Zandu the Devourer's page

Is it just us (me and my players) or is the Aspect of Immortality just a tad too deadly even for 20th level characters? We had a TPK just half an hour ago. The Adventure Path ended with the Magic Warriors dead, sacrificed to save the Magaambya just moments before Belimarius and Sorshen, alerted by a prayer of one of the PCs to Dajermube, who caused an untimely eclipse, came to banish the Grim Reaper and ease the Magaambyans' suffering. It was a tragedy!

Hi there.

I'm preparing to GM the 2nd edition version of the Kingmaker Adventure Path and one of my players has decided to create a cleric of an evil deity that is masquerading as a cleric of Abadar who wants to bring civilization and prosperity into the Stolen Lands.

We stumbled upon the False Faith 1st level cleric feat that is presented in volume 4 of the Age of Ashes Adventure Path, specifically for clerics of Droskar (it is indeed a prerequisite). Still, I feel like this feat should be available to at least some other faiths, especially the ones that are known to try to spread their faith subreptitiously. Norgorber seems to me like the deity that should give access to this feat, but other options might include Urgathoa, Groetus or Asmodeus, for example.

There may also be room for a reformatted version of 1st edition's vestments of false faith.

What do you think?

pauljathome wrote:

syrath wrote:

I watched a podcast that gave very good advice that im currently applying to me group of 4 new players to Pathfinder and that is to globally apply the weak adjustments from Bestiary page 6 for players that arent as high tuned, you can always ramp it up later if they find it too easy.

I think I prefer my method of just raising the characters level by 1. Pretty similar effect (raising a level gives a little more to the characters, especially at some levels) but less work on the part of the GM :-).

That was actually my first way of dealing with it, however with new players this puts them at level 2 when they havent been able to understand how to cope with combat at level 1, accelerating their learning curve when they are already behind the curve. I upped their level to 2 after the owlbear at the zoo, and I am paying for that mistake in that i made it actually too easy for them that they havent learned how to make themselves better, i just made them that way. Each to their own of course.

Yeah, this is one of the problems I see with the system. The difference between level 1 and 2 is huge. It was maybe more pronounced, at least HP-wise in 1st edition, but nontheles...

I'm so sorry for the delay, but thank you SO much. In the end, I did it more or less like that and it went decently.

Hi there. I was wondering if the information we get as GMs in the gazetteer is more or less readily available for the PCs. I mean, I guess it's my call as a GM, but I fear giving them too much information might disrupt the mysterious feel the Red Star is supposed to give.

Hi! I'm preparing Hurricane's Howl to start this weekend and there's something that I wanted to ask.
How are you running the encounters the PC's have during their travels with the students? Do you include the students as supportive NPCs? Do you add a certain mechanic to account for their presence as a helping or distracting situation? Have you created specific stat blocks for each one of the students?

Hi!

I'm designing a new character. It'd be a leshy druid, more specifically a fungus leshy. They are based on the Psylocibe genus, i. e. hallucinogenic mushrooms.

They' are a chaotic good druid of the Leaf Order, not the most devout guy but admiring of Desna, Gozreh, and not specifically opposed to Cyth-V'sug (although they view rot and decay just as a part of the cycle of life and a way to nourish new life, not a as a way to destroy everything).

The thing is, I'm thinking of an alternative Ancestry feat to represent the special qualities of their metabolism. As they'd be not exactly a mushroom themselves, their "blood" wouldn't be constantly filled with hallucinogenic substances, but they may concentrate them for protection.

Similarly to the Aasimar "Blessed Blood" feat, this one would be HALLUCINOGENIC SCLEROTIUM.
Tags: Leshy, Poison
Trigger: You suffer piercing or slashing damage.
Effect: You concentrate the substances in your blood that make animals see strange things. The foe that dealt damage must make a Fortitude save. If they fail, they become dazzled for 1d4 rounds. If they critically fail, they instead become blinded for 1d4 rounds. If the foe attacked with their jaws, fangs or similar, the result of the Fortitude save is considered to be one step worse.

What do you think? Do you thing this would imbalance the game too much?

thewastedwalrus wrote:

The chapter intro describes why this is the course of action suggested in a fair amount of detail, basically that there's:

- Incredible danger presented by the "doomsday device" means that this has to be taken care of as quickly as possible

An elaborate heist that might fail is not what I consider a faster way to get this done.

Quote:

- Gage 'might' purposefully or accidentally screw up the recovery if they ask for cooperation. They don't know his alignment or what he and his staff truly want for sure, or if they might be involved further

They will show up with a gang leader in custody with a key to one of his boxes with a clear admission that it was stored for a murder cult these very agents very publicly defeated that murdered in excess of 40 people.

