Yakman's page

If the Extinction Curse PCs run a circus, are they still murder hobos?

they are murder clowns.

I haven't played or finished reading TG, but I really like what I've seen of the AP.

The ending could use some work - but that's not hard. Put the final battle in the heart of Absalom, and amp it to shreds. There are some other pointers and suggestions which you can find on the board.

For other APs:

Hell's Rebels, War for the Crown, and Ironfang Invasion will give you a good mix of role-play & combat, and all three have really strong stories which run throughout the APs.

The first 4 books of Mummy's Mask are some of the best stuff Paizo's done imho, but I think it misses hard in the last 2 books - fortunately, you can just end the campaign in Book 4 and tie a bow on it with minimal effort. if your players like Egypt, it's perfect.

Iron Gods is hit and miss. It's really a trilogy of adventures: SAVE THE TOWN; FIND THE PRINCESS; DEFEAT THE DRAGON. and if your players don't want to mix sci-fi with fantasy, that's a challenge.

the refugees are dead or were captured and enslaved by the ironfang.

maybe one of the more memorable npcs from the first campaign is discovered or discovers the new party and tells them the horror of what happened. maybe they find like... the kids... who were secreted away by their parents who led the ironfang away from them only to be slaughtered or captured. now your PCs have to deal with a group of kids who are going to need a lot of help.

your heroes failed. there are consequences for failure.

honestly, I wanted more "monsters" and fewer "furry people"

There were way too many race options, and not enough monster ones.

Think about it like this:

We've had 3 Alien Archives (and the last one has like 20 race options) and not ONE Mutation Table.

We haven't had any guidance on what a 'Random Drift Encounter' might look like.

I don't have any help building a techno-mutant. I don't know what a drift space ship encounter looks like. I don't have a random encounter table for space ships. I don't have Dominion of the Black ships.

There's lots of things that I, as someone who is slowly building a home campaign, would like to have. And I got some of it here, lots of great unexpected monsters. What I don't have is lots of key sci-fi material.

But now I can play a camel person. or a mushroom.

So yeah, I was pretty disappointed with this offering, although I'll use some of the material.

Tazera wrote:

No need to fix the Garaggakal. My 4 3rd level players all survived. A hard fight, but they all loved it...

I believe running book 1 as written, PCs are only supposed to be level 2 when they fight it.

this.

the power jump from 2-3 is pretty substantial. you'll notice that in the plethora of podcasts running dead suns, the DMs have uniformly leveled up their parties to 3 prior to running the boss fight.

Still, just use the AA2 garaggakal stats, they lowered the special attack damage dice, that's all it needed.

agreed. there are some other problems with unbalanced monsters [book 4!] in Dead Suns, and before running a volume, a DM should review these forums and use the monsters in the Alien Archives rather than those in the published volumes.

Extinction Curse should be a road trip - you play a traveling circus - but I thought the whole appeal of Agents of Edgewatch being a police procedural is how hyper-local to Absalom it would be.

It's a traveling circus, but it's just on the Island of Kortos, iirc.

Which is fine and fun, you get to see lots of interesting stuff, but it is on a small-ish island.

Pact Worlds was a fantastic book, and I hope this one lives up to that high bar.

OK, and that's kind of why I'm asking, and making obvious assumptions. It appears to simply double the HP value (so to speak).

Now, you said only the Envoy, but doesn't the book say you can use 1 resolve + short rest to restore your SP (core p251) or are you speaking of in combat?

That said, if the SP goes as fast as you state, and it is expected to do so, by this it seems that I should let the monsters shine (so to speak) and not normally pull any punches.

yes, you can get your stamina back during a rest. which gives everyone a self-healing ability.

BUT it's only ~ half of your total hit points. So if you went into your HP, unless you get HP healing, you are going to be sub 100 % in a future combat despite spending the resolve point.

And yes, one of the side effects of SP is that a DM doesn't have to pull punches on PCs during a combat. As long as a PC doesn't die (hard to do in Starfinder, but certainly far from impossible) and has 1 Resolve Point, they can keep going when a fight ends. So a DM doesn't have to excessively worry about accidentally tpk'ing everyone if he really lets his monsters loose.

Stamina is key for a few reasons.

1 - one of the 'features' of starfinder is that you can be successful w/o a magic healer. sp lets you do that.

