roguerouge's page

Quick design question: why did you have Helekhterie have Color Spray as a 4th level spell? Was it because she has it on her 1e spell list as a first level spell?

My party got totally shelled by the new Brinetooth last night: three PCs (level 2) were down and dying, including one at dying 3. They were saved when the last standing PC hit and then hit again with a crit with the second attack. The PC had maybe 1 hit left in them before a TPK. It was amazing--she had two of the mook grindylows with her, but they were down in round one.

No need to punish your PCs

Oh, no worries about that. Before character creation, I gave pretty full information about how this adventure would work, with the explicit example about crafting replacement ammo. The player chose to make a ranger that focused on archery. There's also backup characters if he ends up regretting that choice.

Is there any way for the PCs to

So how do the PCs get the city, the Starstone, and the citizens' souls back to where they're supposed to be?

Listening to Find The Path's podcast of this AP has definitely made me more likely to run it. I'd hope I'm not alone in that. And having to draw your own maps rather than import pretty maps to Roll20 would definitely be an impediment to that.

I'm watching the series with my spouse. She's not read the books. I read the books until I quit after one too many split-party cross-country trips, hail pulls, and characters carrying the distrust ball. (Maybe around Fires of Heaven or Lord of Chaos? I remember Seanchan.)

BUT!

It's been really pleasant watching this series. It's been so long since I read the books covered thus far that I have the pleasures of both recognition and surprise. (And it helps that there's significant canon changes already.) I have the fun of watching with someone else who's getting into the series. Morraine and Lan have been the core of the fun thus far for us. And the medium shift to television has, to my mind, improved the work by requiring more showing than telling, allowing a few scenes of distrust to make the point, and cutting improves the pacing when you have a split party on different cross-country trips.

Solid B+ so far.

This would be gold for the CCG/Queensmen encounters early on!

If you want to ease your preparation burden as a DM, mandate that the party decide at the end of each session what mission they'll be taking on next time. There's too much going on to "theater of the mind" complex battles with lots of combatants and you can just tell them that they need to give you prep time.

As far as imposing your sequence on them, you can definitely influence them by using the military situation on the ground: "we're facing high casualties in this district", "we can't support our people across the river until we take the bridge", "DRAGON!!!", etc.

You can also use the Council of Silver at the outset to impose some order on the sandbox.

Finally, I cut the Natsiel subplot as well in favor of running set pieces I made up like "take Castle Kintargo" and a "Defend Old Kintargo".

Totally. Series of Dice-Based Events is not coming up when I search for it on Discord? I'm looking for some other conversions to 2e to keep my options open for other APs.

I'm considering making this a three-book AP for my table, using books 1-3. What would need to change, in your opinion, for The Flooded Cathedral to be the finale? Would

With regular divination magic being cast to determine the Queen's response, the party had ample warning of the Corentyn fleet being sent to destroy Kintargo. The chief stumbling blocks were teaching them the rules of fleet combat, the PCs having no ranks in Profession: Sailor (the skill that drives fleet combat), and forming their own fleet. Fortunately, I had anticipated the former problem and had them running a two on two fleet practice battle with their Pezzack and Kintargo ships to showcase the system before Project Phlegethon.

For the putting together the fleets, I just used the fleet from the fleet battle in Skull and Shackles for the Corentyn fleet. I made Admiral Druvalia Thrune a 17th level swashbuckler with PC wealth. On her flag ship, I had a loyalty officer (Lazzero from Hell's Vengeance leveled up to 15th level), 4 minor arcane casters from the NPC codex (to target the monk with magic missiles), and a 19th level Abadaran grey paladin who was great flavor. He was trying to arrest them for treason and undermining the rule of law across the Inner Sea through supporting a civil war with their guerrilla warfare and their own insurrection. "You have already achieved the good you sought. Are you afraid that a jury of your peers will not find your actions justified?"

For the PCs, they used their connections with the Vashnarstills, Captain Sargaeta, and the reformed Court in Vyre to build their fleet. There's a some generic merchant and pirate captains to populate the PC fleet. If you have a dedicated face PC, they will be a powerful admiral despite losing initiative for every round. Because the number of squadrons you can command is boosted by your charisma bonus! My PCs figured it out and put the Magical Child Vigilante 14 in as their admiral and ended up with 11 squadrons, which were each rather small due to NPC captains. They had the Pezzack warship Reprisal as their flagship with the remainder of the warships from Pezzack forming their best squadron (Pirates of Pezzack). Had they gone with one of the NPC candidates for Admiral, their fleet would have had half as many squadrons.

The thing that made this interesting was that no matter the result of the fleet battle, the final battle is always a boarding action between the flagships under these rules. I didn't want to gamble my campaign's end on a subsystem the players weren't familiar with or built for. Why no teleport to the flagship battle right off the bat? I gave two reasons--with both the origin and destination points in motion teleport wouldn't work... or because Besmara dislikes it when boarding actions aren't done after a ripping fleet battle and prevents it.

The strategy of the PCs at my table--which could be very effective for yours--was to heavily invest in "significant character" bonuses to make up for their indifferent Profession: sailor scores. In addition to the PCs, they had: Baron Sendi Vashnarstill, Captain Cassius Sargaeta, his first mate Elia Nones, an ex-PC who's the Mayor and his cohort, Lady Docur (who comes out of the shadows now that we're at the decisive moment), Tayocet Tiora, Morgar (yes, from the first book!), Octavio Sabinus, and the Lillend they rescued from Temple of Asmodeus fight. They also had the Acisazi elves and some Irim elves as a significant "character". (They had completed a mutual defense pact with Irim.) I was a little generous in giving eligibility for significant character status.

BUT the upside was that losing any squadron led to the loss of the significant character associated with it. They had to rally to protect the squadron with their mayor on it. They had to spend my table's version of hero points to reverse the mutiny of Morgar's squadron (and he came out a hero because of it). End result was they lost 3 squadrons (12 ships and a couple hundred sailors/troops) and Octavio, Tayocet, and the Lillend. To mirror those stakes, each time they took out an enemy squadron, the other side lost a high level character from the final fight. I used the NPC Codex for this: a 16th level water druid, an 18th level monk from the Menador Mountain Ascetics, an arcane archer tournament champion, and a 13th level sorcerer. These were good rewards for going through the fleet battle: making the final fight manageable.

Their second major tactic was to have a lot of their significant characters take Vengeance, which kicks in with attack and morale bonuses for the battle phase in which a ship sinks in a round. They had some nasty surprises when for the Chelish armada when that kicked in the first time.

The PCs' final major tactic was to lure the Chelish armada into violating their coastal waters, which they accomplished with a good amount of magical taunting and the fact that the other side didn't know the consequences of doing so. I narrated the loss of the devils (discussed above). The fleet battle impact was that the Chelish squadrons were stunned as they dealt with the loss of their devils, their losses from the revenge killings by the devils, and destroying the devils that couldn't teleport out.

By the way: not acting on the first round of fleet combat is a massive penalty. You don't need to add anything to that.

The fleet battle is fairly simple to run, even at these sizes, and relatively quick--about 2-3 hours. The final flagship battle was about as long. They came back heroes and we RP'd an impromptu Victory Day celebration.

