the Lorax's page

This is the kind of stuff I hope to find in the Adventure Path forums, glad someone shared the work that they did to flesh this out!

Thanks Demiurge 1138.

I intend to use the frame of LoF to build my next campaign, but I'm not a fan of the very start of it.

Starting In Media Res can be a good thing - especially if you have a large table of players. Get the people at the table and get the dice rolling as fast as possible, let the character development happen later. When you have a smaller (4 or less players) table, I really prefer to have the players less focused on rolling dice/crunching numbers and instead thinking about who their character is and finding its voice.

Has anyone built the beginning of the campaign out to include more than "...you wake up in a bed..."
"You've been hired to guard a caravan, after spending a week to get there (feel free to describe yourselves) you're finally almost there - OH LOOK A FIRE!"

I like Barator's idea that builds a story of the PC's being fill-ins to replace some bad hires, but that's more off screen interactions. I'd like some ideas about how they get chosen or hired. and what happens BEFORE "...OH LOOK A FIRE!"

Cheers! . . . Teds Survival Guide Book 1

Ted, that document is really great, just outstanding.

All I can say is that I'm sorry for your loss.

Really sorry to hear that.

Thank you both for the kind words.

I really like this campaign as it turns a lot of expectations on its head, and makes each and every NPC a critical piece of your game.

For this campaign, I think that making the settlement at least SEEM alive is important.
In between every session I tried to use the "three things happen" guide, (kind of self explanatory).

But I shared out those duties - often assigning the task of what happened or who it happened to, to one of the players, such as:

"There's some celebration in the settlement - what is being celebrated?"
or
"Someone has had an religious epiphany and perhaps change of faith, who is it?"

Sometimes just as simple as "Someone in town approaches <different player's character> to talk, who is it?"
or alternately, "what does the person want?"

Just something small to not only create activity in the settlement, but to get the player's invested in the (very limited number) of NPCs in the settlement.

Global pandemics and other local issues really slowed down my progress in this campaign.

With my heavy modifications making the campaign not just Roanoke, but combined elements of John Carter, Lost (even more than already there), Stargate and Gilligan's Island.

I was very happy with the changes and adaptations I utilized, making a resource available with images available for every colonist along with brief bios and updated information.

I made my player's stretch by allowing them to incorporate story and social elements into the colony to make it a living place - to make the players care about the colony and their fellow colonists.

With decades of experience upon both sides of the gm screen, I was pretty proud of what I was doing with this campaign, I was stretching my skills and my player's - even if it was only for three players.

This forum is also a great resource for ideas and has helped me build my campaign and saved me a bunch of work. But now I'm not feeling the motivation to complete this campaign, and its a little sad that I won't get to see how it all plays out as the story progresses. But not as sad as I am about the reason why.

Earlier this month, one of those players died due to complications after surgery. A player who I've shared a table with regularly for over 30 years. He'll be missed.

Yes, this is ancient by standards of the internet, but I thought I'd share how I'm handling money and purchases. I needed to prepare for this in advance as I have some small and some REALLY BIG alterations to the campaign.

I had decided to abstract the money issue.
Any gear that the players did not claim went to the community.
This would award the players with trade "GPV" (gold piece value), effectivly actual gold but not tangible coinage.
Magic items I have been giving 40%-50%, mundane around 25%-40%, atjusting with a little wiggle room based upon the general usefulness of the items.

The players have been able to use that stored "GPV" to purchase items from the settlements crafters rather than having to play out how every individual piece of loot is handled and avoid turing the game into Bartering & Bankrolls.

Its been pretty efficient and allows me a lot of room to fudge their available resources in case they don't manage to find every piece of hidden loot or pick up everything that isn't nailed down.

Plus throwing in the odd extra cracked and flawed ioun stones.

Latest installment of my obsession with this AP: using my list of second wave colonists, I wrote short bios for all the colonists aboard the Peregrine.

Love it! *yoink* I can use this to add to mine.

Disregard any characters after #50: they are my players' PCs.

Why would I do that? They could make fine extra colonists to show up at some point!

I decided to do the opposite - I wiped them out.

I wanted to make the starting situation a little more bleak and to force everyone to rely upon their fellow colonists more. One of the few remaining ones decided to join their settlement - if nothing else to give me a voice for providing guidance/insight about the area for the PCs.

Hope its not too late, I'm still pretty early on in my highly altered version of this campaign.

