I was under the impression that Vital Strike can't be combined with a charge action? Is there something I'm missing about either Ironwing or Vlasko that makes this possible?

There is a unique mini in the HV pawn collection, but it's not very cool. I was also disappointed in the lack of artwork, excluding the cover.

You're right in that VS can't be used on a charge, so idk what they were talking about. Maybe they meant as applicable? Ie. first round, charges with Ironwing Kazi using Death from Above, then Vital Strike on subsequent turns?

Are you not going to run the Court of Spears, then? I definitely think your reasoning here is on point, but that last battle/dungeon is really awesome

Has anyone ran the fight with Parnoneryx's ghost??

I'm confused about him "using Vital Strike with his corrupting touch."
The Corrupting Touch entry under his attacks lists 17d6, and using Vital Strike on top of that brings us to a total of 34d6 rolled on a touch attack that's only going to miss on 1-2.

I ran 10 Vital Strike-Corrupting Touch rolls through a dice sim (so 20 rolls) and got an average of 120 damage/attack, though it has a maximum of 204. That is insane, I really hope that I'm misinterpreting this, and that the 17d6 in the entry is already accounting for Vital Strike, even though that's not really how the feat works.

David knott 242 wrote:

I would assume that this sacrifice is also a little known thing. Simply revealing its existence should, if one is believed, bolster the anti-Thrune cause. But that is only one of many mistakes that the GR made.

eh. I dunno.

even then, it's like... why didn't they build a gigantic temple full of devils and bad guys around the location? why is it in the middle of the woods and not at like, Compound Thrune?

I dunno. Most of the rest of the AP is great. That little part, which is easily fixable, just nags at me.

Cause a fortress full of evil outsiders and infernal guards in the middle of the Barrow wood screams "Hey good guys! Over here!" Plus, the Barrow Wood is a scary place; it's probably safer to keep the ritual date and location a secret and have the Queen just travel there with a full guard complement once a year. The Winter Grove isn't particularly hospitable, so it would be disadvantageous to just sit around and wait, especially when the GR needs all their boots on the ground.

Don't be fooled. While thematically appropriate, this it not a good AP for a Hellknight. It's unfortunate, but Smite Chaos is hardly ever usable and if so, only against smaller encounters or fights. Most of the enemies are Lawful or Neutral Good. The other issue is that Hellknight is not a good prestige at all, so it's a bit punishing thematically to play one.

If you want to be a Lawful Evil knight, I'd highly suggest just being a full cavalier, antipaladin, or fighter, and just theming it as a Knight. It's equally thematic and doesn't force dead class features on you.

If your players still want to do it, I'd just recommend giving them a fair warning.

I'd really recommend against Cav for this AP as well. Far too many instances where a mount is either really impractical or just won't be happening

Two Headed Snake wrote:

How did you run Citadel Dinyar? We've got 2 2'x'2 battle mats and one 3'x'4 and even double sided I don't think that will be enough space. just looks like suuch a headache

I tend to draw out the maps on graph paper and my players stick the different bits down using blu-tac. Then if there's a room they have an encounter in they draw it out on a battle mat.

ah yeah, not a bad idea. We are all way too spoiled at this point in time to stop using mats, though. I also remembered I have a set of dry-erase dungeon tiles, so likely I will use those for all the ridiculous tower levels, and only really draw out rooms for encounters.

How did you run Citadel Dinyar? We've got 2 2'x'2 battle mats and one 3'x'4 and even double sided I don't think that will be enough space. just looks like suuch a headache

My party used their halfling necromancer character as bait and sent them to be “rescued” by the Bellflowers. When the halfling pc was taken inside they assaulted the building. The wizard, the cleric, and the knight of the sepulcher all wound up dying because they chased a rogue down the tunnel with the brawler waiting one at a time rather than regrouping to move forward.

The necromancer and the gun tank both fled to get the hellknights after the other three died in the tunnel with the brawler. At that point I had the Bellflowers begin to teleport away themselves, the crop, and the corpses. When the two remaining PCs returned the house was abandoned and empty of all valuables. The Bellflowers even stole the corpses of the dead PCs so they couldn’t be questioned or raised without huge expense.

