xTheJim's page

Awesome, thank you so much!

I'm hoping some folks can help me out with understanding Barzillai's final mythic statblock.

As a 2nd tier Hierophant, shouldn't he have two Path powers and a Mythic feat? I don't know if I'm blind or they're missing, but I can't find them on his statblock. I can see that he has two Mythic spells, so I assume that means that he took Mythic Spellcasting as one of his path abilities, but what was the other one? And what was his Mythic feat?

I want to make sure I don't miss any of his potential abilities.

Also if anyone has any advice for this final fight on how to have him be the most effective, I would happily accept any tips!

Ohhh the Forbiddance effect is fantastic, I'd forgotten about that one. You're right, he should be able to kite them super well if he's cornered here, and he'd definitely want to retreat to this room to try and mess with them if they manage to find him in a different location. I like that a lot.

And good tip on the Divination, you're right that I should be using that a lot more and assuming that the enemies have good information on the PCs.

Huh. I thought it was great if for no other reason that the party gets a talking dinosaur as a reward.

I completely ditched the talking dinosaur, cause it seemed so completely random and out-of-left-field to me.

My PCs really did enjoy the Slime Naga though. They realized that she was ensorcelled and dispelled the magic on her, then convinced her to aid in their assault on her former captor. The Naga and her poop oozes came along for the fight, but were a totally chaotic force since she didn't care at all about her new temporary "allies" and just flung herself around the battlefield dropping stink trails. The fight against Natsiel turned into a crowded clusterf&*~ and my PCs loved it even though it wasn't much of a challenge.

Thank you, rogue. I've always enjoyed reading your posts about the AP.

I was considering having, rather than an attack on the Lucky Bones (because I don't like the terrain in there, lmao), have the CCG assault the Tooth & Nail. Get some good resolution on Setrona and Luculla.

I had quite a bit of fun with the attack on the HQ. In my game, the PCs had managed to avoid fighting the Drowning Devil Shurshugot by promising him that they'd release him from his captivity as soon as they were powerful enough to do so, and basically convincing him to serve as their guardian.

I had Barzillai's troops launch an underwater assault against the Lucky Bones through the tunnels, by using a Cleric with Control Water to create a big bubble around the soldiers. They got a ping from Shurshugot while in a meeting and had to hustle down into the watery tunnels to attempt to defend the hideout, all while not being properly prepared for an aquatic battle. It was fun, and worked pretty well.

In real-world playtime I've noticed that this seems to be a VERY fast adventure, at least compared to when I was running Reign of Winter.

We play once a week for 2 hours, and I seem to be leveling up my PCs every 5-or-so sessions. Especially as we get into the later books, they're able to bypass some of the fights by roleplaying their way around them, which generally takes less time than playing out a full combat.

For in-game time I think it's pretty reasonable at the start. Early on the PCs were doing one mission per game-week, so that section lasted several months. I'm in Book 4 now and they're flying through it though. They beat 3 of the 6 missions in a single day, and they're on track to beat the next 3 in only a day or two. And that's right after doing the Opera House.

It's funny to think of how they went from 9th to 12th level in the course of less than a week of in-game time.

My players are just too darn clever :P

The Aasimar took Heavenly Radiance at 9th level, which gives her a single Sunbeam once per day. She used it in the Opera House to just melt the Vampire Jilia in a single hit, and I'm certain she's going to use it again on Alucada Zohl. That's also going to be a pretty anti-climactic fight, although the scene of a PC just one-shotting the scary vampire that I spent all this time building up will probably be pretty hilarious and memorable.

The lich, the Records Hall, the dragon, and the Temple will emphatically not be those kind of battles.

My PCs had a very easy time with the Records Hall and the Bleakbridge so far. In the Records Hall they snuck inside and cornered Tiarise in her office. They managed to kill her before she could even get a turn off to try to Dimension Door to safety. They then used Wall of Force to trap the Inquisitor Troop in half of the building and then lit the entire interior of the building on fire.

Bleakbridge was a similar story, with high stealth to get a bunch of surprise attacks on the general, Disguise to peel off a troop away from the fight, and then Wall of Force and flight to herd the soldiers into a group and airbomb them.

I'm expecting that they'll mostly be able to bypass Kyrre Ekodyre if they want, but the Lich should prove to be a bit more difficult. And I'm planning on ignoring the Tactics section for Rivozair that says that she lands and engaged in melee, because that seems idiotic for a dragon. She has enough speed and range to kite them from a distance and to just repeatedly do breath weapon strafing runs, so I'll see how they handle that.

