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it's just a planet Baba Yaga happened to visit before her son invited her to Earth. Beside the first part of the adventure where the players are trying to learn the new configuration of the hut (the only part I'd like to keep from this adventure), I don't see a whole lot that ties this world into Baba Yaga, her backstory, etc, etc.
This is an incredibly easy fix. The fact is, Triaxus isn't "a planet Baba Yaga just happened to visit". It's one of the keys to maintaining the endless winter of Irrisen, the site of a Winter Collector. In a very real sense, the PCs are visiting one of the places that enables Elvanna's plan to function. The problem is that they have no way of learning that within the scope of the adventure.
The easy fix is simply to introduce something into the chapter that does allow them to learn this. Well, I say "the" easy fix...there are several options that can be either separate or tied together. One, as Tangent mentioned, is to have the double-headed eagle prod Pharamol into attacking into the Drakelands. On its own I think this is rather weak, because there's no real reason for Baba Yaga to want this to happen. But what if there was? Suppose Elvanna's ritual required not only access to the Winter Controller in the Royal Palace in Whitethrone and the Witch Queen's Kurgan, but one of the Winter Collectors. Suppose further that instead of being at the pole as The Witch Queen's Revenge says, it is actually located in Ivoryglass. Finally, suppose that after trapping Baba Yaga in her matryoshka doll, Elvanna co-opted Yrax and stationed a simulacrum of herself to make sure he doesn't waver in his guardianship of her interests, either not knowing he's also guarding Baba Yaga's key or satisfied that a MF'ing dragon makes a wonderful guardian. Maybe she can even aid in the ritual from the Triaxian end (I call this an "easy" fix because Elvanna's statted up in full in chapter 6, so halving her power shouldn't be too difficult). Suddenly Baba Yaga's bird has a reason to manipulate Pharamol, having got wind of "Elvanna" or of Yrax's changing sides and wanting to challenge them or for them to pay for their betrayal.
Suddenly, voila! Elvanna makes an actual appearance in the AP before the PCs' final encounter with her, something only Rasputin was able to do in the AP as written. Part of Baba Yaga's interest in Triaxus is revealed and the PCs get a hint that they might be able to free Irrisen from eternal winter. All it takes is one additional encounter and a little generosity towards the concept.
An aside: looking only at your avatar and your gushing over chapter 5 in the final paragraph of your post, I felt sure you were Brandon Hodge. I was only disabused of this notion when the time came to edit the quote tags. Funny, huh?
An aside: looking only at your avatar and your gushing over chapter 5 in the final paragraph of your post, I felt sure you were Brandon Hodge. I was only disabused of this notion when the time came to edit the quote tags. Funny, huh?
Lol. Should I pick a different avatar?
Anyway - you've got some good nuggets there and it's at least given me some things to mull over. I will concede that it would be less homework on my part to retool what's already here than repurposing another adventure entirely. The connection with the Winter Collector on Triaxus continually slips my mind, but that might be in part because it's not mentioned as prominently (at least not in this part of the AP) as I think it probably should be.
Part 5 though is so climatic that it makes part 6 feel rather anticlimactic, especially the penultimate encounter . ** spoiler omitted **
But the final battle is a battle of life or death - for ALL of Golarion.
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Lol. Should I pick a different avatar?
I was going to call that a little extreme, but it seems too late. Oh well.
The connection with the Winter Collector on Triaxus continually slips my mind, but that might be in part because it's not mentioned as prominently (at least not in this part of the AP) as I think it probably should be.
The winter collector is not treated in the body of the adventure at all. All the references to it are in the Adventure Background section, and they run as follows:
[Baba Yaga] has visited Triaxus for centuries, tapping into the planet’s long winters to help fuel the supernatural winter that eternally cloaks her kingdom of Irrisen on Golarion.
* * *
After summoning her Three Riders to Iobaria as part of a contingency plan to deal with her daughter Elvanna's treachery, Baba Yaga traveled to Triaxus to perform maintenance on the mystic winter portals connecting the snowbound planet to Irrisen.
All the other references to the winter collector on Triaxus are to be found in The Witch Queen's Revenge, where it talks about the artifact's location near the north pole and its being guarded by a brood of white dragons.