2 - i think you are underestimating enemy damage in starfinder. when you are fighting properly leveled foes, they hit PCs hard and often. that vesk soldier quickly becomes a pile of mush w/o that giant reserve of sp+hp.

3 - the healing serums in starfinder don't work on sp, just hp. removing sp from the game would require those to be rebalanced.

4 - in combat, the only means to heal sp is with the envoy, which makes their abilities incredibly important and gives them a critical role in a party's combat strategy. it really let's that class shine at key moments - heck, an envoy can't even activate that ability except the round after a PC has been injured by a significant enemy.

since the drone's to hit chance is dramatically lower than a same level combat character, i concur that going with explode / thrown weapons is a safer bet than using a laser or projectile weapon.

My group is trying without magic at all, and no "frontliner" - ikeshti exo-mechanic w/longarm; human envoy, double pistols; phentomite sniper soldier with barricade feat; and lashuntan operative with pistol. I believe it can be done, and if there is an AP I've seen so far where it could be, this is it.

One major difference between Pathfinder and Starfinder; "healing" is spread out between two classes - envoy and mystic. But because of the Stamina/Resolve point system, you may be able to get by through the first two books without a mystic or envoy (probably need one or the other).

Once they rescue Cedona, they have a mystic in party for hp heals.

I'm intrigued with this magic-less party.

we recently completed this AP w/o a dedicated healer, and it is possible. my 1.5 cents

1 - we had an envoy for the first book. he was killed by the BBEG. the stamina healing was really helpful, but I don't think we missed it so much later on.

2 - my PC was a mindbreaker mystic who had no healing spells beyond the mystic healing ability, which is only useful during a rest period. while she was the holder of most of the healing serums, and ended up healing characters who were injured, this role could have been performed by any PC.

3 - you don't need magical healing in starfinder. full stop. it's nice, but it's not required, and arguably not even optimal, since to get there, you'd probably want a healer mystic. the envoy healing is helpful, but b/c you can get your stamina back after a 10 minute rest, it's probably only a big help in a boss fight (admittedly, it would have been very helpful in those encounters).

Yakman wrote:

We just concluded the AP today. This was a really fun adventure, especially book 1 and the first half of book 2. The middle of book 3 was also superb. Nothing really dragged, and the adventure moved forward consistently.

We were in a bit of a rush today, so we called it after the big fight in the lab, which was a close thing (if i'd have brought my fumble cards, we'd have tpk'd).

This was a great experience, and I think everyone in the group had a fine time.

Are you done with these characters? Or does your GM have a continuation in mind?

the next game we are playing is a homebrew beginning at level 10. PUMPED.

i do not think we are not going onto signal of screams after that. i think it'll probably be Attack of the Swarm or Dawn of Flame.

My PC officially left the party at the conclusion of AtAT, so she wouldn't be a part of a mid-level AP if we were to begin one of them in any event.

We just concluded the AP today. This was a really fun adventure, especially book 1 and the first half of book 2. The middle of book 3 was also superb. Nothing really dragged, and the adventure moved forward consistently.

We were in a bit of a rush today, so we called it after the big fight in the lab, which was a close thing (if i'd have brought my fumble cards, we'd have tpk'd).

This was a great experience, and I think everyone in the group had a fine time.

I'm considering some type of event before the actual travel through the portal such as pirates or something else on the portal island, letting the PCs sort of hit the ground running once on the moon and cut off from resources.

well... that's kind of how the AP is set up.

Still no race builder? DISAPPOINTED! I just want to play a proper robot mechanic.

A SRO doesn't work for you?

how do you know that we aren't seeing them already?

you will be ok

Dunno about an adventure, but I should think that whoever runs this AP should do a session 0, wherein the future adventurers meet in a tavern and there's this mysterious woman...

All of them. I'm the kind of guy who believes there is no such thing as a bad adventure, be it path or module.

I concur. When you get people together, that's the magic.

Val'bryn2 wrote:

It's rather unfair to say we're complaining about not curb stomping him when our real problem is that the PCs are superfluous in beating him. They do damage, and he ragequits, destroying a huge part of Absalom's army, and while Tar-baphon returns, only needing a shopping trip, the pcs are gone, utterly, not only dead, but so destroyed that they no longer even have souls that can be judged. For a temporary setback, they entered oblivion.

