This is a spoiler-filled resource thread for GMs running the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path, specifically for the fourth adventure, "Gardens of Gallowspire."
A minor point, but one I just noticed: as a shield guardian, Timberward should have fast healing 5.
(This will make a lot more sense when people see this great adventure in a few months, of course.)
Do you all write all of the books of an AP in advance ? I always thought the outline was written and then they were written as they were published
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Do you all write all of the books of an AP in advance ? I always thought the outline was written and then they were written as they were publishedA minor point, but one I just noticed: as a shield guardian, Timberward should have fast healing 5.
(This will make a lot more sense when people see this great adventure in a few months, of course.)
Book 4's street date is in 2 months. I'm sure he was reviewing a print proof or some other document in the QA process before final printing.
So I'm planning on playing out a little of the fight between WT and Arazni at the end of Book 4. Actually, I'm significantly altering it lol by bringing in some mythic heroes the players encountered in a previous campaign to soften up WT before Arazni. (spoiler: it won't help lol).
I know that the WT's and Arazni's stats are given (both in Mythic Realms) and I see Arazni's stats are slightly tweaked for this AP. Is there a plan to revisit the WT's stats or should I just "go it alone" on this one? Because, honestly, there's a few character choices I'd question in the WT's stat block.
Because, honestly, there's a few character choices I'd question in the WT's stat block.
*Cough*Doesn't meet the prereq for Craft Construct*Cough*
So, I was cross-referencing Arazni’s stats with those in Mythic Realms and I noticed that she suddenly has Martial Weapon Proficiency (rapier), which I appreciate (since she wasn’t proficient with it inherently), but cross-referencing her other feats I noticed something else: she just has that feat; she has all her other feats and so she just randomly has a bonus feat. Why the random bonus feat? Just to make her stats work? (Because that Leadership isn’t really doing much for her in my opinion)
EDIT: By the same coin: Why is Arazni’s SLAs from Divine Source not written down anywhere? And why is prismatic spray suddenly a spell she can cast mythically?
I'm a little sad at the intentionally ambiguous resolution of Arazni's story ark. I can understand the 'not giving a solid answer to avoid messing with continuity when playing other 1e APs', but I expect there will be a canonical outcome encoded in the 2e campaign setting update.
I guess its too much to ask what that might be (as its a spoiler for 2e content).
Any thoughts on how the bloodstone or periapt's scrying divination/messaging link should work in the various ambiguous resolutions? (It sounds like the blood in the periapt is not the reason for its normal magical effects, so none of the panoply's standard/bonus effects would change based on the GM's preferred resolution). The bloodstones destruction requirements would not be met either, so I assume it still works/is magical regardless of the resolution. However if the PCs choose to try to scry/communicate through both/either of them, it would seem to break the ambiguousness.
In my own campaign, our Paladin is planning on maybe serving Arazni since I let slip she is in this campaign (the art for book 3 didn't hide this either >_>) so uhhhhhh we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking I'll run it that she's destroyed but ascends to higher divnity as a non-evil deity, and her First Paladin is the PC, and that'll give him some shit to live up to (he's playing a vindictive bastard, so this REALLY fits well into his redemption arc).
Eager to see how it plays out in canon, though.
Sooo….A weird thing with the Gustari fight: the section beforehand mentions “As these foes can fly (or, in Gustari’s case, air walk while riding her phantom mount)…”
That’s fine and dandy, but the phantom steed spell (of which the Graveknight ability is based) can only air walk for one round at a time, after which it falls. I just gave Gustari a few scrolls of air walk that the Daughters of Urgathoa cast on the steed (which brings up the weird situation of if the quasi-real horse/hippogriff/whatever is a valid target for that spell), but that still seems like a weird oversight…
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In my own campaign, our Paladin is planning on maybe serving Arazni since I let slip she is in this campaign (the art for book 3 didn't hide this either >_>) so uhhhhhh we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking I'll run it that she's destroyed but ascends to higher divnity as a non-evil deity, and her First Paladin is the PC, and that'll give him some s*~% to live up to (he's playing a vindictive bastard, so this REALLY fits well into his redemption arc).
