Disappointed with book 6? Spoilers ahead, fair warning.

[Dracovar]

Sloanzilla wrote:

I'm still a little confused:

* Regular Radiant Fire goes off: Baphy is destroyed but regenerates and still has his five or so remaining nukes. Players die but keep their souls.
* Modified (in Book 5) Radiant Fire goes off: Baphy is destroyed but regenerates and loses use of his five or so remaining nukes. Players die and also lose their souls for reasons I still don't understand.

5 nukes, especially with one placed in one of the world's biggest cities, is a pretty big deal, but so is an epic lich even without five nukes. A CR30 guy can probably do every bit as much damage without the nukes, IMO, it just might take a couple rounds.

I wish maybe he lost a couple mythic levels, or something, to signify a more significant reduction in power.

The idea with the nukes is kind of fun, but really, TB could just as easily fire off a Limited Wish for a Control Winds, and meta magic it with Widen to decimate large cities, armies, etc. Then, just turn a couple squads of Wraiths loose on the survivors. Sort of why the ending sucks so much - you sacrifice your leveled character to stop future uses of the Radiant Fire, and force TB back to regenerate himself. Whoop de doo! Means squat.

TB could systematically nuke a couple of cities/day easily with Tornadoes, and what's going to stop him? Well, not the PC's from this AP....unless a kind DM implements a certain Book 5 sidebar.

EXCEPT - I forgot, if going forward TB is now hamstrung by 2E casting rules, he's really been neutered way worse than losing his Radiant Fire nukes...

[CorvusMask]

Well if lore wise 2e's spellcasting is closer to in universe magic power level, that DOES make radiant fire seem much more unique powerful weapon :p

(that said high level casters in 2e does still have stuff like earthquake heightened to tenth level and such to destroy settlements with. But them being harder to pull of casually is good thing since it does explain why wizard god kings don't just go around soloing everything.)

[Scharlata]

pjrogers wrote:

ARMY OF LIFE ORDER OF BATTLE

Battle of Immenwood*
Exact date unknown 4719 AR

Thank you for your very helpful assumptions and listings. I'm feeling a little more comfortable after having at least some basic idea in my GM's mind.

[Yakman]

The Shifty Mongoose wrote:

Actually, that's slightly what I had in mind for a PC if I ever played in this. Though it'd be more like, two former Whispering Wayers who ended up becoming spiritualist & phantom, discovering the truth, and deciding, "We have to stop this right now." Pharasma's lenience could be because of their realization that they were taking solace in evil this whole time.

...Though things might get tricky if, at the end of Book 1, they willingly agree with and submit to the primary antagonist, and the other PCs just stand back and watch.

the antagonist in Book 1 is pretty hard for a non-suicidal PC get on the same side as. She wants to rip the PCs souls to shreds and might well do the same to all the people in RC just to figure out the differences.

remember, remember 'I'm just playing my character' characters aren't worth playing at all.

Players should develop PCs who want to work together to achieve the adventure's objectives. Otherwise, the player is just trying to frustrate other people's fun, and that's no fun at all.

[pjrogers]

Scharlata wrote:

pjrogers wrote:

ARMY OF LIFE ORDER OF BATTLE

Battle of Immenwood*
Exact date unknown 4719 AR

Thank you for your very helpful assumptions and listings. I'm feeling a little more comfortable after having at least some basic idea in my GM's mind.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm very slowly moving ahead on this, mainly waiting for official PFS sanctioning of the AP since I'd be running book 6 for PFS characters in campaign mode. If/when I do this, I'd like to emphasize the battle elements of the AP using a revised set of the Mass Combat rules from Ultimate Campaign. Here's a very rough first draft of a battlefield hex map. However, it's fairly low down the page of my current to-do list.

[pjrogers]

The one other thing I did was to try and put together a timeline for the events of Book 6 along with the Siege of Gallowspire and Passing the Torch 2.

CAMPAIGN TIMELINE

Day 1 – Destruction of Vigil and TB’s escape from Gallowspire

Day 28 - TB v Arazani at Renchurch

Day 35 – TB uses radiant fire at Hammer Rock

Day 40 (day 1 battle timeline, see below) - TB takes first wave of Fallowdeep forces to Immenwood outside of Absalom

Day 42 – PCs return to Lastwall (PCs spend two weeks doing book 5)

Day 43 – PCs go to Fallowdeep

BATTLE TIMELINE

Day 1 (day 40 of campaign timeline) - Initial wave of TB’s forces in arrives in Immenwood

Day 2 - Lyanthari closes teleportation circles

Day 3 - AP PCs arrive at Fallowdeep

Day 4

Day 5 - AP PCs arrive at Immenwood battlefield from Fallowdeep (start rolling for Passing the Torch 2 random event)

Day 6 - Flash Point Encounters 1 (start rolling for Siege of Gallowspire conclusion)

Day 7 - Flashpoint Encounters 2

Day 8 - Tyrant’s Grasp Book 6 concluding day

I'm not totally happy with this and would welcome any comments, suggestions, etc.

[Mightypion]

Our ending differed.