For Project Phlegethon, I had the players narrate how they infiltrated the facility, which went deep into the ground from its surface level, with the bottom four levels so spaced apart that one can dimension door only to an adjacent level. I used some Starfinder maps for the science fell. I narrated their descent through the facility, using the fire exit stairs and golem-automated lift. We had files and archives levels; labs and advanced labs levels; kitchen, cafeteria, and toilets level; interspersed barracks, training facilities, armories; re-education chambers, medical experimental surgery chambers, and loads of cell blocks of tormented Chelish ex-soldiers.

For these floors, they just had to have a plausible plan to deal with regular soldiers, tiefling medical staff, half-fiends, and various devils--sire devils, bone devils, and imps. Because none of these are a match for a 14th level party.

The tenth floor had the guards and wards, with roving erinyes guards and haunts from the decades of trauma from the facility. Erinyes work well due to their true seeing and teleport. This is where a surgery haunted by ectoplasmic miasma was home to 4 mimic failed apotheosis. Cell block D's prisoners created a haunt of ghastly whispers. A rehabilitation facility (with strange machinery, magic lantern projection, and religious artifacts to damn the innocent featured a symphony of the forever screams haunt.

The last floor was where the final fight with Project Director Ghislaine Thrune, ghast alchemist 14, was. They find her gloating over the creation of a seige necrocraft. Hidden in the chamber's pods were two profaned paladin undead troops with the fiendish type. (So... not really a success with a super soldier program in quite the way that the Queen envisioned.) As soon as a living creature enters the chamber, it sets off a gruesome gurney haunt, but also a helpful haunt of the paladin they didn't break, a swordsman betrayed haunt that attacks Ghislaine exclusively.

Once they defeated the final encounter, the Fall of the House of Haunts activates: "Sometimes a location is so infested with haunts that the facility itself rebels in a final desperate act. In these rare circumstances, the vengeful forces within heave forth in a final cataclysmic effort to destroy those who discover their unsettling secrets. You must run or be buried alive as the very earth rebels against the facility, which begins to crumble into a gaping hellmouth."

A fitting end to the facility, but also one that incredibly frustrates the Queen, who sends Admiral Druvalia Thrune with 8 squadrons (47 ships, incl. the flagship Abrogail's Fury) to destroy Kintargo and end their guerrilla warfare. This leaves Corentyn vulnerable, but still defended with a skeleton crew.

Thus far, this alternate path has worked out quite well. It's been a bit more of a sandbox than my players have been used to--they tend to prefer guided choice mode. Since the Town Council challenge, they have:

* negotiated a workable peace treaty with Nidal
* air-dropped propaganda on the True History of Thrune in Belde
* air-dropped propaganda "House Thrune's Just Not Into Hellknights: A History" over Citadel Rivad
* stole the minor armada circling outside Pezzack
* taught the Silver Ravens' mode of revolutionary organizing to the White Thistles in Pezzack and "handled" the Galtan and Loyalist factions of Pezzack
* started building their navy and army

They've been using their divination magic to track the Egorian response to their actions thus far. Liberating the Secret Archive has led

Last night, they chose between three options:
* Storm Citadel Enferac (secure the coastal land border, take out the magical artillery of the Hellknights, get high-level magic loot)
* Recruit the mountain strix to engage in guerilla war (this would be trivial to accomplish for their party face, especially if they think to bring along Ravounel's forest strix)
* Stop Project Phlegethon's

The Glorious Reclamation has secured Westcrown and is on to Egorian next. They would have preferred Ravounel send their little navy and a few troops to aid that battle or the stalemate in the Fields of Chelam. (Which is a hilarious request indicating their allegiance to traditional military strategy and how little they think about Ravounel.) Failing that, they would have respected Ravounel taking Citadel Enferac or eventually appreciated the effect on supply lines of an aerial guerrilla war by the strix. (Although they would NOT have liked the fact that Ravounel would have had to recognize the Mountain Strix as an independent nation.) They'll be enraged by Ravounel's decision to do... none of those things.

They're on to Project Phlegethon, because their divinations to Irori indicated that destroying that facility will be the most likely to cause an extreme emotional reaction in Egorian. They don't know why:

Quick question: does this product have rules for fleet battles (mass combat for ships)?

Here's my calculations of how many books are in the Secret Archive of Redacted Histories:

Western and Eastern Archives: Cubic footage of books (10x15x1): 1800 (table canon, because I eliminated the bookshelves not on the walls) vs. 2700 (real canon on the map). I found a thread for Amazon retailers that assumes ~25 hardback trade books/cubic foot. (The thread specified 36 trade paperbacks/cubic foot.) So each room has 45K-67.5K books.

Repository of Broken Promises: These faulty documents are essentially entertainment for the cultists, so are inessential to take. But if your party does... QLS solutions says that 2200 pieces of paper fit a banker’s box of 1800 square inches. I estimated that 120 banker’s boxes will fit in a cubic square, or 264,000 pages. The room’s total: 12,672,000 pages.

The Library of All: The shelving is thicker on the map, so I went with 5x5x2 per 5’ square: 144 5x5 squares of books (144x144x2): 41,472 cubic feet of books. Amazon assumes hardback books ~25 books/cubic foot: 1,036,800 books.

Treasure Stitching spell makes a 10x10x10 cube of books easy to carry and teleport: 1,000 cubic feet per casting. This is by far more efficient for carrying stuff than handy haversack (12 cubic feet), bag of holding (30-250 cubic feet, depending on type), or portable hole (250 cubic feet).

Here's what I went with for doing research projects using materials stolen.

Stolen Archive of Redacted Histories CR 16

To research it: Succeed in a check to do damage to its Knowledge Points

Time: 8 uninterrupted hours per attempt. Cannot take 10 or 20

Knowledge: DC 43 (varies by topic of research)

Aid Another Skills: Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (engineering), Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (history), Knowledge (local), Knowledge (nobility), Knowledge (religion), Perform or Craft: Writing, Perception (very convoluted filing system)

KP 48
• Research thresholds: 30, 20, 10

Provides +5 bonus to Knowledge: History, +2 bonus to geography, local, nobility, religion.

Bonuses:
• Up to three people can aid another for a +2 each at DC 10. Failure is -2. [Rules say two can aid, but I’m making it three because otherwise one PC has nothing to do]
• Each prior attempt +1 cumulative to rolls
Success on research roll: Primary researcher is…
• 1d12+Int KP damage [if 10 ranks, skill focus, OR 5 ranks and it’s class skill]
o 1d8+Int KP damage [if 5 ranks OR it’s a class skill]
o Others: 1d4+Int KP damage
• +1 KP for every five by which you beat a DC
• Critical success threat: double damage if succeed on second roll (no extra time)
• Natural one: fail and increase KP one-quarter remaining KP

Occult Mysteries has several excellent entries that could be useful for Occultist PCs at your table to be found at this Archive. I don't have any of those, but for flavor I'm including Book of 1,000 Whispers, a lay copy of Gospel of Ilhys, and a near-mint copy of The Inward-Facing Circle (early Thrune diabolist). I was really, really tempted to include a copy of the Aucturn Lexicon by Chelish Osirionologist, Paracount Imivus in 4657 ar, but I was afraid that would just be too tempting to lead to anything but utter derailment of the campaign.

