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Next Friday I will be starting Jade Regent for my RL group. Having read many threads here, I'm inclined to dump the caravan and relationship rules and just run those two aspects with just flavor, no crunch.
But there are a few additions I'm planning on that I would solicit opinions on.
* I want to include Amaya in the caravan in addition to Ameiko. Having the party travel all the way to Westcrown to go get her seems like a clumsy detour. On the other hand, just having her happen to be in Sandpoint seems awfully convenient. I'm thinking that after the group brings the letter to Ameiko from Brinestump, she then contacts Amaya and invites her over to discuss things. But I'm open to hearing better ideas for how to bring in Amaya.
* Ameiko and Sandru's personal tragedy with the cannibals was at the southern Fogscar mountains, and coincidentally, the caravan route goes *right* past that location, so it seems totally out of character to pass that region unnoted. What will I do with it? I guess the simplest is cannibals are still there, group goes wipe them out, catharsis and closure. But I'd like some additional depth to that. I was thinking maybe they find some old item of Alder's and bring it to Ameiko, and it starts haunting her, as the spirits think that Ameiko fled and left the rest of the group to die. To exorcise the haunting, Ameiko would need to perform x acts of bravery which would lay the spirits to rest. Con: this will push Ameiko to participate in combat encounters? That's an unwanted outcome for me. Ideas to solve?
The group consists of
sylph bard
ganzi gunslinger
gnome sorcerer
tiefling mesmerist
hobgoblin slayer
half-elf witch
All six are new to the system and thus characters are very unoptimized, so I will not be modifying encounters (at least upwards in difficulty) and may use the fast XP track.
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For the Amaya angle you could change it so that the two of them actually don't know about each other. It just so happens that a few months before the campaign began Amaya found evidence in Westcrown during something else she was up to and the party runs into her at Brinewall. She might jump in and save them during an exchange or the opposite.
It could lead to a dramatic moment when the two women find out that they have a sister.
I can't endorse enough getting rid of the caravan and relationship rules. I made the mistake of going full bore and using third party relationship rules for it and I just wasn't up to the challenge.
As for the whole Cannibal angle I used a third party plug in adventure that had the party doing some stuff in Wolfear where it turned out that Sandru's brother was buried and there was a dramatic moment when Ameiko and Sandru went out to visit the grave.
I had substituted Amya for Ameiko when I ran Jade Regent because I had feared the Ameiko was too powerful for the adventures in Brinewall Legacy. I began chronicling that campaign in Amaya of Westcrown at 2nd level because I needed some advice.
I had Amaya arrive in Sandpoint on her own. She was an adult employed as a glassblower, so she had enough savings to travel. She was an NPC in Pathfinder Adventure Path #25, The Bastards of Erebus, and I pretended she had run into trouble that led her to flee Westcrown. Since her half-sister Ameiko was trying to run both a tavern and a glassworks after the death of her father Lonjiku Kaijitsu, Amaya joined her to manage the glassworks. She could have been living in Sandpoint for years.
The Bastards of Erebus described Amaya as expert 1, with her 2nd level to be bard if she followed the party and joined a level. I instead made her 2nd level Dexterity-based fighter, because my 8-player party had plenty of spellcasters but was short on martials. However, long after I finished my Jade Regent campaign, Amaya appeared again as an NPC in Song of Silver, the 4th module in Hell's Rebels. According to PathfinderWiki, Amaya Kaijitsu had become a Bard (detective) 6.
Ameiko Kaijitsu's stat block on page 52 of The Brinewall Legacy has her as aristocrat 1/bard 3/rogue (rake) 1, a 5th-level character. Having both Ameiko and Amaya at full levels in The Brinewall Legacy would be twice as powerful as the rest of the 6-player party. Dropping each down to 2nd level would be manageable.
In the 2nd module, Night of Frozen Shadows, my Amaya multiclassed to expert 1/fighter 1/oracle 2 because our cleric player had dropped out of the game and we needed a healer. The three classes did not mesh well, so I switched to fighter 1/oracle 3, which worked. Since your party has a bard and lacks a healer, Amaya as an oracle ought to work for you.
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Lol, I just noticed that between all the six characters, five of them have Str at 7 or less. I predict a lot of trouble with basic melee. Good thing I'm giving out ability points faster than base game (2pt/lvl instead of 1pt/4lvl) so hopefully by the end of Brinewall Legacy things will look up on that front. But at the very least, I know what those two chests at the end of Brinewall Castle (that are open for DM to customize) will contain...some belts of giant strength! :D
I will probably have *some* sort of relationship number to represent how strong the relationship is, but I won't use the as-written mechanics. Maybe I will just DM fiat the number. But I want to have some sort of numerical indicator. If nothing else, to give some xp buffs when the relationship levels are reached.
Oh, one more question I had. I know Ameiko and Shalelu have pawns -- in Rise Pawns, I think. Do Sandru and Koya have pawns in any set? Pathfinder Society or Inner Sea Pawns perchance?
Are there any other Jade Regent relevant pawns in any other set? Since JR doesn't have its own. I know Paizo sometimes slips in characters from APs into "generic" sets.
Miniature suggestions also welcome.
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Since your party has a bard and lacks a healer, Amaya as an...
I'm not much worried about healing. Between the bard and the witch there will hopefully be plenty of Cure spells, and everytime they return to camp, Koya will be an available cleric (though I might bump her a level to 5th, so she can access Remove Curse/Blindness/etc.).
I will probably keep Amaya as a Detective as per her Song of Silver writeup, not that it matters much because I'll be trying to keep the NPCs out of combat as much as possible. I'm thinking her major role will be to wrestle with the, "if Ameiko happens to die, I will become empress of a major nation" issue, so struggle to remain CG without slipping toward CE.
Also toying with ideas to include Hirakonu from Song of Silver, since he was explicitly written with the idea of being added to Jade Regent, but I'm not feeling the character much yet. Has anyone used him, what was cool about him?
Lol, I just noticed that between all the six characters, five of them have Str at 7 or less. I predict a lot of trouble with basic melee. Good thing I'm giving out ability points faster than base game (2pt/lvl instead of 1pt/4lvl) so hopefully by the end of Brinewall Legacy things will look up on that front.
If they've dumped Str to 7, that's usually a sign of an optimised PC with gunslinging or Dex to damage or high DC spells. Being bad at melee attacks doesn't matter if you don't rely on melee attacks.
Are you really giving out 2 attribute points per level? Because that could lead to a character with an attribute above 50 by the end of the campaign...
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Are you really giving out 2 attribute points per level? Because that could lead to a character with an attribute above 50 by the end of the campaign...
Not if attributes are capped at 18 (19 at lvl 4, 20 at lvl 8, and so on) before racial modifiers.
They also started with low attribute points to start with so there's catching up to do.