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Playing this AP now... And I gotta say:
Ms.Pedipalp is a crappy encounter design IMO... In part because the spells she uses are poorly designed in the first place, and in part because her saving throw DCs are too high.
A bunch of hours/level and days/level SoL effects with absurdly high DCs (for 3rd level characters)... It's simply not a fun experience.
Hey, I’m looking for help on how to pronounce Mictena. Would it be Mick-TEE-na, or Mick-TAY-na? Or even something else?
I had gone with mick-ten-uh, almost like her name was spelled McTena.
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If you have players who think hard about the situation and background, be prepared for a rocky road with this module. We are just about finished with it (about to do Deathbower) and have had issues with the following:
(1) Everyone seems shocked over the PCs being alive, like it has never happened before. But there is a party of live humans in the random encounter list, and a recently-alive gnome in one of the dungeons, and food for "visitors who need to eat" in another dungeon. So living people *do* come here. Also the numerous faeries and vermin are alive. It needs to be made much more clear that the psychopomps are reacting to the obols, not to the PCs being alive.
(2) The business with Kishokish's staff violates just about every rule about how that item works: if the PCs know much about shoki psychopomps they will be skeptical of the advice to do this as it is obviously wrong. (The staff kills the being drawn into it, and can only be used by its owner, and has a saving throw. Also, one challenger's glove doesn't work.)
(3) If living creatures in the Boneyard do not eat or drink due to its planar traits, the presence of kitchens and food is peculiar. If they are immune to disease and poison, various attacks are ineffectual. The issue of planar traits *really* needed to be addressed at the start.
(4) My player was really bothered by the decomposing dead esobok. If an outsider's body and soul are one, why is there a body left behind when the soul is slaim?
(6) He was also really bothered by the fairies--how did those get in here? Why are they tolerated? Why are there SO MANY of them?--and by the living vermin, ditto. As a result the PCs wanted to decide they were not in the Boneyard at all but in the First World and everyone was lying to them. We basically had to fiat that they didn't conclude this as it would have derailed the adventure pretty badly (starting with, the PCs go back to the Boneyard to rescue the villagers from the delusion that they are dead).
(6) There aren't supposed to be undead, but the specter in the stone is an undead--and what is it doing here? If duplicating tombs duplicated the undead in them, the Boneyard would have big problems! Also, we could not understand how the unfettered phantoms were not undead, even though their creature type says they are not. I mean, it's the soul of your dead ancestor come back because of unfinished business--how is that not an undead?
(7) Both the player and I felt that the module spent a lot of time setting up a theme of "Something is very wrong here in the Boneyard" but with no follow-up or payoff: you can't find out what it is or do anything about it. This is frustrating.
I loved Umble and Thoot. I did not love the constant struggle to get things to make sense.
I also think that if the PCs are going to go from level 1 to 5 with no resupply, it's cruel not to have any arrows or crossbow bolts anywhere.
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I will add, I rewrote the early encounters and ran this for 5th level PCs, not 1st level PCs. I strongly recommend this. The lack of resupply is not as bad if the PCs are already equipped in a level appropriate way. Also, some of the encounters (especially the wihsaak) are way too hard for their stated level, and more appropriate for 5ths. This also avoids going up 4 levels in 3-4 days (and 3 sessions), which I really don't like.
Roslar's tomb will need creature substitutions (gremlins are a good replacement for mites) but there's surprisingly little need to change the creature types in the remainder. Remove any power-reduction templates, add a few more critters and clump them up more--that's all it seemed to require. (Okay, I also gave Colulus some levels of witch. Didn't make a big difference in the end.)
If you don't do this, I strongly recommend using GM fiat to make the PCs find the tooth faeries, which they can handle, before they find Nine-eaves or the Scriptorum, which are a lot more iffy (especially Nine-eaves--the wihsaak can fly out of reach, use its drone, and just let the party tear itself apart).
The module has kind of strange difficulty levels: a lot of things seem too easy (Aydie and her giant raven in particular) and several seem way too hard. Too easy is maybe okay, and lets you let encounters clump; too hard is a problem, especially given the lack of equipment. The PCs are going to end up being 4th or 5th level with 1st level equipment; do not expect them to perform as well as usual.
If you have players who think hard about the situation and background, be prepared for a rocky road with this module. We are just about finished with it (about to do Deathbower) and have had issues with the following:
(1) Everyone seems shocked over the PCs being alive, like it has never happened before. But there is a party of live humans in the random encounter list, and a recently-alive gnome in one of the dungeons, and food for "visitors who need to eat" in another dungeon. So living people *do* come here. Also the numerous faeries and vermin are alive. It needs to be made much more clear that the psychopomps are reacting to the obols, not to the PCs being alive.
(2) The business with Kishokish's staff violates just about every rule about how that item works: if the PCs know much about shoki psychopomps they will be skeptical of the advice to do this as it is obviously wrong. (The staff kills the being drawn into it, and can only be used by its owner, and has a saving throw. Also, one challenger's glove doesn't work.)
(3) If living creatures in the Boneyard do not eat or drink due to its planar traits, the presence of kitchens and food is peculiar. If they are immune to disease and poison, various attacks are ineffectual. The issue of planar traits *really* needed to be addressed at the start.
(4) My player was really bothered by the decomposing dead esobok. If an outsider's body and soul are one, why is there a body left behind when the soul is slaim?
(6) He was also really bothered by the fairies--how did those get in here? Why are they tolerated? Why are there SO MANY of them?--and by the living vermin, ditto. As a result the PCs wanted to decide they were not in the Boneyard at all but in the First World and everyone was lying to them. We basically had to fiat that they didn't conclude this as it would have derailed the adventure pretty badly (starting with, the PCs go back to the Boneyard to rescue the villagers from the delusion that they are dead).
