This is full of spoilers, but it's the GM Reference forum.
Does anyone besides me think that using the Chase Rules for everything is anti-climatic? I mean, closing the Doomsday Door in Windsong Abbey was once an entire adventure and now it's just "go there and roll a Religion check to use magic to stop it."
When my players hear there's a bunch of Doomsday Doors to close, they are going to expect dramatic adventure and combat. Having them just be obstacles in a chase is definitely going to be disappointing.
Lord of the Trinity Star did this too for several parts of it. I haven't read Into the Apocalypse Archive yet, but I suspect it will be similar.
Why is everything Chase Rules and skill checks? Why aren't there more dungeons and combat? It's a little boring to get to an adventure location and have it literally just be a couple of skill checks to get through it.
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This is full of spoilers, but it's the GM Reference forum.
Does anyone besides me think that using the Chase Rules for everything is anti-climatic? I mean, closing the Doomsday Door in Windsong Abbey was once an entire adventure and now it's just "go there and roll a Religion check to use magic to stop it."
When my players hear there's a bunch of Doomsday Doors to close, they are going to expect dramatic adventure and combat. Having them just be obstacles in a chase is definitely going to be disappointing.
Lord of the Trinity Star did this too for several parts of it. I haven't read Into the Apocalypse Archive yet, but I suspect it will be similar.
Why is everything Chase Rules and skill checks? Why aren't there more dungeons and combat? It's a little boring to get to an adventure location and have it literally just be a couple of skill checks to get through it.
This is common in MMORPGs. Some Dev comes up with a new "system" and that automatically means game studio has to shoehorn it into their next game Update (Edition) in as many places as they can to justify its existence.
Nobody seems to understand the concept that "less is more" anymore.
Too many new "systems" (like the Chase mechanic for one) is one of the main reasons why I'll never play PF2, remastered or otherwise.
Paizo is trying to be too cleaver and it's to their detriment.
I'll still buy the lore stuff, though.
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So, overall, I think this book is an improvement over book 1. Especially if you're running for a group that's done the previous APs and you can call back on previous PCs, but....I kinda just hate the idea of the Doomsday Doors being closed in 10 minutes in a Chase that has you jump around to a bunch of familiar places with familiar faces, roll once, then onto the next!
Has anyone figured out a sane way to expand on this? I don't think I have the energy to create 6 dungeons (well, 5, Shattered Star provides maps for one of 'em), but maybe at least turning each door into an *encounter* at the very least? Like, the PCs are going to be level 17. A +4 encounter is doable at that point. Creatures above CR 25 got retconned from 1e to 2e, so nerfing Yamasoth from 24 to level 21 and making him a boss fight at Windsong Abbey feels a lot better than 2 successes on a skill check (or 1 crit), right?
Creative Director
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There are three reasons we decided to do the Doomsday Door section the way we did:
1) I worried that multiple dungeon crawl/complex encounters where each gets closed would get repetitive and frustrate folks from being able to "move forward with the plot."
2) There wasn't enough space to do all that in #1 above anyway.
3) And then we get to the main reason—by presenting things in this way, the idea was to convey that ONLY the mythic high-level PCs could do this, since it had to be done swiftly using high level and mythic options.
That said, it's certainly a place where one could expand thigns into more robust encounters, absolutely. That said, for Yamasoth, I would suggest keeping him as a level 24 creature but NOT giving him mythic powers; that's how we would officially convert him, after all. It's only the level 26–30 creatures that in 2nd edition get rebuilt at lower levels. My internal guidelines here have more or less been to rebuild level 26-27 as level 23 mythic creatures, level 28-29 as level 24 mythic creatures, and level 30 as level 25 mythic creatures. And THAT said, I'd "save" Yamasoth for a later campaign where he can be the main foe. Having him just be a monster to fight in one of several similar encounters kinda wastes him; instead you might consider having the Windsong encounter be against a lot of powerful qlippoth.
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There are three reasons we decided to do the Doomsday Door section the way we did:
1) I worried that multiple dungeon crawl/complex encounters where each gets closed would get repetitive and frustrate folks from being able to "move forward with the plot."
2) There wasn't enough space to do all that in #1 above anyway.
3) And then we get to the main reason—by presenting things in this way, the idea was to convey that ONLY the mythic high-level PCs could do this, since it had to be done swiftly using high level and mythic options.
