Wikkidkarma's page

Hello all,

I am running a new-ish campaign set in Thornkeep and my players decided to tackle the undead infestation in the graveyard. I decided to expand on the story and add a modified Ghul as a recent inhabitor. I say modified because I want to change the flavor of the Ghul to go from Djin to Fey to assist with the fitting into the Echo Woods.

I decided that he was originally a Forlarren who was trying to start an uprising in the fey community within the Echo Woods a few centuries back, and was cursed and entombed as punishment. Fast forward to now, a group of Orcs had found the ruins of the fey community and began scavenging and excavating, accidentially freeing the Ghul from his imprisonement. Fortunately for the Orcs, the wards in the tomb were still strong enough to keep the Ghul weak, so he wasn't able to wholesale slaughter them, so he fled, and took up residence in Thornkeep.

As of right now he's been feasting on the dead in the town, which there is no shortage as one of the NPC's in town has been forced to bring him the dead to eat. He's biding his time to find the perfect "meal" of living creature, and more importantly, he wants to recover an artifact that is still in the ruins of the fey village, and doesn't want to raise the hackles of the town.

Once the PC's encounter him in the tombs, he'll be clearly too powerful for them to defeat (APL is 2 right now, and the only cleric they have took the merciful healer archetype. They are weak against undead) and he will sieze the opportunity to send them to get his artifact or he WILL begin terrorizing the town.

What I need is help in designing the artifact. I looked through the artifacts in the Ultimate Equipment and none of them jumped out at me immediately. I think the Ghul was a follower of Asmodeus (falling back onto his fiendish blood, after being shunned for so many years by the fey), and began converting some of the other fey. I figure either an artifact that can summon/control minor demons/devils or some other ties to that would be most appropriate.

Ideally I want something that COULD be useful-ish to the PC's, but comes with an inherant cost/threat to keeping it. It's also important that it's not necessarily tied directly to the Ghul directly because I want to let the Orc's get their hands on it if the PC's balk at recovering it for the creature (which they should of course) and hesitate too long.

I also want the Ghul to be able to recover his mortal form as a Forlarren (with sorceror levels) and then convert him to a longer term villian.

Any suggestions on how to craft a suitable artifact would be greatly appreciated!

Hey all,

My group just started a new campaign after a disastrous conclusion to our Rise of the Runelords campaign. Now I'm running a Thornkeep based game and focusing on my own self-written adventures, which is something I have very little experienc with when it comes to Pathfinder.

In reading (and re-reading) the rules from the Gamemastering section, I've come to the conclusion that if I'm awarding treasure in line with the level of my encounters, each PC should have approximately 1750 gp worth of treasure alloted to them by the time they reach level 2. My math may be off, but assuming it is correct, that puts them over the estimated wealth of 1000 gp at 2nd level.

Does this allot for spending gold for healing and other supplies, as well as losing money in conversion (selling treasure/items at half value), or is my math completely off?

Also, it states that a PC should never be given a magic item of more than half of there total estimated value. Is this intended for higher levels than first, or does it mean that a PC shouldn't get even a +1 weapon or armour until level 3? I'm assuming the former rather than the latter, but I'm basing that purely off the rate of which magic items were granted in RotR.

Lastly, is there a method of determining how many charges a magic wand would have when found in a treasure hoard? I know most magic wands start with 50 charges, but if I'm rememebering correctly, older editions of D&D (can't remember if it was 2nd or 3.0/.5) had a method of rolling for charges. Also, if a wand doesn't have a ful charge (which it shouldn't if found) should I pro-rate the "value" in terms of my treasure budget based on how many charges it has? The wand in question is a wand of tongues with a CL of 3 (randomly determined through the gamemastery guide charts), so the inherent value is hard to quantify. It could be very useful in the campaign (which would make me think I should keep it at full value) or completely useless (which makes me think I should pro-rate it).

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. Previous to the RotR campaign I was running a long-term 4th edition D&D game which for all it's faults, made treasure placement a lot easier! (Although it never felt organic, which was one of my driving factors in coming back to what I preferred in Pathfinder).