We recently made a small change to our credit card processing, and our system is now much more stringent about having the correct billing address (amongst other things). If you are having issues like this, try re-entering your payment information and make sure that the billing address you enter matches that to which your credit card bill is sent.
If you continue to have problems, let me know and I'll take a look when I'm in the office on Monday. :)
Thanks,.
cos
I can try to purchase the items again with the proper address, but right now I'm more concerned about the three charges that are still showing up as pending on my bank account. Since on the website they didn't go thru, I don't have an order number. How do I remove those charges?
I just got a new debit card and when I tried to use it to buy some paper minis, I was told it was declined. i thought I might have typed the wrong number,so i tried it a few times. However, according to my bank I've being charged for each attempt. I like you guys but i don't want to just give you my money. What do I need to do?
I just had the party get to Kaer Maga last night. I had them wait at the Twisted Door for an evening and mildly introduced the Cinderlander at the base. Then they went up the Halflight Path and into the Warrens. I had a lot of fun describing the craziness inside the city. I also suggested they go see the Augurs, Troll fortune tellers. Useful for giving the party some information about what's to come and to lead to a side quest I wanted to run.
My group seemed to have a lot of fun, and I love the City of Strangers book and was super happy to get a chance to use it.
Oh for more information on the city, the backup short story in Rise of the Runelords has a visit to Kaer Maga. I can't remember which volume that is, but the information in there would help. Those stories were collected in this Pathfinder Tale Here
Hope this helps. It's an awesome setting, you'll have fun with it.
Summoned monsters would be great, but it's looking like the pawns are going to take care of that. For me, I use plastic or metal for player characters, pawns from the Beginner's Box for summoned creatures, and paper minis for all villains.
I love the new trend of iconic versions of races. The Orcs and Halflings of Pathfinder sets. Honestly, Orcs and other evil minis are a bit more useful for me because I need them for villains. For whatever reason my players don't like using paper minis, so even though I got the Halfling set and Battle Studios mini sets, I haven't really used them much.
One area I might thing about is looking at Bestiary 2 and 3. Bestiary 1 is getting a pawn set, but if you want people fighting Dire Corbeys or Tenku, you're out of luck.
Pretty much what I want is to have access to any creature I might need. That makes it difficult to pick one specific creature.
Well life happened and so I didn't have time to paint the map, but it was still awesome and added so much to the game. I had three different groups as moving walls and teleporting kept splitting the party. Pretty awesome. I'm going to take a detour and spend some time adventuring in Kaer Maga before moving on the the next session. But here are my photos of the last game.
I continue my photos of paper minis/campaign journal with this part one of what honestly might be two sessions of Escape from Old Korvosa. Dependent on how my players react to the next section, this might be an extremely quick adventure. That's okay with me, but it's interesting.
Here are the photos of this week's game and some images of my styrofoam dungeon I'm working on for the next session. I'm super excited about that dungeon.
For the record, Blood Pig worked better in my mind than in game, but I was tired and maybe didn't do a good job of making my team work together. Oh well. At any rate: Photos
Well life got in the way and this final session got pushed back a bunch. But here we go, the last session of Seven Days to the Grave. It was fairly short, just two rooms, but two rooms of boss battles.
For some reason, I've always thought of Gnomes having extra large heads for their bodies. Regardless, I like Pathfinder's version, where the fey aspect comes in. It would give you a lot of freedom with hair and skin tone, maybe play up the forest spirit nature of them. I'm sure whatever you come up with will be awesome. Glad to see you back Tim.
Yet again you guys have come out with a great product. These look awesome and Jack you should be proud. I do have to point out that there is a bit of problem with the Tidewater Guards on page 9, some of the images don't match. That's all I noticed. Again great job.
Sorry I haven't been posting, with school and everything else, my life has been crazy. But today we got to play for a little bit. Should be finished with this adventure on the next game, we did most of the final temple today. The fight against the necromancer was awesome.
For some reason the order is backward, not sure why. But the photos still work. I used the 4th Ed D&D dungeon tiles today. Mainly because I didn't have time to make anything more interesting. These worked pretty well in the grand scheme of things.
