IronWolf
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There is foreshadowing, but it is subtle and a GM could miss it or fail to bring it to the forefront enough. I added a couple of things to help foreshadow it a bit as well.
Pathfinder 1E Prepping for Pathfinder: Kingmaker (spoilers!)
There is foreshadowing, but it is subtle and a GM could miss it or fail to bring it to the forefront enough. I added a couple of things to help foreshadow it a bit as well.
Our second session was without Lee, who had been summoned to a family emergency. As a result, we were without a ranger (and his excellent Perception checks).
I began the session by doing a little role-playing with the inhabitants of Oleg's trading post, and reinforcing a few of the quests. Svetlana asked for the Moon Radishes (to cheer up the ill Lee and the depressed Oleg). Though this quest has a ridiculously good reward, I wasn't about to change it.
The group's main objective was to regain Svetlana's wedding ring, but on the first expedition they discovered some kobolds guarding her moon radishes and - after failing to negotiate with them - slaughtered three of them and then successfully negotiated with the fourth. From here, it was time to look for the Sycamore tree the mites lived under.
Once that was found - and the guard party of mites was dealt with, we had one of the most amusing set-piece encounters yet: the group would find some mites, kill one, then the rest would run away. Once they reached the leader, he had all these reinforcements. Unfortunately for the mite leader, he won initiative, charged into combat, and was killed before the rest of the mites could act. What did they do? They ran away - abandoning their home to find somewhere far, far away from cruel adventurers!
This session was *mostly* run without miniatures, but I did use a basic map to show the mite combats.
After the mites were defeated, they recovered the statue of a devil, and freed a poor kobold who really wanted to return the statue to his tribe. The group were very amenable to negotiating with the kobolds, and accompanied him to the tribe.
The second big set-piece of the session found the group giving the statue to the chieftain of the tribe rather than the shaman, and then defending themselves as the shaman attacked them. The chief was overjoyed when the shaman was slain, and a treaty was enacted between the kobolds and the adventurers. Dave was talking about trade routes - we'll see how that goes as the adventure continues. Mikmek, the kobold they rescued, will probably have an ongoing role as well...
Apart from that, the group continued to explore the lands around. A random encounter with a troll saw the group bribing it with about 12 days worth of rations rather than fighting it (good thinking!), they reclaimed a temple of Erastil, and failed to discover a couple of items because their Perception skills weren't high enough. The session ended with them fighting a great boar (one of the quest monsters) and defeating it pretty easily.
Beads indicate hexes explored. The goblin has no significance.
At this point, the group was just short of 3rd level, so I instructed everyone to level up in preparation for the next session. (They'd reached 2nd level after a couple of encounters this session). We should finish this first adventure next session, and then move into the kingdom-building aspect of the Adventure Path.
I began the session by doing a little role-playing with the inhabitants of Oleg's trading post, and reinforcing a few of the quests. Svetlana asked for the Moon Radishes (to cheer up the ill Lee and the depressed Oleg). Though this quest has a ridiculously good reward, I wasn't about to change it.
The group's main objective was to regain Svetlana's wedding ring, but on the first expedition they discovered some kobolds guarding her moon radishes and - after failing to negotiate with them - slaughtered three of them and then successfully negotiated with the fourth. From here, it was time to look for the Sycamore tree the mites lived under.
Once that was found - and the guard party of mites was dealt with, we had one of the most amusing set-piece encounters yet: the group would find some mites, kill one, then the rest would run away. Once they reached the leader, he had all these reinforcements. Unfortunately for the mite leader, he won initiative, charged into combat, and was killed before the rest of the mites could act. What did they do? They ran away - abandoning their home to find somewhere far, far away from cruel adventurers!
This session was *mostly* run without miniatures, but I did use a basic map to show the mite combats.
After the mites were defeated, they recovered the statue of a devil, and freed a poor kobold who really wanted to return the statue to his tribe. The group were very amenable to negotiating with the kobolds, and accompanied him to the tribe.