I just noticed that the Temple has a permanent Invisibility Purge effect, which is very helpful. Although with their existing Stealth and Dimension Door-ing ability I still think it's possible that they'll be able to do a fairly surgical strike against the Mayor and bypass lots of the encounters on the way.

A couple of ideas that I've had so far:

See Invisibility can be made permanent for 5000gp. It's reasonable that some of the Mayor's high-level allies will have gotten this performed on them. Corinstian Grivenner, Alucada Zhol, etc. This requires casting the relevant spells on YOURSELF, so they would have had to get scrolls and pass Use Magic Device checks in order to do so. It can't be done on non-spellcasters.

The Mayor could have instructed Grivenner to keep a bunch of Detect Lies or Zone of Truth spells ready, in case anyone tries to impersonate him or another ally and issues any strange orders. The Investigator is likely to beat the Will save, but it'll at least put a bit of added fear into him.

I'm part way through book 4, with a group of 11th level PCs, and they've gone down an extremely stealthy and deceptive route for their character builds. We have a rogue who's stacked stealth and can regularly roll in the 40s when she's had Invisibility cast on her by the party mage. And we have an Investigator with a disguise-based archetype who can perfectly impersonate any character he wants.

They're having a lot of fun with it, but I'm struggling to give them proper challenges and to not let them just bypass most of the adventure. With the abilities they have, the rogue should be able to sneak into just about anywhere and skip most of the fights. And the Investigator is able to succeed at impersonating Barzillai Thrune himself and just ordering the Mayor's goons to leave wherever he goes.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how to throw a wrench in their plans every once in a while, to add some challenge? I've had enemy magic-users start to cast Alarm spells on their lairs so that they at least notice when an invisible PC has arrived. Occasional enemies with True Seeing can mess them up, but it's not a spell that someone can have permanently without a LOT of wealth.

I figured I’d make a session report on the Masquerade, since it was such an incredibly fun adventure (one of my faves that I’ve ever run) and it might help other GMs to prepare for the wild amount of things that could happen.

My PC group consists of an Investigator, a Rogue, a Sorceror, and a Magus. The PCs had also recruited Tayacet Tiora into helping them, they planted one of their Spies as one of the Dottari guards, and they brought along Lictor Octavio and his team of Hellknights in their finest party clothes. They nailed their Secrecy checks in advance, so they had detailed maps of the Opera House and the Underground area.

The players started out by slapping the rogue with every invisibility and non-detection spell possible and sending her into the basement to do some scouting. She made it into the secret Silver Raven tunnels and poked around a bit, but didn’t run into the big Hellhound. Meanwhile the other three PCs were scouting the main floor and chatting up party guests. They disabled the Cockatrice cage quick-release. The Sorceror used Detect-Thoughts on some of the guards, and discovered that they’d been told to lock all the doors at Midnight and stand guard. So the Investigator started sabotaging the locking mechanisms on as many of the doors as he could.

They kept it pretty low-key until the Dance of the Damned, where things got completely ridiculous. I’d told them in advance that it might be handy to put some ranks into Perform (Dance) and they took me VERY seriously. The Investigator and Sorceror were determined to become the Lords of the Dance, so they cast every possible Charisma and Performance boosting spell on themselves. The Investigator eventually managed to make it to a successful DC 35 Perform check, and the Sorceror flunked out by ONLY rolling a 33. Barzillai begrudgingly gave the dance crown to the Investigator.

Their first big operation was to try to raid the vault in the Underground. They knew where it was because of their maps, and they’d seen that the door to the office was open (because that’s where the Bone Devil was controlling the Orchestra). The Rogue and Magus turned invisible and went downstairs to check it out. They got into the open office and immediately bumped right into the Bone Devil, who was ALSO invisible. Both the PCs and the Devil were extremely surprised, and got into a very goofy fight in which no one could see each other. They also closed the door behind them, which cut off the Bone Devil’s view to the Orchestra pit, thus ending the illusory music.

The PCs already had figured out that the Orchestra was illusory, but didn’t know what was causing it. Once it disappeared the Lord of the Dance rounded up some of the local party guests and handed them instruments to try and keep the party going, which salvaged things a bit.

At some point the Rogue also infiltrated the Guard’s off-duty lounge and managed to poison a few of them and make it look like they’d just come down with a stomach bug, knocking them out of commission for the night.

