Wonton's page

As for the encounters... having the encounters be "softer" is 100% a deliberate choice, made after reading so much feedback about folks saying that Adventure Path encounters were too overturned or too deadly. This being the first Adventure Path I was developing from scratch since Age of Ashes, I took that feedback to heart, and was much more deliberate in suggesting to the authors that they place the really hard ones toward the later part of the campaign or in areas where it was obvious that the PCs should prepare, and then relied on each author to infuse the horror of the story into the entire narrative rather than try to make the horror "mechanical" by making each fight a killer. Season of Ghosts is not a "survival horror" experience, but a brooding, moody, atmospheric one akin to so many of the Asian horror movies that inspired it in the first place. So if we DO remaster this, I doubt we'll "tune up" the encounters to be more deadly. We might include a sidebar near the start that tells the GM specifically that this is an intentional choice, though.

In general, I very much agree with this change - fewer encounters per book makes them feel less grindy. Basically eliminating PL+3 monsters makes fights far less swingy and more "fair".

But I do still think some of the very climactic fights (chapter bosses, and especially book bosses) could easily stand to be tuned up in SoG.

Book 2 and Book 4's final bosses especially, feel a little too anticlimactic because they're just simply too low-level or understatted.

Season of Ghosts is my favourite Paizo AP of all time so yeah! 100%! I'd love a nice hardcover version, especially if it was updated for the Remaster. Any other updates to fix issues (e.g. buffing some encounters, maybe a touch-up on Book 4) would be neat to see, but absolutely not required.

I had the same idea as you. At minimum, I think I will move the reveal until after the Xin Yue boss fight. Zhi Hui can materialize for the PCs, but (just as is explained by Shinzo in Book 3!), they can't "hear" the truth yet. So she will mainly deliver smaller hints about the shrines, Kugaptee, etc. And only when Xin Yue (who herself says some lines about being "trapped" in a loop) dies, will Zhi Hui be able to tell them the full picture.

And if I wanna get wild with it, I might even do it even more cinematically, like with a flashback. Or straight up confuse my players with some time-jumping.

Just a thought I had, why does the "Maze of Mist, Rain of Blood" only happen *after* the first encounter? The adventure starts with some light mystery, but I could see an alternate version where the strange mist is there as soon as the PCs wake up to give it more of a "horror" feeling.

And lore-wise, if it's Kugaptee's influence causing the mist, it feels weird that it just suddenly "activates" as the PCs head west. I even think some PCs could be misled by that

Just curious if there was any reasoning for this. I could see arguments to both start the tension low & ratchet it up over the first hour, vs to just start the tension high.

Anyway, we're gonna be playing this in about a month and I'm quite excited!

One of the perks of the current system is that if you hate the current AP, there’s never more than six months between you and one with a different premise. I completely checked out on the product line for the Extinction Curse/Agents of Edgewatch year, and it was miserable waiting a whole year for s campaign product I actually cared about to come along

So it's not just me? EC and AoE were just extremely unexciting premises and settings. That was a rough time. It took me until Strength of Thousands to become interested in APs again...

I love the flavour of this, it's giving Strange Aeons vibes, and depending on how "ancient forest with paranoid townsfolk" turns out, could even end up sorta like True Detective.

Plus, 3-book APs are just infinitely more approachable for me than 6-book ones.

Definitely the most excited I've been for an AP in a while.

Definitely interested in checking out Fall of Plaguestone. Will be a good way for me and my group to learn the system, I think.

As someone who ran Serpent's Skull, it's super cool to see that Sargava overthrew its colonial background. The colonial themes and racial tension in Eleder were... weird, and I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

Alchemical Wonder wrote:

I would much prefer races native to the material plane to be morally ambiguous with cultural tendencies toward specific alignments being attributable to whatever deities their local populous chooses to follow. I feel inherent alignment to be a strictly outsider phenomenon.

Seconded!

Thirded. Rich Burlew did this in Order of the Stick 10+ years ago, and it makes for much better writing to have goblins and orcs who are evil because they were raised evil & because humans/elves have abused them, than because they just have... evil genetics or something.

Would also love to get the "Director's Cut" since we're coming up on the of Book 3.