That said, it's certainly a place where one could expand thigns into more robust encounters, absolutely. That said, for Yamasoth, I would suggest keeping him as a level 24 creature but NOT giving him mythic powers; that's how we would officially convert him, after all. It's only the level 26–30 creatures that in 2nd edition get rebuilt at lower levels. My internal guidelines here have more or less been to rebuild level 26-27 as level 23 mythic creatures, level 28-29 as level 24 mythic creatures, and level 30 as level 25 mythic creatures. And THAT said, I'd "save" Yamasoth for a later campaign where he can be the main foe. Having him just be a monster to fight in one of several similar encounters kinda wastes him; instead you might consider having the Windsong encounter be against a lot of powerful qlippoth.
Fair enough on point #1, and #2 is just always a concern. Honestly probably my main reason that I wish there was more of a focus on digital content than printed because then the ever present page count would stop standing in the way of things.
But I can't really say I understand the logic behind #3. Like, I get what you're going for, but...it's just objectively not true? Mechanically, at the level we're talking, mythic PCs are only a +2 better than a non-mythic PC of the same level. Maybe a +4 if they're only master and not legendary at the relevant skill. They're just flat out *not* better than a non-mythic level 20 PC. So it's not like there's any sort of "You must be this mythic to succeed" here. I'll be honest, while I *do* like mythic, my biggest issues can be summed up in the fact that there's not a simple passive increase over non-mythic PCs (back in 1e Mythic was supposed to be roughly 1/2 a level in power, I figured every 2 tiers giving a +1 mythic bonus to proficiency would've perfectly covered this and let things still scale to level 30 max before the mythic 2e rules were actually made. If these were level 17/tier 8 characters, with effectively a +4 to everything they did compare to a non-mythic 17, and things were balanced around an effective level of 21? Yeah that'd make a lot more sense!) and the lack of interaction with mythic features if you don't primarily rely on a Strike or Cast a Spell (looking at you Kineticist). Still feels like an overcorrection from how broken 1e got to me. Still fun, just a little underwhelming. But that might just be the neurodivergence and taking things too literally talking.
I get the feeling you were going for more of a "narrative" power with mythic PCs, which *is* cool (and in that vein, when my PCs became mythic the one with the Thief's Calling wanted to do a casino heist. I had them literally steal the casino. Their mythic theft turned it into a magic item that's basically a much larger version of a Portable Gaming Hall) it's just...not something that's easy to convey in a system that's otherwise got such very strong mechanics, and in the case of the Doomsday Doors, which is a suitably epic task, it just...kinda comes across as "Urgh, *another* chase?" instead of the dramatic sequence that, say, the Ashen Man and Xanderghul get in book 3.
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Yeah, this is just the best way I know to provide said feedback. Honestly I do really like this AP. I have my gripes with things here and there (not getting to spend any time in Xin-Eurythnia and Sorshen getting shoved in the fridge immediately made me really frustrated, though I get why you can't just have a level 23 ally around all the time to solve all the problems, I still wish they'd gotten to be at least a little present) but ultimately this is probably my favorite 2e AP thus far.
The subsystems are a little overused (but in fairness, this AP also contains what is *easily* the best Chase I've ever seen in book 1's dream introduction), and I do wish the Risen Runelords were all a little more...unique, but I'm going to fix that by just given them all a custom spellshape or something. After that my biggest complaint is just "my group hasn't played through all the other APs, so instead of getting to see their old PCs again, I've set it up so that the Sihedron Heroes just never reappeared after setting off to battle Alaznist and no one can remember their names or faces (which gives Sorshen more justification in her paranoia)" and that's not an issue with the book, just the number of hours in a day lol
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Speaking of the doomsday doors in this book, do you think there is a chance that paizo is eventually gonna publish the portraits of the 6 runelords involved with opening the doomsday doors ? (As well as Atharend who died in the background in book 1)
I would love to play the encounter with them using each door cataclysm as context and environnemental hazard for the battles, but i feel they deserve at least to have their proper portrait each.
In the worth case, James, do you think that you could give a physical description of the aformentioned runelords, in the case anyone wants to give a try with drawing them ?
Thanks in advance if james or anyone else for paizo answers this !
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Creative Director
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Speaking of the doomsday doors in this book, do you think there is a chance that paizo is eventually gonna publish the portraits of the 6 runelords involved with opening the doomsday doors ? (As well as Atharend who died in the background in book 1)
I would love to play the encounter with them using each door cataclysm as context and environnemental hazard for the battles, but i feel they deserve at least to have their proper portrait each.In the worth case, James, do you think that you could give a physical description of the aformentioned runelords, in the case anyone wants to give a try with drawing them ?
Thanks in advance if james or anyone else for paizo answers this !
