Is this standard fare for APs?


Strange Aeons


I'm almost at the end of book 3 for this campaign. Without spoilers is this what I should expect from Paizo APs as a whole, or is this an outlier?

Silver Crusade

... what are you expecting?

Edit: No really, you're question is extremely vague so I don't know what exactly you're asking.

Are you asking for the story? The combats? The time it takes to get though them?


It's mostly the combat. I've noticed that enemies almost always go first, that there's a lot of invisibility and darkness flying around, and that everything grapples the investigator here in particular. There's also the matter of skill checks because our melee hasn't been able to spot a single thing despite maxing out perception and they lost interest after...I'm gonna spoiler this just in case.

book 3 at the start:
They lost interest during the research phase of chapter 3 since they had no knowledge skills to look into the books.

Silver Crusade

The invisibility and darkness and grappling is kinda a thing for this AP given the source material, but the other two things I can't really comment on without getting exacts. Could be bad luck. Could be your GM.


HyperMissingno wrote:

It's mostly the combat. I've noticed that enemies almost always go first, that there's a lot of invisibility and darkness flying around, and that everything grapples the investigator here in particular. There's also the matter of skill checks because our melee hasn't been able to spot a single thing despite maxing out perception and they lost interest after...I'm gonna spoiler this just in case.

** spoiler omitted **

Did your players have access to the players guide before character creation? It has recommendations for skills etc, with only minor spoilers. In my experience, grappling, invisible monsters are par for the course in the higher modules of most AP's. Also there are some NPC's in book 3 that could help with research.

My players started book 2 this week. I have the opposite problem, too much knowledge skill. I am suggesting some multiclassing for the investigator to up his offense.


If you're the GM, are you applying the stealth bonus from invisibility to all Stealth checks or applying them only to checks against sight?

If you are a player, ask this question of your GM. If the answer is yes, consider separating the check into a sight result (Stealth roll +20) and a auditory result (raw Stealth roll). This was how 3.5's invisibility worked, and invisibility in it's current state is mostly as a result of poorly ported adjustments from combining Hide and Move Silently into Stealth, and Listen and Spot into Perception.

Perception checks should be far less daunting with those results (see: not Completely Impossible), and your melee should begin to feel less cheated for their investment because they're not some super wizard who always has see invisibility up.


My GM is pretty by the books so I suspect they're using the default stealth for invis, but that's not the issue with the perception. With that it's that the Paladin, Investigator, and I think the Bard all maxed it out and feels like it was a complete waste for all the things that aren't invisible that keep ambushing us. Whenever we find something it's because the investigator took 20 and even when he does he still misses a trap or two. Invisibility causes a different problem that's pretty much personal to the Paladin (protip, don't have someone start playing melee in this campaign.) I was mostly asking to check if invisiblity and grapple counters were something I should make priorities for the other APs or if I shouldn't bother.

Also as a party we're fine on knowledge skills, it's just that the Paladin lost interest in the plot because of book'o'rama. That was mostly on us researching a huge majority of the books before even starting the stuff in book 3. I'm hoping they'll be back on board once this part has been completed.


That's a bit weird.

Maxing out perception checks against non-invisible creatures should be good enough for most haunts and traps in the adventure, or the incidental things in the adventure. If this is book 3, you should be roughly level 8 or so, which is about when you'll make the vast majority of checks with full investment, though there are still some checks that are harder than normal. On average, I think checks will probably be DC 20-25, and the harder ones around 30. With aid checks, this shouldn't be too difficult at all, and taking 20 is expected.

I'm honestly astonished the Investigator isn't regularly beating these DC's, since they are incredible at skill checks and can usually regularly hit high DC's (With Expanded Inspiration and Trapfinding, any traps should honestly be a joke at that point, and most investigators shoud have Expanded Inspiration by 8th just because of how powerful it is). I had an investigator in another game of about 6th level whose results were often in the 20's without issue just from investing a rank per level and getting Expanded Inspiration. Check the results of the Investigator's rolls. If he's rolling higher than 30 and not making the DC's on non-creature related checks, your DM has actually altered the DC's of these checks. And if that is the case, you need to have a chat with your DM, because there is clearly a problem. Your Investigator is your trapfinder, not unlike a rogue. If he can't do it, nobody can, and that means tampering behind the screen.


Our investigator is a lot more combat focused than most and tends to save inspiration for saving throws. They're also a psychic detective and lack expanded inspiration, so that's how some of the traps got by. My memory also isn't the best and I might be misremembering failures to disarm traps as failures to spot traps, I know we at least trigger a lot of traps.

However I do know for certain we've been ambushed by almost everything that can ambush us and the only instance of us not being ambushed we because we shot arrows at the thing we didn't trust rather than on perception checks.

Book 2:
Unless there was ambush opportunities in the fortress in book two, we got to the top of the roof, had to run, and then ran back in with reinforcements on that one so everything was in different spots than originally intended. Also the thing that didn't ambush us was the living topiary.


The game I am running also has a psychic detective. He's probably not as combat focused as yours sounds as he hasn't struggled much with traps. Also, he has used detect magic to look for magic traps on occasion as well. I've had a harder time getting successful ambushes though, as all the characters have Perception as a class skill with ranks every level. With 3 of the 4 characters being occult (psychic and sensate along with the psychic detective), the group has proven to be pretty well equipped for the AP. They've planned well for darkness and grappling as well, but they did suspect the AP would be heavy on aberrations. Only the promethean alchemist has felt somewhat outclassed at times.

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