Yakman's page

So... reading through the Stairs section, and there's the harpy queen. It says that she doesn't get involved even when her other harpyes are engaged unless someone's flying OR they go into her home ... which is on top of a statue that is inaccessible unless someone flies up there or climbs up.

What's the point?

I'm thinking about holding her in reserve if the fight against the BBEG is really easy for my players. She can sweep down from behind in round 2 or 3 and really stick it too them.

Otherwise??? I dunno. Any thoughts?

Yakman wrote:

I dunno. It's your game. Most of the APs are isolated enough that you don't have to worry about previous events if you don't want to. For those which are tied to the others, some of them are more tied and some less. And honestly, players don't usually care that much. Most of them want to have a good time - canon not being 100% in alignment doesn't get in the way of a good time for most people, I think.

Long / Short : Have a good time!

My players and I have spent a lot of time building our version of Golarion, so I could definitely have them just read the wiki for an update or give them some version of "Somehow Palpatine returned!", but I would much rather have the option of them playing these things out if that makes sense?

yeah. totally. just... there's a world shaking event published at least once a year, and for me, it took 4 years to run tyrant's grasp. I dunno how fast you game, but keeping up with everything just seems unsustainable to me.

Anywho, this is something I have thought about a lot over the past couple of years, so I figured I would put it out there into the world.

It is YOUR Golarion.

So... maybe just ignore the stuff you don't want to include? or just leave it in the background? or yeah, point players at the wiki and keep a change log for your game which supersedes it. i have a little text document with the changes i've made at my table. just a some bullet points going over the divergences from 'canon' as a result of our running Tyrant's Grasp and Sky King's Tomb. it seems to work so far.

Tyrant's Grasp is a really solid campaign, and if you do end up running it, there's plenty of guidance in the forum here.

Scanning through this book... not a fan of the first one, but this seems like running this on its own would be a pretty solid stand-alone dungeon crawl. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

I think I would just throw the PCs in, with a little blurb about them trying to save a sea-side town from an awakened vampire lord and go from there.

I dunno. It's your game. Most of the APs are isolated enough that you don't have to worry about previous events if you don't want to. For those which are tied to the others, some of them are more tied and some less. And honestly, players don't usually care that much. Most of them want to have a good time - canon not being 100% in alignment doesn't get in the way of a good time for most people, I think.

Long / Short : Have a good time!

Got back to playing after a 55 day break [Foundry is very helpful!]

We ended our last session after the initial battle on the Storval Stairs, and we continued clearing out the Band of Blades. Bit of a short session since I couldn't log in for about an hour, but it was refreshing getting back to the game.

Yakman wrote:

My table want to be sailors. I know there's a nautical component to MythSpeaker, but I think an 'exploration' AP where the PCs are sailors / traders, might satisfy their itch.

You may be in luck, with the recent announcement of the upcoming Lost Omens High Seas book...

I could see an AP, or at least a stand-alone adventure, based on it.

oh nice! hadn't seen that one yet...

I'm so far behind on these though... still haven't read the academy book! or the taldor one!

Yakman wrote:

My table want to be sailors. I know there's a nautical component to MythSpeaker, but I think an 'exploration' AP where the PCs are sailors / traders, might satisfy their itch.

They keep bringing up wanting to run Skull and Shackles, and I seriously considered it, but I'm not going to run 1E again, and don't have the bandwidth or interest to run a 2E conversion.

Are any of your players game to try GMing?

oh, I'm happy GMing. I'm running STOLEN FATE, and we're in the final chapter of Book 1, so we'll be doing that for another 2 years or so. We are having a good time, so it's not a pressing concern right now, but in 2028... might be nice to have another nautical AP to choose from.

And the shorter APs are just a delight. I ran Tyrant's Grasp, but that took almost 4 years [4 hour sessions every 2 weeks].

My table want to be sailors. I know there's a nautical component to MythSpeaker, but I think an 'exploration' AP where the PCs are sailors / traders, might satisfy their itch.

They keep bringing up wanting to run Skull and Shackles, and I seriously considered it, but I'm not going to run 1E again, and don't have the bandwidth or interest to run a 2E conversion.

Yakman wrote:

]I personally hated this part of the Radiant Fire reveal.

Just like... kill TB. It's FINE.

I'm probably going to. When my party dithered about accepting the destruction of the souls, I upped the stakes a bit by having Maraina provide new information based on updated research: there's a chance the radiant fire will kill the Tyrant outright, but she wasn't sure. She also suggested they pray. The Cleric of Desna cast Commune and sought guidance. Desna was particularly supportive of any efforts to put a stop to the plans of the Tyrant.

