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My players are on Bonewrack Isle. They have no desire to stay. They left the ship looking for food and water saying "we'll just conjure it when out of sight of the captain". Recall the captain says he won't eat magical stuff.

I'm having a hard time keeping them there and outright out of game asking them to indulge me. Even the thread to go after Sandra isn't enticing to them. We're talking about scoundrels here in this campaign (explicitly suggested in the beginning of the first module) and these guys just don't want to stay.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. This module requires a bit more leaps of faith than I've usually had in running modules and I don't want to bash it so I'd love some ideas how you handled it.

Thanks, appreciate it.

This is going to be full of spoilers. Be warned.

So I had mentioned last time that we lost a PC to the encounter with the demon wolf pack lord. Let's move on from there.

My PCs took on Vrood last night. Rather than trying to get through the door they decided to use a rope of climbing and an invisible gnome bard to get in there and see what was going on. Once he landed in the foyer I had Vrood's alarm spell go off. Vrood then walked in and tossed glitterdust in front of himself - sadly, the bard was standing right there and was lit up.

The other PCs, not knowing what was going on, did nothing. Vrood then cast eyebite and the bard panicked, used jester's jaunt to get out of there and then spent the next 4 rounds running at max speed (he had already cast expeditious retreat) - so as you can imagine, he was pretty far away during this combat.

The other PCs heard the spell being cast and teleported in (we have a teleportation specialization psion). Vrood then immediately Circle of Deathed the cleric of Desna and the trip-specialist fighter. Both failed their forts and immediately died. +2 character deaths.

Vrood started taking high damage from the ranger firing xbow bolts into him in rapid succession. He would have easily TPKed the party had the psion not summoned a construct, large, that easily grappled Vrood and then pinned him to the ground. With all the somatic component requirements of necromancy spells, Vrood literally could do nothing - he never could get loose and just sat there taking stabs from the inquisitor/rogue and bolts from the ranger.

While he seemed ineffective at that part, he had already killed 2 PCs so I let it go.

Some thoughts afterwards:
Eyebite is brutal - I only used it once but after it was cast I could have been using it each round as a swift action, even while pinned. I can't imagine the party could have survived if they were all running and sickened.

COD is deadly but that's no surprise. Be careful not to let your PCs get to level 9 before Vrood or this spell is useless. That being said, he can easily take out 2-3 level 8 PCs with this. For a normal party of 4 PCs this is surely a TPK.

He's got cloudkill and confined spaces. I also didn't feel like being a bad guy and using this - but it's at your disposal.

If he wasn't pinned, he would have been using his wand of animate dead on those dead players = awesome. If I'm not mistaken, you cannot resurrect a PC that has been animated? I think that's true.

He has stoneskin = 10 * caster level, so that's, what, 110 hps of stoneskin? Ugh! Unless the PCs are packing adamantine (our ranger had adamantine bolts and the story has provided them if I recall) or bane weapons (our inquisitor has an ability to bane her weapons to whatever she wants) this guy is going to be brutal.

He also has fly. I should have had him try and fly while grappled since it's already cast before combat.

In summary, for my party it was effective - it was scary and killed two people. But all that being said, I could have easily killed more. I also didn't even use the skeletal archers or the "hands" Vrood had summoned. My Vrood also never got to use his lich touch supernatural ability because the construct he was grappled with had his hands pinned (and also is itself immune to necromatic energy).

How did you guys handle Vrood? Was he deadly? Did you scale him back?

This is full of spoilers, be warned!

In last night's session our witch character was killed - as in -50hps killed - dead-dead. The story was pretty cool.

The group had taken on Acretia and her wights and pretty easily handled them. So easily in fact that I wanted them to be resource drained some more. I had the demon wolves and their pack lord show up and charge the armory (the PCs and the wights had been fighting out in the town square). The pack lord ate the heart inside for a few rounds like the demon wolves held the PCs off. A pretty intense fight ensued (my particular party found these wolves considerably harder than the dread wight monk and her wights). In the end the witch ran up into combat to heal our front line fighter magus and expected to run out next round. Except our psion character teleported the magus to him, leaving the witch in the middle of the fray by herself. She was summarily critted by the pack lord (he hit on all 3 attacks, 1 of which was a huge 37point crit) and she went down hard.

Yes, I know, dumb move by the psion but a good lesson.

OK so here's where I'm going with this.

That witch character's story was that she was the daughter of Professor Lorrimor - long lost sort of thing. So she's a sister to Kendra (who is still alive IMC). I'm wondering if I can do anything interesting here with the witch with respect to the Carrion Crown. There's threads on these boards about the Lorrimor bloodline being required for the CC; some DMs have talked about replacing the 5th module (I think it's a vampire) with Kendra . . . perhaps I can do this with the dead witch?

Maybe Vrood (who has not been encountered yet IMC) could raise her as an undead? Perhaps he could use a scroll of resurrection on her (my player will not play this witch anymore, not implying that).

Anyway, just shooting from the hip here looking for some clever ideas from my fellow DMs.

Thanks!

I'm speaking of Conditions here - like Bleeding, Dazed, Hypnotized.

When these are applied to a character they are applied for a specified number of rounds (1d4, for example).

Can someone explain to me when the number of rounds remaining on a condition decrement?

I think the *BEST* solution would be for them to decrement on the turn of the character that caused the condition to appear but that has numerous problems in pen and paper including:
1: The character that causes the condition may end up dying and being removed from the initiative tracker (for convenience, sure).
2: Tracking conditions in this way seems really painful for knowing when they will fall off all characters.

If you instead track them on the victim's turn you obviously get into a situation where the first round they exist for some amount less than a full round. In the worst case, an NPC right before me goes and applies a 5-round staggered to me and then it's my turn and that decreases from 5 to 4.

I'm interested in (1) where it says in the rules how to do this (I've looked and I really cannot find it - so if you're going to talk rules to me it'd really help me if you pointed to where it is in the rules) and (2) what YOU do in your games.

Thanks!

My group is moving along slowly - the group is very RP heavy so we move pretty slowly. I'm interested in any changes, enhancements, or ideas anyone has for Feldgrau. There's been several times I've missed cool things on the forums and didn't locate them until we had passed the area.

Thanks.

The rules (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/afflictions/curses/lycanthropy-werew olf) state:

Type curse (injury); Save Fort DC 15 negates, Will DC 15 to avoid effects

Onset the next full moon; Frequency on the night of every full moon or whenever the target is injured

Effect target transforms into a wolf under the GM's control until the next morning

So I have several PCs which have failed their fort saves and I have noted which ones are infected. Am I reading this right that every time they take damage they need to roll a DC15 Will save or xform into a werewolf? Meaning multiple times per combat (assuming they are taking damage in that combat)?

Further information is here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/lycanthrope):

A creature that catches lycanthropy becomes an afflicted lycanthrope, but shows no symptoms (and does not gain any of the template's adjustments or abilities) until the night of the next full moon, when the victim involuntarily assumes animal form and forgets his or her own identity. The character remains in animal form until the next dawn and remembers nothing about the entire episode (or subsequent episodes) unless he makes a DC 20 Will save, in which case he becomes aware of his condition.

A remove disease or heal spell cast by a cleric of 12th level or higher cures the affliction, provided the character receives the spell within 3 days of the infecting lycanthrope's attack. Alternatively, consuming a dose of wolfsbane gives an afflicted lycanthrope a new Fortitude save to recover from lycanthropy.

When the PCs in this AP are likely to be infected they are (1) less than 12th level, (2) are unlikely to have access to remove curse scrolls (though there is at least one to be found in the stairs of the moon), and (3) are fairly far (maybe really really far) from any reasonable town where they could hope to get cured (that might be 1.5 modules away in Caliphas, for instance).

If you're not careful, the PCs will try and detour (maybe even backtrack to Lepistadt) totally ruining the urgency of the adventure path.

OK so wolfsbane. The above quote simply says it gives you a new Fort save. How often can this be tried? Daily? Does it require being tried within some time from the onset of the disease (what if they wait a week before they try the wolfsbane?). Does this need to be made into a tea, potion, or just shoved down someone's throat?

In fact, what if one of the PCs xforms. Can the party subdue them and force wolfsbane (I assume it's a plant) and just push it into their mouths? If so, does the (currently transformed and unwilling werewolf) get a Fort save, or maybe a save to resist like it would to resist a helpful spell?

