The Flooded King's Court


GM Discussion

Dark Archive 3/5 **

I'm pretty concerned about Marcon's statistics in Tier 3-4. Specifically...

Marcon's Tier 3-4 Stats:

He has an AC 35. This is unreachable by attack rolls at level 3. If the party is more powerful than four level 3 characters, it bumps pretty quickly to 37. A character specialized in what they do (i.e. a fighter) with a +1 weapon at level 3 is only going have a +12 to hit at best (+4 STR, +4 Expert, +3 Level, +1 item bonus). They still can't hit the creature short of a natural 20.

An Elite Ghast, per Bestiary rules, should have an AC of 20 (18 for Ghast, +2 for Elite).

Dark Archive 4/5 5/55/5 ****

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That seems like a pretty clear typo. Looks like they probably tried to correct the HP for the elite template, and changed the AC instead. The correct numbers are probably

AC & HP:
AC 20 and 45 HP base.

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

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It is a typo! The correct stats appear on Page 24, since parties with enough challenge points face that version of him.

Dark Archive 3/5 **

Kate Baker wrote:
It is a typo! The correct stats appear on Page 24, since parties with enough challenge points face that version of him.

Thank you Kate!

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, Texas—Austin

In area B3, there is a note that says "For the Ilnudar family matter".

Is that a name we have heard before that I am not remembering, or a new plot hook?

5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle

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Guessing it's a new plot hook? Might be wrong, but I searched around and couldn't find any evidence that the name has come up before.

Ran this one last night. With the right energy, this is a super fun scenario to run. I like that there are a lot of great opportunities for the GM to set the mood and really bring the place alive for the players.

I highly recommend giving out individual copies of the play to the players, with each characters' parts marked for ease of reading. Makes it flow nicely and everyone can really get into silly goblin character when they perform it, which is hilarious.

Also, sometimes the font that certain handouts are printed in - Drandle Dreng's note is a prime offender in this case - is really not great for people with less than perfect eyesight. (I cut and paste the text to print it with larger, more readable font.)

4/5 *****

I’m a little confused about the society/lore check to connect Marcon Tinol to Goodman Hugen and House Candren, and the implications it has for presenting Marcon as a character.

Based on the response to “who put you here,” it seems that Marcon wants to keep his past to himself, using a vague promise to reveal the secret of “a family in absalom.” He seems very cagey about revealing his past. Fundamentally, he wants leverage to bargain for his freedom.

How exactly are PCs making the leap from “this undead person knows something about some family in Absamon” to “this undead has dirt on Goodman Hugen of House Candren.”

I was planning on this encounter’s tension arising — at least in part — from the fact PCs have to blindly trust a ghoul. That’s a tough decision! However, perhaps Marcon is willing to share the details of his story?

I just don’t see how PCs would even think to attempt a society check otherwise. Perhaps the check is to recognize the name of a minor accountant who disappeared 500 years ago and worked for the Candrens... but that seems unlikely.

How a GM chooses to RP Marcon, and how willing he is to share his story will greatly effect how PCs react to him.

(Typing this on mobile — hopefully my question makes sense.)

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

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No, it totally makes sense! I agree that this part of the adventure can go in a lot of different directions depending on how the GM roleplays Marcon, the makeup of the party and their feelings about undead, and just how the players react. You're right that it's a little unclear how to connect the Society check, but it would give the PCs context if they've gotten Marcon to reveal the name Candren. Marcon is going to try not to reveal his secret off the bat, since it gives him something to bargain with, but that doesn't mean he won't reveal it at all, especially if he thinks his un-life is at stake!

I'm actually actually quite interested to hear what parties decide to do with Marcon.

(Milan, I saw your question, but I don't actually know the answer!)

4/5 *****

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That seems like a good way to go about it. I imagine PCs will generally try to wheedle or intimidate the information out of him anyhow — it's just a question of the degree to which he'll acquiesce.

Perhaps instead of outright saying the name, he can reference the heraldry or another unique clue about the family — some clue that triggers the check for the PCs. This way, they have a chance to get the info while also keeping the NPC in character.

Thanks!

5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle

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When the PCs see the writing on the walls of his cell, is the obvious place to do a Society check to recognize the name. They can then question him further.

EDIT: I was half expecting my players to go murderhobo on him but they were almost instantly sympathetic (maybe the quavering voice helped?) and went straight for the bluff route to get him out.

4/5 *****

Oh, duh. I totally missed the writing on the walls on my first read through, Iosig — thanks! The writing on the wall is exactly what would allow PCs to piece two and two together to make the check at some point while talking to Marcon. Thank you!

4/5 *****

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Created folios of the play to hand out to my players… they're still a little crispy from the fire.

Cover
Interior

Envoy's Alliance 4/5

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logsig wrote:

When the PCs see the writing on the walls of his cell, is the obvious place to do a Society check to recognize the name. They can then question him further.

EDIT: I was half expecting my players to go murderhobo on him but they were almost instantly sympathetic (maybe the quavering voice helped?) and went straight for the bluff route to get him out.