Eager to see how it plays out in canon, though.
From page 55...
For now, PCs who worship Arazni and gain divine spellcasting from her continue to do so
In my own campaign, our Paladin is planning on maybe serving Arazni since I let slip she is in this campaign (the art for book 3 didn't hide this either >_>) so uhhhhhh we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking I'll run it that she's destroyed but ascends to higher divnity as a non-evil deity, and her First Paladin is the PC, and that'll give him some s*~% to live up to (he's playing a vindictive bastard, so this REALLY fits well into his redemption arc).
Eager to see how it plays out in canon, though.
From page 55...
For now, PCs who worship Arazni and gain divine spellcasting from her continue to do so
Oh yeah, I know that. Like I said, I was just curious about what the Canon reason for that is going to be. I like to avoid homebrewing any major lore changes to cosmology since my table plays all our games in the same shared universe and we try to keep them Canon to each other and Paizos setting as much as possible. :D
So something’s bothering me (no surprise): the adventure implies that Arazni sends the PCs to Arcadia once she realizes what the Radiant Fire is and how it connects to the shattered shield, but in book 3 the PCs got the manuscript of exposition (AKA The Testimony of Count Jomah Gildais) so they already know that the Tyrant’s nukes are because of the shield fragments. Wouldn’t the PCs just tell that to Arazni and she’d have her revelation earlier?
I feel like there’s something I’m not quite understanding with Arazni’s reasoning. The adventure implies that she only realizes that the fragments and the Radiant Fire are one and the same at the very last moment—like she realized something the PCs didn’t (which she did, with respect to the kumaru tree) and only had enough time to teleport the PCs and give a cryptic message. If she knew when she saw them earlier then it seems like it would break the plot.
Is there something I’m just not understanding?
So something’s bothering me (no surprise): the adventure implies that Arazni sends the PCs to Arcadia once she realizes what the Radiant Fire is and how it connects to the shattered shield, but in book 3 the PCs got the manuscript of exposition (AKA The Testimony of Count Jomah Gildais) so they already know that the Tyrant’s nukes are because of the shield fragments. Wouldn’t the PCs just tell that to Arazni and she’d have her revelation earlier?
I feel like there’s something I’m not quite understanding with Arazni’s reasoning. The adventure implies that she only realizes that the fragments and the Radiant Fire are one and the same at the very last moment—like she realized something the PCs didn’t (which she did, with respect to the kumaru tree) and only had enough time to teleport the PCs and give a cryptic message. If she knew when she saw them earlier then it seems like it would break the plot.
Is there something I’m just not understanding?
Ah, but she didn't necessarily know that Aroden had crafted the Shield out of that particular wood. The webstore blurb for Part 5 (as of this posting, at the very least) implies that Aroden and Tar-Baphon both had some rather dark secrets in their past, ones that Arazni knew nothing about... and ones that were connected to her homeland. It wasn't until she could literally feel the weapon/shield's connection to her homeland that she realized what wood it was.
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I mean, the thing I quoted was what Golden Road part of the core book says according to photos I've seen. (in universe people think her being missing means she is either dead or managed to successfully escape from Geb). So it is canon in 2e that her status is still unknown unless I misunderstood what you meant?
Either way, I think it would be actually kind of cool of Arazni showed up thousands of years later like Whispering Tyrant originally did when Aroden first killed him, but we'd never see that in AP so probably couple of years or maybe even ten until she comes back(unless she is actually perma dead)
So no comment on using the bloodstone or periapt to track/spy/divination post book 4?
The fake puzzle is hilarious. Even better because the other puzzles in the AP will have conditioned people to just start solving it.
Here's something that made me chuckle: The simulacrum has Turn Undead. Pretty sure that's not what it would have from the Necromancy school.
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Here's something that made me chuckle: The simulacrum has Turn Undead. Pretty sure that's not what it would have from the Necromancy school.
It's technically a legal choice for evil necromancers; unlike clerics they have no alignment-based restrictions on this.
