Warped Savant's page

For my group, I didn't use the geas at all.
1 player was vehemently against witches to the point that he refused the spilled blood and +2 to a stat that went along with it, even knowing what the bonus was.
2 players ended up becoming riders for Baba Yaga.
The 4th was fairly neutral throughout the campaign.

Saving the world, and stopping the greater evil, was more than enough reason for all of them to play through the AP and go along with everything that needed to be done.
I also highlighted that Baba Yaga was amoral rather than villainously evil by sharing basic information about real-life folk tales of her, with a Golarion twist, that the characters would know about from their youths, or I had them find stories of her in the Dancing Hut's library.

After 2 weeks off due to real-life obligations, we played through "The Dalsine Affair" yesterday.
The Taldor faction player was surprised by the unexpected death and almost immediately followed up with "wait, can I be the faction leader now?!".... so I'll probably end up doing that.

Reasoning: I'm only running 3 or 5* more scenarios for the The Shadow Lodge War and then switching over to the main 7 scenarios for the Jewelled Sages before ending the campaign with part 2 of "Passing of the Torch."** Due to that, I'm allowing as much in-world time to pass as real-world time passed between releases of the scenarios so there's going to be a A LOT of downtime. To probably explain why the PCs aren't doing much adventuring I'm going to offer them the choice of being promoted within their country or within the Pathfinder Society. (EG: Andoran member, who's already an Eagle Knight, can become either a captain of a ship or a venture-captain, either of which will take him away from full-time adventuring.) If they don't want to take either promotion, that's fine, but they'll have to come up with their own Pathfinder missions they've been doing.

*3 or 5 sessions left in The Shadow Lodge War because if they kill the main enemy at the end of "Shadow's Last Stand, Part II: Web of Corruption" then I won't run "My Enemy's Enemy" and "Rivalry's End." I plan on changing the end of "Web of Corruption" so that they have a choice to rescue the prisoner or go after the enemy. I figure a Kyton or something in the room about to kill the prisoner might be appropriate and enough of a distraction to the group so that the enemy has the time to get away.

**I'm not having Torch be the bad guy because I find, due to the way PFS Scenarios have to be written, he's a bad guy in the later scenarios because the scenarios say he is. It very much feels like "tell, don't show" which I disagree with but is needed for PFS. And I figure after The Shadow Lodge War there might be some hesitation to work with him which will (hopefully) mostly be gone by the frank and honest conversations Torch has with people, and if there is any mistrust, it can be smoothed over during the Jewelled Sages arc.

It's fun.

That said, it's slightly less polished than a Paizo AP. For instance there's no actual documentation for the timeline that the historic events took place in. Thousand years ago? Ten thousand? A million? Dunno.

The second-last book just... starts, without really any transition from the previous. It's up to the DM to go "um, you hear about this thing you can do, somehow, and here are the details I figure you need."

But overall it's very, very playable. I don't mean to turn you off of it, just let you know that where Paizo tends to include large blocks of text the PCs will never know about, this doesn't.

That's all great to see, thank you!

*I think, after I finish running the Grandmaster Torch series of PFS Scenarios, I'm going to be done GMing for my group with the exception of maybe short stories that are 8 sessions or less.

I'm DMing Legendary Planet. Players are at 16th level. This one goes to 20.

How is it?

I'm with TxSam... Straight-up archer fighter is disgusting and the player that made the PC loved playing it.

Warped Savant wrote:

Do most / any of the others know how it ends?

More or less.

This is mostly the same group that played through two APs (Giantslayer and Shattered Star, alternating books and GMs) in PFS-mode a few years ago. We filled in some gaps in level advancement with parts of Emerald Spire, PFS scenarios, and a high-level module or two, and ended up reaching 19th level at the end. (A subset of us reached 20th later after one last PFS special that had no upper limit.)

Part of the PFS content we used was Passing the Torch, because it was Seeker tier, and still relatively new at the time. However, those PCs had never met Torch before, so most of the relevant backstory was lost on them. (I believe that all of the players had had experiences with Torch, with other PCs, so out of character, we all had our own thoughts about him.)

We're all very curious how PTT will turn out this time around. At least a couple of the players despise Torch out of character, while another (my wife) generally dislikes him but has been much more sympathetic since playing the scenario where you finally learn about his early history. (That one is coming up next level, shortly before PTT.)

I meant to reply the other day...

It would've been weird to play through PTT without having much context as to who Torch was.
Similarly, I think my group will have a very different opinion of Torch due to me taking out some of the later scenarios (EG: Assault on Absalom) and adding in the Sage Jewel scenarios as he's involved in them in a non-antagonistic way. Plus, playing up the enemies from the Shadow Lodge as a splinter-cell of extremists because, right now, the players realize that the Shadow Lodge has good beliefs but the WORST leaders and are going about things completely wrong.