This is not Rogue One, Rogue One set the stage for New Hope's victory. This isn't even Revenge of the Sith, it would be Revenge of the Sith if Obi-wan had tackled Anakin into the lava, and died before Anakin got fished out.

We don't know that this isn't Rogue One, because the stories after it have not yet been told. What the PCs did might very well be important to taking the Tyrant down once and for all. But because it's not a prequel, we have to wait for the story to resolve.

well... it almost certainly impacts at least one of the two announced isle of Kortos APs...

Kasatha society is bound up with cryptic points of honor. Anything might have caused him to live in exile. The actual event is of little import - non-Kasatha would never understand anyway.

What does matter is the impact that it had on the character - and also the extent of his 'exile'. Is he a criminal infamous to other Kasatha? Has the shame he brought onto his house sufficient that they are seeking him to avenge their honor? Can he ever hope to return? Was it a mistake? Was it intentional?

I also like UnArcaneElection's take that he was framed.

These are the important questions. You don't have to bother explaining the crime, just the punishment and its impact on the character.

wow

nope. you'll be fine.

Cheliax was the obvious locale for the first evil AP. that's been done now, so i can't see them doing a repeat.

Geb might be an interesting place for a 2nd one, as there's lots of fun opportunities for general mayhem and chaos. So maybe we'll see that in 5-6 years.

Yeah, but Paizo couldn't do AP set in Scarred Lands though. And honestly not many necromancer friendly potential ap locations considering that necromancy is illegal in majority of places according to undead slayer's handbook at least(its just that in evil places it tends to be "pay a fine" instead of death or imprisonment)

well... they just added one...

Sunderstone wrote:

Oddly, this completely sells me. I might have to buy the PDFs now. There were some mediocre comments about this AP which dashed my hopes TBH. As a grognard of the old Desert of Desolation series, I'll take another look.

The only reason I gave it an honest look was because all of my players said they wanted me to run it due to it taking place in the equivalent of ancient Egypt. I'm incredibly glad they talked me into it. (And no, it's not just undead and traps. Yes, undead are a main enemy but they're varied enough that it doesn't feel like the same thing over and over again. Having someone decent at traps is kind of required. But having a PC that can do research in a library is also required.... and there's some good politics during one of the books... I could go on forever about how much better Mummy's Mask is than people give it credit for, but I won't.)

And since you like hexploration you'll enjoy a part in the middle of the AP ;)

it's a really good AP.

You could also hand one out at the beginning of Book 4, which would not only come in handy, but make the interactions in that book make a lot more sense.

It would be the minorest of minor titles, but sufficient to 'get them in the door' as you would. Demi-baron fits.

very cool.

Yakman wrote:

we've decided that after playing dead suns and against the aeon throne that the 10 % cap is too low. our DM suggested 50 %; but I think that's a bit high.

parties should be able to buy weapons and augments - in these first 2 APs, they are just scrounging through the scraps of the enemies, and the paucity of given treasure makes them far more murderhobo than they should be.

you end up without all the fun stuff - augments, fusions, upgrades - and you end up carrying a bunch of weapons which don't fit your characters. that's not fun for the party.

i'm working on a homebrew campaign, and i think i'm going to ditch scrounging entirely. if you want a fun enemy weapon or a potion fine, but i'm just going to give the PCs credits when they level up so they get to make their character how they want it.

I'd actually recommend the last option. Have your players get paid by a sponsor in increasing amounts.

yeah, it's not quite a 'sponsor' (at least not after the beginning) but I just hate being a player and having to strip arms and armor off of every foe.

like... Luke Skywalker isn't taking every random storm trooper blast rifle. Flash Gordon isn't yanking the gear off of all of Ming's minions. It sucks, and I think it should just be done away with.

What I'm going to do is just make sure that players are being honest with what's on their sheets, and when they level up, they get to have as much equipment value as the XP value in the Core Rules.

Haven't quite worked out how that would apply for augments. Just swap and switch like guns and gear?

we've decided that after playing dead suns and against the aeon throne that the 10 % cap is too low. our DM suggested 50 %; but I think that's a bit high.

parties should be able to buy weapons and augments - in these first 2 APs, they are just scrounging through the scraps of the enemies, and the paucity of given treasure makes them far more murderhobo than they should be.

you end up without all the fun stuff - augments, fusions, upgrades - and you end up carrying a bunch of weapons which don't fit your characters. that's not fun for the party.

i'm working on a homebrew campaign, and i think i'm going to ditch scrounging entirely. if you want a fun enemy weapon or a potion fine, but i'm just going to give the PCs credits when they level up so they get to make their character how they want it.

