So my group's other campaign has about 1 session left before I take over for Kingmaker, so I am ironing out my changes to the AP before going live. I've read through a lot of the larger threads on this forum mining for ideas, this is what I am planning to go with:
Character Changes:
The two major villains of the adventure path are Nyrissa and Irovetti. I've seen suggestions around for both of them that I liked, and am using/adapting them to my purpose.
Major Character Changes:
Nyrissa's backstory modified: Nyrissa when put down by the Eldest had her Love and Ambition torn from her. Her love was used to forge the three Weapons: Briar, Ovinrbaane, and The Lonely Sword. While her Ambition was wrought into the earth itself in the Stolen Lands.
The three weapons are redesigned to fit this new motif, and have the potential to gain more intelligence, gain power as they spend more time in proximity to each other. Nyrissa seeks to steal the Stolen Lands to reclaim her ambition, and great power along with it. courtesy of Gentleman
Irovetti's story changed: Irovetti takes power around the same time as the PCs. Is aware of the threat posed by Nyrissa through predecessor's journals, and is rapidly amping up resources to be able to defend against her. Somewhere after Part 2 Irovetti in desperation for more power takes up with Devils, exchanging soul of self + others in exchange for the power to stand against Nyrissa. courtesy of Pennywit He is actively seeking the 3 weapons that make up Nyrissa's love, having heard that the three united against her are the only way to end her permanently. (breaking her love into 3 weapons instead of just Briar is my own twist on things, and makes Irovetti's hunt for the two swords in the PC's lands that much more important).
Timeline: Timeline stretched, provide roughly 5 years between each part. After the first break, kingdom turns progress by season instead of by month. Possibly make other changes to slow down time passing if needed. Events get shuffled around, most prominently moving Varnhold Vanishes until the second to the end, but also notably moving the Rushlight tournament close to the beginning. The timeline will be mixed up as shown below.
Timeline:
1) Part 1-Initial Exploration of the Greenbelt, dealing with the stag lord, establishing the start of a Kingdom. Runs as is, except with a few added in references to seed the idea that a powerful fey lays claim to the Stolen Lands.
[PC Levels: 1-4]
[5 year gap. Total: 5 years]
2) Part 2-Expanding into the rest of the Greenbelt, fend off Nyrissa and Irovetti's various plots. Considering using the Hargulka Monster Kingdom stuff(see here), or at least adapting it to make Hargulka a more active and prominent player in this section.
[PC Levels: 4-6]
[1 year gap. Total: 6 years]
3) Interlude 1- Players receive their first invitation to the Rushlight Tournament, along with the other 2 local monarchs (Varn and Drelev). Use this as a good place to introduce the players to local politics and the leaders of the nations in the region. This is the first indication the players are being taken seriously as leaders, and a strong showing in the Tournament itself will only further emphasize that. Focus should be on the tournament minigames and Varn/Drelev/Irovetti, but lots of opportunity to expand further if the players show interest in diplomacy and the surrounding region.
[PC Levels: 6]
[5 year gap. Total: 11 years]
4) Interlude 2- Varnhold runs into trouble with Minotaurs, get bogged down in war that stagnates their growth and threatens to exterminate them. Brevoy withdraws all official support due a combination to increasing internal tensions and feeling the experiment is now a lost cause. In desperation, Varnhold reaches out to the PCs for help. If PCs can end the war (peacefully or otherwise), Varnhold will swear fealty to the PCs, joining their kingdom without first needing the events of Varnhold Vanishes (which gets pushed back much later).
[PC Levels: 6-7]
[no gap. Total: 11 years]
5) Part 4-Have this begin simultaneously with the PCs being preoccupied with helping Varnhold if possible. Drelev sees weakness in the PCs kingdom with them being preoccupied dealing with the Minotaurs, and decides to take advantage of it. Break out mass combat rules here, rather than the small bands used in the official adventure. If Hargulka is not killed in Part 2, have him show back up as a part of Drelev's forces here. Play up the threat posed by Drelev, making ending that threat a high priority for the PCs.
[PC Levels: 7-8]
[3 Year Gap. Total: 14 years]
6) Interlude 3-Brevoy Civil War. Optional interlude if the PCs are showing interest in the politics of the region, or just in expansion (going in and stomping over both sides of the warring nation). Otherwise this happens in the background while the PCs nation recovers and the PCs themselves enjoy some hard won peace.