I kind of like the idea of "The Americans": The AP. Your party are deep undercover spy ring in a foreign nation. You not only have to run missions each book to thwart particularly important military, economic, and political developments, but you also have to fit in with the neighbors, your co-workers, and... your kids, who don't know you're undercover.

You could call it "The Andorens" or "The Galts Next Door".

Any AP where you can plausibly run a jail and a court system is one that you can at least capture rather than kill people, if that's what you mean by non-violence. Skull and Shackles (you end up with a fleet and a base, you could ransom people, etc.), Kingmaker (literally, just build jails and courts to your heart's content), Hell's Rebels (street trials once you get your rebellion on and a jail by the end of book two, but probably not enough capacity to hold all the collaborators and true believers of Thrune until after book four), maybe Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Look to The Flash and Green Arrow on TV for the potential drawbacks for running a jail as a vigilante hero, however.

As for PCs... The plus side of these APs is that there's a lot of focus on leveled humanoids, so having a monk or fighter focus on combat maneuvers will work for lot longer than usual. Monk's ability to do nonlethal damage in melee with no penalty is a major plus. Merciful spell would be a must for the casters. Depending on your definition of violence, enchanters and illusionists could shine if the party wasn't trying to kill people at the drop of a hat. The stabilize cantrip would come in very handy.

And if you have a PC dedicated to Diplomacy and Bluff you could probably end a lot of encounters early, even with the penalty for rushing or implausibility.

It turns out that the best sources for the secrets can be found from "Cheliax, the Infernal Empire", with extra stuff on Egorian and the Bellflower Network in Hell's Vengeance 4, Pezzack in Towns of the Inner Sea, House Thrune and Kantaria in Hell's Vengeance 2, and Westcrown in Council of Thieves 1 and 6 (the ending tells you who made the call to leave Westcrown as self-governing).

I ended up with 14 pages single-spaced of secrets. They only get all of that if they are somehow able to take everything home.

So, in case others go down this path, I thought I'd share what happened. Long story short? It's pretty easy to accomplish: 37.5 hours or so with the instrument at my table. Basically, it's a logistics challenge that doesn't take much time at the table once the DM's figured out the math behind all of this. It was a nice little accomplishment acknowledging what high level PCs can do and a bit of kingdom building fun.

First of all, you can use the Kingmaker rule set, which seriously under-estimates the value of this item, or the downtime rules, which don't account for this item at all.

As you can see above, each half hour of playing is 2400 worker-hours. That's 4800 worker-hours per hour. Skilled laborers get 3 sp per 8-hour day. Unskilled laborers get 1 sp per 8-hour day. So, if the successful check is for skilled laborers, it generates 1400 gp worth of labor per hour of playing. If it's for unskilled, it's 480 gp worth of labor per hour of playing. I had the lillend make an engineering check each time to determine whether the half hour of playing was skilled or unskilled.

Using BPs, a castle is 54 BP. I ruled that a keep was 27 BP, plus 3 BP in military materials that couldn't be made by the lyre (which were provided by Kintargo's vault).

I translated the BPs into gold: 4000 gp per BP or 2000 gp of labor under the ruleset. (My table was replicating the dwarven aesthetic of using stone for as much as possible, so the goods part wasn't all that necessary except for the surcharge of 3 BP for military grade materials.)

So, going with the 2000 gp of labor per BP, a keep would be 54,000 gp of labor. That's 37.5 hours of skilled labor or 112.5 hours of unskilled labor. If it's possible for your lyre player to fail the check, just keep track of gp labor created. So long as my players kept fatigue from the lyre-player or the people casting spells and aiding another to boost her stats, she couldn't fail the check. They got the hint that ANY interruption in her playing meant waiting a week before they could continue.

I had Tannessen and Jarvis collaborate on the blueprints.

I agree that earth elementals or even more playing of the lyre would be needed to clear the pass--recall that the lyre can make mines, which suggests the lyre can clear the pass pretty easily. You can add that work to the duration of lyre-playing or have your casters dealing with that while the keep's being built.

I had workers in Old Kintargo protesting the fact that they didn't get to work on this job, losing vital income to feed their families with. That pressure convinced the Town Council to restrict the use of the lyre of building to only work required for emergencies or national security and preferably both.

I'm approaching the negotiations in a few months, so I thought of what would happen if my table's PCs approached the Abadarans for training in the basics.

Bargaining training: by CEO Mhelrem Gestaliel (old fart)
Consider having an assistant with minor image project a "slide" on the wall which CEO Gestaliel will "powerfully point" to as he runs through this training.

Background: These rules were created by the Taldoran Empire and are enforced by the Central Bank of Abadar

* Punishments range from a sternly worded letter (after we have consulted with both sides) to the formation of an investigatory committee to formal sanctions if a majority of shareholders at our biennial meeting determine that a party has been unlawful.
* A pattern of conduct over time may escalate the sanctions.
* But first impressions matter a great deal to the Central Bank: none of your shenanigans or tomfoolery, good sirs.

Rules to abide by:

* Must bargain in good faith: reasonable times and places, must have a sincere resolve to get to an agreement, must furnish relevant information, cannot deal directly with your people, demanding impasse over a permissive subject of bargaining
* Doesn’t require to agree to a proposal or make a concession
* Cannot do “take it or leave it” across the board
* Cannot do “first, last, and best offer”
* Cannot engage in surface bargaining, in which you just go through the motions
* Can’t sit pat through the entire negotiations, although they can present the status quo is permissible as a counter-offer
* No regressive bargaining where you backtrack from your prior proposals (unless you’re trading a significant concession)
* Must have authority to negotiate, although ratification can be away from the table
* Proposals must be reasonable: “no self-respecting nation” would accept such a proposal is against the rules
* Breaking deadlocks: package deals, trades, minor changes to save face for them, expiration dates, gradual implementation, reopeners, joint committees to study the issue, live to bargain another day, change locations or the pace, off the record dealings
* If there is a deadlock, you can get on the docket for the central bank’s mediation services. If that fails, we can go to fact-finding. If that fails, you can take the case to the arbiter’s guild within the central bank for a final decision.

Discussion questions:
* What issues need to be addressed in bargaining?
* How do we set priorities among these issues?
* What is the strategy, the big picture?

Have you taken a look through Cheliax, The Infernal Empire? I've found that to be an invaluable source of lore and NPCs for the late stages of my Hell's Rebels campaign.

My table's PCs have decided to go the guerrilla warfare route with Cheliax as the way to best support the Glorious Reclamation. I've managed to direct them towards the Archive of Redacted Histories on...

They're going to try to rescue and make propaganda out of the materials that they liberate from there. What kinds of juicy secrets would they find in the books that were supposed to be burned or edited?

I've been looking through "Cheliax, The Infernal Empire" for ways to enable the players' choices without overwhelming me with prep or being totally infeasible.

Feasible targets...

To enable guerilla war:
Liberate Pezzack by defeating naval blockade and ending the strix raids to release revolutionaries from Galt, Andoran, Cheliax, and elsewhere. (More information to be found in Out of Anarchy scenario, Towns of the Inner Sea.)