6) There aren't supposed to be undead, but the specter in the stone is an undead--and what is it doing here? If duplicating tombs duplicated the undead in them, the Boneyard would have big problems! Also, we could not understand how the unfettered phantoms were not undead, even though their creature type says they are not. I mean, it's the soul of your dead ancestor come back because of unfinished business--how is that not an undead?
(7) Both the player and I felt that the module spent a lot of time setting up a theme of "Something is very wrong here in the Boneyard" but with no follow-up or payoff: you can't find out what it is or do anything about it. This is frustrating.
I loved Umble and Thoot. I did not love the constant struggle to get things to make sense.
I also think that if the PCs are going to go from level 1 to 5 with no resupply, it's cruel not to have any arrows or crossbow bolts anywhere
The book addresses pretty much all of your points, here. You may want to try a re-read, and I’d advise the same for the following books to make sure you don’t run into similar issues for the rest of the story. Some of the issues are a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, one-line explanation, which may be how you missed them; it would definitely be nice to have more thorough explanations to some situations, but the writers and editors are limited to a very strict page count, so sometimes the info is squeezed in with as few words as possible.
1: It’s established that Psychopomps (and several other creatures in the adventure) can sense - even visibly see - the Obols in the PCs’ hearts. It’s this that certain NPC’s are surprised about when they meet the PCs, not just the fact that there are living people there.
2: This...is correct, unfortunately. Well, the actual ability states that it can only be used on incorporeal or dying creatures, I believe. If a player calls this out, my advise is to encourage them to roll with this departure from RAW with an open mind - it is a very cool encounter, after all!
3: I agree that the Planar Traits should have been brought up. In their absence, I think the best thing to do is for GMs to also not address them. I personally applied Boneyard traits for parts 1 and 2 of the Book, and removed them once they were transported to the Deadroads. Again, the book doesn’t point out any difference, but I considered the Dead Roads a separate planar body than the Boneyards - not quite its own plane, not quite part of the Boneyard or Material. This allows all creatures on the Dead Roads with Diseases and Poisons to use them.
4: I’m not sure what decomposing Esobok you’re referring to. I believe that checks out, though. Outsiders who die in the Outer Planes break down into Quintessence, which infuses into the fabric of the plane they died on, much in the same way dead bodies on the Material Plane break down and become nutrients within the soil. I’m sorry to hear you had a player who was bothered by this. It is a horror adventure, after all, though; spooky or graphic imagery is part of it.
5: I don’t think Fey in the Boneyard (or Deadroads in this case) is any more indicative to being in the First World than Fey on the Material Plane. The Book actually explains their presence - Salighara’s Dream Gate accidentally opened a breach to the First World before being recalibrated to the Dimension of Dreams.
6: The Unfettered Phantoms do make sense not being Undead. There’s a lot of technical terms and specific circumstances, so I’m not gonna put a whole explanation here, but I recommend you read about Phantoms from the Spiritualist Class. The spirit in the stone admittedly doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I just chalked it up to “weird planar phenomena”.
7: I didn’t get that impression. I will relent that the whole “what are the odds that EVERY Waystation has some huge problem requiring the PCs to fix it??” angle is a bit contrived, but honestly no more than plenty of other scenarios in other modules/APs - I mean, the goal is to give them exp, and you need conflict to do that, so if it feels contrived, that’s because it’s supposed to be?
As for not having shops or other sources of supplies, well, that’s where the Survival part of Survival Horror comes from. It’s supposed to be a scavenger hunt. As the GM, if you see that there’s an important resource required by your group that is not written into the adventure, you’re encouraged to sprinkle them in yourself. The writers can’t possibly account for the needs of every conceivable adventuring group that might ever play through this adventure, after all.
The problem the player had with the decomposing esobok (it's in the tooth fairy castle) was not that it was horrific but that it didn't seem to make sense: he felt strongly that outsiders, as spirit beings, shouldn't decompose, but should turn to dust or bone or something when slain. He felt it was one of several points where the sense of being in the Boneyard was lost. (That was my reaction to the kitchens and so forth; I wasn't as bothered by the esobok myself. Also to the masses of live birds at multiple points--why is the Boneyard full of live birds?)
I understand that Umble and Thoot can see the obols. I am startled that the witchcrows apparently can too, but okay. But the given dialogue emphasizes the PC's aliveness, not the obols. I wish I had caught this sooner as it led to bad inconsistencies in my GMing.
Yes, there is one line blaming Salighara for the faeries, but that's at almost the end (if you do Salighara last, as we did) and gives a whole module for the PCs to come to the wrong conclusion. And it is still weird that the lawful psychopomps put up with being overrun with faeries, especially in Roslar's Tomb, which is not close to Salighara's Scriptorum at all.
As for the rest of it, okay, Paizo has to depict the whole area as badly messed up, despite having no intention of developing that theme or doing anything with it...because of EXP. For me this is just another nail in the coffin of "The EXP rules are actively harmful." You can't avoid the harm by simply not using them, because they distort adventure design in ways that are hard to fix. It's a shame.
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I have a question about the Deathbower, quite a few encounters are done very close to each other but do not seem to mention aiding others. The main one I see here is in F6,7, and 8. Aydie fights the players at the bridge, there are four gardeners about 25 feet away in open view, and Reedreaper is just behind some gravestones.
Should the other NPCs be running to aid in other fights? or are they just supposed to stand and watch as the PCs approach? Nothing seems to indicate they are hidden or waiting. How did others run this?
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I wasn't as bothered by the esobok myself. Also to the masses of live birds at multiple points--why is the Boneyard full of live birds?)
Not the Boneyard, the Dead Roads were full off birds because it's Barzakh's realm. It's a giant bird and when slain they rejuvenate from one of the many birds that make the realm home.
