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Ecclesitheurge has me rather confused.
Ecclesitheurge’s Vow: At 1st level, an ecclesitheurge makes a vow to his deity to be protected solely by his faith, not by armor or shields. An ecclesitheurge who wears prohibited armor or uses a prohibited shield is unable to use his blessing of the faithful ability, use cleric domain powers, or cast cleric spells.
The last two are clear, but there is no blessing of the faithful ability...?
Couldn't Baba Yaga, as part of her wish granting as a thank you...bring back Nadya's daughter?
::slow clap::
::standing ovation::
** spoiler omitted **
My party told Nadya to go back to her sons at the uncle's request. I had her break down crying begging them to let her come along so that baba yaga could get her daughter back. The Cleric (soon to reclass warpriest I'm sure) was having a romantic relationship with her and he may wish for that. We shall see.
1) An Ice Troll that is a Necromancer that was pushed into the sewers when he cut up a family of Winter Wolves inside of a tub, now, he cuts himself up and now he animates his parts that he has chopped off along with any victims he has captured in the sewers.
Dey say dat when you cut sometin' off it grows back bigguh...
A friend of mine is running his first full-fledged campaign using this path and I got to say a lot that's happening in it seems pretty, well, stupid
First of all, you're pretty much railroaded into the plot because the Black rider gives you a geas/quest? Then the adventures seem extremely linear. Then the first adventure will freaking murder you because of all the BS fey that can hide in the snow.
I don't know, is the overall pacing and development of this adventure sub-par, or is it justmy GM's general new-ness? Sometimes I feel like I'm forced to play into some amusement park of fail because some witch forced me to do it.
This is my favorite adventure path to date. I am running it.
Its also what my party has deemed "[Pathfinder] Hardmode" if you can't stand a challenge, don't play it. This campaign is hard, and only gets HARDER.
And in regards to the quest, Witch Queen Baba Yaga is as powerful as Asmodeus. Sure, this AP railroads, any good GM can disguise a railroad, or make a railroad interesting, so that can be attributed to your new GM. My player's don't realize they are fully railroaded. I disguised many elements or gave them proper plot hooks to get the characters involved in the story.
TLDR: Don't like a challenge? Don't play RoW.
Don't like railroading? Blame new GM, not the writers. AP's don't have a whole lot to work with, you... kinda have to railroad.
I think there are two problems here. First, it feels too short, especially in comparison to the previous module. Second, we are introduced to a second antagonist who honestly doesn't feel related to the first. If the antagonist had in fact been a war party from the Queen meant to seize this stronghold dedicated to Baba Yaga, then there would have been a greater sense of continuity. It would have been an ongoing part of the story.
Instead, we go skipping off to Siberia to fight centaurs and frost giants who are only there out of a sense of opportunism. There is no great war going on here. There is no threat. The only thing driving the party is the goad of the geas and the "need" to get the key to go to the next locale.
Further, you get a strong feeling this is going to once more be the case for the NEXT module. We go to another planet... and it'll once more have naught to do with the Queen. Instead, we're searching for the Doctor - er, I mean Baba Yaga using her chicken-legged Tardis. That's all.
We have a Queen who is threatening to turn the world into an icecube. And yet the queen has been abandoned. ** spoiler omitted ** and the cold weather here has naught to do with her plot. So what gives?
A couple years ago I ended up scrapping an entire segment of a novel I'd written. Why? Two antagonists that were unrelated. It made no sense for the two to be disassociated (especially as one was an Unseelie Prince who had manipulated much leading up to the story). The solution: make the second antagonist a servant of the Prince.
The same could have been done here: The centaur and frost giants could have been working for the Queen and seeking to seize control of this bastion of Baba Yaga. The end result would be a more cohesive story and would not only unite these disparate elements... but allow the PCs to have thwarted the Queen once more.
(Having thought of this, I may very well rewrite the villains to be...
So... I am going to rewrite the villans, but I actually got my inspiration from the "Game of Crones" poster I saw on the paizostore.
I am going to stay mostly true to original intent of the story, Vselvod is storming Baba Yaga's fortress for his Demon Lord. Why? Because his Demon Lord told him to, in order to get a foothold in Golarion during Elvanna's reign. Going to use the idea of some of Elvanna's people doing the same, but getting wrecked by Kostchchnie's followers. Empty camps with dead witches, as previously mentioned. (This will also create a feeling of unease which I so relish. Every now and then, not often enough to be over used, I build up encounters in such a way that player's feel like they are killing off potential allies. Also it will fit in with my "Bittersweet victory" theme I have going on. Win at this, but lose this.)
Kostchchnie's followers have 3 rules, and one was kill all witches. So having Vselvod work for Elvanna seems a little out of flavor.
This creates a second issue when the campaign ends, the fortress will still be under siege when they leave it, but with some of Elvanna's troops eliminated on their way in, and the denizens all but eliminated, the Frost Giants will have no problem finally seizing Artrosa.
Thoughts? =D
I needed to let some time pass before writting this one down, as the end for our RoW game was quite emotional for everyone and nostalgia isa hard thing to shake off; However, during the last session of the game there was one death worth mentioning.
Uh... Don't use Yeti?
I don't like "Random Encounters," I roll on the charts, but then I build up each encounter into something a little more realistic than just "Yeti appears roll initiative" I rolled an ogre, so I had it rummaging through the caravan site, etc.
I actually didn't roll for the yeti encounter, I decided to throw it in at the start of book 2, and it killed 1 person, and knocked 2 others unconscious before it fled.
Irrisen book has some cool encounters, like the Freezing Fog etc. Non-combat encounters with those.