So.... Scenario season 02-20 ("Wrath of the Accursed") went really well today and the players thoroughly hate the leadership of the Shadow Lodge.
BUT! The best part was them finding the note at the end which starts as "Grand Leader," followed later by referring to the leader as "Great Master," and flowery language which includes "rippling through the filthy Pathfinder Society like a lit torch in an oil refinery."
So my paranoid player read it and went "wait, is it just me or does it not directly say "Grand Master Torch" in the letter?!?" and now they're trying to figure out if Torch is in charge of the Shadow Lodge.

So they asked the victims that were still alive in the scenario to see if they were at all connected and the PC with the library of Pathfinder Chronicles books from 01-52 ("The City of Strangers, part II: The Twofold Demise") is going to scour his collection trying to find anything that could point towards who was described in the letter. (If anyone of note was burned in an oil refinery or anything similar). Now I'm debating if I have the PC find the blurb from page 44 of "Osirion, Legacy of the Pharaohs" written by Ven Lorovox briefly describing his companions dying and himself being cursed.... which I feel like I should give them. (Since Osirion didn't allow Pathfinders within their borders for the longest time, and the PCs have a rough idea when the leader was cursed, it shouldn't be hard to find the passage... right?)

I could be wrong, but I think:
Emerald Spire (entire book is one connected dungeon)

Shattered Star (entire AP is mostly one huge dungeon?)

Scarwall Castle (book 5 of Curse of the Crimson Throne) is a massive castle

Briarstone Asylum (book 1 of Strange Aeons) is a large building

The final book of Mummy's Mask is a series of dungeons in one place, if that counts?

The final book of Kingmaker, but that's a demiplane rather than a dungeon

In my group's round-robin Torch/Shadow Lodge game, we've reached 10th level, and will be playing Shadows Fall on Absalom tonight. After that, we have 7 more scenarios before the finale of Passing the Torch Parts 1 & 2 at 12th level.

So close to the end!!

I ran The Sarkorian Prophecy yesterday with the other system I'm using (Outgunned Adventure) and it was freaking amazing!!
The system has a "Run!" mechanic that lasts a few turns for when the PCs have to avoid something dangerous (like a giant rolling boulder) so I made the Worldwound environmental effects pretty dangerous. When the group made it to the cave and met the enemy pretending to be an ally it became pretty tense. They realized before they slept that she wasn't what she claimed to be, didn't know what she was, but if any of them got hit there was a chance they'd end up dead so they pretended to play along until they could get their health back.
IT WAS FANTASTIC!!! Exactly what I had been hoping for!

I also changed up the attitude of the NPCs in the main building of the scenario. I left them as Shadow Lodge, kept their backstories, but had them be much more moderate. They wanted to help Pathfinders that had been left for dead and DID NOT trust the Decemvirate for the reasons listed in the scenario. (Embla was the leader, the other 2 mostly just followed her lead). They occasionally worked with Caggrigar, didn't really know who their Venture-Captain was (had only met him a couple of times; it was Caggrigar using threefold aspect to appear much older). This allowed me to show some of the nuances within the Shadow Lodge that way there's some foreshadowing involved but kept Caggrigar as an obvious bad guy.

Wonderful session that will have some great pay-off later!

Oh, and you should've seen the look on the two players faces that had played through my Wardstone Patrol / The Traitor's Lodge / Weapon in the Rift / Vengeance at Sundered Crag quadrilogy a couple of years ago when they recognized who the Venture-Captain was that gave them their mission at the beginning!

Yeah, Razz, that's why I didn't use the Morale rules for my game.
Hopefully, for the sake of making the fleet combat more intense, your GM doesn't use them either.

Plus, it's WAY more fun to sink ships rather than to have the enemy tuck tail and run!

Dirkish wrote:

or would the Admiral add a bonus to the moral of his fleet?

This thread is quite old, but: Same question here..

Shouldn't the Admirals CHA bonus be added to the morale value of all squadrons?

From my other response in a different part of the boards, for people that come across this in the future:

The rules do not specify. I'm guessing it was lost in editing.
The main points to work with, and then make a call based off of, are:

Admiral: Commander of a single fleet. An admiral influences a fleet’s morale score and determines the fleet’s maximum size.

Commodore: Commander of a single squadron. A commodore primarily influences a squadron’s Attack Value and Defense Value.

Step 3—Select Commodore: List the name of the squadron’s commodore, along with her Charisma modifier and Profession (sailor) skill modifier. An admiral can never serve as a commodore. If a commodore is also a significant character (either a PC or a significant named NPC), that squadron gains a +2 bonus on all attack rolls, damage rolls, and morale checks. (As a general rule, most NPC fleets should have 2–4 significant named NPCs serving as commodores.)

