So, long-time game master, first time running a Paizo adventure path. Two sessions so far, on evenings and via Discord so they tend to be short (especially as two of my players are a time zone ahead, and a third works the early shift on many days, and I can't start earlier due to my own job).
Anyway, the first session was entirely the circus show, and the second started the investigation. They found the tracks and started making calls on what to investigate first. The group discovered the dream pollen pods in the ringmaster's wagon, and were menaced by Bardolph. They want to explore the Kanbali wagon next before heading out to the forest. As folks who have this AP know, that's where Chapter 1 Boss FIght Nemmia Bramblecloak is hanging out, watching the mayhem (or lack thereof).
I worry that this is anti-climatic, even if the adventure clearly allows for it, and offers suggestions to get the PCs to explore everything else. I also want to give the PCs more practice at combat before I throw a more than medium-difficulty encounter at them.
Has anyone else had that happen, or have to change some things around to make it avoid happening? How did your players take it?
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I'd let them do it. The night can get pretty brutal if the party ends up doing everything. The fight with the snakes can really take it out of them and then it feels like you are piling on when you make them fight the mini-boss wounded and out of spells.
Edit: That is the situation my party is in. They even have 5, but they are mostly newer players so they are still figuring out tactics.
Thing is, the end combat really isn't harder than certain other encounters, so I'd just let them luck out and nail Nemmia right away.
The problem with keeping her until last is that level 1 heroes can easily be so beat by that time you might be risking a TPK (total party kill)...
I just didn't have them find her until she appeared at the end- I saw no story benefit to them finding her in the Kanbali Wagon early, especially since they're likely to stop searching everywhere else afterwards.
I think as long they've encountered enough things from Nemmia, you can totally do it. The goal is to make her scorned enough that players do feel some hatred towards her when she does appear. Which as long you've done Bardolph, the Ringmaster's caravan and done the circus, I think would lead enough anger her way to make players feel invested.
That said, if you want the grigs to initiate their event so Nemmia can do her villain speech after, you can distract the party the same way I did: Make the guard captain of the circus report to the party how there's something in the forest or by the rocks attacking labourers. It's not vital for the party to discover the backpack in the woods in the short term, but it'll hopefully help direct the party towards the hermitage in Chapter 3 more so. So as long as the cockatrice or the mephits draw players away from the circus long enough for the grigs to appear, that should set things up neatly.
Evilgm wrote: I just didn't have them find her until she appeared at the end- I saw no story benefit to them finding her in the Kanbali Wagon early, especially since they're likely to stop searching everywhere else afterwards. Yes, but that story brings its own rewards.
I mean, once circus workers start turning up eaten, or turned to stone, or whatever, the heroes should realize it ain't over just yet... :)
Just make sure the players fully understand Nemmia has been up to all kinds of mischief: the snakes in the circus, the pollen pods, Bardolph, and so on. They should at the very least feel that they missed some pretty obvious clues Nemmia might have blighted more of their surroundings, when and if they stop looking.
I mean as long as the players feel they stood a reasonable chance of preventing more circus deaths, even if they ultimately didn't, all's well. It's only if the players feel they got no clues that they should have kept cleaning up after getting rid of Nemmia frustration of the bad kind sets in. Maybe a bit on the nose, but you could always add a line to Nemmia's speech to the effect of "even if you kill me you will all die... so leave now!"
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My players lucked out and got to her as basically the second thing of the night. Even after they killed her they realized they still had a ton of tiny fires burning all over the circus grounds, so they went and dealt with them as they came up. That's basically the entire point of the second chapter (putting out more of her fires) so it wasn't particularly important when they came upon her, and they felt clever for finding her early.
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My group has an alchemist, cleric, rogue and druid. After their (successful) show they investigated the body and found tracks which I said headed toward both Bardolph's wagon and Myron's Wagon. I didn't give them that specifically, just that they headed toward the part of camp NW of the stream and toward the bridge. Knowing what lay in wait at each location, I was surprised when they decided to split the group and half follow one set and the other half follow the other. Especially since these players make jokes all the time about not splitting the group. Luckily (for them), Myron's wagon was locked and the rogue went toward Bardolph's. So when the cleric shouted for the rogue to come unlock Myron's wagon they hadn't yet disturbed Bardolph.
Whether due to the difficulty of some of these encounters or due to poor rolls, the perception thus far has been that EC and Plaguestone are extremely difficult. All of my players are veterans of Pathfinder 1E, having migrated to Pathfinder from 3.5 back in the day. But we have nearly wiped almost every encounter so far in both stories.
So in the first salvo, before she could even act, the pods had the rogue at 1 HP. The group survived, but burned a lot of resources. Then the cleric took The Great Fortunato's cloak and the group went to Bardolph's wagon. I had not choice :) I dropped the cleric to dying. Obviously that was a lot of resources to get her back in order. Once they started trying to figure out where to go next, I had the woodchoppers tell them about the snakes. Even though by RAW you can't do this, I let the druid 'diplomacy' the giant viper (mostly because I played a 1E druid and found it annoying that you get this ability to use diplomacy with animals, but every animal Paizo puts before you is in combat so the ability doesn't get used). Anyway, they did fine at the camp and mephits.
