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Yeah, ghosts can be nasty. I based it on the Poltergeist, which also has natural invisibility! Looking back, lowering the damage was probably a good call. I've recalculated it and 2d12+3 would be just about right.

Neat! I've been running the adventure path using the playtest rules from the beginning, and my group just killed Ibzairiak as well! I'm taking a week off to prepare the stats for the next book. Here's the only monster from book 3 that I've converted so far, if you want to use it.

You used my Roll20 picture! Cool! Sorry you couldn't remove the wall of blades.

Starfinder's Adventuring Classes Are All Varying In Design; Envoys Treated Like Bards Are Annoyed.

A Career As A Very Important Drift Engine Technician Looks Bright And Appealing.

All Captured Audio And Video Information Doesn't Explain The Last Battle At All.

I've developed a whole gigantic list of houseruled spells. For example, Flesh to Stone gradually petrifies you over a few rounds, Possession grants another save with a cumulative +1 bonus for every 2 points of damage per caster level the target takes, and other characters can dive into a Maze spell to try to rescue the target.

I'm still impressed that this AP seemed to actually pull off high-level RPG horror. Congratulations to everyone who made it through!

I've finished the campaign. It was a lot of fun and, while I tweaked details here and there, I didn't feel like I had to make any large-scale changes.

I really felt that moving the Pallid Mask fight to the end of the adventure was a good thing. I started out the fight with him just taunting the PCs while not taking any damage from them. An especially good moment was when they used their Gem of Seeing to discover that he was real but the PCs themselves were not! That of course lead into the out-of-phase part.

Being thrown out of existence was pretty awesome and terrifying for them. I tried to make it as hopeless as possible, only allowing them to make their way to the Asylum with extreme effort, a unique bardic masterpiece, some divine intervention, and a wish. Once there, the Advanced Bythos fight was a bit underwhelming mechanically but was still exciting enough.

After returning to the tower they fought the Pallid Mask who was exceptionally tricky. The Horrific Revelation ability was tough to describe but in the end I went with him leaning on the fourth wall and describing how they were all figments of someone else's imagination. I also gave him the Mirage Arcana / Yellow Sign trick from the Shrike Worms. Improved/Greater Feint wasn't strong enough to use so I gave him Weapon Focus / Quarterstaff Master instead so he could use his touch attack at the same time.

The big final fight went pretty well, although many of the spells Ariadnah was using I have had to houserule in the past to make less unfun. I also had to make clear the the Star Seed is the final boss and she was just a side character trying to take advantage of the situation.

One thing I think was important was to emphasize just how hard it is to get out of Carcosa. I established that if you die in Carcosa, Hastur gets your soul instead of going to any afterlife. The whole adventure was supposed to be a suicide mission, and even then have a very small chance of working. I also added an army of monsters swarming towards the PCs during the final battle to emphasize the hopelessness. Horror in high-level play is really hard, but I think that it managed to happen here. They did manage to escape back to Golarion (barely) by commandeering the witch's ritual with DC 50 knowledge (arcana) and spellcraft checks just before being torn apart.

It was a fun adventure, everyone had fun. Dreams of the Yellow King was everyone's favorite part, while the middle parts of The Thrushmoor Terror and What Grows Within didn't have clear enough goals. Other favorite elements included the Tatterman, the Keeper, fighting Xhamen-Dor's husk, Paris, and being erased from existence.

Well, there's the monster creation guidelines and the Great Old One subtype. The important points to figure out (beyond ordinary monster creation) seem to be their unique method of immortality, their unspeakable presence aura, and under what circumstances they can send out nightmares.

I've finshed up Bohlvarai and Paris and am now preparing for the finale.

I had to remove most of the encounters in Bohlvarai to play up the desolate atmosphere (plus they skipped the caves with teleportation). It was a lot of fun to play up the sheer weirdness of the place. I had fun with the Elder Thing archivists viewing the PCs as barely sapient until convinced otherwise. I played the Mutate as extremely cautious, setting off traps at the PCs and running away a lot. I also described it as spontaneously developing new abilities on the fly based on things it saw, which was fun.

I managed to keep the nature of Paris a secret up until the Eiffel Tower was first mentioned by pronouncing it as "PAH-REE." One of the PCs ran Rasputin Must Die a while back, so I managed to drop in a reference to the Russian Revolution by talking about the Ballets Russes. One of the PCs managed to psychically control a radio through Telepathic Bond, knowledge (engineering), and a book on electronics taken from Bohlvarai. They ended up using it in the theater to insult Armel to get him away from his guards and used a Wall of Force to fight him alone. Also, the bard learned the Charleston.