I prepared a pretty exhaustive interview process for the expedition.

I went around the table asking questions about why they wanted to join the expedition, made them make some skill checks and a variety of other things to get them into their characters heads first. It really helped the players get a voice and get into the head space of their characters.

The Monkey Goblins seem to be the best option for any information at the beginning of the campaign. Did anyone explore this or expand their role?

The constantly running bad guy can get old fast, you'll have to judge your players, but in no particular order...

- Eliza is, for a while, one step ahead of the PCs - in joining the bad guys, whichever bad guys are the flavor of the day. At some point she doesn't run away fast enough.

- Eliza gets killed and eaten by the Sahuagin - and remains to haunt a piece of her gear, or be the intelligence behind a magic item.

- The escape wasn't what it seems, and she's misunderstood, she was trying to warn people about the (insert threat) when the sahuagin caught her.

- Ochy really didn't want her potentially spilling beans too soon and intervened arranging her escape (and return to his servitude) this time she'll really want to come clean as Ochy no longer trusts her.

- Mysterious Death. Leave a hodge podge of random clues as to her fate - get the PCs talking about it, steal the best of their ideas, but subvert them somehow so it seems like they only partially "guessed" right.

What's the possibility that the locals are only recently local?
That the locals are just now building a nearby settlement?

Making the players respond to questions about themselves while on the spot really did work for my group - people were quickly getting into character and already being forced to answer some questions - perhaps even to themselves about their own characters.

If you have a chance to do any sort of interview process with your players I think it could be of value.

I also created some hand out Stock Certificates for their personal stock in the venture. A tangible item for them to hold on to so that they had some sense of ownership in the success of the mission. They went over pretty well too.

I've actually started running this - but this will only be very loosely a "Ruins of Azlant" campaign.

I'll still share what I've done in case it sparks any ideas.

I've set the stage, the players made their NPC classed characters - hereafter "colonist characters" and we role-played the selection process with the characters making assorted skill checks.

I went around the table asking questions that could be pertinent and included some questions based on Mars One guidelines. The players had no knowledge that they were going to the moon until the end of the session.

The "...to the moon..." bombshell was exciting, and the players began talking about what to do and plans for their real..."explorer characters".
For a group of long-time jaded players, this was a nice bit of excitement, and the players began revising their explorer character plans.

Role-playing out the interview process turned out better than I'd hoped even if I wasn't quite as prepared as I wanted to be. With all the players there, they quickly were able to get into their colonist characters and at least somewhat begin to form a persona. I also gave the players free reign to make "peanut gallery" comments when their own character was not being questioned. Heckling the active player.
Along with that, they were able to "introduce" their characters without any stilted typical beginning of campaign introductions or descriptions.

If you're thinking of starting this campaign, I thought it worked well for me and my players.

In the last AP I ran I made the occasional use of "cut scenes" - giving the players the chance to play through some of the events that happen off screen from their regular characters by playing some of the background NPCs for part of a session.

Show rather than tell.
It was very effective in communicating the story to the players.

The thought I have is to begin the campaign with that idea.

Here's the outline:

1 - Before actual character generation, have each player build a 15 point npc classed character.

2 - Have the players experience the selection process through to the final step of the first wave selection, but will ultimately NOT be selected as a first wave colonist.

3 - Have the players generate their own PC characters for the second wave selection after having experienced the selection process once on another character.

4 - The NPC classed characters will be part of the second wave and join the PCs on their mission as second wave colonists.

5- The NPC classed characters will be used on a recurring basis to show the players things that their actual characters are not their for.

Thoughts?

With my group, the financial incentive in this expedition was always very openly present.

You make some nice points, "incentive to just abandon the colony" isn't really going to be much of a threat or option given my re-theme plans, but I don't want to make the players feel TOO trapped in the situation.

Regarding the Haunt - I like your alterations. In reading through the AP, every time I read through that part I keep thinking "How am I going to run this in a way that the players will be interested in rather than frustrated with?"

Thanks for sharing!

My reading between the lines of history seems to indicate a huge financial incentive behind the Roanoke colony, and its continued existence - I want to play a bit more with that idea and try to let at least some of that bleed through into the campaign. The idea that the colonists are being used for financial gain - that there are bigger movers and shakers that may not have their best interests at heart.

I also want to build Buy In from the players and a bit of character development in the direction of why they WANT to be colonist, and to let that be a guiding idea during character creation and initial development.