Aid the giant insurgency in Thuryan by sending arms, transportation, and using diplomacy to get them rolling more actively than Andoran military advisor has. Complication: probably needs divination magic to become aware of this possibility.

Use strix allies from Ravounel forest to convince Ciricskree settlement of strix to attack Chelish weak points.

Military targets:
Stealing the books at the Archive of Redacted Histories on Warlock Island. This location is fully detailed in Hell's Vengeance in book 5 and would stop the plans of that AP cold. It would need divination magic for its existence and location, with more research on the Queen's plan in motion. But even the existence and location makes this an incredibly tempting target given that Kintargo used to have a cult of The Secret Order of Archivists. Vengeance!

Destroying Project Phlegethon on Shardstone Island: top secret super-soldier laboratory. Exposure of highly sensitive evidence to the world community is probably the only short-term benefit here, as there's no sign that super-soldiers have been utilized. It's very on theme for my party, however. More labor for me to DM: no map and I would have to level up the briefly-described occupants (bone devils and 8th level alchemist toughest CRs).

Attack Citadel Enferac in Hellmouth Gulf: This Order of the Gate citadel is militarily significant, as it's right on their SW border. There's a nice map in Council of Thieves 4 and CR 7 Signifers already available. More labor for me to DM: I'd need to come up with descriptions for various rooms, I'd need more NPCs, and the map isn't a battle map.

Sack Belde: This is the administrative capital of the Archduchy of Hellcoast, led by Paraduke Marcellus Thurivan (NE male human fighter 8), an ally of House Thrune who nominally rules Hellcoast. This is too much work for me to put together: no map, little information, an entire city. If they chose this, I'd probably narrate most of it and come up with a few encounters.

I've really enjoyed their Mummy's Mask podcast in 1st edition: really strong narration by the DM, solid rules knowledge, good characterization and voices, and surprisingly gripping combats. (Also, 3 female players, which I find to be a nice change of pace from some of my other gaming podcasts.)

Anyway, they've started a podcast using the 2nd edition rule set for Hell's Rebels. This should be of interest for entertainment, ideas for your own table's world-building, and those interested in the second edition rules.

I know this isn't the point, but, man, the players really should have taken ten on one of those initial rolls. Even if you fail, it's useful to try it out. Players at my table don't use take 10 enough--love to roll.

Solid response!

And I'm not really all that simulationist with my gaming--I'm not using the Kingdom building rules now in Book 5, for example. You're probably right that I'm a bit unusual in my interest levels in that stuff, however.

I tend to look at the politics and economics as more about background world-building, helping me to understand the NPCs better, setting up skill challenges, and helping create challenges for my table's noble scion PC that's trying to create a better world. What better way to challenge a high-level Face PC than ideological and economic structures that are immune to the diplomacy skill?

I think of ideology and economics as one genre among many at my table--it suits one player (narrative obstacles to the noble scion trying to build a better world), but it shouldn't drown out the genres that interest my other players--tactics, religion, heists, martial arts movies, even romance. I do think the social sciences are a useful tool for all DMs to have in their belt. Threads like these really help me, because there's a lot more effort and expertise that goes into this genre than in learning the basic tropes of martial arts movies.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

(Also, how did you find a bunch of leftists willing to play Pathfinder, of all things?)

What?

Why wouldn't people with left-leaning (or very far over to the furthest left possible) not want to play Pathfinder?

I think answering that in the way I would prefer as a former academic would require pointing to articles that might run afoul of the board rules on politics. And even if my post wouldn't, I would end up derailing a productive thread. I'm glad you spoke up with this question, because it did lead to an educational google search for me to look into the matter.

He's not stupid, but, yes, the strategy can be improved.

The not stupid part: The longer Barzillai Thrune lasts, the better the transformation process is for him. That makes him risk-adverse, but it also makes him a general. His high charisma has ensured that he has a variety of competent lieutenants. Some of them have sub-average stat blocks, but they're still high level for this backwater province. He's got troops that the rebellion doesn't. He has a 24 Wisdom as well. Remember--he knows what the rebellion doesn't--the Temple is going to be working on a magic ritual to summon several pit fiends. He has got to believe that the only way he can lose is if these rebellious nitwits get a lucky critical in combat or, worse yet, ambush him.

He also has a dragon and they don't.

That having been said, I did make some changes to book 4 to improve the war. I had the first event be an assault by devils, hellknights, and troops on the Old Kintargo district. I did some narration to stitch together street encounters by describing how things were going and didn't let the PCs rest. When the PCs hold off the invasion, the forces retreat to Castle Kintargo, the Bridge, and Temple of Asmodeus. Then Barzillai Thrune uses that Orb of Storms in the Temple vault to decimate a massive area of Old Kintargo. That solves your concerns about him not going on offense.

I also narrated the guerrilla war going on in each district to explain why their forces were so spread out. The whole retaliation mechanic also indicates an active posture by his forces, but it's also really hard to win urban warfare. Finally, I had a taking of Castle Kintargo crawl as well.

As for the assault on The Lucky Bones, I put that towards the end of the book. I had that be the result of Aluceda Zhol using her vampire minions using dominate person and more to gradually find the HQ. Also, Zhol was a nemesis of one of my PCs, who was a heretic in her view, so her invasion was personal... but it was also a mislead as her team went below to rescue some captured lieutenants in the Lucky Bones smuggler's level prison. (And, because I have a monk in the party, I re-skinned Tombus as the head of a rival dojo, so he partnered up with Zhol on this prison break and vendetta mission.)

As for Dance of the Damned? I added a ton of devils to that encounter--barbed, cabal, and a sire devil. And the Fake-Barzillai was a simulacrum instead.

By the way, running Shadowsquare Cathedral as a dungeon crawl in the late stages of book 4 or in book 5 is a good one-nighter. Really flavorful to repurpose the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony from Inner Sea Temples for these purposes. My table just did a crawl through it after the revolution, as they grew to hate the Nidal team during books 3+4. Really good break between RP-heavy sessions around the constitutional stuff of creating a new nation.

Also, I got to say, "Diplomatic Immunity! Take me to my embassy!" as one of the Nidalese surrendered during the raid.

I am a crazy person.

Not THAT crazy, as it turns out. I had accustomed myself to my table's PC's rebellion politics of pseudo-libertarian middle class freedoms with a side of the good nobility are a good thing. So, one of my players--my wife, actually--surprised the heck out of me last night by proposing this draft proposal for post-revolutionary Kintargo:

This sparked a lot of debate. One strand was on whether to trust the Town Council or to set up opposing structures, centered essentially on whether people are essentially good or not. (Without breaking the board's rules, the players were concerned about corruption, vote buying, and undue influence of the rich and powerful, esp. spellcasters.) Another strand was on whether to have an executive branch and how strong of a one, with proposals including a strong mayor, a weak one, a war council, a war subcommittee, or simply let the bureaucracy implement what the Town Council proposes. The player of the heretical cultist PC floated a proposal a Religious Council as a counter-balancing House of Lords or something.

The party ended up agreeing on a snap election of an ad hoc Constitutional Congress with representation by district weighted by population: 1 representative for Castle Kintargo district, 1 for Yolubilis Harbor, 2 of each of The Greens, Temple Hill, and Jarvis End districts, and 3 for each of Old Kintargo, Villegre, and Redroof. NONE of the PCs are running, agreeing to serve as advisors only. They agreed the Congress must vote on the executive branch issue and on term limits.

