The various Hamlet Flip Mat, Battlefield Flip Mat and Ruined Village Map Packs work well in filling in the blanks for those encounters. For the siege crossing, I used the River System Map Pack in conjunction with the shoreline side of the Pirate's Island Flip Mat to make a river showing both sides. It's easy enough to just draw something out if you don't have access to those maps.
So Longshadow's base limit is only 2,600. That feels VERY low for this point in the adventure. PCs can get like 50,000 gold handed to them from Ridgeline Camp and Mayor Crawbert alone, and I'm not sure what they can actually spend it on if there aren't level appropriate items on hand.
This feels consistent with the scrappy, DIY nature of the campaign. Except they get handed so much money. Longshadow seems like a great place to buy raw materials for crafting, but there's no time until after the assault to craft.
How did folks handle this?
Base Value is, as you said, only 2,600 but there's 5th level spell casting available therefore you could easily have a crafter in town that can make things by request (and requires a 50% up-front payment for supplies).
Sure, it'll take time to get things crafted, but it's nice to have the game stretch out a little and to have the added tension of "we don't have time to wait for our stuff" as well as the watching the players decide if they want to upgrade what they own (and therefore go without it for a little while) or buy a new one then sell the old.
Base Value is, as you said, only 2,600 but there's 5th level spell casting available therefore you could easily have a crafter in town that can make things by request (and requires a 50% up-front payment for supplies).
Sure, it'll take time to get things crafted, but it's nice to have the game stretch out a little and to have the added tension of "we don't have time to wait for our stuff" as well as the watching the players decide if they want to upgrade what they own (and therefore go without it for a little while) or buy a new one then sell the old.
See, this runs into the old "who are these anonymous high level casters, and why aren't they listed anywhere with other relevant NPCs" problem. This is a common issue in APs, and it always bothers me.
Like, most of the listed craftsman are 5th level, and the highest character with caster levels I see is 7th level. I can obviously handwave this, but it bugs me.
I mean, Navah only has 6th level spells, and she's a notable enough force in the region to base a sidequest around.
Longshadow is a large town in a very rural country. Nirmathas is still being developed, so resources should be limited. I ignored the 5th level casting and made the players actually travel to find higher level spells such as raise dead. If you don't want to make your players go on a side quest in the middle of it all, it's easy enough to have scrolls of whatever spells they are looking for available in town. They're leftover remnants from Chelish or Taldan settlers or even from the nearby dwarven communities.
Longshadow is a large town in a very rural country. Nirmathas is still being developed, so resources should be limited. I ignored the 5th level casting and made the players actually travel to find higher level spells such as raise dead. If you don't want to make your players go on a side quest in the middle of it all, it's easy enough to have scrolls of whatever spells they are looking for available in town. They're leftover remnants from Chelish or Taldan settlers or even from the nearby dwarven communities.
Actually, that's about where my head was at too. With Kraggoden under siege and the Hollow Hills full of Ironfang I couldn't see that much import/export going on at the moment. So I may very well lower the spellcasting services to reflect all that.
My group has actually been side-questing for Resurrect for a while now. We are using the playtest rules, so they are actually looking for someone to teach them the ritual at this point. I'm currently thinking half of it might come from the Samsaran gravekeeper, and they might need to get the other half elsewhere. (Navah? She's certainly got the magical chops but Necromancy is an opposed school.)
Flying to Lastwall would take a considerable amount of time. They are on a strict timeline once they start shoring up Longshadow's defenses. Give them a few more defense points as you see fit. Creativity should be rewarded. They should be hitting tenth level just before the assault hits, so flying out of country should be highly unlikely.
So does anyone have any experiences to share with running the siege (more or less) as written? I'm currently planning on it under the playtest rules. I can't decide how the 10 minute "Treat Wounds" should interact with Turn duration. I do want the battle to test the resources of the PCs. They've got plenty of potions but some of them have very limited resonance and that should be a downside to dumping charisma.
On the other hand, part of improving Longshadow's Defenses DID include building medical stations. I'm thinking that maybe the chaos of battle doesn't give the PCs room to Treat Wounds in most of the town, but they can spend a turn traveling to a med station, and then a turn treating wounds. So using potions and such saves time that could be used to actually deal with threats. If they spend a turn moving to a med station, and then an event begins that turn, they won't have time to treat wounds anyway.
