Blood Lords

[rotund arch]

Yeah if they attack her lol

Like even if the party fails her riddles, she only becomes hostile if threatened

Berlina specifically warns the party about not pissing off the fair folk. If someone gets killed by Drusilla, that’s on them imo

[twin oracle]

Guess whose party was incredibly paranoid

LOL

[rotund arch]

Well if attack on sight is their first move, yeah they should be paranoid lmao

Also, my second party pissed Berlina off lmao

Barbarian nearly got into a fight with the guards after murdering Kepgeda in broad daylight (she ran out the building), and would not drop his weapon (ikon) when ordered. A diplomacy check from another player convinced the guards to turn the other way because they work for Berlina.

So Berlina finds out and is PISSED because of how reckless the Barb was. A player then had Altimerred be escorted to Berlina's manor as a prisoner (rp reasons). In a chamber offered by Berlina, said plauyer then tore off Altinmered's head (rp reasons) and spilled blood on Haldoli's carpet. Haldoli then comes in, sees the mess, takes the cleaning supplies from one of the maids, and tells said PC.

"You best not use my manor as place to dispose of others again, or two heads will be sent to your father."

[vestal inlet]

My players were in the bone shards hideout and after a bit of a talk with the still alive members of the gang they managed to come out of it with maybe some extra maids to take care of their manor. The shards effectively gave up at the start and aftet all the stuff theyve been through they figure theyre out of the crime business for a while, so having some kind of stable work would at least be better than risking running into Kepgeda again

Are they gonna be full time maids? Probably not. Players cant afford that shit yet. But at least they can stick around for a bit, or be on the shortlist for people to give the manor to when they gotta move on.

[rotund arch]

Was there a hazard you based this on? Or did you make it from the gorund up?

Hoping I can use another as a template

[fiery loom]

I don't remember unfortunately! I probably used something just to do quick comparisons with DCs but all the abilities were made from scratch

[rotund arch]

Also

that shadow encoutner in A6 is mean

Thinking about moving it to A4

I'm referring to when two shadows ambush them on the stairs

I may make this a low threat level, but then have Taviah call out to them to enter

So that they don't get a rest in between fights

Yeah idk who designed that cottage, but holy shit...

So it'll go from low > moderate > moderate with the hazard

[rotund arch]

If I give my players a ghost touch rune after the Taviah Cottage, do you all think this will trivialize any future fights?

[fierce bison]

there's some wraiths in yled i think...

don't recall any other incorp!

[rotund arch]

Probably not too big a deal?

[fiery loom]

Access to ghost touch generally doesn't trivialize ghost fights IME

It makes them a lot easier but not trivial and still requires a bit of preparation or adaptation

[rotund arch]

Thank you

[vestal inlet]

i gave my players a one time get out of death free card this session. since the party has been feeling a little goofy with silly memery and jokey jokes the past few sessions, they started going through the bank and the rogue missed one of the scythe traps, resulting in the oracle getting crit and one shot by it. Because of the mood of the session up to that point, the fact that this is most of the players first pathfinder game, and also this being the first really big hit of the campaign, after talking about it with the PC's, we all agreed on the one time option of the party offering all of their hero points (which at this point was 2 per player) to cut the damage in half. which still knocked out the character, but didnt outright kill them. i think it was an effective decision to make since the party was a LOT more careful with all future doors and now they know that pathfinder traps are not messing around

[dim venture]

Is that pc undead

[vestal inlet]

no, living halfling. they are also a follower of Arasni so they are not sure how they feel about being undead

looking at Arazni's stuff im probably gonna bring up that arazni isnt gonna get mad if they choose to become an undead, since she doesnt like her followers to create unwilling undead, but theyre also not a cleric so its really more a roleplay thing instead of strictly following the edicts and anathema

[dim venture]

Well it's going to be forced on them anyways if they decide to remain in Geb (and as a blood lord, they probably will)

And arazni only hates people that make unwilling undead

She does not care if you are personally undead

[vestal inlet]

yeah, ill bring that up next time its relevant. but im overall happy with the decision in the moment

it was agreed on party wide to only be a one time thing and its put the fear of god in them so theyre taking this seriously now 😛

[dim venture]

They also might follow arazni

As her former self of being the Lich Queen of Geb

That's possible for non clerics

[fierce bison]

you're only forced to become undead when you die, otherwise not at all

[dim venture]

Aka

Eventually

[fiery loom]

A thing I've been doing in Blood Lords is giving each PC an "extra life" per book. If they would die with one, they instead lose their extra life. Mostly since I do not want permanent PC death to happen often if at all, but I still want to avoid having to do stuff like this where the PC "would have" died but could avoid it. Bit of a table preference thing though

[fierce bison]

if they're living, it's easy, as per law they must become undead, so PC continues on as undead, had that happen at least once between my 2 grps!

[echo yew]

How common are mindless enemies in this AP (considering playing a Occult Witch or Psychic)

[grim egret]

Early game its pretty rough for that. But there's a lot more mindful enemies as the levels go up so there's that

But also be careful talking in here

[echo yew]

?

[echo yew]

thanks 😄

[grim egret]

Spoilers

[echo yew]

ah ok thanks

[ember helm]

We got to the field of Maidens and I’m enjoying it more than I thought would

Influence system is still a little clunky imo, but not as bad a time I had as when I tried to run it in age of ashes 😭

[sick mountain]

Need zombie feast advice:(spoilers) || players just did the bank, and were planning to do the bone shards hideout next, but found the flask in the bank and figured out about the crooked coffin. They think that the hideout is the End Goal and the coffin is just another way to get info: any suggestions on railroading them slightly? ||

[grim egret]

||I mean cant you just let do them hideout and find out its not that||

[fierce bison]

no need for spoilers in here btw

[sick mountain]

Ah, I didn't mention the main problem: they're now planning on going to the crooked coffin first, while still level 2

[dim venture]

I mean, they can visit it normally

They send some of their bigger guys out

"listen pal don't make trouble in this bar"

Or smth

they might get their ass beaten if they press on

They can decide to run

Or die there

Up to them

[twin oracle]

Yeah I wouldn't really rail road them in this scenario, in their perspective they're just following a lead

you can do what qwert said and make them way in over their heads, such that if a fight broke out it'd be a hard fought fight

then if they still fight it's on their hands lol, you could make the bar people just knock em unconscious

the book does say that if the party leaves the tavern while it's not fully cleared kepgeda will create more zombie minions once per day

if you're worried about tpk-ing you could nerf the fight

[rotund arch]

If you’re worried about them missing out on treasure or xp, maybe have Ortagar hint at there being potentially more information to be uncovered.

If the party chooses not to and goes for the bar, let them. You gave them the hint, it’s on them if they have problems for not taking it

Of course you could also have them level up. The hideout overall is uneventful except for one monster, and another chance for the characters to be evil

Personally I think separating the Bone Shards from the Three Fingered Hand was a mistake concept wise

[sick mountain]

i thought it was interesting but my players havent cottoned on to it

in their minds there is one gang, the Bone Shards, that has a logo that is a three fingered hand

[rotund arch]

Exactly

Like they’re both hella similar

And the bone shards are cooler bad guys than the ruffian npcs that are the three fingered gang

[vestal inlet]

The bone shards feel like they fit the title of generic thieves guild in the area that can easily be spliced into any custom adventure in greydirge. The three fingered hand is a little more like an ap specific group because of the ties to everything in it.

[sick mountain]

i may have made a mistake

i let one of my players, an human undead oracle, take the adopted ancestry feat and pick Skeleton

they jus leveled up and are planning to take the "undead empathy" feat. but i think, rules as written, it wouldnt work since they still count as a living creature

should I let them take it and just apply things, so it only really works on non-aggressive mindless undead? (not exactly uncommon in Geb but still)

or like...

idk

[rotund arch]

Let him have it, he’s burning a gen feat

Rule zero

[sick mountain]

i think what i'll do is let it work as normal but mindless undead start as unfriendly to her rather than indifferent, as they would be to a full undead

[dim venture]

RAW adopted ancestry only allow "cultural feats"

you are adopted by said ancestry

not part half them

personally, i'd question the decision of why skeleton adopted ancestry in the first place

cuz most of the skeleton feats are tied to the fact they are skeletons

yeah

looking at the list

none of them are cultural skeleton feats

they're all tied to the fact you are a skeleton, made of bones and once had a life before you died

[ember helm]

Yeah I would let them

But id make them justify it lmao

[dim venture]

atp, skeleton mixed ancestr heritage might be the better option

skeleton that retain their mortal mind, instead of becoming amnesiac

make them is undead, period. lose "access to so in life, as in death" & its follow up
as the mixed ancestry mechanics for them

[rotund arch]

Agreed. They’re still giving up their heritage but no longer need adopted ancestry

[ember helm]

I think I condensed the influence system and it made the tribal stuff in the field of maidens more palatable, I think my players are digging it, you guys were right

[fiery loom]

Field of Maidens is not supposed to be tribal at all I think?

So if you avoided running it that way that's a good thing ig. But the two groups represent two powerful states within a divine nation. They're not "tribes", they're warbands/envoys from a neighboring country

Or do you just mean the faction politics part of field of maidens. I may be misunderstanding you

[ember helm]

Yeah whatever you call the holomogians

[sick mountain]

in you lots's opinion, should i let the players know how and when they gain reputation points? or keep that mostly Behind the Scenes, and let them use their intuition

[hidden bramble]

i make it public information

[fiery loom]

I make it public info. The campaign gives players no way to spend reputation or interact with it at all until the last book, which I thought was a big misstep. I did two things to remedy this:
-The first faction the PCs reached 15 reputation with gave them a special magic item. I can share the items I used for this if asked. The players were able to research which gift each faction would give in advance, and I believe mine reached this threshold late in book 3.
-After the PCs became blood lords, I let the PCs vote on various political proposals during downtime. Faction reputation was a part of this, as the PCs could spend reputation to influence factions to vote this or that way. To resolve a vote, I always roll a flat check with the DC determined by however the PCs tried to swing the vote.
-To accommodate these changes, I also gave the PCs more chances to earn reputation than the books provided

[sick mountain]

is kinda sad that reputation doesnt come up much. the magic item and voting ideas are pretty cool, ill have to use em

any suggestions for additional points at which to earn rep?

[fiery loom]

Three things I can remember off the top of my head that I did are:
-When the players became blood lords, they could pick a faction to "sponsor" them, which earned them rep with that faction
-When the players made big moves, solving the Holomog border crisis in book 3, taking down Kemnebi in book 5, all factions wanted to curry favor with them so I gave them a set number of "free" faction rep points to distribute as they pleased

Also I let them sell their vote for reputation in the political votes they didn't really care about

@sick mountain (and anyone else who's interested) can find the faction rewards I made here

These were one reward per faction the PCs could earn for whichever faction they reached 15 rep in first

[sick mountain]

so you only gave em the one from the first one?

[ember helm]

I gave them the first thing at level 5

And I tried to do reputation privately and sort of describe it but mechanically it’s too dense to try to impart vibes so I switched to public

[fiery loom]

I only gave them the first one yeah. But if your players would respond especially well to it I think letting them have a second would be a good idea too. Maybe after they hit a higher rep threshold

[ember helm]

Ayo this ghast fight got hands

I think my party is gonna TPK

[ember helm]

Rogue down, Barbarian down, psychic on his last legs, gunslinger sniper is chilling

[ember helm]

Lmao the gunslinger critted the last ghast the turn the psychic was about to hit dying 4

They survived 😮‍💨

[rotund arch]

Beware shadows everyone.

Just had a snowball encounter where they kept cloning themselves via steal shadow.

