Pathfinder Module - Godsmouth Heresy Suggestions

[Thursty]

Hello all!

Per my previous thread on the topic (see here), I have a group of four loyal local gamers who are starting up a PFS group to tackle the existing Pathfinder modules.

We finished character creation late last week, ending up with an odd mix of characters...

Dwarf Oracle of the Dark Tapestry
Gnome Cleric of Gozreh
Tiefling Rogue (Aiming to Shadow Dancer)
Tengu Monk (Though he MAY be changing to fighter... need to confirm)

In essence it's a pretty 'standard' group (minus the monk acting as tank), so I don't forsee too many class based problems. I'm curious on hearing form the masses what their thoughts are on the first module we'll be running - The Godsmouth Heresy.

Any GM suggestions out there for people who've run/played in the module? Anything to keep an eye out for considering we're using the PFS rules?

Appreciate any feedback!

[Andrew Christian]

It’s a pretty straight forward dungeon crawl, so not much to really pay too close attention to.

Only thing is, with the modules, you will have to write your own intro. Fortunately when I ran this, the month prior I had just run City of Strangers Part 1 and 2. Had different characters though, but for the players it made it a little more interesting.

Basically one of the characters was from Kaer Maga, and so I had the representatives from the City of Strangers scenarios ask him to gather a group of pathfinders for assistance, and that this would generate some good will based on what had happened during the scenarios.

[Thursty]

Thanks Andrew. I plan on putting together a section of 'intro text' along the lines of what you'd expect to get in a module along with brief Q/A, and generally treat it like the introduction to a standard PFS scenario.

[Doug Miles]

I've run this one 6 times. I have to say that if you create an introduction make sure that you make it overwhelmingly clear that the path to the adventure starts at the big metal door leading into the dungeon. The players have a tendency to suspect that the body thefts are an inside job and they'll want to do their own investigation in the church & catacombs. This will waste a lot of time. They'll want to scour the catacombs for tracks and search for secret doors before they open the big iron door. Don't let them get too far down that road. Give the bad guy dust of tracelessness and put the secret door in the ceiling if you have to. Sometimes the players are like a dog worrying a bone. You gotta cut them off and get things started before they take things right off the tracks.

You may want to give the party a time limit so they don't rest after every fight in which a spell is cast or a HP is lost. I think 3 days is fair. Any more than that and the group might become too mechanical in their approach to what is supposed to be an urgent problem.

The first encounter with the darkmantle is very deadly if you run it true. There's no map so you'll need to create one given the 3D nature of a spiral staircase. The darkmantle hits pretty hard (1d4+4) and then a free constrict if it wins the grapple. That's a minimum 10HP of damage. On average you'll drop a 1st level PC. Fortunately there are two PCs in the party who can see in darkness. I just hope it's not one of them that gets sucker-punched... Due to the darkness this encounter can eat up a lot of time so be prepared.

The other encounter you need to watch out for, especially with 4 PCs, is the necrophidius. It can take multiple PCs out of the fight and it hits very hard for a 1st level opponent.

The rules for modules haven't been changed yet, so your "out" is that if you kill a PC they can come right back into the game when the encounter is over. Otherwise the players of the special races might want to reconsider risking their precious PCs in the Godsmouth meatgrinder.

It sounds like this is going to be a lot of fun with the party you've assembled. And by "fun" I mean "challenge".

[Painlord]

Doug Miles wrote:

Awesome.

Damn DougDoug, you speak with much experience.

Thanks for sharing.

You rock.

[Thursty]

Excellent post Doug! This is EXACTLY the type of information I'm looking to compile when running this.

'The Plan' (unlike the Cylons who lacked one), is for us to run the module, and then try to have some discussion on our thoughts about the module. Things like which encounters are difficult, how to adjudicate certain things as the GM, what to look out for when it comes to party compositions, etc, etc.

I suppose now would be a good time to mention that the PCs are using Ogre's post on upping PFS difficulty as a basis for their characters. I'll have to look exactly what 'tier' they chose, but I know that none of them had dump stats, and they were using at least 3 of the various options presented in that post.

[I'M INCREDIBLE!]

Remember that they're locked down in a dungeon, so things like food, water, etc. should be a factor after about the third day (although you have a cleric for create water). If neither your cleric or oracle have an AOE spell, and nobody has an alchemist fire, there's a cockaroach swarm that will literally devour your party (had basically a TPK there). If your group doesn't have at least one person with a perception of +7 or higher, the whole group is gonna miss out on quite a bit of traps, and get the hurt put on them. Especially the large room of statue traps. The tight areas of some of the rooms mean that you could have some one on one action if your two casters don't have any blasty spells at level one. The cleric's ability to channel energy should really put a hurt on most of the bad guys. That was my experience when running the module (took us three tries to get through it).