Step 9—Determine Morale Check: A squadron’s base morale check is equal to its commodore’s Charisma modifier, further modified by flagship boons and the presence of significant commodores.

My guess is that page 66 is supposed to be "...A squadron’s base morale check is equal to its admiral’s Charisma modifier..."

OPINION:
Morale checks will decide the battle more than attacks. Honestly, I took them out of my game because otherwise, when I ran a few tests, nearly every ship fled after a couple of hits / after a couple of rounds and it would've been disappointing to my group. I wanted the enemy to be willing to risk it all to win.

A short story arc description can help guide a GM on how this NPC can get character development or make important choices. In 1e, we got this with many APs so it's nothing new to ask.

Hunh.

I assume, that the charisma modifier of the admiral is added to each squadrons base morale value. Is that correct?

The rules do not specify. I'm guessing it was lost in editing.

Admiral: Commander of a single fleet. An admiral influences a fleet’s morale score and determines the fleet’s maximum size.

Commodore: Commander of a single squadron. A commodore primarily influences a squadron’s Attack Value and Defense Value.

Step 3—Select Commodore: List the name of the squadron’s commodore, along with her Charisma modifier and Profession (sailor) skill modifier. An admiral can never serve as a commodore. If a commodore is also a significant character (either a PC or a significant named NPC), that squadron gains a +2 bonus on all attack rolls, damage rolls, and morale checks. (As a general rule, most NPC fleets should have 2–4 significant named NPCs serving as commodores.)

Page 66 of The Price of Infamy wrote:

Step 9—Determine Morale Check: A squadron’s base morale check is equal to its commodore’s Charisma modifier, further modified by flagship boons and the presence of significant commodores.

My guess is that page 66 is supposed to be "...A squadron’s base morale check is equal to its admiral’s Charisma modifier..."

Either that, or you have to change the line "An admiral influences a fleet’s morale score and determines the fleet’s maximum size." to "An admiral determines the fleet’s maximum size." (which seems kind of lame... base morale off of admiral's charisma makes more sense to me.

OPINION:
Morale checks will decide the battle more than attacks. Honestly, I took them out of my game because otherwise, when I ran a few tests, nearly every ship fled after a couple of hits / after a couple of rounds and it would've been disappointing to my group. I wanted the enemy to be willing to risk it all to win.

Yeah, she is! (If you want her to be)

One of the PCs in my game offered her a ridiculous amount of money halfway through the fight against the Scorched Hand so she flipped sides (Velriana had already been carelessly casting AoE spells that Idorii was caught in). Afterwards, Idorii was a mercenary that popped up frequently enough and the PC and her used each other as fun distractions.

As James said, Paizo doesn't know which NPCs the group will connect with.
It's up to the GM to find ways to include the "important to your group" NPCs in the later books. Replacing new NPCs with the older ones is (typically) pretty easy, which is on the GM to do. Or the PCs checking in with the NPCs every once in awhile is a good, proactive way that the players can ensure that the NPCs feel like they're still around in the later books.

People on either side of the screen can help to keep NPCs around. It shouldn't be put on the shoulders of the writers.

I keep added or removing scenarios from my Grandmaster Torch / Shadow Lodge / Jewelled Sages non-PF campaign! (List in my profile behind spoiler tag is my current plan)
Reminder: because the game system I'm using doesn't have levels and instead simply uses "enemy difficulty" I'm able to put in whatever I want.

Eyes of the Ten went great, with the group trapping Adril in an Ioun stone and having him over to the Decemvirate.
Year of the Shadow Lodge and Shadows Fall on Absalom, combined with what they saw of the Decemvirate in Eyes of the Ten has the group questioning how good the Decemvirate are and also if the Shadow Lodge is actually all that bad. They've kind of clued in that there are extremists, but that some of what they're fighting for isn't all that bad... which is promising for the end of the season, and then leading into the Jewelled Sages storyline. (And they miss Grandmaster Torch... they're surprised he hasn't shown up lately.)

When I first read the "Heresy of Man" trilogy I absolutely loved it but realized that the PCs are assumed to have done something between scenarios 1 and 2.
It's way out of order but it was easy to insert anyways, so I put in the main adventure part of "Faithless and Forgotten, Part I: Lost Colony of Taldor". To do this, I ran the entire scenario for "Heresy of Man, Part I: The First Heresy", had the PCs get down to Wadi al-Hesr where they met up with Obo, who replaced Zefiro Balinger as the quest-giver, and the PCs were sent west to ruins near the Chelaixan region of Kharijite. (Cheliax is trying to claim that the ruins are ancient Taldan and therefore they should own that area as well). And then, obviously, instead of the ending in Lost Colony of Taldor the PCs returned to Obo and then The Heresy of Man, Part II will happen.