The full blooded shadows can hide in other PCs’ shadows very easily with +14 stealth mod.

Also for the love of god, do NOT run that encounter in A6 of Taviah’s cottage. Whoever designed that is an asshole

[nimble fossil]

I’ve only skimmed though Taviah’s cottage which encounter is that

[spiral marsh]

its the shadow encounter, set on this super small (5ft by 35ft) staircase going down, and at the bottom is the boss,

[nimble fossil]

Ah

Yeah that one’s going to be interesting for my group

I’m excited to see how they handle it

Also I’m trying to think of more ways to incorporate the reputation system I do love the items Henrio made. Any other ideas floating around?

[rotund arch]

It’s probably doable for 3-4 players

But even then, it’s very cramped

And unless you’re a nice GM who will have Taviah let the party rest outside her doorstep, they have a severe right after

Then moderate via the hazard

If you want to have the encounters still be hard.

1. Scrap the stairway encounter
2. Make Taviah’s fight extreme and let the party rest (not long rest) before facing her.
3. Run house as normal.

The extreme will probably be much more forgiving then the AP’s set up. Shadows are a bitch without ghoat touch, and RAW the AP doesn’t give the party anything to prepare. I gave out a vial and had a ghost touch rune in the Wight Grave

You can justify the extreme encounter because the party will level after the dungeon

RAW assuming you’re running the dungeon immersively and not letting the party rest between each fight, you’ll have

Moderate (really annoying and draining) > Severe > Moderate (House)

Extreme + Moderate (House) is less likely to kill people then the original set up

If you’re too scared to do it my way, give the party either a vial of ghost touch or a rune

Shadows are an absolute bitch if you play them the way they’re supposed to be played.

Especially if the party can’t heal Enfeebled

Also, they can reliably dodge Revealing Light

[nimble fossil]

I like that

The party consists of a wizard, fighter, champion and psychic. So in theory they should be fine

[rotund arch]

It all depends on how "smart" you run your mobs

Shadows love pulling out the life from others, so they're going to go after people with higher strength / con

They don't do that much damage. The danger is that for an action, steal shadow inflicts an auto enfeebled

Say those shadows get the chance to swarm someone, bad things happen

[ember helm]

Yeah I think ran that encounter without the shadow and the gunslinger should have died in the basement but I have a house rule where you can drag people at half speed for an athletics check so they managed to drag him out just in time

[rotund arch]

I’m pretty sure that house rule is RAW if the creature is your size or one category smaller

[ember helm]

well that worked out nicely lmao

[ember helm]

I’m also realizing that the first stage of ghast fever being no ill effects is diabolical lmao

Non-zero chance one or two of my players get Ghastified

[mild plinth]

How well can I get the campaign working if my players wanna play more goody?

Do I need to homebrew some sort of route they can take for a benevolent lordship or is that just something they can do?

[grim egret]

Can you expand on what you mean by good

[mild plinth]

Basically, I think my party is going to want to entirely overthrow others and enstate a democracy.

Obviously not immediately, but dunno if that's doable RAW

[grim egret]

Hmm. Well obviously that cant be an open goal of theirs. But the important thing is they need to be very okay working with all the really messed up people running geb as well. So pure paladins or the like cant really work here. Secondly unfortunately your epilogue is likely gonna be "they attempted to do this and geb trapped their souls inside his walls so he could listen to their tortured screams for all eternity" cause there's a lot of people that would stop them doing that

At least with how it currently is considering you are only helping Geb by removing a lot of thorns in his side

[mild plinth]

Gotcha. I haven't read too far into the books yet. I'd like them to do something that gives them a 'good ending' goal, where they can at least alleviate some suffering.

[grim egret]

I think a more reformist goal is possible. But to get any real power and influence they are gonna have to become undead themselves eventually. There are some opportunities to improve things a bit for people during the campaign but overall if they're anti Geb there's not much they do within this adventure to take geb down. Unless you add some really extensive stuff

[mild plinth]

Gotcha. I guess being living in it is essentially something that invites a lot of prejudice against the PCs and natural suspicion? I imagine just letting them improve some people's lives might be enough, but reworking the campaign to say "Geb got clapped at the end" is a bit much

[grim egret]

Yeah i mean the players guide and pretty much everything says as such

The quick are underclass here

[ember helm]

Yeah I would frame it as “you guys are trying to change the system from the inside, but it’s gonna take playing dirty”

The first 3 books are also fully independent of being blood lords lmao, they really slow roll that part

[rotund arch]

Welp, my party is going to fight Taviah in Sallowshore

They wanted to lure her out in the middle of the forest, so she just sent them a dream message telling them to pull up, and left the hut

They then went back into the house, found her missing, and said house tried to eat them

Did you know Exemplar's Marathon run cheeses the hazard

Either way, I'm expecting an encounter with both Sadhi and Taviah

[ember helm]

That’s very funny lmao, AP’s made before certain classes came out always has funny shit like this as potential situations

Also a double hag fight sounds brutal, might wanna give them some help somehow if that happens, maybe have Tobias help

[ember helm]

Has anyone messed with not revealing Kemnebi as the guy at the end of 3? Seems anticlimactic since that knowledge doesn’t come into play until way later

[nimble fossil]

I honestly plan to have Kemnebi be a major thorn in the players side.

[ember helm]

Ah so you reworked the later books to have more kemnebi influence instead of delaying the reveal?

Or are going to*

[nimble fossil]

Going to I got a few vauge ideas but nothing really concrete yet

[ember helm]

Hmmm that’s not a bad idea, maybe I’ll do something with that too. Gotta read more into 4-6 but I like that

[rotund arch]

It is brutal, but my party has

• Free Archetype
• Ancestral Paragon
• One free general feat at lvl 1
• Teams+ content
• Good tactics and synergy

They can handle a lot

[ember helm]

Man that sounds awesome, my players are Neanderthals

[dim venture]

doesnt it become immediately relevant with book 4

they get invited to meet Geb

they can tell him what he's up to but the party will lack evidence

and then his lackeys starts to show up more after

[ember helm]

Yeah I think that’s underwhelming myself. Like “here’s the big bad guy” and then you spend a book doing blood lord chores without really interacting with that part of the plot at all

[fiery loom]

I had him start antagonizing my players in book 2 and gave him more of a persistent role overall

Both me and my players didn't really view him as "the villain" of the story as much as a powerful political rival

[grim egret]

Yeah my gm had him antagonising Bernili in book 1 to show his relative power. We died in book 3 but they seemed to have a lot in mind

[fiery loom]

The nature of the setting made the idea that "Kemnebi is probably involved with this but a group of nobodies trying to oust him over this will not even slow him down until you have a lot of power/an airtight investigation and evidence backing you up"

[ember helm]

Yeah I just feel like that falls kinda flat in execution personally

[rotund arch]

Having him frame the party at the end of book 2 is a good call

Then Seldeg’s arc is less forced and more of a way to get back into Geb’s good graces

Which will make killing Seldeg harder

You can have the party meet him while in Yled

[fiery loom]

Having him frame the party in book 2 was huge for making that arc work yeah

[rotund arch]

He’s got the soul of a wisened monk. Nipping upstarts in the bud is completely understandable

[fiery loom]

And they've already been thorns in his side for 2 books at that point

Even if the PCs don't know that yet

[ember helm]

I wish I’d thought of that lmao

Also what’s the deal with fossil golems, they reuse them in back to back chapters lmao

Is this one of those “everyone wrote a different book” situations

[fiery loom]

I put a note on a box in one of the rooms that it had been delivered from Nex

But I also made it part of the lore that all Golems are made in Nex

[ember helm]

I think I’m gonna have the arrested scientist guy you get the morticians suite from (where the second one is) have sent it to Kemnebi as a gift

[fiery loom]

Paizo writers hand out golems like candy but I like them to be a lot more restricted in my take on the setting

I have it so that they're only made in Nex and Kaer Maga (the latter being from a clan of exiles from Nex)

[rotund arch]

So Taviah fled to Sallowshore. Any ideas on how she can fuck with the party

I’m thinking she’ll disguise herself as Hunsl and whip the mob into a frenzy

If I want to be a prick, I could have Taviah attack after the mob fights the party

[rotund arch]

Really want to put that shapeshift ability to work

[fiery loom]

My immediate (mean) thought is that she would want to try to swoop in and attack the PCs after they defeat Sahni

[rotund arch]

Absolutely

Her and Midnight are still a moderate

[fiery loom]

Iron Taviah does not trust the other members of the coven enough to ally with her, but if she can get away with making the PCs bash their heads against Sahni and then try to take them down that's something she'd want to do

[rotund arch]

I can see Sadhi thinking she's gonna jump in, only to realize too late what Taviah is plotting

[fiery loom]

That can result in a pretty nightmarish back-to-back combat scenario so be careful if you do go down that route. If it were me I would probably make Taviah a complication in Sallowshore that can be dealt with preemptively, but if the PCs neglect to do this she's gonna do her swoop

Another path if you want to be cheeky is have Taviah disguise herself as a local (presumably killing or kidnapping her lookalike), and offer to take the PCs out on a boat to Sahni's lair. That way she can stay close and observe them for a good swoop opportunity

And the PCs get a bit more of an opportunity to see through her lies

[rotund arch]

My first idea is Hursi, and having Taviah egg on the mob.

The mob will be a trivial encounter, but have bad consequences if the party kills them

[dim venture]

Beware about how that'd conflict with the next book

You need to plan ahead of that's based on what happened to your group

Cuz the original version assumes she dies in her cottage

Then her body get eaten by it but in reality its transported the body to Kemnebi

Who turns her to a vampire

The party then sent to investigate her shack and o see what's wrong but then they found it fucked up and begin searching her

[mild plinth]

How open is combat and terrain? I kinda wanna run sea combat and some open combats, letting the party get a few vehicles.

[ember helm]

It’s a lot of indoor maps through the first 2.5 books, field of maidens in book 3 could give you some mad max openness

(Also make sure everyone knows vehicle rules or you have some homebrew in place because they are comically difficult in execution lmao)

[mild plinth]

I was going to make it so they could each have an opportunity to give up a downtime week to learn driving lore, and make driving work like Riding, where you automatically do it without backflipping to death.

Also was going to give vehicles super strong Hardness against non emplaced weapons & creatures small relative to it and their weapons.

only certain maneuvers were gonna be rolls tbh

Figured it'd be fun to give them the option, and might throw in some little homebrew open areas to interact with marches & vehicles if they like.

plus the party riding up in a carriage to encounters is peak aura

[mild plinth]

Are Quick treated as about the same as the Dead?

The cattle/chattle are slaves, that I know, but it seems Quick will be converted on death, but get protections by the dead laws.

Its mostly like you're being racially biased against, but not quite a second class citizen?

Microaggressions abound?

[fiery loom]

Kinda. You have legal protections which makes a big difference in the big cities, but if you go out into the countryside that piece of paper will be extremely flimsy

And yeah the quick are mostly seen as "future undead"

[mild plinth]

So if they make it towards the later books as Quick, will they curry enough respect to be seen by some of the forward-thinkers as peers?

In Castlevania, they have the devil forgemasters, human necromancers who are able to create undead since the living must link up with hell to do so. Was basically thinking I'd give them that sort of reverance among at least some of the vampires.

