aett's page

Hi folks!
My 2e conversion for Reign of Winter is now live on Pathfinder Infinite.

It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. If you use it, let me know how it goes, or if you have any suggestions!

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions regarding future influence sessions!

While I'm here, I'm curious if anyone has given their party a generous gift of horses (enough for each PC) early on, like from Lady Aldori as a reward. It would be really useful for adding an extra hexploration action from the start, but I don't know if it would be too much that early on.

I ran our first session last night. It went well, but the Influence portion of the feast... could have gone better. The players just ended up with abysmal rolls, round after round. All of them even used their initial Hero Point and either got the same result or worse. They ended up with no more than two points with a couple of NPCs.

I'm not sure (off the top of my head) if there are any other situations designated to give them another chance at Influencing the companion characters, but if not, I'll probably find a way to let them do that at some point.

Starting this campaign soon, and wondering how much is common knowledge and how much is known with a Knowledge check that a 1st level PC would be able to succeed.

Ha, that might be cute! Could throw in pig-faced Orcs, too.

It's a little cheeky for my tastes, but there's way to play both ideas completely straight.

I can't believe I forgot pig Orcs (or "porcs", which I always think of when I see them). That would definitely be easier to explain than a mammal-like version of a reptilian ancestry, haha.

When we inevitably get a Lost Omens: Tian Xia book, I would like a new heritage for kobolds that looks more like a humanoid dog. For those who don't know, in Japanese media, kobolds usually look like dog-people, so it would be a fun shout-out to that. (Apparently this is the case because the '80s Wizardry PC game was very popular in Japan, and kobolds look like dogs, which in turn is probably because kobolds had dog-like faces in the first edition of D&D.)

Hopefully I'm not too late in seeing this thread, but I've made some maps for the latter half of Strange Aeons.

The book 5 maps are pretty barebones, in part because the city itself is described as mostly smooth, featureless, towers, so I tried to build up the creepiness through (non-combat) encounters and descriptions. I also cut out a room or two from the Undercity just to speed things along a little bit, and I cut half of the book 6 Neruzavin Nexus for the same reason. I ran The Snarl mostly as theater-of-the-mind using the in-book map as an occasional reference.

I hope this helps a bit! Good luck.

A well-earned retirement! Enjoy it and thanks for all you've done!

One PC went on an evening walk to get fresh air, and noticed a luxury sailboat being loaded for supply late at night at the docks. He alerted the rest of the PCs, and they all made it to the docks in time to find out the undead bard directing some dock workers into loading what was left of Iris Hill into the boat! (the cultists were now fleeing Thrushmoor after the PC's several forays, not wanting to risk future battles against a reinforced party or other Royal Accusers) The PCs ganged up on the undead bard and as other cultists began to arrive, they took them out one by one, with the climax of the battle being the hound of tindalos and the cultist leader. They defeated them all, now that the cultists no longer had the home advantage...

I was fully planning to have the bad guys 'win' and escape Thrushmoor. I told my players that the bad guys would 'react' to their continuous invasions but said nothing else. It was only due to that PC's actions and night scouting that they realized the cultists were leaving, which made the PCs' win even more memorable.

I really like this idea. I'll probably give my players one more chance to escape and rest if they really need it (although I'll increase the security outside again), but if it happens any more than that, the cultists are going to try to escape. My players get a little too complacent with resting sometimes...

My players began infiltrating Iris Hill in our last session, but left fairly quickly, after one of the PCs was killed by the Hound of Tindalos. The cleric managed to blind the Hound and they ran away and out of Iris Hill.

I was wondering how the cult would respond to people breaking in, destroying the Topiaries, killing a few cultists, and leaving behind a corpse before leaving. Melisenn is definitely going to send the assassin after the rest of the party, but I'm not really sure how to handle Iris Hill itself.

I'm thinking that the Kuru thugs/guards could be actively patrolling around the grounds, for starters.

Happy Pride Month, everyone!

Thank you all for a great book and for giving me many more character ideas that I, as a forever-GM, will never get to play!

Thank you all for sharing! I love how welcoming the whole Paizo community feels.

My kids love looking at the monsters. (the Bestiary battle cards)

My five-year-old daughter likes looking at the monsters, too. She also likes saying "where are we going?" and pointing to stuff on my Lost Omens map (or really any map).

They actually already played ALIEN for New Game, Who Dis? You can watch it here.

Did they cancel Androids & Aliens? I am subscribed to the feed but haven't listened to it yet as I am waiting for Giantslayer to end.

Once Dead Suns is finished (which should be before the end of the year) they will not be continuing Androids & Aliens. Troy didn't want to say that it was canceled outright, and that they may one day have a new show that alternates between different sci-fi games that they've played before (ALIEN, Star Trek, etc). Honestly, to me, it sounded like a gentle way of saying it was over. I love A&A, but they don't really hide the fact that they have difficulty playing it with all the other games they have running... I mean, they had to hire a rules lawyer to help out. It's still a great podcast, though!

I'm not a patron so I'm not sure on the details of what you posted, I thought this post would be about Dalgreath.

I actually haven't gone through the main Glass Cannon podcast yet (I'm only about a dozen episodes in) as I keep getting caught up in their various other shows. I'm caught up with A&A, New Game Who Dis, Get in the Trunk, and Legacy of the Ancients. I just finished LotA and wanted to jump right into Raiders of the Lost Continent, but I'm not sure if I should do that or finally make an effort to focus on Giantslayer.

Seems like an appropriate time to bring this thread back again now that Troy just did his annual State of the Naish last night.