Wait... the dragonkin rider is named Bescaylie? My players are going to have a good laugh at that. Maybe I'll take a page from Alien Nation about that and invent something humorous about a PCs name in Triaxian. Triaxic?
Wait... the dragonkin rider is named Bescaylie? My players are going to have a good laugh at that. Maybe I'll take a page from Alien Nation about that and invent something humorous about a PCs name in Triaxian. Triaxic?
What's so funny about the name?
What do people make of the first section in the garden? I had a quick scan and didn't recall that much of it was any more than filler.
It would be fine if my players didn't play in video game mode and try to kill everything that engages them, never retreating no matter how pointless or close to death they come.
At the moment the majority seems like an unnecessary delay to the main adventure
Most of the plant encounters aren't necessary, except perhaps the one with the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing with Queen Jelizaveta's familiar. Talking to the cat's spirit might give the party some first clues as to what is going on behind the scenes.
Also useful is the encounter with the moon-beast and its denizen of Leng slave, because it serves to let the party get their hands on the soul gem with the imprisoned mercane. This is important because it provides the party with basically the only outlet for selling and buying magic items for the rest of the adventure path.
The treant can actually be saved - she can be nursed back to health or fixed with a heal spell.
I had some fun with making the moonbeast proactive and messing with the PCS with its illusions.
The moonbeast and its denizens (I gave it more) actually showed up in the middle of the fight with the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing.
I was looking at this adventure today again (still planning to integrate it somehow into another campaign, at the moment thinking about using it to replace the fifth module of Shattered Star, which would give me two Brandon Hodge penned modules IN A ROW! ^^) and I noticed what appears to be a potential problem.
Around the prison camp there is a 1000 feet No Mans Land in all directions. So far so good. But although this gives the defenders an excellent LOS, they don't have the range to capitalize on it. The farthest distance they can cover with the mortar troops is 400 feet.
This seems a good distance, but it is vastly outdistanced by long-range spells, like Fireballs. Assuming that the prison camp uses some lighting, so that there is a LOS, a level 13 Sorcerer can start a veritable bombardment of the camp without any fear of repercussion from the troops.
Their only option seems to be to rush the party en masse, which of course could work, but really kind of would ruin the whole idea of infiltrating the camp or the feeling of assaulting a fortified position.
I am not sure how to solve this, outside of increasing the range of the troop attacks dramatically. Or hoping that we got no Fireball throwing character in the party, I guess. ^^
wrong book thread there magnuskn:)
its a problem i'll have as well, moreso because my wife always takes fireball, i'll look again but I think my plan was to either add more snipers in the towers, Have it lousy with animated tanks, maybe some fog too:)
Wow, I must have been really distracted to post this in the wrong thread entirely. :-/ I'll try to flag this and get that post moved to the Rasputin Must Die! thread in the proper forum.
Lol, we all do it occasionally:) at least you got the right AP:)
The dangers of doing five things at the same time, I guess. ^^
Thanks for input on garden encounters.
I am thinking of ditching most in favour of some creepy fairy tale themed encounters - please see my post in themain RoW board - looking for some advice!
My PCs happened upon Baknarla fighting the Ursikkas. They killed the ursikkas, but Baknarla died as well, making a questionable-if-brave tactical maneuver. The PCs didn't even bother to try a Breath of Life, even though they had plenty handy.
Fortunately, I had already passed them the information about the Rimekeening Crevasse through Baba Yaga's Library. Now they simply get more treasure out of the deal.
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Some advice please. My players started Frozen Stars well behind where they "should" be xp wise, and whilst I don't "need" to follow the reward system slavishly I do like to keep roughly to it. I want to fit a supposedly random encounter in between leaving the Hut and reaching Spurhorn, but none of the suggestions in the book work for me. I don't know Bestiaries 1-4 as well as I could, so, does anyone have any suggestions for a level 10-11 mountain encounter?
What about the CR 10 and CR 11 encounters listed on the chart on page 83?
CR 10:
1 adult white dragon (Bestiary p. 100), or
1 ursikka (The Frozen Stars p. 88), or
1d4 moonflowers (Bestiary 2 p. 192)
CR 11:
1 carnivorous crystal (Bestiary 3 p. 45), or
1d4 greater earth elementals (Bestiary p. 123), or
1 devourer (Bestiary p. 82), or
1d4 yrthaks (Bestiary 2 p. 290).
