I read the synopsis of the fifth chapter - it boils down to party allying with a bunch of vampires in order to track down a vampire killer. It sounds pretty amusing to me, but how on earth will that be doable with any even remotely good character (god forbid, a paladin)?
Creative Director
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I read the synopsis of the fifth chapter - it boils down to party allying with a bunch of vampires in order to track down a vampire killer. It sounds pretty amusing to me, but how on earth will that be doable with any even remotely good character (god forbid, a paladin)?
Wait and see is all I can say for now.
This has been a trick for this one from the get go. I pulled the author, Neil Spicier, aside at Gen Con last year after he said he'd do it to give him an info dump. Part of that was letting him know how necessary it is that good-aligned characters and specifically paladins be able to not just be involved in this, but be able to have fun with this adventure without breaking their alignments or other restrictions. So that was a mandate from the get go.
And so he did, and it's looking really awesome.
Rob's heading into the development of this adventure later this week, so if you want nitty gritty specifics on the final draft maybe you can wring them out of him over the next few weeks. But he tends to be a bit of a stickler.
Otherwise, you'll just have to hold tight for Pathfinder #47. :P
It boils down to...
Also, remember, these synopses are just that - not detailed overviews. There's a bit more going on in the adventure than just vampires, vampires, vampires.
Yeah, there's been talk of the issue of starting a campaign before all of the chapters are out, and I guess this reason is one of them... I'll be DMing it and one player wants to play Oracle of Life, with Pharasma as his deity, which would naturally cause problems if he's supposed to make a friendly contact with the undead.
Now, I really don't mind if that's the case, but I am at a loss what will happen in 5th chapter and I would hate if he'll ignore the undead-hating portfolio of his godess just for the sake of the campaign.
I'd prefer if he didn't play a Life Oracle, but that would mean no significant healing power for the party...
Man. You people call yourselves geeks. (Well, maybe you don't. If you don't: SHAME ON YOU!) Have you never seen a Joss Whedon show? Good and evil ally all the time, and all are acting well within their agendas/alignments. And it certainly doesn't mean that the good guys end up becoming best friends with the bad guys.
It's not only possible, it should be a GM's prerogative to do this at least once in every campaign he runs.
Now, I really don't mind if that's the case, but I am at a loss what will happen in 5th chapter and I would hate if he'll ignore the undead-hating portfolio of his godess just for the sake of the campaign.I'd prefer if he didn't play a Life Oracle, but that would mean no significant healing power for the party...
Nah, you'll be fine. This adventure was designed with the hardest of the hardcore paladins of Iomedae in mind. So don't worry, at every step of the way, from concept, to writing, through development we here have had just the sort of character you're talking about in mind for this adventure. But if you're still worried, just wait and see - June isn't THAT far away.
Good and evil ally all the time, and all are acting well within their agendas/alignments. And it certainly doesn't mean that the good guys end up becoming best friends with the bad guys.
While this is more of the game I run, we understand there's a lot of different takes on alignment. So we like to make sure that things will work for even the most morally rigid characters. That way be can be sure things work for everyone.
...I pulled the author, Neil Spicier, aside at Gen Con last year after he said he'd do it to give him an info dump. Part of that was letting him know how necessary it is that good-aligned characters and specifically paladins be able to not just be involved in this, but be able to have fun with this adventure without breaking their alignments or other restrictions. So that was a mandate from the get go.
It's true. We talked about this very early on. And, just so you know, I try especially hard (all the time) to satisfy as many people as I can with any adventure writeup. Basically, I'm always looking for ways to give people their cake and let them eat it, too. What that means is I went into this particular assignment with the knowledge that some collusion and combativeness needed to be possible where it concerned the vampires. As Wes says, however, wait and see. I'm confident in how things came out. And, I'm equally confident Rob McCreary will take the final turnover and dial it up another notch.
Rob's heading into the development of this adventure later this week, so if you want nitty gritty specifics on the final draft maybe you can wring them out of him over the next few weeks.
Heh. The funny thing is I may be the one hitting him up for nitty gritty specifics on the final draft! I can't wait to see what he does with it. And, following that, I can't wait until everyone else can see the final product, too. :-D
My two cents,
--Neil
For the life of me, I cannot imagine a situation where Paladin would cooperate with intelligent undead (and try to save a number of them). There's no shades of grey in his code, not to mention that suggested player archetype is Undead Scourge. If he's not murdering them or helping their killer, I'd say he's not a paladin anymore.
At this point it's far too early to know what sort of cooperation is involved. Without that level of information it's not possible for anyone to imagine the situation. So it's far better just to wait and see. Or, to make it even simpler, set aside any plans to play a Paladin and design a character of more flexible morals.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine a situation where Paladin would cooperate with intelligent undead (and try to save a number of them).
Cooperate? Of course there are situations where that might become necessary. But save them? That's doesn't necessarily have to be included. Wait-and-see to better understand what I mean by that. Or, better yet, trust Paizo to know what they're doing. I do.
There's no shades of grey in his code, not to mention that suggested player archetype is Undead Scourge. If he's not murdering them or helping their killer, I'd say he's not a paladin anymore.
Shades of grey and exploring the in's and out's of a paladin's code are one of the primary roleplaying hooks for such a character. I could easily see myself playing in a Carrion Crown AP (and this adventure, specifically) with an undead scourge paladin and I'd have an absolute blast...both in terms of roleplaying and smiting some undead vampires.
So, don't sour on the whole adventure based on one synopsis write-up that pre-dates the final manuscript turnover. Have a little faith. And flex some of those roleplaying muscles a bit. Don't lock yourself into a single interpretation of how a paladin will have to conduct himself in the course of this adventure...or this adventure path.