Of course, my wife's PC has a +34 to her diplomacy score, so the election's debates are likely to be centered on this proposal.

What did your PCs do to celebrate the end of... book 4? It's a pretty significant party opportunity. I'm drawing a blank on stuff to do.

Well, I know what my little vanguardist, Laria, will be introducing to what I predict will be a very noble-friendly democratic order...

I suppose the King of Keys could REALLY be The Stabbing Beast.

Yeah, this is the time to reveal the soul anchor. Have the player who was okay with a new character be the one who's executed. Then, do something like...

... have his consciousness take over the body of some random NPC who had a near death experience that wasn't actually near death. He's been reincarnated and has some memory of the soul anchor's role in the process.

... flash forward to him coming back to life with some narrated experience with the the soul anchor... in his body as it is being cremated. Then the rest of the session is the rest of the party trying to get to him "in the nick of time." Now's the time to use omens and weird shared dreams and such to send the message that the players are aching to receive.

Then use the buying the survivors and using bribery to get the others out.

Location means next to nothing in my purchases and affection for the work. My top APs are Hell's Rebels, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Rise of the Rune Lords, Skull and Shackles, and Kingmaker. I seem to be more interested in theme (changing and making the world) than in exploration, as Kingmaker's appeal for me is the sandbox approach and Rune Lords was simply the style of writing in the first and third books. Not saying that they're not right about their customer base. And I'm not arguing a location-based playstyle is inferior at all.

Themes: Intrigue, sandbox structure, cool set pieces

Well, repurposing Tombus' attack on the hideout as a jailbreak worked swimmingly. I put this event after the combat with Rivozair and before the Temple of Asmodeus. It works very well as a desperation ploy by the Asmodeans to rescue important NPCs awaiting street trials in the basement jail and as a last-gasp attempt to cut off the head of the revolution.

In addition, having Aluceda Zhol come along gave it more style points--it's a much more intimidating visual when the upstairs door to the Lucky Bones opens and the players hear 5 bat swarms eat a SR guard alive. And then the vampire strides in with Tombus and his troop. It's a great intro to a villain off-screen much of the time. (At my table, this was more of a culmination of a campaign of terror than a first appearance.)

Sadly, she didn't survive the combat. A daylight spell neutered her darkness defenses and when she was finally taken to 0 HP and forced into gaseous form, the PC arcanist trapped her in a well-positioned wall of stone so that she couldn't get back to her coffin.

I also had a team of her vampires and a kyton take two rowboats to do the prison break from the smuggler's tunnels level while the PCs were being kept busy upstairs with Aluceda and Tombus. They ended up being thwarted by the arcanist having turned their target (Zella Zdili) into stone and having sunk her feet into the floor. They argued and tried some stuff while the combat went on upstairs. When the PCs--who got split up trying to get down there as fast as possible--hit them, it was headed towards a TPK. So, I had a PC's cohort present a holy symbol to keep them at bay. That worked long enough to unite the party. The vampire-kyton team went back to the docks and rowed off, because their mission couldn't succeed.

That's when the spellcaster PCs flew after them invisibly and dropped two sacks containing all of the alchemists fires I gave them this campaign. They took out one of the two rowboats, permanently destroying two vampires with the running water immersion.

And all that went to hell when a strafing run by the dragon turned into getting blinded on a failed save on glitterdust, a full attack from the monk with that broken flying kick pounce-ability, a few hits from the inquisitor, and a long range magic missile took it down.

On the plus side, the whole team of heroes had to chip in (two cohorts, Shensen, and a mook), they had to use three action points, and they had fun.

Plus the magic missile that brought the dragon down meant that it landed on the monk for 60 damage when he rolled a 1 on his Reflex save.

I'm sorry--are there no openings to the outside in the belfry? Don't all belfries have that?

The most important caveat--this campaign is going to be very different table to table. It's more like Kingmaker that way. My advice is based on my table's experiences--in which there's a Sailor Moon narrative, a martial arts narrative, a cultist revolutionary, led by a tactical genius, leading to war narratives. I got to access to some of the stuff below that others might and other stuff that people worked in just got cut for time. (Also, I made them put on a musical.)

Finally, my players ended up choosing a political theory that was a mix of cultural liberalism, middle class freedoms, and pay it forward charity. I had to remember that it's not my revolution--it's theirs. I can complicate things, but I have to respect their choices... if they're viable.

I have fully read and begun to GM Book 1. I have fully read Book 2 and skimmed 3-6, taking notes. Excuse any ignorance despite this.

Take a close read of book 3 as soon as you can. A LOT of your decisions for books 1 and 2 depend on what you do there.

Are they going to Vyre? You can move that whole thing to book five, where it fits well with freeing Ravounel, not just Kintrargo. If you're really into the Norgorber cult, this would allow you center them by making book five about the council fight for control, rather than having it Queen of Delights vs. the King of Keys and the Norgorber cult that shows up in the earlier books as random homicidal jesters. (I'm headed in that direction and I'm feeling like writing all that up is going to be overwhelming complicated.)

Moving that whole Vyre dinner opens up a second military mission in book three: bringing in No Response from Deepmar. The motivation was to destroy the crystal they were mining to reduce their access to a material component for devil calling--a key way to help the Glorious Reclamation and themselves too. Made some of the surviving prisoners key to splitting the dottari and recruiting a noble house. (Note: the crystal is not actually a material component for anything related to devil summoning so far as I can tell.)

Who's going to be onstage? That's a highlight of my life as a DM, because virtually everyone onstage and dozens in the audience of the Dance of the Damned were known well by the players. (The key to making military movies work is where you have affection for every grunt at risk.)

This was also where I had the Game of Houses become a multi-direction shooting war up in the balcony while the main scene was on stage. (So this is where you can make the noble house politics a bit more central.)

The adventure seems a bit 2D politically. There are many potential factions mentioned, but they do not seem alive. Barzillai as the BBEG has some reactions. Everyone else, however, seems frozen in time and merely a brief backdrop. Please correct me in all ways I am wrong, but I am looking for ways to make the campaign a bit more reactive and proactive, living, and 3D.

I do wish I had made more central non-nobles and non-religious groups. I made some things up as I went along, and might have done better than I currently think. The tieflings went well as a revolutionary group--more urban guerrilla war than any other district, the target of atrocities and racism, problematic expressions of respectability politics to be navigated. The Shelynites were hilarious--they demanded a musical from the Silver Ravens to express their revolutionary ideas and to prove they had the management chops to deal with the post-revolutionary phase. The Calistrians have ended up being the schism group, with a legitimately silly inciting incident.

These were the exceptions... Lady Docur just seems to show up whenever there's a deal to be done around information management in the post-revolution era. Promoting a dottari schism and figuring out what they wanted ended up being a worthwhile sub-plot. Still, not much sense of a worker's revolution here, although Laria ended up being Sailor Moon's working class foil at my table--it all came to a head with a miner's strike.