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Well, a white dragon is the culmination of this chapter of the AP, they had to battle moonflowers to get out of the hut, and there's a carnivorous crystal and a pair of ursikka in the search for the adlet champion, so I'd rather avoid those four.
The sheer amount of flying combats coming up means I want to avoid the yrthaks.
The earth elementals don't really seem to fit in my opinion, which leaves the devourer. Maybe...
Flying combats will be interesting for my group as none have an ability to fly.
Even when there were 2 wizards (now only one) there was still no flight. I'm pretty sure the remaining wizard has transmutation as forbidden
Could get awkward...
In PF, a specialist wizard can still cast spells from his prohibited schools, they just cost two daily slots instead of one. So a Fly spell would require two L 3 daily spell slots instead of one L 3.
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What's people's idea of the game mechanics to be used when Impressing sorry, Bonding With a Dragonkin?
It seems to me that unless every PC gains a bond there needs to be some form of balance, probably in the form of a feat. Leadership? If so, what level cohort should a Dragonkin count as, and how do you think they should advance?
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If you actually use the normal leadership rules, a dragonkin probably counts around L15 or so as a cohort (as a 10 HD monster with flight, good stats and a few special abilities). The leadership rules as-is kind of discourage monster cohorts.
What I actually did, as the party's reward for vanquishing the Lord of the Howling Storm, was offer all of the PCs dragonkin, with the limititation that your dragonkin stays 3 levels behind you, but if the rider takes leadership that the dragonkin "catches up" to 2 levels behind you - and gets the benefits of various PC house rules. The dragonkin could advance by level or by hitdice. The party was L14 at that point, so any dragonkin would be 11 hitdice or 10 hitdice, 1 class level.
I was planning to have a dragonkin grow to huge if someone advanced a dragonkin to 15 hitdice =P
Only the witch (whose player is a huge Anne McCaffrey fan) took a dragonkin (Nevra, actually), and she's been levelling Nevra as a ninja in part just because dragonkin ninja. The witch took leadership at 15th. The witch also sunk a lot of money into outfitting Nevra. Nevra's proven quite useful.
Dragonkin are muscle that moves at high velocity. They're damn handy, but not excessively so. (It's a smaller deal than your L11 cleric pulling in a movanic deva, for example.) Though you'd obviously need to make adjustments if your party size doubled because everyone wanted a dragonkin.
(I'll note a number of PCs mentioned returning to Triaxus and bonding with a dragonkin once their quest was over, though.)
If you actually use the normal leadership rules, a dragonkin probably counts around L15 or so as a cohort (as a 10 HD monster with flight, good stats and a few special abilities). The leadership rules as-is kind of discourage monster cohorts.
What I actually did, as the party's reward for vanquishing the Lord of the Howling Storm, was offer all of the PCs dragonkin, with the limititation that your dragonkin stays 3 levels behind you, but if the rider takes leadership that the dragonkin "catches up" to 2 levels behind you - and gets the benefits of various PC house rules. The dragonkin could advance by level or by hitdice. The party was L14 at that point, so any dragonkin would be 11 hitdice or 10 hitdice, 1 class level.
I was planning to have a dragonkin grow to huge if someone advanced a dragonkin to 15 hitdice =P
Only the witch (whose player is a huge Anne McCaffrey fan) took a dragonkin (Nevra, actually), and she's been levelling Nevra as a ninja in part just because dragonkin ninja. The witch took leadership at 15th. The witch also sunk a lot of money into outfitting Nevra. Nevra's proven quite useful.
Dragonkin are muscle that moves at high velocity. They're damn handy, but not excessively so. (It's a smaller deal than your L11 cleric pulling in a movanic deva, for example.) Though you'd obviously need to make adjustments if your party size doubled because everyone wanted a dragonkin.
(I'll note a number of PCs mentioned returning to Triaxus and bonding with a dragonkin once their quest was over, though.)
Why did only one take a dragonkin? Did you offer an alternate reward? I would be worried my entire party would want one (5-6) and there are not that many available as written...
The short version: No one else wanted to deal with running an extra character, and my game is mythic, so I think people were expecting a non-mythic dragonkin to be roadkill.