They let Barzillai give his big speech at the end, but the Rogue hid in the rafters with a big bucket of paint that they’d planned to drop on him during his speech, to try to embarrass him. They did so just as Barzillai sprung the trap and the Devil-Azatas warped in. This f@*&ed up the Mayor’s attempt to start the fight by going invisible, since he was dripping paint everywhere.

During the fight the PCs directed the Lictor and the Hellknights to try to clear as many doors as possible so that folks could escape. The Sorceror spent the beginning of the combat focused on trying to take out the Dottari guards and clear the doors, by launching spells around the room. The Magus got caught in the middle of the hall and it took him a few turns to get up to the stage, all while dodging the Bearded Devils that were coming after him. The Rogue flew around on the Flying Carpet they’d gotten from Menador Keep, and focused on trying to take out the Furie Devil that was launching spells at the crowd. The Investigator charged right at the Mayor, and Tayacet joined him for some double-Investigator action. The Bone Devil had been taken out early so it didn’t show up to the fight.

The PCs had killed Nox in book one, so I switched in Sabo the Spider as the Mayor’s bodyguard. They’d thoroughly embarrassed her but let her live during the prison break. The Mayor managed to protect himself pretty successfully with a Wall of Ice build into a dome over him, but the Magus focused on breaking into it. The PCs fought their way through all the Bearded Devils, and the Lictor and his Hellknights eventually finished clearing all of the doors and then rushed onto the stage to help out. The Lictor and one of the Hellknights went down during the fight, but stabilized before dying.

Then Barzillai managed to unleash a full attack on the Magus and fully KILLED HIM. Brought him below his Con on the third attack. First PC death of the game!

The Investigator landed the killing blow on the Mayor, and then decapitated him for good measure. But when he held up the Mayor’s head he realized that he had been duped! It was a fake Mayor!

In the clean-up after the big fight the PCs attempted to raise the Magus using a scroll of Raise Dead, but the player decided that he’d rather try something new and roll up a new character. So he decided that the Magus had found peace, and decided to stay in the Halls of Nethys. Before abandoning the Opera House the PCs headed into the basement once again, where they fought the big Hellhound, found the Silver Ravens treasure hoard, un-stoned Shensen, and found Jilia the Vampire. The Sorceror completely obliterated Jilia by using her Aasimar innate ability to blast her with a Sunbeam spell, which just destroys Vampires in one-hit if they fail their save. Hilariously anti-climactic.

They then GTFO’d before any of Thrune’s reinforcements could show up. They never discovered that the fake Mayor was actually a Bone Devil, and didn’t attempt to resurrect Jilia. They ended the night with 22 Masque Points remaining, 34 dead party-guests (less after reducing the number by the Masque Points), and 174 that had made it out during the fight.

Honestly I completely missed setting up that whole reveal. I couldn't find a good way to introduce her as a character, and so I just didn't. A missed opportunity, sure, but the dungeon crawl of clearing out the cultists still went fine.

xTheJim wrote:

They split up again at this point, and left the Gunslinger to activate the Anvil so the rest of the party could free Zorumar/the halfling prisoners with a bit of a head start. This is where things start to get hairy.

We did our next session this week, and my players also left someone behind to blow the place while sending the other three on rescues!

After defeating the Graven Guardians and chatting up the Archons, they rested up in the Anvil room. The Menador guards didn't know about that area so they were safe to do so. Before settling down, the Rogue snuck back out while invisible to do some scouting on her own though. She managed to find the other secret door up to the treasure trunk and the Wyvern parking. She threw open the door to the treasure, which the Host Devil noticed, but he wasn't able to see who opened it, because of the invisibility. She ducked out of there and then checked the other room, came face to face with a Wyvern, and ran away to rejoin the other party members.

The next day they left the Magus upstairs to trigger the Anvil, then went to go liberate the treasure trunk. I assumed that the Host Devil would have told Lucian that something fishy went on, so I stationed another two Guards up there with him. One of them got off a shot with the Screaming Bolt before they took him down, which the Wyvern heard next door. Wyvern took off into the skies and started screaming, which alerted the rest of the fortress.

They finished the fight with the Devil quickly, looted the chest, and Dimension Door'd out of there just as Lucian and a few more troops busted into the room!

They then went to go try to rescue Zorumar, who they had to knock out and tie up for his own good, since he couldn't disobey Lucian by escaping. They then ran off, and left the Magus to trigger the Anvil. He did so, and then in the ensuing ten minutes of chaos he freed the halflings and cast invisible on all of them. They just ran out the front door while everyone was evacuating.