The second big set-piece of the session found the group giving the statue to the chieftain of the tribe rather than the shaman, and then defending themselves as the shaman attacked them. The chief was overjoyed when the shaman was slain, and a treaty was enacted between the kobolds and the adventurers. Dave was talking about trade routes - we'll see how that goes as the adventure continues. Mikmek, the kobold they rescued, will probably have an ongoing role as well...
Apart from that, the group continued to explore the lands around. A random encounter with a troll saw the group bribing it with about 12 days worth of rations rather than fighting it (good thinking!), they reclaimed a temple of Erastil, and failed to discover a couple of items because their Perception skills weren't high enough. The session ended with them fighting a great boar (one of the quest monsters) and defeating it pretty easily.
Beads indicate hexes explored. The goblin has no significance.
At this point, the group was just short of 3rd level, so I instructed everyone to level up in preparation for the next session. (They'd reached 2nd level after a couple of encounters this session). We should finish this first adventure next session, and then move into the kingdom-building aspect of the Adventure Path.
Attachments
We finished our third session of the Pathfinder adventure path, Kingmaker, today, which also concluded the first volume of the six-volume set. It actually took a little longer than I expected, a little over three hours, which is not how long it looked when the group were finishing off the last of the exploration of map hexes; that proceeded fairly quickly, mainly because there were few actual combats to get through (and little role-playing).
Most of the excitement in the early stages came from random encounters. Upon finding the dice indicated a faerie dragon, it proved an opportune time for Perlivash to return. A group of grigs (insect faeries) were unknown to the party, but they'd heard of the party, and so we got brief vignettes of role-playing as a result, which I mostly used to give feedback to the party that they were having an effect, and that their efforts against the bandits were appreciated by the forest folk. I wonder what Perlivash will think when the settlers start moving in...
The group also escorted Jhod to the reclaimed Temple of Erastil, fulfilling that quest, and found the fangberries for Bekken, with the spiders being defeated with Tim's first attack (although not before they poisoned most of the group, though somewhat ineffectively. I like how Pathfinder is dealing with resolving poison, even if most of the group (with the exception of Lee) weren't affected.
On the other hand, Dave wanted to craft some poisons. As we're using the Advanced Player's Guide for this campaign, Dave has taken the poisoner option for his rogue (losing trapfinding to be effective with poisons). Unfortunately, nothing will make the Pathfinder crafting rules good. They were stupid in 3E, and they're stupid in PF. To get one dose of poison, he'll need to spend three weeks making it. Yes, Kingmaker will be a longer campaign than most D&D games I run (it's already spanned 7 weeks of campaign time), but 3 weeks for one dose? Yes, far more effective to just "buy" the poison.
(But from whom?)
Give me the Ravages from Book of Exalted Deeds any day.
One of the more important encounters, although possibly not seen that way by the group, was the discovery of a unicorn's body with no explanation as to how it died or who killed it. Foreshadowing. Woo!
The final battle against the Big Bad Bandits was fun. The group got ambushed on the way up to the lair, but did manage to get into the lair through a back door. That led into a battle with the bandits attacking in waves and the group getting aid from an unexpected source. And finally the Big Bad appeared and did some damage before going down. All of this just reinforced to me how pathetic NPCs are in Pathfinder as villains.
I'm just going to do a comparison of the baseline with the Big Bad's stats. I think these shouldn't be that far off... while noting we're talking about a CR 6 threat here (allegedly):
Big Bad: AC 19, F+4, R+9, W+1, hp 67, Atk +8/+3 (10) plus sneak attack +10
Suggested: AC 19, F+5 R+9 W+5, hp 70, Atk +12 (25)
Well, defensively on par, but definitely underpar (and a fair way) offensively. I don't like Pathfinder rogues as enemies. They're generally crap - they get one sneak attack and that's it unless they have some magical way of hiding. Stealth +12 is *not* enough. At least this Big Bad has a magic item allowing a second sneak attack. Not that it helped once Greg and the others got up into melee.
The last encounter was with the guardian of the bandit's treasure, and here was an unfortunately brief and fairly pointless battle, all over in one round.
With the bandits all dealt with, I wrapped up the details of the first adventure and laid some groundwork for the next, explaining a few things about the kingdom-building rules. We'll cover the details of the rules next session. Actually, I'll give them all copies of the rules prior to us getting fully underway. I'm really not sure of how much time we'll devote in-play to the kingdom.