Nevra actually turned out pretty bad-ass, but the witch sunk a lot of her own money into outfitting Nevra. A dragonkin with the elite array, some classes, and solid gear is (not surpisingly) actually pretty bad-ass.
I'm guessing the other players wouldn't have made similar investments, and so their dragonkin companions wouldn't have turned out nearly as well.
And I would've written up custom dragonkin for folks as necessary - they'd killed the Lord of the Howling Storm, after all, and unbonded dragonkin were basically coming forward and volunteering.
Does anyone have an idea about how I can introduce a new PC on Triaxus (just pre-siege).
I don't want a Triaxian PC who speaks the language as it ruins the culture shock element.
But other than having someone follow the group out of the current hut configuration I cannot think of how to add someone and what races/classes they could feasibly play.
(I imagine this will only get worse in Book 5)
@Zhangar: Did you travel the Dragonkin with your PC's away from Triaxus? So that they are available for part 5 and 6 of the AP?
If so, how much had you to upgrade the encounters? (or: How much more had you to upgrade, as I think that you already upped them if your RoW is mythical).
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@Zhangar: Did you travel the Dragonkin with your PC's away from Triaxus? So that they are available for part 5 and 6 of the AP?
If so, how much had you to upgrade the encounters? (or: How much more had you to upgrade, as I think that you already upped them if your RoW is mythical).
Nevra's with the party right now in Book 6. The bond is "'til death do us part," so I assumed the dragonkin would be in for the longhaul.
Well I've absolutely had to upgrade/replace encounters (my party is currently tier 5 mythic, and despite being on slow XP are now 2 levels ahead of the book! An amusing vicious cycle - since they can beat stronger encounters, they're leveling much faster, and so require stronger encounters to challenge them), the dragonkin isn't requiring any special consideration. Though she's a huge boon to her witch rider (speed 120, flyby, etc.).
(Among other things, rider and dragonkin use whoever's roll was better to determine initiative. Also, dragonkin have high Dex, Combat Reflexes, and fight with x3 crit reach weapons.)
I think how good your players' dragonkin will be determined by what the players invest and whether you allow the dragonkin to advance. Both of those factors are really important.
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Just getting ready to transition my players to Into the Drakelands, and I have a couple of questions about the monsters in that section.
Zavackuul the Roper is going to be spending the encounter on the ceiling I would guess, and she has pull so that she can get her targets to her mouth. Can pull lift things? She has a Strength of 34, which by my reckoning gives her a "lift over head" of 2,800 lb, but I would imagine that would require all of a lifter's "hands"; would a lift of 466lb per strand sound right?
Secondly, am I alone in thinking that the Frost Worms are massively under CRed? "Death Throes (Su): When killed, a frost worm explodes in a 100-foot-radius burst that deals 12d6 cold damage and 8d6 piercing damage (DC 23 Reflex half )." Twice?
Frost worms are like remorhazes - incredibly dangerous but yet kind of fragile.
I'd warn folks of the death throes if they roll well on the knowledge check.
Your estimates for the roper's lift capacity sound fine, if you're worried about it. I assume that 2,800 factors in the increased capacity from being large?
Wrong system.
More importantly, the knowledge check lets the party know that they need to avoid detonating both worms at the same time =P
I only had my party face one frost worm, and it nearly killed them. They only survived after first heavy hinting, then heavy reminding, about the death throes. (This session was right after resurrecting somebody, so I was in no mind to do it again.)
The worms might or might not be a tad under-CRd at 12, but two against an APL of 11 is a death trap for sure.
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Right, with Ivoryglass starting tomorrow I'm after a few opinions from other GMs please.
Are the guards at the palace gate meant to have a way of opening the doors? Seems a bit daft that the PCs can talk their way past and then need to beat the doors down to get in. Assuming that there is a way, should it require the guards to be alive?
There is realistically no way a group of 12th level characters can find and kill the dragon in one day, unless they make some incredibly lucky choices. But once they back out defences would be strengthened beyond recognition. I not sure that I see a safe resting place for them unless they befriend Viveka or Cesseer, what do others think?
Tricking their way past the golems using the arcane mark earns experience as if defeating them I guess?
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Hey guys, I'm planning to pick up a new party to resume the story arc from a prior one. Fortunatley this shism occured just as we hit the boundry of book 3 to 4. I have a few ideas, but I'm curious what take you guys would have for gathering a party at this level. Golarion explorers? Plane walkers? Native Triaxians?