So I'm wondering why exactly Ambassador Nor decided to publicly release the footage filmed by the bot on the driftrock? Is this covered in later books? I'm about to GM the follow up meeting between Nor and the PCs and I'm expecting this issue to be raised. So far I'm thinking of having him just brushing off their concerns with essentially a response of "my reasons are my own" but I would still like to know.

i always assumed it was a means for him to publicly display his neutrality as the arbiter.

he hires a party of starfinders, sends them over there, and they come back with whatever evidence they come back with. he's got no real stake in the arbitration, but he hired the team.

it might look like he had some other agenda, or favored one or the other party if he didn't publicly release the footage. so he did it. it boosts his prestige, boosts eox's prestige, and leaves his neutrality unimpeachable.

We use the Core Rulebook set. They are great. I've been thinking about picking up Alien Archive or Alien Archive 2 as well.

I can definitely see it as a reward for player actions at the end of Book 6. But there's a big old army of paladins that's gotta get killed first.

Then you can run evil kingmaker all you want.

BUT if you want to make a player feel good about their character, start handing out petty titles to them. They don't need a benefit, but if you want to have a title, give them all a minor one at the end of Book 4 or 5, and a major one at the end of Book 6.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial,_royal_and_noble_ranks#Minor_nobilit y,_gentry,_and_other_aristocracy

has a list of minor titles you can use.

Cole Deschain wrote:

Also... cool as the tree rebirth can be, I've already got my epilogue planned, and it's a little different. Figured it'd give more of a sense of accomplishment to the players, while also tying back to a much-loved NPC from volume one...

Umble, the Nosoi from The Dead Roads approaches Pharasma with a small bag in her claws- containing the dusty remnants (the ash, if you will) of the heroes' souls.

The Lady of Graves does her usual "listen without saying anything" routine as Umble spells out the highly unusual circumstances of the case, finally concluding with an observation that for services rendered, if for no other reason, she hopes that something can be done, even if the souls as they were have been destroyed.

Pharasma actually reaches out, takes the bag of dust. Looks at it.

Says "Yes."

Cut to four children born on the same day in Absalom. Roll credits.

Okay, that is a REALLY good idea! I just might steal that :P

considering that at least two of the upcoming APs are set on the Isle of Kortos / Absalom... well... just sayin'...

I’m very curious to see the upcoming police procedural one.

that was quite the shocker.

the next 2E AP, where the players are members of a travelling carnival, also sounds like a ton of fun.

some of the best APs have been the ones in the last 3 years. Ironfang, Ruins, War, Return, are all really cool. Haven't really read Tyrant's Grasp.

Yakman wrote:

i would have gone overboard for a far more awful Aztec blood sacrifice demon worshiping society. Which is hinted at, and which, were I to ever do anything with, I would go hardcore into. in my personal campaign, i would have no noble savages, just death cults.

but as it is, pretty good stuff.

Personally, I would like for Arcadia to NEVER be covered by Paizo.

Take a second and think about "I want the setting's indigenous/latinx representation to be stereotypical jungle murderers."

yup.

i would have gone overboard for a far more awful Aztec blood sacrifice demon worshiping society. Which is hinted at, and which, were I to ever do anything with, I would go hardcore into. in my personal campaign, i would have no noble savages, just death cults.

but as it is, pretty good stuff.

Personally, I would like for Arcadia to NEVER be covered by Paizo.

I kinda like that they generally aren't in the game, but I would always allow a PC to have one.

Personally, I have a baller gunslinger PC-concept for Hell's Vengeance, so Cheliax having a division of tiefling musketeers might be fun.

Rysky wrote:

I don't see performing a heroic sacrifice as insulting.

And nor would it have been if you'd actually acheieved something.

The real problem here was the choice of BBEG. In making it one the company were never going to allow to be killed off they made the players sacrifice nothing more than a holding action.

Not good enough.

The players are the heroes of the story, they are ones about whom the story revolves, not the DM, not the writer, and certainly not the too precious NPC villain.

Everyone in the game from Gygax through the late great Aaron Allston and more have written about the differences in books and game adventures and noted not being too precious with your monster. This AP is the ultimate in being precious with the monster.