[PC Levels: 8]
[5 year gap. Total: 19 years]
6) Part 5-Irovetti at this point in time has been working on behalf of the devils for 10-15 years, and rumors of this should be spreading rapidly, especially when the change in national religion becomes official.
The PCs by this point have likely recovered 2 of the 3 weapons (Ovinrbaane and The Lonely Sword) that Irovetti has been seeking for his battle against Nyrissa, and by this time he is aware of it. In addition to that, and the PC Nation's growing power; the Devils Irovetti made a pact with have begun to mislead Irovetti into believing the PCs have secretly allied with Nyrissa, and are acting as her first line of defense. Proof of this includes that their lands contain the portal to her sanctum in the First World, and visions of the potential future in which all of the stolen lands are reduced to a barren wasteland.
Irovetti launches his attack, bringing to bear every force he can lay his hands on, ideally timing his attack to coincide with some disaster or other event (either natural or arranged by him or the devils), hoping to overrun the Kingdom and move to take on Nyrissa before it is too late.
[PC Levels: 8-12]
[1 year gap. Total: 20 years]
6) Part 3- Here we reimplement the events of Varnhold Vanishing. Nyrissa is coming very close to being able to complete her ritual to steal the Stolen Lands, but after the events of Part 5, the PCs are almost certainly aware of and looking for her, and have all Three Weapons in their hands.
The players will have roughly a year for research and searching here to try to find Nyrissa. As soon as they get close, to throw the PCs off her track she manipulates a mortal into opening up Big V's tomb, breaking the seal. Varnhold gets vanished just like in the AP, but V takes a far more active role in the adventure, having come out at full power instead of much weaker. His first few weeks are still reconnaissance, but after the PCs investigate and re-clear Varnhold, they should find themselves on the wrong end of an undead uprising with full support from a 17th level spellcaster whose eye is set on domination.
[PC Levels: 12-15]
[No gap. Total: 20 years]
7) Part 6- Play out almost identically to the standard Adventure. Unlike the other parts of the adventure, no long timeskip between Big V and Nyrissa. Ideally Nyrissa is in position to launch her first bloom during the climax of the battle against V. If V survives, Nyrissa will recruit him to her cause to aid with the ritual and get another shot at the PCs (possibly with a power boost courtesy of Nyrissa's First World Connection).
[PC Levels: 15-17]
So I guess what I'm looking for is another set of eyes to let me know if I missed anything obvious, or if there are major plotholes caused by any of these changes.
Explanation:
The main reason for the reshuffling is to try to make the story line flow better, as with these changes it evolves naturally from exploration/natural threats to external armies/kingdom threats, into supernatural Undead/First World threats, with Irovetti being a major crossover point (representing both a Kingdom threat and an extraplanar threat).
With these changes, most of the parts where armies and war is involved happen with the PCs below level 10 (with the PCs breaking past level 10 during their dealings with Irovetti). Meanwhile the deal with the devil gives Irovetti some more noble motivations, and makes him more human, a tragic figure even if the PCs bother to find out what's going on they may even want to try to bring him onto their side (which could end up being a sidequest all of its own, finding a way out of Irovetti's contract).
Meanwhile, at the same time, the literal deal with the devil makes it possible to have a higher level/higher powered Irovetti and lieutenants without making it seem like arbitrarily making every humanoid the PCs run into happen to match or beat their level. With both the Barbarians and the Rushlight tournament being pushed earlier in the campaign, the game can get by with most humanoids the party encounters being level 6 or below (with a handful being in the 7-9 range) without making it too easy.
Houserule Notes (in case they affect anything):
-I will be doing level up via fiat to keep players in the level range intended.
-Experience rewards will still be issued and may be spent on upgrades that supplement/replace magic items. In exchange fewer magic items will be dropped and magic items available for purchase will be severely limited. Expect the players to invest more personal wealth into the kingdom, or personal businesses/buildings.
-I will be making tweaks to kingdom building rules to make populations numbers make a bit more sense, and encourage players to have a standing army early on.
Interesting ideas! I like the idea of delaying Vordekai's appearance until the players are ready to fight the full lich.
