I'm currently a player in Carrion Crown, and we'll be starting Ashes At Dawn in a week or two, so no spoilers please!
The DM running this for us has good experience with D&D 3.x in a homebrew setting, but this AP is his first time behind the Pathfinder screen, and by his own admission he's not always good about catching details in the background/flavor text in the AP volumes.
Our party includes no Paladins, but we do have a Ranger with undead as a favored enemy and more problematically, a Pharasmin Cleric. The ad copy for Ashes At Dawn suggests the party will have to ally with undead in order to oppose the Whispering Way.
That Cleric's player takes roleplaying very seriously and if Pharasma's attitude toward undead is "Kill 'em all, let Me sort 'em out" then she's going to feel like she can't participate in any such alliance.
So, your personal opinions about alignment aside, can anyone...
...cite a general reference showing that Pharasma might be okay with this given the extreme circumstance?
...point our GM to anything in Ashes At Dawn (maybe just a page number, so I get no hints) that gives Paladins or (preferably) Pharasmins this latitude?
...assure me that there's a viable alternative to allying with undead and still accomplishing our goal? (don't tell me what the alternative is)
Thanks.
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Ok... with as little spoilers as I can manage.
There is an 'NPC' that is very closely allied with Pharasma in Book 4. (Your GM will know why I put quotation marks around that NPC)
Tell him to have that NPC rationalize it to the cleric. Essentially it's, "You can fight these undead now and make things harder for yourself or begrudgingly listen to them and take out something FAR worse down the line. We can always hunt them down later."
A commune or other way of contacting Pharasma would convey the same information. Also by 'using' them to accomplish your mission vital tactical information could be gathered for later taking them out.
There is another way to accomplish the goal. It is very boring but there is a way.
There is an 'NPC' that is very closely allied with Pharasma in Book 4. (Your GM will know why I put quotation marks around that NPC)
If you are referring to
I'm not sure which 'NPC' Tybid is referencing from book 4, but there are members of the Pharasmian church that she could seek council with in Book 5.
There's definitely a sidebar somewhere that talks about paladins, clerics of pharasma, and undead hunters.
I'd also recommend your gm take a look at the ashes thread. And be careful of spoilers! This forum isn't very player friendly.
There is a viable alternative to allying with the vampires, so it doesn't hinge on an alliance. Personally, I don't like the alternative, but it is there.
There's also the fact that the bad guys of the AP are hellbent on trying to bring back someone connected to Urgathoa. Pharasma may not like the vampires, but she certainly does not want this person brought back into the world. She is also the goddess of Fate, so she does know what might be required to prevent this from happening.
In addition, there is nothing stopping the Cleric from coming back to Caliphas to deal with the vampires after the AP is done. In fact, the final book has a section dealing with how to prolong the game after the last book. This is one of the potential ways to do so.
Pharasma despises the undead, but she is not the mindless 'Kill 'em all' type of goddess. Gaining help from the vampires for the time being, then coming back when stronger to kill the vampires is probably something she'd be rather okay with.
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Ah, it is possible that the version of that 'NPC' is different in my game. I used a variant version from the boards and since I haven't looked at Book 4 in months I just assumed that they have the same abilities.
The others do have very good points though. There is a huge chapel to Pharasma (the largest in Golarion I think) in the place you are going next. Have your DM suggest that if the cleric is troubled about the decision have him/her seek out higher council among the faith.
@Ben the Red - Not to worry, I'm not straying from this one thread into the larger forum. Our current GM isn't a Paizo subscriber never visits these boards (not that you have to be a subscriber to do so); I'll suggest it but have little faith he'll read through multiple threads. I'll make sure he finds and reads the appropriate sidebar, at least.
There is a viable alternative to allying with the vampires, so it doesn't hinge on an alliance. Personally, I don't like the alternative, but it is there.
Good enough.
Pharasma despises the undead, but she is not the mindless 'Kill 'em all' type of goddess. Gaining help from the vampires for the time being, then coming back when stronger to kill the vampires is probably something she'd be rather okay with.
Citation?
This is our group's third AP and we keep running into situations that make us wonder what the writers were thinking, or what kinds of PCs they imagined would be running the adventure. Earlier in Carrion Crown, for example, our exploration of Schloss Caromarc detailed the resale value of all kinds of personal furnishings...as if we Good Guys were expected to rob the home of someone who had (via the Beast) invited us to visit him?
Different APs, different situations, but a recurring pattern of assumptions that the PCs will be either amoral or heartlessly mercenary, or both. So we were concerned about the prospect that we'd now be expected to ally ourselves with intelligent undead no matter what our party makeup might be. Good to hear that's not [entirely] the case.