A couple of points on the staging of this adventure: first of all, I managed to acquire a copy of the Dungeon Tile product DN2: The Witchlight Fens the other day, with a lot of swamp and river terrain. It proved perfect for the fight against the Tatzlwurms, which was a lot of fun as Lee's Ranger tried to use Animal Empathy on them, not realising they were dragons. After the group killed the one that mauled him, the combat was only two rounds long. Pathfinder doing lengthy and significant combats? Not so much so far. (The bandit combat I dragged out by introducing them in waves). I really, really love the D&D Dungeon Tiles, particularly the ones for the wilderness, and they have proved very useful so far.
Second, I drew up the bandit camp on my Flipmat before I came to the session, and so was able to deploy it without any hassle and such saved a lot of time. D&D Miniatures made the bulk of the miniature action this session, with Tim and Michael providing unpainted Reaper metals for their characters, and Lee having a Pathfinder mini for his ranger.
We're not running every encounter with minis (mainly because a lot are so damn inconsequential), but I have them available if they become important.
Kingmaker is playing nicely from the player's point of view, though I'm very curious to see if it manages to give us challenging encounters. The final encounter with the bandits was quite challenging, although mainly due to Auchs, the big brute bandit, not so much for the rest. Once Michael got his oracle's healing online, the damage being dealt was less than the healing on offer.
Most of the excitement in the early stages came from random encounters. Upon finding the dice indicated a faerie dragon, it proved an opportune time for Perlivash to return. A group of grigs (insect faeries) were unknown to the party, but they'd heard of the party, and so we got brief vignettes of role-playing as a result, which I mostly used to give feedback to the party that they were having an effect, and that their efforts against the bandits were appreciated by the forest folk. I wonder what Perlivash will think when the settlers start moving in...
The group also escorted Jhod to the reclaimed Temple of Erastil, fulfilling that quest, and found the fangberries for Bekken, with the spiders being defeated with Tim's first attack (although not before they poisoned most of the group, though somewhat ineffectively. I like how Pathfinder is dealing with resolving poison, even if most of the group (with the exception of Lee) weren't affected.
On the other hand, Dave wanted to craft some poisons. As we're using the Advanced Player's Guide for this campaign, Dave has taken the poisoner option for his rogue (losing trapfinding to be effective with poisons). Unfortunately, nothing will make the Pathfinder crafting rules good. They were stupid in 3E, and they're stupid in PF. To get one dose of poison, he'll need to spend three weeks making it. Yes, Kingmaker will be a longer campaign than most D&D games I run (it's already spanned 7 weeks of campaign time), but 3 weeks for one dose? Yes, far more effective to just "buy" the poison.
(But from whom?)
Give me the Ravages from Book of Exalted Deeds any day.
One of the more important encounters, although possibly not seen that way by the group, was the discovery of a unicorn's body with no explanation as to how it died or who killed it. Foreshadowing. Woo!
The final battle against the Big Bad Bandits was fun. The group got ambushed on the way up to the lair, but did manage to get into the lair through a back door. That led into a battle with the bandits attacking in waves and the group getting aid from an unexpected source. And finally the Big Bad appeared and did some damage before going down. All of this just reinforced to me how pathetic NPCs are in Pathfinder as villains.
I'm just going to do a comparison of the baseline with the Big Bad's stats. I think these shouldn't be that far off... while noting we're talking about a CR 6 threat here (allegedly):
Big Bad: AC 19, F+4, R+9, W+1, hp 67, Atk +8/+3 (10) plus sneak attack +10
Suggested: AC 19, F+5 R+9 W+5, hp 70, Atk +12 (25)
Well, defensively on par, but definitely underpar (and a fair way) offensively. I don't like Pathfinder rogues as enemies. They're generally crap - they get one sneak attack and that's it unless they have some magical way of hiding. Stealth +12 is *not* enough. At least this Big Bad has a magic item allowing a second sneak attack. Not that it helped once Greg and the others got up into melee.
