Dreams of the Yellow King (GM Reference)


Strange Aeons

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I started making this Indian Jones style map that I could put on the monitor screen, but the pandemic unraveled my group before I finished it.

It doesn't look like much, but it's animated when played in powerpoint.

Liberty's Edge

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That's perfect kadance! thank you very much! I like the look of the map and I'll modify it with a different itinerary! thanks!

Liberty's Edge

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Kadance:

I used the base map you linked and made a little indiana jones style itinerary which starts playing automatically upon clicking it...

However if you find the other half of the map all the way to Katheer I can add that leg of the journey to it! :)


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For anyone else that might want the full map...

Liberty's Edge

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I updated the slides with kadance's full map

Thanks kadance!


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What happens if one character decides to stay behind in the Dreamlands while the rest of the party wakes up?

My group just rescued the Yellow King and escorted him back to the caravanserai and decided to wake up to heal up and regroup. One player, however, decided he wanted to stay behind to make sure nothing happens to the Yellow King in the meantime.


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I'd be quite tempted to have them make Will saves or Charisma checks as ages pass while they guard the Yellow King waiting for their companions to return. Every hour in the real world, a day would pass in the dream. Each day in the dream, a new check. Each passed check increases the DC. Each failed check doubles the relative time difference for the character and the yellow king. A few failed checks and they're practically standing still as the caravanserai seems to speed up around them. The few travelers that come through are blurs, and the sands shift quickly to alternately engulf and reveal parts of the buildings. By the time the rest of the party rejoins the dream, the character left there has grown old (and taken a lot of insanity damage).

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

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Do you think the 2d6 Backlash damage on the dream ritual would affect the dream bodies? Or just their physical bodies on the boat?


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Just their physical bodies.

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Is it correct that Bokrug is only large size? B4 statblock says he is large. But the art in the module and B4 suggests he is around gargantuan.


Hello everybody (and sorry for my English). I'm mastering the yellow king, and having problems with the las encounter, when the players fight their doppelgangers (animated dreams).
It's really difficult form me to play every character (they are 5, and some of them with very original and rare builds). I was wondering if any of you had any ideas to make the encounter more DM friendly, by using another creatures, or something similar. Thanks!


Could you give each doppelganger to a different character's player to play?


I'm pretty sure more than one player won't know how to use another character. Not very well at leats

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

I would just simplify each character down to HP, AC, Saves, and attack/damage bonus. No need to get super granular about every spell or feat, just use your best guess. And then note a couple tricks or spells each player likes to use. As long as you get the 'flavor' of each PC, the actual specific numbers behind the scenes shouldn't matter too much.

At least this is what I plan to do when my players get to this point.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The animate dream IS the simple version of the fight. Those creatures have very generic abilities and attacks (and the players may have already fought some of them, if they have had trouble with the Dream rituals).

The more complicated form of the fight (which I ran) is to build NPCs based on the player's characters. This obviously takes more time and preparation (to obtain and build the characters) and more knowledge (you need to know how to run each of the updated versions of the characters). In my case, I thought the interest of this fight was worth the additional effort. The same might not be true for you.

Personally, I had covered my need for the character sheets by asking for new sheets each time they levelled up prior to this event. I built the shadow versions by assuming the characters changed alignment to an evil version of whatever they had before, and then built them up from level 1 to the level of the fight. In a couple of cases, the alignment change forced some other change (like deity worshipped for instance, or energy channel type).


I was looking at the section where the PC's fight their dream reflections and it says to apply the Advanced creature simple template and the nightmare creature template. It then says the dream reflection should be CR 8, making this a CR 12 encounter.

That's incorrect, each dream reflection should be +2 making it a CR 9 (assuming the PC's were level 7). Making the encounter a CR 13 instead of 12. Does this not sound like a little too powerful?

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Yes, it looks like it should be CR13. A miscalculation may have been made by the author on the part of treating the nightmares as NPCs. Normally, an NPC with class levels has less gear than a PC, and has a CR equal to level -1.

As to difficulty...for my group, it wasn't much of an issue. Your milage may vary?


YogoZuno wrote:

Yes, it looks like it should be CR13. A miscalculation may have been made by the author on the part of treating the nightmares as NPCs. Normally, an NPC with class levels has less gear than a PC, and has a CR equal to level -1.

As to difficulty...for my group, it wasn't much of an issue. Your milage may vary?

I guess even if they get wiped the most they will wake up with is a madness and a splitting headache.

But a few of them are pretty dangerous PCs and those extra abilities especially from the nightmare template is pretty deadly

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Sure, but the NPCs are also several base levels lower than the PCs, and will not have all of their current capabilities.


Hello! Im having trouble to understand the following: ABDUL ALHAZRED (the Mad Poet), told the PCs, that "they can peruse the genuine Necronomicon at a university of the occult called the Mysterium in the Qadiran city of Katheer." Whats stopping your players to take a boat to that city, the moment they arrive at Cassomir?

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

Tannus wrote:
Hello! Im having trouble to understand the following: ABDUL ALHAZRED (the Mad Poet), told the PCs, that "they can peruse the genuine Necronomicon at a university of the occult called the Mysterium in the Qadiran city of Katheer." Whats stopping your players to take a boat to that city, the moment they arrive at Cassomir?

Nothing, really.

But you could say that arranging travel to Katheer may take a day or 2, so why not follow up on the lead of Munn who happens to live in Cassomir, and possibly get more info on what Lowls was up to? You could really do all the Cassomir stuff in 1 or 2 game-days anyhow.


Well my group finished book 2 and started book 3 in the last session. A few checks in and they have all the basic information on the dreamlands and ritual, at least enough to get to the Caravanserai. They already had the boat trip information on how to follow Lowls.

Unfortunately, my players seemed to have keyed only on catching up with Lowls, and have little interest in pursuing the dreamlands opportunity.

They also seem put off by the ritual's knowledge checks, as none of them are intelligence based characters: Shifter, Kineticist, Summoner, & Paladin w/ Cleric Follower.

Any thoughts or advice on how I can prod the group into trying out a ritual?

Thanks in advance.


For rituals in 1e, I would modify them to use two skills for each check, one knowledge-based and one physical-based; verbal vs. somatic component. You could tailor these to the character's so they would have less risk/more incentive to attempt the ritual.

For inspiring them to try it... bait them from the dreamside? Have them dream of their doubles discussing the count, but the PCs only make out a few tantalizing words.

Or, when the PCs fall asleep, have them each make a knowledge check (can be done untrained), highest result(s) glimpses some of the rewards of the dream quest with the rationale that since they now know of the ritual, they have more insight into their own dreams.

Edit: Have an NPC/follower they like accidentally 'fall' into the dream realm (or even a PC that really bombs a knowledge test or Will save while reading the ritual) and appear in the PCs' dreams begging to be rescued.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

Also there is the first encounter in the real world with the Bloodwind. Maybe have that ship show up and bug them only to slip away into the dreamlands a few times. Maybe that will incentivize them to go there.

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