[fiery loom]

One thing I told my players at session 1 was that they could start as living or dead, but once they reached the end of the adventure they would all be dead

Though living long enough to get to choose your own kind of undeath was something I presented as a bit of a challenge to them

[mild plinth]

Hm. Alright. I guess I reason it in my head, that in an all-dead society, you'd probably want some living, just in case you essentially have a Vitality energy Chernobyl event, and it describes Geb as having high-ranking necromancers as the only respected and needed quick. I'll probably present it in a similar fashion

[fiery loom]

I think attitudes in Geb are similar - being able to stay alive long enough to choose your own undeath means you're smart and resourceful, but if you then don't take advantage of that it loops around to being a dumbass

But there's plenty of room to craft your own version of Golarion (or in this case Geb), and that's something I encourage other GMs to do

[mild plinth]

Hm, alright. I know very early they get the option of just getting basic undead benefits, but I do think it would be cool to have a vampire approach them with side-content, offering to turn them with some additional kickers/drawbacks, and then other types of undead down the line.

[fiery loom]

One of my players took on a huge sidequest to become a Lich

She started out as the cousin of Berline, learned Berline was planning to kill her to turn into a Lich and turned that scenario around

[mild plinth]

That's very cool! I had a little plotline in mind since I love side missions/content. Basically, a necromancer offers a fancy base of operations and to personally raise them, in exchange for doing some tasks.

Their 'final quest' for this individual is stopping a ship and they essentially find a bunch of oddly powerful siege weaponry, mostly ballistas with oddly shaped bolts among other things.

Said necromancer is specifically trying to stop the ship since it's carrying cargo designed to kill large beasts, namely dragons.

[fiery loom]

A lot of side content I added was quite player-directed or in response to what they did. Not everything though

Actually

If you're just starting out Blood Lords I have some material that may be handy. Probably my most evergreen material I did for my campaign

[mild plinth]

Oh? Sure I'm game!

Basically that side content thing would be a twist where they're caught up in a conspiracy dragon's great game to weaken Geb overtime.

But I haven't figured out all the solid lines for it yet, and I like making things more responsive.

[fiery loom]

Yeah as my campaign went along it changed more and more in response to the PCs actions

(Quoting Myself)

The campaign gives players no way to spend reputation or interact with it at all until the last book, which I thought was a big misstep. I did two things to remedy this:
-The first faction the PCs reached 15 reputation with gave them a special magic item. The players were able to research which gift each faction would give in advance, and I believe mine reached this threshold late in book 3.
-After the PCs became blood lords, I let the PCs vote on various political proposals during downtime. Faction reputation was a part of this, as the PCs could spend reputation to influence factions to vote this or that way. To resolve a vote, I always roll a flat check with the DC determined by however the PCs tried to swing the vote.
-To accommodate these changes, I also gave the PCs more chances to earn reputation than the books provided

[mild plinth]

I know Geb is like super-uber powerful but there's several self made gods in lore. I honestly think it'd be a cool epilogue to take him down, or at least temporarily strike him down.

[fiery loom]

Basically, the reputation system is quite underused and doesn't really come up at all until the last book so I made adjustments

[fiery loom]

My players are making plans. I have things in mind for this

[mild plinth]

Yeah. I figured they would have a few options

[fiery loom]

Items I used as faction gifts are here

[mild plinth]

OH THESE ARE COOL

I think I saw your mailbox post before

[fiery loom]

My players ended up picking the ring

[mild plinth]

I also am going to have 3 players: What do you think about their faction granting them Summons dark souls style? When they set out on a task, they can get a faction thematic summon/creature to help them out.

[fiery loom]

Which came in handy since it let them leave the party face in Mechitar to do politics while they were out adventuring

[fiery loom]

Oh yeah! I have a system for this that may or may not be helpful

Uhh

Oh yeah

Basically, this is a system I made let PCs use allies in combat without needing a GM-controlled NPC. Having an ally unlocks their "ally action" and one ally can be "equipped" to a PC

[mild plinth]

Its like... Oh god, vaguely like the phone system from the south park RPGs or the ally summons from Yakuza

They come in, bitch-smack something or provide a support effect, and go?

[fiery loom]

Yeah that kind of summon is a good way of thinking about them

[mild plinth]

I dig it. Heavily!

[fiery loom]

Though the way I contextualize is is more that the ally is fighting alongside the PCs and their contribution is abstracted into a single action

So I think I see them more like combo moves in Chrono Trigger

But you're like comboing with an ally on the sidelines

[mild plinth]

Ever seen the Avatar clip where he goes "Drop that guy" And the sniper instantaneously drops a combatatnt on the spot?

[fiery loom]

(Also the reason some are spoilered is because I posted this in gm/homebrew and put spoilers in characters who appear in the books normally)

[mild plinth]

That kind of vibe would be cool. Befriending a Shobhad or an Alkenstar sniper.

[fiery loom]

Not seen that clip specifically but I get the idea I think. And yeah that's how I tend to view them

Kind of a baton pass "Z'thini, do you thing" kind of deal

These ally actions ended up being a major factor in Book 5

That's when I really demo'd them, and I ran that book more like an open adventure where the PCs could explore Yled and prepare allies for the final dungeon

With a warning at the start that the final dungeon of the book would be beefed up and very difficult if they went in unprepared

[mild plinth]

I love it. I also plan on running with lots of alt rules like gradual abilities, free archetype, paragon. I like giving my party combos more than items; Such as the dragon party member can flame-coat your weapons for a round.

I'll do something quite similar; thank ya!

[fiery loom]

I also made some changes to the "connective tissue" between books

[mild plinth]

...Would an airship be out of place in Geb? Is that an acceptable method of transport to arrive legally?

[fiery loom]

In general I thought that was something that was a bit weak with the AP and I've heard other people say similar things

[fiery loom]

I don't think airships are something that's really a thing on golarion yet and they're not in my canon

However, Nex making airships would make a lot of sense. I think if airships ever become part of my version of the setting it's probably Nex which would be the origin point. Or a joint venture between Alkenstar and Nex

A weird addition I made to my Geb canon is that trees that grow in Geb all transform into horrible abominations as a result of some mage war fuckery with the soil

So they get all their lumber from a peace treaty/trade deal with the Axan Wood (which also explains why a fairy forest is just like... allowed to exist in Geb)

[mild plinth]

They're in Alkenstar but they don't have many places that support... landing the massive things

They're clunky.

[fiery loom]

There are some battlemaps with trees in them but I went with the idea that rich people use illusion magic to put fake trees around their homes lol

[mild plinth]

Hm; Does the godsfall happen in the later books? Assuming not since it doesn't reach into that year?

[fiery loom]

Oh yeah looking at the wiki there were two functional airships as of 4723

[mild plinth]

I think it'd be interesting for players to experience The Living Plague

[fiery loom]

If you follow canon strictly then the adventure starts 4722 AR

Specifically, on Erastus 27

[mild plinth]

How far does it stretch out? No way for them to reasonably attain that happening?

[fiery loom]

You can always check the canon start date of an AP because it's the corresponding release date (27th July 2022)

[fiery loom]

Godsrain happens in 4724, so two years later

I gave my players 1 year of downtime after book 3 concluded

Also rather than just having an NPC go "you're blood lords now" at the start of book 4 I told the players that becoming a blood lord was something they could pursue during that big stretch of downtime. Everyone became a blood lord eventually but I found that players doing it themselves for the first run around was more impactful than what the book does

[mild plinth]

My players worry that they're going to be treated as "HEY YOU THREE GOON-LORDS" later, so I was wondering; Do they all by default get distinct roles and such ? Or are they treated as stooges still? I'd like them to feel... powerful and singular

Despite being a team.

[fiery loom]

I can offer some advice for this, yes

One thing I made part of the lore of Blood Lords was that they all had their "territory" or sphere of interest

So for example, Berline's "territory" was her dominion over Greydirge, a major food producer

[mild plinth]

I figured I could do something like making one a game-warden, another a tax collector, etc, giving them districts of property they each work or a role fitting to each character's career

[fiery loom]

This is why this approach worked better for me as well, as becoming a blood lord mandated that the player actually claimed some territory

So it felt more like they were carving out their own little kingdom rather than having a bunch of things given to them

[mild plinth]

Thanks; you're giving me a lot.

[fiery loom]

The second point on this was also a big deal when it came to players actually feeling like blood lords. Being able to vote on political proposals and influence the voting with bribes and other underhanded tactics

[mild plinth]

I wanted to do a custom campaign AU at some point after this, where the Godsrain isn't just Gorum getting clapped. It's 90% of gods getting obliterated and the world nearly collapsing as a result, so the player's immediate goal is survival, and then figuring out who's stapling divinity back together and trying to fix elemental chaos. I like the feeling of letting players build.

[fiery loom]

And the outcome of the votes having an effect on the world

[fiery loom]

For my players, one of them ended up claiming Greydirge, one claimed The Bloodless Arena in Mechitar, one has a more abstract conception of "territory" being the leader and face of the mercerary group "The Amber Company" (which the PCs are all part of) and the final one doesn't actually have any real territory but people just assume she does because she's a Lich

[mild plinth]

I already have an idea based on what you've given me-- One PC wants to be a mob boss, more or less, running goods and raising a little goon army. I think it'd be fun for them to build up a big army of followers... Only for them all to get Game-Of-Thrones massacred, cut down on massive scale.

...Then give them a summon attack that is their loyalists coming and giving them help from beyond the grave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVJk3BdwebQ This vibe.

[fiery loom]

Also the Lich player is kinda setting herself up to take control over the entire city of Yled (which I have reimagined as a giant walking spider-city controlled by psychics)

If I keep talking about the particulars of my version of this AP I could keep going forever lol

[mild plinth]

Yeahhh, I'm excited, but anxious to run

I just like giving my players super cool stuff to fight with, and even more RP opportunity

[fiery loom]

My players responded extremely well to being able to vote on things during downtime once they became blood lords

So far they have voted on;
-Greenlight a joint expedition into a Shory ruin in the border mountains with the Magaambya
-Greenlight an embassy in Kaer Maga (this ties back to a previous adventure)
-Greenlight an embassy from Holomog (specifically, the faction the PCs aligned with in book 3)
-Fund a restoration of Greydirge after it was partially destroyed by a summoned Qlippoth
-Close the tax code loophole that allows caviar to be exported tax free
-Ban Alkenstar Icewine
-Greenlight the mobilization of Yled
-Voting process for selecting a new Blood Lords Chancellor (after Kemnebi was ousted in book 5)

[ember helm]

My players beefed the holomog stuff, Rhino was not happy that they let one of her guards die and the players were able to talk her into leaving but they took lahseeli’s family statues so neither of the factions are fans of them now

Also stealing these vote ideas

[fiery loom]

Yeah I've been trying to factor in their earlier decisions and what they've been focusing on to do the votes

One thing that's been a big hit with my players is that if they don't really care about the outcome of a vote, they can sell their vote for faction reputation

[ember helm]

Ooooo I love that

I’m excited to see how my players do as real blood lords, they really didn’t like (in character) how the holomog stuff went, they don’t trust Saldheg, I think they’ve become very disillusioned with Geb politics and might go for a “change the system from the inside” type beat

[mild plinth]

How is religion in Geb?

More specifically, holy ones and Pharasma in particular.

[fiery loom]

Pharasmites are considered dangerous terrorists

And worship of Pharasma is outlawed

Holy gods are allowed/disallowed mostly based on how hostile they are towards undead. AFAIK more disallowed than allowed

[dim venture]

there's a scene later where it's equivalent to stopping a mass shooting perpetrated by Pharasmins that entered a church of Urgathoa

some mid-level pharasmin was about to spam 3-action heal in there against low level undead worshippers

[mild plinth]

Party is going to be a Barb OR Oracle, plus a Rogue & Thaumaturge

Dunno how they'll do

[mild plinth]

Neat-- Would it be more dramatic to allow two instances of this? Give the party the ability to stop one for a heroic fantasy, but also give them the feeling of

"DAMN, shit is MESSED UP here. They just got OBLITERATED."

