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 2 of the Ironfang Invasion Adventure Path. Links for the individual threads for each part are as follows:
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Looks like Page 8 has Ironfang Patrol Leader and Ironfang Forest Prowlers Entries Swapped. (at least on PDF)
IRONFANG PATROL LEADER CR 4
XP 1,200
Hobgoblin fighter 2/rogue 1 (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 175)
hp 7
vs.
IRONFANG FOREST PROWLERS (3) CR2
XP 600 each
Hobgoblin fighter 2/rogue 1 (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 175)
...(rest of stat block)
Edit: Correction, Print Copy shows
IRONFANG PATROL LEADER CR 4
XP 1,200
Hobgoblin Lieutenant (Pathfinder Monster Codex 119)
hp 47
Start this tomorrow
Rather excited to begin running
Party of 5 humans
Aside from the horrible way the 'Aubrin wound' is written it looks great in theory.
It's amusing that Jang and Parthuk can't talk to each other despite being friends for a long time. They don't have a common language. Not that it's a problem for the two nature-lovers. Either they just grunt and growl at each other, or they use speak with animals abilities and use Ruanni or a random chicken as a translator when grunts are not enough. Language issues might be important for Parthuk's tactics, though. Command is a language-dependent spell, so he is wise to talk to the PCs before attacking to find out who is going to be vulnerable to it.
In order to keep Eygara safe for an extra round or two, her Fort save should be +11 (5 class 5 improved Con 1 cloak) instead of +9.
Making it a decanter of endless water is such a good idea I'll probably use it too. Since in the next book(s) the PCs are going to be away from the refugees, that will help setting them up to be a lot more independent.
Starting this mod very soon
Any pitfalls?
Plus the local rangers seem a bit rubbish!
Almost tempted to make the first fort a wholly social encounter after the first mod spent lots time butchering the poor unfortunate hobgoblins!
Having had mass slaughter in mod 1, mod 2 has turned into the social bit. The Pcs have partied up big time in the first fort.
They did fight the Giant one eyed fey (the positioning of his clothing makes the picture look somewhat inappropriate??). Also it seemed really weak CR 5. It just died very easily and with a whimper.
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will run the areas of K1 to K4 very soon. Not sure how its possible to not have to fight all the occupants in one big battle. Might be a bit nasty? Any body past this bit yet
Would it be possible to get a description of the Fangwood cougar? I'd like to be able to offer it as an appropriately local option for the inevitable druid character to wild shape into.
there is a picture of one in mod 2. Its basically a tiger
Finished this mod. Quite a lot of references to the Blight. Kinda tricky to make sure PCs don't head there next!!!!
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One of my players is considering taking the Chernasardo Warden Prestige Class at level 8, but the requirements state, "You must defeat an evil enemy of a CR 5 levels higher than your character level. This victory must be witnessed by a Chernasardo Ranger."
That puts the required CR at 12 for a (at the time) level 7 PC.
To meet this requirement, I was thinking of beefing up Ibzairiak to a mature adult dragon, but am concerned that will TPK the party.
Our level 7 party consists of:
- a Gathlain hunter with a treant sapling companion
- a Dragonkin (3PP) paladin of Apsu
- a Dwarf life shaman (witch doctor)
- a Human rogue
What do you think?
If you don't want to risk TPKing the party here is what I did. I decided to also allow massive services rendered to qualify as well since there is only 1 living member of the Rangers that can possibly witness the event in the AP by that point (unless I missed somthing) and the ranger's have been badly beaten and are in need of people.
I then quantified massive services rendered as liberating a minimum of three former Chernasardo fortresses from the Ranger's enemies.
If you still want to go with having to defeat an enemy 5 CRs higher, then it all depends on how you upgrade Ibzariak to mature and if you play to the dragons strengths. If you give the dragon fly by attack as its new feat, you can pretty easily kill the party unless the paladin primarily uses ranged attacks. I'd just either use darkness or fog cloud (Mature Adult will give Ibzariak 2nd level spells) to kill the parties eye sight then strafe them with her breath weapon, targeting ranged opponents and casters first. Or even take glitterdust and try to blind them then land and use natural attacks vs the parties flat footed AC - 2.
