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I am doing my final prep and looking a C5 the majority of the area is effected by the negitive energy and the gravational shift, so much so the northeast half is almost total under these effects.
** spoiler omitted **...Adjudicating the C5 hazard can be rough, depending on what else is in there. The only time I saw the Drow raiders used, the GM put them in C6 (and then had the raiders block off the southern entrance into C6 forcing the PCs to circle through C7 in order to get to them). C6 seemed to be big enough to accommodate a full party of 6 PCs and Drow at the high tier.
As far as the hazard - I ran Sparklegrim with the Kobolds last weekend. I brought a straightedge (effectively a piece of string) to lay on the actual "line" to help the players see it once they figured out where the hazard was emanating from (even if they didn't yet know why it was there). I found that helped me as well - the art on the flip mat showing the "angle" of the rift makes it harder to judge exactly which squares are adjacent to the wall and which are not.
Hope some of that helps, and good luck with your prep!
Well the game is over. here is the recap.
I had a party with 5 characters, lv 7 Swashbuckler, lv 6 Alchemist/Rogue, lv 5 Kineticist, lv3 Shaman and a lv 3 Barbarian playing high tier with 4 part adjustment. the scanrio was drow raiders with rock trolls, trolls and camoflaged pit trap. Each encounter was mildly difficult to very difficult.The drow in C5 should have killed the Alchemsit/Rogue and the Barbarian but I pulled punches at the end. This encounter also took a long time by it's self.
At one point the Barbarian, the Swashbuckler and the drow priest were all locked in the negative energy/gravitational shift and the Priest reliazes there is no escape and starts channeling negative energy to kill the party as she was the last drow alive (the barbarian was unconcious do to not being able to overcome a Hard CMD roll/failing wills saves while sitting in the negative energy/gravitational shift several rounds and the Alchemist/Rogue was dropped to neagtives by taken 2 AOO that were Nat 20's from the Captain and Priest while trying to amuver into place).
I had the Priest stop channeling for a single round or the would of killed the previous mention players (even with a full retail boon to add additional negative Con) just to try vainley to escape(everyone understood what i was doing and was appreciative.
Each group of trolls did well in getting rends off so there was damage all around.
The pit trap was evaded with out issue.
The saddest part was not having enouigh time for the Drider encounter ( I was sad as I purchased a Drider mini just for the game and didn't have time).
Fun but challenging for a group playing up.
P.S
If anyone can point me to a scenario with a drider I would appreacite it as I intended to get some play out of this other wise light paper weight.
Contributor
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If anyone can point me to a scenario with a drider I would appreacite it as I intended to get some play out of this other wise light paper weight.
I reckon you might have some luck with #1-32: Drow of the Darklands Pyramid. ^_^
(I'd spoiler it, but the title alone should tell you enough. And the cover image on top of that.)
Hey gang, I was hoping to run 2 play-throughs of this module, for VERY different audiences. One group would be new-ish players and the game would be easy but fun & quirky to keep things interesting. The other would be very very hard, like Bonekeep hard (if that's possible) in order to challenge our most jaded veteran players and mix/max optimizers.
Would anyone be able to give me hints/tips for "easy & fun" run, or "super challenging" run? What encounter load-out would you suggest, and why? (In particular, why is an encounter "hard" to you -- for example, use of Darkness, or a special ability that I should pay special attention to? Let me know. Thanks!)
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If I know one thing about veterans, they tend to prebuff the moment they see a map. If you really want to mess with them, in high tier there is the option of a dweomersink. Place it on a place where they need to get through (like the bridge of Map A/B, or the connection of area C3 and C5). Make sure there is at least combat before then, so that they do buff, and then take it all away.
But beware though, the dweomersink hazard is poorly described. It is as big as you want it to be, and there are no rules on how to detect one (except the spellcraft check, but I'm not sure it is automatic).
If you are really evil, you place a terrible beat-stick monster around the corner, just outside the dweomersink area. One that doesn't care about that hazard (such as the Lead Golem or the Chaos Beasts). Or lure the trapmaster with the Deathtrap Ooze which also resides in the hazard...
For the easy-fun group, I recommend either the Recovering Implements or the Kobold Testing Grounds. I'm assuming, since they are new-ish players, that you are going to prepare the low tier.
Which tier will you be running at and what does your veteran group consist of?
I don't know. I'll let them sign up on Warhorn, and whatever their make-up is, it is. I feel confident I could force a tier, though. I could mandate that I was only running high tier, if that helps.
I won't know which characters they will bring for a while, though.
Developer
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In continuing to prep this another question cops up.
Page 5 provides the table for different skill and saving throw DCs across the tiers. Is it really intended that skills and saves use the same DCs? When this has been done in other scenario's there are normally different values for skills versus saves, as skill values tend to be much higher than saves.
Has a part of the table been missed off or are they supposed to be the same?
We did drop the saving throw table. Here is what it should say (reformatted for clarity).
Subtier 3–4: Easy 11, Average 13, Hard 15Subtier 6–7: Easy 14, Average 16, Hard 18
For four players, reduce the saving throw DCs by 1.
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Sorry if this question has been asked, but I'm a little confused on where exactly the upper entrance to the Halflight Path is located.
1) The rumor for Summoning Gone Wrong indicates the entrance is near to the Guildhouse and thus apparently inside the district of Bis and the walls of Kaer Maga (p. 91 of the scenario booklet).
2) The City of Strangers Chronicle says the upper entrance is "just a stone's throw outside the Warren" (p. 50) and thus outside of the walls of Kaer Maga. It does agree with the scenario that the Duskwarden Guildhouse is in the Bis District.