Being undead ain't easy

[fiery loom]

I did a little planned "random encounter" one time when the PCs needed to travel in one of the early books

Where the PCs come upon a cattle ranch that gets attacked by Pharasmites

[dim venture]

in that encounter attacking them immediately is "the wrong choice"

because sure you can probably kill them

but they'd take down a bunch of undead with their 3-a heal spam already

[fiery loom]

I had my players onboarded with the idea of "Geb is a horrible, horrible place and this campaign you work to maintain the status quo and your characters are, in turn, not good people"

[dim venture]

you need to persuade/initimidate them to leave

now if your PC choose to follwo them to the back alley and kill them there after that's a different story

[fiery loom]

Though we are a bit past "your characters tacitly allow soul slavery and human chattel". My players just did a plagues of egypt on Greydirge a few sessions ago for a small benefit

As part of striking a deal with a Lesser Death

[dim venture]

hell you might not even care about civilian casualty

you fight just care about killing the terrorists

[mild plinth]

Would it be a bad idea to make Geb less evil?

Or at least a bit more nuanced feeling? Adding more redeeming qualities rather than taking away atrocities?

Was considering a lesser clan of vampires causing troubles then essentially getting publically executed, with Geb more or less becoming weary with the dramas of those around.

Basically seems Geb just does nothing and then appears suuuper late, just wanted him to feel more present and not just... le super evil super guy who doesn't appear till late?

I might be missing some things but I just like... depth to evil things. I like that he's lawful which helps but the Arazni stuff seems SUPER bad.

Maybe I should just roll it Raw?

[dim venture]

what he did to Arazni is retalliation for assassins from Lastwall

a warning to those that tries to attack him

[dim venture]

he appears pretty early on, relatively speaking, book 4

my intro is adding a precession, the celebration in Mechitar honoring him at the staty of the story

where he is just there, disinterested

[mild plinth]

How is her relationship with Geb? I don't understand the dynamic. It feels ICK but I don't know how ick.

I understand that she gained freedom, but wondering about before then.

[dim venture]

Puppet queen

He makes her do all the ruling

[mild plinth]

Gotcha- Basically just made her head of state then went and did his own things? Basically slavery?

Scoob, we're gonna have to kill this guy.

[dim venture]

He did nothing basically

He lock himself in his room doing nothing. Cuz there's no Nex lmao

He only returned now cuz he was forced too and only gained slightly more enthusiasm about his job cuz Nex might return

[mild plinth]

I have book of the dead, any other important reads?

I wanna know how to run him appropriately

Would most references to Geb be in impossible lands and LO?

[dim venture]

it is in il YEAH

[fiery loom]

The way I view Geb is that he's essentially like any other ghosts (single-minded in resolving a conflict from his life), except with way more resources under his command than other ghosts. And the conflict he's trying to resolve is essentially impossible

So I don't exactly view him as pure evil - in a sense he is, but he's not committing atrocities because he specifically wants to, he just cares specifically about this one thing and will do whatever takes him closer to that goal

[rotund arch]

So something just popped out to me

Why would Sadhi hide the potion of annulment in the basement of one of her victims?

Like even with the trap, why would she leave that so close to them

[hidden bramble]

sahni didn't put that there

[rotund arch]

Who did?

Like how did it get there?

If I was the hag, I would’ve scrawled (Potion of Annulment) on a water bottle

Omg I just thought’ve something hilarious

An undead mixer that has a 1/7 chance of their concoction having the potion of annulment effects

[fiery loom]

Canonically it was the Builder's League that hid it there

I don't think the book specifies why

[rotund arch]

That is weird

I’m do the water bottle thing

Hags are assholes, they’d definitely do that

Have the real one be in her lair

[fiery loom]

As I understand it, it's unrelated to Sahni. Off the cuff I'd imagine a potion like that would be useful when you make magical deals in general

Just something they stowed away years ago

[rotund arch]

Something she could’ve used as potential leverage

[fiery loom]

I try to avoid those kind of fakeout rewards for my players truth be told, but YMMV

It's a table/GM style thing probably

[rotund arch]

I mean you’re dealing with creatures that adore spreading misery

Making shit ugly and depressing is a hag’s bnb

[fiery loom]

It'd probably work if you establish that Sahni set the whole thing up, where in the AP it's not really related to her at all

[rotund arch]

Well the party knows about the sea hag who makes deals that end badly

[hidden bramble]

it's implied the builder's league and the lodge predate sahni

[fiery loom]

Sure, but I'm talking about what she has to do with the basement

[rotund arch]

Even then, what are the odds they’d have a potion of annulment in a trap

[hidden bramble]

quite high

[rotund arch]

She’d have left that there hoping her trap would’ve killed them, only to punish them more when they found out it was for nothing

[fiery loom]

If there used to be a hag here before Sahni (which is implied), fairly high

[rotund arch]

Ok

I’ll use this reasoning when the npc tells them what’s going on

[hidden bramble]

henrio already pointed this out: an organization that makes many many contracts but isn't on perfectly friendly terms with the other factions is likely to hold onto a few aces up their sleeves to deal with contracts they don't want to be apart of anymore

and the great factions have been around for what, thousands of years?

[rotund arch]

Taviah’s about to get a player arrested posing as a guard captain, so…

[fiery loom]

But yeah if Sahni got access to the basement (which is possible), she could have already filched the potion

[rotund arch]

Yeah they didn’t kill Taviah so she’s in Sallowshore

The player tried to burn down Salough’s inn after he ripped them off

[fiery loom]

I don't like this that much myself because I'm a bit ehhh on sending my players on a quest and then they get nothing. It varies though, in this case I'm not really a fan because it's a relatively minor reward

The Evil Adventuring Party getting to The Amulet of Legend first is something I'd do

[hidden bramble]

it's more than likely that the item was just left in storage, sahni doesn't know about it, and stana only knows because she spent however much time scouring old records of inventory to find it

[rotund arch]

She’s posing as a peasant woman, so Taviah has to beat her deception dc

But Taviah knows the party

[hidden bramble]

and like, she literally says as much:

"A Builders League lodge contains many secrets, and this one's secrets are known only to me and my son. ..."

[fiery loom]

My players are going to need to go through an evil detox program when we move on to the next adventure lmao

[rotund arch]

One player made a deal witn Sadhi because he got the town guard on him when he fled without paying

[fiery loom]

Recently they sacrificed all the living children age 4 and down in Greydirge to a Lesser Death so they could have a guide when they went to Abbaddon

[rotund arch]

In exchange for the guard forgetting what he did, no one knows who he is (including the party)

So when they find that potion of annulment, the PC will need to decide if they’ll give it to the son, or drink it

[fiery loom]

I like this way more ya

[rotund arch]

My god that’s hilarious

[fiery loom]

Finding an item like that and having to make a choice

[fiery loom]

Straight up plagues of egypt shit

[rotund arch]

When they fought Nebunah’s ghost, the swash kept grabbing and using a whip on him (ghost touch).

Got to rp PTSD

[fiery loom]

One of my players adopted Nebumi and made him a part of her animal companion

[rotund arch]

A player failed their saves on his aura and started crying because of their abusive mother

[rotund arch]

Someone should tell them no good deeds happen in Evil campaigns lmao

[fiery loom]

Ehhh questionable if it can be considered good. She bound his ghost to her rat

[rotund arch]

Worst part is I’m a therapist, so I did a pretty good job

[rotund arch]

Damn…

[fiery loom]

After killing his mom and all that

[rotund arch]

I mean Taviah’s death would be a gift

She neglected and probably abused him every which way

Hags normally devour male offspring

I had her turn Neboah into a Greater Shade

They fought him instead of her because they waited too long

There are shadows running around, she knows shadow magic

[ember helm]

Dollhouse defeated but all 3 dolls are alive and the sensed motive to tell she’s not being straightforward about her intentions and they’re about to face the bulettes

[ember helm]

Also there’s so many phantasmal killers in this book, terrifying ordeal

[dim venture]

well...

it's a death effect

so the PC are immune to the insta death effects

assuming they're undead

alternatively, you can use the remaster version instead, Vision of Death

which does not have insta kill effect

[hidden bramble]

vision of death does instant kill if it reduces the target to 0 HP though

[dim venture]

Via the death trait, which undead pc is also immune to

[hidden bramble]

if the party used berline's ritual, they're not actually undead, they are just living creatures with void healing

of my table of 6 (and two companions), one of eight is actually undead

[twin oracle]

more opportunity to turn them undead

[ember helm]

Holy shit I missed that they’re immune to death effects, all but one of my players is undead

I’ve committed a GM sin

[patent dew]

I’m struggling a bit with Book of Ashes (City of Soldiers). The party has entered Yled and are explicitly informed that the Warmasters council is not to be trifled with. They are here to see a local high priest about a dog, but said cleric isn’t open until Sundays so the party has to kick around and wait for an appointment. Before the day arrives however, they learn that the Warmasters have unexpectedly turned their eye on the cleric and have sent one of their more violent member to apprehend the holy man.

The party might be able to talk their way past the police cordon to chat with the priest before the executioner arrives, but all roads as presented in the AP lead to a bloody confrontation with one of the Warmasters. Like, there’s no dialogue to be had with this single minded executer of the councils agenda, he just attacks anyone standing between himself and his prey. No thought is given to the idea that the players might not want to interfere in, what by all appearances, is an agent of higher authority pursuing a legal mandate. And they kill a member of this legal body they have been explicitly warned not to upset.

Then… the chapter just moves on. Like, it does not even consider addressing the immediate repercussions for killing a council member, let alone the future political ramifications for the fledging blood lords.

This weirds me out, and I believe my players are going to have some questions.

[rotund arch]

Than homebreq a solution

Assuming this is book 5, maybe the executioner will think twice about shoving his weight past the party, so he may be up to negotiate assuming the cleric still dies

Make him opportunistic. Maybe he’ll want a favor when the blood lords gain more power

I usually throw in rp with monsters who I feel like would be cool to talk to. Even if it’s just temporary

[fiery loom]

I could talk you through how I ran that book if you want me to, I did it in a somewhat different way that I found to be quite successful

[patent dew]

I'd love some ideas on how to spin it, yeah!

[ember helm]

(Not on 5 yet, but I’m also down to hear those ideas)

[fiery loom]

Okay so

The way I ran Book 5 was a big divergence from the source material

Both book 5 and 6 were like this, because at this point I needed to make space to react to my players actions and choices up until that point

The biggest change I made to book 5 was making it a lot more open - the players were sent into Yled as enforcers of Geb with the express mission of uncovering the drug production conspiracy they were able to secure direct evidence of in book 4

At this point Kemnebi was essentially stuck in a legal battle and the players actions in book 5 was the final blow

[fiery loom]

But this meant several things:
-The book was an "open adventure", the players could freely choose which order to investigate things in
-I told the players at the start that they would need to gather allies for the book's final confrontation (more on that later)
-The player could arrest NPCs at will. Their word was law and could only be contradicted by direct orders by The Warmaster (This was an especially effective change I found)

In service of point 3, I gave the players a resource "The Ghost King's Patience" which they could spend to execute the ghost king's authority (for example if they wanted to detain a politically powerful NPC)

In service of point 2, I used my "Ally Actions" Subsystem, where players can recruit allied NPCs in order to get associated "ally actions" they can use in combat

[fiery loom]

You can find the full list of Ally Actions I used in these posts up here

Which includes ones for most major NPCs in the book

[patent dew]

Nice... I'll have to read those thoroughly.