OH! And the group learning one of the faction leaders was a traitor was AMAZING! Especially since the one that realized it is from the faction of the traitor!!!

Does the Snap Shot feat allow an attack of opportunity when the target that is provoking is around a hard corner?

O W W
A W W
O T

O = Open space; W = Wall; A = Attacker; T = Target

Thanks!

With ranged attacks, from where "A" is on the map, "T" is a legal target and does not have cover from "A". If "T" were further down the hallway they would still not have cover from "A" unless something else was in the way.

Azothath wrote:

Belafon wrote:

Quote:

the target must succeed at a DC 16 Will save or become frightened

"Be" frightened sounds more descriptive. Personally... I wouldn't apply a fear effect.

that's also very reasonable.

The 1d4 Wis damage is pretty potent as is.

It would have been a big oversight, but it is possible.

I'm with Belafon on this one.... Without a duration listed, I'm going with the assumption that "be frightened" is descriptive rather than mechanical.

Plus the fact that:
"Frightened: Characters who are frightened are shaken, and in addition they flee from the source of their fear as quickly as they can..." combined with "Project Terror (Su)...This effect creates terrible, nightmarish visions in the target’s mind;" made me think "that wouldn't work because how would someone flee from their mind?" so I looked into all of the monsters that can cause PCs to become frightened... very nearly all of them do something physical or vocal to frighten the target(s) or have an aura.
The two exceptions are Taniwha and almost Qoloks
Taniwha bring up a fearful memory and their ability specifies that the target flees the area (the Rhu-Chalik entry doesn't say anything like that).
Qoloks cause the target to become afraid of a specific thing of the Qoloks choice, and unless that thing is in the area the target doesn't appear to be forced to flee the area.

After taking a month off due to various reasons (which is very unlike us, but it happens)... the group finished off their time in Kaer Maga (played through "The City of Strangers, Part II: The Twofold Demise") and now I'll be running the rest of "Eyes of the Ten".
They love Kaer Maga (familiar with it from when we played through Curse of the Crimson Throne) so they were happy to revisit it.
The player in the Taldan faction is starting to think they made a bad choice because the Taldan faction leader seems to be at least a little insane, so I'm quite excited for running "The Dalsine Affair".

The players also joked about how Torch is clearly in charge of the Shadow Lodge but then decided that no, in fact, he's the entire Decemvirate and he only uses "Decemvirate" to throw people off to the fact that it's just him. (And no, they don't really believe either of these "theories").
On top of that, the Osirion faction player is a little suspicious of his leader as well due to handing off coded messages while finding other sorts of coded messages in Kaer Maga, so it's all working out wonderfully!

Eyes of the Ten, Part IV has the Osirion mission written by a different NPC so, thankfully, I send a text version of the mission to my players the day before we get together along with an image of it. I'll just so happen to "forget" to send the image the day before I run that scenario and I'll change who it's signed by in the text I send him.

I've also had to add in "The Chasm of Screams" because the group wants to find a way to cure Kyalla after what she goes through in Eyes of the Ten, Part II, so I think they'll be happy with that.

Overall, it's still working out well even though a month long break requires a lot of "remember how this all happened recently?" but it's all good.

Dragon78 wrote:

Now that you say that, there might be even less people on this site when you take multiple accounts into....account.

Actually, isn't this all "sock puppets" of one person?

We're all just secret accounts of an Angry Bag, right?

Super-Necro

How does Empower/Maximize work for spells like Threefold Sight and Embrace Destiny?

I would argue that Empower and/or Maximize wouldn't do anything. Threefold Sight allows you to roll 3d20 instead of 1d20 when you need to roll them. Rolling the d20 isn't an effect of the spell, being able to roll three of them is. (So if it was a 1d4 roll to see how many d20s you rolled the 1d4 could be empowered/maximized.)

Plus, a level 5 (empowered Threefold) or 6 (maximized Threefold) spell that gives you those bonuses for 3 minutes is a joke beyond being broken and therefore, to me, clearly isn't how it's supposed to work.

Sure, some people online seem to say it's totally fine and GMs can allow it to work in their games, but there's not a chance I'd allow it in mine.

Actually, yeah, if you want to counter her, look through the mythic rules and create something with a decent amount of mythic ranks. You said you can use meta-knowledge so the mythic creature would know this one character is the largest threat and would therefore go for her first.

If there isn't something in the base Mythic rules to help enough, Legendary Games created a bunch of mythic content as well; check that out.

