Yakman's page

Update: We finished the book. #AMA

This was a hell of a rollercoaster. Gallowspire was a lot. Seeing my last post being just after the Gustari fight means Gallowspire took the best part of 4 months for us to clear. Highlights include:

- The Paladin destroyed Yhalas the Serene in a single full-attack action. She didn't even get a chance to strike more than once (which she missed). It was literally "Turn 1: Yhalas charges, misses. Turn 2: Paladin Smites Evil, full attacks, deals somewhere in the region of 300+ points of damage. Fight over.

- In the Mummified Morrigna (Mummigna) fight, the player of the Conjuration wizard asked if there were any decent psychopomp summons for a bit of added roleplay. I've allowed her to use the 6th level Vanth alternate summon. The Vanth the wizard summons is Thoot from Book 1.

- The party have really good AC and healing. Their collective touch AC is kind of garbage though. And HP isnt worth a dime when a Dread Wraith is hitting you with that 1d8 Con drain instead. The Swashbuckler almost died, would have done if the Paladin didn't use Paladin's Sacrifice to take the effect instead. That fight ended up being way more fun and impactful than I was expecting.

- The Conjuration Wizard now worships Arazni. They've had some great little mind-palace conversations where they're both like "hey being held against your will and forced to do evil sucks amirite?" I'm sure this blossoming new relationship will be very healthy and last a very long- oops.

- With the party a) stomping on all my precious graveknights and b) smashing their armor with a hammer every morning in case one of them decides to get back up, I was concerned that the fight with Amaretos was gonna be far too easy. It did not. Amaretos cast Cloudkill and then disappeared into it, using the concealment to avoid attacks while remaining immune to the ability damage. Anyone who wanted to get a hit on him had to move into the fog, and you still take half Con damage on a save.
(You might be thinking...

epic.

good time for a bit of a break.

I didn't use all of the timeless trait, but I did note to the players that they didn't feel the need to sleep or eat or anything, which was disconcerting for them, but they only got really really hungry and sleepy when they got back and no immediately starved or dehydrated or died of sleep deprivation. I let them have the natural healing because, for my table at least, I think it would have felt a bit of a slog at early level.

But, if you wanna increase the survival aspect, you could totally go full timeless trait and/or full Strongly Neutral Aligned. (I used the latter one too, mostly because my two good-aligned party members are religious, and I wanted to sort of express to them that their connection to their deities was far more distant/smothered here than was comfortable.) As the others have mentioned, I'd absolutely look for alternative options for them if you did wanna use the planar traits and touch base with your players about what it means/requires from them and how they're feeling about it.

Another point (kinda unrelated to planar traits but related to prepping for book 1 not being in the material plane) - if any of your players have some sort of animal companion, you might wanna decide how best to handle that. The book kinda just says "they're dead, but you can find a new one in book 2 and onward," but I wanted to tweak it a bit. My wizard player had a jerboa familiar. They loved that lil guy. His name was Buttons. I didn't wanna just kill the poor thing off immediatly - "soz, he's gone now, get a new one later", so I had the familiar still be around for the whole book, right up until Barzhak appears to help them get to the Material Plane, and was like "unfortunately one of you must stay - the dead cannot return" and the Jerboa hopped off the wizard's shoulder to go stand by the psychopomp and - surprise - was a ghost. He just wanted to help his wizard get home.
(I think someone else wrote this idea in the main book thread, so I can't take credit for it, but we were all weeping. You...

I'm not crying, you're crying.

adventure path are by necessity if not by ideology champion of status quo

setting could not change too much with 1 short ap

this is always the case but particularly glaring in the case of warden of wild

writer trying desperately to justify pro peace stance just fail miserably when peace just means don't complain about the boot constantly stomping down

it is narrativelly unworkable

literally come off as anti environmentalist propaganda

the only way to work this campaign as written, imho, is for the party to be ambassadors from Galt/Taldor/Andoran, and they are trying to fight for the status quo - not for the factions on the inside of the forest. they align themselves with the moderates against the radicals.

you can run that game. it does make the 'magical forest' stuff a lot more interesting, and everything would be new to the PCs, which is a big benefit to the table. but i don't think a lot of players would be happy about it v. some kind of Ferngully campaign.