1: PC had played WOTR before

2: PCs got the idea, only mildly metagamey, to research which reachable and relatively reasonable entity had the most impressive track record of permanently killing very dangerous things.

3: As their souls were basically about the be shattered anyway, there were far fewer hindrances to offering these souls to Nocticula. They needed to add a major favor from Pharasma on top, but she agreed.

4: We had Tar Baphon got nuts when he hit 200 hp, at which point he conventionally blasted the party, then Nocticula appeared, but Tar-Baphon was wise enough to have a contingency specifically triggering when he was about to be assasinated by Nocticula (he did the same research, concerning things with the capability and willingsness to kill him), mythic timestop on him, and the last thing to attack him (the parties paladin who was pretty down by that point) that was not Nocticula. (Intention being to take her most competetent cats paw out during timestop).
He also shouted "Hahaha Baphomet, I am smarter then you!".

5: He then tried to use a concentrated single target version of his nuke on Nocticula, cackling how the nuke stream would incinerate even her, as Nocticula cannot move faster then light, as soon as the timestop ends.

6: But the Paladin jumped into the death ray in between T-B and Nocticula.

7: T-B: "The ray will burn you so quickly, Nocticula will still perish anyway, its cute how a Paladin attempts to sacrifice himself for a demon lord, and it still wont be enough! MWAHAHAHA".

8: Timestop ends, T-B thus self nukes before the nuke ray reaches nocticula. Last thing the Paladin hears is "I will see if I can save your allies" telepathically from Nocticula.

9: Nocticula had a contingency activating whenever she was about to be hit by Tar-Baphons nukes outside of her home plane (she does proper opposition research, and the PCs have been quite forthcoming with waht they knew of the whole nuke thing), which is to plane shift her, and every creature hostile to Tar-Baphon within a 60 foot radius, into her citadel (figuring that anyone hostile to T-B and alive at that point is a possibly valuable asset that would greatly appreciate not getting nuked along with her).

10: 2 party members who were in range of the shift survive but the Paladin (fried before nocticulas contigency activated) and the ranger (not in range) do not. Nocticula shifts herself back to the startstone and ascends via it.

11: GM at the end: I really need to stop with those, "kindly ask Nocticula to do a hit on the big bad" plots. Good thing this is no longer an issue in second edition.

[Mightypion]

I would also add that the discussion on how to kill Tar Baphon with Nocticula were creative.

Proposals:

--Drop the Demon Isle of Deskari on him (Deskari died twice in our WOTR, and Noct provided most consensual kill stealing services on both him and Baphomet, turns out she is an excellent employer if you are setting her up for easy and fairly risk free real estate aquisition), as effing nobody every had any use for it anyway. Rejected because he probably would not care all that much, logistic concerns, collateral damage.

--Thoroughly disable Tar-Baphons movement capabilitys, chain him to the demon isle of Deskari and let him sink forever into the endless depths of the Ocean of Ishiar.
Noct:"Some Qlippoth Lord will eat him, and he will respawn."

--Create in T-B the perception that Nocticula knows where his phylactery is. Figure out, based on his reaction, where it actually is.
Noct: "Unfortunatly, he actually does not know himself where it is. I checked."

--Create a heavily trapped illusion of the Starstone
This was actually done as a final "f--k you" if the heroes + Nocticula would fail.

--Steal the Starstone before Tar-Baphon gets there. Noct being "been there tried that, discussed it at length with Aroden (parties jaw dropping begins). The thing is unmoveable, if you touch it well, I have reasons to not do that in the current situation".

--Create an illusion in which Tar-Baphon perceives that he won.

--Nocticula very decisivly shot down any approaches involving either Rovagug or the Dark Tapestry, with the words "Look, if you, hypotheticially speaking, give me a choice between assasinating 2 out of 3 possible idiots, one being some idiot messing with either Rovagugs prison or the dark tapestry, one being an idiot named Koschtschie and one being an idiot named Tar-Baphon, I would assassinate the idiot messing with either Rovagugs prison twice."

--Create an illusionary star stone, which makes an illusionary reason akin to the reason why Nocticula does not want to use it.
Noct:"Could have worked if we were talking about someone with more then 20 Wisdom. T-B is too entitled to think that any type of rule possibly applies to him, and I am saying that as an effing demon lord.
Problem one with the star stone, anyone who ascends with it can be destroyed via it exhibit A Aroden the most disappointly replaced, problem 2, too many ascension with it results in a massive degree of messing with causality and reality essentially resulting in tentacles appreciation days forever for everyone via omniplanar horror from the dark tapestry invasion. Why the do you think so much stuff involving so many planes happens on Golarion?
Oh, if you think that unmaking Tar Baphon via the starstone after he ascended, well, doing this essentially requires that you pass the test yourself, and then completely erase yourself from reality, and in turn disappear whichever starstone ascender you want to unmake, although this entity will still have a history but you will have never existed. And it almost certainly counts towards the too many ascensions invite in horrors from the dark tapestry metric, probably even more so then just ascending. And yes, the star stone is probably a trojan horse from the dark tapestry."

Party picks up jaws from the floor.

Nocticula:"Oh my, well, I am a demon lord and could be just making stuff up."