--CuckooVrock
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If you have players who think hard about the situation and background, be prepared for a rocky road with this module. We are just about finished with it (about to do Deathbower) and have had issues with the following:
(1) Everyone seems shocked over the PCs being alive, like it has never happened before. But there is a party of live humans in the random encounter list, and a recently-alive gnome in one of the dungeons, and food for "visitors who need to eat" in another dungeon. So living people *do* come here. Also the numerous faeries and vermin are alive. It needs to be made much more clear that the psychopomps are reacting to the obols, not to the PCs being alive.i ran it farm more with the reaction to the obols. the PCs were 'wrong' and didn't belong in the Boneyard. This is why Mictena is trying to destroy them and why they have to leave as soon as they can.
(4) My player was really bothered by the decomposing dead esobok. If an outsider's body and soul are one, why is there a body left behind when the soul is slain?magic! also, it's physical here in the plane. unless you made other enemies go *poof*, what's the issue with a body?
(6) He was also really bothered by the fairies--how did those get in here? Why are they tolerated? Why are there SO MANY of them?--and by the living vermin, ditto. As a result the PCs wanted to decide they were not in the Boneyard at all but in the First World and everyone was lying to them. We basically had to fiat that they didn't conclude this as it would have derailed the adventure pretty badly (starting with, the PCs go back to the Boneyard to rescue the villagers from the delusion that they are dead).they snuck in, worming their way between 'gaps' or thinness in the planes. that's how fey get into the material plane, why wouldn't they also get into the Boneyard. The same goes for the abyssal monsters in the tomb.
(6) Also, we could not understand how the unfettered phantoms were not undead, even though their creature type says they are not. I mean, it's the soul of your dead ancestor come back because of unfinished business--how is that not an undead?i made it an evil dream spirit to better tie into the 3rd tower. threw a small red herring at the PCs that this was in fact, all a dream. it was asking the town to walk into the mists to 'wake up' which would have been 'bad'.
(7) Both the player and I felt that the module spent a lot of time setting up a theme of "Something is very wrong here in the Boneyard" but with no follow-up or payoff: you can't find out what it is or do anything about it. This is frustrating.
I loved Umble and Thoot. I did not love the constant struggle to get things to make sense.
I don't think they are supposed to make sense. The Boneyard is a million layers of detritus stacked onto an ancien regime. it's full of leaks and cracks and weirdness. 'solving' that is beyond the ken of the adventure.
I also think that if the PCs are going to go from level 1 to 5 with no resupply, it's cruel not to have any arrows or crossbow bolts anywherei introduced the party to Reedreaper along the Dead Road. He noticed that one of the PCs was an archer, and challenged him to a contest with a prize of arrows. Although the PC had a lower to hit, he won, and was awarded with 20 arrows.
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I have a question about the Deathbower, quite a few encounters are done very close to each other but do not seem to mention aiding others. The main one I see here is in F6,7, and 8. Aydie fights the players at the bridge, there are four gardeners about 25 feet away in open view, and Reedreaper is just behind some gravestones.
Should the other NPCs be running to aid in other fights? or are they just supposed to stand and watch as the PCs approach? Nothing seems to indicate they are hidden or waiting. How did others run this?
I had Reedreaper enter the combat with Aydie when the PCs were about to kill her [I had introduced them to him earlier on]. He talked them down from it, and she retreated into the topiary.
Also, with my melee heavy party, she retreated south, and that caused the gardeners to jump the PCs.
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As for the rest of it, okay, Paizo has to depict the whole area as badly messed up, despite having no intention of developing that theme or doing anything with it...because of EXP. For me this is just another nail in the coffin of "The EXP rules are actively harmful." You can't avoid the harm by simply not using them, because they distort adventure design in ways that are hard to fix. It's a shame.
if you haven't noticed Golarian as a whole is pretty messed up, and there's no plan to fix that ;-)
And there's no adventure if the psychopomps just send the PCs back to the mortal realm. Like, you die, and then REBOUND, back alive.
While I have my criticisms of Book 1, I thought it was pretty cool to have the players journey in the Boneyard for some utterly weird low-level play.
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I'm remaking the maps for 'The Dead Roads' right now. If anyone else is looking for maps that line up better with 5' squares, and higher resolution, here are the ones I have completed so far.
Roslar's Tomb - https://imgur.com/gallery/ryTcfEo
Palace of Teeth - https://imgur.com/gallery/lFfDmn1
If this is not the place for resources, I can move and/or delete this post.
Thanks!
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I have finished redrawing the maps for the first two books. Here is a zip file with all maps from 'The Dead Roads' in 256 pixels per inch.
https://app.box.com/s/guns9b50kfqp1bgm3s98uy8yyo8jdhyo
Earlier in this thread there was a discussion about whether or not to use the planar traits that belong to the Boneyard. The issue was that the Boneyard's Timeless trait, if used, prevents any kind of natural healing, which can become a desperate problem (especially for PF1e) to groups without magical healing. On the other hand, not using the Timeless trait subjects the party to a world with no food besides what happened to come with them when they arrived.
Now, if you wanted to use the Timeless trait, you have the option of pretty easily handwaving the healing by making it a weird interaction of the obols--it's not so much that their bodies are healing naturally but the energy of the obols is doing something weird which allows them to heal as if naturally.
On the other hand, I just happen to dislike the Timeless trait for no good reason, so if you happened to forget planar traits and were concerned about an explanation for food, this idea popped into my head last night: We already know that when a tomb is consecrated, it is duplicated in its entirety (apparently right down to the paints and construction supplies) left in the tomb. Meanwhile, in many cultures around the world it is customary to leave offerings of food for the dead at graves etc.