Even though I might not be running this adventure anytime soon, I love how you guys were able to get this set ready so quickly. Between this and the Pawns set, Paizo has really done a great job of supporting this Adventure Path. Love it.
And for the record I was already interested in running this and now I'm even more so. Great job on the figures Jack.
I've run a number of your games at this point. I never preordered anything, but I would have bought everything Sinister put out. At least I don't think I did. It doesn't matter. I've never been upset or angered, I was, however, worried about you. That's the strange thing about gamers. At some point you begin to get attached to the creators and writers. I've never met Clarke Peterson, Bill Webb, or Greg Vaughan, but I've walked the dusty halls of Rappan Athuk, and looked out towards the city of Tsar. And I don't know James Jacobs, Richard Pett, you, or any of the other Paizo staff, but we've shared the village of Sandpoint, helped bring about fights with hillbilly Ogres and evil Queens against our beloved PC's together, and we all helped make a make believe world seem lived in together. Gamers have a strange attitude towards loyalty and togetherness. We're a fringe group and we have to stick together.
And for better or worse, the internet has changed us all. When I was a kid, Tolkien was a name on a book. Now Stan Sakai is my facebook friend. That's crazy. For the record: Usagi Yojimbo is the greatest story of a hardcore samurai rabbit known to man.
My point is that even though many of the people on this board might not ever meet you, we do have a bond. Each one of us understands each other in some geeky way.
Sorry if this is sappy. It's been one of those days.
It is good to see you back. Best of luck with everything and I hope to read your next adventure soon.
So after a mild break we gamed tonight and here are the photos. I know that this is a bit more of a campaign journal and is only sort of connected to the minis, but if no one is complaining....
So in this session the party went underwater, discovered a doctor that wore a cultist amulet, and they found a box that explained who he was. They left the body in the ship. However, the real proof of wrong doing, that connects the cult to the doctors and Davaulus was lost when they opened it underwater. After fighting the sea hag, which was awesome, they came back to the city.
Days before, they had asked Abadar priest Ishani to research the plague. He left them a note that he had discovered something important and might lead to a cure. After the ship, excited about their discovery, they find the priest dead, assassinated and altered so that he could not be raised. His jaw bone had been removed to make it impossible to cast speak with dead. At this point they start asking questions about the doctors and Davaulus. They find out that one of their party members (who had to work tonight) had gotten sick and under orders by a new decree had to be sent to the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden. They rested and then came to get their friend back.
They attempted to sneak in, but things went awry. This fight was awesome. I hated that the Grey Maidens, characters set up so well, had worse fighting abilities than the head nurse in the building. So I bumped them all up to fifth level and gave two of them magic weapons. The doctors were all fifth level Alchemists. This one put them on their toes. I told them that from this point on, the game gets real. Hope you live.
By the end of the fight, two characters went below 0, but no one died. Lots of fun.
After this, they fought upstairs and defeated but did not kill Devaulus. What they haven't thought about yet is that even though they are right and the doctor's are the bad guys, they have no proof. Once the city watch shows up, if they haven't found the Temple of Evil below them, Devaulus will have them arrested for murder. It's their word against his, and all the witnesses can say that the party attacked a hospital and that the guards defended themselves. All the evidence they have is really weak. I figure attacking/killing the Queen's Doctors and the Grey Maidens is a crime of treason and punishable by death. Of course Grau will help them escape on the way to jail. Then they have to sneak back in to the Hospice and find real proof. Next week should be fun.
I've used the Crit and Fumble cards for a while and I love them. The Condition deck is a must have as well. These make every game much easier. One GM friend of mine had a creature that he created that gave out random status effects, Condition cards made that fight super fun and mildly ridiculous.
I have the item cards and I agree that they add a lot of time and not having the right card for everything does effect the ability to really use them. I went out and got a baseball card holder that you would put in a binder and had all the potions I needed which helped for a while. In the end I stopped caring and stopped using them.