About interviews as a prologue (if that's still relevant for you), I did that, presenting it to the players as a way for us to make sure the characters made sense and for me to get to know their characters and skills so I could add a couple fun things related to that. I sprinkled in a couple skill checks based on the way the roleplaying went (diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, knowledge local) and didn't give specific rewards. The players mostly got a sense of what was expected of them from that.

Totally relevant - I'm still playing around with the re-theme, I've probably got 9+ months before I have to worry about starting the campaign.

And that's exactly the type of thing I have in mind.
I hadn't really thought about using it intentionally to push the players into deeper discovery of who their character is, but that's a great idea actually.

My group would get into it.

Yeah any perk should be minor at best - probably a small amount of bonus gear as a welcome package.

I have the interview process prepared, It wouldn't be too difficult to work it up into an encounter with a handful of checks and a bit of RP.

I'm still collecting data and thinking things over for this as I'm doing quite a bit of adjusting.

Was thinking of this myself while doing prep.

Anyone?

<with snippage>

Currently, the plan is to close out each Adventure Path with ... "Beyond the Campaign" articles. These articles would discuss ramifications of the adventure path on the world at large.

What sort of information would you like to see in the very last volume of an Adventure Path, in place of the "Continuing the Campaign"?

I use the APs as a framework to hang my campaign on, and run them in my long term homebrew world. The end of campaign ramifications is always great, as I've been running my campaign since the 80s - the successes and failures of previous campaigns often plays a role in the game.

I'd really like to see some ideas about other elements (adventures/plots) that could play into the campaign. Even ideas for replacing/reskinning whole chapters. Sometimes you don't want to run another haunted castle, or there isn't a badlands/giant mountain/tribe of barbarians near where I want to run the campaign.

To play off of that I'd also like to see ideas for slower progression, and additional elements to add, potential side treks. Some of the discussion forums have some really creative and interesting ideas for things that that they added and its super helpful, even outlines of events that were cut would be useful.

My (long term home brew, which has its origins in the early 80's)campaign world has a long (ancient) history of conflict between dragon-kind and fey(and by extension elves). I've also used the moon as a inhabited location in the past.

Using areas of low-gravity and low-air is entirely my intent, in fact I intend for the "normal" areas to be the "pockets", simulating islands of normality. There will be water, so if I'm forced to, I can still use outright underwater areas.

I also have a long established 'Atlantean' civilization, almost all of the Runelords material fit very well within the world history with only moderate shoehorning, and I've no reason to make a differentiation between Azlant and Thasilon, as far as my campaign world the IS no precursor and successor empire.

I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't make the fey/elves the enemies in this campaign - I'll have to think about that...

Adventurers find an ancient 'Atlantean' portal to the moon, on the moon they discover rare metals and woods, they decide to try to exploit the resources, but realize it will take the founding of a colony to really exploit them. The real problem is that the portal only opens during a total lunar eclipse.

Rough outline to begin the campaign:

1 - Explorer adventurers set up company to exploit the moon.

2 - Company sets up and organizes a settlement on the island where the portal is located.

3 - True colonization recruitment begins, First Wave selected.

4 - First Wave of colonists sail to staging settlement and trained and sent through portal.

5 - Things happen.

6 - Second Wave selected.

7 - Second Wave of colonists sail to staging settlement (including PCs) and trained and sent through portal.

I'm considering some type of event before the actual travel through the portal such as pirates or something else on the portal island, letting the PCs sort of hit the ground running once on the moon and cut off from resources.

I am preparing to run this AP. All of the feedback and insights have been tremendously helpful. I have decided that I really like the idea of this being an expedition that the PC's need to apply for. Using the information I had read about the Mars-One initiative (to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars) I altered it to reflect the Bountiful Venture Companies process.

This sounds really cool, I've already yoinked your text and begun adapting it to my own into - combining it with material from the RoA Player's Guide and adapting it to my campaign world. The fact that this is ideas you've borrowed from a Mars initiative is even more fitting as I plan on making this about settling the moon.

I know I'm setting myself up for a lot of work with this, but we're barely halfway through another AP being run by another DM, so I have quite a while to work on this.

Has anyone thought of trying to actually do a prologue based upon the interview process? Maybe with some skill checks and Charisma checks?
Allowing those who can pass the interview process to begin better equipped and perhaps with a bonus trait or some such as an award for making an appropriate character, and slotting in those who "fail" as a last minute alternate (who doesn't get that kind of perk).