Or make Ibzariak more of a meleeist and give her multi attack as her next feat to get rid of -3 penalty of her secondary attacks and take blur to get some mischance. Maybe take web as well to help lock opponents in place. She'll have an AC of about 30 and about +20 on primary and +18 on secondary attacks. I don't know what your players to hits and ACs are like, but the rogue is probably going to be unable to help much at the very least. It gets even more out of hand if Jang decides to hang back and cast bulls strength, greater magic fang, and barkskin on Ibzariak instead of on herself and her cougar.
Plus there's the problem that the party will probably be running on fumes after getting through the rest of the fort and that Jang and three lizards will be in the room bringing the room to something like CR 13-14.
So unless you purposely play Ibzariak below expectations I would say the party dies no matter what. I'd need your parties character sheets to confirm that though. Hope that helps.
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If you don't want to risk TPKing the party here is what I did. I decided to also allow massive services rendered to qualify as well since there is only 1 living member of the Rangers that can possibly witness the event in the AP by that point (unless I missed somthing) and the ranger's have been badly beaten and are in need of people.
I then quantified massive services rendered as liberating a minimum of three former Chernasardo fortresses from the Ranger's enemies.
If you still want to go with having to defeat an enemy 5 CRs higher, then it all depends on how you upgrade Ibzariak to mature and if you play to the dragons strengths. If you give the dragon fly by attack as its new feat, you can pretty easily kill the party unless the paladin primarily uses ranged attacks. I'd just either use darkness or fog cloud (Mature Adult will give Ibzariak 2nd level spells) to kill the parties eye sight then strafe them with her breath weapon, targeting ranged opponents and casters first. Or even take glitterdust and try to blind them then land and use natural attacks vs the parties flat footed AC - 2.
Or make Ibzariak more of a meleeist and give her multi attack as her next feat to get rid of -3 penalty of her secondary attacks and take blur to get some mischance. Maybe take web as well to help lock opponents in place. She'll have an AC of about 30 and about +20 on primary and +18 on secondary attacks. I don't know what your players to hits and ACs are like, but the rogue is probably going to be unable to help much at the very least. It gets even more out of hand if Jang decides to hang back and cast bulls strength, greater magic fang, and barkskin on Ibzariak instead of on herself and her cougar.
Plus there's the problem that the party will probably be running on fumes after getting through the rest of the fort and that Jang and three lizards will be in the room bringing the room to something like CR 13-14.
So unless you purposely play Ibzariak below expectations I would say the party dies no matter what....
Thank you for the tactics, but I really don't want to kill the party. I just want the dragon battle to be fun and suitably epic, which I think it will be as written now that I can waive the CR+5 requirement due to "services rendered" by rescuing the last living ranger who hasn't gone into hiding.
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I am running this currently, about to start book 2.
Just ignore the requirement. The Chernasardo Rangers have been decimated. The only confirmed member of the Rangers the PCs will encounter is Cirieo Thessaddin, and he doesn't have the prestige class. Cirieo desires to join the PCs to free the other forts and clear out this part of the Fangwood. The Rangers need to recruit and boost their numbers, so they should look favorably on a PC that helps them and allow them to join. After they start to rebuild, the Rangers can reinstate that requirement.
I see 2 options for allowing a player to take this prestige class:
1) If the PCs free Cirieo, allow the players to take the prestige class upon reaching level 7. (they should attain level 6 while exploring the first fort) Cirieo should be the default leader of the reformed Rangers and he will need support and help, ie the PCs.
2) If the PCs do not free Cirieo or he dies, then allow them to take the prestige class at their next level (9 I believe) after finishing book 2. After liberating all 3 forts, the remaining Rangers will start to come out of the Forest from their hiding spots.
If Cirieo survives, I plan on him leveling when the PCs do and have him take the prestige class.
Thank you! This is a perfect solution! I will waive the CR+5 requirement in lieu of "services rendered" and keep Cirieo Thessaddin alive so he can accompany the group along with Aubrin from book 1. Two NPCs missing their left foot/leg--what are the odds? Working for the Chernasardo Rangers is rough on appendages! ;)
Actually, Aubrin is not associated with the Chernasardo Rangers else she would know where to find the forts and give the PCs an "in" for any Chernasardo they might run across as a random encounter.
Allow me to offer a few counterpoints:
As a young child in Nirmathas, Aubrin (“Abby” to most) grew up on tales of heroism. She played at being a famed ranger, liberating her toys from the oppression
of Molthune.For years, the she honed her skills until she became a Chernasardo Ranger in the Fangwood, and eventually ventured beyond Nirmathas.
