Pathfinder 1E Prepping for Pathfinder: Council of Thieves (spoilers!)

This weekend, I hope to start what will be a long and fulfilling campaign: the Pathfinder Adventure Path, Council of Thieves

I've got two players who are quite eager to play Pathfinder, a third who is eager to play anything, and I'm still looking for a fourth. I was going to ask the D&D players at my FLGS store on the weekend, but quite a number of them were missing due to the long weekend, so I'll have to ask this Saturday if anyone wants to play in a Sunday campaign... which starts the next day. Heh.

I haven't run Pathfinder before, but I'm rather hoping that 8 years of running 3E (often about 6-8 hours a week) will hold me in good stead. There are a few significant rule changes that I will have to worry about, but I'm hoping that mostly the players can handle all the new powers their characters have.

Of course, the first step is to read the adventure, The Bastards of Erebus. My initial impressions of it aren't that favourable, mainly due to the hamfisted way it starts. After a meeting with the NPC who recruits the characters, the group are chased into the sewers where they stay there until they get bored.

No, really: the sewers are generated randomly, and they end as follows:

"The exit to the safe house is not something that can be randomly rolled; you should place this exit once the PCs have had enough encounters to reach 2nd level, or once their resources have run so critically low that going on for much longer becomes too difficult—when a PC is reduced to negative hit points or is otherwise helpless is a great point to have the exit be just around the corner."

Errata to the adventure indicates that the level 2 guideline is a mistake. I have some tremendous problems with adventure design in this manner, because it doesn't matter what decisions the players make!. They can't act well because there are no bad decisions. If there was any section of the adventure that would have been far, far better designed as a 4E Skill Challenge, this is it. (Skill Challenges have their own problems, but well-structured ones are brilliant).

All of this is made worse by how much space is given in the adventure for this set of generally uninteresting random encounters: ten-and-a-half pages!

Thankfully, once the party makes its way out of the sewers, the adventure begins to look up.

I'm going to run the first session slightly differently to how written in the adventure. Instead of Meeting, Sewers, Hideout, I'll begin it in media res with the party tracked down by a Hellknight patrol in the sewers, then (after that battle is done) return to where things began and the initial meeting (which will be quite short). After that, it'll be another sewer encounter and then onto the rebel hideout where the actual interesting part of the game can begin.

I'll probably have the exit having a bunch of sewer goblins in the way; Janath (the recruiter NPC) will alert the group to the way out, but the goblins block the path. The sewer goblins - as written - are hilariously incompetent. So much so that they aren't a credible threat to the party except through extremely lucky rolls. I'll have to consider whether I want them that stupidly weak. (-6 to hit, 1d4-1 damage? And still CR 1/2? Yeah, that's blindly following the CR rules.)

We'll create characters and start the adventure in the same session. I expect about 1-1½ hours for character generation and thus 2½-3 hours for play; finishing the session with the Ambush to rescue Arael would be the best ender, I think.

So:
* Character Generation
* Encounter One: The Hellknights (combat)
* Encounter Two: How we got here: the Meeting (role-play)
* Encounter Three: The exit from the sewers (combat)
* Encounter Four: The Rebel Hideout (role-play/planning)
* Encounter Five: The Rescue (combat)

I'll now go and review this part of the module in more depth and the rules I'll need. (As well as getting more familiar with the PC generation rules.)

If things go as planned, this will be a weekly campaign, which will be wonderful. (And I'll be very interested to see how it tracks with Crothian's campaign, as I can already see we have vastly different DMing styles...)

Cheers!

I ran the first session today. Five players attended - one more than I was expecting, as the brother of one of my invitees also wanted to play. I was happy to accommodate him. Character generation took about an hour longer than I'd expected - two-and-a-half hours instead of one-and-a-half, mainly due to the unfamiliarity of some of the players with the system, as they hadn't played any 3E-version of D&D before, and also due to a lack of rulebooks. (One hardcopy, one ipad PDF, and one laptop PDF).

Roleplaying details in the character generation were pretty light, likewise roleplaying was at a minimum during play. I'll see if I can tease out more RP-moments as the game progresses.