[fiery loom]

I found all these changes made for an extremely effective contrast with the players' first visit to Yled

First time around they had been small fry (and in my campaign had needed to escape the city and lay low as Kemnebi framed them as masterminds of the poisoning plot at the end of book 2)

And second time they were big dogs who could order people around and held more authority than almost anyone else in the city

[patent dew]

Sounds very interesting, but also very mechanical. How did things shake out in the confrontation between the party and Pokmit Bloody-Pike? I'm most interested in the fallout if they were to murk the dude during the execution of his duties. Did the warmasters react at all?

[fiery loom]

The party loved Pokmit and he became a campaign pet for the book

So no killing on that front lol

[patent dew]

Haha, ok, lol

[fiery loom]

Making the PCs "equal" to the Warmaster Council during the book meant they had a lot of wiggle room though

One of the things the PCs had to choose between in this book was aligning themselves with the Warmaster Council more or the Old Guard of Blood Lords who see the council as a threat to their power

[patent dew]

That's an interesting wrinkle.

[fiery loom]

I also beefed up the final dungeon a fair bit

Since it was made with the assumption that the PCs would have a full kit of ally actions by then

[patent dew]

Can I ask how you found Slagtown? I'm leery about running these infiltration rules, but dread the idea of wholesale replacing the chapter for something homebrewed. (I run AP's because I don't have the time to do a lot of extra legwork).

[fiery loom]

I ran it as an infiltration

It's been a while since though

[patent dew]

I think I've resolved to just running things as written, but I want to know if it's a slog.

[fiery loom]

I think I made some small modifications

It was pretty fun for us I think

[patent dew]

Small modifications I can survive.

[fiery loom]

We got it done in 1.5 sessions I think

So it didn't feel too slow to me at least

[ember helm]

You were cooking, goddamn

[fiery loom]

And the payoff for the party to corner Decrosia only for her to propel herself backwards through a window onto the street by shooting one of the PCs in the face was good

For the Decrosia fight I ran a "run and gun" fight where it was assumed that Decrosia spend 1A each turn running down the street. So anyone who didn't spend an action moving in that direction each turn would get "moved" 25ft on the map

So I could run a very mobile encounter with lots of running in one direction without a huge battlemap lol

[patent dew]

Hm. Did you run this on a digital platform?

I can think of a few interesting module gimmicks for a fight like that... Parallaxing a city street with modular hazards could be a lot of fun...

[fiery loom]

I ran it on Foundry ya

[fiery loom]

I put some automaton sniper hazards on rooftops that would come in at certain turns

And they would "lock onto" a PC and everyone would then get a change to do a ranged attack to disrupt the shot/the targetted PC could dive into cover

[patent dew]

I was thinking more of rolling carts, collapsing awnings, two dudes haphazardly carrying a pane of glass in the middle of the street...
But, uh, maybe some alkenstar techno-bullshit is more appropriate, lol.

[fiery loom]

One small thing I did during the Infiltration was to rename Awareness Points to "Heat"

2E has too many damn things called Points

[patent dew]

Tru

[fiery loom]

But yeah it's been a while

But I remember running the infiltration pretty close to the book and it being a good time

[patent dew]

That's a relief. I'll endevour to make the best of it, and if the players complain, I'll punt the responsibility onto the AP instead.
I mention slagtown only because I am always a little hesitant with these sort of fiat systems that seem to exist in their own little pocket adventures.

The game we are currently about to conclude has one of those for cinematic chases, and I always felt like they were more of a bump in the rythm of the adventure as everyone had to stop doing what they normally do and instead adhere to this random new system that abstracts away all the skills and abilities they usually have access to.

Anyways, thanks a bunch for the input. I figure I'll have to do the most re-working on the last two books of the AP, which honestly doesn't come as a huge surprise. I'll figure out a way to make the investigation in Yled conclude more cohesively and with some more player input.

[fiery loom]

Have you started the campaign yet?

[patent dew]

No. We're concluding a 3 year WHFRP campaign that has been an absolute monster to get through and now it's my turn back in the pilot seat.

Players insisted on going back to a more high-fantasy game, but I vetoed 5E since I am completely burned out on the system. PF2E was a compromise and I semi-randomly picked bloodlords as the AP.

[fiery loom]

I could share the most successful (and generically useful imo) changes I made if you want me to.

Assuming I haven't already lol. I've been pretty freespoken about my Blood Lords run

[patent dew]

I am super interested, yeah. I think there are great moments in the material as written, but also tremendous oversights (possibly intentional). I'll take any advice you can give me.

[fiery loom]

The biggest "structural" change I made to the adventure that applies to all books was giving the PCs more uses for faction reputation

Which when you run the adventure RAW has no use until the final book, which I found quite lame

[patent dew]

Oh, for sure, I clocked that almost instantly. But go on...

[fiery loom]

I did two things, quoting myself..

-I gave each faction a "signature item" that would be granted to the PCs after they reached a certain reputation threshold. They could only get one of these items, even if they later reached the threshold of a second faction. I believe I set the threshold at 15 rep, but I also added additional opportunities to get reputation (otherwise the PCs will almost automatically reach Reanimators first), and they earned their signature item near the end of Book 3
-After the PCs become Blood Lords, I introduced council votes on various policy decisions in the country (the PCs can also cast their vote), and faction rep could be used to sway votes

The second addition was very engaging for my players

I can also dig up the signature items

[ember helm]

Yep I think I already stole that plan from you

[fiery loom]

And these are all the things the PCs have voted on
-Greenlight a joint expedition into a Shory ruin in the border mountains with the Magaambya
-Greenlight an embassy in Kaer Maga (this ties back to a previous adventure)
-Greenlight an embassy from Holomog (specifically, the faction the PCs aligned with in book 3)
-Fund a restoration of Greydirge after it was partially destroyed by a summoned Qlippoth
-Close the tax code loophole that allows caviar to be exported tax free
-Ban Alkenstar Icewine
-Greenlight the mobilization of Yled
-Voting process for selecting a new Blood Lords Chancellor (after Kemnebi was ousted in book 5)

Especially the last vote was a big engaging factor for the players. It was a lot more involved with an election of sorts and one of the PCs became the new chancellor

[patent dew]

Oooh, I like these.

[fiery loom]

What the players could do was to sell votes on topics they didn't really care about for faction reputation

And buy votes on topics they did care about with faction rep

Which turned out to be a very fun system to engage with during downtime or sorta-downtime

The "signature items" I used can be found here

[ember helm]

Wish we could pin those lmao

[patent dew]

Excellent. I'm absolutely stealing this.

[fiery loom]

The players were super tempted by the Interdimensional Library Card but ultimately got the Ring of Bloodclone which let them make a copy of one of the PCs to do politics in Mechitar even when the PCs were out adventuring

I also gave the PCs more opportunities to get faction rep in general. I think if you run it RAW the PCs will get rep for reanimators mostly in book 1

And I wanted them to be able to pick a signature item at around book ~2, I think I set the threshold at 15 rep

It might have been 10

[patent dew]

I'll carefully tally out the reputation gains/losses and try to systematize them more. I had that on my to-do list already.

[fiery loom]

The voting thing was honestly the bigger success overall (though the signature items was great too and voting doesn't come into play until book 4)

But getting to vote on things was huge for really making the players feel like batman I mean blood lords

[patent dew]

We'll be having a session zero soon and I floated the idea for the players that one option in the game might be to found their own minor faction. I stressed that this would preclude them from reaching the maximum heights with any of the pre-existing factions, but I wanted them to make this decision before I put pen to paper on any big changes I was going to make to the material.

[fiery loom]

I ultimately did not go down that route myself

But if the players had expressed more interest in it initially I would have

Well

[patent dew]

Yeah, I figure that would be where I spend most of my energies if they do opt for it, but we'll see how they feel.

[fiery loom]

The players sort of ended up creating their own faction at the end

The party has garnered great fame as "The Amber Company" being a company of mercenaries consisting of mostly themselves

It's more about branding than being an actual faction though

[patent dew]

Yeah, I imagine that is sort of a byproduct of them becoming famous in Geb.

[fiery loom]

Yeah

I made some changes to the "glue" between books

Some of which I recommend because by default it's a bit weak (as it tends to be with APs with books written by different authors)

[patent dew]

I figure I'll do some expanded downtimes, let the characters really settle into the world.

Spend more time in their manor that they earn in book one, then never have any reason to return to in the rest of the AP, lol.

[fiery loom]

Between Book 1>2

I had book 2 start with Iron Taviah contacting the PCs and threatening to cast a curse on them for killing her daughter. Not totally neccesary but gave the players much more of a personal stake than just being told to go deal with it by Berline

[fiery loom]

Yeah I also gave the PCs farmland alongside the manor, and they got to choose what to grow and earn a bit of gp over time

That was a big hit

[patent dew]

Noting it down.

[fiery loom]

Even if greydirge eventually got half-destroyed by a Qlippoth lol

For unrelated reasons

...and recently the PCs sacrificed all living children of Greydirge age 5 and below to secure a deal with a Lesser Death so they had a guide when going to Abaddon

[patent dew]

Yikes!

[fiery loom]

Real plagues of Egypt stuff. I've been telling my players I need to detox them on evil in the next campaign

But it's a decidedly evil campaign and they have been leaning into that more and more as the campaign goes on

[patent dew]

I was drawn to this AP specifically because everyone is sick of playing the prodigal heroes foretold.
Did you find any issues with tonal drift in the material? I feel like things are horrifying one minute, then kinda played as camp the next.

[ember helm]

Oh damn they’re leaning into the evil part of the adventure huh

[fiery loom]

Some of the PCs started out more morally grey, but at this point they are fully leaning into being completely corrupted by power/undeath

The moral core of the party died when the Sorcerer was eaten by Urgathoa and became undead

Incidentally she grew up as an urchin in Greydirge and was the one who ultimately order the aforementioned sacrifice

[ember helm]

I think my players may end up in a similar spot, there’s been a few events that didn’t go their way (they botched the Homolog stuff) and are already feeling icky about their role in it

[fiery loom]

I think that depends on how you run it. I have been targetting a lot of systemic evil inherent to the setting

Some of my players have expressed that they feel like just by engaging and being ambitious within the system of Geb has pushed them more and more towards cruelty which is what I was going for myself

[ember helm]

I have a vampire player I offered lichdom to and she’s been wrestling with the decision the whole time

[fiery loom]

I think my players are very ready to shift gears and play as heroes after this

Oh yeah one of my players turned into a lich

She was the cousin of Berline and sacrificed her lol

which, tbf, Berline was planning to do the same to her

[ember helm]

If she accepts I’m doing custom stuff because that archetype is snoozer

[fiery loom]

I might have something for you actually

[ember helm]

Hell yeah

[fiery loom]

Could adapt/steal this

[patent dew]

Approximately where in the AP do you introduce lichdom, btw?

[fiery loom]

Between book 3 and 4 I gave my players 1 year of downtime to advance their various agendas and ambitions

Also, one setting change I made was to make Grave Knights and Liches way more rare

[ember helm]

I dropped mine a few levels early because it was thematic, but mine are at level 10 and hitting the last chapter of book 3

[fiery loom]

By default there's a lich and graveknight around every corner on Geb

[ember helm]

Yeah I’ve been using them sparingly as well

[fiery loom]

Which in some ways is appropriate but I am not a fan

[ember helm]

The one who appeared to her and made the offer was very esoteric and mysterious

[patent dew]

Too many chiefs, not enough indians kinda deal.

[fiery loom]

I limited them to:
-The only graveknights in Geb are Arazni's Knights (well, the one remaining one) and the Warmaster
-There have been liches historically in Geb, often Blood Lords. But atm there are none

[patent dew]

You want rare creatures to maintain that mystique. If they're in every coffee shop then that swiftly dissipates.

