So I've been playing DnD, Pathfinder, Starfinder, and many other versions of DnD itself. I decided I wanted to run a Pathfinder campaign for my roommates who are always running something for me. I do love DMing and I think I've got most of it down after doing a session zero and our first official session. I chose Quest of the Frozen Flame and we're having fun but after the first session, though I have questions from the players about things I don't necessarily see an answer to in the DM guide. Maybe I don't know where to look? So I have a couple of questions and would like advice from someone who has DMed before. (I don't want to ask my roommates who have DMed before because I don't to give away any details to them like spoilers by accident).
1) In this module the party is in they are in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords. It's not a city per se. They are basically a tribe living in the wilderness. I have a player who asked about the "shop" to buy or craft things like weapons or upgrades. Because they are technically in the middle of nowhere how would I go about answering that exactly? I don't see anything in the module about it so I'm a little confused on what to say or allow as the module or story goes.
2) I know that players have their own agenda when it comes to the campaign. Lol. I do understand that the story progresses differently according to the players' actions, though I find myself questioning what exactly am I supposed to do if my players either "kill" an NPC they aren't supposed to or don't progress the way I thought.
Any friendly advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance!
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I think you will find many useful tidbits in the dedicated Quest for the Frozen Flame forum.
You can also ask specific AP questions there.
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1) In this module the party is in they are in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords. It's not a city per se. They are basically a tribe living in the wilderness. I have a player who asked about the "shop" to buy or craft things like weapons or upgrades. Because they are technically in the middle of nowhere how would I go about answering that exactly? I don't see anything in the module about it so I'm a little confused on what to say or allow as the module or story goes.
The way the balance of the game is set up, it assumes the characters will pick up magic items, especially the main ones (weapons, armor) at the normal levels. If that doesn't happen, then the game becomes much harder.
However, not all adventures out of the box work well with that assumption. QftFF is one such adventure series; it's pretty clear you'll spend a lot of your time on the run / coaching your horde. You don't really have the option to take a shopping side trek to a big city to buy the magic items you're expected to have.
So you have to adapt, and there are a couple of different things you could do:
* Do nothing. The characters won't have the magic items they're "supposed" to. This basically means playing the game on hard mode. And I mean really hard.
* Do nothing, but maybe make the enemies easier where needed. This is more hard mode for the GM, who has to do more work.
* Keep a close eye on the loot in the adventure, and compare that to the guidelines in the GM chapter of the CRB / GM Core. Change the loot that is printed in the adventure, where needed. The writers of the adventure can't know what characters are in your campaign, so they don't know what items would be a really good match. But you do. So if the adventure says to give a +1 crossbow but the ranger's build depends on longbows, change the item to be a longbow.
* Find a way to make such items come to the PCs. Maybe there are traveling merchants, or merchants that take orders and ship to distant tundra realms. Maybe there's some very manageable dungeons with good loot right on their path.
* Make it easier to craft the items the players need. Nobody's adventuring 24 hours per day. The tribe is trekking say, 8 hours per day. Then they're making camp, and there's some time every day to use Craft to make magic items. Loosen the requirements for that a bit (don't require a stationary workshop..) so that it works for a nomadic tribe.
* Another radical solution: use the Automatic Bonus Progression rules (GMG / GM Core) to make it so the PCs don't need magic items to be sufficiently powerful. I've heard this is a popular rule in QftFF
2) I know that players have their own agenda when it comes to the campaign. Lol. I do understand that the story progresses differently according to the players' actions, though I find myself questioning what exactly am I supposed to do if my players either "kill" an NPC they aren't supposed to or don't progress the way I thought.
Any friendly advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance!
Usually adventure paths are pretty robust against this. Later books often introduce new NPCs because they don't want to rely on NPCs from an earlier book still surviving.
The most important thing is to agree with your friends that you're playing with, about the premise of the adventure path. This campaign isn't going to work well if they for example all make characters that are in a hurry to leave their primitive tribe behind and start a showbiz career in Absalom :P
If your players buy into the central premise of the campaign, then it should not be too difficult to overcome smaller things that don't go as expected.
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Yes, the math balance of the game overall is expecting that the characters will have access to the level of items that their characters need.
In Quest for the Frozen Flame, that needs to be handled narratively in some way that is reasonable to the campaign setting.
Personally, if I wasn't using Automatic Bonus Progression, I would do something like this:
* Make it easier to craft the items the players need. Nobody's adventuring 24 hours per day. The tribe is trekking say, 8 hours per day. Then they're making camp, and there's some time every day to use Craft to make magic items. Loosen the requirements for that a bit (don't require a stationary workshop..) so that it works for a nomadic tribe.
Or perhaps have one of the NPC tribe members be the tribe's crafter if none of the PCs want to go that route. That is this tribe member's full-time job and purpose in the tribe - creating the items that the tribe needs. Including the items that the adventuring player characters need - so that they can either buy or commission these items from them.
Yes, the math balance of the game overall is expecting that the characters will have access to the level of items that their characters need.
In Quest for the Frozen Flame, that needs to be handled narratively in some way that is reasonable to the campaign setting.
Personally, if I wasn't using Automatic Bonus Progression, I would do something like this:
* Make it easier to craft the items the players need. Nobody's adventuring 24 hours per day. The tribe is trekking say, 8 hours per day. Then they're making camp, and there's some time every day to use Craft to make magic items. Loosen the requirements for that a bit (don't require a stationary workshop..) so that it works for a nomadic tribe.Or perhaps have one of the NPC tribe members be the tribe's crafter if none of the PCs want to go that route. That is this tribe member's full-time job and purpose in the tribe - creating the items that the tribe needs. Including the items that the adventuring player characters need - so that they can either buy or commission these items from them.
Thank you SO much! This helps a lot. As I said this is the first time I've ever DMed and my roommates are very accommodating because ALL of them have DMed before so they understand and their characters are an interesting bunch that I'm definitely having fun with as well. These are wonderful suggestions and I'll do a little more research in the GM guide to plan out my next session to answer their questions. The NPC tribe crafter member is a WONDERFUL idea I don't know why I didn't think of it. Specifically, one of my PCs is a Fetchling Monk, and was asking how they would go about getting the hand wraps they need for upgrades. I play a monk in a different campaign so I know exactly what my PC is talking about. Again thank you!