That's actually a fair point.

The 'ultimate sacrifice' would probably be a better fit with a BBEG who is permanently stopped (as much as can happen in a fantasy world) like

3Doubloons wrote:

One thing that worries me about Backgrounds as a reward for an AP is that if you only play APs, you either can't use it (because you want one of the new AP's backgrounds for the more relevant benefit) or don't get the useful Lore and hook of the new backgrounds.

Mind you, that's already a slight concern of mine with just the CRB backgrounds and don't have a good solution for either problem

I'd set these up as rare backgrounds. Which would do two things:

1) It'd mean that in order to earn them, you would have to play through the adventure path, and they probably wouldn't make sense to players who didn't know how that AP played out and might even be spoilers for players who havent. (For example, a post-Rise of the Runelords background might be "Looter of Xin-Shalast" or "Legacy of Slain Karzoug" or the like.)

2) But as with ALL rules elements, a GM can always simply decide to give out anything that they think is a good fit for their game. So any GM who sees these backgrounds can take any of them and make them common for their game as they see fit.

THAT SAID... coming up with a way that these backgrounds could work as "templates" on existing backgrounds is an interesting idea, so that you could play a new AP with that AP's specialized backgrounds, but adjust them for the prior game's results.

i think that's pretty cool.

it's sort of like Society boons as well. You don't need them, but you can show up with one and it's pretty cool.

i thought that the rather poetic ending of being reborn in the trees of Arcadia was pretty cool.

I've been looking at this topic as well. One I haven't seen mentioned is Hell’s Rebels. I might consider running it in PF2, considering I have a few of the books already (from a humble bundle, I believe). The setting seems like it could support the downtime rule very well. On the other hand, the rules for building an organization would probably require quite some work. Otherwise, for those who are familiar with that AP, any challenges in particular to convert it?

some DMs have skipped the militia system entirely in favor of just story telling it.

and in any event, you could just import it wholesale if you chose.

Hello everyone.

I'm creating a character for a RotRL PbP campaign, and while searching for something interesting I've found the bloodrider archetype for the bloodrager. Since I've never played a mounted character I thought it would be interesting to give it a try, but I'm concerned that the character wouldn't use mounted combat frequently. I know that one campaign trait gives you a fully equipped, combat trained heavy horse, but I don't really know if this AP will let my character really shine with his mounted maneuvers.

Can you help me decide whether a mounted character would fit in this campaign?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Book 1 should be okay... except for the last bit. Book 2 will be a challenge. Book 3 should be okay. Book 4 should be okay. Book 5 ... just let the DM know to make the dungeon's dimensions bigger, which it should be in any event. Book 6 you should generally be okay.

I think you'll be fine. Not everyone can shine in all things. But as the campaign progresses, you should be one of the more effective characters in the party.

Shame they are unavailable here. We are going to wrap up the AP in a few weeks and I was going to add a set to my subscription. Guess I'm going to have to go elsewhere. Alas.

Now that we have it, have others looked at this yet?

If so, what is the verdict?

considering the sample size...

that being said i concur with the theory that if you were to update an AP to 2E, that it should be one which requires a lot of work by the DM in any case, but without extensive and critical sub-systems.

From what people on this forum have said, the leading candidates would probably be Second Darkness, Serpent's Skull, and Giantslayer. All of them have good to great parts, but could do with some work.

Serpent's Skull and Giantslayer in particular could make use of the new downtime and exploration systems.

there's a zillion posts in this forum on basically all these subjects. just search bro

yup.

Carrion Crown has really solid bones, but there's a need for a good DM to tie them together into a great AP.

i got mine a few weeks back...

yes, the 'what if the villain wins' articles are lots of fun.

ramifications for the world at large are also good fun - there was an excellent article in Hell's Vengeance on the implications of either side winning the war; similarly there was the 'aftermath' mechanic in War for the Crown

BUT what I'd really like is a quick paragraph or two to help a GM either develop a new campaign/adventure from material in the AP (a loose hook for instance, or an unexplored lower level of some dungeon, or a fresh evil awakened/introduced)

just run the first 5 books. then, change book 6. you'll have 2 years to think about it.

i can't recommend enough THE HIDEOUS LAUGHTER podcast, which is running through Carrion Crown right now.