lambence's page

Also does anyone know what the "business hours" of the bank actually are and what time the characters start their planning. It says that they have 12 hours till the bank reopens in the morning, but it also states that it is assumed that the characters rob it during the daytime...

I kinda just went off the assumption that the bank would open at 8AM, meaning the adventure starts at about 8PM (which also makes sense with why there's only 4 hours to do some of the social Gather Information portions; midnight seems like a reasonable cutoff).

And since it's mentioned that the clockworks will be back from maintenance the following afternoon, I just had it in my head that they'll only be in trouble if they somehow delay until 12PM or later. That gives them 4 hours of daytime robbery.

Of course, my players decided to just leave immediately without doing any prep work, which might be partly my fault as I'm new to GMing Pathfinder and I wasn't really sure whether to explicitly tell them they can and should do those specific actions... but hey, it's a learning experience... :P

Ancient Void Dragon

Question: How is any of those gang members alive if they keep shooting themselves in gut? x'D

(That is one of worst places you could get shot at since it very likely results in extremely painful and unavoidable death)

That one is truly confusing and it's one of those weird tone problems I have with this so far. I would sincerely love to hear from someone who ends up using that action with a straight face without any of the players going "wait, what??". Kinda same for Dresh's "money distraction" one, but that one's just silly, so it gets a pass.

Anyone else have any thoughts about how to run the Sludgespine gnolls in chapter 1? I don't really understand the decision to have mutated gnolls from the Mana Wastes show up and be nothing but depraved serial killers, despite the potential for interesting elaboration on their condition. I'm disappointed by Paizo's decision to write these characters as purely evil sickos with no motivation after the level of nuance they were given in the Mwangi book.

My own thoughts are to maybe say they're trying to eke out a living in the scrapyard because most people in Alkenstar see them as gross monsters, the Nailgobblers want them gone because they're intruding and they're bad for business, but Bristlebane is uncompromising and ruthless and wants to drive out/kill the goblins, who are just another group of gatekeepers to her. I can see a lot of potential for an interesting and unconventional diplomatic encounter here so I'm curious if anybody else is thinking about this too!

(I admit I'm much less sure about what to do about the fungus leshies, for that one I'm probably just going to follow the book's advice to skip it assuming the group hasn't just breezed past everything else...)

So excited to run this along with the Foundry module!

Question: On pg 11 in Planning the Heist, the text reads, "If a character gets fewer than 8 hours of rest, they're fatigued the next day. If they get fewer than 4 hours of rest, they're exhausted." I see the condition fatigued, but not exhausted. What does exhausted entail? Thanks!

I looked all over for this as well and my conclusion is that I guess it's just a narrative descriptor? Kinda confusing when it's written right alongside an actual condition that exists, though. :S

Asking on a friend’s behalf: in Chapter 2, the “Escorting Gattlebee” section has a pretty significant geography snarl that’s throwing us both for a loop.

The whole section hinges on Bottleneck Bridge, a crossing over the Ustradi River that an enemy faction uses as a choke point. Escorting Gattlebee is supposed to take the inventor from his home in Steamhaven to a saloon in the Ferrous Quarter… which are both on the same side of the river. There’s actually no route I can make on the provided map that has any reason to cross the Ustradi, as all the pictured bridges lead away from their destination.

Any thoughts or help on this one?

Just to chime in (I'm said friend): We had the thought that the bridge spanning the big lake in Smokeside is actually the bridge the section is talking about, but if that is the case I'm curious as to why the players would choose to go that way instead of going around the lake when their scouting (and common sense) should yield that it's very clearly a great spot for an ambush.

That is to say nothing of the fact that it's a very straight shot from Gattlebee's house to the east wall of Ironside Quarter, where the brewery is specified to be, and that taking the bridge first for whatever reason would be an enormous detour.

EDIT: Also, the bridge on the map is like 50 feet across? Is that really how narrow the Ustradi is, if that's what the bridge is intended to be crossing? Using the scale reference on the map, every bridge looks to be... just eyeballing it, but at least 200 feet across? Sorry to harp on, but this bridge is just full of mysteries to me.