I just feel the lycanthropy rules are really vague, maybe intentionally so. I was really excited to read more about it from a rules-perspective in the additional material in the back of Broken Moon but it's almost entirely flavor text.

So, if it's all house ruled what are you guys doing in your campaigns?

Thanks.

Spoilers inside.

My PCs smoked Mathus and the druid wolf he had with him pretty easily last night - completely charring the druid to -35 hps with a maximized fireball when she was only at 2 hps (so no real hopes of getting info out of her dying corpse).

They got the Dusk Moth communion ritual scroll but I told them, as the story is written, that the temple would need about a day of reconsecration. None of them worship Desna so there's no real motivation for any of them to commune with the goddess.

So where it stands, I have 2 dead NPCs and no motivation to commune with the goddess and, therefore, the PCs have no idea what to do next.

Essentially, the trail has gone cold. They were coming to Mathus to learn about where the Way went and ended up just killing everything.

I'm looking for some suggestions on how to address this. The PCs are planning to camp at the top of the tower tonight since they are totally spent.

I'm considering having the wolves in the woods go into disarray with the fall of the pack lord and wondering if I might be able to lead them to Feldrau that way.

Any clever ideas - especially to encourage them to commune w/ Desna for the fun reward?

I am the creator of the Combat Tracker for PFRPG iPad application and wanted to describe what motivated our company, Failed Will Save Productions, to build this app, detail its features, and discuss some upcoming changes.

MOTIVATION:
For at least the past decade my gaming group has been using The GameMastery Combat Pad. You probably use one too in your sessions. It's a dry-erase magnetic tablet that tracks initiative. You scratch down monster names on little magnetic bits and move them around on the initiative tracker. For years I had been using this in conjunction with a module and several Bestiaries open in my lap or behind a DM screen. Space was at a premium at our gaming table and so this was all a very taxing and complex balancing act (literally) as I flipped between bookmarks in multiple books / modules while maintaining initiative tracking and rolling dice. In all, I found it difficult to evoke an appropriate mood given the tasks I was juggling as a DM in combat.

The Combat Tracker for PFRPG iPad application was made to address these complications. Since early implementations of Combat Tracker we have been using the app at our gaming table and literally I do not even open my bestiaries anymore - instead leaning back with my iPad and managing combat with ease.

DESIGN GOALS:

• Ease tedious and often long Pathfinder combat, especially for a lot of NPCs and PCs
  
• PC dice rolls are NOT emulated. This is important to understand. This is a GM aid, it is not a replacement for players. Your players still roll to attack, roll damage, roll initiative - you are provided with easier-to-access views and manipulation of monster hit points, AC, etc (more below).
  
• Provide digital searching and manipulation of NPCs and monsters from standard sources (more below on what this gives you)
  

FEATURES:

• Deployment tracking - PCs and NPCs can be added to the 'deployment' area - a staging area of PCs and NPCs you might use or need in a coming session (easy access).
  
• Initiative tracking:
  
• ---->PCs and NPCs can be dragged and dropped onto the initiative tracker. For NPCs, their initiative values are automatically rolled. For PCs, you as the GM enter a player's rolled value.
  
• ---->Initiative order is tracked including who's turn it is, what is the round number
  
• ---->NPCs and PCs can hold their actions. This causes them to be placed into a holding area, ready to jump into the fray when they choose to take an action.
  
• Combat:
  
• ---->NPCs added to the initiative tracker automatically roll their hit points. Remember those complex hit point rolls such as 12d6 + 18? Rather than take the average (as is provided by Paizo), instead Combat Tracker actually rolls those numbers.
  
• ---->GMs have the final say and can manipulate monster hit points, kill NPCs, and change their turn order.
  
• ---->When damage is to be applied to an NPC, you as GM pull up a damaging screen which lets you apply this damage. If an NPC has DR that is reminded to you here and you can choose to bypass it (DR: 10/silver but your fighter is using a silver sword? Tap to bypass the DR) or let it apply the DR (in which case it subtracts off the DR from the damage you apply).
  
• ---->NPCs hit points are managed and when they are reduced to 0 they are automatically moved to the 'graveyard' area.
  
• ---->---->The graveyard tracks the amount of experience awarded this session (or since the last time the graveyard was cleared).
  
• ---->---->Can automatically divide this evenly by the number of PCs in the campaign for easy GM math
  
• NPC and Monster Management:
  
• ---->Inclusion of all of the monsters from the Open Gaming License (OGL) Paizo sourcebooks (Bestiary 1,2,3, Ultimate Magic, GM Guide, etc). This is over 1,000 monsters.
  
• ---->GMs can search for monster names. Any letters typed will return all monsters with those characters in them (not just starting with). So typing "were" will return all the "were<wolf/badger/etc>" monsters as well as "meowwere" if that monster, perhaps, existed.
  
• ---->Each monster has a monster "card" with multiple "tabs":
  
• ---->---->There are tabs for attack, offense, defense, statistics, abilities, ecology / environment, and more
  
• ---->---->The "attack" tab parses the melee and ranged attacks of a monster, automatically rolls their ENTIRE attack strings, and puts information for you to read about their attack roll and damage. As a GM, you would just ask if the attack value hit and then read off the damage. This makes rolling combat damage super fast. It even handles critical threats and critical hits (including crit multipliers), different attack values (+20/+15/+10 is rolled separately) and reminds you about special effects ("plus grapple", "plus curse of lycanthropy", "plus poison").
  
• ---->---->Simply tapping the "attack" icon rerolls everything if you want to "fudge" some GM dice (ack! That string of lucky crits is going to kill that PC!)
  
• ---->---->All the attack, defense, stat blocks, everything from the monster stat block is presented broken out into categories.
  
• ---->---->The description you might read to your PCs is provided as well
  

WHERE CAN I SEE IT?

• The official Apple store link is here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/combat-tracker-for-pfrpg/id532579558?mt=8. Be sure to scroll to the right in the screenshot section to see all the screenshots.
  
• Our company site, Failed Will Save Productions is here: http://www.failedwillsave.com/
  
• To see some videos of the app in action check out these on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FailedWillSave
  

You will notice that the colors, backgrounds, etc are different from the first link and the following two. The first link, the Apple Store link, is the released colors and the earlier versions are from beta screenshots. You can certainly see the functionality in these 2nd and 3rd links, however. Also notice that the earlier versions did not include the background images and icons that you can see in the released version.

WHAT'S NEXT?
The review process for IOS apps is particularly long. This app spent about 30 days in the queue until approved. As such, the next version is well underway and we expect to submit it in early to mid August (unknown how long it will sit in queue, especially with some of the feature changes below). Its features include:

• The ability to add your own databases:
  
• ---->This is the big feature in the next release. If you want to add your own NPCs, other monsters from adventure paths you have purchased, etc you can now do that.
  
• ---->We are releasing scripts that help you manipulate Excel spreadsheets (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-filter/ and http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-db for example) and convert them into the Combat Tracker database format.
  
• ---->These databases are then added to your iPad by file transfer using iTunes. The Combat Tracker app then just "sees" them and lets you add all the monsters from each database you add
  
• More font options (than the 3 we ship with)
  

Further off goals include:

• Graphical "skinning" so you can change the background images, colors, etc.
  
• While you can add player-controlled summoned monsters to the tracker at this time, they are identified still as NPCs. This is nice since you as GM can roll their damage for your player(s) instead of them having to look up how to attack with a Fiendish Dire Bat. However, we intend to add a "summoned monster" colorized template in the future to differentiate between enemy monsters and player-controlled monsters.
  
• Condition tracker to track effects (poison, stunned, hypnotized, etc) that includes reminders of what the effects are, the amount of time until they go off, DC, amount of rounds in effect and round tracker, etc.
  
• GM assistance for other dice rolls (saves, CMB)
  
• GM dice rolling for spell effects cast by monsters / NPCs
  

QUESTIONS:
Why not do this with just drop-down menus, radio buttons, and normal features?
We wanted to create a game-like pleasant to look at interface. As such there are animations, fades, pulses, and colors. We felt that the other combat trackers out there lacked an interface that a GM would want to use.

Why iPad only?
Real estate. I haven't yet redesigned the application to fit onto an iPhone and worry that the real estate (literally, screen dimensions and resolution) will not be sufficient for what we want to do. However, this is a stretch goal.