My suggestion is what if there is food in the Boneyard. The souls of the dead don't need to eat, but what if loved ones can leave offerings for them to make their afterlives more comfortable while awaiting their Judgement? Sure, nobody could possibly have left any offerings for the townsfolk yet, but there may well be food to be scavenged somewhere. Besides which, if the psychopomps created a duplicate of the town, its possible there's some kind of food somewhere in the town (though you could just as well twist this by saying that since it's only duplicate food, it's tasteless, and only food made out of the energy of an offering has any taste--perhaps it even tastes like the idea of food, just to make things even weirder).
I'll grant, technically this means the PCs might end up having to scavenge food that was meant as an offering to someone else, but being as nobody knows how long their family members will hang around before they get judged, it's entirely possible to find an offering made to an already judged soul. Aside from that, since the waiting souls don't actually need the food perhaps you could beg a favour or trade someone for their offering. There are possibilities, is what I'm saying.
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Earlier in this thread there was a discussion about whether or not to use the planar traits that belong to the Boneyard. The issue was that the Boneyard's Timeless trait, if used, prevents any kind of natural healing, which can become a desperate problem (especially for PF1e) to groups without magical healing. On the other hand, not using the Timeless trait subjects the party to a world with no food besides what happened to come with them when they arrived.
Now, if you wanted to use the Timeless trait, you have the option of pretty easily handwaving the healing by making it a weird interaction of the obols--it's not so much that their bodies are healing naturally but the energy of the obols is doing something weird which allows them to heal as if naturally.
On the other hand, I just happen to dislike the Timeless trait for no good reason, so if you happened to forget planar traits and were concerned about an explanation for food, this idea popped into my head last night: We already know that when a tomb is consecrated, it is duplicated in its entirety (apparently right down to the paints and construction supplies) left in the tomb. Meanwhile, in many cultures around the world it is customary to leave offerings of food for the dead at graves etc.
My suggestion is what if there is food in the Boneyard. The souls of the dead don't need to eat, but what if loved ones can leave offerings for them to make their afterlives more comfortable while awaiting their Judgement? Sure, nobody could possibly have left any offerings for the townsfolk yet, but there may well be food to be scavenged somewhere. Besides which, if the psychopomps created a duplicate of the town, its possible there's some kind of food somewhere in the town (though you could just as well twist this by saying that since it's only duplicate food, it's tasteless, and only food made out of the energy of an offering has any taste--perhaps it even tastes like the idea of food, just to make things even weirder).
I'll...
I told my guys to buy gear for their adventure as standard, and everything that they bought was in chests at the feet of their coffins, which fortunately included a lot of rations.
I didn't have any add'l food in the Boneyard and in Book 2, well... let's just say that they were out of rations by the time that the second book ended, and it was either take on the boss or starve to death.
Earlier in this thread there was a discussion about whether or not to use the planar traits that belong to the Boneyard. The issue was that the Boneyard's Timeless trait, if used, prevents any kind of natural healing, which can become a desperate problem (especially for PF1e) to groups without magical healing.
I'm using the Timeless trait, although we're only one session in and the party haven't yet tried to recover hp naturally or noticed they don't get hungry or thirsty.
But IMHO parties that don't have magical healing deserve to die. Horribly. Particularly in this adventure path, as the player's guide provides not-so-subtle hints that healing will be paramount.
Perpetually glad that 2e ditched the notion that a cleric in the party was mandatory for healing. Granted, it does sometimes feel like it only really made the Medicine skill mandatory for at least one party member but then at least you can still play basically any class after that...
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Really enjoying GMing this one. My party consists of:
human bard
tiefling sorceress
half orc fighter (tower shield specialist)
hobgoblin scout
svirfneblin cleric
half orc witch
They got through Roslar's tomb ok, although there were some scary moments for them as the scout nearly died twice. I had to beef up most encounters to suit a party of six, when the module assumes 4.
Their main takeway from the tomb is that Ervin Roslar was a total douche. The bard amused himself by graffitiing the many statues that Roslar erected in his own honour.
They weren't surprised by the big reveal as they'd already worked out that being dead would be one explanation as to what happened to them.
They're now halfway through the Palace of Teeth and the tooth fairies are annoying the shit out of them. The scout is down to 4 CHA as he's taken the brunt of the plier attacks. The sorceress and bard are so terrified of taking damage they run away whenever the tooth fairies attack.
Putting creatures whose main attack does ability damage in a setting where such damage doesn't naturaly heal and before the cleric can cast lesser resoration is such a nasty idea! I love it but my party doesn't.
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Really enjoying GMing this one. My party consists of:
human bard
tiefling sorceress
half orc fighter (tower shield specialist)
hobgoblin scout
svirfneblin cleric
half orc witchThey got through Roslar's tomb ok, although there were some scary moments for them as the scout nearly died twice. I had to beef up most encounters to suit a party of six, when the module assumes 4.
Their main takeway from the tomb is that Ervin Roslar was a total douche. The bard amused himself by graffitiing the many statues that Roslar erected in his own honour.
They weren't surprised by the big reveal as they'd already worked out that being dead would be one explanation as to what happened to them.
They're now halfway through the Palace of Teeth and the tooth fairies are annoying the s*%~ out of them. The scout is down to 4 CHA as he's taken the brunt of the plier attacks. The sorceress and bard are so terrified of taking damage they run away whenever the tooth fairies attack.
Putting creatures whose main attack does ability damage in a setting where such damage doesn't naturaly heal and before the cleric can cast lesser resoration is such a nasty idea! I love it but my party doesn't.
we had a lot of fun running it, but i don't envy your having to rebalance for 6 PCs
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Here are some tweaks and additions I made when running this book.