I'm with Chuck Mount... a lot of this REALLY depends on the rest of the group.
If they're not even close to this one player in power the one player should fix their character and build it as per the rules because I can very nearly guarantee the rest of the players don't like playing with her.

Otherwise, build a custom mythic enemy that can use timestop on everyone else and make a custom magic spell or cursed item (because you've allowed her to create custom things she doesn't have a leg to stand on if she tries to say it's not fair that you did it) that reduces her to a regular character instead of this giant ball of misunderstanding (or cheating) cheese that she's created* that way it was done "in the story"

*(and, sadly, that you've allowed her to create and continue to play for the past year?!? Seriously, have you spoken with the group? Are they all having fun? If you haven't yet, talk to them all separately to hopefully get honest answers out of each of them.)

One of my players, in Reign of Winter, decided he wanted to play a ranger with a giant weasel as an animal companion that specialized at grappling.
That beast could take nearly any enemy out of the fight and it was fantastic!

If I cast the spell Echean's Excellent Enclosure ... which has a range to touch, an area of an immobile 10 ft radius emanation, and a duration of 1 round/level, and then I die, does the spell persist for its remaining duration?

On topic answer:

Plus, there are a whole lot of cases of spells lasting after the caster died in Adventure Paths. (Typically via Permanency, or due to a Permanent duration.)

But if you're not sure how your GM would rule it, you should ask them. Don't specify the spell if you want your tactic to be a surprise. Use something like "hey, GM, if I were to cast Antilife Shell, and the bad guy killed me with a range weapon would the spell end right away or at the end of the duration?"

Warped Savant wrote:

A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me.

You can check out Curtain Call, you do end up in Vyre but the player's guide mentions this is not an AP for the Hell's Rebels and not to rely on them for help as NPC's, "Curtain Call is not their story."

My local shop is getting the 3 books in for me next week!

(And I wouldn't want it to be a continuation of Hell's Rebels / I wouldn't want it to involve the previous heroes.)

I am VERY excited to read this adventure!!
My players pretty frequently talk about missing Vyre and wanting me to run an adventure that takes place there.

Or was your attention elsewhere?..

I had to make sure none of the ... foreign objects in the water made their way over to me!

I think if you're using PF1 adventures with a different system (or vice versa), that's close enough for government work. Whereas AbV is neither designed for PF1 nor being run with it.

I, at least, would be like to keep hearing about what you're doing....

That was my thought too. And thanks! It's good to see that people enjoy it :D

***************

I realized the other day that Eyes of the Ten should all be played right after each other instead of delayed like the releases were. I ran the first part, then started City of Strangers, then realized my error.
So I'm going to run the second part of City of Strangers then back to finish Eyes of the Ten.

I've added a full list of the scenarios I'm planning on running, and the order I'm doing it in (which is, essentially, the order they were released) in my profile, behind a spoiler tag due to how many there are.

(the other is Abomination Vaults, but obviously that is outside the scope of this thread.

I was going to ask "how come?" and then realized this is supposed to be for PF1 campaigns.

Meanwhile I've been posting about using a non-Pathfinder system, but using PF1 PFS scenarios to create the campaign soooo.... I'm just gonna keep posting my updates every once in awhile anyways :)

Warped Savant wrote:

A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me.

You can check out Curtain Call, you do end up in Vyre but the player's guide mentions this is not an AP for the Hell's Rebels and not to rely on them for help as NPC's, "Curtain Call is not their story."

Oh! OH!!!!

I'm going to have to look into that now. Thank you, Niktorak!

Do you prefer:

Not Sequels

As a GM, I like tying things in to each other. (EG: Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale & Realm of the Fellnight Queen into Kingmaker, Academy of Secrets into Curse of the Crimson Throne) but I'm also a GM that wants to put the players through the introductory story first. The main reason I bought Crimson Throne was so that I could run The House on Hook Street.

I seem to be one of the few people that didn't like Rise of the Runelords and because of not running it for my group I wouldn't run Shattered Star or Return of the Runelords. Even if it's not needed, it feels like the players would be missing things / call-backs due to not having played Rise.

So, mostly, I'd cast my vote for "not sequels".

Now, that being said, Seers of the Drowned City was written as an indirect sequel to Ire of the Storm and you could run either of those and never realize that the second was written with the first a little bit in mind. But Seers feels more like a "theme / tone" sequel that happens in kind of the same area of the world so has some connective tissue instead of there being throwbacks to Ire of the Storm. That kind of "Indirect Sequel" would be fine, but it's so indirect it may as well count as not a sequel.

