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Hi everyone,
My PCs are currently going through Valley of the Brain Collectors and I'm prepping for the next module. Ghartone has become a familiar foe for the PCs in my game, since they are close with Khonnir Bane and he's also tied into the paladin players' backstory.
I'm planning to have him play the central villain role that the module assigns to Ozmyn Zaidow as the leader who deposed Zernebeth and took over the Technic League (I've already had the PCs learn that he recently had one promotion between the 1st and 3rd modules).
Are there any pitfalls I should be wary about while I'm changing the story this way? Any advice on running this module in particular?
It depends. How much do the heroes already know about Ozmyn Zaidow and Ghartone?
It is entirely possible that the two (Ghartone and Ozmyn Zaidow) could exchange roles, but you'd have to rebuild both Stat Blocks - IF he is known to the heroes as a Alchemist. (Otherwise you could simply swap the stat blocks).
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Akalsaris, don't you want the big reveal? Ghartone is defeated by the party and tells them that though they think he has been the villain all along, he is just a puppet with a bomb in his head, and the real mastermind is--and the reveal is interrupted by his head exploding.
Okay, I doubt the timing would work out that cinematically. Pathfinder combat seldom leaves the villain alive long enough for a death speech. But having a new villain as the boss behind the familiar and well-despised old villain is a Paizo adventure path tradition.
Good job tying Ghartone into the paladin's backstory. It makes him more central to the story. Val Baine is a good friend of my party and they knew her backstory with Ghartone. Ilarris Zeleshi in The Choking Tower and Hyrsek Caio in Valley of the Brain Collectors both said they worked for Ghartone. Despite this, my players thought of the Technic League as a whole as the villain and Ghartone was just one of them.
I asked a player and she said that Ozmyn Zaidow seemed to come out of nowhere and merging him with Ghartone into a single character would work out better. She had misunderstood my explanation that Akalsaris wanted to swap the characters rather than merge them, but merging them into one character is another option. Ozmyn was not foreshadowed because the party never met Zernebeth and never heard her intentions to depose Ozmyn.
My party has a habit of derailing adventure paths, so they skipped a lot of encounters that set the stage for later encounters. See Inconspicuous PCs Unmotivated in Palace of Fallen Stars for what they did in Starfall instead. Furthermore, after battling alien menaces who want to conquer and consume the world in Valley of the Brain Collectors, the Technic League and Ghartone seemed less significant.
I like the notion of merging the characters rather than swapping them. Take Ozmyn Zaidow's stat block and add a level of alchemist with vivisectionist archetype to make him fit Ghartone's backstory as an alchemist and to make up for the XP loss of dropping the original Ghartone. First-level extracts would be nearly useless for the character, but he would gain Brew Potion and could carry potions of Invisibility and Monstrous Physique. Rename him Ghartone Zaidow. Use Ozmyn's picture and say that his facial scars were mysteriously cured in his recent fruitful expedition into Silver Mount. Ghartone Zaidow does not have a bomb in his head; instead, he is controlled by Unity. He can be found in both the Palace of the Fallen Stars and the Technic League Headquarters because his healing gave him so much vigor that he keeps running between the two places. He outsourced the drugging of the Black Sovereign to Doc Hellbroth because he became so busy.