The change I would most strongly suggest is to familiars and animal companions. The AP has them unavailable until book 2, but I would suggest instead having them come up the path join the party when they exit Roslar's tomb. Make sure you play up their cute interactions with the PCs during the rest of the book. Because the payoff at the end of the Dead Roads, when they reach the portal to the Material Plane and a breeze from Barzahk's wing passes over the familiar, causing their form to flicker into a ghostly reflection like the townsfolk? When the PCs realize that the familiar did not get an obol at their death and thus cannot return to the land of the living with them, and the party has to say their goodbyes on the very precipice of their escape? *Chef's kiss*. The John Wick school of character motivation really works.
Like many others, I had some scenes in Roslar's Coffer before moving to the Boneyard. The town guard was stretched thin escorting workers to the Bastion of Light, so the guard captain had to recruit the PCs for an unexpected incident. A merchant coming into town was attacked by zombies along the road; her wagon got stuck in a ditch and she fled into town. Unbeknownst to the party, a Whispering Way agent had directed the attack then hid the fragment of Arnisant's shield among the merchant's goods. After the party defeated the zombies, they saw two cloaked riders in the distance: one was the cultist who had been watching them, the other Arazni who was pursuing the cultist as part of her investigation. Returning to the town square for the festival (I had set the starting date as the Sarenite holiday Burning Blades), the guard captain death-flagged himself by mentioning his imminent retirement next week and took the occasion to have one of the PCs take the public oath of office as his successor. She had just finished swearing to protect the town and its people when they all exploded.
Down in Roslar's tomb, some people, myself included, found it weird the evil spectre in A12 seems to have been created when Roslar's tomb was duplicated in the Boneyard. I explained this as being an old Pharasman technique to deal with troublesome rejuvenating spirits; the magic circles surrounding the crystal contain runes for planar travel as well as binding. When a tomb is concsecrated and a duplicate of the crystal and runes appear in the Boneyard, the spirit's energy is slowly transferred to it over the course of years so that the psychopomps can deal with it. Using this explanation, I put a similar crystal in the Material Plane version of Roslar's tomb. Because someone had moved the crystal from its perch when the tomb was first ransacked, the Material version still contained most of the spirit's energy and gave a greater shock of negative energy when approached. This gave the party an additional weapon to deal with the rot grub swarm there, which many have found to be a troublesome fight.
I don't know why the Animate Hair wig on Roslar's bust wasn't a handlebar moustache to begin with. It should be.
The tile puzzle in A11 struck me as too nonsensical and videogame-y. I instead changed it to a statue of Arazni with a palm-down extended hand and an insciption on the base reading "Show your devotion." This coresponded to the mural in A9 below. Kissing hand caused a panel in the base of the statue to swing open revealing the usual armor and shield, as well as a small marble statuette of Arazni. Placing the statuette's round base in a corresponding depression on the altar caused the secret passage behind it to open. In book 2 this passage would be used to reach the Bastion of Light, but since only the tomb is copied in the Boneyard the passage ended in a dead end.
A15 seems kind of cramped for the Horn Caterpillar fight. I instead moved it and the gorgon shell to the spacious A16, and had it set up some web sheets to trap creatures as per the universal monster rules.
I took inspiration from Aloisus's gold wedding ring to introduce a side story about an Orpheus-like figure named Castrovella that the party would uncover over the remainder of the book. Shrunken for skipability in case it is tl;dr:
Castrovella was a fighter with the Red Shrike's and Aloisus's husband. She was unable to accept his untimely death at the end of the Shining Crusade and so made her way down the Dead Roads, seized his spirit from Roslar's tomb, and fought, trick and cajoled her way back to the Material Plane. But this unnatural method of bringing the dead back to the living turned Aloisus's spirit into a ghost as they neared the exit. In his confusion, he burnt Castrovella to blackened bones with his corrupting touch and ended up lost between the planes.
Throughout the Dead Roads the party found pieces of equipment decorated with the Red Shrike motif that had been lost by Castrovella during her journey. A masterwork longsword pinned the body of the celedon Number Two to the wall in the entryway to Roslar's Tomb. Number One describes a woman who grabbed a spirit and fought her way past them; Two first thought it happened last month, then remembered it was actually 889 years ago (time is difficult to keep track of as an immortal construct in the Boneyard). In the Palace of Teeth, touching a Headband of Vast Intelligence embroidered with a shrike conjured a ghostly vision of an armored woman battling three more of the stained glass angels. Up in the craft room, among the piles of cloth the party found a smashed skull inside a gossamer shawl; this was the remains of an ember weaver psycopomp, the previous keeper of that waystation who was killed by Castrovella. In Nine Eaves Manor, Kishokish mentioned that the shrike-embossed Shadow Falconer's Glove that the party looted had previously belonged to a clever woman who bested him at a game of Imperial Conquest to earn his stamp. Salighara remembers Castrovella using the Knowledge: Planes-imbued Headband to trick her into thinking she was also a planar scholar.
Before each of the waystations, the party had the chance to notice the hunched, cloaked figure of Aloisus weeping in the mists to the side of the road. At first he was distant, but as the party gathered more of Castrovella's items he was drawn closer. After the first two waystations he angrily shrieked and lunged at the party but vanished before reaching them. Right before reaching Deathbower the party found him in the middle of the road, hunched over Castrovella's blackened bones. He was confused as always, at first recounting how Castrovella died in his arms, then seeing her equipment he accused the party of taking her from him and attacked. Using a Shadow Conjuration-like effect, he produced a pair of ghostly warriors in the image of two of the Red Shrikes. Upon taking damage he called out for Castrovella to protect him and produced a third that looked like her. The party's obols mitigated the negative energy damage that his touches inflicted. Upon being defeated, he briefly came to his senses. He extracted a promise from the party that they would bury Castrovella's bones with him, then departed with some ravens that Barzahk sent to guide him to the Boneyard.