The guide Aubrin (see “Trail of the Hunted”) knows much about the Chernasardo Rangers, having briefly served with the group.
...Aubrin trained briefly at Fort Nunder.
She has yearned to be a Chernasado ranger most of her life, trained with them, served with them and then retired due to a career-ending injury. The second book tries to slightly downplay her relationship with the rangers to allow the PCs to discover things organically instead of just receiving an info-dump.
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They did fight the Giant one eyed fey (the positioning of his clothing makes the picture look somewhat inappropriate??). Also it seemed really weak CR 5. It just died very easily and with a whimper.
I hadn't noticed that particular aspect of the picture until I read this, and now I can't NOT see it! :(
That creature did all right against my group, getting in a few solid hits. If he had managed a critical, chances are high that a character would have died.
I am prepping the Fort Trevalay part of Book 2. Aside from me disliking nearly everything about the design of this fort - Does anyone else see a problem with a 15,000 lb dragon PLUS a small pond of water not collapsing the tower? It just doesn't make any logical sense to me.
I'm considering having him take up residence in the large cave that is described in the ravine by the water. That seems far more suitable to a black dragon.
Thoughts?
Also, what is the point of the trebuchets? Who would have dragged those into the forest, and for what? They would have been useless to attack the fort with all of the trees - there wouldn't have been any way to set them up and have a line of site. And you couldn't defend the fort with them...
Trebuchet's were actually great for firing into forests. They could actually do significant damage to forests, etc. Especially against things like to hide such as the Chernasardo rangers. And with the Trebuchet being an indirect seige weapon it is very effective.
tweak the treasure they find to match the parties need. That way shopping becomes much less of an issue
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Or simply have some the NPCs start crafting. No real reason they can't, even if the PCs don't want to take those feats.
Longshadow has a pretty low base value though, IIRC. By RAW it won't have a lot of powerful enough items by the time of book 3.
How do we maintain wealth by level with only Novvi able to buy/sell goods? How do players purchase the big 6?
Oh my. We're in Fort Trevalay now and every one of my guys is well over WBL, one of which is pushing 45k GP. Granted, they're carrying a lot of stuff they don't use... but they've pretty much outfitted every NPC to the point we no longer meta-game that aspect. I've only had to change a few things here and there. We have:
Human ravener hunter (inquisitor)
Dwarf ranger
Human grenadier (alchemist)
Oni-spawn tiefling hexcrafter (magus)
The inquisitor is still using a regular composite bow (STR +2), since he only has a 14 STR, and greater magic weapon makes anything more unnecessary. Otherwise, the story has been kind to him so far. The alchemist is booming, too, but not nearly as well. Neither the alchemist nor magus are concerned about spells, either. The mwk cold iron scimitar and +1 scimitar have been his friends. The adaptive bow actually went to the ranger (a switch-hitter) since he's got an 18 STR. All in all, the given loot has balanced out well.
As for NPCs, we've got Kining up to 7 now (well, when they return from Trevalay). Adepts are NOT the ony ones that can craft thanks to the master craftsman feat. Kining will be crafting shortly.
How did people break up the various Fangwood encounters in this book? I came up with a calendar for Trail of the Hunted because the pacing felt important and the encounters are laid out in manner that didn't really feel sequential.
For this book, it doesn't look like it will be necessary as none of the encounters seem unreasonably difficult. I don't imagine any given of the scripted events require the PCs to have hit a certain level. I may actually be able to use the map this time and just pepper the Fangwood stuff between the forts. Unless folks found it makes sense to run them in sequential order or something.
My party has yet to attack Camp Redjaw but I'm thinking about pacing and transitions between books.
Edit: wrong book. I have comments for this one later!
I did NOT do a hexmap for this one. Rather, I just led them (using various clues) to each of the forts in order (Ristin should be first, btw, I think there is an editing error in the book regarding Aubrin's comments), making sure they came across the nearby encounters each way, forcing them to camp on occasion (each trip was a couple days). I didn't do many random encounters since there was enough in the book to make it interesting. This is in contrast to the first book in which I did a hexmap, and had them explore (book 3, too).