I had a lot of fun with the Bhole encounter. I've been allowing them to drastically speed up the ritual by taking a -20 penalty to the skill checks (the investigator is super good at them) and they barely managed to hold it off long enough to finish the ritual (while feather-falling!) and run away. I had fun with the Roll20 map and music as well.

I plan to finish this campaign next session. They are currently wondering how things could possibly get any weirder.

I've been awarding Hero Points to PCs when roleplaying their personality gets them into trouble, or when I have an enemy exploit a personality trait. I haven't been giving Hero Points for anything else. It's worked okay, allowing the players to knowingly make bad decisions and suffer the consequences without actually increasing the death toll. I also tried having them describe how their personality strengths help them when they SPEND the hero points, but that hasn't worked nearly as well.

For example, in the most recent session, one of the PCs was overly curious and slowed down to look over his shoulder at a Shoggoth. I gave him a hero point after he failed his save against confusion. A bit later, he spent the hero point in order to dramatically and barely escape from the Shoggoth's grapple just before being engulfed. Much fun all around.

On the mechanical side, however, part of the fun is figuring out how to use what your class is good at in new and interesting situations. This doesn't work if your class "just so happens" to be perfectly suited to the situation from the very beginning (because they were built that way by a genre-savvy player). You also don't want a class that is so poorly suited to the situation that there IS no way for them to contribute.

You want a middle ground, where the PCs are competent, but are thrust into new and surprising situations. Different groups of players will need different solutions. In my campaign, for example, I allowed a player to play as a Psychic Detective, but didn't allow him to put ranks in Knowledge (planes) or learn Aklo until he could justify it in-game. You have to use your judgement to put the PCs out of their element while still allowing them to shine.

I wouldn't recommend giving the players a reading list, although the GM should read these. Think of the references as sort of a bonus for people who have read the books, but they aren't the point of the adventure. The game should be able to stand on its own merits.

The other thing about the references is that they can work in reverse! After the campaign is complete, I believe that many of my players will read these books and enjoy them more for having some first-hand experience with the things referenced.

If the players are unfamiliar with the genre entirely, though, it may be worthwhile to have them read a single short story just so they can understand what sorts of things to expect. The Call of Cthulhu seems to be a good choice for this.

Erich Zann himself shows up near the end of the campaign, but this viol doesn't actually foreshadow that in any logical way. I just removed it from my game.

No. The only thing from Horror Adventures in Strange Aeons are a very few scattered spells and archetypes, and some optional references to the sanity and fear systems.

Just to chime in, I am NOT using any sanity rules but every PC has been driven insane at least once in this campaign anyway.

Finished Aevan-Vhor with good results. I played it as a pretty plot-heavy session, swapping out a number of monsters in favor of more focus on partygoing and intrigue.

One of the PCs had a pocketwatch, so I used it as an excuse to let them know exactly how much time was passing. The first part of the session was an exciting race against the clock to get Delmaria out. They ended up taking the harder route of helping her enjoy everything at the party so she'd be more likely to listen when they convince her to leave early. At the end Avaric himself came in to convince her to stay, but they managed to convince her to go anyway.

After that, they returned with a message from Eldarius to Avaric to release the musician, but Avaric feigned suspicion and asked for Eldarius to come himself (which he can't do because he's a ghost). This stalled the PCs long enough for the Bleeding Moon to start and all the undead to attack the town. The PCs hid and infiltrated the Manor while everyone was gone, found the dungeons, and fought some monsters.

At this point I was running out of time so I skipped the memory-loss part entirely (been there done that) and only used Oromith the Nemhain. The PCs had a ton of trouble with the combination of anti-life shell and hit-and-run tactics.

When the PCs went to get Zann's instrument, they found Avaric waiting for them ("Looking for this?") and fought him while he monologued. The adventure book didn't really go into his plans or motivations much so I had to figure something out on my own.

His goal was that he wanted to expand his control. He's trying to take over the Paris nexus by backing Armel the Leng Ghoul after Zann fortuitously fell into his hands. Avaric is the one who gave Armel his Vorpal greataxe. Zann is kept alive for now so Avaric can get information about Paris and Carcosa in general out of him.

After he got to low health he challenged them by claiming that without him in charge, the Aevan-Vhor nexus would be overrun by monsters. Was this nexus really as bad as the other, barren ones they passed through? Is undeath really a sin when the alternative is having your soul consumed by Hastur? His arguments actually managed to convince the party to make a deal with him where they wouldn't interfere with each other. The fate of the Paris Nexus is still up in the air, though.