In Deathbower, Mictena thanked the party for helping find Aloisus and put him to rest, but explained that his case shows why those who have died cannot be allowed to return to the Material Plane. This story helped to flesh out some of Mictena's motivation, and reinforced why making undead is a bad thing.
In Roslar's Coffer, I changed the unfettered phantom's tactics to make the fight a bit more dynamic. Midway through the fight Arbella Tharmethion became frightened by Garrid's violence and ran around and into an adjacent farmhouse shouting for help. Garrid yelled that she was betraying him like everyone else and pursued, using his incorporeal movement to run through the building's wall. The party had to find their way into the building and get to him before he harmed Arbella.
I suggest referring to the Palace of Teeth instead as the Palace of Fairies. It provides a nice surprise when the party gets there and realizes just what kind of fairies they are dealing with. Both Prince Uspid and Queen Carnassial got a comical dropping cage trap in front of their thrones, which would have been enough to capture creatures the size of tooth fairies but only bonked the PCs in the head and could be easily lifted off. I had Barzahk provide a brief explanation of why he granted the fairies a waystation; when they slipped in through Salighara's gate, he realized they could be a difficult problem if they spread through the Boneyard and multiplied out of control. Being granted a throne to fight over, they have kept themselves contained to one place and limited their numbers through their annual regicidal plots and power struggles. Barzahk's laid-back approach to setting up situations so that they resolve themselves contrasted with Mictena's desire to actively intervene in all situations.
Nine Eaves manor was enjoyable. I had Kishokish give the party some extra gems as thanks, but awkwardly ask that they please not take the expensive tablecloth and glassware they had looted from his house. I know it is listed under Treasure, but do we have to steal every piece of silverware from a guy's house? The party spent the night playing Kishokish's copy of the wyrewoods' RPG, with Kishokish GMing a one-shot. I gave the player's pregenerated characters to play out the last rooms of the dungeon. They were unable defeat the overpowered unique variant hydra at the end, due to Kishokish having concealed its critical weakness behind inscrutable puzzles and cyphers.
In Salighara's Scriptorium, I customized a few of the events for the PCs. The portraits in the Impossible Hallway became the wizard's teachers from magic school as the party all had the nightmarish realization they all had finals in classes they never studied for; they had to pass various knowledge checks to answer the portraits questions and proceed. The guardian scroll became a collection of notes about the population and guards of Roslar's Coffer that one of the PCs had sold to the Whispering Way, not realizing it would get everyone killed; after touching the notes, they became soaked in blood and flew up to attack him. In the sculpture garden, cutting free the face of the web-shrouded figure revealed a PC's husband who had been killed in the orc raid; he berated her for not saving him then exploded.
I changed the final fight with Mrs. Pedipalp. When the party found her, she grabbed the Dream Gate and burst into black smoke. The walls of the room burst into flame and collapsed, leaving the party standing in the middle of Roslar's Coffer on the night of the orc attack. The party got to relive some traumatic memories. Then the black smoke swirled together to form the PC's PCs from Kishokish's game, who each taunted their corresponding character for their individual failings before attacking. When the party defeated them the black smoke formed the overpowered unique variant hydra, but having learned of its vulnerability to cold the party was able to emerge victorious. When the hydra was defeated the party found themselves back in the room with the Dream Gate and Pedipalp slumped dead against the wall.
Following another forum poster's suggestion, I made the gardeners in Deathbower extremely corteous. Though they were insistent that the party had to be properly dead to proceed, they promised to make it painless and would give the party as long as they needed to prepare. They reassured the party that their fears were common and natural. They offered to bring a grief counselor, as talking about fears often makes them more managable. They pointed out the nearby statue of Ethariel and talked about the grace of accepting death. They offered to provide relaxing massages as they played relaxing music. The party did not take them up on any of their offers.
If you really want the players to hate the witchcrows in Deathbower, have one of them turn invisible then use Flyby Attack to steal the party's ioun stone and fly off. A monster trying to kill a PC is rude, but trying to steal their stuff is an unforgivable offense.
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During the opening scenes in Roslar's Coffer, I also included an encounter with the Coffer Crew from book 2 as a trio of local thugs and the young man who would become the Baffled Ghost in book 2's jewelry shop puzzle. As the party was leaving town to deal with the zombies, they saw the Crew outside the jewelry shop shaking down the young man. The party exchanged unpleasantries with the Crew and made an intimidate check to send them scurrying off. This gave the party an existing connection to the characters when they returned later on. I stole this idea whole cloth from another GM on Reddit's Pathfinder forum.
we had a lot of fun running it, but i don't envy your having to rebalance for 6 PCs
The advanced template is getting a good workout.
To the posts above who ran a Roslar's Coffer session before the main narrative: I thought of that but decided not to. I thought it would lessen the impact of waking up in coffins with a bunch of almost complete strangers. I wanted the party to have no connections.
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Like many others, I had some scenes in Roslar's Coffer before moving to the Boneyard. The town guard was stretched thin escorting workers to the Bastion of Light, so the guard captain had to recruit the PCs for an unexpected incident. A merchant coming into town was attacked by zombies along the road; her wagon got stuck in a ditch and she fled into town. Unbeknownst to the party, a Whispering Way agent had directed the attack then hid the fragment of Arnisant's shield among the merchant's goods. After the party defeated the zombies, they saw two cloaked riders in the distance: one was the cultist who had been watching them, the other Arazni who was pursuing the cultist as part of her investigation. Returning to the town square for the festival (I had set the starting date as the Sarenite holiday Burning Blades), the guard captain death-flagged himself by mentioning his imminent retirement next week and took the occasion to have one of the PCs take the public oath of office as his successor. She had just finished swearing to protect the town and its people when they all exploded
I explicitly didn't have any scenes in town before starting. I had each of the PCs describing what they were doing on the Night of the Pale, which is sort of like Golarion's Day of the Dead.