Yes, I used the timeless planar trait for the whole book. The PCs noticing (eventually) that they didn't need to sleep or eat provided clues as to where they were.

oh, and when they finally emerge from the tomb, have someone from the town looking for them. someone that they know and trust - where were you? and why are you out here?

they are all bewildered about why the PCs vanished... and if you can, maybe do what I did, and end the session with everyone rolling a Wisdom check... lie about the DC, and tell the one player who rolled highest that they look up to the sky and on the moon, they see a laughing skull...

let'em cook on that 'til the next session.

The Dead Roads are part of the Boneyard. It applies to everything.

My party had an oracle, so they were good on healing. If you don't have a healer, you'll want to provide some options for your PCs. Some of the fights in the castles are pretty brutal - looking at the glass angel and the big bug - so you'll want your PCs to be able to heal up before they tackle each one.

Hello all GMs. I will be starting this AP for my group in two months and was looking to see how many GMs jumped right into Roslars tomb or did session zero, or extensive background sessions before dumping the pc’s into the coffins.

I have been listening to two podcasts for this AP, and like the idea of doing significant character background to make the impact of part two more significant. My initial plan is to do a lot via email (who you know, what your link to town is, what they are doing on day -1) and start first live session with stuck in box.
Just looking to see how folks have started this AP off. Jumped right in or session zeros?

As an aside, i have already run We Be Heroes goblin one shot and will be doing the PFS Reavers Roar and the Shattered Shield, as preludes. My head cannon will be that the recovered shard from Shattered Shild will be passing through town when WW sets off test fire.

I did not do anything before the blast.

I set the AP on the first day of the year. In Golarion, the last day of the year is a sort of 'day of the dead' where people celebrate those who have passed. I asked everyone to say where they were at midnight, someone said that they were looking out at the street, I said, oh, you see a guy walking down the street ... ALL OF YOU ARE IN DARKNESS ROLL FOR INITIATIVE.

Threw them right into it. They had no idea what was happening, and no idea where they were.

One thing I did was make up the Red Shrikes, so each one of the PCs had a 'fore-runner' Red Shrike whose coffin they woke up in. Turned out that was one of the best decisions I made in the whole campaign. I created little subplots tying them to the PCs... one of them was a half-orc dragonblooded bloodrager... his 'forerunner' was his ancestor, book 5's villain's lover, who was grabbed by TB's forces and sold to the orcs hundreds of years ago, and who gave birth to a half-draconic child... when they met up with the boss of book 5 it was readily apparent to him that he would be battling his descendent, and relished the opportunity... the oracle woke up with a holy symbol of Aroden around his neck, which was the holy symbol of the Red Shrike's cleric... that was a long and thoroughly awesome tale... The gear that they start with isn't their gear - it's the gear of the Red Shrikes.

One podcast [I just listened to the first episode] has the Red Shrikes being the ones who summoned Arazni to the mortal plane all those many years ago. Now the heroes, who are 'reborn' in the coffins of the deceased, have a chance to address the consequences of that action.

By doing this, you have the opportunity to add in some unique storytelling to the campaign which might otherwise be kinda dry at times.

I also went with the alternative bonus progression mechanic, since there is almost no shopping opportunity through large stretches of the campaign. Using that mechanic meant that the bloodrager went to the final battle wearing Roslar's breastplate, which was pretty awesome, while the gunslinger had the same gun that they started with.

Arkat wrote:

I just don't see it.

If you do, please speculate here.

Somehow, Xanderghul returned.

-Skeld

I do hope something like this is in the credits quote.

my party TPK'd in the bakery, so my direct knowledge of running the game is limited to book 1 and reading through the other two.

1 - the 'festival' should be a multi-day affair. I ran it so that it lasted for a few weeks, so the party could be at the 'kickoff' event and then we can conclude it at the 'dinner party'. that way you can have pcs go and have a place to interact with npcs throughout AND gives a reason for people to stick around. AND a better place to meet the key npc who drives the plot in book 1.

2 - there's a big throughline of the adventure that the dwarves did really bad things and it still has ramifications throughout the darklands. this is not reflected in anything in the adventure beyond an npc saying things to them. the troglodytes should be SCARED of the PCs, even if they are willing to fight them. the gnomes should distrust the PCs at the very least. those ruins you wander through in book 2? dwarves made them ruins. The dwarves crimes are brought up from their perspective, not from those who were actually savaged by them.