Definitely looking forward to their upcoming PF2e podcast around the start of 2022. The group of writers they've hired to create a new world and adventure seems fantastic. And they've still got their Azlant and Runelords podcasts for that PF1e fix, not to mention Strange Aeons for live shows.

Going to miss Starfinder - something about the sci-fi/fantasy setting clicked really well for them and they came up with some great characters. I feel like some of the funniest GCN moments I've heard so far (I'm still far behind on GCP but have listened to most of everything else) have come from Androids & Aliens and Delta Green. I totally get why they need to shelve Starfinder, at least for a while, but I hope there's a way they can return to it some day, even if just for short adventures.

I keep thinking it's not possible for me to appreciate Paizo any more than I already do. This is great to see.

My 10-year-old son is autistic and every so often I try to see if he would be interesting in trying tabletop gaming with me, but he always politely declines. He tends to get really focused on one hobby at a time, and it's usually something that involves putting stuff together: Minecraft, Mario Maker, and currently, coding. He might make a great GM one day, or at least he might be able to write one hell of a campaign.

The scorpion nearly killed a character who tumbled into the room to flank it and the rest of the party started running. I had Wrin run in, give some advice (mostly "taunt the scorpion away from the unconscious guy", cast a spell or two, and generally rally the party to take it out. It was pretty cool.

I'm really looking forward to my players reaching the Warped Brew Tavern.

Anyone got any suggestions for music that the band could be playing?

I'm relatively new to the whole Paizoverse, having only played 2e for the last several months and only reading 1e and SF, so I don't know if this is a good idea or not: why not a short AP that is along the lines of 3-12 (or 4-13, etc)? That way you can play with some more abilities while also seeing your character grow from nearly the beginning.

It's not broken but it may need GM fiddling if the PCs aren't optimizers.

We just finished our last session of book 1, which ended with the Voidglutton fight. I definitely ended up nerfing the fight for a couple of reasons, mainly because the party leans more to the magic side than physical, and thanks to all of the

I should also add that, overall, book 1 was fantastic! I loved having a town to return to and let the players get to know the citizens. This may also be the first campaign in which my players started remembering names of NPCs without checking notes.

Forgive me if I completely missed this somewhere, but one of my players raised a great question in our last session: how does one know where the other side of a portal is located? They just found the Awaken Portal ritual and when they learned that both sides of a portal have to be activated, the question came up. Is there a way for them to somehow know through the ritual or some other spell/Arcana check, or do they just need to activate every portal they find in the hopes of connecting two of them?

aett wrote:

"Perfect Vision" module will do the trick. Easy peasy

I am having serious brain farts today, I cannot - for the life of me - wrap my head around this module haha

I have a goblin PC, who should have darkvision. But with the mod on all PCs have the same vision, I also don't get how to simulate no illumantion zones like in the first level of the dungeon. Could you maybe explain to me what settings you are using?

Not a problem! I don't believe I had to change any settings for the module itself (make sure it's set to Pathfinder 2e, though) so I wonder if the issue is with the illumination within your scenes.

For the underground levels of the dungeon, these are the settings I'm using:

Token vision - checked
Sprite Limit (distance) - unlimited (default)
Global Illumination - unchecked
Fog Exploration - checked
Daylight/Darkness Color - both default
Darkness Level - 1 (all the way to the right)
Global Illumination Threshold - unchecked

Apart from that, I would check to make sure that the PC actually has darkvision listed under their senses on the first page of the character sheet. Also, under their token's vision (character sheet -> token (top of the sheet) -> vision tab) make sure they have a value for Bright Vision. I just use 300 for all necessary vision values because there's no specific limit to darkvision or low light vision in PF2e IIRC. Of course, for PCs with low light vision, put the distance value under Dim Vision instead. (Sorry if you already know all this stuff, just trying to cover all the bases!)

I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other problems and I'll see if there's anything else I can figure out.

By the way, for other modules I recommend:

Forien's Quest Log - this has been a huge help with all the various side quests throughout the campaign.

Health Estimate - shows different health identifiers when you/the players hover over an enemy token (Uninjured, Barely Injured, Near Death, etc.) so that you don't have to constantly answer the "how does the enemy look" questions during combat or just show off the actual HP.

Monk's Token Bar - does a lot of stuff but I'm mostly just using it to be able to always see the PC's AC and Perception at the bottom of my screen, and for requesting skill checks or saving throws.

"Perfect Vision" module will do the trick. Easy peasy.

I also use the "Torch" module, which makes it easy for players to activate/deactivate a torch so the GM doesn't have to. For extra fun, set up their torches to have a light animation and a slight yellow tint. Personally, I put the light intensity at 0.25, light animation is torch (of course), animation speed and animation intensity both set to 3. This way, you get the effect without it being too distracting.

It's great to get to know about all of you and to see this amazing art. Thank you!

There was a little bit of discussion about this in the product page for book 1, but I wanted to see what other GMs have done or are going to be doing when starting the AP.

My players are finalizing their characters now and we'll be starting the campaign in a couple days. They know that they are friendly with Wrin (from the Player's Guide) but I'm not sure I want to jump straight into the Ruins.

That said, I'm considering something like a flashback: start off in the Ruins as suggested, then after a short while, go back to the party's last meeting with Wrin as she explains her concerns with the Gauntlight. My concern with this is (knowing my players) there will still be some "um, why are we here, what are we looking for" at the very beginning, and I'd rather not just TELL them out-of-game if I can help it.

I'm so excited to start this AP with my group, most likely next week.

First: to plan out my playlists. With the major focus on the dungeon, with plenty of combat, I don't want the music growing stale early on.