Warning: Shadow Demons are extremely hard for their CR. In order to keep the adventure focused, I'd move one of the existing monsters over there instead and use it to lead them in the right direction somehow. Perhaps the Keeper of the Yellow Sign, the Penanggalen, or the Star Vampire.

They are the Sarkorian godstones created by Ariadnah. They don't end up being important to the story. From the Thurshmoor Terror:

Amid its woods and rocks, she raised three new godstones, each attuned to a particular entity: the Lord of the Woods, Shadix Who Dreams, and the Tatterman.

Ran the first session of this adventure, which was pretty crazy. I had a lot of fun playing the Pallid Mask, figuring out what each PC was after and showing them how they could achieve it through Hastur. In the end I had him and Cassilda destroy each other for now instead of having the party fight him because I want to use him in the finale instead.

After that, I emphasized the sheer danger and weirdness of the place. While they were just looking for a place to rest, going through the "Adjacent Nexuses" section in the bestiary, I threw powerful monsters at them (Plankta, Annihilator, etc.) while they ran away.

Once in Aevan-Vhor, I menaced them a bit more with the death coach (which successfully killed someone) and a gallowdead. I tried to emphasize the danger that they haven't yet learned the rules of this place, which ended up being both funny and scary.

What I'm having trouble with is figuring out exactly what Avaric is doing with Erich Zann. He's keeping him in a weakened state... why? What's his plan??

Slavery is illegal in Ustalav I'm pretty sure. I carefully chose a single PC to have the slavery background who had really low charisma and no marketable skills, so he couldn't go anywhere else. I also made clear that Lowls wasn't particularly horrible at first, especially compared to Weiralai. He just needed a test subject.

Not sure why this is in this thread.

Are you looking for feedback?

Having three factions (cult, coven, and Skum) may dilute the story quite a bit. I like a lot of these changes, but try to keep the story focused on a single "horror," in this case the cult and their machinations, as much as you can. The scary thing about a conspiracy is that you never know who could be one of them; it's fun to play that up.

I liked the picture but just shopped out Ariadnah. You could also just use the picture of Thrushmoor as a teaser, which is less exciting but gives away less.

You could replace Daridela Cornett with a green hag if you really wanted. Hand wave the plant powers and tie it into Winter being a changeling or something. Don't think it adds much, though.

In PZO90114 Interactive Map.pdf, the second-to-last map (J and L) retain their grid even after pressing the "Grid Off" button. The other maps are fine. Can I get a grid-free version of this map?

I just finished the adventure with my group. I ended up tweaking the adventure to give it a few more twists and turns. I fortuitously established way back in The Thrushmoor Terror that the Star Stelae rituals tend to cause earthquakes. I then allowed the PCs to attempt the Path to the Black Stars ritual halfway through the adventure only to have it be interrupted by Weiralai. The resulting earthquakes were what caused the Flying Polyps to break loose and require resealing. Once they had finished resealing them, the polyps that had already escaped sacrificed themselves to Xhamen-Dor so the PCs had to draw him out and defeat him before he finished digesting them and returned to full power. I only revealed that Lowls was carrying the Star Seed (and pledged himself to Hastur while carrying it) after "Xhamen-Dor" simply died instead of shooting off into space.

I ended up skipping most of the undercity in favor of extending the final fight. The PCs had to fight the flying polyps, a bunch of seeded, and then the husk without time to rest. I made the individual encounters a little easier to compensate for the added difficulty, having the second flying polyp appear only after two rounds and removing the husk's bite attack.

I had some fun with the final confrontation with the seeded of Neruzavin as well. I used the Speaker for the Deep but played him defensively and gave him the ability to telepathically call more seeded into the fight as a standard action. I got the chance to use several encounters I had skipped earlier, including the Speaker, the seeded prophets/stalkers, and the seeded quelea swarm. I also used Xhamen-Dor's aura of no-dex-bonus-to-AC here. Once the fight was mostly over, Xhamen-Dor began to rise and I switched the aura to the walk-this-way aura, causing the remaining seeded to be eaten.

The PCs dropped a modified lightning gun into the water and defended it from the seeded to annoy Xhamen-Dor into fighting. The ranged DPS (kineticist) got completely messed up by its aura but tanked quite a bit of damage while unconscious, the melee DPS was buffed to the point that he could actually bypass its DR and nearly brought it down, and the skill monkey managed to use telekinesis, knowledge (engineering), and craft (traps) to drop a building on it to finish it off.