What about Android tablets?
Sadly, porting from IOS to Android is not simple and is more complex than we have the manpower to tackle at this time. Efforts instead will be placed into new features. We understand the appeal of Android, particularly for the Paizo / OGL community, but it is not the target platform at this time.

What does it cost?
$4.99.

Why isn't it free?
This project took us over a year of coding and several tens of thousands of lines of code to produce. Apple also requires a developer license fee and we used a few pieces of not-particularly-expensive but not-trivially-free software packages. And secondly, as myself a purchaser of several for-pay Pathfinder community generated iPhone and iPad apps, I realize there is a market. Furthermore, the app is really only of use to a GM so the volume is particularly low for this app.

What if I have an idea or bug?
We'd love to hear from you. We are players too and poured a lot of our heart and energy into this app. If you have suggestions, complaints, ideas, we want to hear it so that we can make the app better for everyone. Contact us at support@failedwillsave.com.

We are nearing the final stages of our first iPad app - "PF RPG Combat Tracker". We welcome your thoughts and comments. This was built by a GM specifically looking for a way to offload some of the tedium of GMing so he could focus more on storytelling and mood setting.

I'd post screenshots here but that's not allowed, so check it out at the link if you're interested:

http://www.failedwillsave.com/2012/05/04/combat-tracker-ipad-app-preview/

Send us an email if you have any thoughts: admin@failedwillsave.com

We are going through the final stages of publishing this through the iTunes store and hope to have it online in a few weeks (though their review process can sometimes be lengthy).

I'll be making a movie soon to demonstrate how a GM interacts with the device.

Spoilers, please don't read if you are a player.

I have a diviner in my group that has a pretty high concentration and has already informed the party that he intends to spend his time at Ascanor Lodge talking with the guests and using Seek Thoughts. He intends to do this to find out more about why the Whispering Way came to the Lodge. I'm talking about Seek Thoughts here, not Detect Thoughts.

I'm mostly concerned about him doing this to Estovion as we know Estovion is the one hiding the most.

I'm looking for some early advice from my fellow DMs on how to play this out.

I realize that Estovion has an extremely high Will save (+12) and is a conjurer himself - so perhaps would recognize what's going on. Perhaps he just Spellcrafts it and puts up some protection himself and becomes even more paranoid about the PCs (which moves us along in the Events).

Since I have some time before the next session (a couple of weeks) I was hoping I'd get some cool ideas from you guys about how to play this out, what he might be thinking about, what maybe some of the other NPCs at the lodge would be thinking about, etc. It'd be cool for me to write these down ahead of time and be prepared. I find spells like this somewhat hard to do off-the-cuff at the table so am trying to prepare ahead of time.

Thanks!

So I have LE Ninja/Inquisitor from Cheliax in my group. She has kept her identity hidden the entire time - the party almost uniformly thinks she is nothing more than a thief.

We are in Schloss Caromarc and have gotten to the rope bridge and . . .

We have a pretty role-play intense group so help me ham it up! :)

So my PCs went to Castle C and . . .

So given all of that, any suggestions how to stop them from turning around next session?

I thought . . .

They have not . . .

Perhaps the trope . . .

Eagerly awaiting your thoughts and suggestions.

I want to bring up a few interesting problems I am having, perhaps you have ideas from your campaign how to address these:

CHALLENGE:

PACING:

SPACING:

MOTIVATION:

Ideas? Thoughts?

Fun and challenging start to the castle. Definitely a nice change after the intense role playing of the past few (in-game-time) days.

Obligatory statement about spoilers within. You have been warned.

So apparently like many other DMs on these forums my Vorkstag

Spoilers within.

I ran this battle the other night and we only did the battle in the big vats room and it took a solid 3.5 hours for a 7 player group. I wanted to get my fellow DMs thoughts on what I did wrong, how I could speed things up, etc.

The encounter is very tactically oriented, taking place over 3 stories - the cellar level, the ground level, and the 2nd floor (for lack of a better term).

Cellar Level: 7 vats touch the floor here. Two ladders go from cellar level to the top of two vats / planks. 8 (if I remember correctly) mongrelmen (3 of which are supervisors and aggressive) work / patrol this level.

Ground Level: The PCs (likely) come in on this level. A network of 10" planks go between the vats at vat-top level. One vat has a ladder from this level to the 2nd floor.

2nd Floor Level: 3 doors go about to 3 different rooms - most noteably, the rooms of Vorkstag and Grine.

The module is written such that the intention is the PCs will be moving about on these planks, making Acrobatics checks, losing their dex bonus, and therefore being sneak attacked by Grine with his Throwing Axes. Also Vorkstag is supposed to be tossing bombs in the intention of knocking the players off - hopefully into the vats.

My PCs just walked in on that level, shouted that they had a warrant (they did), and the mongrelmen moved to attack (the supervisors). At this point I had them climb the ladders from cellar to ground and move about the planks, trying to get to the PCs. The PCs (those who could fit in the room) just plinked them off with slings and bows - very easily. The mongrelmen have to move at 1/2 speed on the planks, while making Acrobatics checks (twice if they get hit). It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Not sure the mongrelmen would have done anything differently.

So then I didn't know what to do so I didn't bring out V&G, I let the combat subside. The PCs came into the room, dropped a rope to cellar level and came down there. They walked around, the worker mongrelmen ignored them and when they seemed in a vulnerable position I have Grine come out and hell "What the hell is wrong with you!? GET THEM!" and then all the mongrel's attacked.

But, we're looking at 14hp monsters which my PCs 1 shotted for the most part - they even have terrible AC.

Then V&G were both out, standing up there on level 2 throwing bombs and hand axes. There's some interesting problems here.

1: The handaxe is relatively short distance. So G has to be close, else he takes negatives every range increment (which in this case is 10 feet - every 10 feet is a -2). I suspect that's why the statblock had +9 to hit for the handaxes - to make up for that.

2: The bombs aren't REALLY that deadly. V's wand is pretty pathetic as well.

3: Basically the only thing V&G have going for them is the Spider Climb and V's invisibility - but that doesn't make him deadly, just hard to take down.

My PCs sat in the middle of the room ranging them with Magic Missile and bow/slings. I frankly didn't know what to do. I had V retreat (to get a skin), come back out looking different while quaffing a potion (to go invisible) and then spider climb down and out the cellar-level door toward the zombie pool room. I figure my goal there being to have him escape and reappear in a later module (as per several other threads on these forums).

I had Grine retreat and come back w/ all three of his familiars (who are basically wimps unless their weak poison hits).

Even Grine's channel negative energy is terrible - he has 8 Charisma. The DC to save was freaking 9. Yawn. For 4th level characters? Maybe I was expecting something more epic to go along with the epic terrain for this battle.

And on top of that, let's talk about the terrain.

Why are there 10" planks between vats? Would the workers really traverse these things? How contrived. Wouldn't they just put up a ladder to get to the top of a vat to do any work on it (perhaps, stirring), that was needed? Even if planks were right, why 10"? I realize why, it's to make it interesting for an Acrobatics check, but amazingly implausible imo.

As such, there was no way my PCs were going to walk on those - which seemed like the entire intention of the module (get the PCs on the planks!).

You might say they need to get to the planks briefly to get to the 2nd floor (as there is a ladder that runs from ground floor to 2nd floor so one would have to get to ground floor via the planks for something from cellar level). However, the PCs just pulled out the Rope of Climbing from module 1 and had it slide up the wall to the 2nd floor, and up they went.

So I'm looking for advise here. I need more experience as a DM. So what did or would some of you more seasoned DMs have done in this situation?

Should I have upped the CR (remember, the encounter was 3.5hours already) substantially?
By the way, when shooting from cellar level to 2nd floor level, do I need to take into account the vertical distance? I didn't feel like busting out the Pythagorian Theorem to calculate hypotenuses of triangles in this combat (again, encounter was already 3.5 hours).

I guess in the end it was interesting. The players felt it was an interesting tactical encounter where they could hide behind 15foot tall vats and snipe off things. They felt very smart but as a DM trying to make it challenging it certainly wasn't.

So tell me where I failed and how I can improve and learn.

Thanks. :/

I just DMed the Morast arc tonight and thought you other DMs might find it interesting. Perhaps this gives you some insight into what some players might think when you DM it. I'm also interested in your thoughts (as DMs) on where to go from here given their deductions that follow:

So given all that above, anyone seen anything particularly interesting I should do? Anyone see anything that the PCs might next try that I can prep for?