I guess more of a "takes place after the events of another AP / module happened" is something that could work. A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me, something like The House on Hook Street is fantastic (I really didn't NEED to run Crimson Throne first, but I wanted the group to understand the city as much as possible), The Witchwar Legacy having ties to Reign of Winter was great. The difficulty with writing that type of adventure, though, is that you don't know what the groups did / what the area looks like after the AP is concluded. Vyre, for example, you could touch on NPCs from Hell's Rebels but those NPCs shouldn't be important enough that they can't be replaced by another NPC / by a PC in case they died / lost their political position during the course of the AP. (EG: The Mask of Vyre that was used in Hell's Rebels... perhaps the group didn't like her and managed to overthrow her so she shouldn't be written as a main NPC. The other Masks might've been overthrown as well due to the GM adding things or the group going really off-book but you can't account for that so you have to assume they're still in power. A module with the King of Keys, cult of the main bad guys in the city, and the prison there would result in me switching my group over to PF2 in a heartbeat.

Do point out to them that he has extensive burn scars. I don't know much about proper burn care IRL, but the affected area needs to be kept clean, and IIRC, some of these scenarios refer to oils, unguents, etc., that he also uses; some might be administered via bath.

Also, IMHO, meeting people in bathhouses has become an affectation for Torch. His injuries unsettle people, and the juxtaposition of physical vulnerability and Torch's aura of being all-knowing make for some delicious cognitive dissonance.

Oh, they are definately a little creeped out by him always being in the bath, especially when he invited them to join him in the bathhouse. :)

Torch involves himself in the Scarab Sages' business more and more as that faction's story grows, so these are highly appropriate to include.

That's what I figured, yeah.

This does hurt my head a bit, given the huge level jump involved for anyone playing these by standard PF rules.

With the system I'm using, it kind of comes down to enemies having 3 levels of difficulties so as long as you roll good enough on 3-9 D6s you've hit them, and they need to be hit 3 times. (Defending against them is much the same). So it is very different than pretty much any other system I've seen.

As you said, foreshadow main villain more. Alternatively, you remove all hints of her and replace them with hints that it's Pitax and end the game with book 5. (If you do this, hints should imply that there's humanoids / someone smarter than the enemies that is coordinating the attacks. If you foreshadow Nyrissa, enemies having locks of green hair works, combined with denizens of the Stolen Lands making references about her with nicknames or some big threat to the lands or something.)

Dudemeister has amazing changes to tie things together a little better, and his changes to mass combat make it less of a risk early on but later-game combats take FOREVER so if you use those rules you may want to roll it all between sessions.

Main Advice directly connected to Kingmaker:
Pre-roll the random kingdom events! That way you can foreshadow them or possibly connect them together instead of trying to retcon things so that they make more sense.

I've run a few APs for my group and, for a new GM, I can't stress enough how great Mummy's Mask is. Seriously, if you want to run an AP instead of modules I suggest this one. Pretty linear campaign that switches things up enough that it stays entertaining and fun. The BBEG is mentioned pretty early and you very slowly learn more and more about him. Reading other reviews had me wary, but it's not all traps everywhere and the types of undead change so that it never feels like you're just hacking away at the same enemies over and over and over and over again. Super fun, great AP to run as written and pretty easy to follow along with what's happening. It's also easy to run the first two or four books if you want and it would feel like a full campaign, which is also why I suggest it to new GMs. (GMs would just need to remove minor connective tissue to the next book and the players wouldn't know that the campaign was cut short)

It's so much fun! Ancient Egypt inspired setting, zombies, mummies, skeletons, nearly every kind of undead you can think of!

(The Mummy's Mask board on here is pretty quiet, not because it's not a good AP, but because there's not much say about it / GMs don't have many questions / people aren't looking for advice on how to make it better or fix things)

***

Or, if you go with what Andostre suggested and look at modules, the three he listed (Crypt of the Everflame, Masks and Golden Death) are pretty good.

I prefer The Dragon's Demand because it feels more "classic". It's levels 1-7 and you get to fight a dragon at the end!

Ire of the Storm is also really good. They play through levels 1-5, there's wilderness exploration involved, going through ruins, and stopping an evil cult.

PLUS! If you like it, there's also Seers of the Drowned City which is thematically (and a little conceptually) connected to Ire of the Storm, and they start at level 6 in the same area. It was written to be a sequel to Ire and works pretty well at it.

We had to take a couple of weeks off so we've only played the first 3 scenarios with Grandmaster Torch in them, but Silent Tide (as previously mentioned), The Many Fortunes, and Delirium's Tangle have gone really well and they like the information broker, but they wonder why he's always submerged in water :D

I've added a large handful of scenarios to the list I was planning on running due to them being important to the Shadow Lodge (like "The City of Strangers, Parts 1 and 2), as well as others that involve Amenopheus, the Jeweled Sages, and the Sage jewels because one of the players is in the Osirion faction and they look like they're appropriate for the GMT storyline.