...I'm going likely going to make extensive changes.

I have no desire to use the primary baddies that this campaign uses.

I really like the whole Roanoke thing it has going for it, and while islands could work, I also have some things I want to run on my campaign world's moon.

So I'm thinking that there is a portal that only opens rarely to the moon and running the game as a colony being sent to the moon.

Most of the underwater problems/challenges go away.

The main baddies would be draconic.

Does anyone have any advice, or threads to point at here for cool stuff?

I know it the other AP forums there's always lots of neat stuff buried in there created by other DMs, so if someone would be so kind as to point me towards the cool stuff, please!

This is a neat idea, did any work get done on it?

Absolutely, and they knew that.

The irritated PC proceeded to do nothing with the land/house.

Maybe in a future campaign I'll incorporate it all over again - a deed of a distant relative falls into your hands, its for some place called "Foxglove Manor"...

The massive money pit called Fort Rannick became the first distraction, then Stones over Sandpoint made a second.

The social encounter was actually a hit, and all the PCs were entertained by the situation blowing up, even the wannabe lawyer.

Well... I haven't started yet, in fact another DM is still mid-way through their campaign, but I'm thinking of running this while making extensive changes.

Some changes are pure setting based - I'm using my homebrew world, so some things are out. The main change (and its really just at the start of the planning stage) is that this will take place on the moon. Help and support will be even farther away.

Aberrations will largely be replaced with draconic creatures, and I intend on largely replacing the underwater aspects with land based ones.

I've just started re-reading the path and haven't even started with notes yet, but based on the campaign outline I can make this work with a whole new skin.

I'm kinda with Dracovar here, especially about Ilsoari. He's a well known and liked character who many townsfolk probably remember as their favorite teacher, nobody likes the idea of their favorite teacher getting roughed up for no reason by thugs.

Is it the players or the characters who are the murderhobos?

Players?
Go with Jhaeman's plan, get them out into the wilderness and start rolling on the wandering monster charts, let them kill stuff and take loot, let them build a fort and retire. For some players this is the kind of game that they want to play.

Characters?
I like John Wass's plan, let them do their stuff, and keep dropping links back into the campaign. Maybe get Shayliss AND the retired PC killed when Sandpoint gets invaded. Make sure there is puppy kicking involved.

Good luck!

So let me get this straight - significant spoilers for RotRL follow

** spoiler omitted **...

Not quite.

I'm not sure why that idea is so offensive - for the PCs to engage in a non- "HPs and ACs" confrontation, but I'll elaborate.

Party doesn't know if anyone left living has a claim on the house, files a claim of ownership with the courts, hires a lawyer.

Lawyer goes about working on the claim, finds that there are living relatives who probably have a better claim on house, but is working for the PCs.

Sisters get notified, file counterclaim, with the hope that the PCs will actually just opt to pay them off and take the deed and house off their hands in return for some cash - as the deed (prop) I provided them actually includes a fairly large land grant, it is of value.

One of the PCs actually has invested in Linguistics and ranks in Profession(Lawyer) and other related skills. Tries to step in a force the actual legal claim - botches skill checks. Then tries to Intimidate the sisters into giving up their claim, and goes on to insult them with nonsense like you just posted above - "Some of your family were bad, so you don't deserve land you should actually inherit."

Sister's lawyer smells blood, wealthy adventurer types trying to steal land and property and wealthy patrons family looking for recompensation. Hes looking at a ton of billable hours.

One of the PCs annoyed at the situation just decides to pay the sisters off, the full value of their claim just to make the irritation go away.
All the lawyers take their cut. The sisters get more than they had before. The PCs, well the wannabe lawyer anyway, goes away with egg on his face. The annoyed PC goes away with a significant land and property deed.

You're framing the situation that somehow the sisters should be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors, and should just go piss up a rope instead of try to make a legal claim on property that they should legitimately inherit? You're suggesting that the local authorities should ignore inheritance laws and back the claims of some rural bumpkins instead of members of local aristocracy?

My players tried to put in a claim for the house itself even!

So I let things go for a while then had the sisters show up with a lawsuit and a claim for the building and stolen property.

Then I let things play out, the PCs mostly just rolled over on this one, but we got in a good session just dealing with it.

I tried to see if that was noted somewhere too, not finding an answer in anything printed, I ran it as a pure plot tool to help them move forward when they were stuck.