My players decided to capture the siege engines to use for themselves in defending Longshadow. I'm surprised this option wasn't thought of by the writers.
They won't be nearly as effective for defense though. Catapaults are for breaking down walls, not peppering infantry.
Now, if you could get the catapaults in range of the Onyx Tower it would be a different story, but I doubt Kosseruk would put the tower close enough for that to work.
Also, did anyone come up with any fun scenes for various named NPCs to be doing in the background? Little cut scenes and such?
After several delays, I'm about to run the siege in a couple weeks. I may have some suggestions for you then.
I've been running the assault section of the adventure over the past few sessions. My advice would be for GMs to have a visual aid for Longshadow. I spent the time to draw my own map for the table, but a copy or print out of the Longshadow map page from the module would work fine.
I've switched to using pogs to represent groups and actions in the city during the assault. The props help the players really visualize everything going on.
As for healing between turns, you just use one turn to let your players heal. During that time, their Defense Points will drop based on whatever ongoing attrition is at play during the turn.
If I were using the second edition rules, I would not change this. The players need to use turns healing or relocating throughout the city or else their Defense Points don't really drop enough to keep them on their toes.
Is the Defense Points system robust? Is is a cake walk, whats the difficulty like?
Is the Defense Points system robust? Is is a cake walk, whats the difficulty like?
It's fairly simple. It's made to serve as an abstraction of mass combat. Rather than running battles between units, events subtract from the city's defense points. They earned points by reinforcing defenses before the assault and every turn of the assault subtracts from that total. Whatever final number the city is left with determines the outcome of the battle.
Yes, that is a good description for it. Did your players find it easy, would it have been too easy without the addition of that in between rounds?
I think maybe it runs on the "easy-ish" side, in that the players usually win every individual combat which keeps the continuing damage from building up.
Really, it comes down to how well the PCs weakened the Ironfang Legion in the preceding events of the book. They could potentially have destroyed close to 75% of the assault units before the invasion begins. My group weakened a few teams, but did the best by sabotaging the siege weapons which backfired during the assault.
My group took out everything but the Carrion Sisters, Dreamstalker Sisters, and Wyverns. They had a lot of trouble on the first night, dropping from like 228 defense points to 173. This was largely because the opening fight with the giant at the gate took longer than expected, and they were playing catch up for the rest of the battle.
They really crushed it the second night though, and they are only down to like 167 and should be finishing off the Wyverns and Ankheg next time.
Question on the finale: I can't actually figure out where on the map of Kseeruk's encampment the Ankheg's tunnel leads. Can anyone point it out to me?
Edit: Ah, found it, the easternmost pen in Q4. Man, they really tucked that away.
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After several delays due to one player being unavailable during the Fall, we finally finished book three. All in all, I have to say it was a pretty epic adventure and one that I really enjoyed running.
I ran it as part of our ongoing campaign, so I added a couple of things.
1) Our Pathfinder Society plot hook was centered around going to Nirmathas to find Canayvan Heidmarch, only to discover that he had been captured by the Ironfang Invasion. He was held captive in Kosseruk's camp, so the PCs would have the opportunity to rescue him at the end.
2) Qa'al the gunslinger (from book two) was responsible for capturing Heidmarch and delivering him to the legion. He then began stalking the PCs and had a few encounters with them throughout the adventure, culminating in a final battle on day two of the assault on Longshadow.
3) Ibzariak, the black dragon, escaped from the rangers and headed north to Kassen to get away from the battle and lick his wounds. This gave the PCs the chance to encounter the dragon (as we did not run book two).
4) Since there is a Council of Wyrms in the Fangwood, we added Svannost the Just, a bronze dragon, in the Mindspin Mountains to the east of Longshadow. The PCs made a trip to visit him and ask for help protecting Longshadow. This gave him the chance to make a dramatic appearance on day two of the assault on Longshadow.
Great adventure. Feel free to borrow my ideas to add to your own.
Peace out, Ironfang thread.