The chase cards are awesome, but limited to only the moments when you have a chase. But my players really had fun with this. So much that I added a few extra chases just to use the deck. It's like a fun minigame in the middle of the story.
I've never used the Face cards, but they seem like they would be helpful.
Sort of, that was a summon monster 3 Demon. I didn't have a good mini, so I grabbed a random Beginner's Box pawn. Which by the way, a Sum Mon mini set would be really useful. I'm just saying.
First off, I somehow missed your last post, so not only do I have a worldworks mansion, I'm showing it off now. We just did this section of the game and man was it fun.
Okay, so like last game I gave them two options, go to the ship or try to find a young ladies missing brother. Like good adventurers they went to look for the brother, thinking this should be easy. Ha super fools!
This fight was so fun. I made all the zombies more powerful using the fast and zombie spawn ability, so anyone who dies becomes a zombie. I also increased their HP to 24.
I made Jolistina attack them and then drink invisibility potions (but always out of sight, which made them think she was teleporting around) On her first attack I forgot to do sneak attack. She critically hit, so it still did +20 damage to the wizard. Adding +3D6 might have killed him dead. But it didn't. From then on it was her roaming the house sending in zombies whenever possible. I even had her go out the front door cast jump and reenter on the second floor and sneak attacking the Cleric. (twice)
It all ended when they killed everything else and went after her. She ended up using her insane spell added Jump to get to the roof. Everyone that could raced around trying to get her. Best moment is when the fighter types took damage to jump back down after her. She casts Entangle (I gave her the Fey bloodline) and then she immediately jumped back on the roof. They hated her but seemed to love the fight.
So this is a continuation of my photo record of my Crimson Throne game. I made a collection of images from the first part of the adventure, and finally I'm continuing it here.
Our first game was all set up and I had players complain that there wasn't enough fighting. So on this session I had non-stop action.
The maps I used were from the Streets of Malifaux and Buildings of Malifaux sets by Worldworks and Wryd Games. The other is a Sewer Map for Wizards 4th Ed. There is a Sewer of Malifaux, which is awesome, but this was faster to have at the game.
Spoiler game details:
We went a bit out of order, I gave them the option of seeking out why bodies weren't coming in from North Point, leading them to the Vamps, or to go speak to the mysterious Yelloweyes at a shady tavern. They went with Yelloweyes and the sewers of Korvosa. Fun fights with lots of Wererat death. They tried not to kill them, but it happens.
After that they went up and fought the Vamps. I was going to try to get one more fight in, but we started late and it got too late.
I try to let players use one type of mini (maybe painted plastic or metal) and then use paper minis for villains. I've been using pawns for animal companions or summoned monsters. That's been working pretty well recently.
Wow. Jack, these look awesome. This weekend were starting Seven Days to the Grave, so I have a while before I get to these bad boys. But man they look great.
They're from Skeleton Key Games. I really like their stuff. I discovered them when I was running a Ptolus game. I like Worldwork's 3D elements, but these are still great (and fairly cheap) tiles. Also the modular aspect of them worked out really well.
Well, this one was super fun. I really wanted to complete everything in the Dead Warrens and do the final scene in one sitting, so the game went a bit long. It was still really fun. The party had a lot of trouble with the Derro. They burned up so many Magic Missile and Cure Light Wounds charges on their wands it was ridiculous. But by the end they were beaten and nearly killed off a number of times. But they survived. Thus far they really seem to be enjoying the game and I think their realizing how bad the Queen is. I changed BlackJack to the Nightingale due to my love of Skyrim, and they love everything about him thus far.
I know some people disliked the railroady moments such as his rescue of Sabor, but my group didn't seem to mind. If they did they were quiet about it. Having it happen right after a long dungeon crawl really helped. They were out of spells and felt betrayed by the system, since they wanted to speak at her trial. I had been setting up Nightingale since the first game so it was a great way to really show him off. Sadly I was a little tired, so I could have done a better job of describing him. Oh well.