Quote:

- The casino clearly has connections higher up in the government based on the Captain's prior experience that could delay a warrant being given out or more likely alert the criminals storing the device causing it to be moved or activated early

These are agents with clear probable cause that a murder cult is storing an item intended for bad results that they forced a violent street gang to store in Gage's Vault. Not sure why any higher ups would impede that unless they want to invite serious heat on themselves.

Quote:

- Their evidence to secure a search warrant for the device isn't strong enough to be expedited through the bureaucratic pipeline

Which as I see it does not fit their capabilities. One of the characters in our group is a high charisma, master intimidate Shadow Sorcerer who can obtain the necessary mental spell he needs to extract information from a gang leader as needed.

Maybe I could see this if it were a group of martials with no face man who wasn't able to secure the gang leaders and force them to speak if necessary, but this particular group is more than capable.

But really by this 3rd module, The Agents are pretty famous. Their fame should bring...

This is Gospel. Thanks for putting just my thoughts into words.

Speaking of spoilers ... does anyone else think "Rumormonger" is a bit too obvious an alias for Reginald Vancaskerkin? I'd think it would be a big red arrow pointing at the NPC the players know who runs a gossipy tabloid newspaper.

YES.

I'm having a little trouble with my party. There was already a TPK just as early as the menagerie, with a whole massacre at the jaws of That Bastard. After that we've had the little goblin investigator and an iruxi fighter die horribly digested by the jelly ochre in the Hotel's basement. We managed to work in some connections and political interests in order for the goblin to be resurrected.

While infiltrating the Skinsaw Cult hideout, both the catfolk swashbuckler and the human paladin of Iomedae died, albeit somewhat ceremoniously in the case of the paladin, who was sacrificed to Father Skinsaw with the ivory-handled war razor, yet the hobgoblin war-bard went to a bank and asked for a heavy loan to resurrect the two fallen.

Now they've been brutally beat down by Bloody Berleth, even without the aid of his minions, and the goblin investigator is once again waiting for Pharasma to say "hi" and a third loan is on the way.

The thing is: I feel the foes in this campaign are a bit too strong, and after revisiting the amount of treasure they have received this far, they are severely underequipped. Even after paying out the loans, they still are like 6.000 gp short of what is usually expected for characters at their level (they just hit level 10).

Am I the only GM who has encountered this level of difficulty moving forward?

I would rephrase the question:

What makes you think Elves don't reproduce the way humans do?

If you instead assume everything works as normal except where stated, you'll avoid having to search for info that simply isn't there.

Good luck with your game!

I think there has been a misunderstanding here. I'm part of the same gaming group, and we share that thought —unless stated otherwise, we assume there are no differences to the usual human experience—, but some of us recalled having read somewhere that there was some sort of special ritual that did not involve human-like intercourse but some other sort of sexual reproduction system that involved magic. But then we tried to look it up again and did not find anything; thus the question.

But it seems we might have read that about elves in some other setting.

Thanks for your replies, guys!

Haven't fully gone through everything related to crafting yet - but doesn't this argument rely on the assumption that you always have access to at-level work during downtime? After all, the reduction in price for crafting is based on your level instead of the task level. On the other hand, work you can find earns money based on the task level, which is influenced by a settlement level that seems to cap out at 10 for a metropolis or capital city. Past level 10, you either need to be be at, "the largest cities in the world or another plane," to easily get earned income at an 11+ task level.

So it seems like crafting may not necessarily be the 'optimal income' method at lower levels when plenty of people can make the same things and other jobs are just as profitable. But sometime past level 10 you'll almost always start saving more money by continued crafting instead of picking up a (lower level) job.

Some number crunching may be needed to determine the exact point crafting profit outdoes the loss of income from the first 4 days, but you'll also have to take into account that the GM can require you to spend, "1 day or more of downtime looking for leads on new jobs." Not to mention that the initial jobs found may not be at the highest level available in the settlement, which might require spending more downtime on using Diplomacy to Gather Information. Crafting by contrast seems like it has a very consistent 4 day period before you start making profit, where earned income has a 1-? day period before getting the job required to start making profit.

Overall, I wouldn't consider Crafting to be in a bad place for making money. It can be used to earn income in the normal way during downtime AND potentially craft items above the level of a settlement's available jobs to save more money compared to working+buying from someone else. If it takes more than 4 days to find a high enough level job (which gets increasingly difficult or even impossible as the party's level goes up compared to nearby settlements), then Crafting seems like it could frequently be a superior option for total cost savings even at levels before 10.