The party barely got the notice points to meet the queen but they will survive without the extra xp since I don’t use xp in my game.

damn that's even more harsh than my party. 3 deaths?! jeeez. I didn't even think the combats would be much to speak of for my party. they did end up having their leveling delayed though

/raise dead

is anyone still running this AP/book? We will probably start this chapter in a month. The fort is pretty intimidating, any stories so far?

Has anyone has their group completely and utterly botch part 2? Like we're talking found, intercepted and brutally murdered the Barrister before obtaining any information, and then destroying her body during a failed Reincarnation that caused a Nabasu demon to spawn in her corpse instead because her soul was unwilling to return.

They have no other leads, and the barkeep at Clerk's Cloister doesn't know anything useful beyond some info on the ex-Barrister. Part of me just wants to skip part 2 entirely and go straight to the Hellfire Ball (bumped it until just before part 3) because they dont deserve a second chance at taking down the Network

Two Headed Snake wrote:

Ghost town!

Has anyone ran the encounter(s) in the Black Dagger's hideout? I'm reviewing now, and actually a bit worried that they will bluff/diplomacy/generally weasel their way out of as much confrontation as they can before Tilo...which is a shame cause I'm looking forward to tossing Ghast Retch flasks at them!

It really just comes down to what you and your group enjoy, but frankly, there's always plenty of mandatory combat in APs. When my players try to talk through an encounter rather than fight it, not only is it more interesting and more enjoyable, it also means they're invested in the world you're putting before them, rather than just rolling attack dice at it.

You should just take out the diplomacy aspects altogether if you'd rather just run it as a combat gauntlet. It was pretty easy for my group to beat these encounters. I find fights with a lot of 'rogue' elements tend to be pretty easy for a informed group to handle.

yeah they just slaughtered their way through the hideout and then slumber'd Tilo and he fell into the pit of water and drowned.

We had the big fight with Fex last week, and today they'll be going to fill the bounties on the Feign Prince and the Savage Mistress of Beasts.

Ghost town!

Has anyone ran the encounter(s) in the Black Dagger's hideout? I'm reviewing now, and actually a bit worried that they will bluff/diplomacy/generally weasel their way out of as much confrontation as they can before Tilo...which is a shame cause I'm looking forward to tossing Ghast Retch flasks at them!

My group just got done with this book, but some things i took away from it.

1 it makes it easy for necromancers to make a large army from things for my group it was dire bears that they kept getting on the random encounter table.

2 you never know what the party will try at the orphanage, mine has a witch that used its prehensile hair hex to kidnap one of them, his name is joey and he has to go around following the party or die...

3 because of the big battle/siege near the end, if you want the party to have easy sacrifices to get a hold of the portal just let them find some knights that are stable at negative hp.

4 if you have necromancers a good place to purge the number of undead they have is at that siege.

just what i have seen from my groups play of the book.

Yeah, our cleric has started raising most of the corpses from animal/dire animal encounters >_< at least you can plague them with cerberi and whatnot if they're carting around a bunch of undead.

I had also considered giving him that template! I would suggest Legion archon-graced, as Mindaliel is right there right Oppian, and the Legion template is very strong.

Unfortunately for me, the party nuked BOTH archons in the tower stairwell *while* all being affected by Slow from the haunt and the fatigued condition for being in the room longer than 3 rounds. I managed to Bull Rush the cleric off the top of the tower using Oppian's Inheritor's Strike (which is AWESOME, btw), but the damn witch summoned a dire bat and saved him about 2 feet from the ground. Crap!

Having run that fight now, I would suggest statting up Oppian on his own sheet. He has several spells running on him when the fight begins, and all of them last long enough that they won't expire before he does. I bumped up his DEX, because no final boss of mine is going to have -1 to Initiative. I also gave him one or two feats, but nothing wild. Doubled his HP and used the simple advanced template of +2 to all rolls and +4 to AC and CMD...he ended up being almost untouchable with an AC of 31, as well as running Freedom of Movement (take that, Goblin strangler!), Air Walk, Bull's Strength, Bear's Ferocity, Divine Favor, and maybe one or two more.