We are becoming a little hardened regarding payment for services, and may require all such payments to be made in advance from now on. Most recently
Our group has played a lot of Call of Cthulhu, and some of us are very familiar with Mythos stories. One of the last combats we had this past weekend below the lake was with mi-go, which leads the players -- though not the PCs, who remain puzzled about what "unclear" could mean -- to suspect that at some point we'll find the mayor's living brain in a metal cannister awaiting transport to Yuggoth or wherever. Still not likely we'll get paid.
This is our group's third AP and we keep running into situations that make us wonder what the writers were thinking, or what kinds of PCs they imagined would be running the adventure. Earlier in Carrion Crown, for example, our exploration of Schloss Caromarc detailed the resale value of all kinds of personal furnishings...as if we Good Guys were expected to rob the home of someone who had (via the Beast) invited us to visit him?
It might have more to do with how the GM frames plot points. At that point in the adventure path, my party went to Schloss Caromarc because they believed they had to rescue their friend the Beast from the mad scientist who sewed him together from stolen corpses and only cared about him enough to occasionally seize control of him and send him to commit crimes such as stealing the Seasage Effigy.
They had zero ethical problems with taking Alpon Caromarc’s stuff.
My players’ characters include a Pharasman cleric and a Pharasman inquisitor, both zealously anti-undead. They are one session away from completing Ashes at Dawn, having achieved all their objectives.
There are different ways to complete the adventure. Don’t feel you have to sacrifice character integrity for a railroad plot.
That said, you might want to point your GM to the spoiler below, as it has a suggestion he or she might find useful. Don’t read it yourself.
They liked playing out the diplomacy and intrigue, and have speculated that the next part of the adventure path will be the human/vampire war. Heh. Naturally they’ll have to leave all that behind when Count Galdana is kidnapped.
Another fight like the one we just had, and Book 5 may not be an issue for some of our characters.
On our first dive below the Tern Rocks, weekend before last, we were attacked by
2 dimensional shamblers
14 or 15 skum
a sentient fungus ball
9 or 10 mi-go
Feeling really drained by this point we decided to head back
So we recharged overnight, went back the next day (in-game, a week later in real time) and
Some creative spellcasting from the surviving sorcerer (cohort of one of the two surviving/free PCs), a couple of very lucky skill checks and a certain amount of sympathy from the GM allowed the bodies to be retrieved, but still: WTF are we going to face when we go back a third time, with some of the PCs still under a negative level after raise dead and a single restoration?
Depends on how many enemies the GM provides as reinforcements.
Here's a hint: you were like 3 encounters away from the end of Wake of the Watcher when you fled to recharge the first time.
Your GM is giving the bad guys reinforcements so that you aren't just walking into the final battle at full capacity and curb stomping it.
And so just how many reinforcements are coming for round 3 is going to depend on what your GM thinks ya'll can handle. =P
Depends on how many enemies the GM provides as reinforcements.
Well, yes, my question about what we'll face next time was rhetorical. I still want no spoilers; we were just shocked at the level of smackdown we were handed.
Once we're done with the AP I'm going to go back and add those 29 enemies together to see what the total effective CR of that fight was. In this last fight we only managed to kill 20 skum and the gug.
Your GM was a little harsh, but looked like they were playing a realistic scenario.
The finale will be worse, much worse.
Scum are low level throw away minions, they don't add much to the battle beyond bodies.
The Book has a section on your question, and most of the above suggestions are referenced in it.
If, however, your group goes all Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
it's perfectly fine.
My 1st group allied with the lesser enemy to fell a greater one, but planned to come back and clean house.
And we did appreciate the realistic scenario, despite the extreme beating we took; too many published adventures (speaking generally, not just about Paizo/Pathfinder) assume that enemies remain in place, only activating when you actually enter the room; or at best say "if you make noise, the bad guys in Room 27 move to Room 28."
He's being tactical, changing the spells listed for some of the NPC casters, etc. This is all good. He also mentioned that a certain statuette they have at the moment allows their cleric to commune so they had some notion of what to expect from us when we went back the second time.
Yes, skum are no real threat on their own, but when they turn up in large numbers they more or less force the use of a couple of AOE spells, which then aren't available for more serious threats. I mentioned we'd only managed to kill 20 skum (of the 21 present) and *one* of the more dangerous foes, the gug. I presume any reasonable number of skum are available for reinforcements, so it's almost like we didn't kill them at all, only put them down temporarily and let them regenerate once we left. And next time there may be more than three mi-go, and/or more than three dimensional shamblers, and/or more than one gug...and/or something even worse.