Aw, but the random encounters are interesting too. Especially the written out ones in the back. I actually really liked random encounters in book 1 because they were a way to make the Fangwood feel more alive. I just didn't always make them into combats. The party watched a couple of giant stag beetles competing to mate with a female, got pranked by a pooka, and invited a group of sunflower Leshies displaced from the Nesmian plains by the invasion into their refugee group.
I find it is worth maybe rolling outside of the sessions themselves, so you can look up monsters in advance and think about creative ways you can use them.
Otherwise, I think it sounds like you had the right approach.
My party is one more session away from Trevalay. How did your fight go? There are a lot of big guns in the fort. What strategy did your party use?
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My party tried to sneak into Fort Travelay and decided to start from the top and work their way down (as they didn't know how deep into the rock the fort went, whereas the tower was finite). They waited until the Dragon was out.
So they flew or spider-climbed up the tower and went in through the trapped gap.
This alerted the entire fort and I had things go up in 2 waves.
We had to split it into 3 sessions:
session 1:
Jang (plus companion)
3 ridgetail lizards
Hessal and Kensa
4 hobgoblins
3 ironwing sergeants
3 roc companions
Having killed all that, they had 2 minutes whilst the next wave donned armour hastily and/or cast buffs:
session 2:
Parthuk,
dire weasels (2),
Salokut,
4 more hobgoblins,
Eygara,
Marrowcrack,
Manwatcher,
having killed all that they knew the Dragon was inbound.
I gave them 5 rounds to heal (and remove the Barbarian's petrification) before some militia turned up to help and then the Dragon arrived.
7th level party of seasoned gamers, and no-one had anything to deal with darkness.
The fight went well... for the dragon!
We have often found Dragons die pretty quickly, but they had nothing to counter the darkness.
Ibzairiak took 20 damage total from about 8 rounds of combat, took down 2 characters and killed one.
First time in forever that we have had a range of races (4 characters, no two of the same race) no-one had darkvision and no-one had daylight or anything like it.
Cirieo offered his sunrod, no-one took him up on his offer.
Half the party is considering their options and rolling new characters, for me though: FINALLY! A dragon that is a challenge and truly scary!
Hurray!
*ahem*
Sorry guys, so what is your new character going to be?
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How do we maintain wealth by level with only Novvi able to buy/sell goods? How do players purchase the big 6?
I started using the militia system to obtain higher level gear. You can send out various troops on missions to improve opinion of neighboring towns and then acquire level appropriate gear. It's true that the Ironfang Legion occupies much of Nirmathas, but even they can't be everywhere all at once. It is feasible that militia troops are able to acquire better equipment for their heroes.
Feel free to add some drama elements into it, but without some way to acquire better gear, your point is concerningly valid.
So about that Darkness spell... I was actually worried my party would have no way of countering it either, and would get wrecked. But I was thinking of 5e Darkness. PF Darkness just reduces ambient light visibility by one step. If the fight happens during the day, it seems unlikely that it can lower the visibility down below dim. (Ibzairiak's den makes no mention of the light level being lower than normal. Given it has a big hole in the wall and there's an "unmistakable sparkle of gold" it seems weird if it is dim or dark.)
That drastically changes the usefulness of the spell, to the point where I wonder if the person who wrote his tactics was aware of it. I'm considering whether Ibzairiak should wait to renter his tower until the night time, because otherwise that spell accomplishes very little. But given his ego and the fact that it would absolutely murder* my party I might not. I dunno, he left around dawn... Does he get back around dawn the next day or does he arrive back overnight? Hmmm..
*Murder is a strong word, given his listed tactics allows for the party to retreat to spread his name instead of killing them. But if he stays 70 feet off the ground in the middle of a globe of darkness, I don't think anyone could see him even with dark vision? And only the melee people in my party have that anyway.
If they does let them flee, they could maybe go and visit Veld the wizard to get some scrolls of Daylight or something. Though I kind of think by the time they got back to Fort Trevelay Ibzairiak would have probably bounced.
I think room J12 is missing a staircase on the map. specifically the stairway that leads from J11 to J12.
I think room J12 is missing a staircase on the map. specifically the stairway that leads from J11 to J12.Bristle Billie has sealed the staircase from the first floor to the second floor room he is in by using his stone shape spell like ability. So therefore the map is correct as he has altered the floor and presumably removed the stone railing from the stairway from below.
Nope. He sealed the stairs from the second level up to the third level. It specifically says he left the stairs down to J11 open.