Also what would be the motivator or the build-up-to-encounter? For book one this was the winter portal and eventually reaching the hut in the second; so I'm curious as to how I can do this. Perhaps I can have them start a level lower and build an arc to reach the appropriate starting level. Question would be how to structure such an arc.
Darrell:
I made it so that Iantor in the Atrium was on door duty. He was in charge of opening the door when the soldiers on the other side demanded it. I don't remember off hand exactly what was in the module, but I made the room the barbarians occupied a sort of antechamber/guard outpost, and then the official door into the palace was a massive affair that had to be opened from the inside.
My PCs reached the palace after an already long day, evaded the outside guards, killed the door guards and Iantor, destroyed all of the golems, and rope tricked in the Atrium. Yrax's living situation is curious in that he doesn't live with anybody who likes him. Only Ceseer was left as an at-large guard who could be thought to care about what happens in Yrax's house. As it happens, in my campaign, she observed the carnage, noticed the rope trick, and left them alone to challenge in the morning. Yrax himself was wrapped up in himself, as big bads often are.
Yrax wasn't notified until the next day, when the PCs got thoroughly beat by Ceseer. If they had slept again, I had a plan to bring in some Drakelands Sorcerers with reinforcements via dimension door to see why there wasn't any communication coming from the palace. This did eventually happen anyway, once Yrax was defeated, to hasten the PCs from taking the whole horde like the book suggests. (They still managed to give them the slip and get away with most of it!)
Hey guys, I'm planning to pick up a new party to resume the story arc from a prior one. Fortunatley this shism occured just as we hit the boundry of book 3 to 4. I have a few ideas, but I'm curious what take you guys would have for gathering a party at this level. Golarion explorers? Plane walkers? Native Triaxians?
Also what would be the motivator or the build-up-to-encounter? For book one this was the winter portal and eventually reaching the hut in the second; so I'm curious as to how I can do this. Perhaps I can have them start a level lower and build an arc to reach the appropriate starting level. Question would be how to structure such an arc.
I can't comment on everything that you asked (I'm AFB at the moment), but I seem to remember something about some diplomats from Castrovel (Lashunta and/or elves). Some of the other planets in the same star system are a lot more cosmopolitan than Golarion, insofar as the inhabitants are more aware of the other planets, and visit them for trade/diplomatic/whatever purposes. So potential replacement party members could be from any of: Castrovel, Akitron, Golarion, Verces, and Triaxus itself. Not to mention the old stand-by of someone coming through a one-way Gate from somewhere else.
As for the motivation for gathering the indivdual PCs into a party, and getting them back on track ... that sounds more difficult to me. The RoW AP has a very definite railroad (and I mean that in the nicest way possible). There's the Black Rider's geas, the understanding that BY has to be rescued or else eternal winter will spread across Golarion, and the need to back-track BY's route. Maybe the replacement group (if they're already together) was "hired" by one of the other Riders?
Quick question about Event 1 on Spurhorn - it refers to victory points for "each light ballista" and "the heavy ballista and firedrake", but I can only see the light ballista and firedrake in the descritpion. Am I going mad?
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From memory, the description of the encounter only mentions the firedrake and light ballista(s?), but the room-by-room description of Spurhorn at the start of the chapter says that there is a heavy on the tower roofs too.
Had the chance to check it. From page 20:
"B2. Bastion: Eight of these squat towers protrude from Spurhorn’s outer walls. Forty feet tall, each bastion has two f loors aboveground, equipped with arrow slits on all sides. Each bastion has a crenellated roof and holds two light ballistae, one heavy ballista, and one firedrake (Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Combat 161), usually covered to protect them from the weather. Doors provide access to the tops of the outer walls (area B1) and interior stairs lead down to the bastion armories (area B15). Ten Triaxian soldiers serve as crews for the siege engines on each bastion."
Great, thank you! I knew I was missing something...
Also, I was thinking of doing something between the council meeting and when the attack begins. A contest of sorts between the commanding officers and the PCs, in a "it'll be good for the men" / "some of us don't really like you" way.
Has anyone done anything similar or have any good ideas for contests I could include? Hoping to bring a bit of light relief, given they're about to get into some heavy encounters.