Thanks!

Spoilers abound. Players please just stay out or this will ruin your experience of the module.

I ran the first session of Trial last night with my party of 7 PCs and have some thoughts on the organization of the module, things that I think could have been done better on my part, and things I wished the module had made more explicit. Maybe these will help other DMs yet to run this to prepare and maybe you guys can offer some suggestions to some of my concerns.

This post will probably be pretty long.

Spoilers, players please don't read.

So my crew has cleared all of Harrowstone and only has the room with the Splatter Man. I've had a love/hate relationship with many aspects of haunts - from their "how would I know this destruct condition" to what I feel (felt?) were ambiguities in the haunt rules.

Having run 99% of Harrowstone now over several months I have one particular problem that bothers me about haunts. I'm not sure if this is good or bad that my players are playing this way.

Haunts trigger once you get inside their radius - PCs outside of the radius don't see the effects. So a PC who walks into a room and the room starts the haunt, booga booga, the PC seems all this horribleness, but the ones outside the room . . . don't. My PCs have begun to use this very efficiently to their advantage and I think it sort of ruins a bit of the fun of haunts.

Here's an example:

My PCs dug the back way through the secret passageway into the Nevermore, where TSM is. We have a rogue character who is out in front, like a good rogue, he sneaks into the room. Well, the haunt goes off since it affects the room area. No one else sees this, of course. Blood starts appearing on the wall, spelling out the rogue's name, he fails a Will save, loses Wisdom damage, I tell the other characters that they DON'T see this - all they see is their rogue looking pained in the room. So they reach in a drag him out. :(

Is this bad? I dunno. If you think about haunts as basically psychic traps - I totally can see a rogue out in front exploring, getting blasted by a trap and backing out - then the team regrouping and thinking how to tackle the room. But I think it ruins quite a bit of the interesting aspects of haunts. There's been all this work put into the effects and the PCs just go "OK, we're sending in the clerics first, tie a rope to me, if I get blasted, drag me out of there (fail my perception check)."

I mean . . . good role playing . . . good roll playing . . . but working as intended?

There's also something interesting that I'd never really thought about until I was in the moment. Consider this:
The Mourning Maiden haunt has a 15foot radius - which is smaller than the torture chamber room. So as a DM you have to ask PCs to move about the room and when someone gets with 15ft - WHAM! Roll Perception, OMG you see the iron maiden starting to creep open!

OK so what happens here if they fail the Will save, the one that causes them to see a loved one inside - the one that makes them run into the (now open) Iron Maiden? More to the point, what do the *OTHER* PCs, outside of 15ft, see? Because . . . the iron maiden didn't open for them, it's just a piece of furniture.

What I did on the spot I'm marginally happy with, I said that the PC ran up to the device, opened it, jumped inside, and closed it. That kind of works. So next PC goes "wtf!?" and runs into the 15ft radius - now, question, do *THEY* see a loved one inside? I thought their friend was inside. Do they fail it run up, jump in there WITH the other PC? Do they jump in and toss the other guy out of the way?

Furthermore, my PCs decided to basically stand there and beat on the iron maiden - they became convinced that THAT was the way to destroy the haunt. Technically I don't think this would work. My PCs started prying the door off the torture device. Frankly I think the haunt would still exist with the door missing, even if it appeared that a real door was there.

The whole thing just becomes kludgey. What bothers me is that I've felt after running Harrowstone that almost all of the haunts had this kind of kludge. I love the theme and the work put into them, but somehow I don't like how they come out at the table.

I'd appreciate some thoughts from other DMs.

Extreme spoilers in here. Players please stay out or obviously you are in danger of ruining your fun and other people in your campaign.

I have created set of cutouts for the 5-ghosts cursed items to give to players as well as a set of DM aids to remind the DM the special conditions related to these items.

At the link below, you'll find:
PLAYER HANDOUTS: The vault module text says each of the 5 special property items has text identifying what it is. This is pretty vague and I decided to type up sort of museum / journal-like "cards" that Lyvar Hawkran would have placed with each of the items when (presumably) he placed them in the vault for safe keeping. You might consider cutting these out and handing them to the player who takes that item. You'll notice in them that I wrote them as though I imagined the items when they were put away. Was the "tarnished silver flute" really tarnished when the Piper was jailed? How about the moldy spellbook? I imagine it molded over time.

DM AIDS: Each of the items have some very specific curses and benefits that are extremely situational. I found it difficult to remember some of these conditions and have created a single piece of paper with (hopefully) short reminders to key you as the DM off. Examples are when an arcane caster holding the spellbook casts a spell (will save to stop casting), first time a PC touches the axe, etc, etc.

Then, further down in the document you'll see much longer text (almost a page per item) table describing in most cases flavor text I wrote up for you as the DM to read to the player. An example:

The first time a PC picks up the Piper's flute:

Ahhhh, this flute is tarnished and old but you can tell the silver and construction are both quite fine. Probably a bit of polishing and a bit of playing to blow out the dust of the ages would help.

And there's text for if they try and play it, and if they try and polish it, and . . .

There's also text for what happens at the end of the adventure and notes for what the items become after the curse ends.

I hope you guys enjoy. As usual, I made these for me but enjoy sharing with folks.

If you don't like the text or the colors and want to change it you should be able to make a google docs copy to your own doc and fix up whatever you want.

HERE ARE THE CURSED ITEM HELPER CUTOUTS AND DM AIDS

Enjoy guys.

This whole thread is spoilers so I'm not going to bother spoiler blocking it.

I want to talk about the 5 cursed items in the secret vault of the property room. Each of them have bonuses when used versus the 5 baddies and each of them have some curses.

So the question I have for you, DMs, is how to relay the information for the curse/bonus to the players? The module (in my opinion) punts on this hard question by saying

"the unique effects these items have upon their respective haunts cannot be learned via typical item examination, but using a spirit planchette to communicate with the spirit in the item can reveal its us. At the GM's discretion, other methods of communicating with spirits could also function similarly."

OK so just how exactly do you see this planchette playing out? In my campaign the planchette has been an utter failure, so I can't really see the PCs using it. Example of how I think this might work:

PC using planchette: Spirit in the spellbook! Tell us how to use this to hurt the Splatter Man!
Planchette: Rip out the pages (very slowly, 1 letter at a time).
PC: Cool! I rip out all the pages, crumble them up, stomp on them, and then burn them! Ha! Take that TSM!
DM: Ummm... well, you were supposed to do that when you were fighting him... crap! Let's go back.
. . .
Planchette: Rip out the pages in front of splatter man!

It all seems so contrived. The players are way too low level in this adventure to have any real lore or divination abilities, so those are basically out. The legends of the prison are mostly lost and even so, strange effects (while cool in a role-playing sense) don't readily seem to me like things the locals or legends would tell of.

I could go on but I feel like I'm trashing on a module that I have spent a lot of energy learning and loving and that's not my intention. I honestly just don't see how to relay this information to my players.

Right now my PCs are just carrying the items around and I suppose will try and improvise using them in the combats. I'm frankly OK with that, but with the module suggesting ways to pull out more specific usage information I'm looking for ideas.

Anyone got any bright ones?

On a side note, I should be done soon with another set of player handouts for these cursed items and DM hints and reminders about them. And, frankly, this is some content I'd like to get onto those handouts/hints.

This is all spoilers. So players please take care.

My party finally decided to tackle the piper last night after, literally, running from the haunt 3 times now. It's funny, they still haven't found Vesorianna yet and, as such, are convinced that they cannot kill the Piper. They neutralized him (which, as a DM, you know that Vessy keeps the 5 from manifesting again) but they thoroughly believe he will be back.

How did I get them to not run, finally?

We had a new player join, a 7th (sigh!). I brought her in as part of a rescue party from Tamrivena. The council had sent for help before the main party had looked like a viable option. So I brought that 1 new player in by saying her raiding party had come into town, quickly learned that the problem was the prison, and headed off - without any preparation. They stormed up to the prison, followed the PCs (original) tracks to the western balcony and through the smashed door into the Piper's haunt area. See, my PCs did that on their first approach and then fled and have been going carefully through the prison using the front door.