3 - the BBEG should be at the festival. why wouldn't he be invited by one of the less reputable major npcs? He's gotta learn about the worm from someone...

4 - the whole plotline with the gnome doesn't make any sense at the end of book 1. why is this happening? there's no payoff at all - not in this book and not in book 2 - and there's no reason why you would need this particular gnome. the settlements you are going to are large, and highhelm presumably has trade links with them. then she leaves the party after getting you to a place any merchant should be able to give you directions to. plus the part with getting her out of prison makes no sense at all. remove it or jazz it up.

5 - The Ash Engineer is AWESOME and should be in this trilogy somewhere.

6 - Book 2 ends badly. what the party has just done should end them up in prison. Book 3 starts weakly. Start it with some kind of prison break and a flight through the Darklands back to Highhelm. This gives the BBEG a chance to show up again and taunt them in the cells and reveal his plans so they can show up and be heroes.

My Stolen Fate campaign has reached its triumphant conclusion! We had a great time with it (but then again we might be easy to please). People had fun collecting the cards and deciding which ones went the best with each character, and the various set-piece locations in the later chapters had a lot of flavor.

awesome!

I think this was a solid AP to jump into after cancelling my Starfinder game. Everyone seems to be jiving, enjoying playing higher level PCs, the exotic travel has been fun, and it's just a good AP.

Shame that it hasn't been received as well as it should have been. Admittedly, we are about halfway through Book 1, but I'm looking forward to getting to where you got!

Yep, I'll add in my .02 also. I've recently had to cancel my subscriptions due to not needing the physical product any more...and now having to buy both the pdf and the foundry module make me reconsider things even more. Hopefully there's some new solution soon, or there's some way to at least bundle the foundry module with the pdf...

Just buy the Foundry module. Yeah, it's not the same thing, but the adventure content is all there.

And w/ the change in adventure paths, the pdf value vis a vis the Foundry module will probably be nil.

I'll throw my 5c in here: My group has recently gone from 1e to 2e, and we're also embracing a hybrid in-person/VTT playstyle. One of the big sells for that was being able to buy the PDF, then get the Foundry module for a great price as well. No Foundry discount is going to be pretty disappointing

100%

And it's not like this is a challenge to implement [at least from my perspective] - it's a discount code based on a prior purchase. Am I missing something?

The Foundry discount is:

a) a great value, particularly for me, a guy who purchases way more stuff than he can actually use
b) what encouraged me to switch from Roll20 to Foundry

And finally, then you add those two things together, its meant for a much better table-top experience, since the Foundry VTT is so great AND I can get value out of the subscriptions I've been plugging away at for well over 10 years now.

Paizo really needs to prioritize this for its user-base, as more and more people are playing their games online, and on the platform of one of their key partners.

If I may be so bold to suggest....

ROMANCE OF THE RUNELORDS!

RATTLESNAKES OF THE RUNELORDS!

Well, teh Foundry Marketplace do list it at a price that is 5 bucks lower than here, so if they paid 50$, it was either because of taxes, or something else... if it's the latter, they might have to contact Foundry, cause that wouldn't be normal.

the foundry marketplace does indeed say that it's sold for $15, but it directs you right back to Paizo where it's currently sold for $19.99.

I just received this in the mail, and admittedly, I have not read it, just flipped through and scanned a few pages, and is this not truly awesome?

Kinda regretting not loving the first book and pitching it harder to my players...

Castilliano wrote:

And why couldn't you have? (Especially unwittingly.)

What would (expected) cannibalism add to an AP?

For II, would help with resources.

And part of the point being that not all Evil acts are selfish and/or destructive.

The Raven Black wrote:

Walkena got stronger because of the Godsrain and used it to strengthen his army according to War of Immortals.

And his problems could be similarly empowered.

Granted, maybe he is meant to somewhat become an equivalent of the Whispering Tyrant in Garund.

Garund already has Geb!

We have wrapped up acquiring THE THEATER and THE BIG SKY and started out last session in the Terwa Uplands looking for the THE JUGGLER.

Great session. We didn't get very far - ended with meeting the dragon. The Opalis are GREAT monsters. Love how they can stealth through the jungle, and have interesting attacks with both range and melee options. The fight did take us almost the whole session [we started late and ended a bit early... maybe 2 1/2 hours?] but everyone had a lot of fun. Looking forward to the DRAGON FIGHT!!!