Another two cents,
--Neil
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Creative Director
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For the life of me, I cannot imagine a situation where Paladin would cooperate with intelligent undead (and try to save a number of them). There's no shades of grey in his code, not to mention that suggested player archetype is Undead Scourge. If he's not murdering them or helping their killer, I'd say he's not a paladin anymore.
Which is why I believe the idea is to present enough information in the adventure so that if the party doesn't want to cooperate or help or whatever the undead at all, but instead wants to hack through them... that'll be an option to play the adventure as well. It'll be quite a bit harder, of course, but paladins hit quite a bit harder against undead anyway, so that's all good.
Now, that said, one of my HUGEST concerns about paladins is that they NEED to have situations where their devotion and faith are tested. If a paladin player never has to make some tough choices about how to solve problems without comprimising his/her code, then that removes a fair amount of the fun and compelling parts of role-playing a paladin. It'd be like playing a cleric but never getting a chance to wax philosophical about your god, or playing a rogue and never having a chance to pick a pocket/pick a lock, or playing a bard and never getting a chance to impress NPCs.
At this point it's far too early to know what sort of cooperation is involved. Without that level of information it's not possible for anyone to imagine the situation. So it's far better just to wait and see.
This is totally spot on.
And at the same time, like Toadkiller says, NOT cooperating with the vampires is totally an obvious option - which is accounted for in the adventure. Generally, AP adventures aren't really in the business of telling PCs they HAVE to do X, Y, or Z, or hand waving over core elements of the rules we use, and such is the case here in regards to PCs with extreme sense of good and evil. The adventure is built to assure that its playable by even those with the most rigid senses of right and wrong.
As I said, addressing EXACTLY this concern was a fundamental objective of this AP's outline, the author's writing, and the developer's efforts. And if you don't know the specifics of how it works out quite yet it's only because the adventure doesn't release for another four months.
Badwrongfun!
GEEET'IM!
The party will be non-good and I think they wouldn't start destroying the said vampires just because they're vampires.
I just want to make a player who'll be playing Oracle of Life feel that he's not pressured into allying himself with vampires just because campaign is scripted that way.
If you say he'll have, I guess I'll have to trust you. ;)
I guess I'll have to trust you. ;)
Drink the Kool-Aid, man. It'll be cool. ;)
Now, that said, one of my HUGEST concerns about paladins is that they NEED to have situations where their devotion and faith are tested. If a paladin player never has to make some tough choices about how to solve problems without comprimising his/her code, then that removes a fair amount of the fun and compelling parts of role-playing a paladin.
Now James has me kind of wanting to create a Paladin.
In my opinion the biggest hurdle to playing a Paladin in any campaign is finding the right DM to set up the scenario for you. It's really only a matter of making sure that the DM is on the same page with your character concept/ motivations and is willing to challenge you without stacking the deck too firmly against you.
Sadly, that's kind of hard to accomplish.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine a situation where Paladin would cooperate with intelligent undead (and try to save a number of them). There's no shades of grey in his code, not to mention that suggested player archetype is Undead Scourge. If he's not murdering them or helping their killer, I'd say he's not a paladin anymore.
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
When the party got to the vampire's castle, it turned out that the head vampire was away traveling. However, he had defeated and turned the party being led by the paladin they had been sent to rescue; they were now all serving the vampire lord. Fighting their way into the underground chamber with the paladin-vampire's casket, the radiant servant did a Turn Undead (3.5, not PF, remember) that destroyed all the spawn and came within a few hit dice of killing the paladin-vampire, too. The vampire felt the postive energy and realized another one could take him out too so decided to parley.
He recognized the party as brother paladins from the same temple and addressed them as such, making no move to threaten them. The party was conflicted, realizing that this was in fact the man they had been sent to save and that he had been turned to evil against his will. He recognized his bow, confessed that he had unstrung it and sent part of it away with evil cultists to avoid the weapon being turned against him, and, retrieving the magical bowstring from his coffin, offered it to his fellow paladins on their sworn word that they wouldn't turn the weapon against him. They agreed, figuring they had enough other weapons they could use.
Then, while the players will still discussing whether they should kill a vampire offering no resistance to them, I pulled my trump card. I informed one of the paladins (now married to another party member) that she recognized the vampire as the scion of a wealthy family and an old childhood sweetheart. Well, that was that for her; she couldn't kill Peter in cold blood, so they chatted about old times and he apologized for missing her wedding.
The paladin-vampire led the party to believe that if they could slay the vampire who had turned him, he would be returned to his mortal LG state. (None of them asked for a Knowledge (religion) check for this assertion. The vampire really just wanted his master dead so he would be free of his influence and become master of himself.) He offered to let them stay in the castle and discuss how they could track him down. The party kept dithering and debating what the right thing was to do, and just when they had decided that they ought to go ahead and kill him and then get him true resurrected, he told them, "Remember your promise" and went gaseous form and slipped away. The party was stuck underground, as the door had closed behind them to trap them in, and had to spend quite a bit of time breaking their way out. One player turned to another and said, "You know what this means: We're going to have to atone!"
Honestly, though, I probably would have come down on them harder alignment-wise for attacking someone who wasn't threatening them. An LE blackguard vampire ought to be able to run moral rings around paladins restricted by a code he knows in and out. Long-term, he intended to work on his ex-gf as the weak link in the party, with bluffs and charm, and use her to torment the rest of them. A showdown would have come, but it would have been when he'd had time to stack the deck against them, not when he was weak and alone.
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For the life of me, I cannot imagine a situation where Paladin would cooperate with intelligent undead (and try to save a number of them). There's no shades of grey in his code, not to mention that suggested player archetype is Undead Scourge. If he's not murdering them or helping their killer, I'd say he's not a paladin anymore.So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
Misconception.
Good is stubborn, and regards Evil as unutterably wet behind the ears for its softness/flexibility.