to the players of characters: how do you feel? Do you see similar events in your adventures, and if so are you satisfied with having time in the game to go sell then buy?
to the GMs of said adventures: do you tailor item rewards to be in line with your group of charactrers and the player's goals?
I might change an axe to something a player wanted. I also have yet to see an AP so constrained for time that the players can't see what they don't want to get what they do want.
When I am playing I have time to buy what I need, so it has never really been an issue.
It seems that either your GM is rushing you along or the players are rushing themselves in your group.
I have seen this occasionally, and though I havent run LOF yet, I could see that being a major problem in books 4 and 5, where the heroes have noplace to sell their loot.
And what do they do with evil, especially intellegent evil, items. some players won't want to simply give it to a good temple or they wont feel good selling it.
Creative Director
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There's pretty much no way we can tailor the loot in an AP to be "right" for every group. Thousands of people play these things, after all. So instead, we generally skew the treasure an AP gives out to stuff that feels right for the AP in question.
GMs should ABSOLUTELY tailor any adventure's loot to match their party, though. That is, in my opinion, one of the marks of a good GM.
If an adventure gives out a lot of wizard loot, but you don't have a wizard in the party, but you DO have a witch... make sure the spells you give out work for a witch, is what I'm saying. Or if the only melee weapon character in the party is a halfling fighter who uses spears, you really should make sure a Small magic spear shows up now and then.
A lot of APs had very interesting and fun treasure contained within. My favorite is Council of Thieves-- there are really neat things in Book #2, #3, #5. Curse of the Crimson Throne had some great treasure, too.
Alas, RotRL and LoF are not good treasure games due to the fact that everything is either too big, too small or too bad. And Serpent's Skull is Paizo's experiment at lowballing treasure-- my group found it really, really frustrating that we finished up that AP wielding +1 and +2 weapons.
There's pretty much no way we can tailor the loot in an AP to be "right" for every group.
Yeah, but.....I don't care about every group.
Just mine.
The AP with the axes surplus is probably Legacy of Fire, where the axes abound because lots of opponents are Rovagug followers. Of course it can be adapted to a groups weapon preferences, but it loses some of the Rovagug flavor along the way. I wonder what the staff with the vile effect was, though.
I don't recognize from any of the Paizo books, so perhaps this was the DM's attempt to customize a loot find.
Pretty much.
If so, I'm afraid he missed the mark on what his players would find useful and desireable.
Yeah.
I'm sorry you had to play through RotRL, LoF and SS back to back. I hope when LoF is done you get to play through one of the more interesting, gear-wise, adventure paths.
I'm sorry you had to play through RotRL, LoF and SS back to back. I hope when LoF is done you get to play through one of the more interesting, gear-wise, adventure paths.
Which ones would you consider more interesting, gear-wise, and why?
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I'm sorry you had to play through RotRL, LoF and SS back to back. I hope when LoF is done you get to play through one of the more interesting, gear-wise, adventure paths.Which ones would you consider more interesting, gear-wise, and why?
I'm going to put this into spoilers because who knows who could complain? A lot of frank talk about the stuff in a lot of APs to follow.
Council of Thieves had a lot of really neat stuff in it. Basically, Council of Thieves is the opposite of Serpent's Skull. SS is outdoors; CoT is in a city. SS goes to level 17; CoT goes to level 13. SS has no treasure; CoT gives you a lot of treasure. Basically, it gives the party a bit too much treasure so that the group can tackle some really mean badguys, and it worked out really wonderfully at making me feel like my PC was awesome. Too bad everyone salivates over high levels so hard or we'd see another AP that goes to level 13 with a big amount of treasure again. I honestly liked being level 13 with a +2 holy weapon and +4 full plate A LOT more than I liked being level 17 wielding a pair of +2 weapons (the paladin in the group had a +2 weapon and a +1 weapon-- a weapon he got in Eleder in the second module's opening he used to kill the last boss of the campaign).
CotCT has a good amount of treasure and a lot of it is fun treasure. Kingmaker also has a lot of treasure, and it really amps up the PCs and makes them very high level with a lot of treasure which made the game very hard to balance imo.
Carrion Crown was Paizo's experiment with adding 9,000% more consumables than in any other AP, and honestly, I thought it was pretty alright... but my party doesn't use consumables all that often. Add on that the good folks writing the AP didn't want to make all of the ability damage and status effects they were tossing out unhealable and you've got a lot of healing-centric consumables and not too many interesting powerful items. As a result they were lugging around a practical alchemy lab of potions of cure light wounds by the end of the second module.
Incoming SS Rant:
Honestly, the big mistake of SS is that the Devs decided to make the base enemy a completely stupid race like Serpentfolk, who have some of the most absurd stat modifiers in the entire game only made better by the rules as written. They aren't defined by class levels, so oh yeah, they get this and that... it basically made it impossible, I think, for the developers to make a serpentfolk an even-CR encounter with any magical items at all. I think in the final book there is a serpentfolk fighter who is like level 12 who is using a double weapon that is +1/+1... and that's like his only magical item. Why? Because if he used a weapon for his level, he'd be completely broken. Oh, +2 armor-- but it could be fullplate. If his AC went up by 5, he'd be completely broken. If he had 6 more strength, he'd be completely out of the park. I think that it made it very hard for the devs to give the enemies magical items AT ALL without making them completely broken, so as a result they gave the PCs less and less magical items... which, as a result, made the PCs less and less capable of fighting the actual monsters in the book.
But yeah, just look at this.