My group took out everything but the Carrion Sisters, Dreamstalker Sisters, and Wyverns. They had a lot of trouble on the first night, dropping from like 228 defense points to 173. This was largely because the opening fight with the giant at the gate took longer than expected, and they were playing catch up for the rest of the battle.
They really crushed it the second night though, and they are only down to like 167 and should be finishing off the Wyverns and Ankheg next time.
Question on the finale: I can't actually figure out where on the map of Kseeruk's encampment the Ankheg's tunnel leads. Can anyone point it out to me?
Edit: Ah, found it, the easternmost pen in Q4. Man, they really tucked that away.
How did they end up with 223 DP to start with! My group did all of the city prep and are only at 140 before the siege has started. Did I miss something that would add significant points?
In my group, I let them come up with other means of preparation if they had a good idea. They did things like build a moat and then contacted the bronze dragon for help. I gave them a comparable amount of Defense Points for these actions.
I did stuff like that too. Specifially I added 10 defense points for Lief and Thurt because it felt weird that they were omitted, and I added some extra points because they resurrected a fallen PC to help with the defense.
But I am reasonable sure you missed something. 140 points being the max would make it impossible to achieve a great victory, for example. So even just going as written something got missed.
Yeah, below 110 is a pyrrhic victory and close to failure.
A quick question on Area J. I cannot figure out the slopes on the map to determine what goes up and what goes down. So is ground level on the east or west? (or is ground level even depicted on the map?) I don't understand how the hanging cages work. Are they dangling from the level of the camp, over ground level? Or dangling from up above the camp on some higher plateau? The switch back path, I can't tell if it goes up or down or is same elevation as the camp?
This area really could have used better explanation, or maybe I am missing a key bit of info?
Page 18 descirbes Area J3. Prisoner Cages as being "along an abrupt cliff which drops 80 feet below".
The map alone is very confusing, but I used this bit of description to help layout the area by placing the cages up high on a cliff meaning the area leading to it is an incline with the rest of the camp being in the valley below it.
That makes some sense by the wording. But I still don't get why they would keep their prisoners so far away in a place that is inconvenient to quickly access, and if someone else climbs to the top of the cliff from the other side, it would be super easy for someone to set them free. Oh well. I suppose I can just re-jigger things to make more sense for me.
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For preparing Longshadow for battle, is it 3 things per group per day? Or can each character do 3 things a day to help?
For preparing Longshadow for battle, is it 3 things per group per day? Or can each character do 3 things a day to help?
I am pretty sure it is the latter. Each character can do 3 things. So a 4 man group gets 12 total things that day. That means for a 6 man party you could half the number of tasks per day to keep them at the same curve.
Just finished book 2 and about to start Assault on Longshadow. I see most of the posts here are about the assault itself. Is there anything in hindsight that those of you who have gone through this would have done differently at the beginning (once the PCs leave the Fangwood or tied in with the refugees arriving)? From a read through it looks like a book in 2 parts - episodic encounters that then shift in to a timeboxed countdown to destruction with bureaucracy and side quests.
Question on shoring up Longshadow.
City Walls requires Craft (Stonemason), Knowledge (Engineering) or Profession (Soldier)
Internal Defenses requires Craft (alchemy, carpentry, stonemasonry, traps), Diplomacy, or Knowledge (Local)
Militia Drills requires Intimidate or Profession (Soldier)
Reinforcement requires Perform (Oratory) or Profession (Soldier)
Siege Supplies requires Profession (baker, cook, farmer, trapper) or Survival
Townsfolk Readiness requires Diplomacy, Heal, or Profession (Solider)
Did you have PCs with the requisite skills (and high enough to make DC15 checks be more likely than not)?
My group should have Diplomacy covered (1 PC), and Survival (another PC), but nobody has any ranks in any Craft, Perform, or Profession, and nobody has maxed out Heal, Intimidate, or Knowledge (Engineering or Local) - only a point or 2 in them as at level 7.
Anyone else find this a hurdle and if so how did you work it? Do I need to start dropping hints about putting skill points in areas the PCs are not overly interested in at this stage for the next couple of levels (because they will need them by level 9).
