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Finally got the shimpment (yesterday, 11/20/13) but it was badly damaged - the shiping envelope was torn and the Adventure Path in the envelope was torn as well. Any chance of a replacement copy? I'm pretty sure the USPS won't step up on this one.

Hi folks. I got the initial notification that this would be shipped within "the next week or two" on 10/14, but have not seen the usual "Hey we shipped it!" e-mail, nor has the package arrived. Could you check and see if it was ever shipped out for me, please?

Please suspend my RPG subscription for the time being (probably the next few months at least - just had to wait for the Ultimate Equipment Guide to ship before I did this!). I'll give you a yell when I can afford to pick it up again (and probably pick up the items that I've missed at the same time, with any luck).

Thanks Much and hope to be back in the fold again soon!

Just a random evil, chaotic thought - how long does the rift stay open, and could something in the vicinity (on the other side of the rift) wander through and say "Hi There, Crunchie Bit!" to the thief with the wand? Sounds like good times to me...

Gots to love the character names you give the poor, soon to be demised players. Being ex-military I'm especially fond of the "SPFR" moniker...

Enjoyment would be the right word, I think. Always fun to see how a party handles Kingmaker. Hopefully things will go well with them when they find the boss bandit...

Ah, but do you really need a human workforce to have slave labor? Not only is there at least 1 tribe of kobalds around (and where there's one there's bound to be others), but there's an even better source of slaves handy. Just give the evil druid a way to raise the dead, and you have a skeleton/zombie workforce ready made. Just find a few massacre sites (and I wager that Tartuk had set up a few of those in his time with the kobalds) and you have your undead workforce. They don't need to take breaks, and they're remarkably resistant to union organizers...

Hope someone's keeping good notes - we're all looking forward to the saga continuing!

The way the description reads I assume that you would only be able to use the cleave feat when outdoors in a temperate climate. So if you want to take the greater cleave feat, I suppose that you'll have to be trained outdoors, and it would only be useable in outdoors/temperate climate settings...

Just a quick query - in encounter Q (the spirit naga), if she's been there for years shouldn't she have treasure of some sort? Especially if she's killed and devoured any intruders who were resistant to her charming gaze?

Not sure if I'm wrong about this, or if it was just left out in the interests of space.

Sorry - didn't mean to come across as "deplete the soil just to screw the players". It just seemed to me that a full season or more of forced growth would, indeed, deplete the soil.

On the other hand, there are still lots of reasons to use the spell. It could be used to increase the yield of high value crops (cloud berries?), or to bring an orchard of fruit trees into bearing age in just one season or so, instead of having to wait for several years for them to mature. And doesn't one of the River Kingdoms have lots of orchards, and export fruit, cider, etc.? Maybe the characters can do some trading for young fruit trees...

And for that matter, this could be a good chance for a druid to do some spell research. A nice "replenish earth" spell would be a good thing. The sheriffs could jump start the crops with Plant Growth in the spring, and prepare the fields with thier wands or staves of Replenish Earth in the fall. Or they can fertilize the old fashioned way each spring if they have heards of cattle, or what have you (it's a lot more work, but less money spent on making the magic items...).

At any rate, I absolutely agree that the players should reap the benefit of their characters abilities (and the players ingenuity). The fact that there may be unexpected consequences to their first tries at manipulating the environment can still be fun - and overcoming the consequences (or making them work for you, in some cases) can also be fun!

When it comes to players using plant growth spells to increase crop production, how about throwing in a "soil exhaustion" surprise for the next growing season? Figure the excelerated growth of the plants is bound to use up more nutrients from the soil than a normal growing season, so after 1 season of "plant growth" the fields have to lie fallow for at least one season to recover. The players can still benefit from the spell, but they'll need more farms so that some can lie fallow while the others produce like crazy. And if you want to really mess with them, make it two seasons for full recovery if the weather during the growing season was overly dry (unless they manage irrigation from nearby water sources, of course).

Out of curiosity - is there any chance that those of us who've already purchased the original campaign setting pdf file will be given a price break on the "new and improved" campaign setting? Maybe? Please? Pretty please....

Just out of curiosity, what levels have the party achieved to date? I'm assuming that when they die and come back they don't come back one level lower than they were. If this was the case some of the character might be at a negative level by now, due to multiple deaths...

If I have it right, Mina is the only surviving member of the original party. A good many characters seem to have met their maker via traps - a deadly dungeon indeed. And an amusing and well told story as well!

Bump (in the night...)

Bless you, US Postal Service!

Mine came yesterday, and it was difficult to make time for lesser priorities like eating and such. Looks awesome and I can't wait to use it on (with?) my players!

Can't hold out any longer - pre-order done!

I'm so weak... But I'll be so happy when it arrives!