Roll the dice behind the screen, consult the chart, nod sagely and provide whatever answer works for the game. I waived the stat loss issue too, but didn't tell the players that, it kept them from using it in places other than in town where they were safe in case something happened.

I used a fair amount of extra goblins throughout the Glassworks, often wielding improvised weapons like tongs, hooks, pipes and assorted glass items, having glass shard "splash" damage hitting PC and goblin alike.

Really with the self destructive tactics of the goblins, you can add a bunch of level 1 warrior goblins without much impact on the danger level.

Difficult terrain, hurled bits of molten glass, and a pair of goblins charging with a plate glass window to dump on the front line guy.

Gotta play up the goblins love of senseless destruction, those glass bottles are a great addition. Add insult to injury, have one of them put something foul in the bottle before throwing it.

Hmmpf - over 4 years ago I started planning for this campaign, and over 2 since I last updated this thread.

I've added lots of extra material and trimmed a little.
I really plan to do a section by section thoughts, I have a good part of that finished already. The campaign has not proceeded as well as I could have hoped especially over the last year, but that is as much due to real world interference.

Most importantly, last weekend we finally finished.

Big K met his match at the hands of the party - the final fight went well and had players sweating the outcome, players choosing to take a final stab at finishing off K instead of trying to save their fellows.

I don't feel it was the most exciting battle of the campaign but it went well.

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback thoughts and any material in this forum - you've made this more fun to run, and made me a better DM.

Nope, didn't think of it, good idea. Wish I'd thought of it earlier myself. It would have made more sense, and would have made some of the stuff throughout the campaign a little more cohesive, especially how the first chapter links into the rest.

This type of change makes the first chapter a side effect of things happening and removes the link of Lamashtu and Karzoug, which is a little weird. Mammon is a pretty decent choice too if you'd like to add in some deviltry and maybe remove some of the Lovecraftian aspects.

It's good that I planned so far in advance, I had thoughts, side treks and ideas planned well in advance - and it was important to do so, as I am running this in my own long time homebrew. Changing place and people names, deciding how to alter locations based upon a completely different geography, changing names when appropriate or when I just didn't like the mouth feel of the name, but I stopped at the Vekker Cabin.

I'd always just sort of assumed that by the time they reached the city of greed, that it would be pretty much just the remaining slide ride for the campaign, especially with my groups strategy of stealth past threats and move on to the important bad guys.

Which is what they've been doing.
Spending several sessions scouting and planning.
Avoiding engagements at all costs.

In the Runeforge, Vraxeris mentions in his journal the idea of sending an agent into Xin-Shalast. It struck me that this may make a better central "quest giver and information dispenser" than Morgiv and Gyukak are directly. So I've gone with the idea that Vraxeris DID manage to get a Simulacrum out of the Runeforge and that simulacrum (SimVrax for short)has made it to Xin Shalast and has been scouting and spying on the city for a while.

SimVrax has learned quite a bit, using illusions and a great deal of caution. He has also set up a network of magic mouth spells set to trigger on specific conditions - conditions that notify him when potential allies find their way to Xin-Shalast.

Sim-Vrax will have as contacts both Morgiv and Gyukak, allowing him to direct my skittish part to Morgiv and Gyukak as needed, giving me a flow chart something like this:

1 - PCs get to X-S
2 - PCs stumble around/scout
3 - PCs trigger one of SimVrax's Magic Mouth
4 - SimVrax contacts them - extra cautiously
5 - SimVrax gives them basic city info, fills in knowledge gaps
6 - SimVrax brings them to Morgiv, Do Hidden Beast
7 - SimVrax brings them to Gyukak
Path branches depending upon player's choice after talking to Gyukak, good point to insert Kahlib and put an end to SimVrax.
8 - In no particular order engages last of encounters important in lower city, Ghlorofaex, Gamigin, maybe Yeti or Lamias (someone mentioned earlier in this thread the idea of Gyukak trying to convince the PCs to stir up trouble to help get some of the uncontrolled giants free)
9 - Up the Spire with their required rings.

Going through all my old notes, it looks like all the others I thought might have been guards were actually militia.

tbug's list(and Deviant Designs expanded version) is really nice.

Its always great to have a name and at least SOMETHING to go on, it frames how they interact with the PCs, plus my PCs are all townies, so they should pretty much know who almost everyone is.

