The purpose of this thread is to clarify questions arising in this adventure. This is a SPOILER filled zone, do not venture further if you do not wish the adventure to be spoiled for you, and spoiler tags are not required when posting here.
This thread is a GM Reference thread for Part 6 of the Hell's Vengeance Adventure Path. Links for the individual threads for each part are as follows:
Hello! Will this mean Shadowbeast/Ilnerik shenannigans? I suppose it would be very ironic to players who played CoT and fought the Shadowbeasts in order to free the city and now have to potentially team up with Ilnerik.
Hello! Will this mean Shadowbeast/Ilnerik shenannigans? I suppose it would be very ironic to players who played CoT and fought the Shadowbeasts in order to free the city and now have to potentially team up with Ilnerik.
Actually, the coexistence of these two APs in Westcrown might be a problem.
James said that Westcrown is in it's original state before CoT so DMs could tailor it as they see fit so.
1.Delvehaven sealed and Morrowfall still there
2.Shadowbeasts roam the streets and Ilnerik is under Walkcourt
3.Pit Fiend still chilling under the manor.
Creative Director
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James said that Westcrown is in it's original state before CoT so DMs could tailor it as they see fit so.
1.Delvehaven sealed and Morrowfall still there
2.Shadowbeasts roam the streets and Ilnerik is under Walkcourt
3.Pit Fiend still chilling under the manor.
James said the exact opposite.
In any event, the Westcrown in "Hell Comes to Westcrown" is a very different place in some ways from that presented at the end or the beginning of Council of Thieves. The actual events in Council of Thieves won't play a significant role in this adventure, as far as I understand it.
James said that Westcrown is in it's original state before CoT so DMs could tailor it as they see fit so.
1.Delvehaven sealed and Morrowfall still there
2.Shadowbeasts roam the streets and Ilnerik is under Walkcourt
3.Pit Fiend still chilling under the manor.James said the exact opposite.
** spoiler omitted **
Really?
I know that you had been trying to keep from advancing Golarion's timeline.
So this decision seems a bit strange.
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Creative Director
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James said that Westcrown is in it's original state before CoT so DMs could tailor it as they see fit so.
1.Delvehaven sealed and Morrowfall still there
2.Shadowbeasts roam the streets and Ilnerik is under Walkcourt
3.Pit Fiend still chilling under the manor.James said the exact opposite.
** spoiler omitted **
Really?
I know that you had been trying to keep from advancing Golarion's timeline.
So this decision seems a bit strange.
We aren't advancing Golarion's timeline overall. This is no different, really, than how we treated Runelords in "Jade Regent." You can certainly still run Council of Thieves before or after Hell's Rebels if you wish, but since there's crossover in the locations we had to decide which one came in which order.
Ultimately, the reason why we decided to go with this decision was the result of a lot of discussions during meetings and the like, and now isn't the place to go over the whys of that decision since we're still half a year away from this adventure being out.
I guess it makes sense, thanks for the clarification. No doubt the GR would step on Ilnerik's head after the first few nights of Shadowbeast attacks.
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Okay, so I'm gonna point out, very tongue in cheek, screw you guys ;)
The last book involves westcrown?! WTF guys?! I LOVED council, and sweeping Westcrown out from under Thrune. Now you guys are going to make me take it back!? C'mon!
Side note, on an actual serious manner; I'm very terrified that if any one of two of our regular GM's are involved in running this, then he'll involve our Wrath of the Righteous characters, or the other will involve our Council of Thieves Characters... Terrified...
Though still very excited for this adventure path!
I just hope we get a Roddy Piper inspired NPC for this chapter.
My problem is that I'll have to shell out $25 for probably half a dozen pages just to know what happened.
(I don't plan on playing HV, but immediately thought of CoT.)
Guess I'll have to go PDF, or just ignore it completely.
I am guessing 'Status quo, minus undead'.
Saw this on rpg.net and I dunno if it is true or not but it talks some about HV and HCTW
So she ragequits it seems.
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The last book involves westcrown?! WTF guys?! I LOVED council, and sweeping Westcrown out from under Thrune. Now you guys are going to make me take it back!? C'mon!
I do wonder, since Amaya got "advanced" stats in A Song of Silver, if we'll get such stats (or at least guidance) for Janiven, Arael, and/or the other Children of Westcrown.
Spite
I think there is a misprint in the Glorious Tabard.
"When a greater glorious tabard is used as a divine focus to cast a spell, the wearer does not need any material components that cost more than 5 gp."
I think "more" should be "less" :)
Senior Developer, Starfinder Team
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I think there is a misprint in the Glorious Tabard.
"When a greater glorious tabard is used as a divine focus to cast a spell, the wearer does not need any material components that cost more than 5 gp."
I think "more" should be "less" :)
You are correct. Looks like an editing mishap. The original line was "the wearer does not need any material components, unless the required component costs more than 5 gp." Unfortunately, the edited sentence kept the "more" even though the meaning changed to "less."
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PF 108 states that the new mayor carries out his duties from a building in Rego Areum, due to the last mayor's residence having an accident.