I'd suggest that rather than giving your players outright hints at skills, you could try to meet them halfway if they come up with suggestions that aren't in the book. Ideas such as digging a moat or something like that would help their defense points. Whatever they come up with, just compare it to the options in the book and come up with something comparable.
Did you have PCs with the requisite skills (and high enough to make DC15 checks be more likely than not)?
My group should have Diplomacy covered (1 PC), and Survival (another PC), but nobody has any ranks in any Craft, Perform, or Profession, and nobody has maxed out Heal, Intimidate, or Knowledge (Engineering or Local) - only a point or 2 in them as at level 7.
My players are still playing through Trail of the Hunted, but I appreciate learning about the other modules in advance.
I once had a Pathfinder character put one rank into Craft(carpentry) because he was helping repair the town of Sandpoint. The GM later let him use carpentry to tear down a boarded up door, but that was the only tactical use. None of my characters have ever put a rank into Craft(stonemasonry). However, in a Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 game, our party had cleared an abandoned keep of trolls and the local duchess offered it to us, including providing staff, if we repaired it and resumed running it as a border outpost. My cleric did most of the stonework repair, with the Stone Shape spell and by summoning creatures with powers from the Plane of Elemental Earth. I would view three Stone Shape spells as the equivalent of DC 15 stonemasonry.
Likewise, let the player characters improvise with their skills to fit the listed needs. View the skills listed on page 23 of Assault on Longshadow as an incomplete list of suggestions.
For example, it suggests for the militia, "A PC can whip the militia into shape with a successful Intimidate or Profession (soldier) check." Okay, Profession(soldier) trains the untrained militia in soldiering skills, but why Intimidate? Intimidated people are not learning. My guess is the PC would scold the trainees drill-sergeant-style into practicing, practicing, and practicing. That is about discipline. Yet what class is considered a master of discipline? Monk. If you have a monk in your party, then find a way that a monk can use the discipline he or she learned in the monastery to train the militia in discipline. How about an Unarmed Strike roll to represent teaching martial arts stances? Make the DC 20 instead of 15, since the monk has a higher bonus on unarmed strikes than most characters have on skills.
Only 2 ranks in Heal, Intimidate, or Knowledge (Engineering) is not bad. It is more than most townspeople have and, combined with the +3 class skill bonus, gives a 50% chance of success against DC 15. Seven ranks would increase that to 75%. At 50% success rate Longshadow would gain 6 Defense Points over 12 days and at 75% success rater Longshadow would gain 9 Defense Points over 12 days. 6 Defense Points is better than 0 even if no-one can reach 9 or 12.
This may be more of a rules question, but for the Hobgoblin Phalanx Troop, they have the Combat Expertise feat.
But since troops don't make attack rolls, there seems to be no drawback to ALWAYS using Combat Expertise for an extra +3 dodge bonus to AC. Combine this with their "close-ranks" ability and you'll have AC-30.
I guess I am curious if this is intentional, or was Combat Expertise a mistake? (maybe meant to give them Combat Reflexes?)
All the other troops from this AP do not have attack roll penalizing feats (like power attack, deadly aim etc).
This may be more of a rules question, but for the Hobgoblin Phalanx Troop, they have the Combat Expertise feat.
But since troops don't make attack rolls, there seems to be no drawback to ALWAYS using Combat Expertise for an extra +3 dodge bonus to AC. Combine this with their "close-ranks" ability and you'll have AC-30.
I guess I am curious if this is intentional, or was Combat Expertise a mistake? (maybe meant to give them Combat Reflexes?)
All the other troops from this AP do not have attack roll penalizing feats (like power attack, deadly aim etc).
Combat Expertise makes sense. Using it does impact their CMB for trip, and if they go 'turtle" they should be very hard to hit with melee weapons. At level 8+ a full-BAB class should be at least ~12+ to hit anyway, and if they close ranks their movement drops to 5'. It also can't be used with Volley as Combat Expertise is limited to melee attacks.
It's CR 10 so should be fairly tough.They either tank it up in which case the party can pepper from a distance or attack with spells, or they open up to move and volley and their AC drops to 25.
I'm OK with that.