Then I cut in, told them that "everything went black, and you hear, almost as an echo of an echo, in a language you do not speak and yet understand, a whisper... 'the Radiant Fire'... roll for initiative!"
If I were to run the AP again - and I wouldn't, for any number of reasons - I would have set up a small adventure before the big moment like you did to built up the party's camaraderie.
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My party is nearing the end of the Palace of Teeth.
They haven't yet figured out that they can reverse the charisma damage done by the tooth fairies. As a result the fighter has a CHA of 3, the scout is down to 2, and the cleric has one scroll of lesser restoration left. I'm going to have to nudge them in the right direction, else they'll be doing the rest of the module with two almost useless characters.
They've already made a bargain with the rebel tooth fairy prince. When they encounter the queen I think I'll have her offer up the cure as part of a counter-bargain. The problem they'll then face is that the prince has all their missing teeth.
My party's nearing the end of the Scriptorium. They were shocked - shocked I tell you! - when they found out that there had been a coup there, and that the way to get the stamp they needed was to overturn the rebellion. Just like had happened at the first two waystations...
They're really hating the fact that there are so many monsters in this module that do ability damage, with the characteristics of the Boneyards meaning said damage is hard to heal.
They're also hating that the player's guide strongly hinted that the adventure was undead heavy and they prepared accordingly.
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My party's nearing the end of the Scriptorium. They were shocked - shocked I tell you! - when they found out that there had been a coup there, and that the way to get the stamp they needed was to overturn the rebellion. Just like had happened at the first two waystations...
They're really hating the fact that there are so many monsters in this module that do ability damage, with the characteristics of the Boneyards meaning said damage is hard to heal.
They're also hating that the player's guide strongly hinted that the adventure was undead heavy and they prepared accordingly.
They'll find those abilities come in really handy in books 2, 4, and 6
i personally like the fact that only half of the volumes are undead heavy. otherwise, it would be pretty boring in terms of monster variety.
had an oracle who was focused on using channels. later went with the soul warden archetype (leaving the campaign this week, sadly, as we get to the mid=point of Book 5, alas, movin' Californay-way). He was a bit peeved about not being able to destroy everything in Book 1... but boy oh boy did he do so in Book 2...
I just wanna flag an enormous thank you to Kresblain for their write up on some tweaks for this book, I especially love the Castrovella-Orpheus plotline! I hope you don't mind if I pinch a few of these ideas for when I start running soon. My group has just finished Carrion Crown and now that I'm done reading all 6 books of TG I've been skimming through these forums for advice, and I'm not disappointed!
Also I adore the psychopomp duo, nosois are just the best lil guys. I'm tempted to see if I can have them make recurring appearances throughout, like cheerleaders for the party during their darkest moments (because hoo boy they're gonna need a few pep talks I'm sure...)
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More questions about the "timeless" trait of the Boneyards:
* Can PCs rememorize spells there?
* If yes, how do they do it without sleeping? Do they just quietly rest while awake for 8 hours?
* Do spell durations run as normal? Or will the mage's Mage Armor last until they get out of the Boneyards?Thanks.
1 - yes
2 - have fun with it. clearly by the text of the Dead Roads, nightmares are seeping into this part of the Boneyard. Maybe its capacity to be "timeless" is being lost as a result, allowing / requiring the PCs to sleep. any sleep in the Boneyard should be troubling and terrible as a result of the broken portal.3 - yes.
3: I agree that the Planar Traits should have been brought up. In their absence, I think the best thing to do is for GMs to also not address them. I personally applied Boneyard traits for parts 1 and 2 of the Book, and removed them once they were transported to the Deadroads. Again, the book doesn’t point out any difference, but I considered the Dead Roads a separate planar body than the Boneyards - not quite its own plane, not quite part of the Boneyard or Material. This allows all creatures on the Dead Roads with Diseases and Poisons to use them.
Just came across this issue in our last session (after totally forgetting it for the entirety of Roslar's Tomb, mb). For one, we've got a paladin of Ragathiel in the party so he's got a -4 to all mental checks and skill checks until they leave, and I just found out about the hunger, thirst and age (less relevant) catching up once they leave (thank you to Serisan for flagging that!). First I debated just having Barzahk just handwave all those issues away but a) ehhhhh and b) my players are gonna worry about the effects right up until that happens and I dont want it weighing on them, so I think going with the "The Dead Roads dont suffer the planar traits" is perhaps a better move. Like they're a space between the Boneyard and the Material Plane rather than the Boneyard itself. It also gives a bit of the sense that they're one step closer to home than before.
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Apologies for a double post but in case anyone else finds this useful...
My group started Tyrant's Grasp a few days ago and I thought it'd be cool to post some of the changes I've made so far to adjust it for my group's interests. They've just finished up Part 2 and are about to venture into the Dead Roads.
1. I added a small segment set in Roslar's Coffer before The Incident(tm). I wanted them to feel more connected to the people, as none of the party are actually from the town recently, though the paladin lived here as a child when the orcs attacked, and has lived in Vigil since. He was returning home to visit after all these years and marveling at how far the town had come since the attack. Oops. Local tavern owner (half-orc man called Larod who's everyone's friend) was concerned that this month's mail courier hadn't shown up this morning, so they went out to investigate, found some bandits and the courier (Swashbuckler party member), retrieved the mail, got back, drinks all round. Then, that night, as the wizard is snuffing out his candle and looks out the tavern window, he spots a hooded, masked figure watching the sky in the town square, and a sudden blinding light... Cue Act 1.