Could Ron or James confirm if the old manor is still a smoking pit, or has there been an attempt to fill it in and rebuild on the site?
And I'd love to see the realtor's assessment of the place.
"A bit of a fixer-upper", I imagine.
Don't be fooled. While thematically appropriate, this it not a good AP for a Hellknight. It's unfortunate, but Smite Chaos is hardly ever usable and if so, only against smaller encounters or fights. Most of the enemies are Lawful or Neutral Good. The other issue is that Hellknight is not a good prestige at all, so it's a bit punishing thematically to play one.
If you want to be a Lawful Evil knight, I'd highly suggest just being a full cavalier, antipaladin, or fighter, and just theming it as a Knight. It's equally thematic and doesn't force dead class features on you.
If your players still want to do it, I'd just recommend giving them a fair warning.
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so has anyone actually run this book? We haven't played CoT and won't be any time soon. 99% of the discussion here is not relevant to anyone wanting to GM the adventure.
Any real input? I'm looking forward to opening the book by dropping a tactical nuclear warhead on the GR siege, but am curious about some ways anyone has either run or imagined the Nightwalkers/Warsworns as PC-controlled, without getting bogged down with too many dice rolls and statblocks
I realize this is a stalled response to your question, but maybe someone (even you Two Headed Snake!) will find some value in it.
When I ran this, I modified the setup so that the army surrounded the citadel with 3 battalions of units consisting of a mixture of sergeant, devil slayer, field hospital and siege troops. (Roughly 20 or so in total.) I explained that this was an abstraction that represented many thousands of men. Above the troops, I added a small number of legion archons flying overhead as scouts, roughly 2 per battalion. These were primarily acting as a challenge to villains' attempt at dropping the tathlum without raising attention, and the archons took no part in the battle that would follow.
I then explained the criteria surrounding the use of the tathlum, though I left the exact effects something of a mystery. They had a rough idea of the area that would be devastated and I modified this as well from what was described in the module to account for the more broadly arranged army. They also knew that they had to drop it from height, that they had to do so discreetly, and that delivering it to the desired spot required an 1d20 + BAB + INT mod attack roll, with a 200 ft. range modifier.
Essentially, I forced them to decide which portions of the army they wanted to most impact with the tathlum, making them choose between things like harming the greatest number of units vs. damaging fewer but more elite troops or siege weapons, and so on. This was accomplished by positioning the troops around the battlefield in a way so as to make these choices naturally apparent.
After dropping the tathlum, troops within the center portion of the blast had a very high FORT save to make or die. Survivors would take massive damage and be stunned and then staggered. Troops within the outer ring of the blast also had to make a fort save versus significant damage and would be staggered for 3 rounds (reduced to 1 if they made the save).
After that, I allowed players to choose to play either a Horned Devil or Nightwalker which spawned from the blast. I made these act like summons with a 1 hour duration, and if the player could cause the death of another troop or devil/nightwalker player within the blast radius of the tathlum, a second devil or nightwalker would spawn under their control.
I then turned them loose to battle one another, the troops and the citadel for 7 rounds. I explained that each round represented between 1 to 2 minutes in duration and modified move speed and a few rules for combat to make it play more smoothly. They weren't aware beforehand that it would be limited to that duration, which was partly to control how much real-world time we'd play the battle, but also because I didn't want them to determine the full results of the conflict that way.
Simultaneously, their PCs attacked Endranni's post on the command hill to the east, and we ran that battle immediately following the larger conflict.
It all turned into an exciting and epic evening of conflict for the players.
Can someone confirm that my understanding about Alexeara's AC and HP is correct. It does not appear that Heart's Edge is accounted for in her stats.
She has a starting HP of 271, increasing to 331 while wielding Heart's Edge.
She has a starting AC of 35 (+14 armor, -1 Dex, +6 insight, +6 shield).
* Her AC increases to 41 (+6 sacred) while wielding Heart's Edge.
* Her AC increases to 49 (+8 untyped) versus a smite target.
And what's the source of Alexeara's +6 insight bonus to AC? For the life of me I can't figure that out. Also, I realize the smite bonus is deflection and not untyped as I mentioned previously.
Finally, has anyone played out this crowning battle with Alexeara yet? How did it go? What would you have done different and what worked well?
I also can't figure out her stats. Her highest to-hit bonus should only be 29...BaB 18 + 1 from Weapon Focus + 5 from STR + 5 from Heart's Edge. Her combat block says nothing about casting Diving Favour, but that would make it higher than the listed +31. I also can find absolutely nothing that would provide her with ANY insight bonus, let alone +6.
I'm guessing it's a mistake for her AC, and the +6 insight bonus is instead supposed to be the +6 sacred bonus from Heart's Edge.
Her attack bonus is still inexplicable, though I'm wondering if it is counting Heart's Edge twice -- once as a +2 weapon and once as a +5 holy avenger. I think that may account for the oddity in her attack line.