We are on about the 10th session. I started out with a run through SKY KEY SOLUTION, the big convention society game as a lead in. It took us like 3 sessions to get through that, and then we had a 7 year jump. The party were all Pathfinder Society guys, a team, and they all parted ways after the SOLUTION debacle. They come back with the cards.

This has been really fun so far. This isn't my 'high RP' group, so we just goof around, and boy oh boy, it's a great AP for that.

And yes, I am rooting for Abrogail II.

Failing and falling from the inside is incredibly boring and not very fertile ground for memorable APs.

A 6-volume Mythic AP where the PCs are charged with taking down House Thrune via heroic/mythic means from the outside is FAR more interesting and I'd LOVE to play that.

How cool would it be to take down the Arch-Devil whom Asmodeus temporarily entrusted to watch over Cheliax?

I'm also rooting for Abbie.

Honestly, I hope that Cheliax WINS. It would make the setting much more interesting if they can break Andoran [not conquer it, but weaken it] forcing back the tide of anarchy and the rule of the mob.

Yakman wrote:

sorta bummed that there isn't going to be an 'evil' AP in this meta-plotline. Alas.

I'm pretty sure that Paizo doesn't want to do another "evil" AP again, as in "we're not interested in telling a story where PCs work to make the world a worse place." Even in Blood Lords you're working to make the world not-worse in a specific way. Not to mention, there's no such thing as alignment anymore.

There are certainly APs where you can be a big ol' jerk who is mean to people for no reason (this is somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 APs) but the PCs should never be villains, IMO.

Blood Lords is NOT an Evil AP. It's basically Parks and Recreation in Nightmare Before Christmas.

i get why Paizo doesn't want to make an evil AP, but I'll just say that my party would probably go bonkers for an evil 2E AP.

warriorpriest1990 wrote:

I feel the intro is a little weak in bringing players together

That is also something we struggled with on my end. The Player's Guide backgrounds do a decent job of getting the characters to Iblydos in general, but it is missing some guidance on getting them to justify their presence in Bailax and especially to Terpsime's dining room. It would have been very useful for the players to have a better idea of where their characters will need to be (under Terpsime's hospitality) so that everyone is on the same page about where their backstories need to end and where the adventure begins.

By way of contrast if the design team is reading this, Season of Ghosts handled this problem expertly: The Player's Guide was very clear to the players that the adventure would start as they woke up on the morning after the Season of Ghost ritual, and that they were expected to have volunteered to take part, whether by the campaign-specific backgrounds or by a reason all their own.

I was thinking that they should all be from some small town nearby or better yet, a neighborhood in Pol-Bailax. Maybe they are the children of the noble families in the city. It would explain why they all know each other and would go along with the Greek stories, where the heroes are always royalty.

Any update Yakman? I'm curious if you ended up pivoting away from DA. Or if you came up with something else.

Are your players commonly optimizers?

We ditched DA. Running STOLEN FATE with the same group and having a blast [session 8 is tonite!]

My guys are not optimizers. They build decent, but not min/maxed PCs.

One player's soldier [unintentionally] broke the math on Attack! but he built a 'themed' Witchwarper for D/A who was anything but optimal.

We had run THREEFOLD and ATTACK! w/ some common NPCs and stuff between them with the goal of finishing the grand campaign w/ DA, bringing PCs back and all, so it's kind of a bummer, but looking at the weak encounters in Books 2 and 3 combat was just going to be either a) a time sink as the PCs roll every encounter, or b) a headache as I have to rework encounters to scale them, and then midcombat de-scale them b/c I'd gone overboard.

This seems awfully complicated.

Personally, as I DM, I'm a fan of subsystems.

They give players a chance to drive narrative action, to introduce NPCs, always an opportunity for a joke when the barbarian crushes the library check and the wizard flubs it.

There might be too many in Myth-Speaker and Wardens, but I think they are a critical part of adventure paths. Otherwise, it's just punching and blasting.

I honestly do not understand the influence system [this is after running Book 1 of Sky King's Tomb]. It's a lot of note keeping or otherwise I was doing something wrong.

I would hope that future subsystems not vary dramatically from the GMG. But yes, get the party in a library, get them on the dance floor, get them in the courtroom.