Yeah, one of the things that bugged me most about the AP was how the PCs go from fighting regular people to fighting a thousands of year old lich back to fighting regular people. I get that humanoids are super adaptable and can be made to fit any power level, but incredulity gets stretched when the super-threatening lich is around level 10 and when you go to the kingdom next door there's a half dozen level 14 barbarians and bards and whatever else. It makes it seem like the PCs are a case of right place at the right time rather than actual heroes.
Frontloading the standard humanoid interactions and backloading the stuff that is traditionally considered higher level helps alleviate a lot of those concerns.
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Thanks for the bit about the devils misleading Irovetti. I hadn't thought of that bit.
No problem, thank you for providing the Irovetti ideas in the first place!
Also in case anyone cares, I decided instead of doing rolls for random encounters every day, I'd preroll out all of the random encounters for the map, and then group together encounters in such a way that they can make some sort of story sense. So instead of having 15 or so random 1 encounter work days spread around (probably more, looking through it, I rolled around 23 encounters total compared to the expected average of 15ish), I've got 4 new adventure hubs where there's something interesting to do that progresses or at least contributes to the plot in some minor way.
Location: Anywhere near Area Q (the Rickety Bridge)
Scenario: The local wolf pack (the 3d6 wolves) has been acting increasingly erratic over the last month. Local Hunter Harsk has been at a loss as to what to do about it until the PCs show up, so he can ask for help. Harsk will aid the party in any way he can, including in combat.
The wolf pack has recently come under new leadership, as a werewolf/worg team have taken over the pack, and are driving the wolves to take actions they normally would not. Hunting for sport and leaving the kill to rot, attacking humans, torturing creatures,
etc.
As a result the local elk herd has been largely dispersed, with the remnants being extremely skittish and defensive, attacking anything that comes too close.
The wolf pack should be broken up into 3-4 encounters. My current plan is for the PCs encountering the wolves taking down a couple of elk; later running into a couple more elk who uncharacteristically attack; the a potion of wolves staging an ambush with both leaders (and fleeing after one or the other dies); and ending with the PCs tracking down the wolves and taking care of whichever leader managed to survive the first attack (or a second ambush with everything the wolves got if the PCs decide that their job is done).
Tying this back into the main storyline, this werewolf will be the one that infected the werewolf that shows up in Part 2, and has a strange stripe of green fur running down its back, a DC25 Kn(Nature) check will identify this marking as a sign of it working for a powerful fey.
Location: Area N, somewhere near the statue of Erastil
Scenario: This group is a handful of fae that are organizing themselves. While it wouldn't be right to call it a village, it is definitely a community that is small but growing. The mites are on the run, deserters from the main mite group who is at war with the kobolds. I added in a Korred named Desta as an extra creature here.
Desta hates all humanoids especially, and has begun organizing this group as a resistance against the increasingly organized and settled bandit camps in the area. Desta is also the reason why the Tatzlwyrm is present, as she managed to tame the beast, and uses it as a mount.
The PCs can try to make peace with this community by agreeing to help uproot the bandits, but if the fae catch wind of the PCs intending to stay and settle the region themselves they will be as hostile to the PCs as they are to the bandits. If Desta is removed from power, the grig who acts as second in command is more amenable to working with the PCs even knowing they plan to stay, as long as they agree to leave this hex plus all adjacent hexes open to them. (Note: This may cause problems when Tatzlford is built, either resulting in relocating that or renegotiating a deal with the fae).
As for these fey's relationship with Nyrissa, Desta and the others consider themselves in service to the Green Lady, but Nyrissa herself barely acknowledges their existence. She is somewhat annoyed at them working against her purposes (since the stag lord is furthering her agenda) but considers them small and irrelevant enough to not bothering to reign them in. She may ask them to spy on the PCs or feed the PCs false information if a deal is struck. Whether it happens or not will depend on how strong the relationship between these fey and the PCs becomes.
Encounters: This one is pretty open, it will probably come in the form of a few ambushes of mixed fey before the PCs get annoyed or clued in and go to their camp to resolve the issue permanently.