The last encounter was with the guardian of the bandit's treasure, and here was an unfortunately brief and fairly pointless battle, all over in one round.
With the bandits all dealt with, I wrapped up the details of the first adventure and laid some groundwork for the next, explaining a few things about the kingdom-building rules. We'll cover the details of the rules next session. Actually, I'll give them all copies of the rules prior to us getting fully underway. I'm really not sure of how much time we'll devote in-play to the kingdom.
A couple of points on the staging of this adventure: first of all, I managed to acquire a copy of the Dungeon Tile product DN2: The Witchlight Fens the other day, with a lot of swamp and river terrain. It proved perfect for the fight against the Tatzlwurms, which was a lot of fun as Lee's Ranger tried to use Animal Empathy on them, not realising they were dragons. After the group killed the one that mauled him, the combat was only two rounds long. Pathfinder doing lengthy and significant combats? Not so much so far. (The bandit combat I dragged out by introducing them in waves). I really, really love the D&D Dungeon Tiles, particularly the ones for the wilderness, and they have proved very useful so far.
Second, I drew up the bandit camp on my Flipmat before I came to the session, and so was able to deploy it without any hassle and such saved a lot of time. D&D Miniatures made the bulk of the miniature action this session, with Tim and Michael providing unpainted Reaper metals for their characters, and Lee having a Pathfinder mini for his ranger.
We're not running every encounter with minis (mainly because a lot are so damn inconsequential), but I have them available if they become important.
Kingmaker is playing nicely from the player's point of view, though I'm very curious to see if it manages to give us challenging encounters. The final encounter with the bandits was quite challenging, although mainly due to Auchs, the big brute bandit, not so much for the rest. Once Michael got his oracle's healing online, the damage being dealt was less than the healing on offer.
IronWolf
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A lot of the encounters in Kingmaker were pretty easy. It was simply the nature of one encounter per hex plus maybe a wandering critter or two. That let the party be ready for most encounters. There were some exceptions along they way, but they were exceptions.
There was usually at least one "mini-dungeon" that provided some challenge within. It seems each book has at least one of those.
Book Six makes up for this in spades. The power level in there is a shock compared to the first five books.
We finished book 6 this weekend. Yes what a shock, re: the BBEG,
my ranger... i roll 47-47/49/42/25/29/12 to hit!
DM... you miss
my ranger...
IronWolf
blank
We finished book 6 this weekend. Yes what a shock, re: the BBEG,
my ranger... i roll 47-47/49/42/25/29/12 to hit!
DM... you miss
my ranger...
Yep! As a GM I loved that battle! Helped make up for all the easy encounters during exploration! I really enjoyed the final book in that series as a GM. Along the way I feel I had done a good job of foreshadowing it, so book 6 didn't seem as far out of left field as some complained on the Paizo boards.
Overall I really liked the AP. I think our group had a good time with it.
Starbuck_II
First Post
Really, the only way to save it, use gp not sp to determine crafting speed for poisons.
That makes crafting useable as it should be.
I'll see what you can do if using sp.
Trapdoor spiders? 150 gp.
Craft DC 14, cost 50 gp.
Assuming 14 Int, trained +1 rank=6.
Yeah, taking 10 means a 16 means to get 1500 goal: 240 a week. 6 weeks.
Caster's can boost your ski'l by 5 (Crafter's fortune, 1st lv spell). This raises you to 11. This lowers time to 315 to 4 weeks
A masterwork item would boost by 2. raising to 345, so still 4 weeks.
If you have the others all aid another him: 4 x2=+8. Raising to Skill Total 19 +take ten, we can raise DC by 10, since we still make DC.
New amount 725, Time 2 weeks.
What Came Before
My Kingmaker campaign has been continuing somewhat sporadically, as various illnesses and events have been interfering. We took 4 sessions to play through Rivers Run Red, which saw the characters found their kingdom and bring it up to a 17-hex barony. Most wonderfully, they recruited a giant to be the kingdom’s headsman, and the threat of the giant keeps the loyalty of the kingdom quite high.