Yakman wrote:

Ptolemaic / Christian Egypt

Come again? The Ptolemies were a couple generations gone by the time Christianity was a thing, never mind a predominant thing, in Egypt.

I'm thinking of when Egypt came permanently under the sway of foreign imperials... macedonians, romans, etc.

there's historical continuity, but also unmistakable foreign influence

ultimately, eh. doesn't really matter too much. make it your own place.

sorta bummed that there isn't going to be an 'evil' AP in this meta-plotline. Alas.

Why Ptolemaic? I would've assumed that's the era that's missing the most, since there's no parallel to Hellenistic conquest in Osirion's lore, but you seem more well-versed in Egyptian history than I am.

(I feel like there's also a bit of modern Egypt in there with the sort of nationalistic reclaiming of its ancient history, but that doesn't contradict anything else)

I always thought that if you were really desperate for Ptolemaic / Christian Egypt, then the influence of the Inner Sea Gods would be a good proxy for these.

But that's really getting in the weeds.

I'm just about to start running this Book. I realized that it repeats the trope of the PCs arriving...by sheer coincidence...just as the town's major annual festival is starting. (This also happened in Book 2.)

This isn't a big deal. But my rule-of-thumb is that a story should really only have a maximum of one coincidence. Any more and I fear it will strain the reader's/viewer's/player's suspension of disbelief.

Allen

there are so many festivals in adventure paths...

Dunno about it being 'new' but my players TPK'd near the end of Book 1 of Sky King's Tomb just last month. To an unnamed monster just 1 CR above their level. They'd been seriously challenged a few times as well earlier on.

The end of Book 4 proves that Radiant Fire can be used to destroy a lich and to sever a lich's link with their phylactery (because that's exactly what Arazni did). So I have chosen to modify Books 5 & 6 so that the goals of the PCs are for them to learn how to do that to Tar-Baphon. I think that is much more internally consistent...and I think the players will find that much more emotionally satisfying.

After this is all over I will confess to the players that in the canonical Golarion 2.0 Tar-Baphon survived.

I'll give many more details on my modifications to this AP after we finish.

Allen

Dracovar wrote:

If I was a PC, right about the end of part 2 of the installment I'd be kinda pissed...

PC prospects going forward into Book 6 look bleak indeed.

So - just so I'm clear - the endgame for the PC's is to sacrifice themselves to create a feedback loop that blows up Tar Baphon and ends his ability to use Radiant Fire. However, given he's a lich (and what we already know about 2E so far...) he is coming back, just without his superweapon. And that's the goal of the AP, in a nutshell?

Effectively, from a metagame perspective admittedly, the PC's get to perma-death themselves in order to set the table for how Golarion 2E is going to look. At least the devs had the foresight to put in a sidebar suggesting the helpful NPC can arrange something for PC resurrection sometime in the future, after they've heroically sacrificed themselves. Gee, thanks for that.

What I eagerly await now is the "what if the PC's fail" outlines that typically show up in Book 6 of the AP's. This kind of 'ultimate sacrifice' might work ok in some groups, but I know groups that would take the boon (having their obols recalibrated to positive energy), and head for the hills.

I had a similar thought when I was running it.

I was pretty unimpressed with the two story beats you mentioned - and altered the outcome so that both Arazni and TB are perma-ded as of the end of TG.

Was running the bit in the archive, and there's a line about the ghostly possession of Ole Krohan, which talks about him having to pass a DC 20 flat check to resist the possession, and also about what happens if he critically succeeds on said check... needless to say, it's impossible to critically succeed at a DC 20 flat check.

It didn't make any sense to me, told my players, and they thought that the author probably meant a Will Save, which I thought made more sense.

Wow! Great stuff. Gonna yoink some of that for sure. We're just doing the penthouse ourselves now. I had to completely rejigger the Hagegraff part too...

We are going to wrap up Book 1 in a session or 2... what did you do to improve Hagregaf?

A consistent concern I've seen of reviews of this AP is how to motivate the party to pursue the story. Have any of you had an issue with this, and do you have any suggestions as to how to make the players feel the importance of seeking out the cards?

I dunno if that's going to be an issue for my party, [we just did Session 1 last week] but I told my guys that 'hey, it's like Pokemon' go get some cards.

I suspect that the novelty and mystery should get through Book 1. The plot picks up pretty dramatically in Book 2, so the 'motivation' problem probably ends there.