Yeah, lots of high level beasties rolled, and basically all of them went into this session because it's where it makes the most sense. As a result, I also boosted the CR of the Temple Guardian himself, and commensurately boosted the reward for the clearing the temple quest; as this is now effectively a higher level quest, and possibly something the PCs won't be able to accomplish until after establishing their Kingdom.
Scenario: The Will-O-Wisp is hanging around feeding off the negative emotions/torment of the Bear/Priest/Guardian, and stays out of it unless the PCs seem to be a serious threat to its food source. The rest are natural guardians beckoned to protect the temple by the same source that turned the priest into a cursed bear in the first place. So the PCs will first encounter the pair of thylacines acting very defensive as they approach the temple. The next line of defense is the grizzly bear. Then the shambling mound. Then the Guardian himself. At any point the PCs can freely turn and run without any of the creatures pursuing, they are actively defending the temple, if the PCs start heading the opposite direction, they are not a threat.
Scenario: The Bandits have established a second camp on the opposite side of the woods, conveniently located near the other major river in the vicinity. The PCs can learn of this second camp from any bandits they interrogate, it is as well known as the camp at area K. If peaceful contact has been made with the fey at area N (see above), these fey will directly ask for help in wiping out this camp if it has not been taken care of already. They are very close together, and the fey have been harassing the bandits endlessly, but mostly by way of pranks and annoyances rather than actual aggression.
The bandits recently captured a pair of boggards and a slurk who ranged too closely to their camp (note: I upgraded the boggard lair at area O from a lone boggard to a small outcast community). The bandits blame the boggards for the annoyances the fey have wrought, but one of these boggards can miraculously speak a bit of common and has convinced the bandits he can lead them to hidden treasure. This claim has bought some time, and the boggard hopes for a rescue before he has to make good on the claim.
If the PCs rescue the boggard, he will offer to translate for the PCs with Garuum, providing an alternate avenue of reaching a peaceful solution with the boggards if the PCs can't find another way to communicate. If the PCs press the boggard on his supposed treasure, the Boggard will offer to lead them to a nearby Whiptail Centipede lair, knowing there is some valuables in the lair that may appease the adventurers.
Optionally, the boggard may ask for the PC's help in subduing, but not killing, the centipede, as tales of the Mite's pet whiptail centipede have reached them, and they would like to have one of their own.
Storypoint leveling like you are planning to do is a great idea for this AP. One point to mention, at a certain level (9-11th) many many kingdom challenges become rather mundane. If you want them to experience several years of solving kingdom issues to really give them a feel for being rules, you may want to take a long break between books and keep them suspended in the middle levels. My party is 9th level now and it pretty much takes a declaration of war with a neighboring kingdom/faction or a kingdom shattering event to make them break a sweat now. Luckily we are moving into the latter books where it is primarily this sort of material.
Don't be afraid to throw non-standard encounters out there as well to round out the daily encounters. I used a lot of tracks and night sounds to foreshadow certain encounters, or for example let the party know there was a giant in the region without the actual encounter taking place yet. The party still doesnt know that the chortling noise they hear along the rivers at night sometimes are tatzlwurms calling to each other :)
Storypoint leveling like you are planning to do is a great idea for this AP. One point to mention, at a certain level (9-11th) many many kingdom challenges become rather mundane. If you want them to experience several years of solving kingdom issues to really give them a feel for being rules, you may want to take a long break between books and keep them suspended in the middle levels. My party is 9th level now and it pretty much takes a declaration of war with a neighboring kingdom/faction or a kingdom shattering event to make them break a sweat now. Luckily we are moving into the latter books where it is primarily this sort of material.
Yeah, that was definitely the idea behind this. Most of the kingdom building here (and 19 of the 20 years of downtime I currently have planned) takes place between levels 4 and 8.
After level 8 things speed up significantly and deal with escalating supernatural threats in rapid succession. In the span of the last 1-2 years the PCs will move through the War with Pitax (including Demon powered Irovetti), dealing with Big V (both his new undead army and his tomb), and dealing with Nyrissa herself, with 1 year of downtime total for all three of these major events (which will carry the PCs from level 8 up to level 17).