The cultists of Mathallah sit at the anchor and do nothing until slaughtered by Thrune. The (separate? Aware of one another?) cultists in the Lucky Bones also just have their own sacrifice parties. (I also notice the lore on Math is pretty light).

I'm trying to tie the Mysteries found in book two as a key to her library, which is where the party can find out about the path to the soul anchor in book six. We'll see if this works.

The Skinsaw Cult is also missing from most the campaign despite being next door. I don't know enough about them to know what they might be doing before the SRs peeve one of their members in Vyre.

See above for Vyre as a way to write more about them. There's a tantalizing hint in book four that their interest in advancing their doomsday clock would be helped by taking sides in the rebellion.

The gangs (Red Jills, River Talons, and Luncafex) are all small-time and don't feature much.

They are there for campaigns that want to have a thieves' guild war sub-plot. Lacunafex being connected to Lady Docur and the meaning of their name really made them shine at my table. They are also rivals for the royal house associated with information gathering... Jhaltero.

The noble houses are generally left out until you need to recruit them (there's one or two encounters with individuals before then, but otherwise they seem to ignore what's happening).

The noble houses have at least a sketch of what their current interests are and Zimmerwald and others are pretty astute about them. The boards are amazing here. With a little thought, you can do a lot with this information. It helped that the Sailor Moon character was a scion of Jhaltero. I had two solo side sessions that introduced her to each family as a coming out process as a debutante, which was her family's test of loyalty for her after her revolutionary work got her kicked out of Lady Docur's school.

Does the Court of Coin ever do anything?

Nope! And then maybe!

The Order of the Rack seems strangely absent for most the campaign?

Having them doing raids late in book three to collect particular books worked wonders for their profile. Also, writing up a full "take Castle Kintargo" and a Defend Old Kintargo set piece helps.

The Church of Asmodeus and the Hellknights seem to have judicial and extrajudicial power, but they seem content to let Barzillai handle (or fail to handle) everything. I don't know if they are worried about the Silver Ravens at all and/or if they're fine with watching Barzillai fail.

House Thrune runs the show. They may be outside their direct line of command in various ways, but ultimately the royal house still rules at my table.

Other groups have gone aground, so that's a reasonable reason why they're missing (Archivists destroyed, Rose of Kintargo and Bellflower Network in hiding, the followers of Calistria, Caden, Desna, and Sarenrae silenced). Although then they just seem to fall in line after being aided by the PCs.

Some of this depends on your table. One campaign on these boards is remaking the Asmodean temple into a Sarenite temple. Don't forget House Jarvis for Cayden. Calistria could make for a great feminist revolutionary sect--it just didn't happen at this table.

I know it's not their affair, but the Nidalese don't seem to intervene in any way, even in secret. The local temple's priestess features in later books, but just to pummel the players on behalf of her boytoy, not interact with them.

That was a whole publishing thing that just didn't make it in book five. It's the area I feel most concerned about for the end game at my table, and I can't really avoid it. A new nation-state means diplomacy with the incredibly dangerous evil nation sitting on their border.

The Iomedaens/Glorious Reclamation are left out on purpose, I believe a book note says, because their targets are elsewhere and they're more center stage for Hell's Vengeance campaign. Still could have a tiny involvement, though.

Strangely, I gave my table a chance to pick up a thread during the Dance of the Damned and they just refused to do so. I had planned on a cross-over event for book six but it's not looking like that's going to happen.

The Aspis Corsortium is strangely missing despite being featured in nearly every Pathfinder Society mission that even passes through Cheliax.

Huh. Good point.

The Eagle Knights, if any, probably wouldn't target Kintargo much for sabotage, I imagine, especially when they realize they are rebelling, but still a potential option.

The parliament or assembly or whatever voted down taking advantage of the Glorious Reclamation, leading to a focus on privateer operations against the slave trade on the sea. If you want to make Andoran more central, that's the incident to change--either the vote or the compromise--help Kintargo rather than fight the slave trade.

I don't know if any other devils or devil cults would be interested in getting involved. (Mathallah is a "recent" convert and seems more interested in herself than the diabolism of Hell or Asmodeus). The later contract devil does get involved a little, but that is PC-driven - not by taking notice of or approaching the PCs himself.

I went furthest off canon with Mahathallah. I'm still not sure if it's going to work out.

I'd recommend using a cabal devil as a sub-boss for book two or three plots.

Have a small subset of devils teleport away and be returning villains. Erinyes are the most common devil encounter, so they'd work best, especially since they have true seeing and get through disguise magic.

I had The Gardener try to ascend to become a handmaid devil of Belial through a ritual for the Hetamon kidnapping. The Belial thing was tied to a tiefling PC backstory about them promoting tiefling births in Cheliax.

I am interested in any way any of you have spiced up your games. I really want to have the world moving around the players, whether they act or not... and then actually react to the PCs, not wait their turn to be discovered and beaten to a pulp.

In addition to the above...

Zella Zdilli was the Thrune propagandist with a sixth level message spell that affected the whole city. Think Dolores Umbridge as a diviner, but annoyingly controlling on a city-wide level. I just had her be the Secretary of Education and takeover both the university and the School for Girls

The musical: "Les Miserables, But We Win."

Street trial for the serial killer. Street trials I wouldn't have thought of without the boards.

There will be an election. That whole retrograde baloney in book five is not going to happen. And the player agency wipe (version: "All Part of My Plan!") in book six will not be happening at my table

Having them develop an organizing pitch in book two.

The Abadaran business seminars that they got to do regularly with the Silver Ravens as a condition of an early raise dead on a PC. It was a weirdly funny juxtaposition and weirdly popular at my table. Perhaps because they were always 2 minutes or less.

Giving the party a chance to dance with Barzillai Thrune. Having the Cultist of Doubral Reform PC having a dance with Aluceda Zhol.

Use

This is just spit-balling, but I am also trying to think of a side/third party that gets involved. A devil who tries getting ahead by helping or hindering the PCs, a deeper Mathallah or Skinsaw group with some grand goal, an infiltrating Nidalese vampire cult trying to influence Kintargo/Ravounel, a growing countryside rebellion that eventually comes at odds with the Kintargo-grown rebellion, a disinterested archmage/lich/someone who uses the PCs to get at something for a book or two... or something like that.

I simply didn't have the bandwidth for some of this. My changes have been to strip away some of the extraneous stuff and refocus on the revolution. I've tried to make Mahathallah matter more and I'm really not sure if that works.

Okay, what I did was have her be preparing a Greenhouse connected to the Alabaster academy. She reshaped it over the past three books--bringing in plants, learning ritual magic, and kidnapping Hetamon Haace for the last piece. I had her be a worshipper of Belial, seeking to use Hetamon to as a ritual sacrifice to transform her into a handmaiden devil and to have him birth her first child, a mandragora swarm. It expanded the Belial presence (and my table's subplot on tieflings) begun with my addition of a sire devil to the finale of Dance of the Damned. My PCs put finding Hetamon on the backburner, so the Sire Devils cleared out and she was tending her baby swarm.

I did a non-linear "maze" in the greenhouse, which was a demi-plane gifted to the Academy. Think 1970s and early 1980s text-based adventures. I also used the Ynn Memorial Greenhouse pdf purchased through RPG exchange as inspiration and some descriptions.