Starting STOLEN FATE tonight! I ran SKY KEY SOLUTION as a 3-episode prologue, and our intrepid heroes have returned to Absalom after an 8 year separation, with a card in hand, and the 5th member of their Pathfinder Society party, the Varisian sorceress Raven, is missing... and everyone was brought back by a mysterious Harrow card... and just as everyone lays eyes on each other, they hear a terrible scream from a store...

GM Cthulhu wrote:

The party rogue detected the trap on the door to J7 but totally fluffed his disable device check, so he's now a hand short.

My condolensces to your rogue, I hope they weren't a two-weapon fighter?

On the note of the Graveknights, I am wondering if I should do something with them to flesh out those fights a bit more. My party has been wrecking shop - Paladin and Swashbuckler do so much damage, Cleric is really well kitted out for undead fights, and between the Wizard's summons and buffs they're a force to be reckoned with whenever they have a spellslot free, so it's all added up to some very quick combats. Which, you know, love that for them, but sometimes you want a fight to have some oomph to it.

So while I probably won't go full "army of undead" I'm considering my options - two at once sounds rough but, who knows, maybe they can handle it. Putting Yhalas into a fight with Tycha or Amaretos maybe? Since she doesn't have any mooks. Or having Gustari swoop back in during another fight after rejuvenating (swooping is bad).

Also, unrelated: my party have met Arazni and the Wizard (who was in a cult against his will) is like "wow actually I can totally get behind his whole 'no mercy for your oppressors' thing" which is nice, I'm glad my players are vibing with her, she's great.

ALSO also unrelated (but don't wanna double-post for it): I'm thinking of doing something at the end of the book at Renchurch. Having the Watcher Lord just sort of leave sounds sad - I get it, they'll all totally die if they try anything, but I'd love to have something more dynamic happen. So I'm thinking of having the PCs convince them to instead intercept a force of the Tyrant's soldiers on route to the bulk of the army. Also, part of our canon is that, after the events of the the Carrion Crown AP, the party (which included a powerful hallowed necromancer) spent a good long while destroying Renchurch and exorcising the trapped souls there. There's also some figures left behind...

I gave Yhalas two ubashki lynxes for flanking. It wasn't enough against our bloodrager, swashbuckler, and fighter.

If I were to run it again, I'd either give her a few Daughters of Urgathoa [or something like that] or pair her w/ the graveknight on the surface [can't remember her name]

The Graveknights are REALLY DANGEROUS in pairs. Not so much on their own.

woo boy.

Ran this in 2E at level 10 for my guys as a set up for STOLEN FATE.

It's a lot of fun... a bit of a mess, but that's all good. It's a fun mess and the guys had a good time. They were NOT expecting the setting or the enemies.

My biggest question is... how was this run at a convention in 5 hours???

We spent like... 10-11 hours running this on Foundry. And I cut out most of Part 3.

Did anyone run this in person? How was it? What had to get cut out? Did anyone finish it in the timeframe?

Huang Shixin is my bet. He'll just break the whole system up. He's not going to ask permission.

Yakman wrote:

they don't always come out on time.

not worth worrying about.

Counterpoint: I would like the Player's Guide because I wanna build characters!

You can always build characters... just sometimes they'll be better off riding bench for a bit... ;-)

We're finally at the end of the book! Just got one more sessions of wrap-up and they're onto greener and grassier pas- Oh wait it's Virlych.

The fight against The Haunting Dark went pretty well - Wizard summoned a flying Ankylosaurus for the Paladin to ride into battle, they cast Death Ward on it to make it immune to the nightwing's Channel Energy buuuut it didn't do much for the Cone of Cold right to the face. Still, it survived long enough to make a couple attacks, and when it died to a nasty AoO the Paladin dismounted and managed to mount the nightwing instead. Swashbuckler hit with the Needle. it passed its save but still 50-something hp down is a nasty blow. Also the cleric had a big reveal of a sort of awakened-aasimar state (she's been outwardly a half-elf the whole time but an aasimar on paper, I know this isn't reeeeaally how aasimar heritage works but it was fun! Some stuff about Sarenrae's fury burning through her and such.) She had wings of fire and a Flame Blade (to hit that 12 touch AC instead of dealing with the 29 AC) and used Invoke Deity:Glory Domain (via Deific Essence) to get heroism and add a lil 1d6 positive energy damage each turn but mostly to look really cool.