Lucian and his Wyvern are both still fine, so I'm going to have him track them down as soon as their invisibility runs out as they're running away down the pass!

Menador Keep has turned out to be super fun, I'm in the middle of running it right now. It's so open, and at 8th level there's a ton of ways that the heroes can approach it. I'll give you my summary to compare:

Party consists of:
Aasimar Sorceror: Buff-oriented mostly, with occasional magic missiles. Lots of Haste and other such spells.
Elf Magus: Heavy hitter, just gets in there and wrecks stuff up.
Half-Elf Investigator: Very skill focused, not all that great in a fight, but excellent in social situations.
Half-Elf Rogue: Built for stealth and trickyness, also not all that great in a fight. But excellent out of combat for sneakyness.

The gang got into Menador's courtyard by talking their way into joining the caravan guard of a travelling merchant who was willing to pony up the cash to cross through the Keep. They specifically approached the keep during the night and talked the guards (and Lucian) into letting them camp in the courtyard before moving on the next day. They also talked their way into the guard's card game to shmooze and ingratiate themselves.

During the night the Sorceror and Magus managed to sneak off and use Invisibility and Dimension door to do some scouting inside the keep. They found lots of rooms but were eventually caught when they threw open the door to the Erinyes (because of true sight). When that happened they enacted their contingency plan, and had the Investigator invisibly sneak into the stables and light a fire. The guards rushed out to try to put it out, giving them enough time to deal with the Erinyes without getting discovered.

Afterwards, during the commotion from the fire, they continued exploring and discovered the Slithering Trackers. They slammed the door shut on them and ran off, hoping they wouldn't follow. Shortly after they found the secret door in the armoury, leading to the Anvil of Unmaking.

We left the session just as they were getting jumped by the Graven Guardians. I'm going to have the Slithering Trackers join the fight after a round or two as well, tracking them up the stairs. They also only have three of them up in the Graven Guardian room, they left the Rogue downstairs to keep an eye on things. So it should be a challenging fight with a three-quarters party, extra enemies, and most of the Sorceror's high-level spells gone (from Dimension Door-ing everywhere).

As for Thrune, he mounted up when the fire started, and is currently flying overhead scouting to see if this was an attack or sabotage. The players are terrified of taking on a flying cavalier, so they're staying far away from him. I'm guessing they'll probably bring down the keep and avoid fighting him, so I'll get to figure out how to bring him back into the story later.

This is an old thread, but I found it by searching and am going to update with my experiences anyway, since I just ran Menador Keep last night.

My players have not fought Lucian yet, but they're pretty damn scared of him right now.

They managed to get into the keep's courtyard by getting themselves hired as caravan guards to a traveling merchant. They talked the guards into playing cards with them to distract them, and then the Sorcerer and Magus did some scouting with Invisibility and Dimension Door. Things went to s**$ when they stumbled upon the Erinyes Devil (who has True-Seeing), at which point they enacted their backup plan to have the Rogue invisibly sneak into the stables and set them on fire.

The guards rushed out, and brought Zorumar the Djinn to cast Create Water and help put out the fire. At this point Lucian ran upstairs to mount his Wyvern and start scouting the area to see if the fire was a deliberate attack.

The PCs are pretty terrified of having to fight a Wyvern-riding Cavalier, so they ran around frantically inside (all while still invisible) until they eventually found the hidden door leading to the Anvil of Unmaking.

They took out the Erinyes Devil, but they also opened the door to the Slithering Trackers and were spotted by them. They slammed the door closed and ran off, but I'm going to have the Trackers follow them sneakily and jump them when they're in the middle of the Graven Guardians battle.

Meanwhile I don't know if they're ever going to even get to fight Lucian Thrune. I'm betting that they just bring the Fortress down and then run away and avoid him. But that means I can bring him back in later, during book 4!

We're in Dance of the Damned (book 3) and my players just finished taking care of Menotheguro the Aboleth, who was menacing the Aquatic Elf town of Acisazi.

They cleverly managed to kill the Aboleth before he could flee, by tracking him using a pod of summoned dolphins (who have blindsight) and hitting him with glitterdust.

They've now got themselves the corpse of a horrifyingly eldritch sea god, and they've towed it back to the shore using their sled team of summoned Hippocampuses (Aquatic Cavalry). The Investigator and Rogue would like to see if they can harvest some poisons from it (Aboleth slime) and to also see if a collector somewhere would like to buy a fresh aberration corpse for dissection. They've got a Cleric with them so should be able to keep it fresh via Gentle Repose.