A lot of people going with really obscure stuff, so I'll try to keep it simple and basic:

1) Storm Druid (Druid): A lot of people want to play Druid, but really aren't that interested in shapeshifting or having an animal companion. Something that focuses on the druid's connection to Air/Water magic is great.

2) Zen Archer (Monk): Just a really solid archetype that completely changes the class while retaining the theme. Only thing I'd suggest is try to make it less attractive as a level 1 dip. I've seen this dipped far more than I've actually seen it played.

3) Invulnerable Rager (Barbarian): The idea of a Barbarian as a tank is really attractive for obvious reasons. An archetype that focuses more on that is great.

4) Vivisectionist (Alchemist): Great name, great theme, and completely changes the playstyle by removing Bomb for Sneak Attack.

5) Ragechemist (Alchemist): Again, incredible theme, and an easy way to play Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde without needing to multiclass.

If the party is trying to trek across the island without some kind of base camp to fall back to...

Well, with decent Survival checks they've been setting up a new camp in about 2 hours every day, so they left the camp on the first day and haven't looked back.

The only NPC they had any real interaction with before leaving was Jask. That part actually worked out really well since they have ZERO healing between the 3 of them so getting a Cleric to follow them has been very beneficial. But it still means they missed out on 4 NPC quests and a bunch of interesting RP.

I dunno, maybe I've been too loose with the carrying capacity rules and I need to make it so that they can't carry all the supplies for setting up a camp plus 24 days' worth of food with them. That would give a -5 on that Survival check and make them have to backtrack to previous camps more.

I guess the root of the problem is that I just don't see how "maintaining the camp on the beach" is important enough to get any NPCs to stay behind - once they're Friendly/Helpful, why not just have them abandon that camp, group with the PCs, and set up new camps every day as they push south through the jungle?

Edit: A camp in 2 hours every night is DC 24... hm. Either I failed at math somewhere or they've been rolling really well (which is possible with +3 Survival and +6 aid another). I guess the first time they fail I'll have some wandering monsters attack to show them that there's a real danger to their "new camp every day" strategy, especially if they only start building it 2 hours before sunset.

Just ran my first session of this, it was great. My suggestion: Make a contingency plan in case your party somehow avoids EVERY dot on the map. On their journey South, my party walked within like half a mile of several interesting things while missing them all. This resulted in a hour-long lull in the session, one that could have greatly benefitted from a random/wandering monster encounter if I'd prepared one.

I'm also looking for advice the fantastic GMs on these boards. What should I do if the PCs actually make all the NPCs friendly or helpful? It's not like I can group them all in and make a party of 8 - combat would be slow as hell and the 5 level 2 NPCs would easily outshine the 3 level 1 PCs, which means I'd basically be playing against myself.

I had an idea that I would send Sasha, Ishirou, Gelik, and Aerys to the southeast of the island. This effectively splits them away from the party and also allows them to "scout" the Blood Temple to make sure the PCs don't just leave the island once they reach the lighthouse. The only issue (and I know at least one of my players will bring this up) with that is that it just makes more sense to stick together as 8 - they could check both corners of the island as a group and it'd be safer.

The only reason I can think of for splitting would be "it's easier to find or track a big group" (a rather weak reason) or some sort of time pressure (of which there isn't any). Ideas?

Hi all! I'm hopefully gonna be GM-ing a run of this adventure path soon (just need to find a few more players) and here's an interesting idea I had regarding navigating through the jungle:

I feel like a speed of 1/2 mile per hour is so laboriously slow that the PCs won't want to move around very much due to extremely long travel times between areas. So what if after the first trip through a particular section of jungle, the PCs cut down enough of the undergrowth so that their speed along that path from then on is 1 mile per hour. It's not quite a forest trail, but hopefully it'll encourage them to roam around a bit more.

Hey Sadie,

I recently got back into the roleplaying, and upon downloading your character sheets I was very surprised to see that my Focused Specialist sheet was still in there AND that I had the honour of being named a "Contributor". You're too kind! :) All I did was move a few things around on the Wizard sheet. Anyway, could I ask you to change the credit to "Wonton" in the official release? That's the handle I go by whenever I can.

Thanks, and looking forward to playing many more 3.5/PF games with your sheets.

P.S. On the Gunslinger sheet, the level 15 Deed "Evasive" should also say it grants Improved Uncanny Dodge. I only noticed because my current character is a Gunslinger.