Went up against Devargo and the Eel's End. It was really awesome. First, the party Rogue tried to be sneaky and attempted to get past a guard by seducing him, instead she ended up in a one on one fight that ended when she jumped overboard, grabbed the side of the deck and kept hidden. Meanwhile the rest of the party totally messed up their conversation with the King of Spiders, and ended up fighting a whole bunch of thugs and spider creatures. They killed Chittersnap and threw Devargo into the pit where he was eaten by Dream Spiders. A fitting end.
Then we played the chase minigame (using the Chase Deck). Everyone really enjoyed this section. The Eel's End fight was epic and they needed something like this. They liked the story element of this (as the Magus is already acting like Trina's protector) and we loved the silliness of the Chase deck (falling off the rooftop and running into a befuddled baker or spooked horse was super fun). Note: I pulled all the cards that I felt wouldn't be on a rooftop and made anyone interested in a street race use the leftovers. The party Ranger rolled so well on his Handle Animal that he got on the horse and rode down the street (and kept the horse)
Here's the photos from today's game. The ship is a Worldworks Game paper ship. I've had it for forever, and this was definitely the best use of it I've ever had.
These look awesome. Really great work on this set, this one in particular and the whole series together. Can't wait to see which set Todd works on next.
The characters are now all level 2. You can read more about them on our website: Link
Sadly, I forgot to bring Verik's Mini, and had to go with a different one, a mini that one of my players was using, but switched out for a new one.
story spoiler:
The gang seemed to have a really good time, and they really liked Verik. It helps that he's one of my favorite NPC's. In the end, they confronted him, but never fought. They are thus far falling into all the right traps. Love it. Hopefully I'll have Eel's End next week.
I'm running this adventure right now and I have an elven ranger in the party and he's working out great. We had him come from Bloodsworn Vale, with the idea that due the events in that game, his forest has been reduced, leaving his small village a very small group of people. Then I had a group of villains from later in the story wipe out his village in order to obtain a magical item. Now he's in town looking for revenge. Don't let the city aspect stop you. Even in a major city, there are places for wilderness.
Sorry the photo quality is bad. My Ipad makes a better computer than it does a camera.
The players have been loving the minis by the way. The Otyugh made the night oh so special. The map is from the Streets of Malifaux. What a great resource.
This one fight was really interesting. Started with six thugs attacking a young noblewoman, protected only by a drunken guardsman. The party was having issues with the thugs, and the Otyugh almost took them out. It was a lot of fun.
Next they went to the castle and meet some people of the royal persuasion. Next up: Joining the Guards!
Sort of. I was able to use a ton of minis for the beginning of Rise of the Runelords (multiple goblins, I added some Hellknights, the Burnt Offering set you did, and a few customs), but by the time all the sets had come out, life and school got in the way and I had to stop. Similar things happened with Legacy of Fire. I wish I had thought to take pictures.
Most of the minis I've used were from other sets on games that I've just run on my own, and I use the Battle Studio minis for PC's. But honestly I just use whatever works. This is the first time that I'm running a story and the minis should be all ready to be printed and used by the time I need them, which I'm super excited about. I'm a visually person, I really like to have something to look at and use. It both makes the game more like a board game, and more realistic sort of all at once for me. Besides, I love the looks of the minis.
And I've been super happy with all the Worldworks stuff, but the Streets/Buildings/Sewers of Malifaux and just awesome. Between them and your minis, I was really pushing this adventure. I'm so happy I decided to do this one.
The game went really well and the players are super excited to get together next week, so hopefully this campaign will last. I'm in grad school working on my MAT in English Ed, so when I'm not in class at the University, I'm in a high school teaching. It makes doing anything that doesn't directly lead to graduating that much harder to do. That said, this is what I do for fun, and I kind of need rpgs in my life.
That's a good idea! He could try recruiting them for a 'business venture' he's coming up with. He'd probably be happy they got rid of back-alley competition like Lamm.
You could also have the Arkonas or the Carowyns show up earlier. Maybe spread rumors about the Cinderlander or the Cindermaw as early as you can too.