I really feel like I'm missing a few of the guards I've used, but only Keeler, Jacoby and Belor himself received any development beyond their initial stat blocks.

Jacoby started as an expert 1 and a new recruit - as two of the PCs spent time at the Turandarok Academy, and were notable as pranksters and trouble makers, he was intended to be a bit of both a foil and ally, that plotline never developed.

Keeler was the guard that the PCs always wanted to talk to, so he ended up with a bit of a story and a few minutes in the spotlight - and thus his level of expert gained at level 3 along with the realization that he is NOT an adventurer and he may want anther way to make a living. Privately Ethram Valdemar has suggested he may be the next sheriff.

Belor gets plenty of action, and his depression takes a back seat to the clean-up duties he takes part in (first goblins, then ghouls, then the odd ogre issue). As the PCs move out of the area during Hook Mountain, tensions in town begin ramping up Titus begins trying to take over the glassworks, and opposes a new town run grain mills construction. The Sczarni and the other families work against them, and Belor struggles with the moral issue of allowing the Sczarni to be a thorn to the Scarnetti. But when he saves some townsfolk and guards during Stones over Sandpoint he makes a turning point and realizes that some things he is capable of and others are outside his control, he begins to come to terms with his relation with Stoot (and his brother) and moves more directly against the Sczarni. He moves from 4th to 8th across that time.

It's really a terribly written spell, even beyond your confusion.

There are other threads that have discussed it, but this one has links to just about all the info available...which is really almost no info at all.

I've come up with some house rules to make it work because a player wanted to try it out - its a pretty cool SOUNDING spell, but the rules for it and actual implementation in a real game make this spell unusable as written.

ooof, had a LONG post ready here, and then lost it, very painful.

Well, this most of it all over again, a bit abreviated.

Info I had used for the town guards and Belor.

Benk Griffon – Town Guard

Wallace Fard – Town Guard

Keeler Gaar – Town Guard

Pol – Town Guard

"Chert" (actually Devon Chertom) – Town Guard

Barto Markovi - Town Guard

Jacoby Trume - Town Guard

Belor Hemlock – Sheriff

Love this idea - though I think the concept would work better if it was structured by power groups rather than individuals.

I've got plenty of stuff for the town guards, but only a little on Belor himself.

During Stones over Sandpoint, I allowed the players to participate in mini scenes across town (I ran it a bit differently, than presented, giving the players no real forewarning of the attack)with each player getting to run some of the NPCs of the town, each player getting to run the closest think to the mentor type of their actual character, and answer a couple of questions about the character and their motives.

For me, Belor is in a bit over his head - he got his job with the support of the Scarnetti family, who want to use the town guards as their own personal anti-Sczarni task force. The Scarnetti also wanted someone who owes them something in charge of the guards in the wake of the Avertin/Deverin alliance of the previous years. Belor is a decent guard and a man of his word and is out of his depths in dealing with the political aims of the Scarnetti. The secret that truly haunts him however is that Chopper is actually his great uncle, and he maintains his tight control over himself because he is secretly afraid that he may have the same evil inside.

After further investigation, they figure out the killer came from The Feathered Serpent (not sure how i'll lead them to this conclusion...still working on this part.)

Perhaps a discarded wand with a price tag from the Feathered Serpent? This sets up having the odd Gremlin with assorted wands shooting off sub-optimal spells.

May I suggest grappling Gremlin swarms jumping on the big weapon wielder, forcing him to drop his weapon in the grapple, then other Gremlins running off with his weapon? Dirty Tricks and Improvised weapons. A battle in a barn with panicked horses and a fire.

Heck, rewatch Gremlins and Gremlins II.

Male Human Paladin(Hospitlar&Tempered Champion)/Oracle 2/1
Lawful Good
Str 13 +1
Dex 15 +2
Con 15 +2
Int 8 -1
Wis 10 +0
Chr 16 +3

Feats
Point Blank Shot
Fey-Foundling
Precise Shot
Traits
Finding your Kin - Extra Favored Class, get HP and Skill point with that class.
Scarred by War - +1 HP when healing others, +1 Diplomacy
Reactionary - +2 Initiative

Seems slightly better.
Still concerned about scaling

At 9th level, (lets say 6/3)
Barring any items beyond normal ones:

6 Lay on Hands per day for 3d6
6 Hospitlar Paladin Channels per day for 2d6
4 Oracle of Life Channels per day for 2d6
4 1st level spells per day
(all add +1 for others, +2 per die for self)

BAB +8
Bow Attack +13/+8 (within 30') 1d8+1 (normal non-composite bow)
(+Plus Divine Bond 1/day for 6 minutes, +1 enchantment and 1 Smite Evil per day +3to hit, +12 damage)

Fort +12
Ref +9
Will +11

Looking at your build in the first post, you probably will not be happy with this character.