You kidding - one of the first things I check (after the Paizo Blog) when I check out the Paizo site each day! Do please keep posting - I'm thinking I need to dig up my copy of the "fun filled temple" and run it again...

Well (expitive deleted)!

I didn't see the Paizo notice about this until this morning (7 Apr), so of course the various pdfs I had on my "buy and download sometime soonish" list are gone into legal limbo.

I guess I'll just have to hope that the Wotc lawyers get called to heel sometime soon. The older pdfs are really handy now that Pathfinder has saved them from the rubbish heap (not that Wotc would consider this when pulling their pdfs, of course...).

Something that has been mentioned here and there is pairing undead with an evil cleric or two. When they channel negative energy it not only heals any undead they have with them, it also deals damage to the nasty heros who are attempting to pillage the lovely new temple of (insert evil god or gods here). This combination can really ruin a good parties day even if they have a cleric of their own, and it can hammer (or even TPK) a party that doesn't.

Not everyone maxes out their characters, and some games still use the "what you roll is what you get" method of rolling up a character, as well. I've found that role playing a character with less that perfect stats is often more fun than just steamrolling your way through a game.

And that said, I've found this thread to be an excellent evaluation of the paladins Beta skillsets, and (most recently) of the fixes Jason has put out. Looking forward to more of the same, and I hope that Jason is reading this thread as well - I like the suggestions I've seen so far (I've always loved the theory/storyline behind the character class, but implementation has never really lived up to potential).

Does anyone out there remember the Giant Slug? It was a huge, acid spitting, slime covered adventurer's nightmare. It could squeeze through small openings/doors, and as I recall it was immune to at least one type of weapon (I just can't remember which without digging out my old MM's. As I recall it was in the 1st ed. MM, and it may have made it into the 2nd ed. as well, but by 3.0 it had vanished. So if it's not WotC IP, bring it back! It would make a grand beastie for the deeper tunnels of the Darklands...

Hmmmm. As a DM I understand the concerns that have been expressed about potential power creep from the additional stat points for rolling up new core class characters. However, I think that overall I like this change and will continue to use it, for a couple of reasons.

First, the additional two stat points gives players a much better chance to produce an “above average” player character (even with the points buy system), which after all is what adventurers are – above average. Average folks stay home in their nice warm beds at night and pray that a bad tempered adventurer doesn’t trash their store tomorrow.

Also, from what I’ve seen so far the additional stat points (when combined with a good starting hit point total for first level characters) makes the players feel more confident in their ability to take on the various nasties that are waiting for them “out there”. And as we all know, a confident party is a party that gets itself into trouble very quickly – which is always fun for the DM!

As for power creep and the party over powering their opponents – I think that most low level groups can use the extra help at first, and later on the DM has the option of beefing up the various monsters (at least until Paizo comes out with a revised Monster Manual of some sort) or just adding a few extra villains. And of course at high levels things bog down anyhow (perhaps after Paizo is done with final version of the PFRPG they can come up with a supplement that addresses changes for improving high level game play???).

Overall, I give this change a thumbs up so far – which is not to say that it won’t change in the final version if enough folks disagree with me!

My group will be running through the Revenge of the Kobald King soon (hopefully they don’t know that) and I’m thinking of changing the kobald king from a Ftr 2/Sor 4 to a F 1/Cl 5. This would give him 3d6 of negative energy channeling and since he and most of his minions are undead, it will make things “interesting” for the players. Of course if the party’s cleric doesn’t show up for the game I may have to change him back – I’m not sure if they’d make it without some positive energy channeling in response.
On the other hand, even if the cleric does show up I may have the party run the final encounter again without him, to see how they would do without a “counter” for the negative energy bursts…

Alas for news of untimely death! One hopes that your monk will be raised so that he can continue his adventures - and so that we can continue to see how the monk adapts to the PFRPG Beta!

While I agree that the ability of the clerics channeling positive energy to turn undead and to heal living creatures is perhaps the primary purpose that Paizo intended with this change, I think that an evil clerics ability to channel negative energy gives the villains side a real boost. It may be too much of a good (evil?) thing, but until I get a chance to run my group up against an evil cleric or three I won’t know for sure (as soon as real life stops rudely intruding I’ll do so – we’re in the process of changing the players over to the Beta version as well).
In past adventure paths that I’ve run the evil cleric has always made a good villain, but usually winds up as easy meat for the party unless he/she is backed up by some serious minions. The negative energy channeling will not only make their undead lackys more likely to last a few extra rounds, but will deal out damage to the party as well. And it may be that when there’s a good cleric in the players group that the two opposing clerics will target each other with spells first, to eliminate the potential counter to their channeling attacks. As I said, I’m looking forward to play testing this to see how it works out!