I was not willing to oppose the whole party on the matter, at least after he gave his word to not try to eat us and he seemed trustworthy to our perception checks. After all, the society works with many beings of ... less than stellar reputation.

Grand Archive 1/5 5/55/55/5 *

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Kate Baker wrote:
I'm actually actually quite interested to hear what parties decide to do with Marcon.

We managed to remember the mission. Our big outdoorsy fighter carved out the bigger crocodile and we stuffed Marcon in it after some cajoling. We hauled both crocodiles back to the king, distracted him with an interpretive dance of our hunt, handed the smaller one to the goblins to eat, and told we wanted to take the bigger one back to the lodge to laugh at, study, and eat, in that order. With the wizard's cantrip special effects and a couple of critical successes on wildly untrained but very enthusiastic performance rolls we made it. Then we carried the crocodile across Absalom like a log, claiming it was a hunting trophy.

The look on Drandle Dreng's face was great when we returned with a crocodile. It got better when we cranked open its jaws to reveal a tightly packed ghoul peeking out of its mouth. "You better explain this."

This is a good scenario, especially if the players aren't afraid of flexing their (over)acting muscles. It also greatly benefitted from our GM's ability to play the king. We didn't identify the hat, so we improvised.

Liberty's Edge 3/5 5/5 **** Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha

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Please!! When creating a thread for an adventure, include the adventure number in the title!!! I makes it so much easier to search for!!

Can an admin add the Adventure number, 1-07, to the title of this thread? Thank you!

Sovereign Court 3/5 5/5 *

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The group I ran for put the Hat of Disguise on Marcon. They then returned to the king and enacted a second play, this one of their adventures into the sewers and temple. They finished it with them finding the deed and handing it to the king... where they actually gave it to him.

When inquired about why their team of 4 was now a team of 5 they asked what the king meant, there had been 5 of them the whole time. They passed their deception check and the confused king brushed it off to sing about the deed.

They walked back to the lodge and turned Marcon over.

****

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Society Subscriber
GM Suede wrote:
The group I ran for put the Hat of Disguise on Marcon.

Please note, my first group also did this, but a Hat of Disguise is an invested item (I goofed first time, and corrected my second group). With the water rapidly rising there isn't time for the ghast/ghoul to invest it.

Sovereign Court 3/5 5/5 *

Oh crap, I didn't even think of that. Good catch Exton.

I'm still getting used to the investment rules. I'd wager so are the authors because it seems intentional to have the hat and then a character that needs to be snuck out.


Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Umm, the Invest an item activity takes one interact action, according to the CRB p.531. Time shouldn't be an issue. What am I missing here?

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

Yeah the water doesn't rise all that fast, it's mostly a "Ok, nothing more to adventure here, time to start walking home" sign.

But it is rather odd that among the different strategies the scenario anticipates for bringing back Marcon, using the Hat isn't mentioned.

5/5 *****

I think the issue may be that investing items is described as something you do during your daily prep (pages 480 and 500). It isnt entirely clear if you can invest items outside of that peiod. I think you can but the section on Investing an item doesnt deal with it beyond saying it usually taks an Interact action.

Sovereign Court 3/5 5/5 *

Nebulous ruling, but without having dug too deep on it myself, I'm going to assume the intent is you can always invest an item you find if you have space for it, but you can swap out to something new until daily prep.

Which means this scenario should be fine. And otherwise it would prevent players from taking advantage of a lot of the things they find mid-scenario.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

andreww wrote:
I think the issue may be that investing items is described as something you do during your daily prep (pages 480 and 500). It isnt entirely clear if you can invest items outside of that peiod. I think you can but the section on Investing an item doesnt deal with it beyond saying it usually taks an Interact action.

The idea that investing only happens during daily prep seems to be persistent, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong. Pages 480 and 500 are shorthand references to the main text on page 531, which contains the full description of the Invest an Item activity.

CRB p. 531 wrote:

INVEST AN ITEM

You invest your energy in an item with the invested trait as you don it. This process requires 1 or more Interact actions, usually taking the same amount of time it takes to don the item.
Once you’ve Invested the Item, you benefit from its constant magical abilities as long as you meet its other requirements (for most invested items, the only other requirement is that you must be wearing the item). This investiture lasts until you remove the item.
You can invest no more than 10 items per day. If you remove an invested item, it loses its investiture. The item still counts against your daily limit after it loses its investiture. You reset the limit during your daily preparations, at which point you Invest your Items anew. If you’re still wearing items you had invested the previous day, you can typically keep them invested on the new day, but they still count against your limit.

Investing just takes some Interact actions, which would be pointless to specify if it was something you could only do during daily preparations, which is not done in Encounter Mode.

The references to investing during daily prep that you mention on page 480 and 500 are a bit unfortunate, but this primary section makes it clear the refer to regaining your 10 investment opportunities, and deciding to maintain investment in some items that you were using yesterday.