3) The Pathfinder Wiki article claims the following "The path ends at the Duskwarden Guildhouse, a fortified bunker just outside the city, next to the Warren district."
Which of these is correct? It seems pretty clear that the Pathfinder Wiki is wrong about the location of the Guildhouse which is inside the city in the district of Bis. However, I'm still uncertain about the location of the upper entrance to the Halflight Path. I'm putting together a map of Kaer Maga for this scenario, and I'm sort of stuck on this point.
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The one thing I hate about prepping for these scenarios with multiple outcomes in tracing down all the treasure to mark off the chronicles. Please in the future, organize the treasure by theme and location on the chronicles to make it easier to track down.
I find it easier to highlight what they do get rather than cross off what they don’t.
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The one thing I hate about prepping for these scenarios with multiple outcomes in tracing down all the treasure to mark off the chronicles. Please in the future, organize the treasure by theme and location on the chronicles to make it easier to track down.I find it easier to highlight what they do get rather than cross off what they don’t.
Yeah, the crossing off made me ruin one set of chronicles.
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Developer
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Thanks for the feedback, everyone! We've released an update for Beyond the Halflight Path. Here's a summary of the changes.
*Created a new file of three chronicle sheets, one for each vault, for player use. Each sheet sorts treasure by story arc.
*Moved the existing chronicle sheet to the back of the file, for GM use
*Added DCs for saving throws to the sidebar about check DCs.
*Added clarification that GMs may select the ceiling height in each room to best fit the chosen encounters.
*Fixed various typos called out in this thread, including cleaning up the charts in the back of the book to make it clearer which monsters appear at which subtier.
Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Linda, I love you!!! All of those things make the GMs life so much nicer! This means I can remove my google file of different iterations of halflight chronicles that I had to make!
Hmm
EDIT: And now there are no more watermarks on the chronicles! I don’t have to hand out chronicles with my email address on them!
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Wish I would have thought to post this earlier. Another solution would be to have clickable layers on the pdf that allow you to choose your Story Arc and Location so the others would be crossed out or hidden all together. This would make it simpler than having several different sheets that still need to have items crossed off or highlighted by hand. You do it with module and AP maps so it should be easy enough. If you don't know how just ask me.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Deathtrap ooze. Description says it can take the form of any cr 8 or lower trap, vr 6 if playing with 4 players. Examples are cr 1-5 and core rulebook doesn't list any suitable traps at cr 7 or 8. Provided I have the source, what other traps can I use, or can I simply adjust one of the lower level traps to provide suitable challenge?
The rules for creating traps are in the Core Rulebook, so you can just build a trap at CR 8.
This CR 8 cave-in is from the Core Rulebook, but maybe since it's lumped under "traps & hazards" it's more hazard than trap.
Here's a CR 8 blade trap which is from Pathfinder #9. It's not Core Rulebook, but if you can use the Core Rulebook trap-building rules to re-create it, then it works.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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I've now ran this three times (the Drow arc in high and low, and the evil seeks sacrifice in low tier). I have to say that I love the way this scenario gives the DM room to tailor it for the group - it gives so much flexibility and you can make it challenging for players who want a near-death experience, or funny&easy yet still exciting for newer/lower level players.
Some encounters, though, are clearly more dangerous than others. The dark stalker with it's deeper darkness at will can easily take on a whole team - it can dispel any daylights the party casts to keep the advantage of darkness. Nearly wiped out both of the low tier tables. I kinda want to see how 3 would fare against a high level party...
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I've now ran this three times (the Drow arc in high and low, and the evil seeks sacrifice in low tier). I have to say that I love the way this scenario gives the DM room to tailor it for the group - it gives so much flexibility and you can make it challenging for players who want a near-death experience, or funny&easy yet still exciting for newer/lower level players.
Some encounters, though, are clearly more dangerous than others. The dark stalker with it's deeper darkness at will can easily take on a whole team - it can dispel any daylights the party casts to keep the advantage of darkness. Nearly wiped out both of the low tier tables. I kinda want to see how 3 would fare against a high level party...
In my area, many PCs have picked up a potion of unwelcome halo anyway - so casting deeper darkness will often only buy the Stalker a couple rounds of supernatural darkness before two or three of the neutral PCs spoil the fun.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Obviously, a party with multiple daylights can get rid of the dark stalker easily. Likewise, simply acting tactically - rest of the party delaying until one PC uses the oil of daylight, then the rest beating the dark stalker up.
"Touch Spells in Combat: Many spells have a range of touch. To use these spells, you cast the spell and then touch the subject. In the same round that you cast the spell, you may also touch (or attempt to touch) as a free action. You may take your move before casting the spell, after touching the target, or between casting the spell and touching the target."
The dark stalker doesn't need to provoke. If the party isn't careful, one of them uses daylight - the next time it's the dark stalkers turn, it just uses the SLA, walks up to the target, and then touches it to dispel the daylight. Touching the opponent that (in our case) smeared the oil onto their forehead requires a touch attack, yeah.
But, this is still mainly a question on "how well the PC's are prepared". On the first run, they had no daylights. On the second time I ran it, one PC had one daylight. Fighting the dark stalker in darkness sucks.
As to RealAlchemy, yeah, GM does get access to everything. It feels pretty generous, but I guess it's there to ensure that GM doesn't pick the path/enemies based on what loot they want - and I like it that way. It's not like your character is going to be using all of the buy options anyway. (My gunslinger Did enjoy the chronicle, though >.>)