Really fun conclusion to the book. Today we do our wrap up and TGIF fun time rp.

I'm going to be running the final fight this evening, so I can share my insight regarding prep and where we're at now. Wall of text incoming!

RE: the trap, it may look like it's placed oddly, but if you look closely, nobody can cross the chamber from the lower stairwell without triggering it. There's about 8-10ft of room before you have to step on it. There is a haunt in H24 that is triggered if anyone flies higher than 10ft above the floor in H23, or otherwise touches the ascending stairs, so those 2 things should help to slow them down while the Legion Archon whips flaming javelins at them. :)

I've been toying with re-speccing Oppian for this fight...my party is 6 players, all optimized, all lusting for Oppian's death. The battle through Valor's Fastness so far as been decent. Exemplar, the ghost dog in the courtyard, is great. He targets evil divine characters first, so I can him harass our Cleric of Asmodeus, who hit the dirt at like -4. Exemplar's Howl ability can be really devastating, too. 3 PCs failed the will save and were panicked for 7 rounds. Archers and slingers in the guard-towers kept peppering them with arrows.
They had an advantage when the fight began, as the Cleric had animated a guard patrol they had slain an hour or two before, and so were able to get into the courtyard unaccosted, and had a few meat shields when the fighting began.

I threw another guard party at them, too. 1 sixth sword knight and a mix of Glorious Reclamation sergeants and squires. The witch flew up to the rampart, invisibly, and killed 5 of them with 2 lightning bolts -___-

Inside was also pretty easy. The Vulpinal agathion took the Ranger's animal companion out with Charm Monster, and also got the Magus for several rounds. Once she took a few points of damage, and was clearly outmatched, she dimension door'd up to wait with Oppian and recuperate. The Graven Guardian in the chapel area is quite strong, especially with 70ft land speed and self-cast haste. Note the description says that the statue "immediately animates," which I took literally into combat and shoved her into the initiative order as soon as the trigger occurred. I forgot the have Mindaliel appear and start chucking javelins, but no big deal.
There were 6 guards in H11, and given the close quarters of the room, I was also the bog them down alright. At this point, I have nearly killed the Cleric and the Ranger. Casters are starting to run low on spells.

Upstairs was also pretty easy, though I nearly killed the witch with one of the Foo Lions. Magus nova'd it from full to 0hp in one hit though :(
There's a training room with 2 sixth sword knights. Some nat 1's on their sense motive rolls and will saves and they died pretty quickly. Then it was just the diplomat from Andoran. The book is quite explicit that she does not try to attack or anything. She suggested being locked in her room until the battle was over, at which time they would converse again and she would take her leave, probably spreading word of the Reclamation's incompetence.

ANYWAYS! Tonight they storm the tower and bring the fight to Oppian (and friends.... ;) )
Like I said earlier, I've been considering rebuilding Oppian for a few reasons. We are using feat tax rules, for one, and also my uber optimized party of 6 with 20pt stats...haha. Anyways, hope that helps!

Brutal! My group also seems to think they can just barrel their way into and through the fortress...i am far from convinced.

Right now they are: Human cardcaster Magus, Goblin strangler Brawler, Drow Gingerbread Witch, Dwarf toxicant Alchemist, Human Asmodean advocate Cleric, and i just killed the Half-orc iron tyrant Antipaladin. He will be coming back as an Elf Skirmisher Ranger.

Everyone is pretty optimized, but I've been using the simple advanced template (+2 to all rolls and +4 to AC + CMD) and i think i might wip em

So I intend to be starting this book in about 2 sessions, and reading the stat block for Viona Kadarius, the Big Bad Good Girl, I'm pretty confused/bewildered that she is a Cavalier with no mount. Off the bat, this seems really dumb. Is there something I'm missing?

Of course a unicorn is a more powerful creature than a horse or whatever, but now Viona is super gimped in combat by having to make Ride checks all the time! She has +8 to the check, but still. The entry in Viona's block says that her mount died several *months* ago, yet Mount entry for Cavalier specifically says a Cavalier can obtain a new mount after 1 week of mourning. What is going on here? My party could wipe this NPC right now at level 6, nevermind in 2-3 more levels.