Realistically I feel like there would definitely be someone somewhere in Golarion who'd be interested in this rare find :P And, also realistically, they should be able to bottle at least some of that powerful Aboleth mucous that turns people sea-through.

I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on how much corpse-cash and poison they should be able to get out of this thing though, without imbalancing the adventure too much!

Good tips! Yeah, I think I'm going to let them know that Grivener exists, and that he COULD fix it... but that it'd be a fairly terrible idea to show it to him, since there's a good chance he'd be aware of where it came from and deduce who they were.

Manticce on the other hand, could get introduced early, although I might not make it known that she's the secretive Queen of Desires. This would also necessitate a time-consuming early visit to Vyre, which might turn them off of the idea for a bit... maybe even until the next book when the time is right for them to head over there anyway.

Some day in half a dozen years when we actually make it to book 6 maybe they can use it to head to Hell anyways :P

I made a post over here (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43abs?Players-are-super-interested-in-the-bro ken) but I'm gonna ask here as well...

Did anybody introduce any of the Book3 or later NPCs in book2? My players are looking into the broken Cubic Gate they found in book1, and the only NPCs that would have the spellcasting ability to know anything about it are folks liver Corinsian Grivener and Manticce Kaleekii, who aren't supposed to show up until later. So I'm thinking up some ways for them to be introduced to them now as part of their investigations, and then for them to show up again in book3.

I'm currently running a game of Hell's Rebels, and my players are in the middle of book 2. During the dungeon delve at the end of book 1, they got their hands on a broken Cubic Gate which was in the basement of Hocum's Fantasmagorum. The adventure guide says that this magic item is completely broken and is worth 3000gp if it's sold (rather than the 82,000gp that a working one would be worth), and it would be the same cost to repair it as it would to create a new one. The guide assumes that the players just sell it and move on.

My players have instead become very interested in whether it can be repaired, or if they can find someone who's more interested in it to chat with. They rolled an absolutely baller Gather Information check (30+) to search for more information, so I'd like to give them something good.

It's a CL 13 item, and requires plane shift to create, which means that an NPC that would be able to repair it would have to be at least a 13th level Sorceror/Wizard/Witch or a 9th level Cleric/Oracle (interestingly plane shift is a 5th level cleric spell and a 7th level wizard spell).

In terms of the NPCs built into the adventure, the only person in Kintargo that could make it is Corinsian Grivener, the high Priest of Asmodeus, who is meant to be introduced as a villain in book three. The most relevant potential ally that I can imagine would be Manticce Kaleekii, the Queen of Delights from the nearby city of Vyre, who's supposed to be introduced in book 3 as well.

I'm thinking I'll give them both of these leads and use it as an opportunity to introduce them early to characters that they'll be having more serious dealings with later.

Any other thoughts, or things that I'm missing?

Good lord those Lurkers in Light were brutal. The players fought them yesterday and they were failing fortitude saves against Blindness/Deafness left and right. If I'd wanted to I could easily have turned the entire party into a bunch of Hellen Kellers. That's a heck of a powerful spell. The party didn't have an obvious way to cure it afterwards either since their spellcasters are a Druid and a Wizard, neither of which interestingly get Remove Blindness/Deafness.

I ruled that Dispel Magic could remove it, even though I wasn't sure if it should. But that's a 4th level Druid spell, so the gang had to pretty much use an entire day of the Druid just using all her spells to tend to everyone.

The fight itself was pretty funny though, with half the characters blind and half deafened. Watching one character who was blind attempt to communicate with his deaf animal companion was fun.

Name: Odarg
Race and Class: Half-Orc Barbarian 7
Wisdom Score: 3
Adventure: Maiden, Mother, Crone
Catalyst: The Witch Tree
The Gory Details: Odarg the Chaotic Stupid Half-Orc Barbarian had, over time, been achieving a lower and lower wisdom score through a combination of curses and ability damage, and the rest of the party's refusal to heal it because it was funnier that way. The player had been embracing his newfound stupidity and roleplaying it very well, so it was fun.

The gang approached the Witch Tree that guards Artrosa and it demanded a sacrifice. As the smarter characters were discussing a plan to summon an animal to hopefully satiate it Odarg charged in swinging his axe. The Witch Tree happily accepted it's sacrifice and allowed the rest of the crew to enter the dungeon.