Yeah I think I'll have Arkonas be at the palace when the party shows up with the brooch. Cindermaw and Cinderlander might be too far for them to hear about, but once they leave the city, maybe. But that's a while from now. Due to a background idea of one of the players, I got to introduce Lady Andaisin. I had the cult of Urgathoa attack the ranger's village and kill his leaders, stealing the Crucible of Life, a holy object that they can corrupt and use to create various plague based badness later in the story. I thought this would be a good reason to bring him to the city and sets up that section a little better.
Yeah I'm starting with Edge, but I'm going to try to bring elements from later sections in early, such as Pilts from Old Korvosa. He's just going to show up and talk to one of the PC's. I haven't figured out what they will talk about yet.
Looks great Jack. Tomorrow I'm starting this AP again. I barely got going with it last time, but I feel pretty confident this one will stick. I'll bring my camera and take pictures of the paper minis in action.
The Cindermaw looks amazing by the way. Can't wait to see the next set. Scarwall should be a lot of fun.
I guess it could work, as long as their really careful to work together in what each witch can do. One focus on healing, one of damaging and so forth.
If they fight anything with magic resistance they'd be in a lot of trouble, I'd think.
My big question would be for the story, I guess a coven could care about the plight of Ameiko and the Jade Regent, it just feels weird to me. Maybe they could be Varisian Caravan witches?
Overall, I feel when players get cute, the ideas only last one or two sessions before they get bored with it. That would be my concern. Do you see this witches coven going to 16th level?
If I were you and your friends, I'd return to the beginner box and do the adventure as written one more time. One thing to keep in mind is that the adventure is not a traditional adventure, but a rules tutorial. It's not trying to give you a strong motivation of why you are looking for Black Fang, instead it's trying to teach you how to play.
Also, even though I think it's great that you had access to the Core book, not using the beginner box premade characters on this adventure most likely is a bad idea. The Monk for example is a much harder class to play than the Fighter. And I'm not going to say that the premade characters are perfect, but they are solid characters and I love the rules sidebars on the character sheet. Where the rogue character comes with the rules for Flanking for example. If nothing else, have those rules right in front of you. Not only do they speed up play, but they remind you to do other things than just roll dice.
The next part goes into the stats of the premade characters and the goblins. It talks about how the premades should work against the goblins and gives away some DM information about the adventure.
Spoiler:
The fact that you guys had so much trouble hitting sounds like something was off. The first two Goblins you fight at the entrance only have an AC 13. The premade Fighter has a +5 to hit with his longsword (in the character sheet the have a +4, they forgot his Weapon focus feat --a silly mistake on Paizo's part). He should be able to hit these guys with a roll of 8 or higher. Now he's the best combat character, but the Rogue has a +3 to hit and it's highly suggested on his character sheet to flank, giving him sneak attack damage. But it also gives him a +2 to hit. So when flanking, the rogue is as good in combat as the Fighter. And if he's flanking with the Fighter, both characters gain a +2 to hit. So in the first combat the Fighter might be able to hit these goblins with a roll of 6.
Now I will admit that the next goblin fight is harder. Not only are there more to fight, but the AC goes up to 16, the only AC higher in the adventure belongs to the main boss. But the fighter should still be able to hit on a roll of 11, lowered to 9 with Flanking or Charging. And as mentioned above, this fight can be avoided.
Also all these rolls are with normal weapons, the adventure has masterwork and magical weapons that give at least a +1 to hit.
And on the flip side, the goblins (all of them) only have a +2 to hit. The Fighter has an AC 17 (notice he hasn't equipped his shield which would bring his AC up to 19 --another mistake--who worked on this fighter? grrr). That means that every goblin in the adventure will only hit the fighter on rolls of 17 or higher. They of course can also flank and charge. The rogue has AC 16, the cleric an AC 14 (note: I would have given the cleric a shield to improve this, but whatever), and the Wizard an AC 10. So while the goblins could hit the Rogue and Cleric, the Wizard is the only one that should almost always get hit. That should also tell you how close the Wizard should ever get to a creature.