I'm gonna forego the final fight with the zombie sailors and the mutated turtle - it's a cool setpiece but my party are exhausted and running on fumes and I think it's crossing into the territory of just being frustrating rather than impactful apocalyptic narrative. The death of the Haunting Dark is a good note to finish on, so it'll be a mad dash to get all the survivors to the ship (from both the Tower and the Cathedral), and then setting sail for a much needed rest.

Guess I should start prepping book 4 now....

very fun w/ the flying dinosaur!

I dropped the zombie sailor fight in lieu of a showdown with the escaped gnome thief ... ALL OUT GNOME WARFARE!!! grabbed like 6 gnome NPCs and had them ambush the party as giant skeleton monsters chased them down and crazy living plants started emerging from the sewers.

They were also on fumes... but I felt like I had to wrap up that plotline. They got out to the docks, with nary a draugr in sight, but it was a close thing, just like I intended.

The swashbuckler almost got got by the crocodile in the sewers, but they managed to escape the beast... so instead of a massive turtle, it was a mutant crocodile which emerged [no combat though]. And of course, as the PCs looked back at the burning ruins of Vigil, with the sun setting, the smoke almost seemed to turn into a thousands masked crows descending on the wreck of Vigil...

Here4daFreeSwag wrote:

Prolly still a wee bit too early yet to bring out the Player's Guide for this, methinks. ;)

It comes out on April 2nd, so if anything it's late. They seem to drop the PGs two to three weeks before the street date, and we're just under 2 weeks away now. I know that I was hoping for it this past week.

they don't always come out on time.

not worth worrying about.

Yakman wrote:

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Yes, how will the lore survive without the gameplay canonicity of a biologically superior master race, represented in mechanics that simply don't mean the same thing anymore.

the mechanical bonus was just a straight up bait for an argument between a DM and a player who really wanted the free bonuses.

DM: "Jake, that sure does sound like a fun gnome barbarian... he'll be a great fit in our campaign... Bob, who are you playing..."

Bob: "My guy was frozen in ice for 10,000 years, but he's been thawed out now, and since he's Azlanti, he gets +2 on all ability scores. Says so right here in the World Guide."

DM: Sorry Bob, you can't play Azlanti but you could still play another human ethnicity that was frozen in ice for 10,000.

Is how that conversation should go.

Pretty much.

I think it was just one of those things that had unintended negative consequences. Like, it's kinda cool that a DM might say... well... the PCs encounter Azlanti time travelers or something and they are just... better than they should be. But DMs can do that stuff anyway.

Putting the mechnanic in there was just a cause for friction as certain players try to maximize their PCs.

So, we are starting STOLEN FATE [very pumped, first session is tonight!] and shortly after I told the guys that we are going to start this campaign, I was moseying around on the internet, and I randomly found that there's a Stephen King book which touches on some of the [censored] which are in the AP. When I was preparing to run ATTACK OF THE SWARM, I picked up some sci-fi novels about bug-fighting, namely ARMOR by John Steakley, and the WAR AGAINST THE CHTORR series by David Gerrold [I also bought all of the DAMIA series by Anne McCaffrey, but I haven't read those yet... they are staring at me right now...].

And that got me thinking about the White Wolf / Onyx Path books, almost all of which have 'media guides' for inspiration on themes and backgrounds on whatever book it is, which might help the player / storyteller either get more information on, i dunno, cyborgs or frankensteins, or get a sense of the mood of the book.

I was wondering if Paizo would consider / has considered adding something like this to the Adventure Paths, either in the Player's Guides [in a non-spoilery sense] or in the actual AP volumes [spoiler galore], to help players/GMs get a better sense of the mood and themes of the adventure they are about to play?

My party is slowly working their way to Gallowspire.

Some fights were childishly easy: The Pallis Sunrise had a feeble AC of 20 and lasted about two rounds after the party used the Wand of Communal Protection from Energy (fire). The Tempest Guards were sitting ducks to area effect spells. Otto Canrivash was wiped out after someone used invisibilty purge early on. The various graveknights encountered haven't been much of a challenge either.

By contrast the dybbuk was problematic, and the Dreadwraiths could have easily been a TPK if I hadn't nerfed them a bit by making them play the fight a bit dumb. Their Con damage was downright nasty, and my party suck at fighting incorporeals.