Human being: Str 16, Dex 13, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 12
Normal serpentfolk: Str 14, Dex 23, Con 20, Int 18, Wis 14, Cha 18
Degenerate serpentfolk: Str 26, Dex 15, Con 22, Int 4, Wis 12, Cha 8
Normal serpentfolk with class levels: Str 12, Dex 25, Con 22, Int 22, Wis 14, Cha 22
Degenerate serpentfolk with class levels: Str 30, Dex 17, Con 26, Int 6, Wis 12, Cha 6
I always swap up the loot in treasure hoards. If it's an item the bad guy has and uses I usually stick with it unless I makes sense to swap it for something the party will find more useful but is still equally useful to the bad guy.
I'm sorry you had to play through RotRL, LoF and SS back to back. I hope when LoF is done you get to play through one of the more interesting, gear-wise, adventure paths.Which ones would you consider more interesting, gear-wise, and why?
I can't speak to the other campaigns, but Kingmaker provides quite a variety of loot (weapons, armor and miscellaneous-wise) along with pretty robust exposure to purchaseable items.
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I'm sorry you had to play through RotRL, LoF and SS back to back. I hope when LoF is done you get to play through one of the more interesting, gear-wise, adventure paths.Which ones would you consider more interesting, gear-wise, and why?I'm going to put this into spoilers because who knows who could complain? A lot of frank talk about the stuff in a lot of APs to follow.
** spoiler omitted **...
Okay, this somewhat spoiled SS to me. At least regarding to loot and what kind of challenges we'll come up to during the campaign. But really this is one of the few informative posts I'v read concerning this AP. And I agree, at least so far: We are at the fourth scenario and I don't think any of our player characters can stand up to the ophidian majesty of the serpentvolk.
Then again, the fact that the enemy are competent, heck even dominant, helps my campaign enjoyment. Challenging, difficult and somewhat overpowered, at least equipment-wise, enemies are few and far between when it comes to campaigns. It somehow reminds me of the Rise of the Runelords. That campaign had some ridonkulous ability scores and specific items as well
to the GMs of said adventures: do you tailor item rewards to be in line with your group of charactrers and the player's goals?
I do the opposite: if I feel an AP skews a certain way in terms of treasure, I warn the players about that in vague-but-useful-enough-in-character-design-terms. In other words, I give the players a chance to tailor themselves to the item rewards.
e.g. "You're going to see a lot more cool magic greataxes in this AP than you might think. At some points you'll have very good downtime and availability to buy whatever you want, but at other points you won't have any of either. Build your characters and plan accordingly."
In the case of some of the APs, I feel like the player's guide already helps hint in the appropriate directions.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Okay, this somewhat spoiled SS to me. At least regarding to loot and what kind of challenges we'll come up to during the campaign. But really this is one of the few informative posts I'v read concerning this AP. And I agree, at least so far: We are at the fourth scenario and I don't think any of our player characters can stand up to the ophidian majesty of the serpentvolk.
Then again, the fact that the enemy are competent, heck even dominant, helps my campaign enjoyment. Challenging, difficult and somewhat overpowered, at least equipment-wise, enemies are few and far between when it comes to campaigns. It somehow reminds me of the Rise of the Runelords. That campaign had some ridonkulous ability scores and specific items as well
Some more SS insight below:
(I'm running a group which is almost done with part 6)That having been said, once the party sorcerer picked up greater teleport at 15th level, the group decided to spend a day shopping in Katapesh and Absalom. When they totalled up their sellable stuff, it came to about 250,000 gp profit! They don't feel underequipped now. So there is definitely treasure, but it is really difficult to turn it into the generically useful stuff that PCs want like the Big Six.
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Phew, that didn't spoil me at all. I'm lucky.
But that was RotRL, where having good spell DCs and high saves was paramount. Some of those high-level opponents where total showstoppers. I shudder at the thought of having another go at the Wendigo, for instance. Serpent's Skull on the other hand appears to have more mooks and less set-piece battles. The kind of generally strong melee groups with good saves, such as the previous campaign's stone giants or ogre berserkers, are missing and instead it's either redshirt-like high-damage low-defense mooks(the kech were beyond silly, archer ambushers with ridiculously low attack boni and no combat plan beyond "stand on this shelf and die in droves" :D) or a singular outsider or other strong opponent. It'd nice to have a magic mart available though, since we aren't really inclined to scavenge much with our hurried hero schedule and are currently missing many of the kinds of basic problem-solving gear like adamantine weapons and low-level wands.
Anyhow, digressing here, if you want to have loot and cash in Paizo APs, it's vital to search every nook and cranny(my favorite was that staff of heaven and earth hidden in a canyon-side opening) and get creative with your shopping.
*PS. Who the hell even buys that stuff? Do they resell them back to the enemy forces or something?
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Regarding various APs that feature a lot of large sized weapons and armor - isn't there a spell published somewhere that permanently changes the size of equipment? I vaguely recall that, and if I'm right then that would fix the issue (or if the PCs don't want to go that route, it would explain why merchants are fine buying large sized magic items.)
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Phew, that didn't spoil me at all. I'm lucky.
** spoiler omitted **
Anyhow, digressing here, if you want to have loot and cash in Paizo APs, it's vital to search every nook and cranny(my favorite was that staff of heaven and earth hidden in a canyon-side opening) and get creative with your shopping.
*PS. Who the hell even buys that stuff? Do they resell them back to the enemy forces or something?
Muser, you touch on an interesting point here: adventuring and how it can compare and contrast to role playing.
** spoiler omitted **
Man, that's just it! If you, as a character, want to have your choice of magic gear, regular adventuring and especially following the dramatic arch of the scenario is not enough to bestow what you want or want you need in order to cash in and buy the stuff. Hell, I don't think giving the PC's choice gear is the intention, but if you happen to be playing a gear-dependent(oh, man, poor alchemist) character, then there's either relying on luck or making sure you find enough money to convert into gear.
*Nothing wrong with that, especially since it was a wilderness survival adventure.