[fiery loom]

With the caveat to the liches being that the boss in book 5 is a lich, but he is thought to be long destroyed

Because he once tried to do an insurrection against Geb, but was offered a deal to keep working as a researcher for the war effort

And he conspires with Kemnebi and the rest is history

But the fact that there were no known Liches in Geb made the PC turning into a Lich much more impactful

[patent dew]

History is, paradoxically it seems, a very living thing in a nation where many things dont properly die...

[fiery loom]

One thing I did here as well

Was that instead of PCs automatically becoming Blood Lords at the start of book 4, I made it one potential agenda for them to pursue

So going into book 4, only one of them was actually a blood lord. But it felt incredibly earnt

And from there the other PCs could become blood lords over time as they continued their exploits

Though if multiple PCs had expressed interest in becoming one after book 3 I would have let that happen as well

As it happened the others had other things on their agenda (such as turning into a Lich)

[patent dew]

Hm. Thats another interesting idea. But could this not have backfired? What if none of them expressed interest in becoming a BL?

[fiery loom]

In my case I was totally sure one of the players wanted it, so for me I didn't have that risk

One thing I could have considered if nobody took the bait was to have them appoint one blood lord amongst themselves at the start of the book

[patent dew]

Ok, gotcha. If the players are being cagey about fucking with the levers of power, push them into it, if they are eager, make it an aspirational goal.

[fiery loom]

But yeah it probably works better if you can pre-empt it and "trick" a player into making the choice for themselves

[patent dew]

A bit of a quantum ogre that, but I'm not above it, lol.

[fiery loom]

One thing I told my players at session zero was that they should make ambitious characters and that this was a campaign where they would become Blood Lords

So they were already seeded then as well

But there is definitely a difference in how the players relate to the title and prestige

[patent dew]

Ok, so you frontloaded that as a possibility? I was unsure if that served best as a twist or as a bait.

[fiery loom]

The more lorehound/researcher-y PC (the lich) doesn't really care at all about being a blood lord

It's at best a means to an end

[patent dew]

RAW I know that the players guide pretty explicitly states that this is where the players will end up, but I was wondering if I should bury that and have it be a possible surprise.

[fiery loom]

Yeah I think in this case making it part of the campaign pitch works best

[patent dew]

Ok, noted.

[fiery loom]

Finally, I made a "glue" change between book 2 and 3 that in my mind was a massive success and dodged a lot of problems that people seem to have with book 3

I've seen a lot of people report that book 3 feels like a detour/sidequest and that the PCs are just kinda told to fuck off to the middle of nowhere

What I ended up doing was have Kemnebi frame the PCs for the entire poisoning plot at the end of book 2, and they had to escape Yled and find somewhere to lay low

And that's when Seldeg gets into contact with them, and can at this point both offer protection and also a lead to how they can prove their innocence (Iron Taviah's return)

[patent dew]

Oh, this is interesting. Yeah.

[fiery loom]

This avoids the issue where Seldeg just kinda feels like someone who shows up and starts telling the PCs what to do

[ember helm]

I couched mine the players have to prove they’re worthy of being blood lords and had another group of candidates that they were essentially “competing” against

[fiery loom]

And in my case it actually worked even better than I was anticipating since one of the PCs started the campaign as an agent of Seldeg's and so when the PCs were framed the players actually decided to contact Seldeg on their own

[ember helm]

So book 3 was the “if you guys pull this off you’re definitely in”

[fiery loom]

Which was one of those "things work out even better than I could have possibly planned" moments

[ember helm]

Yeah you sound like you have awesome players tbh

[fiery loom]

This is not a bad approach I think

In my case it was more of a

1 out, 1 in thing lol

[patent dew]

Oh, that's great. I am noting all of this down.

[fiery loom]

The players sacrificed Berline between book 3 and 4, so there was one spot empty for the PC who wanted to become a blood lord

Then when they defeated Hyrune, another PC was raised to Blood Lord status in his stead

And finally after the events of book 5 quite a lot of slots opened up

So then the remaining PCs were raised to Blood Lords

[fiery loom]

They're quite great yeah

[fiery loom]

Some things that ended up having a really huge effect were last-minute additions lol

One of the PCs played as a Halfling and I think 20 minutes before session one started I texted her and asked if she wanted to be Berline's cousin

[patent dew]

If any of my players opts to run as a spy or some kind of informant-type class, I am absolutely stealing this idea of them working for Seldeg.

[fiery loom]

I think around the end of book 1 is when one of my players told me he wanted to brainstorm a secret for the character

So we got together and figured out how we could fit him being a secret informant for Seldeg and make it fit with story so far

But yeah there's about a billion details I could talk about with my campaign if I got into it lol. Like the Zombie Fighter being one of the Knights of Ozem who didn't betray their cause (and subsequently died alone and cut off from support behind enemy lines)

And as soon as the sorcerer suggested playing a changeling I knew what her role was going to be. She got to choose which mommy was hers near the end of book 2

[patent dew]

I came here for one idea and mined you for a dozen more. I think I've already resolved to just make sweeping changes to the political intrigue in the final books, but these extra details are choice, man.

Funny thing about running these pre-written adventures, you usually feel like you've only ever got a solid grasp on the material riiiight after you finish the campaign.

Maybe I've got a too self-critical eye, but I always look back and see all the things I should have run differently, lol.

[fiery loom]

Often I like treating APs as something of a toolbox

Though the amount of changes I make varies based on how much free time I have

It's good to be able to lean on running the AP out of the box when I have less preptime available

Book 6 is almost unrecognizable from the original

I don't think the intended plotline of the PCs being good little enforcers for Geb would have landed well at all. They want to usurp him and take over lmao

[patent dew]

I tend to do the same, but in the after action reports I do, I always seem to notice things that I could have changed to be better.

[fiery loom]

Which, tbf, is unique to book 6 (and to a lesser extent book 5)

The other books were fairly close to the originals

With some small key changes I think made for really big improvements + opportunities for players to pursue their individual goals and ambitions during downtime

But book 6 has the players doing... whatever this is lmao

[patent dew]

Good lord.

Well, I'm happy to see that most of the things you changed in your games were things I'd already resolved to change as well, so maybe I did clock the biggest rough patches. You've given me some real good ideas on how to resolve them though.

[fiery loom]

And they are still doing the assault on The Boneyard... though that is completely different as well

It comes a level later for one

And they already know where Kemnebi is and have no need for Balji's Soul lol

They are going to the Boneyard for fun and profit

And this may or may not happen to them

But describing book 6 is not super helpful beyond amusing myself lol. The other books I can give helpful advice on but book 6 is just "I made my own"

[fiery loom]

Yeah for me the big ones are
-Book transitions, especially 2 > 3
-Giving players more ways to use faction reputation
-Giving being a Blood Lord more significance

[patent dew]

Thanks dude. This has all been super helpful. I’ll come back here eventually fishing for more answers, but for now I have more than enough to get started :>

[ember helm]

@fiery loom my players botched the Holomog stuff, do you think a vote to take military action against them after the field of maidens stuff instead of an alliance with the them is fitting for voting down time/is there anything later that this would have a ripple effect I’m not forseeing?

[fiery loom]

Holomog doesn't come up again later if you run the book normally

I think lore-wise Geb very much does not want a war with Holomog because it would be a big disruption to any war effort against Nex. But you don't have to abide by that in your own game

It's possible you could also sell it more as a "sabre-rattling" to scare Holomog into making concessions though

[ember helm]

Word, yeah it would be some kind of indirect event kind of like what they were doing to Geb, I wanna play up the tense pettiness between them more

[ember helm]

Yeah like that

[fiery loom]

Yeah that makes a lot of sense to me

And ya no unforseen consequences

[ember helm]

Maybe even just a “should Geb send someone to go take the sisters back” even though Geb doesn’t give a shit about the sisters. Just a fuck you dont mess us with us message

Which would also pull on their heartstrings because they feel guilty about it currently

[fiery loom]

Sounds like a great idea to me!

[ember helm]

Also why is this bullete encounter here at all, it’s so goofy lmao

[patent dew]

I mocked up some simple guild heralds for the major factions in Geb.

I'm not much of an artist and used mostly heroforge for referencing certain poses (mostly the horse and rider for the reanimators).

But I think if you shrink it down to icon size you can hide away most of the uglyness, lol.

[ember helm]

These rule

[rotund arch]

So guys, Taviah escaped and is now going to be in Sadhi's dungeon. What room do you think would be a good place to put her

She's gonna have a sea elixir enchantment

I'm thinking remove one of the wights, put her in that room, she's trying to incite a coup, encounters gro from moderate to severe, and when wounded, she flees to get Sadhi like a dog with its tail between its legs

Take a less exciting encounter and morph it into something fun. Yes the dungeon is harder but that's the consequence of letting an annis hag escape

I could also have her take a more subtle role, and have her use her shapeshifting abilities to heckle the party throughout their journey

Have her be a nuisance so when they kill her and think she's done, the revival is much more infuriating

Taviah could become a pseudo BBEG in a way. Having two books of screentime versus a single chapter

[ember helm]

Yeah I don’t think I even used the wights that’s a good idea

Though double hag fight sounds hard

[rotund arch]

Sure is

It wont start out as a double fight

But could turn into one if the party doesn't take her down quickly

[ember helm]

Did they fight Taviah in the house already? I assume so since she escaped

[rotund arch]

Nope, they tried to lure her out by taunting her regarding her daughter's death. She didn't fall for it, went to Sallowshore, and had Neboah (a greater shade in my campaign), fight them when they rushed back in the cottage

She has +4 intelligence, she isn't falling for that

[ember helm]

Ah I was gonna say you could use “previously injured” as a way to give some flexible balance options but that’s out the window lmao

[rotund arch]

She has the Magambya wound and the party is facing her one level higher, with said level giving martials +2 to hit, they'll be fine against her

One is a thaumaturge too, who will quickly learn about said wound

Idk why they didn't just give her weakness to critical hits like Mosghuta

[ember helm]

I think one or two of my players died in there without Taviah also being there so I might just be scared by their dumbassery

[rotund arch]

My players are smart

Their dumbassery normally starts when they get too comfortable winning

I had the Eel rip off the party, and one of the PCs tried to stealthily light his inn on fire

What they didn't consider was that they were outlanders, the PC threatened the Eel verbally, and that they were being eyed with suspicion (told them this upon arrival)

Got to play Citscape for a session. It was fun

[ember helm]

Savage GMery, I like it

[rotund arch]

I then had Taviah cosplay as a guard captain and arrest them on bonked up charges. Then had the vampire NPC bail them out and conscript them into finding Nepenthe's heartstone

Sadhi's pissed off at Taviah's lack of subtelty. I'm thinking if she does appear in the fight, she's going to spend one of her actions berating her on the first round to give the party a leg up

That and my players have free archetype, ancestral paragon, a free gen feat at lvl 1, and more treasure (the ap is weak in this department so I added more)

[ember helm]

Hell yeah

[rotund arch]

Thinking about replacing the rust hag with a gunwitch, any big rammifications there?