Greg’s character, Wyvern, is the ruler of the kingdom, with the other PCs taking on other positions of responsibility. Kingdom-building was the main focus of Rivers Run Red, although there were two main encounters of note: Wyvern recovered a broken feybane sword from a nearby barrow, and Dave’s character, Nowan, a human rogue, was torn apart by a troll. Apparently, rogues with low Constitution shouldn’t engage in melee with advanced trolls!
Dave created a new character – Joe, a human transmuter – and Greg recruited a cohort – Talia, a human Wizard, and our most recent session saw us begin The Varnhold Vanishing, the third part of the Kingmaker adventure path.
The Characters
Greg – Wyvern, human Paladin 7 – ruler
his cohort – Talia, human Wizard 5
Dave – Joe, human Transmuter 7 – spymaster
Lee – Brandis, half-elf Ranger 7 – marshal
Tim – Asmodeus, half-elf Alchemist 7 – magister
Michael – Keira, human Oracle 7 – councillor
The Vanishing
One of the aristocrats of their new kingdom came to Wyvern with a problem; his brother, on a visit to the newly-formed town of Varnhold, which had been formed by another mercenary band at the same time as the PCs’ barony, had not returned. Nor had there been any contact with the barony for at least two weeks!
Baron Wyvern was amenable to finding out was wrong, and set out with his boon companions on horseback to Varnhold. The journey there was interrupted by a fight with five worgs, which, alas, only provided the group with brief entertainment. (Two fireball-casting wizards? Not good for worgs!)
The watchtower in the mountain pass leading to the town was abandoned, and so too proved to be the town. The animals of the town were mostly dead – starvation and thirst being the killers. Or neglect. There were signs of spriggan activity, including a couple of spriggan corpses, but there was no sign of what had happened to the villagers. A feral hog attacked the group, dealing some damage to Wyvern, but it was slain by the group easily enough.
The group soon began to suspect the local centaur tribe, the Nomen, based on the discovery of centaur hides, and a message scrawled on the inn’s door. They also found books and notes from a travelling scholar, who had come to town to investigate the Nomen and other historic parts of the region, which just reinforced their suspicions. There were also pictures and notes about a jade bracelet that had been recovered from a nearby river. Could this have been the trigger that had led the Nomen on their rampage?
Swarms of crows and rats were fireballed away, and the group finally found living, intelligent creatures in the town; a tribe of spriggans, who had been looting the town after relocating there. The spriggans had set up camp in the town’s stockade, and attempted to stop the party from entering. They were unsuccessful, and all seven of them, plus their leader, were slain in the fights, but not before the spriggans set alight the stockade, destroying it and any evidence that might have been there of what had occurred in the village.
The party returned to their home to deal with the business of ruling – their kingdom expanded to 19 hexes, and they built a brewery (having discovered a recipe for stout in Varnhold, it seemed appropriate). Joe crafted some horseshoes of speed for Keira’s horse and his own, and he also started using the Ant Haul spell to increase the carrying capacity of the party’s horses, so they could even carry Wyvern in his plate armour without reducing their speed! The group could now explore even mountainous hexes at the rate of 1/day, rather than one hex per three days as it was before.
Travelling back to Varnhold after this week’s break, they started looking for the centaur tribe, searching the lands around the mountains. One night was broken by a Chimera attack, another by more Worgs, but they were fairly easily dealt with; Asmodeus was wearing a ring of sustenance, and so would always be on watch with one other character, and his bombs were proving quite effective.
The group found the old, petrified bones of a linnorm, at which they found a number of offerings of meat and wine; they were also attacked by a bull mastodon that was roaming the area. Asmodeus and Wyvern took a lot of damage from it before the group were able to slay it. Joe was now casting mass enlarge person at the beginning of combat to aid the group. Keira mainly just channelled to heal the party rather than taking an offensive role.
Further exploration found them taking a quest from a phase spider to clear out the Xills that had invaded her lair; the Xills proved very difficult for the group to slay, with the Xills proving resistant to many of the spells of Joe and Keira, and they did a lot of damage back to Asmodeus and Wyvern; Keira was hard-pressed to keep everyone functioning, but finally the Xills were slain and the group gained a reward from the phase spider which included a spellbook, much to the delight of Talia and Joe.