It is worth noting that Turn Undead is actually significantly better than Command Undead if you find yourself battling a rival necromancer. Command Undead has a HD cap that is only a tiny fraction of what an enemy necromancer can bring to bear against you, and even if the targets fail their saves you must still succeed on an opposed charisma check to wrest control from the other spellcaster. From a pure action economy standpoint, Turn Undead is the more useful since it has no target cap and is much more likely to work due to not requiring the opposed charisma check.
While it's not the intuitive choice for an evil necromancer, it's a perfectly valid and justifiable one.
Here's something that made me chuckle: The simulacrum has Turn Undead. Pretty sure that's not what it would have from the Necromancy school.It's technically a legal choice for evil necromancers; unlike clerics they have no alignment-based restrictions on this.
It is worth noting that Turn Undead is actually significantly better than Command Undead if you find yourself battling a rival necromancer. Command Undead has a HD cap that is only a tiny fraction of what an enemy necromancer can bring to bear against you, and even if the targets fail their saves you must still succeed on an opposed charisma check to wrest control from the other spellcaster. From a pure action economy standpoint, Turn Undead is the more useful since it has no target cap and is much more likely to work due to not requiring the opposed charisma check.
While it's not the intuitive choice for an evil necromancer, it's a perfectly valid and justifiable one.
I'm aware of the legality of the character choice, I was referring to the fact that the Whispering Tyrant proper has Command Undead. And simulacra are heavily implied to be exact copies of the original at a lower HD (and this implication is supported by the Tyrant's simulacrum's feat choices being very similar to Tar-Baphon proper).
2e's canonical outcome seems to be "Arazni is still missing and Geb is forced to get off his incorporeal ass and rule Geb once again"Not quite, although the second part is mostly true.
I understand that some people want to have Arazni's fate go differently than what we've decided for her in 2E, so "she's gone and has no further role to play in this AP" is the way to leave this open for GMs. It also firmly puts the PCs on their own for the last two adventures of the AP: the patron who's been guiding them thus far is now no longer available.
The "she still grants spells" language is primarily to avoid utterly hamstringing those rare PCs who, in the course of the campaign, decided to follow Arazni as their divine patron (which seems at least plausible, if not likely). There was some back-and-forth about this here in the office, and "those characters just need to find another patron, I suppose" was one of the options we considered, but rejected.
But, ultimately, Arazni has a role to play in 2E, so if this adventure gives the tone of "gone...for now," that's actually just what we needed.
My former-Iomedean Paladin, turned Vindictive Bastard, is absolutely going to follow Arazni. Just how I'm going to work that in alignment-wise is... Up in the air, but would it be Totally Impossible for him to serve her as she Was, and be honoring that memory, receive power from her present?
So... What happens if any of the slain graveknights regenerate before finishing book 4? To my understanding, is possible for a graveknight to res only a day later. I find it hard to believe that these graveknights would just sit back and chill after being murdered by agents of Arazni. Is this just a instant of fudging the rolls as a DM so that doesn't happen?
The exploration of Gallowspire pretty much presumes the PC's will have some random encounters along the way, so if a graveknight respawns it should hardly be an issue. Most of them will be significantly diminished as threats if the PC's looted them earlier anyways.
Beyond this, if the PC's know what the graveknights are they can take precautions to prevent this. Many parties will have the means of destroying the armor (both plane shift and disintegrate are save-or-die to a regenerating graveknight), and those that don't can use the time honored tradition of throwing the armor at the bottom of a deep hole and dumping heavy rocks on top.
So something’s bothering me (no surprise): the adventure implies that Arazni sends the PCs to Arcadia once she realizes what the Radiant Fire is and how it connects to the shattered shield, but in book 3 the PCs got the manuscript of exposition (AKA The Testimony of Count Jomah Gildais) so they already know that the Tyrant’s nukes are because of the shield fragments. Wouldn’t the PCs just tell that to Arazni and she’d have her revelation earlier?
I feel like there’s something I’m not quite understanding with Arazni’s reasoning. The adventure implies that she only realizes that the fragments and the Radiant Fire are one and the same at the very last moment—like she realized something the PCs didn’t (which she did, with respect to the kumaru tree) and only had enough time to teleport the PCs and give a cryptic message. If she knew when she saw them earlier then it seems like it would break the plot.