This reply just eased our minds quite a bit. In our groups, we've been thinking about the problem with Crafting for months now, and we hadn't thought about higher levels and the difficulty of getting access to level-adjusted jobs for Earning Income.

This certainly gives it more sense. There are still some gaps, we think; but then again, PF2 does not intend to create a detailed self-sustaining economic system...

Thanks!

Thank you!

We started this AP just yesterday and I got excited and made circus posters for the whole party. The titles are in English, but the rule-related stuff is in Spanish, so my DM hasn't got that much trouble deciphering it.

Just wanted to show them and see what you guys think of them!

The knife-throwing show of One-Eyed Hyacinth, the human-changeling ranger who doesn't lose accuracy in the dark!!

The hilarious storytelling of the best pickler this side of the Inner Sea. Mr. Pickle lets the audience taste his latest creations while telling the most amazing stories!

Silent, but amazing. Vineweaver Sunturner amazes audiences with the pure strength of nature herself, and that is enough. - His catchphrase has rapidly become 'That's enough', because he has no time for banter when friends are in danger.

The mysterious witch Zahara, the latest addition to the Circus of Wayward Wonders, who seems to have the key to managing the legendary luck of halflings. She can grant it, and she can most certainly withdraw it!!!

Hi there!

I would be highly interested!

The only downside would be that English is not my native language, but my level is around C1+, so that would not be a problem, I believe!

OK! Got it! Thanks!

Hi!

I don't quite understand how the wild shape order spell of the druid works. It states that any form other than the ones listed under pest form last 1 minute, and then it states that you get access to the forms granted by animal form when the spell is heightened to 2nd level.

Which other forms are available for a 1st level druid?

I'm very excited about this game. I absolutely love all things cyberpunk, and I look forward to playing it ASAP!

Izal, Hambre

Since the Cinderlands are such a departure from Korvosa, I think you ought to double-down on how alien it should feel to city-folk. I just finished GMing this part of the AP and have some thoughts.

Make sure the Shoanti feel like a real culture. They should not feel like helpless savages just waiting for the PCs to fix things. The Shoanti should mostly hate these tishamek wandering into their territory expecting to learn their deepest cultural secrets.

Ditch the Boneslayer entourage. The Boneslayers make the Cinderlands less mysterious since they can just explain everything. They're also too fragile in an encounter that is level-appropriate for the PCs, which can cause some serious Respect damage if the PCs aren't willing to shell out thousands of gold when they almost inevitably die. Maybe, if the PCs feel incapable of navigating the Cinderlands, the Skoan-quah might grudgingly offer one, perhaps a novice, but make sure to really develop this guide so that if they die, it feels like a real loss. But it's better if the players are on their own since it makes things scarier for them.

I recommend making the "respect quests" more robust. I decided that Sun Shaman was under a geas-like oath that forbids him from sharing the truth with anyone who had demonstrated a commitment to the ways.

In retrospect, I would like to have made the big respect quests actually meaningful to the AP itself rather than just accumulating bragging rights. Otherwise, the PCs are just running around trying to look cool enough to learn a secret.

What I wish I'd done is put clues or MacGuffins in those sites. Here are some ideas:

* Amarund, the Shoanti member of the Palatine Eye Shoani who helped defeat Kazavon, returned to the Cinderlands after her quests. He (or she) scattered clues to his quest in his homeland.
* Amarund was a fire priest and died being devoured by a purple worm, which became Cindermaw. Cindermaw has some of Amarund's essence, and a PC who permits herself to be swallowed will gain some of Amarund's...

OMG I love your post. I was having many difficulties DMing this part, because they have so much guidance it seems a bit like... meh... And I like random encounters now and then, but sometimes they are too random, if that makes any sense.

Sadly, the Cinderlander proved to be no threat to my party of PCs, even accompanied by his animal companion and FOUR Red Mantis Assassins I placed there as "overwatchers" of the Cinderlander. He may have known how to hide his trail, but some Divination magic and, quite frankly, a good strategy (to teleport the party just in front of him and letting the barbarian scream the Cinderlander's soul away in an inevitable surprise round...) turned my take on the Cinderlander a rather boring one. They abused him just like a cat does with a mouse. Now, after that, I come across some ideas I might have had to make it a little more interesting, but back in the moment I wasn't so fast.

But I will make sure to spice things up using your advice. It sounds quite helpful and I will try to make it work.

Thank you so much and congratulations for such a helpful post!!

I have a question which is surely quite absurd, but I have been unable to find satisfying information surfing into various sources and these messageboards.

Is there any reference about the part of the Yondabakari road that travels up the river along its waterfalls until it reaches the top of the Storval Plateau? How far is it from Kaer Maga?