So, the majority of the party accepted their fate. The bard held out and now I'm going to have to work out what happens to his soul when the radiant fire is detonated. Plenty of time.

The PCs are also discussing the possibility that they may have to track down the Tyrant's phylactery. I've already hinted that its beyond their ability to scry. Hopefully they take the hint.

I've never really liked the 'phylactery' mechanic that is so tied to the lich since forever.

I don't know what benefit it adds to the story. I mean... it CAN add fun to a lich adventure... you've killed the bad guy in his evil wizard tower, and now it's a race against time to descend into the mysterious dungeons before he reconstitutes...

That's a great hook... but TG isn't that story.

So... whatever. Maybe TB doesn't have a phylactery. Or maybe not all liches have them.

In my head canon, it's in the black hole thingy on the Isle of Terror [or maybe is the black hole thingy]. But I told my players after we finished TG that since we are playing other APs in the same shared Golarion, that they should consider Tar Baphon as perma-ded, and if I as a DM would only bring him back if there was a super-cool adventure where I couldn't swap in some other BBEG.

I struggled to keep things reasonable and believable around the authorities not immediately acting on a WMD threat. I managed to handwave Lastwall not having news of Roslar's Coffer since the next nearest farmland settlements were being beset by red dragons (linking in an unresolved plothook from a previous campaign), but upon arriving and letting people know, it was hard for me to come up with a reasonable excuse to delay/get them to look for evidence while keeping the authority figures sounding rational and reliable.

As a huge fan of Ustalav I'd have been so down for a jump to Ardis or even Caliphas! Get some Whispering Way vs Vampires action in the sewers!If I weren't about to start prepping Book 5 for when we're off of hiatus I would totally consider some Ustalav time.

remember: the authorities don't know that there's a threat of a WMD. no one knows what happened in Roslar's Coffer. The PCs have to investigate to find that out.

They don't start out with a solid theory of the case. And by the time they have some information, well... it's almost too late. And in fact, it is - only the PCs delving into the sewers can find out the actual truth, by which time, it's too late.

One thing I did add was that the orcs had started raiding across the frontier, and the Knights march out to join their allies in the Holds - Arstan Whitebeard [?] I can't remember his name - so the city is in a state of mobilization, and ultimately goes into the control of the female knight who later tries to flee the city. Then she can be a spoiler to the PCs, just ignoring their claims, and be a deaf ear.

That forces them to act - they gotta get absolute proof - so they follow every lead... and they are too late...

I'm prepping the last battle, a/k/a Flash Point 5.

And I realized that the map shows the hole blown in the side of the keep before the battle even begins. So much for that surprise attack by Tar-Baphon. Arg!

eh. just do theater of the mind until it happens.

I just finished the Blue Gardens section and the PCs then went back to town and got the big reveal from Miraina.

They are NOT happy about having to sacrifice their souls in order to only destroy the Whispering Tyrant's superweapon, knowing it won't also destroy the Tyrant himself. I boosted the stakes a bit in that I had them find in Umbarno's notes some correspondence between Umbarno and someone called Istravek - who the party doesn't yet know is the Tyrant's dragon - concerning research into creating more shards which can be used to trigger the Radiant Fire.

The Cleric is also a bit miffed that reversing the polarity of the obols means his healing spells automatically become maximised. He already does that with the Healer's Touch feat that he spent the first two modules gaining the prerequisite for! Oh well, I'm sure he'll cope.

I personally hated this part of the Radiant Fire reveal.

Just like... kill TB. It's FINE.

That "Last Temptation of Christ" idea is just brilliant! I'm absolutely stealing it.

I'm going to have them think they're just about to die from Radiant Fire resonance...and then each PC finds themself in a dark box. Yes, they're back in the sarcophagi of Rosler's Tomb!

They'll leave the mausoleum without trouble and discover that they're in the town of Rosler's Coffer, which is rebuilding (although is is enclosed in yet another impenetrable bubble).

Of course they'll discover that this idyllic outcome is actually a sort of holodeck situation that Pharasma created for them.

Umble and Thoot will reappear (which I think they'll enjoy) and explain that if they choose to stay, they can live out their lives in peace...but Tar-Baphon will succeed. Or they can give up their happy endings (again) and save the world.

dunno how much i like the switcheroo choice on them in this way. i do really like the holodeck RC idea though.

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.