The players pretty much know by now, even if the characters do not, that the mi-go will have put the mayor's brain in a cannister or done something equally nasty and prohibitively hard/expensive to reverse. This may have been done to other townsfolk or perhaps they're all dead, including the mayor, along with the Dark Rider who we have yet to find.
If there's nothing else we can do for them, and we already have the artifact weapon...well, there's been some debate as to whether we really need to make a third trip beneath the lake. In the end we decided we had to, because at this point we have no idea where to go once we leave Illmarsh, and presume that clue is down here somewhere.
First we need to raise two PCs from the dead, then go somewhere and resupply, gather protective potions and such, and make our third trip as if going to war.
Huh.
Yeah, you need to win down there. The fallout if you just walk off and let things take their course will be bad.
To put it mildly.
Duly noted.
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...The ad copy for Ashes At Dawn suggests the party will have to ally with undead in order to oppose the Whispering Way...
Hi, Damon. As the author of Ashes at Dawn, I can tell you this exact situation weighed heavily on my mind while writing the adventure. The entire Carrion Crown AP is set up for the PCs to oppose an epic plot involving the Whispering Way. So, naturally, players are going to want to play anti-undead characters. And, GMs are going to encourage their players to play anti-undead characters. Knowing that, I had to figure out a way of dealing with such PCs while also honoring the adventure outline given to me by the Paizo developers...one which does suggest an alliance with a particular undead faction. It was a very difficult tightrope to walk, but in the end, I was happy with how the adventure came out. Of course, how it plays at the gaming table is entirely dependent on how each GM approaches it. Thus, the developers also took the time to include a fairly long sidebar on pg. 19 of the adventure which advises GMs on the delicate nature of anti-undead PCs experiencing this particular scenario. You should definitely call your GM's attention to that.
So, your personal opinions about alignment aside, can anyone...cite a general reference showing that Pharasma might be okay with this given the extreme circumstance?
I've always interpreted Pharasma as the most "all-knowing" deity in the entire Golarion patheon. So, as the renowned goddess of fate (and not just death), she has much more long-reaching plans and insights than anyone else. While she's adamantly opposed to the very concept of undeath, like everything else in the world, undead creatures may still have a part to play in how fate unfolds. In other words, even undead creatures may be pawns in the greater events shaping the world according to fate. And, once their individual roles are fulfilled, such undead would be targeted once again by her clergy as normal. What this means is, yes, a Pharasmin could be called upon to relax their normally violent stance against undead in order to temporarily ally with them and carry out a greater purpose. And, once that greater purpose is completed, a Pharasmin will once again turn his or her attention to carrying out the somewhat lesser purpose of eliminating their undead ally so its soul can move on to Pharasma's Boneyard.
The roleplaying potential of this situation should be exceptionally rich if a GM plays his or her cards right in how they portray it to the player running an anti-undead PC. Both a cleric of Pharasma and a paladin would essentially experience a "test of faith." And it could be a test of two different natures...i.e., do you adhere to a "slay them all" mentality in every circumstance in order to be "true" to your faith? Or, do you put your faith in your god or goddess's "master plan" and that they have a bigger picture view than you do, setting aside your first inclination to "kill them all" in order to accomplish that greater purpose on your god's behalf? Both situations are a test of faith. And, if done well, a GM could have both the player and their PC agonizing over the ethical and moral choices they're forced to make. In my opinion, it shouldn't be done in a harsh way...i.e., to cause a paladin to fall from grace. Rather, just do it in small ways to suggest that there's a time and place to all aspects of a religious doctrine and the manner in which its applied. That's a good life lesson to mirror within the game itself. And, giving your players a chance to experience that vicariously through their anti-undead cleric, paladin, or ranger could make for an epic, memorable campaign.
For what it's worth, I like to imagine sometimes that this is part of the unusual relationship between Pharasma and Urgathoa...i.e., that Urgathoa's ability to leave the line of petitioners at the time of her death and refuse to allow her soul to pass into the Boneyard for Pharasma's judgment is a reflection of a greater purpose. Urgathoa's subsequent ascension into godhood and her ability to afflict the world with plagues and undeath only serves to sharpen Pharasma's mortal priesthood. In the "greater plan" of fate, as shepherded by Pharasma, even Urgathoa has a role to play before the world's end. I think Pharasma knows this...and that's why she suffers Urgathoa's existence. It serves a greater purpose. And, learning that lesson for herself, it's the type of thing she may well pass on to her own clergy...especially heroic members of that clergy, such as the PCs. Thus, the scenario in Ashes at Dawn where the PCs may temporarily ally with an undead faction could be a direct reflection of the lesson Pharasma herself has learned over time in her hatred for Urgathoa and their ensuing rivalry.