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Don't be afraid to throw non-standard encounters out there as well to round out the daily encounters. I used a lot of tracks and night sounds to foreshadow certain encounters, or for example let the party know there was a giant in the region without the actual encounter taking place yet. The party still doesnt know that the chortling noise they hear along the rivers at night sometimes are tatzlwurms calling to each other :)
Good point, and I will keep this in mind with regards to the adventure hubs. Little bits of foreshadowing like that can help break things up without wasting a ton of time on singular random encounters.
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Nice, nice work, Seerow. This "story hubs" post probably merits its own thread.
Thanks. I might make a new thread for it later, encouraging people to post their own hubs as well. If we end up with a thread where lots of people contribute you could end up with a full random table for hubs to toss into the campaign, which could be cool.
By the way, Pennywit you've mentioned a few times you are running Kingmaker as a Mythic campaign. Can you go into a little bit of detail about your experience with mythic and how it works out?
Off Topic Mythic Musings:
I have basically no experience with the system. I'm most interested in how easy/hard it is to challenge characters with mythic tiers, how big of a difference 1-2 tiers makes in actual play (I know in theory 2 tiers = 1 CR/ECL, but I've heard stories about games where players being 1-2 tiers apart tore the game apart). Like is it legitimate to toss a Mythic Tier 4 Monster against a Mythic Tier 1 group, or is that just completely overwhelming?
I ask because I was looking through the Mythic rules recently, and was thinking about making gathering the three weapons as an ascension point. Basically remodeling each one as a minor artifact/legendary weapon, and getting all three together triggers their wielders to ascend to Mythic status.
From there scale up tiers as they face the increasing supernatural threats as they progress further into the AP (since they'll first get Briar, the last weapon, during the war with Irovetti, I figure they can easily hit Mythic Tier 4-6 by the time they get to Nyrissa)
By the way, Pennywit you've mentioned a few times you are running Kingmaker as a Mythic campaign. Can you go into a little bit of detail about your experience with mythic and how it works out?
First off, there's a Mythic Kingmaker thread somewhere in here (can't look up the URL right now) that contains updated stats and everything for all sorts of challenges. My own experiences:
* My players enjoy being mythic. They've got all sorts of neat abilities that let them be more of what they are.
* Most of the challenges, particularly BBEGs, have to be reworked. And this is more of an art than a science. My dread vampire archmage Vordakai was completely over to the top, such that I had to nerf him significantly during combat (stop using some of his abilities). Problem was I couldn't suddenly nerf his defenses because my players had already attempted to hit him ...
* You also need to shift the tone pretty early on. You don't need to come out screaming about Nyrissa, but there needs to be some indication that the Stolen Lands are about more than Restov setting up a buffer zone to its south.
* You'll probably want to rewrite most of the encounters and such out in the wilderness. Examine the groups (lizardfolk, boggards, and so forth) to try to create relationships between these groups.
* I found it helped to up the faerie quotient a lot. Mythic Adventures are supposed to be about big things. Ordinary conflicts with trolls and bandit lords are fairly normal things. But faeries (particularly some of the nasties you find in d20pfsrd) can up the weirdness quotient and give your adventures an otherworldly feel, thus justifying the mythic abilities.
* I brought on the kingdom-level threats early, starting with Hargulka's Monster Kingdom. Some campaigns don't like the mass combat, but my group adapted once they got it. Plus, I think they had fun lobbying their allies (Sootscale, Restov, and the Nomen centaurs) for their march on the Valley of the Dead (which in my campaign was home to an army of cyclops zombies).
If so, yeah that is handy. Lots of stat blocks to draw inspiration from. I'm mostly not afraid of reworking stat blocks myself, I am more worried about the specifics of how mythic tiers interact. But like you said it is more of an art than a science, so I will have to experiment I guess.
But like I mentioned in the spoiler of my last post, I was thinking not bringing mythic in at all until level 10ish, somewhere midway through the war with Irovetti they would find the last sword and hit Mythic, just in time to face off against Mythic Empowered Irovetti.
I feel like it would help create a cleaner break between "regular adventurers, conquerors, and kings" and "mythic heroes facing off against extreme, potentially world changing, threats".
Storypoint leveling like you are planning to do is a great idea for this AP. One point to mention, at a certain level (9-11th) many many kingdom challenges become rather mundane. If you want them to experience several years of solving kingdom issues to really give them a feel for being rules, you may want to take a long break between books and keep them suspended in the middle levels. My party is 9th level now and it pretty much takes a declaration of war with a neighboring kingdom/faction or a kingdom shattering event to make them break a sweat now. Luckily we are moving into the latter books where it is primarily this sort of material.