2. One of these parcels with the courier actually had the shard in it. (Later there will be a revelation that the swashbuckler was tricked/used by the Whispering Way into delivering it - they grew up in the cult, and thought they'd gotten out years ago. Guess again.) There was some drama around a mysterious box that held... a wooden stake? A piece of debris? How strange, we'll think on it more tomorrow (AN: Tomorrow never came.) Since the PCs all had shared/adjacent rooms at the inn and were therefore in close proximity to the shard when it went off, I thought it made more sense as to why they all had obols.
3. I also gave faces to some other people of the town - the elderly Humblecut couple that sit in the town square garden every day, some local sassy kids (one of whom wants to be a crusader one day - oops again), a fretful jeweler and his bookshop-owning brother whom the wizard made friends with. Ripe with feels for later in Book1/Book 2.
4. I rewrote Roslar's Tomb a bit. I wanted to make it shorter, and I wasn't all that big on the mites or the random bugs (are there just Material Plane bugs chilling in the Boneyard?). The ostovites were creepy and great so they stayed. I cut down or combined some of the rooms, made it 2 floors instead of 3, made the Arazni statue puzzle more of a ritual (but they didn't do it, sad - I don't think I made it clear enough). Instead of mites, I had a particularly ambitious cacodaemon looking to score some tasty souls, who had gained command of a few ostovites eager for bones and a particularly hungry fiendish small earth elemental called Scuttlemaw that had nibbled its way up from the Lower Planes with the cacodaemon's direction. The paladin was very happy to finally have something to Smite Evil on after all the faux undead Bone Chariots and the Bone Cobra.
I remade the map in Dungeon Alchemist; I'll include a link and a brief detailing of the rooms in spoilers below. I did make a small mistake though, in that the upper floor isn't directly above the lower because of stair placement. Doesn't change how things play out though, but I'll probably fix this for the tomb in Book 2.
A1. Red Shrikes Sarcophagi: as written
A2. Retainers Burial Chamber: combines A2 and A3 from book, Ostovite & Bone chariot fight, 3 pearls (20g each)
A3. Great Hall: A4 in book, murals and stuff, dead Celedon with Ostovite in its chest, shelves containing 5 CLW potions, Create Water wand (28 charges), silver holy symbol of Aroden, 12 candles. Arches to A4 (top right) and A6 (bottom right), double doors to A5 (east wall)
A4. Servants crypt: A5 in book, as written
A5. Roslar and Abdell's Tomb: combines A6 and A7 from book (Roslar loved that horse, why not be buried alongside it?), Roslar to the north, Abdell to the south, Bone Honse fight, a dead graverobber who got caught by the Celedons and hid in the sarcophagus but died of their wounds, carrying 10lbs of silver, ivory and gold worth 260g, jewels from the bridle worth 65g, 87g in coins, 2 lesser res scrolls, and the jar of forbidden gooseberry jam from the offerings (as well as some dried white lilies and a mundane offering bowl for context).
A6. Storage and Stairs Up: combines A8 and A9 from book, Bone Cobra fight (to guard the stairwell), mural on southern wall of Roslar kissing Arazni's hand, stairs up to A7.
A7. Family Busts: A10 in book, description as written but instead of the mites/hair I put Number 3 the Celedon, trapped between the Cobra downstairs and Scuttlemaw in A8. Their legs are all mangled but they're still defensive, thought can be talked around. Door in south wall to A8, stairs down to A6.
A8. Shrine to Roslar and Arazni: combines A11 and A16 from book, Arazni shrine to west, Roslar atop a horse statue to the east (Dungeon Alchemist didn't have a horse statue sadly). Corridors to A10 to the east, door to A9 in the south wall. Scuttlemaw (Fiendish Small Earth Elemental) fight - he's been put on guard in this room and attacks when any creature other than the cacodaemon comes through, but in the meantime he's snacking on the Roslar statue. I've put the new puzzle in quotes to break up the wall of text (and I don't know how to do small text...)
The Arazni shrine puzzle, instead of tiles, requires several actions to be performed at the shrine.
- First, the petitioner must say "My heart and sword to the Red Crusader," upon which the ceremonial sword shines and can be lifted from the basin (its stuck until then).
- Then the sword must be lifted and the petitioner must kneel as if offering it in service, upon which the statue of Arazni animates and offers a hand forward, palm down.
- Last, the petitioner must kiss the hand, and the statue will return to its normal position, and the secret unlocks.
These steps can be discovered from clues in the murals throughout the tomb and/or with a successful Knowledge (religion), Knowledge (history), or other suitable check. If the PCs have actively paid attention to the murals but don't work it out/go back to check, you could give a bonus to their roll to recall the process. The compartment holds the mithral breastplate and mwk steel shield (note: it doesn't specify whether its heavy or light - I made it heavy for the paladin since no one else used a shield.)
A9. Hall of Accolades: combines A13, A14, and A15 from book, contains murals and display cases of weapons and armor, tapestries, trophies, and the hanging gorgon in the center of the room. There's a hole in the bottom right corner where Team Abbadon crawled through. Cacodaemon and ostovite (hiding in the gorgon) fight. There are a bunch of mundane weapons here in case the party felt put out that they didn't get to keep all their gear, but they didn't go for it. Also the leather bandolier (40g) of 4 CMW potions atop a shelf and the mwk silver longsword in the gorgon hide.
A10. Entrance Hall: A18 from book, as written. Celedon Number 2 has a shortsword with the Red Shrike motif (see Castrovella stuff below) stuffed through its gut, though they doesn't seem overly bothered by it.5. I've added the Castrovella plotline in that Kresblain talked about above - they don't suspect much yet but they have her shortsword. They brandished it against Garrid Tharmethion to taunt him away from the wizard and he was furious, screaming about besmirching the honour of the Shrikes and the honour of Roslar.
"Mrs. Pedipalp" might be my favorite NPC name ever.