Why not just make her any other class...Fighter, Slayer, Warpriest, Paladin....would she be a Paladin with a divine mount that she doesn't have?

:/

Has anyone run the final assault on Valor's Fastness? It's coming up quick, maybe even next session and I'm a bit concerned.

My party is ridiculously strong, and they have a habit of steamrolling encounters. They finally told me to stop pulling any punches whatsoever and just let em have it...and now I feel like I'll probably TPK over the course of the final assault...that run is f~++in scary! As much as I want to stop these thrune-licking scumbags, I don't wanna kill all my friends! haha, any input?

Low, probably just around 15 or so at this point... but they went straight to the manor to take on the wizard and failed... and the wizard escaped and told Oppian the whole party are agents of thrune (they triggered the agents of thrune trap)

Oppian emptied the keep and instituted curfew/martial law. Paladins and walking the streets and detecting evil wherever they go.

So I think I can indirectly trigger 'high despair' encounters at this point. Sending the spyglass archons and the big holy bull is only logical a this point as there are 5 fugitives on the loose! :)

really? emptied the keep? that seems a bit unwise...lol

I'm pleased it wasn't just me who was worried about that meal! I like the idea of having Oppan drop in then send them out into the world to meet some of the people themselves. It's a little less forced and gives them the choice who to go after.

Yeah it's worked pretty well, and it more or less forced them to engage the NPCs and to think on their feet during a chance meeting.

I'm about to run the court of spears for a group of 5. I'm concerned about Losoni. A Dryad - CR 4, with 2 character levels, + 10 to attributes over the standard dryad. The book keeps it at CR 4, when by my reading and understanding of the CR system this should be a CR 6 (and a strong CR 6 at that). I'm not worried for the players, but if they're fighting a CR 6, they should get the rewards for a CR 6 - not a CR 4.....

Thoughts?

I run for a group of 6 players- we did the Court of Spears battle about 3/4 weeks ago now. I didn't have Losoni attack them until they entered his favorite area. Just prior to this they were being harried by archers periodically, and then got pincer'd by the Magus and hound archon. Nearly killed the bow fighter, and then the dryad nearly got a couple of them. I had him bouncing between trees/walls and clubbing them good. Ended up killing the Witch during the combat with the Angel Knight, and nearly killed the anti-paladin, too.

I was also cranking up the enemies stats a bit, mostly HP, and in some cases applied feat tax rules to them. Unless everyone is your group is fairly optimized, consider nerfing some enemies a bit, or just don't go full kill mode on them haha

Two Headed Snake wrote:

Insane KillMaster wrote:

Two Headed Snake wrote:

Rimethorn wrote:

There are two connection points.

The floor map location J1a is the lift to J2 above. It's not clearly labeled as such, but you can see the square in the floor of the platform on the second map.

There's a rope hanging down from J3 on the upper level. It's indicated by the white dot on the forest floor map.

Those are the only two access points specifically designated. Naturally, they're living in trees (or a giant tree "organism", I suppose), so plain old-fashioned climbing is still an option. The climb check DCs for using the rope and climbing the tree without assistance are both 15.

Good luck. I'm still on Part 2. My sleaze-bag PCs are so good at schmoozing the populace I'm having trouble getting enough Rebellion Points accumulated to keep them occupied between events. I think I'll have to find a way to work around the Event Tracker.

Hah, just re-read this now, after 2 sessions in part 2. Including the points the party collected before part 2 even began, and by the end of the second day of week 1, they had 25 bloody points. over 30 by the next day.

I'm also realizing how long this part will take, even with accelerated events. I'm going to start having at least 2 events most days...

Guessing no one told them Fex want to still have a city to rule.

No that was definitely addressed at least once. Caggan is dead, the 4 junior deputies are dead, and thats about it. Riley Kels is in jail and they have 'temporarily' closed the Last Stand tavern.

One of the players has turned the snipers nest in town square into his apartment, so I'm going to have it raided/trahsed by some upstart townsfolk. They have also started to recruit Thrune loyalists, so one or two of them will be attacked by angry villagers. I'm also going to start having real instances of rebellion, instead of the 'peasants give you dirty looks' that the book seems to imply

PC debating...

oh Riley met with such a sad, pathetic fate in my game.