Next Sunday is the first part of "Eyes of the Ten", which will be the first hint of the overarching plot for the group, so I'm looking forward to that, and then they'll be headed to Kaer Maga to learn more about the Shadow Lodge. (I'm so glad I don't have to worry about what level the group is!)

Because I've needed a change from Pathfinder and wanted to use a much more simple system, but I love Paizo adventures, I'm now running "The Grandmaster Torch Chronicles" using the PFS Scenarios listed by Tim Emrick HERE but using a system called Broken Compass (which will transfer over to Outgunned: Adventure once those books are out).
So, with the system being called Broken Compass but it's Pathfinder scenarios we've decided it's "Broken Wayfinder"
First session, PFS 00-01, went really well! Converting on the fly was easy, players liked / are curious about Grandmaster Torch, 3 players played through the entire scenario within 3 or 4 hours, which is much nicer than me running a PF Adventure Path for 6+ hours a week.

I don't know if the simplicity of the system will be appealing enough to keep it fun for months on end, but we'll see how it goes!

Invisible rules: reference:

https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=431
Moving at half speed -5
Moving at full speed -10
Running or charging -20

You stopped listing them two lines too early...

His motivation is to get the decimverate out of the PFS or bring some accountability, so it is a union movement against bad management.

So read those two season 10 scenarios and then work backwards. Plant subversive clues to bring down the the two Evil allies and provide access to recovery experts, add helpers in scenarios (like before a battle a npc offers a key written hint or scroll on the sly with the epithet, 'a torch shows the way in darkness').

Thank you for that, Azothath!

And again, thank you, Tim Emrick, for the idea of running the Torch / Shadow Lodge scenarios.

comment - the only thing with G.T. is he goes through psychotic motivational changes as PFS changes his focus as they cast him in different roles, dumps the Shadow Lodge (union busting), decides he helps and then opposes certain groups. blah blah blah. So some balancing/centering of the characterization is needed.

Thanks for the tip, Azothath!

That's only a solution IF:

1. They're a spontaneous caster, not a prep caster
2. They know the still spell meta magic feat

One of the players in the party had taken Still Spell as a throwaway bonus feat earlier on, which I know would allow him to still attempt to cast spells while in the straitjacket...

OP said the PC has Still Spell.

Warped Savant wrote:

Tim Emrick wrote:

Torch/Shadow Lodge Campaign

Hi Tim, sorry, one other question for you... Are there any of these scenarios that you would count as filler / that you would take out if levelling didn't matter? (I assume the four level 1 scenarios aren't part of the story based on your comment, but I'm curious about the rest.)

There were a number of 1st-level scenarios that mention the Shadow Lodge but don't have very much to do with it, so we decided to play some repeatables instead for that level. So, yes, that level was filler.

Night March of Kalakamedes is filler, and once that was added, Valley of Veiled Flame was added because of how its reward interacts with the former scenario's.

Beyond that, I'd have to do some digging through our group's discussion to figure that what else was filler.

IIRC, the player who worked out the initial draft found most of his information by combing through scenario tags for "Shadow Lodge" and using PathfinderWiki to identify all of Torch's appearances.

Awesome, thanks, Tim!

Quote:

Torch/Shadow Lodge Campaign

(roughly chronological within subtier; multi-table specials not included do to logistics)
Lv 1: 5-08, 6-10, 9-16, and Murder's Mark (all slow)
Lv 2: 0-01, 0-14, 1-45
Lv 3: 2-15, 2-17, 2-19
Lv 4: 3-01, 3-18, 4-19
Lv 5: 9-04, 5-12, 5-15
Lv 6 5-16, 2-23, 2-24, 4-21, 4-23, 9-21 (all slow)
Lv 7: 2-06, 2-07, 2-09
Lv 8: 3-12, 3-14, 4-03
Lv 9: 4-22, 4-24, 2-25, 6-07 (first 2 slow)
Lv 10: 2-04, 2-26, 3-20, 3-22 (last 2 slow)
Lv 11: 4-12, 4-20, 9-07
Lv 12: 9-25, 10-22, 10-23

Where only one part of an arc was tagged Shadow Lodge, we tweaked the schedule to fit in the whole arc. Between those additions, and the number of relevant scenarios at that level, we're currently playing all of 6th level in slow mode. (We are doing 2-24 tonight.)

Level 1 is mostly repeatable filler. We avoided quests because you have to play pregens for those, and we only wanted to play our new, weird PCs.

Hi Tim, sorry, one other question for you... Are there any of these scenarios that you would count as filler / that you would take out if levelling didn't matter? (I assume the four level 1 scenarios aren't part of the story based on your comment, but I'm curious about the rest.)