I tried Real Hard to get portraits in for as many of the runelords as possible, in part to show off the fact that Azlanti/Thassilonian humans were not monolithically caucasian, but also in order to give GMs more resources to use in play–particularly in virtual table tops, which really do like having art resources. Part of setting up the Doomsday Door stuff like this to avoid having actual tactical encounters was the simple fact that our art budget for that volume (as well as the loss to word count for each additional portrait placed) didn't let us illustrate all of those runelords. But I still wanted to give some of them a presence, in order to make it feel like Xanderghul really did plunder a lot of their legacies.
That said, we have no plans at this point to publish those extra portraits. They haven't been created. And I'm not comfortable describing their appearances here, because I'll for sure forget what I say here and then years from now IF we are in a place where publishing their images is on the table, if I don't remember this post... someone will and will call me out on the error and I'll be sad!
This is a case where individual GMs are free to describe them however they want. If you want to include a portrait, feel free to use your own art or found art or art from other books or whatever; you have a lot more latitude for using art in this way at a home game than we do! (You do you, of course, but I still would like to request folks DON'T use generative AI to create images.)
Alright, I think I *am* going to make Yamasoth as a non-mythic level 21 creature. Regardless of if anything gets canonized in the future, any discrepancy can be written off as "forcibly opening the shutting Doomsday Door left Yamasoth weakened"
I'm expanding a bit on the others too. I'm going to have the Fulsome Queen show up beneath Korvosa since my party enjoyed sort-of befriending her in Wrath, so she's not intended to be a fight just a "the Door opened into her domain." I've got a couple of other ideas that I'll flesh out more later. Spent all my creative energy condensing Shadows at Sundown into a way to expand on the initial research (Lorthact stole the Kardosian Fragments to aid Aliriel with the Ileosa project) so I'm a bit spent on making up those encounters that are a couple months away.
BUT!
What my players haven't done is Shades of Blood, so Longrasi is kind of...wasted on them. What I'm wondering is what happened to Xoxl? I was thinking about replacing Longrasi with him, or just having them both show up in charge of Belimarius' forces. I'm surprised there's no mention of him. I'm probably going to do it *anyway*, but is there any reason that I shouldn't?
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Actually now that my group is starting book 2, I have a question;
....what happened to the Therassic Library in Jorgenfist? Why send the PCs to do research on how to find the Emerald Chambers in Korvosa and Riddleport and Magnimar (meeting with the Sihedron Council makes sense at least) but not Jorgenfist, where a massive library on Thassilon lore is located?
It was saved from the temporal distortions, so it should be, like, fine, no?
...I do like the 'talking with Zutha's spirit' thing though, and I'm condensing Shadows at Sundown into the first part of this book because one of my players has played CotCT and is playing a child of their CotCT PC (and another PC is also from Korvosa), but I'm just curious what the reasoning was for splitting the research across 3 locations like that and not just putting it all in Jorgenfist, or a mention of what happens if the players think to try and contact Belimarius.
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Creative Director
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Actually now that my group is starting book 2, I have a question;
....what happened to the Therassic Library in Jorgenfist? Why send the PCs to do research on how to find the Emerald Chambers in Korvosa and Riddleport and Magnimar (meeting with the Sihedron Council makes sense at least) but not Jorgenfist, where a massive library on Thassilon lore is located?
It was saved from the temporal distortions, so it should be, like, fine, no?
...I do like the 'talking with Zutha's spirit' thing though, and I'm condensing Shadows at Sundown into the first part of this book because one of my players has played CotCT and is playing a child of their CotCT PC (and another PC is also from Korvosa), but I'm just curious what the reasoning was for splitting the research across 3 locations like that and not just putting it all in Jorgenfist, or a mention of what happens if the players think to try and contact Belimarius.
Nothing happened to the Therassic Library. I probably should have mentioned it though, but the idea was that the information the PCs needed wasn't to be found there anyway—the library is vast, but doesn't contain everything.
From a story point, it was more important to give the PCs of this specific Adventure Path a chance to build touchstones with Varisia's three major city-states, and having them travel here is how that works. This establishes some in-campaign reason to want to save the place, and allowed us to do some updates to those areas in 2nd edition for the first time. Jorgenfist and the library are pretty minor thematic elements there, and having the PCs just go there to study up on things would have been less epic and less sprawling.
Still it would have been a good idea to include a line saying something like: "Since it's rediscovery decades ago, much of the lore in the Therassic Library has been dispersed through Varisia's scholastic circles, so that the first people the PCs contact can confirm that, even with that library's vast holdings, the answers they seek are not found in its holdings."