Anyway, the reinforcements go in that door and this new PC, being a lowly level 2 fighter, was assigned to cover the rear - so she stayed outside (out of the haunt). She then reported hearing lots of fighting and flute music (I really shouldn't have added the music since she shouldn't have heard it outside of the haunt area - but I flubbed on the spot on that). She ended up coming in the front door after hearing the PCs below (we have a gnome bard who crafted his own very weak pistol, which he fired, making a hell of an explosion sound).

So she comes in, joins up with the party, and tells them that her party is lost in there. So FINALLY my original crew of 6 have the motivation to go in there. So they dive in there and start grabbing bodies that are dead and dragging them out, and grabbing some folks who are held by the flute music and dragging THEM out too. It was clear to me that they were on a rescue mission and so I had the commander of the party from Tamrivena show up in there and bark orders for the PCs to come help him find his men and then go out of sight, deep into the 2nd floor.

So after dragging all the survivors and corpses out, they decided they had to go back in for the rest that they couldn't see and to rescue this foolish commander. So they go in, and finally are motivated to combat the piper - which they handled. Then, still exploring for the commander, they came across Father C's room.

The PCs were thoroughly pissed at this point, playing up that they had to come into this area that they were already convinced was bad just to save this foolhardy commander. So when they found his body they were pretty grumpy and dragged him out. But, here's the kicker, as they went to leave Father C's cell (whom they recognized from copious research) one of them kick father C's skull. I decided this would be the trigger that would assign the haunt to him.

Feeling confident, and not knowing where the rest of the bodies of the Tamrivena party were, they went back in. They got into combat with the stirges in the Mess Hall and I had the haunted PC go down - see, he is also the front line ninja who is always engaging first. So quickly the haunt engaged, he was wrapped in tightening chains. It was an interesting encounter because he couldn't roll a will save to save his life. I followed the directions appropriately, leaving the room and conducting the "illusion". It worked great. At one point the ninja was at -2 hps.

What was funny, though, is that the healers then began channeling positive healing into the ninja to save him. They weren't able (probably due to being unable to metagame) to know how much damage was being done to him (because it was said in the other room). So we went on like this for several rounds.

On one hand, it was an easy encounter because the ninja could be healed while being strangled. In fact, he loved it. His deity is Asmodeus (he's evil, but covert and hiding it) and so felt that the deity in the dream was torturing him - harming him and then healing him repeatedly. It really fit the deity in his mind. On the other hand, it was what it was intended to be - a major resource drain on the players.

When it was all said and done, every single caster was pretty much tapped out and they decided to leave and go back to town. There was a lot of discussion about whether they should just leave, leaving the rest of the Tamrivena party (whom they were assuming were alive) to survive on their own. "If we leave, they are as good as dead!" "They're already dead, it won't help them if we die with them!" Lots of that kind of discussion. Lots of alignment discussion about how a NG would view this versus a CG character.

In the end, they loaded up the corpses and headed back to town.

It was great, when they got back to town, they went straight to the priest, Father G. With him were several councilmembers. The ninja had a great line which went something like: "Next time you hire help, make sure you don't hire amateurs." He then proceeded to point them to the 6 or so corpses they had hauled back (on the horses left by the Tamrivena crew).

All in all, a great session full of role playing which is what I expect from this talented crew. The players are absolutely loving this module. Good job Paizo for painting a great background for us DMs and players to elaborate on top of.

Cheers!

(/wall of text confirms the critical hit!)

I'm having a bit of problem understanding what Jominda is likely to be able to craft. The text says "well-stocked supply of pharmacological provisions, both herbal and alchemical." I've been digging around on the SRD and must be looking in the wrong places because I can't really see a list of these kind of ingredients.

Help, especially links to lists, would be particularly appreciated.

Thanks.

I've had this problem with haunts which I think I've solved satisfactorily for me. I'm sure this was the initial intention with haunts but I find/found it hard to conjure up flavor stories around haunts. Not that I've used it yet, but for instance:

Enter, the haunt cards! These are cards which are intended to be printed out and handed to your players when they roll appropriate Knowledge rolls about the haunts. I have taken some of the rulings from the Haunts thread where there are 2 rolls - (1) to find out it's a haunt and what it's going to do, how do defend against it and (2) a lore-centric roll (local or history) related to how to actually destroy the haunt.

Each haunt presented in the Haunting of Harrowstone (though I intend to add the other adventures in if they have haunts - I haven't checked yet, still DMing Haunting) has 2 cards - one for each of the rolls.

I have added a fair amount of flavorful text around the legends to actually construct legends that I can hand to players. I suspect the players will read the card and then ad lib the legend themselves. If you glance at the first few and don't find them particularly flavorful, scroll down. I think it gets better.

Take a look, see if you like. If you find any grammar or spelling errors, let me know. Also if you have some better ideas, let me know too (reply here) and I might add in the changes if I like. If you want your own copy (you can just print it in the link) you can copy it yourself and edit it to your heart's content.

Hope you guys enjoy. There are currently 18 pages of cards.

And a final warning, PLAYERS STAY OUT! Haunt destruction conditions are extremely detailed and are not for players to know about!

HERE ARE THE HAUNT CARDS

Note that I largely punt on the Harrowstone-specific haunts as I find it a huge leap of logic to believe anyone would know what the effect of

Enjoy.

After a break from posting my 3rd and 4th sessions (which were mainly spent in town researching and role playing), I thought I'd post what happened last night in our 5th session.

Warning, spoilers.

My PCs have finally made it to Harrowstone after sticking Kendra with Father Grimburrow for safe keeping. My PCs had become turtled up in Ravengro trying to defend Kendra and it took them several sessions to come to the realization that they needed to destroy the evil in Harrowstone to put an end to this. Equipped with lots of research information, they headed to the prison.

After exploring the grounds for a bit, they decided to go up on the west balcony. After complaining a bit about how a scythe was not a good executioners weapon and a stone block was equally bad, they dealt with the encounter there. They then decided to go through the door there. I was really trying to discourage that because, as you know (since players aren't reading this now, RIGHT!?) behind that door lies the Piper haunt area.

Nevertheless, they managed to beat it down and go in. I ended up playing out the Piper haunt and had them attacked by 6 skeletons. It was a great encounter involving a lot of low light. None of my PCs has any low light vision (all humans) and I had the skeletons that animated in the cells near them remain locked away (not a threat). Then, as the haunt progressed the skeletons ambled into view from elsewhere on the floor. It was a nice effect and really scared them as they didn't know how big the floor was and how many more might be coming.

The piper haunt itself was surprisingly not that devastating. They didn't manage to actually neutralize it, but only a few of them took some minor damage from the stirges. Freaked out, they retreated from the prison. They attempted to go back in and communicate with the piper using the planchette. They asked it what they could do to put it to rest. It's a bit tacky and cliche, but I had it slowly spell out D . . . I . . . E. It seems trite to write it here, but it worked at the table.

Retreating, they decided to go in the front door. One by one they went down the balcony, careful of the crumbling construction. Each one that went I rolled a d4 for 25% chance to break through and one of them, the last one, finally broke the balcony and they went stumbling down. Later, upon retreat, they would climb out and use a rope to make a way in/out.

They went right in and got scared by the Slamming Portal haunt which caused the burned faces of the criminals to escape. Then they went into the auditorium and were beat up pretty badly by a Cold Spot haunt. Basically they encountered 3 haunts in a row.

• The PCs are really attached to this notion that the 'burned faces' that escaped Harrowstone have now descended on the town. They are asking what they unleashed upon the citizens. A cool little thing that isn't in the module! I wonder what I'll do with that. Any ideas?
  
• Many of the PCs (though I don't think the players) are frustrated that they can't do much to combat these haunts. I've tried reassuring them that the prison is not all haunts, but they do feel a bit ineffective.
  
• They made it back to town after these 3 haunts and went to Father Grimburrow and told him it's time to evacuate the town, the town is "f*cked" in their words. I'm a bit worried about how I'm going to salvage some of that now. I played it up that Kendra doesn't want to leave, this is her town, her people, her friends.
  
• I had Father Grimburrow tell the players that Ravengro is the "bread basket" of Ustalav and that all of Ustalav will starve (I played it up a bit) if Ravengro was destroyed to which the players said "well, they should prepare for that". Again, the players are being a bit dramatic, but it's how they are showing their fear.
  