Is there something I’m just not understanding?
Book 5 answered this question: Arazni only sent the PCs to Arcadia when she realizes that the shield is made of the wood from the kumaru tree (which she didn’t know because she wasn’t there when Aroden made it). Had nothing to do with her not knowing that the shield fragments are what the Tyrant is using to nuke places.
Why didn't the simulacrum attack Amaretos ? From what I read, it seems that Amaretos is in K10 for some time (long enough to make K10 a study). I know that most of Tar-Baphon's servants are now controlled by the graveknights, but what about Otto for exemple ? He doesn't seem controlled. Why did he not attempt to warn the simulacrum, and thus Tar-Baphon, about the intruders ? Or is there something bounding the simulacrum in this room ? Did I miss something ?
So I’ve been looking through some of the Lost Omens books (and I started prepping the PFS2 scenario Flooded King’s Court) and I found an interesting thing (can’t give a proper source for this quote, but I’m pretty sure it’s in the Lost Omens World Guide):
"When the watcher-lord limped into Absalom with the remainder of his shattered forces, he brought a very unexpected aide‑de‑camp—a goblin named Zusgut—along with an entire goblin tribe. Though the city watch was skeptical, Ulthun swore by his companions and made it clear they had been critical to his escape."
So…Where/when along Ulthun’s journey did he come across Zusgut and the Crookedtoe tribe? I want to make sure I get the canon right, because part of me thinks it would be super funny to have this goblin as one of the honor guard during Part 3 of Book 4, but at the same time I find that really irresponsible for both Zusgut and Ulthun because (for Ulthun) he’d be leading an entire tribe of goblins—including children—to their deaths against the Tyrant or (for Zusgut) he’d be abandoning his tribe in favor of…marching to his death against the Tyrant.
I think this is a reference to the We Be Heroes Free RPG Day adventure.
I think this is a reference to the We Be Heroes Free RPG Day adventure.This is correct.
Ah. Didn't know that. Don't really follow the "We Be Goblins" modules too closely.
I'm statting up my creatures into hero lab and I noticed with the Horse Thing it is listed as a variant Warsworn. Is there a specific variant that it has? On HL it is listed as CR16 and in the book it is CR11.
Is there a template being applied that I'm missing?
I just played the one in the book.
Fair points! Thank you for your responses!
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Had the Arazni reveal 2 weeks ago and the journey up until Gardens of Gallowspire tonight. I had set aside most of 1 session to the reveal, thinking that the players would have a lot of interaction with her. Turns out they were scared both as PCs and as players and opted to just let the demigod talk at them so as not to offend her.
Ossua + troop was not much of a threat to the party. Pretty unmemorable encounter. To be fair, it was a rough week out of game and that may have been a factor.
Horse Thing was basically shut down by Thorny Entanglement. The players gave me some guff about how lazy the monster name was as I had zoomed in to only show the name when they ID'd it.
Gibrous + Boggles was remarkably painful to the PCs. 2 archers + 1 animal companion failed a confusion from a boggle due to horrid rolls. Because of this and how the combat started, I had Gibrous randomly targeting and generally using bad tactics. The PCs eventually turned this around, in large part due to having taken Dondun as a companion via Leadership and getting a dispel magic against the confusion. The warehouse was set on fire and I had Gibrous jaunt out through the wall and mentally reset so that the PCs could actually get down to the story. They ended up mercy killing Gibrous with the realization that he was a terrible liability to leave alive. They had some feels as players about that, which I thought was pretty satisfying for everyone.
We skipped the tomb giant and the haunt. The party was just two well structured to do anything other than waste valuable play time dealing with these encounters.
DRAGON! This was a rough encounter for the party. Dragon landed a dispel on the paladin/swash after eating a 50 damage hit opener, then followed it up with a shadow breath against both archers. Pally/swash drank a potion of fly while slowly falling to re-engage. Archers started to deal with the situation when the dragon moved in with an Imp Vital Strike bite + snatch. They took him down to the morale condition before I could do anything else and he escaped with 2 HP. It felt glorious.