At that point, we ended the session. The game has been running for about 15 months of game-time so far; I don’t believe this adventure is going to take all that long to complete.
DM’s Notes
This was a very satisfying session. It’s great to see the group working well together, and Dave is really now using his knowledge of the Pathfinder spells to great effect. The group reached 8th level by the end of the session. I’m not really tracking XP any more, and they probably would have been just short otherwise, but giving the characters levels between sessions means the sessions don’t slow down that much.
In contrast to most of our recent sessions, we only had one kingdom-phase this session; the group was very busy exploring Varnhold. I have the map folio for this adventure, and the session was made much easier by having a poster map of the town so that the group could just point to which building they wanted to explore. The mystery of the vanishing is presented really well; I was worried going into the session that it might be a bit boring, but it played well, which is what you really want from an adventure.
I’ve also recently acquired Book of the River Nations: Complete Player’s Reference to Kingdom Building, which Michael spent some time perusing the other day. It expands the options for what they can build in their kingdom and, although we didn’t use it this session, I expect we will in the future. My copies of the first four instalments of Way of the Wicked, an evil-themed Adventure Path from Fire Mountain Games have also arrived, and we’ll likely play that when Kingmaker ends.
The battles in this session were more challenging than most of the last adventure (save for the trolls) which was good to see; it’s very common for Pathfinder battles to be very lopsided, especially with them more likely to be one per day in this AP.
We’ve now played eight sessions of the Kingmaker game; I expect this adventure to take a total of three sessions if they continue with it in the manner they have so far. Their kingdom is now 19 hexes; I wonder how big it will be when this adventure ends?
My Kingmaker campaign has been continuing somewhat sporadically, as various illnesses and events have been interfering. We took 4 sessions to play through Rivers Run Red, which saw the characters found their kingdom and bring it up to a 17-hex barony. Most wonderfully, they recruited a giant to be the kingdom’s headsman, and the threat of the giant keeps the loyalty of the kingdom quite high.
Greg’s character, Wyvern, is the ruler of the kingdom, with the other PCs taking on other positions of responsibility. Kingdom-building was the main focus of Rivers Run Red, although there were two main encounters of note: Wyvern recovered a broken feybane sword from a nearby barrow, and Dave’s character, Nowan, a human rogue, was torn apart by a troll. Apparently, rogues with low Constitution shouldn’t engage in melee with advanced trolls!
Dave created a new character – Joe, a human transmuter – and Greg recruited a cohort – Talia, a human Wizard, and our most recent session saw us begin The Varnhold Vanishing, the third part of the Kingmaker adventure path.
The Characters
Greg – Wyvern, human Paladin 7 – ruler
his cohort – Talia, human Wizard 5
Dave – Joe, human Transmuter 7 – spymaster
Lee – Brandis, half-elf Ranger 7 – marshal
Tim – Asmodeus, half-elf Alchemist 7 – magister
Michael – Keira, human Oracle 7 – councillor
The Vanishing
One of the aristocrats of their new kingdom came to Wyvern with a problem; his brother, on a visit to the newly-formed town of Varnhold, which had been formed by another mercenary band at the same time as the PCs’ barony, had not returned. Nor had there been any contact with the barony for at least two weeks!
Baron Wyvern was amenable to finding out was wrong, and set out with his boon companions on horseback to Varnhold. The journey there was interrupted by a fight with five worgs, which, alas, only provided the group with brief entertainment. (Two fireball-casting wizards? Not good for worgs!)
The watchtower in the mountain pass leading to the town was abandoned, and so too proved to be the town. The animals of the town were mostly dead – starvation and thirst being the killers. Or neglect. There were signs of spriggan activity, including a couple of spriggan corpses, but there was no sign of what had happened to the villagers. A feral hog attacked the group, dealing some damage to Wyvern, but it was slain by the group easily enough.
The group soon began to suspect the local centaur tribe, the Nomen, based on the discovery of centaur hides, and a message scrawled on the inn’s door. They also found books and notes from a travelling scholar, who had come to town to investigate the Nomen and other historic parts of the region, which just reinforced their suspicions. There were also pictures and notes about a jade bracelet that had been recovered from a nearby river. Could this have been the trigger that had led the Nomen on their rampage?