Thinking we got an unsptart blood lord trying to cash in with the Graveclaw

[ember helm]

Is that the third one? Decorsia? 99% sure I rewrote her whole section and did something completely homebrew, as long as whoever replaces her is tangentially related to the poisoning plot, I don’t think it should have any rippling effects

[rotund arch]

The rust hag is pretty unmemorable

A gunwitch is memorable

[ember helm]

Oh wait I think I only rewrote a little of decrosia, it was the random 4th one I rewrote

But yeah I agree with you

I think the hag stuff was way too long personally

[fiery loom]

Decrosia never really comes back unless you make her yeah

[rotund arch]

Guys I’m an asshole

I just remembered that I could have Taviah cosplay as one of the Wights, have her beg the party to slay Sadhi so they can take vengeance, then right after Sadhi is defeated, Taviah reveals herself and attacks

[ember helm]

Evil

You’re an evil person

[rotund arch]

If you read Hag lore, they are absolute douchebags

I had one of the redcaps execute a downed player and dip its cap in their blood

[ember helm]

Hey I didn’t say evil was bad

I’m envious

[rotund arch]

Living worlds are best worlds

[ember helm]

I agree, my players just aren’t that smart yet, the hungering growths in the cottage2 almost TPK’d them

They need some assistance from time to time, I try to be evil mastermind when I can though, I think my gristlehall rewrite will be really fun

[rotund arch]

Dont be afraid

when faced with adversity, players will adapt

I've been a player when our party aggroed the entire dungeon once

One of the best fights I've been in

[ember helm]

We’ll see how it goes with the mantle of Iron Taviah’s body horror transformation extravaganza hopefully next session or the one after

[rotund arch]

They made a deal with Taviah to kill the other two hags in exchange for their lives

After that, in comes Kemnehi framing them and Taviah becomes a vampire for feeding him information on them

Now, Taviah is a threat and the arc of chasing her has merit because the party really wants to kill her

[rotund arch]

Also was really impressed with Sadhi. She held her own against the party. Even took someone out

I gave all creatures weakness 5 to electricity underwater then added in lightning bolt to her kit.

Managed to have my players realize why standing in a straight line was a terrible idea.

[rotund arch]

Any tips for running the infiltration? I’ve heard Pray for Death’s system is better

[ember helm]

I did the whole thing cinematically, just having big meta rolls and having it correlate to a large sequence in the infiltration, not ideal but worked a lot better than how I think it would go their way

[rotund arch]

Yeah like it seems like you just roll a bunch of skill checks until you win

That’s the issue with the influence encounters too

[ember helm]

Yeah I’m learning to be looser with them as subsystems and not feeling beholden to them

[rotund arch]

What do yall think of me replacing Nathnelma with Nepenthe instead?

Cuckoo hags are the same level

[ember helm]

I replaced her entirely lmao

[fiery loom]

I made Nathnelma and Nephente the same character

Nathnelma was just an alias and Nephente was her real identity

[rotund arch]

Noice

Turns out she just wanted to get away from Tobias

[vestal inlet]

last week my players started chapter 3 and got into the brewery, and god damn the book does not mess around with the back room areas. It can snowball really fast when the enemies chain alert everyone else in the place. We had to end session when about 3/4 of all the enemies were dead thankfully. but if i run this again i will definitely be a little more careful with when I trigger new groups entering initiative

[twin oracle]

oh yeah this was a huge learning moment for me too lol

The boss fight was shorter than the zombies lmao

[vestal inlet]

yeah, haha. im definitely expecting this to be the longest part of the chapter

[ember helm]

That was the encounter that killed my players barbarian when she discovered you can’t simply run through the dungeon and try to kill everything yourself

She’s a ghost now

[vestal inlet]

just got out of the session where we cleaned up that encounter. the whole session was finishing it, and nobody died! I did admitedly pull my punches sometimes because i did feel a little bad things escalated so quickly, but i gave the group some fun opportunities for alternative ways to spend hero points while they were behind. once things started to swing in their favor though i could feel them get more confident and ready to take down Pesgahi

[ember helm]

Yeah that one seems to be an early game run killer for this AP lmao

[vestal inlet]

yeah i figured it would be based off what i heard about some AP book ones having bits that are slaughterhouses. thankfully the party did still say they had fun! it was just a LOT to deal with 😛

[rotund arch]

I’ve ran the encounter twice and both parties aggroed the whole room.

Even though it’s extreme, the encounter is well balanced by every enemy except for the thugs and the ghoul being slow and weak to slashing.

It’s a very good horde encounter. You could consider switching our 5 zombies for a zombie swarm if that makes it easier on you

[ember helm]

I think I kited the barbarian away from the party, which is why it went so poorly lmao

[rotund arch]

My players either had slashing or AOE. If you play the zombies as lumbering oafs, they’ll line themselves up perfectly to get blasted

[ember helm]

That was the “oh shit it’s a teamwork game” moment for them

[rotund arch]

It’s a good learning experience

Also a “don’t let the thug open the door” experience

Granted the zombies should target everyone

[vestal inlet]

Admitedly this is also most of the groups first time playing pathfinder and not being overly tactical with their moves. They definitely tried more in this session which helped, but the rogue being about 20 feet away from the rest of the group that was pretty boxed in didnt do them any favors and left them unconscious for like 4 rounds

[rotund arch]

I mean I as the GM warned them that a frontal assault is not the best idea unless you’re ready for heat

Granted this AP is hard for beginners. Mosghuta will fuck your shit up

[ember helm]

Yeah this was like a year ago for my party so I forget some of the details of how exactly it blew up for them, but the beer oozes managed to slink out and flank the barbarian who ran ahead so she was getting surrounded and the rest of the party accidently bottle necked the rest into a corner which kept them alive but made helping the barb impossible

[rotund arch]

The Ostovite Swarm is nasty too

My parties tend to be very smart

[ember helm]

This was most of this party’s first campaign so they’re doing better now but sometimes do dumb stuff

[open adder]

Hey, coming from #2e│builds.

As I’ve said there, I’m playing an Investigator with an Interrogation methodology. We’re still level 1 (we just finished the farm), bu we’e gonna be getting Free Archetype.

My GM knew I wanted to make some sort of spy for the campaign, and he just offered me to reflavour Eagle Knight and Twilight Talon to make them usable for the Geb campaign.

My question is: Is it worth it? Will I get some mileage from Twilight Talon’s espionnage-oriented abilities? Or should I go Gunslinger like I planned?

[ember helm]

Glancing it over it seems to have a lot of specific sleight of hand type interactions, which depends how much your GM will lean into the social parts of Blood Lords (as written, I don’t see a ton of uses for those) and several that key off the charisma skills

So if you’re investing heavily into charisma as well the less niche options might have some more applications

But also the smarter nerds might have more insight but idk if they’ll check in here

I’d check with your GM how much they plan on modifying from the initial adventure because that would give a better idea, my gut feeling being almost through book 3 is that a lot of these would not come up that often, but sometimes that’s kinda the vibe with free archetype

[open adder]

I think my GM mostly adjusts campaigns to balance for stuff we missed, like for example giving us downtime to make money and items when we miss a bunch of enemies and loot because we don’t want to take the loot by force, but I don’t know about rewriting chunks of the campaign to be more like this or that.

Then again, I just asked him, and am waiting for his answer.

[open adder]

So, the answer is that he adjusts, depending on the book.

[ember helm]

I think the flavor of is cool and will feel fun when it pops up, Ginslinger just makes you better

I prefer the first way personally but slinger is definitely objectively better for your power level I think

[open adder]

I mean, in any case, I can try it.

And maybe later take some levels of Gunslinger to get some basics, or retrain. We’re getting to level 20, after all.

If I survive.

This is the third time we’ve started this campaign as a group, and 4 of my characters died (three the first time, the third one being in a TPK, and one the second time, though she came back as a ghost).

The furthest we’ve gone in the campaign was the TPK.

It was against ||the crone in the forest.||

[ember helm]

I’ve also looked into shooty investigator and it is pretty fun, risky reload does a lot of heavy lifting if you dip in enough to at least get that

[rotund arch]

Just reflavor it as being associated with one of the great factions. Or the Warmaster Council, Twilight Consortium, etc

For future reference, this channel is largely for GMs running the AP so be mindful of spoilers, as I am about to speak on

[open adder]

Didn't get that. Someone told me to come ask here.

[rotund arch]

So guys, there’s a very real chance one if my players is gonna go berserk werewolf in Pagked. (He got cursed a month ago).

Thinking running this encounter as a complication. Basically the longer they take to knock him out, the more AP they gain?

What do you all think

[rotund arch]

You can ask here, but there are spoilers everywhere.

[rotund arch]

He’s an Exemplar. Am curious if I should make a suped up Werewolf or just have him use his character sheet with the caveat of being weak to silver

If he fails his fort save, will probably make him switch out either an archetype or class feat for the werecreature archetype.

Thinking of making the DC Hard for lvl 6. This is a curse that is hard to resist. I hate how the book just leaves it as a DC 19 fort check. Like this is lycanthropy

[patent dew]

@fiery loom The other day when we were talking about alterations between books 5-6 you mentioned some heavy editing you did on the AP conclusion. It's a heavy ask, but is that something you'd be interested in sharing? I have a couple of ideas but would love to pick your brain on it as well.

[fiery loom]

Sure! Prepare yourself lmao

[ember helm]

Can you elaborate? “Longer to knock him out” do you mean the werewolf player?

[rotund arch]

Rounds

+1 AP per round of combat

[ember helm]

But are you talking about the player?

[fiery loom]

@patent dew
In book 5, the biggest changes are
-Structure of the adventure, instead of being a linear adventure it is open and the players can explore the city relatively freely. This meant I needed to "fill in the blanks" a lot more with blood lords who are active in the city as well as the warmaster council. I still kept the opera scene mostly as-is, but I picked a date in advance when the opera happens instead of having it be a thing that specifically happens when the PCs are ready for it
-The PCs are sent as a special investigative force and are given a lot of executive power. I gave them 10 of a resource called "Ghost King's Patience". They could spend that resource to make decrees that are only second to direct decrees by the warmaster in Yled. For example, they can detain and interrogate any NPC in the city
-A big focus on gathering allies before the final confrontation. I used my Ally Action system for this, and beefed up the final dungeon a lot

All in all, the book remains the same contentwise... mostly

In book 6, I basically tore out the entire thing to account for the PCs actions up until that point to the point where I more or less wrote my own adventure. To start, I think book 6 as written is quite weak as a final AP and also doesn't fit at all with a lot of choices my players have been making (they are gearing up to usurp Geb is the biggest one). This is what I replaced it with:

-Part 1: The players went to Bloodrot to reforge a broken artifact of Urgathoa that Hyrune had wielded. One of the players had made this a little personal sidequest
-Part 2: The players were given permission to go inside Geb's Cinearium in preparation for their hunt for Kemnebi. I would call it a "simulated megadungeon" and it's a whole entire thing. I could go more into detail on this if asked
-Part 3: The PCs did a research subsystem to determine Kemnebi's location. In so doing, they discovered that Balji's soul was essentially acting as a backdoor into Reprieve and they are now headed there in order to steal millions of souls. They 100%'ed the research subsystem and learned Kemnebi's location anyway so they don't even need Balji's soul. Also a whole thing, but basically they are now doing a wave defense in the boneyard while they try to steal as many souls as possible
-Part 4: Proceeds mostly as normal except I've put Kemnebi's secret shadow sanctum inside an Osirian pyramid so the PCs will need to go on a diplomatic mission to convince the prince there that they need to be allowed entry to take out Kemnebi as he's a threat to the entire region

[patent dew]

Damn.

That's way more ambitious than I'd guessed, but super cool.

[fiery loom]

Geb's cinearium

[patent dew]

I'd love to hear more about it, but only if you're offering, lol.

[fiery loom]

For Geb's Cinearium, it's this overengineered "roguelike mode" for 2E that I invented to simulate a megadungeon at high levels

Without it taking 30 sessions to clear

If you've played Slay the Spire, it should look somewhat familiar. My players have not lol

[patent dew]

Hah, ok, gotcha

[rotund arch]

Yes, the longer it takes for the PCs to knock out their werebuddy PC, the more Awareness Points that will be accrued

[fiery loom]

Rooms on the map are
-Encounters
-Elite Encounters
-Traps
-Curses
-Treasure Rooms
-Boons

You can only move forwards on the map

Each room you pass gives +1 Treasure Point

[patent dew]

Do the players get to see the map, or are the nodes only revealed incrementally?