I just said screw it and made her a 20th lvl Paladin
My players had a numbers advantage due to several devils and undead, including a cornugon and a newly undead Rotbreath. I had to make activations competitive lest Alexeara become overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and I needed room for them all to square off. Therefore, I kept Alexeara more or less as provided but opened up the space on the upper floor and added in numerous bannerets and Third Swords along with the planetar Aveshiel, whom they hadn't managed to track down and defeat openly. I didn't include the trumpet angel or Gardel as a result of my re-configuring.
As the PCs cut through the initial throng of bannerets, Aveshiel used banishment to rid the battle of the horned devil and another barbed devil. The Third Swords used healing and offensive magic alike to keep PCs off balance, though like the bannerets, their role in the battle was fierce and brief. Most were dead or incapacitated within the first three rounds.
Meanwhile, Alexeara buffed her allies and then cut through the necromancer's powerful cohort and larger undead before turning her attention to the increasingly wounded PCs. By the fourth round or so, the battle teetered at the edge of doom for the villains.
At that point, the players made some razor close rolls that pulled things through. They put Alexeara down and she wasn't able to Heroes Defiance back up. If she had, one more round would have started a downslide that the PCs probably would not have recovered from, and we all knew it.
It was an exciting end to an epic campaign.
Depending on how one-sided the final fight is (ie. if they've taken out all Alexeara's companions, how well-prepared they are), I'm considering sending Iomedae's herald, the Hand of the Inheritor, to aid the Lord Marshall
That sounds like a fantastic addition, especially if players recognize who they're facing in the final battle -- Alexeara AND Iomedae's Hand? That is some righteous heat to make players sweat.
For my battle, Aveshiel proved a wild card that kept the struggle swinging back and forth. She almost turned the tide against the villains early in the fight but failed a critical concentration check. Aveshiel and Alexeara, as a final dynamic duo, sent a shiver of fear down my players. If my players would have slain Aveshiel before then, I would have loved to include the Hand as that terrifying "pillar" character instead.
When/if I run this gain, you've inspired me to have the Hand as a known figure around Westcrown early on, maybe even with a mission for PCs to try and take him/her out before the final showdown. Great idea, Two Headed Snake!
How do you usually keep track of everything during large combats? My biggest gripe with the AP so far is that, especially in the last few books, EVERY enemy NPC has buffs and whatnot (Divine Bond, spells, etc), and the books do not account for these, despite the obvious use they will get.
These days, I play through Roll 20 and rely on the initiative tracker and various token icons to track some elements. Turning buffs on and off on the sheets can be painful, so I try to avoid that at times, and I'd have to do some mental math and rely on other means to let me know when to make adjustments. It was a juggling act, and as you mention, there were a LOT of things to keep in the air during this last chapter.
For larger combats, I often utilized troops units, but this wasn't always possible. Leaning on troop units was a thing as far back as Wrath of Thrune and their PCs' assault on Valor's Fastness. Combats and tracking would've been a terror, at times, without them, and I had to consider all that early on because the necromancer really aimed at raising large numbers of minions. I didn't step on that ambition, either, as I wanted to see how things would play out and what steps I'd have to take to keep combats timely and challenging all at once. It was a LOT of work and I won't miss that part of it.
There were also moments where I flat ignored things I should've tracked, even though ignoring gave unwarranted advantages to the players, but I often wanted the pacing to remain snappy or felt that the mental power needed to track everything exactly was worth less than a smoother result. And I definitely lost track of things too. It was impossible not to fail in that way.
But Hell's Vengeance really heaped it on with all the paladins and good outsiders. As you say, the last chapter magnified the issue, though that goes with the territory of this campaign.
I wish I had better answers, but I'll say this -- I'm looking forward to PF 2.0 addressing some of these things for GMs! I hope troop types are part of their core outlook and I hope they invent methods for us to manage larger or more complex combats like these in efficient ways.
Sigh... so small advice.
Pentagram ritual. Remove some of those opponents. It make no sense that in 5 locations they get into 7 battles.
The aquatic guys at the marina? Remove those. They make no sense, my players said so and I agree. Also remove the plant goat thing -whatever its pet name is.
I'd just keep the Asmodean temple (condensed into 1 big battle), the Rack Headquarters and maybe the demons made of slime.
Its lovely when you prepare a session and you see that look of utter boredom in your players face.
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Don't be fooled. While thematically appropriate, this it not a good AP for a Hellknight. It's unfortunate, but Smite Chaos is hardly ever usable and if so, only against smaller encounters or fights. Most of the enemies are Lawful or Neutral Good. The other issue is that Hellknight is not a good prestige at all, so it's a bit punishing thematically to play one.
If you want to be a Lawful Evil knight, I'd highly suggest just being a full cavalier, antipaladin, or fighter, and just theming it as a Knight. It's equally thematic and doesn't force dead class features on you.
If your players still want to do it, I'd just recommend giving them a fair warning.
Eight years later...
You don't actually HAVE to take any levels in the Hellknight PrC to get inducted into any order of Hellknights.
A Hellknight Antipaladin (with no Hellknight PrC levels) is GREAT for this AP. Highly recommend!!