I was wondering whether anyone had run this without the meeting of the council members at the start? Rather than a meal something else, either chance encounters or simply rumours allowing PCs to pick who they went to see?

yeah, I decided to skip the initial brunch meeting, it just felt kind of forced. I had Oppian stop by the Little Uskwood later that day and apologize for having to cancel their meeting, but he had an urgent matter to attend.

Then I basically had Loredana give them the run down about some prominent people in town, fed them a couple of the rumors and let them be on their way. I also decided that the first day in town was Oathday, so they went to the market and ended up meeting several of the council member NPCs. Faydreth Zaine was the only one they didn't meet, but they took care of that last night when they tried to steal some books from the hall library and triggered the fireball trap at like 10am...

Two Headed Snake wrote:

Rimethorn wrote:

There are two connection points.

The floor map location J1a is the lift to J2 above. It's not clearly labeled as such, but you can see the square in the floor of the platform on the second map.

There's a rope hanging down from J3 on the upper level. It's indicated by the white dot on the forest floor map.

Those are the only two access points specifically designated. Naturally, they're living in trees (or a giant tree "organism", I suppose), so plain old-fashioned climbing is still an option. The climb check DCs for using the rope and climbing the tree without assistance are both 15.

Good luck. I'm still on Part 2. My sleaze-bag PCs are so good at schmoozing the populace I'm having trouble getting enough Rebellion Points accumulated to keep them occupied between events. I think I'll have to find a way to work around the Event Tracker.

Hah, just re-read this now, after 2 sessions in part 2. Including the points the party collected before part 2 even began, and by the end of the second day of week 1, they had 25 bloody points. over 30 by the next day.

I'm also realizing how long this part will take, even with accelerated events. I'm going to start having at least 2 events most days...

Guessing no one told them Fex want to still have a city to rule.

No that was definitely addressed at least once. Caggan is dead, the 4 junior deputies are dead, and thats about it. Riley Kels is in jail and they have 'temporarily' closed the Last Stand tavern.

One of the players has turned the snipers nest in town square into his apartment, so I'm going to have it raided/trahsed by some upstart townsfolk. They have also started to recruit Thrune loyalists, so one or two of them will be attacked by angry villagers. I'm also going to start having real instances of rebellion, instead of the 'peasants give you dirty looks' that the book seems to imply

There are two connection points.

The floor map location J1a is the lift to J2 above. It's not clearly labeled as such, but you can see the square in the floor of the platform on the second map.

There's a rope hanging down from J3 on the upper level. It's indicated by the white dot on the forest floor map.

Those are the only two access points specifically designated. Naturally, they're living in trees (or a giant tree "organism", I suppose), so plain old-fashioned climbing is still an option. The climb check DCs for using the rope and climbing the tree without assistance are both 15.

Good luck. I'm still on Part 2. My sleaze-bag PCs are so good at schmoozing the populace I'm having trouble getting enough Rebellion Points accumulated to keep them occupied between events. I think I'll have to find a way to work around the Event Tracker.

Hah, just re-read this now, after 2 sessions in part 2. Including the points the party collected before part 2 even began, and by the end of the second day of week 1, they had 25 bloody points. over 30 by the next day.

I'm also realizing how long this part will take, even with accelerated events. I'm going to start having at least 2 events most days...

I'm not even sure it *isn't* written that way, it's just really ambiguous. There's only one Black Blade ability that uses points from the character's arcane pool, which is the only way that the "Magus's" arcane pool is accessed regarding the Blade.

The way it says "points" makes me think that they mean it is reduced, but it's so unclear. Why can't it say "and her arcane reservoir is affected as the Magus's arcane pool." :(

Hi, I have a question about the way an Arcanist's arcane reservoir interacts with the rules in the Blade Adept archetype.

The Sentient Sword ability reads (emphasis mine):
"The blade advances as a black blade using the blade adept's class level in place of the magus's class level and points from her arcane reservoir in place of the magus's arcane pool."