[fiery loom]

They get the whole map

However

Each room also has a "room modifier" that you can only see for the rooms up ahead

The room modifiers have a d20 table

Easier if I share the doc

So essentially

[patent dew]

Oh, nice!

[fiery loom]

There are two resources you are amassing as you clear rooms - Treasure Points and Revealed Treasures

[fiery loom]

It's only written for my own use so unfortunately it may require some translation lol

[fiery loom]

Most of the time when you reveal a treasure, you do so by Drafting a Treasure. For example, clearing an encounter drafts a treasure

[ember helm]

Okay now Its making sense, yeah I don’t hate that idea though I think the thresholds for the stuff happening with the Awareness Points happen pretty early

But I may have swapped some out because I hate pointless encounters lmao

[fiery loom]

When you draft a treasure, the players roll 3d20 on one of the treasure tables and pick one treasure to reveal

So for example, if they roll 1, 15, 17 on the 2-cost treasure table

They get to pick if they want to reveal
Towel of Dryness
Golemcrafter's Handbook
Maven Flogger, Greatsword of Inez

[patent dew]

Interesting

[fiery loom]

And once they make it to the end of the dungeon

They can then spend their amassed treasure points to "purchase" revealed treasures

So for example, in a simple scenario where the PCs end the dungeon with 10 Treasure points and these revealed treasures
1: Rod of Reach, Headband of Translocation
2: Bracers of the Sunlight Eater, Horn of War
3: Hellfire Rune, Mox, Lamp of Djinni

They could, for example, purchase all three 3-cost treasures and get a single 1-cost

[patent dew]

You know, I did something slightly similar in an old 4E Tomb of Horrors adventure that my players ended up loving and has been a frequent request to recreate in future games. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity for it.

[fiery loom]

The treasure point/revealed treasure system ended up being a pretty big success

[patent dew]

It strays a little close to abstracted mechanics, but I don't think I mind it.

[rotund arch]

According to the GM core, the more rounds it takes to beat an infiltration, the more AP they generate

[fiery loom]

The way I contextualized treasure points/revealed treasures was that the PCs were making a map of the giant dungeon as they went and picking which treasures to route towards/secure

But yeah it's relatively abstract

[ember helm]

Yeah but in this one stuff triggers on like AP 3 I think

[rotund arch]

First complication is 5

5, 10, 15, 20

[ember helm]

Yeah so if they also have to fight they’re werewolf friend into submission, that might take 3 rounds lmao

[rotund arch]

Yup…

[ember helm]

I think I tweaked that encounter though so maybe that’s a bigger deal in my head

[patent dew]

Makes sense, although my greedy loot goblins will question why they can't go back and visit every node and take anything that isn't nailed down, lol.

[rotund arch]

They are at a disadvantage

I’ve been alerting the cursed player in question as he runs out of days

[ember helm]

I just think it can snowball so starting them basically behind the 8 ball with no margin of error at the very least will result it in it being blown up

[rotund arch]

If the party is clever, they may opt to stay out of the city until he rolls his save

[ember helm]

So I guess just be prepared for how you want to handle it when it tips over

[fiery loom]

I think my players basically just accepted it as the rules of engagement, though the way I would have contextualized it if pressed is that they are venturing through an extremely dangerous dungeon for potentially weeks or months without rest and that the "path" on the map doesn't neccesarily represent a linear path for the PCs

[rotund arch]

Maybe I’ll call for a diplo check to calm the masses

[patent dew]

Yeh, makes sense.

[fiery loom]

Currently they are doing the Assault on the Boneyard though

[rotund arch]

If the player is counting days like I warned him, he knows he’s set to transform the day after they arrive in Pagked

[patent dew]

I was also thinking about that bit.

[fiery loom]

There are 5 levels of "soul acquisition" they can attain

Hamlet, Town, Metropolis, Nation, Region

[ember helm]

I’ve learned to stop assuming my players will pick the smart thing

[fiery loom]

As they are trying to break through the wards protecting the souls they are building "Heat" which summons cops Pharasma's forces at certain intervals

[rotund arch]

Agreed, but if I go out of my way to tell you the exact amount of days it’ll take to get to x location, and you’re not doing your homework, yeah…

[patent dew]

Yeah, the book mentions a mechanic like that.

[rotund arch]

Like I can be an asshole, but I will give you outs before it happens

[fiery loom]

With the waves being
-Rival Interplanar Adventuring Party (mercenaries working for pharasma)
-x2 level 20 psychopomp, dual arbiters
-Demigod Narakaas (get the fuck out)
-Pharasma (instant TPK)

[patent dew]

Dang

[rotund arch]

Now this is mean

[fiery loom]

If they TPK here we will run an epilogue when Pharasma judges their souls and sends them all to Hell

Maybe Abaddon for some of them

[patent dew]

As I was reading through the chapter, my mind went more to the incursion being like a heist, but it seems you went for full on assault, lol.

[rotund arch]

It’s hilarious and fitting

But oof

[fiery loom]

They'll be fineee

[rotund arch]

You just run into a god and get nuked if they roll bad

[fiery loom]

Well

If it gets to that point it's them pushing their luck

[patent dew]

No, it's a threat buildup, right?

[fiery loom]

Currently they are at 6/20 Heat

[rotund arch]

I’m gonna steal that

[fiery loom]

Narakaas doesn't show up until 15

[rotund arch]

“Yeah guys, yall in the Boneyard of a goddess who hates you. You might want to not be around long”

[patent dew]

Indeed^

[fiery loom]

And I also made sure to let them know in advance that Narakaas showing was instant GTFO

I can share the Narakaas statblock

[fiery loom]

Book 6 as written has a bunch of opportunities for diplomacy/allying with the psychopomps which is ????

[rotund arch]

What’s going to be hilarious is that when Geb asks the party to go still Benji’s soul, Arazni’s is gonna be pissed if her Exemplar does it

[fiery loom]

I mean it's nice that it's on the table but like

Really??

[rotund arch]

Yeah no, that should be attack on site

[ember helm]

I’ll probably circle back if yall are still in here when we get to 5 and 6 lmao

[rotund arch]

Granted the diplo checks are more akin to “Do as we say or we will fuck your ass up”

[ember helm]

That sounds like intimidation lmao

[rotund arch]

It pretty much is, party is breaking in and breaking things

[fiery loom]

Narakaas statblock

[rotund arch]

That’s a TPK on its own lol

Make him 22-23

[fiery loom]

Actions

[rotund arch]

He should be severe - extreme, lvl 25 is unwinnable

[patent dew]

Yeah, I think a violent exfiltration is needed, but I also feel like at the start the PC's should have some methods of covert actions before everything goes to shit.

[rotund arch]

How can you be diplomattic with creatures who are metaphysically opposed to what you stand for?

[patent dew]

Not diplomatic

Covert

[fiery loom]

Nah, party is level 19 and have artifacts. Level 25 is theoretically winnable but the PCs are aware that winning is not expected and ready to fuck off if Narakaas shows

[rotund arch]

I think the main threat should be him stalling them until Pharasma shows up

So that say the party starts winning, “OOOH TREASURE AND XP!”

[fiery loom]

If an actual fight with Narakaas happens it will not be one where the PCs stand their ground. They will just be trying to survive long enough to activate their escape route

[rotund arch]

Then they forget WHY they needed to hurry

[fiery loom]

Well no the main threat is Narakaas TPK'ing them lol

If they win against Narakaas they should have enough time to do whatever they want most likely

Heat doesn't increase during combat

[rotund arch]

Idk

[fiery loom]

What increases Heat is
-Enemies successfully escaping
-Increases every 10 minutes
-Increases when the party fucks up a skill check trying to crack the ward

[rotund arch]

I’d wager Narakaas would alert Pharasma of Blood Lords of the nation she hates trying to steal souls

[fiery loom]

Pharasma already knows

But leaving her position isn't something she can do lightly

She's not doing it until all the defense mechanisms that should have dealt with the PCs fail

[patent dew]

It's what you delegate to your minions. Can't rush to crush any old necromancer who shows up at your doorstep.

[fiery loom]

Pharasma leaving her place is already a generational crisis

[rotund arch]

It’s Geb though

[fiery loom]

It only happens once a Demigod falls

[patent dew]

It's his shitty little minions

[rotund arch]

That guy who made your anthema a city

[fiery loom]

The PCs are still (relative) no-names

[patent dew]

as far as she knows

[fiery loom]

This is what makes them infamous on a planar scale

Before this they only really have infamy within Geb and surrounding regions

[rotund arch]

I do like the idea of an epilogue involving Pharasma’s avatar coming after the PCs

Or Geb

[patent dew]

Oh, that raises another point

Geb.

[fiery loom]

If all goes according to plan for the PCs the epilogue will be them trying to take down Geb

Which I have a two-stage plan for

[patent dew]

Do we kill this dude at the end of the AP?

[fiery loom]

I am treating him as a secret superboss

[rotund arch]

Book 6 is peak

[fiery loom]

Only because the players have expressed interested in taking him down though

[rotund arch]

Honestly Kemnebi’s dungeon is the least interesting

[fiery loom]

And are actively making plans without my intervention

Kemnebi's dungeon will be a victory lap for the PCs

In my case

They've already outgrown him

[rotund arch]

Taviah’s chase is going to be good for my game

Because the party made a deal after she cornered them after they kill Sadhi

[patent dew]

To tell you the truth, I feel like Kemnebi is just kind of a weak-sauce villain. Crushing him is going to be satisfying, but not a great AP conclusion.

[rotund arch]

So they’re gonna want to kill her

[fiery loom]

I

've integrated him more into the adventure

[rotund arch]

You gotta build him up

[fiery loom]

I like him as a villain a lot tbh, but he's a very different kind of villain

[rotund arch]

Have him encounter the party in Yled

[patent dew]

Yes, I think you also mentioned this last we talked. He defineatly needs to be more involved earlier on.

[fiery loom]

I enjoy that the PCs essentially win against him in book 5

[rotund arch]

This is an issue with a lot of APs

[fiery loom]

Though I think book 6 ends up being a bit weak for this

If run as written

[rotund arch]

Their BBEG doesn’t matter til the later books

Kingmaker is notorious about this

[fiery loom]

Book 6 is the perfect opportunity for the PCs to pursue their own ultimate ambitions

Instead if you run book 6 as written you're just kinda doing busiwork for Geb

Ending book 6 as Geb's favorite minions is a pretty mediocre stopping point

[rotund arch]

I can’t wait for when Taviah rats the party out to Kemnebi and they get arrested and tossed into the flesh pits.

Them and Berlina will have to fight their way out of the flesh pits

[patent dew]

But I just think he is so overshadowed by Geb, the nation and society as one. And, yeah, the PC's kinda thwart his plot early. Book 6 is just mopping up after the guy. Satisfying, but not satisfying enough. So yeah, I think I'm going to have to inspire some more ambitious end-game of the PC's own design to happen in the epilogue.

[rotund arch]

Ortagar is gonna make a return and give them their gear because a surgeon shared his notes about how to painfully stitch living people together

[patent dew]

I'm... basically parroting what you just said, lol.

[fiery loom]

All of book 6 has been the main plot of mopping up Kemnebi plus opportunities to go above and beyond to prepare for Geb

In my case

Bloodrot to reforge an artifact weapon, which could potentially go better or worse

Cinearium to grab as much loot as possible depending on how well you do... with some pieces perhaps being especially useful against a ghost king?