...point our GM to anything in Ashes At Dawn (maybe just a page number, so I get no hints) that gives Paladins or (preferably) Pharasmins this latitude?
Refer to the sidebar on pg. 19. It covers clerics of Pharasma, paladins, and even rangers with undead as a favored enemy.
...assure me that there's a viable alternative to allying with undead and still accomplishing our goal? (don't tell me what the alternative is)
As others have already indicated, there's most certainly an alternative. It'll make for a harder path, though...i.e., the equivalent of playing the adventure in "hard mode." Again, there's a reference in the same sidebar on pg. 19 for the GM which explains how to handle that. And, if your party goes that direction, there could be major ramifications for Ustalav as a result. And, the PCs will ultimately have to live with themselves afterwards for the role they played in it.
There's also some further exploration of this idea on pg. 24 of the adventure, and on pg. 60 under the concluding notes before moving on to Chapter 6 of the campaign. And, of course, the "Continuing the Campaign" material in Chapter 6 itself also explores the aftermath of this alternative. Your GM should have lots of material to draw upon if you go this way.
My two cents,
--Neil
Thanks, Neil, that's extremely helpful.
As been true with some of the earlier books, we're finding virtue has to be its own reward; we recovered the effigy and were given a price for which we could sell it. But we know it's stolen property, and we're not criminals. We feel obliged to return it to Lepidstadt University and hope that maybe there's some kind of reward. Also, we're not high enough level to cast regeneration so we're planning to shell out -- pun intended -- thousands of GP to pay for an NPC Cleric in Caliphas to restore the, er, preserved residents of Illmarsh we found under the lake.
On the up side, it looks like we might have some breathing room for a while. A note found suggests the cult's plans can't be completed without a certain item we have in our possession, so we can stop chasing them non-stop and take the time to upgrade our magical gear.
Our Pharasmin Cleric remains squicked out at the prospect of allying with vampires for any reason, but we'll see how it goes.
Our Pharasmin Cleric remains squicked out at the prospect of allying with vampires for any reason, but we'll see how it goes.
I'd suggest that you approach your GM about giving the Pharasmin cleric some major opportunities to learn more about the vampire history of Ustalav and the role they played during the Shining Crusade, both during the war and the aftermath of it. That alone should start opening the cleric's eyes to the possibility of greater shades of evil and the necessity for setting aside a 100% completely hostile agenda against them in the interests of serving a greater purpose in Pharasma's opposition to the Whispering Way.
But that's just my two cents,
--Neil
P.S. Additionally, if your GM would like further insight into the vampire situation in Ustalav and its historic background, I'd be happy to discuss it with him via the messaging system here on the Paizo boards. Just have him drop me a note and I'll help out where I can. Most of it should be evident in the adventure's background and the campaign setting material on Ustalav, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to talk it through and explore some of the thoughts behind that whole region.
Thanks, Neil. Our GM isn't on the boards, but I'll mention it to him.
Meantime, I'll pull up all the relevant history I can find and have my wife read it (she's our Pharasmin Cleric.) As players we need to stay out of the AP books; anywhere we should be looking for Ustalav/vampire/Shining Crusade background other than Rule of Fear? If it matters, the recently released setting book for Belkzen is one of the very few I don't own.
For vampires in general I might reference Classic Horrors Revisited, but I don't remember if there's anything there on the vampires of Ustalav in particular.
I'll pull up all the relevant history I can find and have my wife read it (she's our Pharasmin Cleric.) As players we need to stay out of the AP books; anywhere we should be looking for Ustalav/vampire/Shining Crusade background other than Rule of Fear?
Your GM would probably be OK with you reading the campaign setting book, Rule of Fear. Your party’s historian would probably be familiar with the facts in the historical timeline on Rule of Fear’s pages 7-8, years 3220, 3866, and 4288.
Please don’t feel your wife has to roleplay a certain way for your party finish the adventure successfully. Ultimately, you will all have the most fun if you choose your own path through it.
No, Neil and others have already made it clear the party has options that don't mandate alliance. She won't have to play in a way she doesn't want to. I just want her to have all the information so she can have options for nuanced play. The wife is very much a roleplayer, and enjoys character immersion much more than game mechanics. At the moment she's hard set against even a temporary alliance because she assumes that what Pharasma would expect of her.