I have read through the AP several times and currently GM'ing book 2. Anyone out there interested in trying to piece together, or push Paizo into: creating a second part for the AP?
As of right now I have a few ideas, but before I start listing off ideas and concepts, who all is interested? My players are loving the setting and I want to try to keep the excitement high for as long as possible (the problem with APs: They have an ending!).
Also, recommend methods of correspondence, as we could get a seriously massive messageboard going.
Alright, reporting in again"
Name: Faunra of Kyotin and Roman Tashanna
Race: Elf and Human (Jadwiga)
Classes/levels: Ranger2/Sorc2 and Winter Witch 4
Adventures: The Shackled Hut
Location: The Woodwife's Plight cave
Catalyst: Finngarth and Gray Ooze
The Gory Details:
Alright, so I built up this encounter a little more, making a cave with a few extra "rooms." The entrance was T-shaped, and the right side was a small tunnel leading into two chambers, the first chamber holding Finngarth and his Mindslaver Mold, the back room is going to essentially by filled with spores and mold and stuff, a "hive" type situation, as I had Finngarth quote Infested Terran lines. To the left was a single room with a patch of ice. Roman and Branis (the cleric) spotted the "patch of ice" and noticed it was slowly creeping towards them. Branis decided to leave with the group, who then alerted Finngarth and his Mold to their presence. Roman proceeded to drop his everburning torch on the ooze to see what would happen. It then grappled him once the light went out as the acid ate away the torch. Meanwhile Finngarth charged Branis and started dishing out quite the damage. The mold just threw spores randomly until Faunra proved the most dangerous (as she was focusing it instead of its slave). Roman gets grappled and attempts to break the grapple. He fails. The group engages the Moldy Finngarth, and after a few rounds Faunra notices that Roman is gone. She sends Jon (the gunslinger) to find him, whilst dodging Finngarth's axe and taking a total of 8 wisdom damage. Jon finds Roman, now naked and hairless, struggling against the ooze. Jon begins firing on the ooze and calls for help. Myana, the party's wizard, using her Arcane Bond to cast Resist Energy: Acid on Roman. Myana then goes back to pelting the Mold with spells. Faunra backs off due to the drain and knowing what the creature does, Branis then goes down in two shots. Faunra is then crit for 56 damage the next round (4+2(two handed)+4+2(power attack) for 12, 36+ 20 dmg rolled on dice) cutting her in half. Myana then deals the killing blow with Spectral Hand+Chill touch. But combat isn't over as the ooze finally constricts Roman to death. The whole time, Roman was casting spells trying to get the ooze off of him. He casted Communal Mount to distract the ooze, he levitated himself up 15 ft and he healed himself. Meanwhile CMD 10 ooze is strangling him. They looted Roman and they elected not too reincarnate Faunra in order to preserve racial purity.
Roman was also the Ninja, Dawei, and the alchemist, Knave, from previous posts.
Myana is now the only player that has not died.
I don't think Sean or the OP were complaining about the tech level, instead they didn't like the intrusion of the real (albeit, somewhat fictionalized) planet Earth into their fantasy and vice versa.
Except Rasputin was fantasy forced into my reality... I mean, have you seen the Anastasia cartoon? =P
Alright, so my party is mostly evil. And mostly greedy. Now, my party is barred from returning to Waldsby after getting a few people killed, and Nadya exiled. After fighting Radosek, and looting Nazhena's treasure trove, my party is in need of Remove Blindness/Deafness and Remove Curse.
They also need to sell their loot, and so when I gave my party the Reign of Winter Map Portfolio map of Irrisen that they looted in Radosek's bedroom, they decided that Nadya (and their Jadwiga prisoner [my ninja died and came back as a Jadwiga witch that they decided to tie up and interrogate]) should lead them to Hoarwood.
Now, I am looking at creating Hoarwood from essentially scratch, with only the Irrisen: Land of Eternal Winter, and my Adventure Path Books. And so I turn to you guys; Does anyone have any recommendations for how/what I should do in Hoarwood? I was also planning on fleshing out (as we're a heavily RP focused group, they actually talked to Radosek for like 3 minutes (an hour IRL) before deciding they wanted to cut out his tongue) the river towns, crowtop, and the ruins of vonosh.
I've decided that the market places will be heavily taxed (13%?) and then 150% mark-up for Non-Jadwiga humans (and a diplomacy check to get it to 125%) and no magic items or weapons/armor for Ulfen (Nadya and my inquisitor, who has an 8 CHA anyway). I also planted ideas of selling the Ulfen while they're there, in the head of my Jadwiga. LOL!
I also decided to create Hjalnek's killer, an Ice Troll Ranger named Onuhk, with a mirror replacing his right eye (which was cut out by Hestrig and then burned closed), and the head of the party's Paladin tied to his belt (player quit but said he wanted to lead a few people back to Taldor before the portal closed). Bordegga was his mate, so I was thinking of having Nadya get in contact with Hjalnek's friend, talk to him about Hjalnek and Rengierr, and then learn about Hjalnek's killer, who is now tracking them because they killed his mate (I thought it would be entertaining for the players to realize the web of revenge they've inserted themselves into).
Let someone in Waldsby cure the other PCs of their blindness? An act which maybe Nadya secures for them in repayment for rescuing her caravan from the giant mantis attack? I think a good candidate for performing this service could be:
** spoiler omitted **
My party got Nadya exiled from Waldsby. They essentially got a few people killed, killed a few more, and decided to rob the Lumber Mill owner. So I had Rolf go to collect Wergeld, and they skipped town.
Now my party has elected to travel to Hoarwood in order to secure a remove curse and remove blindness/deafness. That's going to be fun, going to create another post for ideas for running Hoarwood, Lod, River towns, and the ruins.