• The PCs have CLAIMED that they're "not going back there" unless the town offers up some pretty serious equipment or reason to believe that the PCs will fair better.
  
• The PCs have talked about just burning the prison down. I figure if they try and do this it probably won't do much damage. Possibly also Vessorianna will come out and plead them to help.
  

So. Ideas? Any suggestions from the crowd about how I can get the PCs to want to go back in there?

My current plan is to have the next day the council call the meeting in the townhall which then burns to the ground. The PCs then gain some levels of Trust and are offered services, including some of the items we've seen in the buildings that are reserved for higher trust levels.

However, I'm really concerned that after that they will be just spooked all the more and take off.

The PCs literally are talking about "voiding the contract" and just taking the books to Lepistadt. Saying they don't want the reward since they didn't fulfill their end of the bargain but they did do what the professor wanted. "If Kendra won't leave, and we can't stop this thing, then it's our only option."

I haven't figured out if the players are just role playing well (which I'm sure they are to some extent) or if they really feel helpless. Perhaps I've created something too insurmountable.

As always, would love some creative thinking from my companion DMs here.

OK DMs!

One of my characters, a magus, wants to go into the Bladebound archetype from the Ultimate Magic. It's on page 47 if you want to look it up. I'll wait . . .

Ok glad you're back. Basically it gives the magus a legendary weapon that grows with the magus. The thing is, it's very clearly expressed that the blade is more of a companion than a servant, it's conscious, and stuff.

So what I'm looking for here is any inspiration we can together come up with for how this blade finds its way into the magus' hand. Is it something the professor has in his house? Is it a treasure in the prison? Is it for sale, ultra-cheap in the scroll shop? Given the thinking-sentient-blade there could be some cool connections with the 4th module having to do with Cthuhlu-like otherworldly stuff - could we foreshadow that?

Recall that Bladebounds get their blade at level 3. So I have about a level to line this story up and make it happen.

Ideas?
Thanks!

Spoilers, omg. Players, beat it.

I'm interested in discussing what I see as a paradox surrounding the charge left to the PCs, to protect Kendra for 30 days, with that of raiding the spooky prison.

Here's my thoughts on this:

• If the players turtle up and try and protect Kendra, the hauntings grow more dangerous. This is clearly spelled out in the module. However, this growing danger merely causes the players to realize all the more that they cannot leave Kendra alone.
  
• There is no one in town that could defend Kendra, so the PCs aren't left with the option of leaving her in someone's care. Probably the best choice for this would be the temple . . . and it's not a bad choice, definitely a route out of this.
  
• You can't just try and solve this by having Kendra get killed because, excusing the "we must avenge her death!" bit, the PCs are likely to just pack up and leave town. You've got a suspicious and superstitious town that is anything but welcoming. The only thing keeping the PCs from leaving these farmers to their doom is Kendra. So that's pretty much out of the question.
  
• The PCs could bring Kendra along, but I really don't want to encourage that. Having a goodly NPC to care for is a resource drain on the party and the DM. And it'd also be a (albeit low-level) pocket diviner which could possibly imbalance some things.... maybe?
  

Sure, they get it now, they get that Harrowstone is where they need to go, but they are really unsettled about what to do about Kendra.

Given no brilliant suggestions from my colleagues here I suspect my PCs will try and stick Kendra with the priesthood and go off adventuring. That's not a bad approach. Do you have any ideas of how that itself might be made more interesting?

I guess I just see this as a fundamental issue with the module that PCs who are really role-playing have a hard time getting around.

I'm mainly only after web-based games that have some sort of element that encourages you to come back regularly and tinker with it a bit. Games that I do play / have played and like(d) are:

Estiah - a sort of deck-building RPG. This game is pretty fun. You have a limited number of things you can do each day and it takes about 15 or so minutes to do those things, then you basically need to go away until tomorrow. I like that!
Elements - a Magic : The Gathering-type deck-building fantasy game. I've played this for going on 2 years.
Astro Empires - a truly great space-based exploration and combat game. The problem with this game is it becomes a game where you can't really play by yourself, you have to get involved in large guilds/clans and wage galactic war or you get annihilated very quickly in the crossfire. So in other words, you get forced into a style of play. I played this for almost a year though.
Lord of Ultima - relative nice mix of city building and some simple combat. This isn't a bad game, it just didn't keep my interest.

I love these small web games. I want a game that encourages me to login every day, do a little bit, and then go away. I don't want to be absorbed in an endless game (spent 6 years of my life playing WoW every day, had enough of that) .

Please offer up some suggestions of things you guys like. Maybe my suggestions will give you some ideas.

Heavy preference given to games that are free. AstroEmpires is an example of a game which has a free component but after you exhaust that you really get stuck in unable to enjoy the game without paying.

Are you guys familiar with WorldWorksGames? If you're not, and you're reading the Carrion Crown forum, you'd probably want to jump right to their horror stuff.

Seems like some pretty nice stuff there. We've used a few of their dungeon pieces before and they are beautiful works. You buy the digital rights and then print them out on thick paper. Fit together great.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone sees any inspiration in their pages for specific scenes from Carrion Crown. My players offered to buy some of these pieces in appreciation for the hard DMing work.

So, which might be best? Which fit well in the theme?

Again, this is for GMs.

The instructions for the PCs, left by Petros, are to stay in town for 30 days to make sure Kendra "lands on her feet". My PCs signed onto that.

However, I have a PC now who is asking Kendra each day what he can do for her and I'm having a hard time, as the GM, coming up with something to say. He feels its his duty to help her land on her feet, not to fight the problems of Harrowstone. In fact, he's gone as far as to tell me that he sees no reason he would head into that prison.

So clearly I have two issues here:
1: I need to connect Kendra to Harrowstone so that the PC feels sufficiently motivated that if he doesn't "fix" Harrowstone, then he will not fullfil his duty to Petros to care for Kendra.
2: #1 aside, what are some things I can suggest for the PC to help Kendra do - specifically. This is sort of a mundane question, but does anyone have any suggestions? Have him help her fix crap around the house? I don't get the feeling the house is in disrepair.

I probably need to augment the story so as the haunts are directly impacting Kendra in some way where in the story that is not the case. Ideas?

Thanks!

Our 2nd session was last night. I previously detailed our first session here. Thanks for the tips related to blood money that folks gave me yesterday. Here I'll outline what happened in the session last night.

My party started off the 2nd session on the morning, around noon, of their 2nd day in Ravengro. They had basically just dealt with the seeing of the first "V".

The ninja character tracked down the sheriff and offered him blood money to give to the family of the farmer he killed (see earlier posts if you're interested). The sheriff was horrified, refused it, gave the PC a lot of crap about "that's not how we do things around here" and "you're not going to buy your way out of this murder". However, I let it go saying that Father Grimburrow had spoken with the sheriff and assured him that the farmer attacked first. The sheriff suggested the ninja PC leave town, to which he replied that he had a honor-bound duty to remain here for a month - to which the sheriff replied that he'd be "keeping an eye on [you]".

The ninja then went to talk with Kendra about having her give the money for him. There was a long discussion where basically Kendra was convinced through a series of Diplomacy roles and, frankly, good role playing from the player, that she would offer the money to the family as Kendra's own money, but it would be from the ninja. The ninja would then feel that his obligation was satisfied. I felt this was acceptable and let it go.

My intention is to have the dead farmer haunt this PC, but I didn't get the chance to make it happen last night. There was just too much else going on. You'll notice, perhaps, a lot of these suggestions from the other thread on blood money. Thanks all!

Much of the evening was taken up by role playing and Diplomacy roles to get into the town hall, and attempts to get into the Temple, to use their libraries. Twice the PCs tried to get into the town hall and only once succeeded. They got a bit more info about Harrowstone and I tossed that to them (printed out, paper clippings).

Several of the PCs explored the magic shop (Unfurling Scroll). I had a good time role playing the flesh golem manual being offered for sale. Very under the counter, very shady. The PCs were really taken aback by this offer for sale. I doubt they're going to buy it and take it to Lepistadt for the reward detailed on page 63 of HoH. Any tips on how to encourage that to happen? The scroll shop keeper was fun to role play. I let them try Diplomacy, failed, to use his library and then try and barter down his 10gp cost to use his library. It was enjoyable to play the "if the town folks even knew you were in here, I'd lose business" aspect, as basically I played him as a businessman looking to make a coin but at the same time towing the line between that and the suspicious nature of the town folk, himself included. When it was all said and done, the PCs didn't buy anything.