Just out of curiosity, which encounters did you/will you cut?

I ran the entirety of Okeno in one session, skipping the entire div sidequest. I didn't give them level 13 until they reached Neruzavin, after the Old Obsidian fight. Between that, the fact that this adventure covers only two levels instead of three, and the extra NPC-based session, I am not actually needing to skip much this adventure.

So far, the only real change I've made so far was merging the three plant fights in the tower into one, based on the events of the mercenary-party session: Thala, Keetos, Kelshan, a nulmind, and some terrain advantage at CR 15.

I just ran an experimental one-shot session from the point of view of the doomed mercenaries Lowls hired. The players really seemed to like the change of pace and intensity even though their characters all died in various horrible ways. It also let me subtly set up a lot of later encounters and bought me time to build up the tension slowly in the next few sessions.

As for speed, I've also had to remove pointless encounters to keep things moving. I've found a good rule of thumb is to focus mostly on the illustrated encounters. Also, I try to pace out each session to have a specific sub-goal with its own climax, which really helps it feel like things are moving forward. For example, the sub-goals I've planned out for this adventure (each taking exactly one session) are:
- Reach Neruzavin
- Find Lowls's camp
- Activate the other two Star Stelae
- Explore the undercity
- Reach the Inner Seal
- Save the world twice

My party's pyrokineticist just burned the thing at range while the bard kept the survivors calm with a really good perform (act) check. He even managed to work the screaming into the performance.

I just finished the Mysterium. I focused on trying to make the ending more satisfying. I had Kaklatath emphasize that they never had a chance to catch Lowls here because there are larger forces in play here. I also explained that Kaklatath can't tell them where to go next because it would cause a time-loop and it isn't in good enough shape to handle that right now; it only knows about the PCs because it looked into the future of Neruzavin, so it can't be the reason they get there. Instead, I concealed the knowledge of Lowls's next destination (Okenko) until they reached the Keeper, who, out of shame, telepathically showed Lowls's escape through a portal with Okenko obviously in the background. The Keeper rationalized killing the PCs as preventing knowledge of Xhamen-Dor from spreading further. Lastly, I let them ask three questions of Kaklatath after the fight due to the stronger presence of Xhamen-Dor and consequently stronger telepathic connection inside the Soul. Overall, I think this ended up being much more satisfying than "Whoops, Lowls got away, too bad."

I drew out the rotating-ring Soul Puzzle and the players had a lot of fun playing with it. Here are the files if anyone wants them. Put a black dot on the left (for destruction) and a white dot on the right (for creation). 1 2 3

Also, one of the PCs' dream-doubles defeated his respective PC, went around as a second personality for a while, has just been evicted from the PC's mind, became an Alter Ego, has formed his own rival party, and is trying to become Xhamen-Dor's champion himself.

I'm struggling to plan out Okenko as it doesn't seem to have any way to realistically threaten level 12 PCs and almost nothing there has a decent ranged attack or flight. I think I'll add the recurring villains in there somewhere.

I feel that I may as well contribute the Doppelganger corruption a high-charisma PC contracted from the Tatterman in the final session of In Search of Sanity. I probably need to add some higher-level corruptions but it never progressed to that point. This probably won't see much use...

If they are supposed to be that difficult, why don't their challenge ratings reflect that? It's a trap for GMs.

I just finished the final session, by the way. I customized and tweaked a bunch of stuff specifically for my party and it was really fun. I made custom "alternate builds" for each of the PCs (based on overhearing their level-up discussions) instead of the template thing, which they thought was really cool. Probably the most interesting boss fight I've seen in an adventure path.

Glower was way too easy, though, so I reworked it into more of a hostage situation to play to her strengths.

I just finished running the Lunar Prison which went really well, but yeah I've had to nerf some stuff too. An Adult Nightmare dragon is listed as CR 10 but has the stats of a CR 13(!) monster, which makes her stronger than her own bosses and APL+4, which is unfair.

A few of the bigger balance changes I made:

ANIMATE DREAM: Remove spell resistance. Lower charisma by 2 points, changing stats to 19 AC, 78 HP, and lowering all save DCs by 1. Its melee attack does mind-affecting damage that bypasses DR (like Mind Thrust), not negative energy damage. An affected creature may make a will save (DC 20) to take half damage. If this save is failed, the creature becomes fatigued. If the creature is already fatigued it becomes exhausted. Only if it is already exhausted is it afflicted with Nightmare Curse.
(Apply the advanced template on top of this. This version still killed two PCs and cursed one.)