As for contacting Belimarius... that would be a different plot for a different adventure path and one that would be tricky to pull off without TPKing a group not ready or powerful enough to foolishly contact one of the region's bad gal bosses when they were too low level. Plus... we wanted to save her for later in the story.
Ah, ok, good to know. I hadn't fully confirmed what I was doing yet (I wanted to give the NPCs some time to shine, so I was going to have Jatheriel mention that they'd helped with the recreation of the Kardosian Fragments that are in Korvosa, while Ayavah was going to bring up the Sihedron Council from her time in Magnimar), and I was debating having the Therassic Library be either just...the Sihedron Council relocated all the relevant texts to be closer at hand, or, since the Therassic Order was part of the cult of the Peacock Spirit, just inform the PCs that a few months ago the library was ransacked and its contents stolen (by the Risen, to gather research material for Xanderghul).
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Creative Director
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Just want to check what is the default assumption of the Sihedron from shatterd star Maybe I missed it but I dont remember it being mentioned at all in this ap. Is it assumed it was destroyed during return?
It doesn't play a role in Revenge of the Runelords. It's likely still in the possession of the heroes who played through "Shattered Star" so if you ran that game, you can use that as canon. Officially, it's out there somewhere adventuring along with those heroes—I don't believe we've canonized where it's at yet.
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Just want to check what is the default assumption of the Sihedron from shatterd star Maybe I missed it but I dont remember it being mentioned at all in this ap. Is it assumed it was destroyed during return?
It appears in Return of the Runelords.
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I wonder why the ''spirits'' of most previous Runelords are present in the crypt of runes. Afterall, many of them were killed by players (Krune, Karzoug and Alaznist at a minimum. Also Phirandi is in Xin-Edasseril) and would never have been brought there.
It's also hard to explain how Xanderghul would have been able to ''rise'' them considering he would not have access to much material (at best personal objects for the still living Runelords in the crypt).
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Creative Director
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I wonder why the ''spirits'' of most previous Runelords are present in the crypt of runes. Afterall, many of them were killed by players (Krune, Karzoug and Alaznist at a minimum. Also Phirandi is in Xin-Edasseril) and would never have been brought there.
It's also hard to explain how Xanderghul would have been able to ''rise'' them considering he would not have access to much material (at best personal objects for the still living Runelords in the crypt).
It's less of their spirits/souls there and more of their legacy/residual power. It's the same sort of thing that differentiates between a ghost and a haunt. To raise them, Xanderghul doesn't need their soul at all—most of these runelords have indeed been judged in the Boneyard and have gone on to the afterlife. All he needs is a fragment of their legacy. The raise runelord ritual is more like the OGL simulacrum ritual than it is anything close to resurrection or create undead. The risen runelords are super-realistic illusions, in effect.
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Just want to check what is the default assumption of the Sihedron from shatterd star Maybe I missed it but I dont remember it being mentioned at all in this ap. Is it assumed it was destroyed during return?It appears in Return of the Runelords.
** spoiler omitted **
I recommend you do not give the damn thing out. It was completely busted in Shattered Star and helped make the final encounter way too easy.
At least the final opponent managed a super-successful Disjunction on the bloody artefact and therefore I won't have to bother with it when I run Return of the Runelords one day.
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Creative Director
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I recommend you do not give the damn thing out. It was completely busted in Shattered Star and helped make the final encounter way too easy.
That was KIND of the whole idea all along. I always felt it was disappointing to do a big campaign to track down an artifact and then NOT feel like it was worth it in the end. Of course, how "completely busted" it ends up being depends significantly on the players and GM skill too. But also, that's why we haven't included it as a PC resource in campaigns where the Sihedron is the whole point.
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So I'm currently prepping Revenge of the Runelords for my group. I intend to jazz up the Doomsday Doors section by building one or two of them as mini-dungeons with the relevant risen Runelord mini-boss.
The PCs will fight through to close the door or doors, while the other doors get managed offscreen by other groups of heroes (who may sustain heavy losses, to drive home that if you're not mythic this is HARD). I figure one or two mini-dungeons could be fun, 6 back to back would be overkill.
Having decided to make this change, I figured I'd need some way in-universe to co-ordinate multiple groups hitting the various doors in an organised way. My solution;
Stone of the Seven-fold Summit (rare, magical)
These powerful magical items are crafted in sets of seven, and require the involvement of a mythic caster in their creation.
Once crafted, each stone in a set can be keyed to a single individual; this is a process similar to investing a magical item, but does not take up an investment slot.
Once per week, the holder of such a stone can call for a summit. This notifies all other holders of stones in the same set, and allows them to accept or decline the invitation.