The gnome bard tried to work at the forge and couldn't get Jorfa to talk to him (really bad Diplomacy role). But he role played it so damn well, picked up a nail from the ground and complimented her on her dwarven craftsmanship, spoke to her in Dwarven, and arranged an appointment to come back the next day - I think that counts as a large Diplomacy bonus in my book and unless he rolls REALLY poorly in the next day, she'll let him work with her. He's interested in using her forge to do some gunsmithing.

The PCs spent quite a bit of time trying to break through the "defenses" of the Temple to get inside and get to their library. They got as far as learning that they have records that would be useful to examine, but a slightly low Diplomacy roll sent them packing. Again though, through frankly great role playing, I let them set up an appointment for the following day to meet and see the records.

Two of the PCs heard the event 2, The Skipping Song. These PCs actually spoke Varisian so I went ahead and gave them a printout of what the song meant. They tried to talk to the children, failed, sent them screaming, and instead went to ask Kendra about it. She basically told them the same thing that the children would have - it's been sung here "forever". The PCs are pretty freaked about the song contents. I read it aloud kind of creepily and it worked I think.

One time the bard character wanted to do some singing in the town square. It's funny, he basically walked right into Event 3. I had him start singing, via Perform, and then had a few local musicians join him. A villager or two were around dancing. The PC thought this was good, as he was winning over the locals a bit. Since this PC was alone, I went ahead and ran Event 3 - Hungry Stirges, but only had 1 Stinge attack. I also ran it very easily. Basically the stirge came in and started attacking a villager. When he stopped, the musicians ran, leaving the bard, the stirge, and the villager under attack. I let the bard beat on the stirge who just sat there con draining the villager. He killed it before the villager died, and then was able to role play getting her some help. This whole thing worked out very well.

The final other thing that happened was perhaps the most interesting. The magus PC, after seeing the V stuff on the Harrowstone Memorial, split from the party and wanted to check out this prison. So he went off alone (while the other PCs started to research what this place really was). He made it to the prison and then circled the outside. I kept trying to get him to climb the walls but he didn't. Eventually, back at the gate after a full circle, he peeked his head in and out a few times and decided to step in. I went ahead and ran the mind-effecting fear (he rolled a 3 on his will save!) and was shaken for 6 minutes! Alone, shaken, feeling claustrophobia and that his skin was on fire, he totally freaked and ran screaming back to the village. It was SO well done.

That night he stayed up drinking, heavily. When others went to bed he said his character fell asleep, drunk, in the library of the professors drinking brandywine. I wanted to run the Vision of Imprisonment optional event but I didn't want to do it in the library. Luckily he said that he woke up in the middle of the night and went to bed. Perfect! Now was my chance. So I ran the event just like in the module. It started when he looked at the window and the bars were there. He started looking around the room and I described it like the prison cell - just like in the module. Then he looked out of the window and I gave him the description of the vantage point of the town, and given his personal view of that earlier in the day plus a good Knowledge roll he knew what it was. He started to really freak out now and started to say what he was going to do and I interrupted him with the first letter of his name, written in blood, over his bed. He kept talking, then the next letter. The entire exchange from me to him, interrupting him, was totally effective. By the time it got a few letters in he of course knew what it was spelling and he awoke.

The PC then went and woke up the bard, asking him to wash it off w/ prestidigitation, under the auspices that he didn't want to deface the walls of this house he was staying in. But really, he said it was to see if another person saw the blood. They discussed this for a while, argued, woke others up, Kendra even woke and they ran interference so she wouldn't see it. It was all such great role playing by everyone involved.

We've now gone through 2 whole sessions where the players have not gone to the graveyard to dig up the tools in the crypt. They know about it, they even talked about it several times, but they are just having too much fun to do that yet. :)

So my 2nd session is tonight. I'm the DM of course. I detailed the first session HERE.

To recap. I have a Lawful Evil ninja character from Cheliax who is hiding her background and alignment. She is playing it mainly as a scout, working for the Chelish government to acquire information on what the professor was researching. The other PCs have no idea she is evil, and I'm not entirely sure if the player intends to really play her evil. The evil nature of this shouldn't matter to this conversation.

However, the lawfulness does matter. In the first encounter one of the farmers tried to run and she was next to him. It provoked an AOO and she critted, slaughtering the farmer. I said that she stabbed him in his back, through his heart. I made the priest very mad at the entire party and am going with the negative 6 trust points for this. This has made a great plot hook as the party is trying to dig itself out of a hole.

So the player, talking to me over the week, is confident that he did the right thing. He said he attacked when Kendra made it clear that they had permission from Father Grimburrow to burry the professor here. Recall, that's part of Kendra's speech. That was the lawful trigger he needed and then he saw the farmers as underlings. He's been doing a ton of offline research on Cheliax and believes these are peasants, surfs, and should obey their masters. He sees nothing wrong with the fact that he killed this farmer - even while trying to flee. In fact, the rest of the party had to persuade him not to kill the other farmers - 3 of which had failed resists and were asleep (via Sleep spell).

OK so with that background. The player has decided he wants to find the "constable" who in this case I think will be the sheriff, whom they have yet to meet. He wants to ask the constable what would be an appropriate amount of blood money (TERM LINKED HERE) to pay to the farmer's family and ask him to deliver it. Again, and this is very important, he is not apologizing. This is his duty and the custom of the land he is from.

So the question I have for you guys is:

1: What do you think is an appropriate amount for a Ravengro farmer father. Should I look up the price of some farm animals (cows and such)? The number should have some justification behind it that this PC would buy into.

2: Can anyone come up, relatively quickly (like, today - game is in about 7 hours) any cool plot hooks.

• One I think I'll play out is have the sheriff explicitly use the word "apologize" to draw out from the player that this is not an apology. I want to hear him say it, and I want the other PCs to hear it.
  
• Should the sheriff make the PC deliver it himself?
  
• Should the family take the money and hire a few thugs to attack the PC who killed their father?
  
• Should the farmer "come back" as some form of haunt? What might that look klike?
  
• Should this gain some small amount of trust back? +1 or +2 so the total penalty is only -4/-5 or so?
  

The PCs were already accused of defacing the Harrowstone Memorial during Event 1, when the initial "V" appeared as they are outsiders who killed the farmer.

Send them ideas in! I'll let you know what I use and how it goes over! :)

We had our first session of the Haunting of Harrowstone last night. Ithought it might be interesting to collect my thoughts on the evening while letting folks know what the PCs did. Let's call it a session report. Warning this'll be verbose!

MUSIC:
I took Riptide777's lead FROM THIS THREAD and put together those songs into a Youtube channel, or at least, the ones we would get to last night. You Youtube channel
IS HERE.

The music went well, but I'm not sure it really added anything to the event. I need to speak more with my PCs about this.

ARTS and CRAFTS!:
I went a bit over the top and did some craft work for this session. Each PC had a storyline customized to their character based on the character backstories. Each had a private note to them which was sealed with sealing wax inside of the will case. I even sealed the will. For a thoroughly silly set of over the top photos - CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS HERE. I picked up a set of sealing wax, with some seals, for about $11 from Hobby Lobby. I considered doing some aging of the pages but decided the will was not intended to be old and weathered, and that of course saved me effort.

I also had lots of handouts for folks. I handed out maps from the PDF, images of NPCs, things of that nature. This is the first time our group has done this. We normally play entirely from the imagination but this time I thought I'd experiment with trying to use these bits that the Paizo folks had created to really bring in the players. The players each got a map of the town (without the letters on it) and as they explored the town I would draw their attention to where they were. It seemed to really help flesh out the town more than normal. Several players commented that afterwards they felt that they experienced the town more than a "normal" campaign.

The players seemed to like these touches.

THE PCs:
In case you were wondering, we have 6 PCs.

• A human, dwarven raised, battle cleric of Gorum.
  
• A human, dwarven raised, life oracle.
  
• A human ninja from Cheliax. This character is lawful evil but is hiding her evil for the time being. Her character believes that the government oc Cheliax has implanted a demon within her and is exploring whether this is real or not and whether the evil she does is because of the demon or her own choices.
  
• A human magus whose mother was convicted and put to death on charges of necromancy. This character hates dark magic. So of course . . . my goal is to tempt him here.
  