Pegasi were funny, but they're just not a threat against my players. We did the social part of it and I had realized during prep that the "right way" to handle the bluff was for 7 pegasi to use Aid Another on Dawnwatch's bluff, giving him an effective +28 to the check. The party fell for it, but they all had means of flight so it was no big deal.
We did the social part of it and I had realized during prep that the "right way" to handle the bluff was for 7 pegasi to use Aid Another on Dawnwatch's bluff, giving him an effective +28 to the check.
Oh now that is dirty! *Scribbles down notes*
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Gallowgarden GOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Tonight was my group's first Roll20 session due to COVID-19. One of my players has somewhat severe dyslexia and had never used the platform, so there was a bit of a learning curve there. He was very focused on getting everything up and running so we can continue the campaign. I'm also just learning the GM side of things there, so I've got my own hiccups to deal with. Still, we made it through 5 encounters in one night, which I think is a rousing success for 4.5 hours. Generally speaking, though, the encounters are heavily weighted to the players' favor initially, then dramatically ramp up in difficulty toward the crater.
It should be noted that the miasma is the real threat here. It's negated by Life Bubble. My players had it.
Flytraps: The players had some nightmares about their prior encounter with the giant flytrap in book 3. I think we were all relieved to find that the party was much better equipped to deal with the situation, both from a spatial and capability standpoint. Barely lasted 1.5 rounds.
Adenos: My players learned from the pegasi encounter that sensing motives and paladin laser sight (Detect Evil) are essential here. Adenos does not have a Bluff bonus to speak of. As such, the shambling mounds didn't get triggered and the party absolutely obliterated the daemon.
Moldwretches: They're speedbumps. The players were extremely grateful that they found diamond dust that they had forgotten to purchase in book 3 when there was still a city to shop in.
Furcifer: This was a little rough, but I think a big part of it was my strained prep for the session. Swallow Whole is a serious issue for the party and I misread the Utopia ability to think that the players still needed to make the Will save to recognize that it wasn't just part of the terrain after it attempted the tongue grab. Still, it was mostly the miss chance that was the problem.
Gustari: I was worried about the possibility of a charge crit. It's ok, the paladin didn't get crit but did crit her back. The fight was effectively over in 1 round. The Daughters of Urgathoa are not a significant threat at this level.
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Forgot to update last week for upper Gallowspire. Notes will be shorter here. Some things modified due to time constraints and the size of the floor.
Skipped the Nightwing and the combat against the Daughters. The Nightwing would have been challenging-ish, but it didn't feel like something that was going to contribute to the experience and was also not a mappable encounter for Roll20 due to 3D combat constraints. Daughters literally can't touch my players. They RP'd and I handwaved the combat.
Gravesludge: it was entertaining to play with, but its tactics were ill-suited to my party. Wall of Ectoplasm has very low HP, so it's easily burst down. Best tactic for it was to burrow/stealth and use its ability to cheat action economy for a 2 attack standard action, so that's what it did.
Otto + Loambones: I accidentally had this combat in I3 because I totally missed the transition to I4. Whoops. The squeeze up made for interesting interactions. I think the combat was more challenging for the space constraints. That said, it's 2 CR 9 critters. They got roflstomped because the PCs are 12.
Players did not approach I5 and due to time, I had to handwave the combat in I6. The Tempest Guards could have actually been interesting as they have decent bonuses to hit and reasonable damage.
Dybbuk: The players made really good use of an Antimagic Field to disrupt the primary tactics of possession and dominate. Combat went relatively smoothly with that in mind. The best part was the hunter/slayer using Hydraulic Push on an animal companion to push it into the AMF when it got possessed.
Yhalas: Players won initiative, she got 1 round of actions. Hilarious build, needed some meat in front of her to work with. Probably "best" if she enters 2-3 rounds into the fight against the Tempest Guards instead of being a separate encounter. Definitely gauge this against your PCs relative damage output. My party puts out pretty high DPR for a party of 3 gestalts.