The characters they eventually created were as follows:

Greg - Reven Darklite - CG human ranger
Michael - Alanna Oltar - CG tiefling rogue
Lee - Blezir Direlite - N elf cleric of Pharasma
Tim - Serena Valerius - CG half-elf sorcerer (celestial)
Dave - Kui - LN halfling monk

We did a lot of fiddling with Tim's spells as the game progressed; originally he had Summon Monster I, but he shortly discovered how weak that was for a first-level Sorcerer, and we swapped it out for Magic Missile; his other spell-choice was (on my suggestion) changed to Sleep.

I'm extremely skeptical about the effectiveness Dave's monk (Str 10) will have in the campaign: I've never found monks that great in 3E, and this one seems to be very ineffective at attacking in any case.

Greg, who had most recently played a 4E campaign with me to level 30, was rather struck (as I was) by the problems the characters had hitting and dealing damage in the combats. The group is a very high-Dex, low-Str party, with the highest Dex actually belonging to Lee's cleric! However, bow-fire is very tricky without Precise Shot in PF, especially in the cramped sewer tunnels of the game.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we began in media res, which was just what the players needed after a lot of character generation: the party, rushing through the sewers, were attacked by two 3-man patrols of Hellknight armigers, part of the local guard. I described how their guide through the sewers - Janiven - was knocked unconscious by the gauntleted fist of one of the guards, and then we rolled for initiative and the fight was on.

Initially, four guards attacked the group, whilst two more approached from behind (delayed a round - the pursuers). The guards were pretty tough as written - AC 16 and 9 hp each - which, with most of the group dealing a "massive" 1d8 damage, meant the combat was a fairly frustrating affair for the players, especially as Greg kept rolling 1s on his damage dice.

Tim cast two major spells during the battle; one was Summon Monster I (Viper), which gave us a lot of trouble trying to find the viper stats in the bestiary, for some reason. It also demonstrated what a poor spell it was at present - we swapped it out for Magic Missile immediately thereafter. Tim's more effective spell was sleep, which was only able to affect two of the guards due to their positioning.

Michael is *really* inexperienced with the D&D rules, but has played WoW, so was wanting to go into 'stealth mode' and similar tricks. I was kept on my toes trying to explain the differences in systems (you can't hide if they can see you!), whilst also absorbing the new rules. He did successfully tumble behind one of the guards - although it took his entire time, thanks to the sewer water creating a lot of difficult squares on the map.

Greg protected Tim from the rearward guards, and Tim demonstrated that his celestial lineage could heal... Mick, but not the more damaged Dave and Lee. Lee managed to throw an icicle into one of the guards, but missed with another, as he gave one of his domain powers a try.

One of the guards fled when reduced to 1 hp, and the last remaining one also fled (with Greg futilely attempting to strike it in an opportunity attack). The battle was theirs!

We then jumped back to the initial recruiting of the party by Janiven, which I hoped would allow some roleplaying, but ended up being mostly an expository monologue from myself. Oh well.

Back into the sewers! And loot - some potions of healing and some swords and stuff. Janiven recovered, and led the group to the way out, only there were some (about eight) sewer goblins in the way. Another battle ensued, which once more demonstrated (a) how bad bows are in cramped quarters, especially with little Precise Shot (Greg has it), and (b) how horrible the party is in melee.

Tim used Sleep to send two goblins into "imminent death" mode, the party killed two more, and the remaining goblins fled shortly thereafter.

From here, the group entered the deserted chapel that was the Rebel Base, and as it was now five o'clock, we ended the session there after four hours. We should get a lot more done next session.

The players seemed to enjoy themselves, and we'll pick it up again next week.

Cheers!

Archer building in PF can be tricky as penaties add up quick as everyone else rushes to melee. I would definitely give player the option to rebuild their characters as they learn more about the game mechanics.

Low level casters can be tough. I have found it best to focus on battlefield control (Sleep was a good suggestion) and buffing initially. They'll come into their own eventually, but it takes time (I found my groove as a wizard around 5th level).

Low Str in tough for anyone who enters melee. How did you build the characters? Point buy or rolling? I would go with at least 20pt buy (we go with 25 to increase survivability).