• A human witch who we made the bastard child of Petros from earlier in his life.
  
• A gnome bard, student of the professor's who has never been on an adventure before. This gnome is interested in gunsmithing so that he can make his own firearm and, being a gnome crafter, use it without needing to have proficiency in firearms.
  

THE STORY:
We started with handing out a Harrow Card to each player. They are excited about these.

So last night the PCs introduced themselves as they were caught in a bad storm that was passing through Canterwall and all ended up (how fortuitous!) waiting on a coach to Ravengro.

When they got to Ravengro, they had the funeral. It went OK. The PCs were careful with the thugs but one of the thugs tried to flee and our ninja from above took an attack of opportunity, critted, and killed the thug dead-dead. This makes it really hard on me, because the story is clear that this is -6 to trust. I played this up, of course not letting on the trust calculation yet. Father Grimburrow scolded the PCs, though the ninja was obviously cool about this - "he attacked me". The other thugs were routed, scolded, and sent home.

I've been playing up this murder of the farmer. The PCs tried to goto the temple later and I had the acolytes chase everyone off, saying that Grimburrow was in town "trying to console the family of the farmer you murdered". Right now my intention is to let the -6 trust stand and provide ways for the PCs to dig their way out - probably through more events.

The PCs enjoyed sitting around the fire telling stories about Petros. It was great to listen to my players ad lib this, they were having a great time.

The dwarven-raised PCs went to find a tavern. I took this opportunity to run Event 2, the skipping song. The PCs were pretty freaked out by the lyrics/words but failed a diplomacy check by 6 (>5) and sent the kids screaming.

That first night I played out the "V" letter of Event 1. The next morning the PCs found out about this as the young boy was posting signs about town, he let them know what had happened. They went down there to investigate and asked some great questions. They learned a little about Harrowstone.

I think I'm playing this up well because the PCs were asking questions that were so stupid "what is this memorial" and "what is this Harrow Stone?" that I played it like the locals were insulted by their questions. Regardless, they got little bits of information and I gave them the first (DC10) Harrowstone check. I also dolled out one of the rumors from the table while two of the PCs were having a pint of ale.

It was interesting watching those two PCs at the tavern deal with the strange names of the food there. That worked out really well.

I awarded the PCs each a little treasure. Things that they cannot use yet but will have fun working to figure out. Some of them are relatively powerful, but I left them as broken so that they will have to figure out how to repair it. I also gave the one from Cheliax a Chelish Crux, basically a box of holding. Not too powerful, but he doesn't know what it is or how to open it (it has runes on it that you must trace in a certain order - like the game of Simon - to open). I find the group I play with responds really well to treasure (that's probably true for all groups). So even if it seems powerful, I try and tone it down to keep it within reason. Also the group is very good at role playing so I don't have fear of them munchkining to max/min the situation.

Overall the session went great, and they have lots of threads hanging. For one, they haven't conducted any research yet and they haven't gone to find these ghost tools in the Restlands. The PCs didn't miss those hints, they even talked to me afterwards about them.

Great job Paizo. And thanks to this forum community for helping me craft ideas over these past few weeks.

My group is set to start this up early May. I'll be DMing and have been spending extensive time reading the book, playing around with possible music, and getting notes together.

I'd really be interested in any session summaries that DMs would be willing to post - or players even for that matter (we'll try and keep the spoilers boxed in - if they are even necessary).

I'm looking for gotchas, things your PCs figured out too easily or clues you had to put together to get your PCs to notice the right things. Little tidbits ("I play this song when the PCs first met Gibs", "I threw this haunt in here and it worked great!"). Bits like that.

Thanks all! Hoping to learn from your experiences. I've never DMed an adventure path and usually just DM homebrew stuff made up relatively on the fly.

Just a simple question here about the OGL and Golarion. Are there any restrictions on the geography of Golarion with respect to the OGL? What I mean here, is could I write a story which referenced geographical locations from Golarion?

Like I said, simple question.

Rather than block this entire thread in a /spoiler I'm going to assume PCs read the header and don't come in.

I'm pretty confused about the Haunts section in the Haunting of Harrowstone book - page 64.

Can we talk about this some and some folks explain them to me?

Haunts appear to have (among other things):

• How you notice them (usually perception)
  
• Their hps
  
• A 'weakness'
  
• A trigger
  
• An effect upon trigger
  
• A set of requirements to dismiss them - "Destruction"
  

Wow this is confusing. OK so.

• PCs get near a haunt, and have a chance to 'Notice' them. That makes sense.
  
• The trigger effect goes off. That makes sense.
  
• How are the PCs supposed to know how to destroy a haunt? For example the Headless Horseman requires a holy weapon buried in the ground and them him taunted so as to move over the area. The Cold Spot one has to have a metal object subjected to Heat Metal and then that object buried in hallowed ground. Whhaaaa? Are the PCs supposed to figure this out from talking to old wise men or something? I can swing that. "Oh, you felt that cold spot? I think ol' jenkins had a grandfather who dealt with that. Go talk with him." ????
  
• Why do haunts have hit points? Can PCs just attack the Choking Hands and try and do 18 points of damage to it? What does that even look like?
  
• What are these Weaknesses? Most of them appear to be weak to "Hide from Undead". Orbs are weak to "slow" - is that the slow spell?
  
• And finally, they appear to reset - usually 1/day. What does that look like? If you trigger it and then walk away, next day it can happen again? Is it that simple?
  

There are some words in the document about working out a code to talk with a spirit through rapping. Example?
PC: "Spirit! Rap once for yes, twice for no."
PC: "Spirit, to lay you to rest do I need to bring mancacles enchanted with bless weapon."
<RAP>
PC: "Sweet! Is that is?"
<RAP><RAP>
PC: "Ummm... spirit... do I have to then throw these manacles into moving water?"
<RAP>
PC: "Cool! Got it!"

My PCs are less psychic.

Clearly I'm very confused here and MUST be missing something. Someone please enlighten me.

I bought the Carrion Hill PDF (see my Middenstone question!) and will start DMing it this weekend. We will be joining the throng of folks using Google Wave to do this.

There is a service there you may or may not have heard of that incorporates GoogleMaps style maps (pins, zoomable images, etc) with your own images and you can put them in a Google Wave. People have made these awesome free apps for Google Wave that lets you put an image in there and, for instance, lay out NPCs/PCs, drag them around, put pins ("I search THIS bookcase"), etc.

Where I'm going with this is to do this I have to upload the image I want to use to the maplib service (http://www.maplib.net/). Someone has already uploaded the Golarion map here (http://www.maplib.net/map.php?id=7133)! If you click on that, you can zoom around down to very fine detail on the map. If I add that to my Wave with this app, I can add pins ("We are starting here, in Ustalav!").

Finally my point (apologies): Is this legal? I don't want to piss you guys off but I'd love to cut up dungeons from the PDF (using screencapture tools and Gimp), upload them to maplib, and then use them in my campaign . . . but are those images copyrighted or are they OGL? And more importantly, since this is so cool, would you even care?

For editors out there reading this, if you want to see this in action (if you haven't already), private message or email me (I'm sure you can get my email from the forum login) and I'd be happy to add you to the Wave so you can see the thing in action.

Thanks!

It's unclear to me how much of this I can explain given I purchased this module from Paizo . . . is all of the content under the OGL?

There's a new material in the module called "Middenstone" explained in a sidebar in the Appendix as a mix of brick, bone, gravel, and crushed up bodies on this local roach insect. In explaining why one would do this, they say this creates a material they can pour and mold into shapes for building material and it is "relatively resistant to fire and rot".

Then later in the sidebar it is explained that the disadvantage of the middenstone is that it "weathers badly and thus buildings incorporating it need more upkeep than those of stone." I realize there can be other types of weathering than rot and fire, but this material doesn't really gel to me as something special.

Oh, it's also hard as wood and have a sickening violet hue from the cockroaches (lol) and smells of tar, oil, and graveyards (lollol).

The module encourages that an engineers guild might send someone to Carrion Hill (as a means of getting the PCs to the module) to seek out this material. Other than wondering why people would use such a peculiar building material, I can't see why an engineering guild would be interested in it.

Can anyone shed some light on the material and perhaps give me better motivation to make one of my PCs interested in retrieving a sample of it?

Thanks!