So let's take a closer look at the spellcasters. The wizard has a number of combat abilities, everything from a low level area effect spell (burning hands). This spell needs to be cast early in the fight to avoid hitting other party members, but a d4 to all creatures in a fight can be significant. Many of the low level creatures only have 6 hit points. This is the only spell that the wizard has to be close to cast, with his AC of 10, you'll want to spend most of the game at a distance. And the wizard has a ton of ranged single enemy spells. Magic Missile that can't miss, Hand of the Apprentice that allows him to fight as well as the Rogue from 30' away, and Ray of Frost (which honestly will miss more often than it hits, but it hits on Touch AC, which is almost always lower and he can cast it all day long).
The cleric sucks in combat. With a +1 to hit, expect to miss. However, if you flank with the rogue, you both gain +2 to hit, which helps. And frankly, hitting with your sword isn't you goal. You can cast a group heal 6 times a day, heal the dying 6 times a day, and you have Bless (+1 to all allies) and Protection from Evil (+2 against evil and almost all the creatures in the adventure are evil). And there are at least two moments in the adventure that were designed to be defeated by this character. One involves Undead (group heal is also a group harm to undead) and the other is the large goblin fight. The cleric is the only one with a good Diplomacy skill. With a roll of 10, the character can not only avoid the fight, the party also gets a ton of useful information about the dungeon. Not to mention that the spellcasters have Knowledge skills that can help in various moments of the game.
So take a good look at your characters and see if they have stats better or worse than the premade. If your characters aren't as capable as these, try to figure out why not. What ability scores, equipment, spells, or feats do these characters have that your characters didn't.
Check out the first three Adventure Paths, early in Crimson Throne, they give more details on native Varisians (part 1, Edge of Anarchy), later they talk about Shoanti Barbarians (Part 4 A History of Ashes).
The Adventure Paths really are designed to let you get to know the Pathfinder setting slowly. The first three are the major locations of Varisia, and then they move out into other areas. And since both the first part of Jade Regent and the Beginner Box start in Sandpoint, you learn a bit more about it there as well. The Player Guides are filled with useful info, and they're all free.
The Inner Sea Guides are good, but they have more information than you will need. At least that's how I feel. That said, the section on races and gods is super useful no matter what city you start in and it will give you a stronger concept of all the areas. The recent Faiths of ____ are really great and give you a good idea of how to use the faiths in game.
I started with Rise without knowing any more than what the AP told me and me and my players had a blast. Knowing everything is great, but you won't use most of that info in one adventure.
Personally, I'd love to see you guys work on both ends at the same time. So a Jade Regent or Skulls and Shackles set. That would also cut down the redundancy with the paper mini line. But in the end, I'll support it regardless.
Oh and for the people concerned about bases, I hope you are aware that a number of companies have already created the exact product you're looking for. Unless Paizo is planning on putting some Pathfinder spin on it, I'd think the bases that come with the Beginner Box or Bestiary Box should cover people's needs.
Dude, these look great. Awesome job. I love what you did with all of the large sized creatures. They just look great. Something as simple as a Water Elemental can really make a difference.
And I love your red mantis minis. Keep it up. This was an adventure path i started and never really did anything with. For a variety of reasons we never got past the first part of the story. Your minis are making me want to revisit this adventure. Regardless, so many of these minis work in a number of urban settings, so even if I never come back to it I see them showing up in my games.
For the record, what impresses me the most about this product is that when the Beginners Box came out a thread was started saying how much they liked the Pawns in the box. And then they made more.
It can be difficult for a company to be connected enough with their customers that they can find out what people want and then create it for them. Will everyone be happy? No. Someone will want this and others won't want that. But as one of the people that asked for this product, I'm really glad you're making it. It's like it's for me.
I ordered the Fantasy Flight Plastic Stands and I can use them with the Beginner Box pawns with no problem. Honestly they work a bit better because they'e just a tad bigger and they are easier to get on and off. But not so much that they will fall off.
And you only need as many stands as the maximum number of creatures in one area. So for example in the beginner box adventure, you only need five-six stands to run the game.