Lawn:>> Herb garden>> Ponds>> Mushroom beds>> Maze>> final area
Failures: Orchard, Green houses, Orchid house

Entrance: Simply draw a door in chalk on the exterior, with a traditional incantation of entrance in Sylvan. To exit? Reverse all its details anywhere within. This incantation is taught to first-year students at Alabaster Academy’s biology classes, regardless of whether they learn the language or not. Otherwise, a Knowledge: The Planes DC 30 check reveals it.

Manicured Lawn: Short, cropped grass surrounded by a low brick wall over which ivy climbs. Quiet, save for distant birdsong. You can see paths to various gardens, ornamental ponds, an orchard, several green houses, and a wall of greenery just visible over a distant hill. The Gardner’s tracks on the hard dirt paths are easy to pick up, Survival 15, but lead in many directions (from multiple visits). If players think to look for the most recent set of tracks, a Survival 25 deduces the right set of prints to follow.

Herb garden: Rows of exotic herbs in raised beds, overflowing their allotted space into the brick paths between. One can harvest herbs that, when used properly, induce vomiting, spice food, and the raw materials to create many kinds of alchemical tinctures; alchemical concoctions; balms, medicines, and tonics; and herbs and plants. Profession: Herbalist or Knowledge: nature 20 to notice the pattern in the arrangement. Leading towards the ponds are ingredients for: crystal-sweet, sphere-song, and alluring philter. Leading towards the orchards are the ingredients of brawler’s brew, dodger’s draught, and liquid courage.

Orchard: Fruit trees spaced out every few yards, coppiced so their branches start five feet above the ground. Trunks now gnarled and grizzled with age, branches extending into a tangled canopy that ends fifty feet up. Thileu bark can be harvested from some with a Knowledge: Nature or Profession Herbalist or Forrester DC 20 check, gaining 1 pound of the spice over an hour or ruining a pound with failure. Thileu bark is worth 200 gp/pound as a spice, although you may also snort it if you like burning your nasal passages horribly, making you immune to odor effects for 1 day. There are currently 15 harvestable pounds. Harvesting elicits a low ecstatic moan from the trees that eventually attracts the Gardener’s two advanced wood golems (CR 7 each) patrol looking for illicit harvesters who do not know the passcode (Alabaster Academy’s motto in Tien.) Linguistics 20 and they lead you back to Manicured Lawn. Failure or violence means you have to retrace your steps.

Ponds: Ornamental ponds, their surfaces covered in floating lilies. Huge drifting fish like bright orange and pink carp and catfish beneath the surface. Rushes and cat-tails grow here in abundance. Streams and brooks branch out to other areas of the demi-plane, providing a convenient source of water for non-caster gardeners and herbalists in many areas. Knowledge: nature 25 to deduce from following water flow and discover you’re in a shifting maze planar structure when you inexplicably come to the Orchard or retracing your steps to a greenhouse. Swim 20 to bottom through passage to ornamental pond at the mushroom beds.

Mushroom Beds: A number of beds of bare earth are found in this area with magically dim light. The mushroom beds are packed with mycelium threads under the dirt, and various exotic fruiting bodies: slightly luminous, delicate pink mushrooms (which when prepared can create writing visible only at night); wide, flabby grey toadstools; slender black Ironbloom mushrooms entwined around iron ore (a dwarven delicacy and the cure for blackscour taint); vivid yellow puffballs; dark blue fronds; tiny white clusters of mushrooms; and broad red toadstools. Harvested, these mushrooms can be sold to chefs throughout Kintargo for 2,000 gp. These beds are protected by an advanced huge mud elemental (CR 8) that naps in the wet earth by an ornamental pond. Knowledge: Planes 20: Feed it gems, crystals, or rare stones. To go to the rose garden, identify the mushrooms locally thought to be aphrodisiacs with Knowledge Local 15 AND Knowledge: nature 20 to identify them.

Greenhouses: Glass buildings that house tropical plants. Regardless of the weather outside, it’s warm, wet, and unpleasant within. They are dense with greenery seeking to get out, along with rusted tables and chairs. In one, an advanced dire flytrap (CR 7) awaits in a miniature Mwangi tropical forest, its vines capable of grabbing anyone inside, although it prefers to let its meals explore a bit towards the interior before grabbing and dragging them. Profession: Herbalist or Knowledge: nature 20 to notice a perfect environment for a carnivorous plant or Perception 25 to notice there’s a lot of flying bugs and birds. In others, Tien hibiscus or Chenille bushes can be found without interesting guardians.

A tropical jungle fills this greenhouse, complete with thick plants, loamy soil, and a large pool. The stone walls are painted to appear as more jungle. Strange, white pebbles are scattered across the soil. [Continual flame spells provide light from the ceiling, while plates enchanted with heat metal lie beneath the soil. The pond is 5’ deep. The white pebbles are shards of bones, Heal 20 or Knowledge: nature to identify the remains as the meal of the advanced giant anaconda: +2 rolls, +4 AC and CMD, +24 HP.]

Orchid House: Regardless of the weather outside, it’s hot, muggy, and unpleasant within. The delicate attention necessary to growing these flowers makes it clear that this place is visited frequently. Rare and ordinary orchids can be found within. Paths lead to a dedicated space set aside by a vine trellis (and the Blood Soaker Vine CR 9 guardian) producing the dramatic lighting and subtle shade for the Gold of Kinabalu orchid known for its imposing vertical petals. The collected plants are worth 2,600 gp in total to collectors, if transplanted without damage and cared for effectively in the meantime.

Living topiary hedge maze that changes its orientation, whose hedges function like wall of thorns. Five Survival 20 checks are necessary to navigate all the way through the maze, but allow for effects like levitation to provide bonuses. Using the humanoid statues as markers grants a +2 circumstance bonus; one looks just like the Alabaster Academy herbalism professor. (Its purchase on the black market, along with the regular purchase of feed animals, can be traced back to The Gardner with a gather information DC 30; signs of the consumed domesticated prey it stalks can be spotted with a DC 20 perception check throughout the maze.) Near the entrances are topiary rooms with living topiaries of prey animals with innocuous customizations and a peaceful demeanor, who will not attack unless harmed. Hunting intruders in the maze is a greater verdurous ooze. Guarding the exit is a Fiend-infused stone golem.

Final area of Greenhouse:
You are 600’ away from a ritual involving three sire devils, a tiefling dripping blood into an apricot rose bush, and a tall green woman at the center. She is on an island dotted with menhirs floating in the air. There are irregularly spaced floating lily pads that may permit a path towards her. [If the ritual is complete due to a delay of more than 24 hours from the kidnapping of Hetamon, simply replace the three sire devils with a mandragora swarm, have The Gardener already be a handmaiden devil, and remove the body of Hetamon, consumed in the ritual.] The lily pads and the island are not actually floating in the sky—it is a persistent illusion.

That rose bush features rare roses, the apricot-hued Juliet Rose, holy to the Milani worshipper. Prepare and eat its petals to have a magical rose tattoo, which allows the bearer to summon a single rose of any color as a free action 1/round, which may neµver be used as a weapon. Only one person per location may bear this tattoo. The rose lasts one day, after which it disappears into a puff of perfume. The bearer of the tattoo, if they are a worshipper of Milani, can brush the face of someone with this magical rose as a standard action to cast heal (CL 11) upon them.

