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Greetings,
once again: Spoilers are ahead. Do not read this if you do not want to get spoilered for HoH and quite possibly TotB.
That said...
The last gaming session ended with the group defeating the Splatter Man and all that is left do is bringing Vesorianna the badge and grabbing their reward; they are around 7-8 days into the 30 days they should help Kendra and are about 1200 XP short of level 4 (or they will be as soon as they finish the module).
Here's what they did, very roughly:
- They stopped the town hall from burning down and rescued all the people inside
- They then ordered the whole village to camp around the temple, recruiting guards from the villagers and all in all turning the whole of Ravengro into a certain "You guys are under siege by something dark; we will go and fix this!"-situation. So...they will be very thankful once this is over.
- They have not, however, stopped the writing of letters - they suspect it might be something mundane (or at least something corporeal as opposed to something ghostly), since they aren't really sure why the Splatter Man would need to collect blood to write something all of a sudden - something he never had to do before to write with those letters.
- They haven't really befriended anybody from the village (except Old River); probably because I'm still working on portraying NPCs in convincing and varied ways. (For examply, I tend to play most women in high positions as the clichéd old hag snapping at everybody as if they were mere children - until I remembered Vesorianna was supposed to be a griefing widow she had the whole group cowering like the Blues Brothers in front of the penguin...)
The Problem is this: I don't really know how to fill the time until TotB. They should hit level 4 by then - something I could easily fix by some random encounters - but then there is no way the ranger would have ANY chance to teach his companion a trick or two, so I want him to get his companion before travelling.
But directly throwing the next thread at their heads also seems like overkill - "What, 50 years of nothing in Ravengro, then the ghost of the prisoners try to level the village and TWO DAYS AFTERWARDS some damn Orcs raid the village?!" - so I'm kinda torn.
The last method would be to just say "Screw it, you guys are level 4 now!", but I don't know - the only fights they had at level 3 so far was the one against the Splatter Man and the one against the Skull-Dwarf (I don't know his English name, you know who), and I don't want to overwhelm them with the level-ups, since they are all new to Pathfinder. Plus, the Skull-Dwarfs is a really lame fight.
So...any ideays?
TL;DR: HoH is done, I need a little filler between HoH and TotB to get them on level 4, instant-level ain't such a good idea
I have a few Ideas for you
a) forget about levels...I quit after TotB..to messsy
b) Tamrivena. The PC's must go thouth there to get to Ravengro, and its not really a very nice town. So we could have some problems in town.
c) the PC's picked up a lot of extra gear in HoH that Ravengro hasn't the volume to deal with so the best way would be to sell it to the border guards to the east. While hiking to the east there could be some Orc raids. I put my game in late Autumn so the Orc needed supplies.
d) Just go ahead with the first encounter of TotB and have some extra Orc/Bandit raids put in while they protect the Kin.
e) Did Kendras Dad gone walki? Soo...some extra mission to put the graveyard back into order
Yeah, I second Pan's recommendation of a trip to Clover's Crossing. My party vanquished the ghoul warren and saved the town.
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Thanks for the answers so far!
Windspirit:
Thanks for all the ideas.
a): It's kinda hard to forget about levels in a game where everything is measured in them ;) If you mean XP - I kinda already did. I mean, if they are lacking some XP to go up a level or something I handwave it, but I like to count them in the background, if only to prepare myself for running my own adventures some day (something I sucked at so far). My problem is less "Oh, I totally need some more XP to give them their level up" - that's an afterthought. It's more "They only had one real encounter on level 3 and I want them to understand their new class features before getting the next ones."
b): Yeah, I thought about that too - though when they reach Tamrivena they're not that far from Lepidstadt, which kinda kills the "Have time to train your animal"-thing. Otherwise, good idea.
c): I like the idea. I might do just that if they want to sell all this stuff.
d): Again, time is of the essence. Throwing random encounters at them is something I could easily do, but seems to easy to me.
e): Kendra's Dad did go walki (and brought the first character into negatives with a nice crit - this character now seems to make a habit out of almost-dying), but it feels cheap to say "Remember that graveyard where the zombies and skeletons came out of, the one the clerics of Pharasma vowed to protect while you were gone? Yeah...you need to clean up there."
Althought - that gives me the idea of something being influenced by the ghosts (before they were slain) which hasn't paid off for them yet and might be a little aftershock...
Pan: Clover's Crossing, you say? Hm...I wanted to buy Rule of Fear anyway, so I'll have a look. Thanks!