Quote:

Torch/Shadow Lodge Campaign

(roughly chronological within subtier; multi-table specials not included do to logistics)
Lv 1: 5-08, 6-10, 9-16, and Murder's Mark (all slow)
Lv 2: 0-01, 0-14, 1-45
Lv 3: 2-15, 2-17, 2-19
Lv 4: 3-01, 3-18, 4-19
Lv 5: 9-04, 5-12, 5-15
Lv 6 5-16, 2-23, 2-24, 4-21, 4-23, 9-21 (all slow)
Lv 7: 2-06, 2-07, 2-09
Lv 8: 3-12, 3-14, 4-03
Lv 9: 4-22, 4-24, 2-25, 6-07 (first 2 slow)
Lv 10: 2-04, 2-26, 3-20, 3-22 (last 2 slow)
Lv 11: 4-12, 4-20, 9-07
Lv 12: 9-25, 10-22, 10-23

Where only one part of an arc was tagged Shadow Lodge, we tweaked the schedule to fit in the whole arc. Between those additions, and the number of relevant scenarios at that level, we're currently playing all of 6th level in slow mode. (We are doing 2-24 tonight.)

Level 1 is mostly repeatable filler. We avoided quests because you have to play pregens for those, and we only wanted to play our new, weird PCs.

Thank you for such a detailed answer, Tim! That's a lot more scenarios than I was expecting, which is fantastic. (I had looked up all the ones involving Torch so figured it would just be those.)

My plan is to run a group of PFS scenarios using a completely different system that doesn't involve levelling and is much more simplistic, especially when it comes to combat, so I'd be able to run these chronologically if I wanted to.

Congrats, Marcovic!
You'll have to let us know what the highlights were for you and your group.

...which is essentially a curated history of Torch's involvement in PFS plot lines (occasionally out of chronological order due to level tiers), with Passing the Torch as our final adventure at level 12. This one is more round-robin, with the five of us having aporoximately the same number of scenarios to run over the course of the campaign. We are 6th level now, having recently completed the Destiny of the Sands trilogy, and will be finishing Shadow's Last Stand next week.

You don't happen to have a list of all of the scenarios your group is playing through, do you?

I'm not ready to run a full adventure path again yet, but I have an experiment in mind that will involve PFS scenarios* and what you're doing sounds like it could work out really well for what I wanted to try, which also allows for me to run the scenarios in chronological order if I choose as levels won't matter.

*I don't know which ones yet; I'm hoping to find a bunch I can string together into some sort of story, which is why what you're doing sounds pretty perfect to me.

I don't want to do this anymore.

I SHOULD want to, running this campaign I mean, and I will because I made a commitment, but I don't want to.

Last night we ended the totality of what I'd prepped, 5 years ago, as my APL 1-15 version of Lost City of Barakus. I have tried all this time to evoke some emotional response in my players to help them engage with the narrative, the setting and the pathos...

Oh man, I'm so sorry to see that, Mark. That's really, truly, heartbreaking to read.

I haven't had the same level of pain as you before, but I've seen the warning signs. Years ago I was running two games at once. One was a module (The Dragon's Demand) for some friends to see how everyone played together before diving into a full AP, the other was a full AP (Kingmaker) because I was confident everyone would have fun.
Partway through the module I decided that those players didn't deserve to play through the AP I had planned (Hell's Rebels) so we finished the module and disbanded. The Kingmaker group LOVED Hell's Rebels and we've gone through 6 APs and a handful of modules together.

Some groups don't deserve the stories you want to share with them, and I'm sorry that it's happened to you.

My first post was back in 2017 and I had already been running Kingmaker for a year. While I was running that I heavily lurked before posting anything, and I had been very occasionally lurking since around 2013, I think?

I've never been super active, but I'm slowly regressing back to being a lurker :)

Warped Savant wrote:

Are the players deciding where the nobles live?

Sorry, I'm confused... you're a player in the game but you get to decide where they live based off of "Didn't want to decide where they were and later find out in the campaign"... why not ask your GM where the NPCs live instead of random people on the internet?

I have spoken with my DM about it, he's the one who said I could pick somewhere. I was just being absolutely sure the locations didn't turn up in another book he might not have before making my choice.

Ahhhh... okay.

*for the record, I don't think there's really anywhere you could put the houses that would cause a problem so don't stress about it and have fun.

Are the players deciding where the nobles live?
Sorry, I'm confused... you're a player in the game but you get to decide where they live based off of "Didn't want to decide where they were and later find out in the campaign"... why not ask your GM where the NPCs live instead of random people on the internet?

From what I remember, I ran the encounter as per the tactics listed in the blog.