Grand Lodge

Good evening everyone,

I found an item that was troubling me and thought this was likely a holdover for PF1. On pg. 8 in the "Undermining the Opposition" section the wording calls for...
"..A PC who describes a sufficiently disruptive
activity and succeeds at a DC 15 Bluff check (DC 18 in
Subtier 3–4) causes enough trouble.."

Should this actually be a Deception check or is there a Bluff check in PF2?

Thank you all for your attention.

Nifty

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

You're correct, it should be Deception!

Grand Lodge 4/5 ***** Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia

Was finishing up putting this onto my Roll20 table and saw that AC of 35 and went, "WTF? No way!" So glad this forum exists to clear up this kind of stuff.

An AC of 35 would be probable death to a party in the upper tier of a 5-8 scenario, let alone a 1-4 or 3-6.

5/5 **** Venture-Lieutenant, Michigan—Detroit

In the scenario, under Faction Notes at the end, it says:
"If the PCs succeed, each PC earns 2 Reputation with the Vigilant Seal faction."

On the reporting page, it says:
"Viglant Seal: [checkbox] (1 prestige)"

Change in nomenclature (Reputation --> prestige) aside, which value (1 or 2) is the correct value to award PCs if they fulfill the conditions?

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

By reporting page, do you mean the actual website where you report sessions? 2 Reputation should be correct, but I'm not seeing the other number in the scenario.

3/5 **

Jeffrey Stop wrote:

In the scenario, under Faction Notes at the end, it says:

"If the PCs succeed, each PC earns 2 Reputation with the Vigilant Seal faction."

On the reporting page, it says:
"Viglant Seal: [checkbox] (1 prestige)"

Change in nomenclature (Reputation --> prestige) aside, which value (1 or 2) is the correct value to award PCs if they fulfill the conditions?

By that same coin (kinda), do GMs also get the bonus reputation for the Vigilant Seal?

EDIT: Actually, with a quick look-through of the guild guide, I can't find anything that says that GMs get credit for running the scenario...

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

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Huh. I assumed GMs get it, but that might just be my assumption from PFS1 and SF. This one may need one of the real devs to chime in!

(I just realized I never actually explained in this thread: I was contracted to do a development pass on this scenario and am credited as the lead developer for it. So I can answer developer questions about this scenario in particular but not for the campaign as a whole.)

5/5 **** Venture-Lieutenant, Michigan—Detroit

Kate Baker wrote:
By reporting page, do you mean the actual website where you report sessions? 2 Reputation should be correct, but I'm not seeing the other number in the scenario.

Yes, it's on the website where I report the session. Is this a question then for the web team at Paizo?

4/5

In general what might a Sarenite think of Marcon? On the one hand I know Sarenrae is big on redemption. On the other hand, I know that at least in PF1 Sarenrae really did not like undead. I'm considering which version of the boon is more in character for my GM credit sheet.

Scarab Sages 1/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Virginia—Richmond

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RealAlchemy wrote:
In general what might a Sarenite think of Marcon? On the one hand I know Sarenrae is big on redemption. On the other hand, I know that at least in PF1 Sarenrae really did not like undead. I'm considering which version of the boon is more in character for my GM credit sheet.

Sarenrae is all about redemption, so I think a PC follower would work with Macron.

I'm not so sure about what Pharasmin would do.

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

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There is a Religion check in there to realize that allowing Marcon to tell his story will likely put his soul at rest and allow him to pass on. So a Pharasmin can work with him under the logic of "this is still eliminating an undead creature, but in a more peaceful way." That being said, it's mostly down to the individual Sarenite or Pharasmin!

**

Cross posted in the Product Page, Did we/could we get clarification on the 16-18 CP adjustment for low tier :)

5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht

Hey all, I'm running this next week, and I'm confused about the CP system. I've heard it mentioned that there's a change in determining adjustments, but I can't find it.
I have (so far) a level 1, a level 2, and two level 4. That's 17 CP, if I can count correctly. That should put them in tier 3-4, I believe, but that seems dangerous (especially since the only damage dealer is level 1, the rest is support). Could I get an answer which tier/adjustment I should be running?

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

17 challenge points is correct.

The change is that for a 5-6 player party, they play low tier at 16-18 challenge points. But your 4-player party would still play high tier.

Remember that because the level 1 character is the lowest possible level for the adventure and has to play up, they get a level bump (the level 2 character does NOT). Also the level 1 character can benefit from mentor boons.

You may also want to nudge your players out of a "I'm support and that's all I'll ever be" mindset. Every class has good ways to deal damage. With level-based to-hit bonuses, it's even possible that a level 4 support character's to-hit is just as good as a level 1 warrior's to-hit.

You should also point out to the level 4s that although they may think of themselves as squishy casters, they have higher AC and almost double the hit points of the level 1 (level bump already factored in) and level 2 character. So "I'm squishy" is relative. Sometimes the high level wizard has to tank a bit. At 17 challenge points you're basically experiencing the adventure at level 3 difficulty, so the level 4 wizard is playing down a smidgen.

An alternative for the low-level characters might be to grab level 3 pregens; the level 1 character could even immediately scale down the chronicle to level 1 rewards.

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