Your having experience with 3.x will make it run smoother, but there are a lot of changes as you mentioned (most for the better). Hope all goes well.

We rolled stats, but with a Standard point-buy minimum - everyone rolled better than Standard, although I think the monk is only at "17". The biggest problem, however, is that he's a halfling. And a monk. So, d4 damage, even with flurry, isn't enough.

Cheers!

I'd possibly suggest the Monk to Flurry with poisoned Shuriken and head for the usual Ranged Combat feats.

Optionally, if he can somehow get two feats, I'd suggest Weapon Finesse plus Two-Weapon Fighting. This would net him 3 attacks/round with whatever 1d4 Small monk weapon he chooses... which is basically all of them (including unarmed) except the sai.

Prepping for Pathfinder: Miniatures, Monks and Missiles

Our second Pathfinder session is scheduled for this weekend, two weeks after our first, our once-a-week schedule already disrupted by other events (in this case, the requirement of Greg to visit his grandmother with his new baby in tow).

I've already gathered the miniatures for the session, placing them in one of my many plastic containers for transport. This one has dividers in it, so I can place miniatures sorted by encounter - except, of course, there'll be a lot of miniatures used in more than one combat, so that doesn't work so well.

We didn't get as far as I expected last session due to character creation taking a full hour longer than my initial estimate. So, the structure of the next session will probably look like follows:

* Meeting the Rebels and planning the Rescue (role-playing)
* The Rescue (combat)
* Meeting the Leader (role-playing)
* Returning the Horses (role-playing)
* The Hellknight Stronghold (exploration/combat)

The group doesn't seem to be very RP inclined, so I expect the RP sections will be very brief.

It took me all of one session to realise that I don't really miss how 3E does low-level characters. A large part of this is compounded by the character selection on the part of the party. I can understand Lee, Michael and Tim making substandard characters, but Dave has actually played a fair bit of Pathfinder already... how is it that he ends up with the worst character of the lot, a halfling monk?

The only competent monk I saw in 3E was one made with the Vow of Poverty, which brought it up to a level of a standard PC. Monks are great survivors, but horrible contributors, especially when they have a 10 Strength and are small. It's part of the MAD of the class: they need good Strength, Wisdom and Dexterity. Yes, he has an AC of 20. But he can't hit anything, and does d4 damage.

Dexterity seems to be a theme of this party. The cleric has a really high Dex and uses a bow (he's an elf). Fair enough, except we were brought down to reality by the effects of PF cover and shooting into melee - an effective -8 to the attack roll. It's a shock to the 4E sensibilities of most of the group.

It should be noted that Lee has been playing in my AD&D campaign, so he's seen the even earlier version of firing into melee: which selects a *random* target from all those participating. Though he's been playing a cleric, and it doesn't come up so much for him.

One of the other features of 4E that isn't in 3E that I miss is the retraining rules; admittedly there is a version of the rule in place for the sorcerer (so Tim will be able to train out Sleep when he reaches 4th level), but I'm very likely to be using some variation of retraining rules with the group. It might well go further than that - especially with Dave's character, because the halfling monk may well turn out to be as I fear, a useless character. (It might surprise me as well, but I'm not betting on it).

Merric,

One of the things my GM is allowing for us is that until we hit I think 3rd level, we can completely alter our character, since we are all trying "new" concepts, and we have a smaller than normal group. So if we discover that the character we designed doesn't do what we thought it would, or we don't like how it plays, or whatever, we can switch it up - until we've got a few levels under our belt.

My group isn't exactly new to Pathfinder, but we have a caster who doesn't normally play a caster, a healer who doesn't normally play a healer, and a rogue who doesn't normally play a rogue... so it's anybody's guess if it'll 'work' - although so far, nobody has changed anything drastic - just spells known / etc.

Just something to consider... and yeah, a Halfling Monk is perhaps one of the worst combatants you could introduce. I should know - my first 3.0 character was a halfling monk. It was like he was hitting with a nerf bat. That being said, monks can be competitive... just not when they're also halflings

Bacris said:

One of the things my GM is allowing for us is that until we hit I think 3rd level, we can completely alter our character, since we are all trying "new" concepts, and we have a smaller than normal group. So if we discover that the character we designed doesn't do what we thought it would, or we don't like how it plays, or whatever, we can switch it up - until we've got a few levels under our belt.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty lenient that way myself; I know how much tinkering it can take to get a character "right", and I much, much prefer to have a complete rebuild of a character rather than have someone who can't pull his weight.