Anyone else find this a hurdle and if so how did you work it? Do I need to start dropping hints about putting skill points in areas the PCs are not overly interested in at this stage for the next couple of levels (because they will need them by level 9).
I thought I remember the player's guide indicating that at least Profession (soldier) would get a lot of play in this AP, and I made sure to mention it at session 0/character creation.
In addition, my campaign uses the Background Skills from Unchained (minus the new skill types - Artistry, Lore, etc). Gives players a flat +2 skill ranks each level to assign to so-called "background" skills, which includes Appraise, Craft, Profession, non-monster IDing Knowledge skills, and a couple others.
Combat rounds are still combat rounds (approx. 6 seconds). Durations measured in combat rounds don't apply to the siege rounds, that wouldn't make much sense. Just be really clear that PCs managing their daily allotment of resources will be an important factor in the siege and everyone is clear about the relative time differences of the siege turns vs. combat turns.
curious as to how people have handled the verbal duel - did you use the verbal duel rules in Ultimate Intrigue or the cut down version in the AP? Recommendations or advice on which way to lean would be appreciated. It's still a few sessions away from my group but wanting to prepare now if the UI path is best (as I haven't done anything from UI before).
I just used the version described in the adventure. I tried to make sense of the verbal duel rules in the Intrigue book, but it was too much work for something relatively small.
Question about the 20,000 GP stipend from a successful verbal duel: Did any groups offer to spend any of it on the town, as opposed to just equipment for themselves? What should be the impact on Defense points? Maybe raising the max?
I'd be interested to know this too. My group will likely have the verbal duel next session. They have a fair bit of loot from the griffon kill and ridgeline camp, and can get more from Radya's Hollow mine, but they may decide to "invest" in local defense.
I don't know that I'd translate directly to DPs, but rather increase the skill rolls effective totals for the defense tasks (both making sabotage harder and improving the DPs from some of them).
My players used the money to help buy a Lyre of Building, which they used to improve the town's defenses.
My players used the money to help buy a Lyre of Building, which they used to improve the town's defenses.Did you hand wave the base value/purchase limit for the settlement size? Or did they come up with something clever to get it?
I was thinking about something like "for every 500 GP you spend on the town, the DP increases by 1"
Looks like the Lyre fits within Longshadow's Purchase limit
(from Assault on Longshadow p63)MARKETPLACE
Base Value 2,600; Purchase Limit 15,000;
Spellcasting 5th
Minor Items 3d4; Medium Items 2d4; Major Items 1d4
Good call on a useful item. Limited applicability for my group as nobody has any Perform skills.
thanks for the feedback on skill check vs verbal duel.
We went with the opposed skill checks and dressed it up a bit with dialogue to give sense why the particular skills were being used. Worked very well - lasted about 20 minutes, and about 3 edges were used.
The players' dice were running very hot and cold, several 1s and 2s but also a few 18s and 20s. (full details in the How are your APs doing? thread)
I have also put together a spreadsheet to track both the preparation of defenses for Longshadow as well as the battle. I'll test it in play and tweak if necessary then make it available here for others if they want, but I don't think there is anyone else who is at the defenses prep and battle stage at the moment. If I'm wrong and anyone wants to see the untested version then please let me know.
Reading through Book 3 and in the warbeast camp, the text mentions a harpy named Kallikros, and I thought "gee that sounds familiar". Then I looked back in the Fangwood encounters section of Book 2 and found it. The chimera is also named Kallikros. Spelled exactly the same. I understand that sometimes the editors can occasionally miss these things, but I found it pretty funny.
Unrelated, anyone have a good name for a harpy?
Reading through Book 3 and in the warbeast camp, the text mentions a harpy named Kallikros, and I thought "gee that sounds familiar". Then I looked back in the Fangwood encounters section of Book 2 and found it. The chimera is also named Kallikros. Spelled exactly the same. I understand that sometimes the editors can occasionally miss these things, but I found it pretty funny.
Unrelated, anyone have a good name for a harpy?
maybe it is a really common name in Nirmathas? :-P
names for harpies:
Aello, Ocypete, Celaeno, Podarge, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy) or you could get really obscure with Nurem (look at greater coat of arms for Nuremberg).