Honestly not super thrilled with it as is - scaling as levels go up is a valid concern.

Most Oradins go melee, to reduce the number of stats to STR/CON/Char and dump some of the remaining stats -- as a ranged character, you are going DEX/STR/CON/Char, and not dumping any.

Keeping 10s in Int/Wis really amounts to getting 1 more point of Charisma instead of 8s, a hapless dullard is not the type I'm envisioning with this character, that said I can totally see trying to arrange these the stats in a different way, I was trying to keep Str up for load and damage purposes, 12 might be tolerable, but would be another drag on the damage.

With your feats going to two dissimilar feat chains (healing and archery), you will be behind the curve in both.

Feat starvation is a potential concern

What is the goal of being a ranged Oradin? Meaning, do you need those two clases?

As basically the party's HP battery, it seemed sensible to mitigate my exposure to extra damage when necessary, and maximize the efficiency of the damage I deal - thus bow seemed to be a good plan, not being a "real" archer being made up for by the odd smite.

I KNOW that in this campaign, access to Magic Item Mart is going to be limited at best so being able to trust that I will regularly be able to re-supply wands (of any variety) will be limited at best, and potentially approaching non-existent, so I'd prefer to have never ending heals available innately. This also makes starknife shenanigans probably a bad call too, as the only magic ones would the ones that get made by a PC.

Yeah, the early channeling isn't going to be awesome, I'd like to think that things ramp up after 6th, and by 8th things should be working well enough. Life Link and Lay on Hands is what I'm hoping makes this work, but that is where the decision for the second paladin archetype comes in, Tempered Champion adds some of the Warpriest's damage potential.

As one of 3 options I'm building for this game, its also the most mechanically interesting - and borderline.
It pretty much requires that spell casting is almost entirely handled by other characters, and I have no idea what they're bringing, but I believe that there will be a fair number of new players at this table, so worrying about being uber optimized to be able to "keep up" with the rest of the part is not a high priority.

IF that turns out to that I see a Wizard, a Druid and a Barbarian, then I may just try this.

Oh and thanks for digging in!

Not werecreature-y, but I used a side trek called Night of the Straw Men, and adapted it to fit my needs while the party was going back and forth across the countryside.

It has a Holloween feel.

78. You become blue. (Smurfy, Muddy Waters or both)

4th level does give one more Life Link and be able to cast 2nd level spells without resorting to an item - like Shield Other.

Its the last level of oracle you can add to the build without another BAB drop, and if, for some (campaign/character/party) reason, post 12th level I find that moving back to a more caster oriented build is what is called for, I can.

This could be a dumb plan. But I want some options to put on the table and this seems a bit more on the edge - workable if there are other full casters at the table.

I've worked up a melee oriented buffing cleric and (much more focused and dull) Oracle Healer as alternates as I have no idea what the rest of the table is bringing at this point.

Summer is about over and almost time to be back to DMing again.

I've been thinking about the link between leaving the Runeforge and finding the Vekker's cabin - I expect my party to go to do research on who they were and what happened to their expedition.

Did anyone expand upon that element?

If I'm topping out at Oracle 4, I'm not seeing a big advantage to Spirit Guide, and it drops Survival as a class skill which (due to deity based reasons) I'd like to put a point or two in.

If I was going to 7/8th level (or higher) as an Oracle I could see the advantage.

Ended up going with something pretty close to this - I optimized a little bit more and abandoned the Angelic feat chain for a faster approach to a blaster arcanist with moderate amount of trick/gimmick spells.

We've reached almost 10th at this point, and while the rest of the party are mythic tier 1s, I've more than held my own without being mythic.

Thanks for the help and feedback everyone.

I'd been interpreting this as assessing each "Link" sequentially.

So three links on the same person?
That works fine - if a person has 3 links to the Oracle and 14 hp of damage, they end up healing 5, then healing 5 then staying at down 4hp.

I'd just assumed that that was the intended use for scaling.

I could be wrong - the wording isn't as clear as it could be and I can see the other interpretation.