I had Thrune sit on what info they had on the 4 PCs, then use that knowledge to set up my big twist in Dance of the Damned--they had devils dress as "The Silver Ravens" and attack Fake Barzillai and a daughter of the Sarinis on stage. The quality of the disguises corresponded to how well they knew the PCs. It was a great reveal: the false flag operation was very personal.

I agree--the notoriety should reflect the Thrune-allied views on them rather than, say, the overwhelming fear of the Punisher by all. I think it's adorable that your players going in this non-violent direction, rather than grim-dark. When they get the Lucky Bones, they can even use the prison for major humanoid villains while they await a street trial. (That's what I've done with my table.) Elsewhere on the boards you'll read historical justification for street trials, especially in book two, and I'd encourage you to facilitate your players rather than thwarting it. See The Flash and Arrow for both how imprisoning villains worked and how extra-legal imprisonment without trial gets sticky... especially if they escape and have a personal grudge as a result.

(My book four twist on the Team Thrune attacking the Lucky Bones encounter is that simultaneously they'll be trying to spring the lieutenants my table has imprisoned on the water level.)

And who knows? Maybe the dottari will try to frame them for a series of book two murders? Wouldn't that smear this group of pesky heroes--just another group of murder hobos...

You don't really need the other five books. It's your basic ...

Basically. you'd just need the last two books, if that.

If a lich hits using unarmed strike does the target have to make a fortitude save against paralysis? Would they be able to flurry with the paralysis effect on their unarmed strikes if they were a Sacred Fist?

I've decided to apply the Research mechanic for Infernal Contracts to finding the Soul Anchor and to researching what it can do. In the interests of providing more oomph to the cult of Mahathallah in book two, I've had that mechanism be The Mysteries of Salaur, which the PCs can find in the

“All you see is illusion. All you know is fiction. All you are is lies.” —The Mysteries of Salaur
Description: “Widely copied and traded among Mahathallah’s Qadiran followers, this encyclopedic tome focuses on the cultivation of hallucinogenic plants, particularly bloody methods of haruspicy, interpretations of dreams, and predictions of cosmic alignments. Any character who succeeds at a DC 20 Knowledge (arcana) or Knowledge (nature) check realizes that several of the purported facts are entirely fictional. A successful DC 25 Wisdom check, however, reveals numerous metaphor-coded prayers and rites to Mahathallah hidden among the fictions, including the process of preparing adyton. Salaur herself, a Keleshite mystic born in 1500 ar, is said to have found a way to preserve her body in a state of near death so her mind can eternally explore the halls of the Adyton.”
Source: Book 2

The Mysteries of Salaur (CR 12)
KP: 40
Complexity and Specialized Skills: Linguistics DC 38, Knowledge: religion DC 36, Craft: Writing DC 36, or Wisdom DC 25
Unique Feature: Metaphoric. The metaphoric nature of the text makes it rather vexing to the logical mind. The researcher constructs their meaning of the text through their particular reading of it rather than translates or decodes its only meaning. This feature adds 4 to its KP, adds layers of benefits (see below), increases the specialized skills DCs and adds a Wisdom ability check option (see above), and modifies the rules for research successes and failures (see below).
First Mystery (30 KP): Learn various metaphor-coded prayers and rites to Mahathallah, including how to make Adyton and to gain access to Create Drug spell. Dusting one’s eyes with the drug allows a temporary trancelike state that permits projection of one’s consciousness a permanent mindscape manifesting as a vast, labyrinthine temple that floats in a balmy, sunless expanse. While the nature of the adventure resulting is up to the DM, it will typically involve trading mysteries and praising Mahathallah with worshippers of Mahathallah, and creatures like bone devils, cabal devils, undead, and sahkils on pilgrimage. At this stage of understanding, the researcher can gain only general knowledge about soul anchors and not how to use them or the location of one. Mahathallah controls this mindscape and prevents those with such knowledge from sharing it without their knowledge.
Second Mystery: Transcendence (15 KP): Learn how to preserve your body in a state of near death so your mind can eternally explore the halls of the Adyton.
Third Mystery: Apotheosis (0 KP): Learn how to project your consciousness to the section of Adyton’s halls dealing with Soul Anchors. Mahathallah favors you with the location of one Soul Anchor and knowledge of how to use it, but worshippers of Pharasma are struck with a no-save insanity spell.

To research it: Succeed in a check to do damage to its Knowledge Points
Time: 8 uninterrupted hours per attempt.
Bonuses:
• Up to three people can aid another for a +2 each at DC 10. Failure is -2. [Rules say two can aid, but I’m making it three because otherwise one PC has nothing to do]
• Each prior attempt +1 cumulative to rolls
Success on research roll: Altered due to the nature of the text
• Polymaths: 1d12+Wis KP damage (if you can attempt any Knowledge check untrained, such as a bard, loremaster, or skald)
• Gurus: 1d8+Wis (e.g. wisdom-based casters, worshippers of Mahathallah)
• Novices: 1d6+Wis KP damage for all others
• Scholars: 1d4+Wis KP damage (e.g. alchemists, arcanists, investigators, wizards)
• Critical success threat: double damage if succeed on second roll (no extra time)
Failure:
• Natural one: fail and increase KP +1d8
• Fail twice in a row: you cannot access the next benefit until you gain a level. You may continue to research up to that KP.

Source: Using the Infernal Contract system of Book 5, rather than the more general library research system of Intrigue rules

While I don't think it's a thread hijack to react to canon updates in a thread about updates to canon, I can say that I am ALSO interested in updates that can help me to manage my 1st edition game.

Do the goblins interact with any other groups? Since goblins in 1st edition were basically scavengers with a side of hunting/gathering, I'd be curious as to what's going on there.

Also, what the heck are Revousa Ditches?

And what is going on in Nidal? That's the big honkin' thing I want to know, given how important their reaction is to a New Ravounel and how little information we get about what negotiating with them would be like.

I agree all the historical and economic elements are there to justify better end results. I'll take it one step further. It would imply some pretty nasty things about the customer base if Paizo felt that there wasn't a market for players in this hobby wanting to fantasize about starting a democracy.

There's options for players to make decisions that undermine hierarchy in Kingmaker, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Hell's Rebels, but they have to swim upstream against either the AP as written or game structures that enforce the hierarchy of rulers and ruled. At least we're given these three APs where it's a lot closer to a doable fantasy than most companies' other products. I mean, it's not hard to reject the Board of Governors and that's the first step towards imagining something better than embracing cultural hegemony by reproducing the ruling class ideology. Kingmaker's the closest, requiring only the decision to abandon the Kingdom management subsystem for straight role play; the math of kingdom management really encourage PCs in the leadership slots, especially in the beginning. And, again, it's not canon--just about any fantasy society can fill in your Kingmaker.

Paizo's praiseworthy in their attempts to use canon to force players to deal with trans and non-binary identity and representations that are trying to undermine sexist fantasies, even if it only comes to players being forced to reject it. They lost and gained customers with those decisions and came out strong. I wish they had similar faith in this AP for democracy or even more anti-hierarchical forms.