Cheers!

The Rescue is the best part of this volume of the AP. Take your time with it and have fun. Be prepared to adapt on the fly and reward your players if they make the right decisions.

Well, we've finished the Bastards of Erebus - in total it took us 5-1/2 hours of play. I'm am extremely unimpressed by the module - the overall story and some encounters were fine, but the writing and editing were both dreadful.

We began where we left off, meeting the other members of the rebels. That didn't take long, as we mostly ignored them. Then we had the problem of determining if it were the next day or not; the structure of the adventure demands that it is, but it isn't clear from the text. So, the group gained information about the prisoner transport taking the rebel leader out of the city, and following Janiven's request, came up with a plan for rescuing them.

The planning didn't take too long, but it was very entertaining. Then we had the actual rescue, which played extremely well - the group started by taking out the Hellknight with the ballista with several well-aimed shots, then putting the leader of the Hellknights to sleep, and basically defeating all of them without too much trouble.

With Arael rescued - and the group now calling themselves the Rebel Alliance (as it was too good to pass up, with no-one liking "Children of Westcrown") - they took a week off to recuperate. Oh, and to return the horses, where they met a distinguished and arrogant actor. That played really well, with conflict providing good role-playing.

Everyone had reached second level... except I then realised that the XP table had a major change on it and they hadn't. So I just made them all 2nd level anyway (a bonus 500 XP) rather than (a) running more pointless sewer encounters or (b) running a side quest described in the module but not written (as it should have been).

Then they went up against the Bastards of Erebus - a group of tiefling thieves who had been preying on the populace of Westcrown. Further troubles with the adventure began to surface, the first being that there was no map of the streets and buildings surrounding their lair, despite sneaking up on them and planning an ambush being and important part of the adventure (and the possibility of finding one of the secret entrances into the lair).

First, they took out the tiefling on watch in the bell-tower: two perfectly aimed arrows and a magic-missile did for him. Then (aided by the monk) they ascended the belltower, then descended into the lair and slew the surprised tiefling watch party.

Descending into the tunnels beneath the lair, they fought more tieflings and their "mummy" sorcerer companion, who charmed the monk into running away - but he and his friends fell to the other three PCs (Lee's cleric couldn't make this session). Then they found the kennel with four, no two wolf skeletons. Except that Pathfinder doesn't have stats for wolf skeletons, as they were omitted from the final bestiary.

Not particularly impressed by this, I was even less impressed when I realised that the underground map was actually missing parts of its key (where is G8 on the map?). Editing in this module? Absolutely dreadful.

Still, most of the adventure was still there, so the group headed north, after retrieving the monk, took out some hell dogs (although they knocked the monk down to negative hit points), and then Greg made the inspired decision to search for secret doors, finding the secret entrance into the leader's lair.

The leader of the tieflings didn't get much of a chance to act, as Tim successfully used the sleep spell on him! (He had a 20% chance of failing the save, but did so anyway). The two wolf skeletons with the leader were soon slain, and the group then turned their attention to the main barracks of the tieflings, where a fighter and four rogues waited for them... but given the ranged fire-power of the group plus Michael and Dave waiting on either side of the door for the tieflings to enter, the tieflings never had much of a chance. Good tactics and a choke-point worked wonders, though there was a short moment of real tension when Dave was knocked out, only to be revived by Tim's sorcerer giving him a potion of cure light wounds.

The final group of tieflings approached, considered the situation, then fled. The group were victorious!

And that was that. The group reached 3rd level, and we'll move on to the Sixfold Trial either next week or the week after (depending on how Easter interferes).

Although we had fun with the adventure, as a DM I would rate it as a lousy four out of ten; the first half requires rewriting, the second half needs an exterior map and the whole requires editing. There aren't really enough thought-out encounters in this adventure. I'm hoping the state of affairs improves with the Sixfold Path.