Don't be afraid to throw non-standard encounters out there as well to round out the daily encounters. I used a lot of tracks and night sounds to foreshadow certain encounters, or for example let the party know there was a giant in the region without the actual encounter taking place yet. The party still doesnt know that the chortling noise they hear along the rivers at night sometimes are tatzlwurms calling to each other :)
If so, yeah that is handy. Lots of stat blocks to draw inspiration from. I'm mostly not afraid of reworking stat blocks myself, I am more worried about the specifics of how mythic tiers interact. But like you said it is more of an art than a science, so I will have to experiment I guess.
But like I mentioned in the spoiler of my last post, I was thinking not bringing mythic in at all until level 10ish, somewhere midway through the war with Irovetti they would find the last sword and hit Mythic, just in time to face off against Mythic Empowered Irovetti.
I feel like it would help create a cleaner break between "regular adventurers, conquerors, and kings" and "mythic heroes facing off against extreme, potentially world changing, threats".
I am playing in a Kingmaker game, where we just gained 1 tier (at level 11) during book 4, shortly after dealing with Drelv. We have a house rule that we only restore 1 mythic power per month rather than all of it every day, and many of the more powerful mythic options were banned in our game (mythic vital strike, mythic improved critical, Legendary Foe Biting weapons, ect).
These bans come primarily with another local group's experience playing Wrath of the Righteous where at high levels their characters were doing 700-1000+ damage in a round, so we removed the main culprits of this.
So far we have only played on session, but our GM really wanted to give us mythic foes to fight. It has seemed to work out ok, we are very conservative with our mythic power expenditure, and so far I have spent exactly 1 point, with one of the other players spending 1 point to surge on the attack I gave him.
Also in case anyone cares, I decided instead of doing rolls for random encounters every day, I'd preroll out all of the random encounters for the map, and then group together encounters in such a way that they can make some sort of story sense. So instead of having 15 or so random 1 encounter work days spread around (probably more, looking through it, I rolled around 23 encounters total compared to the expected average of 15ish), I've got 4 new adventure hubs where there's something interesting to do that progresses or at least contributes to the plot in some minor way.
** spoiler omitted **...
I am bringing this thread back to life. I was looking at the full map of both book 1 and 2....
The very top row of the map is wasted space....
My thinking is if the swordlords charter is public knowledge and the bandits are public knowledge then why not have bandit reinforcements or that other bandit camp show up sooner or later in the top row of the map....
It is also a good place to drop hints and clues for the PCs to find.
KenderKin I was thinking much the same thing. Also trying to group and stack encounters because one of the biggest things I've been reading is that the whole aspect of one encounter a day just completely dilutes things. Tools to help drop hints or foreshadow the different aspects I would think are the bigger thing. With leveling being more of a framework and reward rather than, where here is this hexes fight.
I think Oleg's is supposed to be right on the edge of Brevoy, which is why they don't have any real encounters there (trying to claim said hexes later would be an act of war on Brevoy).
That said, I am a big proponent of story-based leveling in this AP. You can still roughly approximate the number of encounters per level up but then the party won't feel an urgent need to necessarily seek out every little thing.
The encounter hubs proposed above are pretty cool too. As Electric Cat says this AP is really susceptible to the 5 minute work day. For me though, I think I will simply be adding additional adventures/context to the mix and in large part doing away with Hexploration after the 2nd book. Hexploration seems ok for the first two books, but as a lot of people have said, by the time the party consists of Kings and members of the Royal Council, etc., exploring/claiming seems a bit beneath the status level of the party. Adventuring though isn't necessarily beneath them. There are plenty of tales of kings who go on adventures and whatnot.
I also considered a group of charter rejects coming along later, but they did a bit more research and came across clues/ hints/rumors....
KM
Spoiler:
Maybe they spoke to a former bandit, or a traveler who can either 1. Tell about the drunkard bandit king who gets drunk and goes on and on about the green haired lady who made him a man and told him to rule...or 2. A traveler who encounter either Hargulkas forces or fey activity.....