That was the end of that session, so before the next session I could take stock. I immediately decided that the cockatrice was too great a level difference (1 vs. 3) especially when they were essentially out of resources. So I didn't give them any hints to go there. Instead they heard the music playing as they left the forest for the grig encounter. I 'steered' them toward the resolution to join the music and guide it to conclusion. Luckily, the rogue made some excellent Performance checks, so this solution turned out to be no problem.
Between sessions I'd already examined the grigs and since they looked similar to a bard kit I gave them each a tiny wand of Soothe. So when the party kicked off combat with Nemmia, there was 2 extra heals they didn't know about... which is a good thing because it probably would have been a TPK without the grigs' assistance (both healing and damage). Normally I wouldn't upstage the heroes by doing damage with a support NPC, but in this case the players already felt desperate enough and that Paizo and the dice were against them that they didn't mind the aid at all. I had also prepped for Bardolph to come to their aid also. I'd decided the trigger was if any party member went down to dying and they squeaked by so I didn't end up needing him.
They were all extremely happy when I let them level to 2 after all that and they seem more hopeful... that will be until next session and they go in the church...
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I also decided to let my party pass on the cockatrice. They were far too beat up to try it the same night, and it feels like an encounter that will get in the way of moving the story along to have them deal with it the next day. I may bring it back as a filler encounter as a way to drag out the investigation of Abberton to take a week, so they can do a full second show before heading off to deal with the sanctuary, but I sort of feel like it will be ok to let that one slide if it feels unnecessary. I am doing milestone leveling anyway and want the story to move along for the players.
Yeeeah, the cockatrice encounter did seem a bit of a heavy fight for players. Although in my group they adopted the dwarf statue, so I guess it'll work out? I don't know if there's actually a cure for pretrification in the rules somewhere (at least outside of a Wish spell), but they'll going to look into helping the guy on the side.
Riobux wrote: Yeeeah, the cockatrice encounter did seem a bit of a heavy fight for players. Although in my group they adopted the dwarf statue, so I guess it'll work out? I don't know if there's actually a cure for pretrification in the rules somewhere (at least outside of a Wish spell), but they'll going to look into helping the guy on the side. For a cockatrice specifically, you get a new save to return to your weak fleshy state every 24 hours, unless you roll a critical failure on one of those saves (at which point you're done for). However, the dwarf in question is described as a corpse, not a statue so my reading of the adventure-as-written is that the poor bastard already returned but had been too badly damaged in the meantime to survive.
Staffan Johansson wrote:
For a cockatrice specifically, you get a new save to return to your weak fleshy state every 24 hours, unless you roll a critical failure on one of those saves (at which point you're done for). However, the dwarf in question is described as a corpse, not a statue so my reading of the adventure-as-written is that the poor bastard already returned but had been too badly damaged in the meantime to survive.
Shame there's no spell that let's you come back at a high level without going full Wish. Just a high enough where fighting cockatrices is beneath you so you're fighting to save a friend, but not so high it's something like level 15 before you can bring them back.
I think I misread it then when I ran it because I treated it as a statue rather than a corpse. That said, maybe it'll take a bit of an interesting turn when the dwarf is de-stoned many levels later, now confused where he is.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Stone to flesh is only a 6th-level. It's hardly low level, but you can get it a whopping 8 levels earlier than wish.
Ravingdork wrote: Stone to flesh is only a 6th-level. It's hardly low level, but you can get it a whopping 8 levels earlier than wish. I feel profoundly idiotic. I was sure me and another player took a deep dive into the spell list and couldn't see anything. Thanks!
Keep in mind that D&D style games have always have a "philosophical undercurrent" which states that the first few levels are when the wheat is separated from the chaff.
That is, getting to have a high level hero is (was) not intended to be automatic. You pay for the privilege by having had several earlier characters die at low level - making your heroic status feel much more deserved.
Not saying this to mean other viewpoints are wrong. Saying this to mean that to some extent, it's alright - expected even - to write off a level 1 petrified hero as permanently dead, instead of getting frustrated by how hard it is to get hold of Stone to Flesh at that level.
tl;dr: you're not supposed to be able to find a cure for petrification at level 1. If you do, that's great, but the baseline "solution" is to create a new character.
There is also the Salve of Antiparalysis (Greater) for 325 gp as a level 12 item. In case you don't have a caster for the spell.
/cevah
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I'm using FGU for this game, but what I did is let the rats prints that were near the body help the players find the places they need to visit. it's in the game that if the players used perception they will see the rat prints around Myron's body in the big tent, going out into the campsite. It's on page 11; above A1. Pond.
https://imgur.com/M7uyH2c
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