I am planning on running this once all of the books are out. I am starting my prep by doing a more thorough read through of the 1st three books to tweak etc. Are there any major landmines or things to look for based on your current experience running the AP so far?
Obvious this is a GM thread so spoiler tags as you feel appropriate.
My group will be 4 players, all but one very experienced players as gamers and experienced with the pathfinder system. We're currently going through RotRL with one of my future players as GM. 4 out of the 5 of us have known each other for 10+ years, so no typical group drama stuff to be worried about
I would think the biggest 'land mine' you would have to worry about is prepping for the mythic rules. It's a different set of variables, a good bit of extra book-keeping and gives the PC's options you might not be ready for. Ditto mythic foes though to a lesser extent.
We chose to use a different option over the mythic rules and this far it's worked just fine.
The rest to me is just personal preference stuff. I put low level demons and fiendish creatures in the warrens instead of some of the encounters presented. I'm going to hand wave the mass battles and alter or replace a few of the NPC's. Make sure you have a handle on how you want your PC's campaign traits to resolve themselves in book 3. There's much more potential there IMO than the generic way it's presented.
Just my 2 cents.
Read the posts about the difficulty of the encounters. Its an issue for some people, especially if you go beyond standard four player/15 point buy.
My group is five with 15 pt buy and I know I've had to adjust encounters to increase the difficulty to make it more enjoyable for the table. That's the preference of you and your players, but something you may want to think about.
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Ive got three tables.
Table one 6 players, is just starting book 4. they had no issues, some challanages.
Table two is 7 players, is standing at the stairs in the grey garrison to go upstairs.
Table three is 7 players, is just bout to go check out that hugggge spider across the room from them where they fell down. at the start.
Well, I just basically finished the module today. Only the fight against the six demons summoned by Areelu to go and the PC's will be mythic next session.
As a GM, I can say that the Grey Garrison is underpowered as written (which is no wonder, with my 20 point buy, six players game) and also feels cramped (again with the caveats enumerated above). I'm not sure how the game would go with standard parameters, but I replaced a ton of encounters with more powerful stuff and that helped a lot. Brimoraks are pretty fun at this powerlevel. :p
This isn't the first time I've heard of cramped space. Typically it seems most indoor caverns/rooms in advnetures I've noticed are TINY. From experiance I typically double the area and this has worked best almot every time. Not only does small space leave battle too static it doesn't leave any room for extra monsters if you use a higher point buy or larger party, doubling the areas solves most that.
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Yeah, I immediately discarded the idea of adding those mongrelmen rangers. Seven characters on the PC side already seemed a bit much.
Luckily, Citadel Drezen looks a bit more spacious.
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Though you could include them and have them targeted first thing by the monsters. In that case they become an ablative meat shield... and thus it rewards the players for negotiating between the Mongrelmen and the surface and also twists the dagger of guilt as for their quick deaths! ;)
Though you could include them and have them targeted first thing by the monsters. In that case they become an ablative meat shield... and thus it rewards the players for negotiating between the Mongrelmen and the surface and also twists the dagger of guilt as for their quick deaths! ;)
Yeah, I was a bit apprehensive about leaving them out altogether, since it would undercut the value of befriending Neatholm. But then again, the party gets so many advantages thrown at it that I simply folded them into the "the first wave of reinforcements gets delayed" advantage.
I agree about the mongrelmen. I had two accompany the PCs as a reward for doing the right things in Neatholm. But the Garrison is crowded and too easy. Also the mongrelmen have good ACs, HPs and saves. They are tougher than most of the opponents in there.
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I agree about the mongrelmen. I had two accompany the PCs as a reward for doing the right things in Neatholm. But the Garrison is crowded and too easy. Also the mongrelmen have good ACs, HPs and saves. They are tougher than most of the opponents in there.
We have four PC's who can all lay the wood in combat AND cast spells, but they are a little light on non-social skills... so I made the first mongrelman they meet into a non-Mythic Archeologist and had him accompany the PC's as a sort of GM PC and liason/spokesman for his people, completely replacing the mongrelman ranger cohorts. I'm not using the mythic rules, but rather accelerating the PC's advancement a bit to compensate while keeping him on the standard advancement track to lag behind. He's effective enough in combat to keep himself from being killed but apart from a handful of buff or healing spells, he doesn't spike their effectiveness to any real degree.