If they accept, the power invested in the stones is used to form a quasi-real demi-plane out of shadowstuff, and project a representation of all users who accepted the invitation into the demi-plane as if using project image. The users can converse freely in the demi-plane for up to one hour, after which the demi-plane and all projections harmlessly dissipate.
(Side note - I figure since the demi-plane is quasi-real you could have really cool holographic meeting aids in there - forming topographical maps, playing back vivid recollections of earlier events in full colour, and so on. It's all made of shadowstuff, it's easy to manipulate!)
Yes, Sorshen's invented magical teleconferencing. (Still stuck with that pesky Thassalonian obsession with the number seven, though!) I think it fits with her new 'softer touch' approach, and dovetails neatly with her teleport gate plans - it's all about making the world more connected.
I figure the PCs can be given one of these stones in Book 1, either by Sorshen herself, Jatheriel Five-Runes or Ayavah. I assume Sorshen's agents can have already handed out the rest of the stones in the network, giving the PCs a 'wise council' they can potentially draw upon as early as Book 1 (but not too often, since the PCs can only call for a summit once per week) and who will come in *very* handy when they suddenly need to manage the geographically far-flung responses to the Doomsday Doors.
What I could do with some input on is; who else should hold one of these stones? Right now I'm thinking;
1: the player characters, obviously.
2: Shelia Heidmarch/The Sihedron Council, Magnimar
3: Toff Ornelos, Korvosa
4: Elias Tammerhawk, Riddleport
5: Jatheriel Five-Runes or Ayavah, Xin-Eurythnia
6 and 7: ???
Ideally the two currently unclaimed stones should go to powerful, mostly benevolent NPCs who are located somewhere that's geographically helpful to dealing with the Doomsday Doors. Any thoughts on who could meet that criteria?
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I would strongly consider giving one to Belimarius, actually. She's not a benevolent NPC, but she is the co-ruler of New Thassilon, and Sorshen would know the implications of not including her co-ruler in MAGICAL MEETING OF MAYORS, particularly when her co-ruler uses envy as a power source. Is Belimarius PLEASANT to have at meetings? No, but being a world leader means sometimes working with unpleasant people to get what you want.
Is it good for the players to have Belimarius in their meetings? Not really, no, but it does give them the opportunity to see more of her during the first chapters and then to be more personally betrayed by her when she gets up to her antics later on.
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I would strongly consider giving one to Belimarius, actually. She's not a benevolent NPC, but she is the co-ruler of New Thassilon, and Sorshen would know the implications of not including her co-ruler in MAGICAL MEETING OF MAYORS, particularly when her co-ruler uses envy as a power source. Is Belimarius PLEASANT to have at meetings? No, but being a world leader means sometimes working with unpleasant people to get what you want.
Is it good for the players to have Belimarius in their meetings? Not really, no, but it does give them the opportunity to see more of her during the first chapters and then to be more personally betrayed by her when she gets up to her antics later on.
That is a incredible idea! I'm also now imagining Toff Ornelos and Belimarius in the same meeting and it's making me giggle. Strong 'the grandparents are fighting again' energy. (Yes, I know Toff's a spring chicken compared to Belimarius, but even so.)
Then again...he's a long-suffering headmaster of a school of diabolism; she's a wizard obsessed with setting up the perfect bureaucracy. Can love bloom on the battlefield Form 11-B-127/C, signed in triplicate?
EDIT: With only one stone left to place I'm having a few thoughts.
1: In terms of placing the stones somewhere Sorshen might want eyes and ears, Kaer Maga would make some sense. My issue with that is that I can't think of anyone in Kaer Maga with sufficient cachet that Sorshen would entrust them with such a device.
2: I could have the 7th stone have gone missing in transit to its intended holder, thus making their identity less important. This would leave a small mystery for the players - where is the 7th stone? Who might have it? Whoever has it could perhaps interrupt at a particularly impactful meeting, revealing themselves for good or ill.
3: As a more devious twist on idea 2, I could have the 7th stone believed to have gone to <individual A>, but in fact have been intercepted en-route/stolen after arrival by <individual B>. This person could then be somehow disguising themselves as A and attending summits, allowing a dramatic reveal later on. Again, depending on how things are going the reveal could be positive, or could be that an agent of The Enemy has been spying on their supposedly closed councils.
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Creative Director
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Could potentially look to the Shoanti—Varisans are well-represented above, but maybe add in Thousand Bone from Curse of the Crimson Throne? Or Krogun Eats What He Kills if you want someone more aggro? Could also be a dwarf from Janderhoff or an orc from Urglin.