While the Bladebound Magus ability reads:
"Instead of the normal arcane pool amount, the bladebound magus’s arcane pool has a number of points equal to 1/3 his level (minimum 1) plus his Intelligence bonus."

So, is my arcane reservoir reduced in the same way?

Also, I came across the new Martyr Paladin archetype last night, and thought it would be a really awesome thing to use in this campaign. At the very least it's a bard-killer, and I could use one of those ;)
Anyone else looked at this?

The problem I'm having is that the Antipaladin and the Sorceror intimidate everything to poo. Half of the encounters just end up being overwhelming terror on the part of the NPCs.

I'm a bit apprehensive about this as well. Between the Court Bard, Asmodean Advocate, and probably the Antipaladin, I'm excepting lots of good social skill checks and perhaps some f+%&ery on their part. Coupled with that they should also have little problem in combat, I'm unsure if I should just ride it out and see how the party works over the first book, then maybe make adjustments in further books.

Two Headed Snake wrote:

Just picked up book 1 the other day and have read through parts 1 and 2, and i cant wait to start this AP is another month or so!

Big party, but we have all played together for the last year running Carrion Crown, and instead of stat rolls we are doing 20 point buy. Might still need to beef up encounters but i will likely just use strategy and/or advanced templates when necessary.

This will be my first real time GMing and I'm super pumped! I've already got loads of great ideas from this thread, so thanks everyone!

Have fun! I'm also running with a bigger group (5 to 7) and so far I didn't have to adjust much. Most encounters haven't been too challenging, but that's mostly because there are large time stretches between them. The crown of spears though was a blast.

Also, I don't see a problem with an archery fighter. I think he will do quite great in the first book, as there are many encounters in open spaces. He might struggle in later parts, where combat isn't the focus, but a GM and a group can mostly work around that. Agency doesn't come from classes, but from his character and motives, so I wouldn't be too concerned.

Yeah, multi-classing and characters dying can always open up some new possibilities, haha.

I need to spend some more time reading it over, but is the Court of Spears/Fort Estanzo encounter really that difficult to map out?

He's the least experienced Pathfinder player, but has played with our group for the last 6 months or so, and ran a few 5e games. That said he has a good grasp of the general mechanics, combat flow etc.

I know fighters tend to have minimal, if any, real contributions beyond combat, apart from general rp, but neither him or i are too concerned about that. I would personally prefer a class with a little more flavour, but it is what it is. Never too too hard to write in a new character anyways

Two Headed Snake wrote:

Just picked up book 1 the other day and have read through parts 1 and 2, and i cant wait to start this AP is another month or so!

My party has almost finished all their characters and i think its gunna be a great group. We have:
- CE female Duergar Gingerbread Witch
- LE male Human Court Bard, worshipping Asmodeus
- CE male Half-Orc Antipaladin of Nulgrath
- LE male Human Asmodean Advocate Cleric
- NE male Dwarf Toxicant Alchemist
- NE or CE Human Archery Fighter

Big party, but we have all played together for the last year running Carrion Crown, and instead of stat rolls we are doing 20 point buy. Might still need to beef up encounters but i will likely just use strategy and/or advanced templates when necessary.

This will be my first real time GMing and I'm super pumped! I've already got loads of great ideas from this thread, so thanks everyone!

I will try to be nice, offer the player of the Fighter to play a different Full BaB class, like Ranger or something.

Whys that?

Just picked up book 1 the other day and have read through parts 1 and 2, and i cant wait to start this AP is another month or so!

My party has almost finished all their characters and i think its gunna be a great group. We have:
- CE female Duergar Gingerbread Witch
- LE male Human Court Bard, worshipping Asmodeus
- CE male Half-Orc Antipaladin of Nulgrath
- LE male Human Asmodean Advocate Cleric
- NE male Dwarf Toxicant Alchemist
- NE or CE Human Archery Fighter

Big party, but we have all played together for the last year running Carrion Crown, and instead of stat rolls we are doing 20 point buy. Might still need to beef up encounters but i will likely just use strategy and/or advanced templates when necessary.

This will be my first real time GMing and I'm super pumped! I've already got loads of great ideas from this thread, so thanks everyone!