Jade Regent Advice

[Paylin Mihzrahi]

***SPOILERS ALLOWED***

Just as the subject says, I will probably be starting this campaign soon. I have experience as a dm with Rise of the Runelords, but I'm basically looking to those who have playtested this particular set.

It's 4 players, 20 pt buy, hero points (debating between 3 or 3+half level), any current pathfinder book available for use.

I'm looking for any issues people may have had; anything from stall points in the story, awkward segways, combat difficulty spikes, wipes, etc. If it makes any difference, this group runs once a week with a 7-8 hour session.

[Kydeem de'Morcaine]

I haven't started yet either, so really can't help too much

But you will prob get more detailed advice if you put this in the Jade Regent forum.

[DystopianDream]

My group is through the first module and on the last part of the second one, "Night of Frozen Shadows". I'll spoiler this just in case:

Spoiler:

In "The Brinewall Legacy" my players had a great time with the goblins and Brinestump Marsh in general. We did some caravan encounters, where they got to know the NPCs (this was a good time to do this, since they were going to be along for the ride for the whole campaign), and they had fun exploring the ruined town of Brinewall. The biggest lull came when they hit Brinewall Castle, since most all of the encounters resulted in a combat slugfest. Since a lot of the residents speak in only aklo or draconic, or outright attack intruders on site, there was not a lot of talking, only fighting.

The last part for "Night of Frozen Shadows" is looking like it will be similar, but there are some roleplaying opportunities with the prisoner and the trolls and the spymaster, Wodes that I intend to draw out as much as I can.

[Chernobyl]

Paylin Mihzrahi wrote:

***SPOILERS ALLOWED***

Just as the subject says, I will probably be starting this campaign soon. I have experience as a dm with Rise of the Runelords, but I'm basically looking to those who have playtested this particular set.

It's 4 players, 20 pt buy, hero points (debating between 3 or 3+half level), any current pathfinder book available for use.

I'm looking for any issues people may have had; anything from stall points in the story, awkward segways, combat difficulty spikes, wipes, etc. If it makes any difference, this group runs once a week with a 7-8 hour session.

I'm running this for my buddies and have a couple comments

The Adventure Paths in general are built for 4 person 15-point build PCs. With a higher point build and hero points, it will probably be a little easier for your group. You many need to scale the encounters a little here and there.

The Caravan combat system has a critical flaw in that the encounters are geared by Challenge Rating. However in combat the caravan in effect acts as 1 PC not a party of 4 or 5 or more with multiple actions, and so the enemies get extremely powerful quickly and the caravan does not. Several fixes have been proposed in the forum here, so do some searches and see what you'd like to implement for your group.

[Fox1212]

Use "We be goblins" as a prologue. It's a riot and a very good intro to the AP.

About the Brinewall castle exploration... yes, it's a dungeoncrawl, although you get some opportunities at roleplaying. If your party does not like big dungeoncrawls, I would recommend using "Feast on Ravenmoor" (a separate module) to substitute for the XPs in Brinewall, and play a reduced version of the castle.

The same thing -worse in fact- happens with the fourth module. There's this big, big, big dungeon where the enemies wait reading a magazine until the PCs come knocking at the door of their room. It's about 30 encounters with no roleplay in between. But again, there's a separate module called "The Ruby Phoenix tournament" that you can play instead.

Also, take a look at this thread about fixing the caravan rules, and this one about extra, more roleplaying-oriented caravan events.

What else? Do not roll the caravan encounters as you play, but rather roll them previously (if at all) and order them so that they do not repeat themselves. This is especially true in the third module.

Hope this helps!!