ADULT NIGHTMARE DRAGON: Change to Young Adult. This makes her closer to actually being CR 10. I also changed her name to the female form "Orsephellia."

FORMLESS SPAWN: I didn't end up running this but it has way too many impossible-to-bypass defenses and a little too much offense. Remove the spell resistance, the DR, and one tentacle attack.

13. Some of the details of Lowls' last trip to steal the Necronomicon are unclear. Did he bribe Lythiin to tell him how to open the Key of the Soul? (I assume Lythiin would do that as he tells the PCs despite not knowing who they are and that information being the deepest secret he can keep.) Once in the Soul, Lowls broke the chain, triggering the wards. Presumably the Keeper showed up then (instead of being on constant guard, which would in theory have allowed it to wipe the Necronomicon's pages clean though in practice that power wouldn't work on an artifact) and got corrupted, but Lowls decided to bail anyway. The adventure specifies that he Teleports away. But surely the Dimensional Lock would have been triggered with the rest of the wards? If it got warped, why is it normal now? Did he use the unspecified method of exiting the Soul and then teleport, and if so, why didn't the Keeper use that method as well to exit?

My interpretation is that Lowls researched the Necronomicon over several days while the Keeper watched him and detected his thoughts. This allowed Xhamen-Dor to subtly corrupt the archon and, through him, the rest of the Mysterium's wards. The dimensional lock must have been corrupted to allow whoever Xhamen-Dor chooses through. Xhamen-Dor can't 100% control the Keeper yet so he keeps him trapped there to guard against the wards being reset.

As for the adventure structure, I'm thinking that the PCs investigate the lab to figure out where the Necronomicon is located. (I've removed that info from the previous books). When they then investigate the Mysterium they lose Lowls's trail but instead are able to receive clearer transmissions from Kaklatath since they are in a spot infected by Xhamen-Dor. This allows her to guide them to Okenko to rescue her and help them find Neruzavin. I'm strongly de-emphasizing the connection between Lowls and Biting Lash because it's unnecessary and coincidental. How's that sound?

Why does Weiralai kidnap the Yellow King? I suppose it's in her best interest because she wants to stop the players (or possibly enslave them) and help Lowls? But how does she know that the Yellow King is key to their mission? How did she know the players even met him? Or is it just blind luck that she stopped by at the caravanserai and thought the Yellow King was a genuinely interesting oddity to kill/imprison?

I can't remember if this was answered in the book but I've been skimming back and forth and I can't find it.

As it's written, I think it's just a big coincidence and she just wants the Yellow King as leverage against Lowls. I really wish the book made it clear what she wants out of all this. I don't know how you're supposed to play a character without a clear motivation.

My interpretation is that Weiralai and Lowls have likely met at the caravanserai before for business (or he at least mentioned it to her). Since she knows that Lowls and the PCs are connected, so after she learns the PCs are in the Dreamlands (probably from Captain Vadrack) she'd look for them there. The Yellow King would give the whole thing away pretty easily when intimidated/tortured.

I would like to know if Captain Vadrack's Planar Fast Healing works in that dream quest or if he's actually killable. It's pretty close to Leng. I'd also like to know what he hopes to accomplish by attacking the PCs in the Dreamlands. My guess is that he hopes to the Feargaunt's Nightmare Aura to prevent some of them from waking up.

Eleven is a young girl with psychokinetic powers that has been held captive in a lab where she has been trained to be nothing more than a weapon. At one point, she was instructed to make contact with an extraplanar monster but it was able to follow her back to the material plane and attack the facility. In the ensuing chaos, she managed to escape. She has no equipment, knowledge of the world, or social skills, but has a unique power that the government is desperate to reclaim.

Sources: Core Rule Book, Occult Adventures

I'm three sessions in now. Here are some thoughts.

I gave each of the ratlings 10 nonlethal starvation damage to make them less frustrating and it seemed to work well. Their stats don't seem to have Throw Anything factored in, by the way.

As far as the haunts go, I believe players are supposed to figure out how to resolve them by communicating with them. I mean, the haunt WANTS to be resolved, yes? Plus, it gives the social PCs some time to shine.

I'm moving all of the oneirogens to the top of the tower so the PCs have more of a reason to go there. Now they have to go there to clear the fog in Zandalus's room before fighting him.

Looking ahead, Aggra Loomis having the advanced template is very strange. I don't think it's meant for humans like that and her ability scores are ridiculous.

Overall, though, I feel that the mood is just right and the players really do want to figure out what's going on. I've gone out of my way to foreshadow everything (especially the ambush encounters) and it's working wonderfully.