Next week they'll encounter Tycha Ghuzmaar. He could be nasty if he can use his death attack in, but his stealth is such that he will probably be seen before he can get his three rounds of study in. I think I'll give him a potion of invisibility to give him a boost. If I don't, I think that fight will be too easy as well.

The dybbuk is a PC killer, and to be honest, I couldn't make heads or tails of how its key ability actually works.

I nerfed it in play, and when the party encountered another one in the adventure i inserted into Book 5, I swapped it out for a "hellsnail" [that was AWESOME].

Tycha's not going to stand and fight to second death. He's gonna run. I also gave him the same out [invisibility] so that he could show up w/ Amaretos [and negotiated his escape by showing them how to turn off the portal thingys... just to return and betray the party when they finally left the dungeon, along w/ one of the other Council Libertine [the mounted one from the surface] had resurrected [lucky me! I rolled a 2 for the # of days for her to return!]]

One of my players is a big fan of Dragonlance, and I made Tycha seem sorta like Lord Soth when he negotiated his escape, even using the Words "My Honor is My Life."

Well, dude's dead, so sucks to be betrayed, but he told you he had no honor.

One GK is a pushover. But two of them make for a great challenge, w/ the different energy damages and their unique immunities and attacks. We even got to a point w/ the Tycha / Amaretos fight where they were back to back against the party, and got to yell, "Just like the old days!" to give them some characterization.

[was missing your updates! hoped you hadn't dropped your campaign!]

Was just thinking about this, and an AP where the PCs are theives / pirates and the books are built around heists, abductions, banditry, shakedowns, etc.

Maybe just a level 1-10 AP as they rise in the criminal underworld of some major city.

Arkat wrote:

Darth Game Master wrote:

In this case the hypothetical enemy would be Cheliax, which Camilia Drannoch has already supported rebellions against, and is less of a direct risk since Andoran could be a buffer against counter-invasion. I agree it probably wouldn't go over too well, but people make bad decisions sometimes, so it's not entirely out of the question. Either way, I'd certainly be surprised if Galt immediately joined the war on Andoran's side.

There would have to be some sort of provocation or a false flag operation conducted to get the people of Galt to believe Cheliax poses enough of a threat for them to ally with Andoran.

Which brings up the question of why Andoran would even bother. Galt is weak, and unlike other weak powers (e.g., Isger, Ravounel) doesn't even have the advantage of offering a strategic base from which to strike at the enemy. An alliance with Galt would at best offer Andoran a quite small army of militia fighting far from home for a cause not their own--thus an army that is unlikely to be useful on the offense or cohesive on the defense.

The only scenario where Galt involving itself in the war makes any degree of sense is one where Taldor intervenes against Andoran with the express or implied aim of suppressing Common Rule, because such a campaign naturally turns against Galt itself after Andoran is dealt with. But that is a thing which Taldor has no good reason to do. The advantages to Taldor of neutrality have already been hashed out at length. And even if it did, for instance by jumping in opportunistically against an Andoran which has suffered reverses, such a Taldan campaign is not one in which Galt could expect to make much difference (because, again, it is weak).

We have no idea of the political leanings of most important player here: Taldoggis.

I dunno. I read the Well of Night thing or whatever it is as some sort of controlled black hole.

Like, his soul cage exists beyond the event horizon. It cannot be recovered and destroyed.

Your solution is more interesting though.

So... where are we thinking Galt comes in? They are kind of a low-key powerhouse with a big population and what one should assume to be a pretty strong baseline economy, albeit one devastated - but recovering - from a near century of mismanagement.

Yes, how will the lore survive without the gameplay canonicity of a biologically superior master race, represented in mechanics that simply don't mean the same thing anymore.

the mechanical bonus was just a straight up bait for an argument between a DM and a player who really wanted the free bonuses.

DM: "Jake, that sure does sound like a fun gnome barbarian... he'll be a great fit in our campaign... Bob, who are you playing..."

Bob: "My guy was frozen in ice for 10,000 years, but he's been thawed out now, and since he's Azlanti, he gets +2 on all ability scores. Says so right here in the World Guide."

Maybe Drustan might be that Azlanti general, who gets sucked forward in time?

So... let's say I have my guys run SCOURED STARS... would this be a capstone adventure I could run w/ minimal updating?