darch's page

Yeah, there's a funny little copy-paste oopsie in the links in the blog post (too many quotes).

Thank you for your answers!

Thanks for clarifying the save for Vengeful Spirit Deck, but I do have more questions. Is the intention that you have to spend three actions each turn (one to Sustain and two to throw a card), or is the intention that Sustainining Vengeful Spirit Deck should be a two-action activity that lets you throw a card?

Also, the traits shouldn't be "uncommon, archetype, metamagic". Should they be "uncommon, archetype, concentrate", instead, or even "uncommon, archetype, concentrate, manipulate"? Maybe "occult"?

Finally (I think), what's the damage type?

My players immediately found the entrance to the tunnels under the Storage Barn. Does anyone have any advice about how their exploration of it should progress?

One player also spoke Undercommon and got a hint that the pugwampi were following some orders. They're now convinced the tunnels should lead to some bad guy.

I would let them explore and find accesses to some buildings -- but the tunnels are long-abandoned and choked with debris in various directions and definitely don't connect to the cave network. In order to keep it from wasting too much time, handle it in hour-long chunks of exploration mode. If you are doing something fancy with downtime, you can even treat mapping the tunnels as a downtime activity.

Have them find some minor things -- maybe one of Ignaci's message caches is near one of the dead ends. You should be able to use the exploration as an avenue for social roleplay.

If they persist for too long, start assessing fatigue if they are trying to do this while also keeping up with the obligations as initiates. If they try to shortchange the latter, have someone have a very serious talk with them about their duties.

Anyway, that's my plan.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses! They will definitely help me sort this stuff out when we do finally get there.

Does anyone have a good sense of the timescale of this adventure? It seems kind of at war with itself, and I'm interested in any thoughts on how to resolve the conflict.

On the one hand, I kind of feel that even with accelerated progress, it should be a couple of years from being raised to attendants to lore-speakers. Janatimo even makes clear that studies take priority over investigation, suggesting the quite a bit of time can pass over the course of the adventure.

On the other hand, the events in the adventure seem pretty tightly coupled in time. Both of the investigations in chapter one follow directly from the end of _Kindled Magic_, in many cases assuming that a few days at most have passed. (And the PCs are to be raised to conversants a couple of weeks later, so possibly within a month of becoming attendants!) All of the events in chapter two are associated with the flooding of Asanda's Manor, and while people mention that a suspiciously long time has elapsed, there's a difference between "suspicious" and "they've literally been doing it for two years".

My current intention is to do enough rewriting that the events can span a year or two. Probably downplay people's opinions of Asanda for a while, only slowly coalescing into the specific complaint that he seems never to have gotten back to his duties after his house flooded. But I want to hear from others, to see if they consider the presented timeline a problem or if they think a different approach would be better.

Thanks!

With downtime "study", a character gains free feats and other advantages as described in Life in the Academy in a primary and second branch, is it right ?

It is in addition skill, class feats ... gained with level, is it right ?

Yes, branch benefits are in addition to normal character growth.

What is the needed downtime for the branch level?

Not specified in the AP, and I don't think you're going to get an official answer. Each Study check covers some months of attending classes; whether that equates to normal downtime and how much is up to the group to decide.

If a character already gained Dedicated Attendant 3rd for the primary branch, what do the character gain with the secondary branch at 3rd level?

Nothing; the branch benefit specifies that it is only gained the first time any branch reaches third level.

Hope that helps!

This has a lot of really neat ideas collected in one place, thank you!

I just want you to know that you're not alone: the calendar for my SoT campaign

Brb, updating the calendar module with cool new month names.

Has anyone else thought about how much downtime should be available in chapter 2? There's jobs available, other students have time to brew potions, and Study and Cram being downtime activities suggests that slackers could choose to spend their time otherwise.

I'm inclined to base the time until the first masking on the academic performance of the cohort -- say, once they all hit level 2 in their primary branch -- and to grant enough downtime for one study check per season. I feel pretty sure that they won't all manage that in just two seasons -- and if they do, that's an interesting story as well!

With that in mind, I'm currently thinking that a student that neglects their studies can spend three weeks of downtime per season on something else. There'll be social consequences if they coast too long or too obviously, but we'll have to see how that develops.

What do other people think? Too generous? Am I overthinking it? (I am definitely overthinking it.)