Swarms of crows and rats were fireballed away, and the group finally found living, intelligent creatures in the town; a tribe of spriggans, who had been looting the town after relocating there. The spriggans had set up camp in the town’s stockade, and attempted to stop the party from entering. They were unsuccessful, and all seven of them, plus their leader, were slain in the fights, but not before the spriggans set alight the stockade, destroying it and any evidence that might have been there of what had occurred in the village.
The party returned to their home to deal with the business of ruling – their kingdom expanded to 19 hexes, and they built a brewery (having discovered a recipe for stout in Varnhold, it seemed appropriate). Joe crafted some horseshoes of speed for Keira’s horse and his own, and he also started using the Ant Haul spell to increase the carrying capacity of the party’s horses, so they could even carry Wyvern in his plate armour without reducing their speed! The group could now explore even mountainous hexes at the rate of 1/day, rather than one hex per three days as it was before.
Travelling back to Varnhold after this week’s break, they started looking for the centaur tribe, searching the lands around the mountains. One night was broken by a Chimera attack, another by more Worgs, but they were fairly easily dealt with; Asmodeus was wearing a ring of sustenance, and so would always be on watch with one other character, and his bombs were proving quite effective.
The group found the old, petrified bones of a linnorm, at which they found a number of offerings of meat and wine; they were also attacked by a bull mastodon that was roaming the area. Asmodeus and Wyvern took a lot of damage from it before the group were able to slay it. Joe was now casting mass enlarge person at the beginning of combat to aid the group. Keira mainly just channelled to heal the party rather than taking an offensive role.
Further exploration found them taking a quest from a phase spider to clear out the Xills that had invaded her lair; the Xills proved very difficult for the group to slay, with the Xills proving resistant to many of the spells of Joe and Keira, and they did a lot of damage back to Asmodeus and Wyvern; Keira was hard-pressed to keep everyone functioning, but finally the Xills were slain and the group gained a reward from the phase spider which included a spellbook, much to the delight of Talia and Joe.
At that point, we ended the session. The game has been running for about 15 months of game-time so far; I don’t believe this adventure is going to take all that long to complete.
DM’s Notes
This was a very satisfying session. It’s great to see the group working well together, and Dave is really now using his knowledge of the Pathfinder spells to great effect. The group reached 8th level by the end of the session. I’m not really tracking XP any more, and they probably would have been just short otherwise, but giving the characters levels between sessions means the sessions don’t slow down that much.
In contrast to most of our recent sessions, we only had one kingdom-phase this session; the group was very busy exploring Varnhold. I have the map folio for this adventure, and the session was made much easier by having a poster map of the town so that the group could just point to which building they wanted to explore. The mystery of the vanishing is presented really well; I was worried going into the session that it might be a bit boring, but it played well, which is what you really want from an adventure.
I’ve also recently acquired Book of the River Nations: Complete Player’s Reference to Kingdom Building, which Michael spent some time perusing the other day. It expands the options for what they can build in their kingdom and, although we didn’t use it this session, I expect we will in the future. My copies of the first four instalments of Way of the Wicked, an evil-themed Adventure Path from Fire Mountain Games have also arrived, and we’ll likely play that when Kingmaker ends.
The battles in this session were more challenging than most of the last adventure (save for the trolls) which was good to see; it’s very common for Pathfinder battles to be very lopsided, especially with them more likely to be one per day in this AP.
We’ve now played eight sessions of the Kingmaker game; I expect this adventure to take a total of three sessions if they continue with it in the manner they have so far. Their kingdom is now 19 hexes; I wonder how big it will be when this adventure ends?
Stouthart
First Post
Looks like you are having a good time with this AP.
I ran it last year and we had a blast. The player's really got into the nation building and made some interesting choices during the campaign that I went along with. Like instead of wiping out a band of Kobolds they befriended them and ended up recruiting them take over and work a local mine. Some of them were even trained as sharpshooters and became members of the town guard!
I know kobolds are listed as evil but I always maintain that this is just the popular opinion of the 'civilized' races. They just don't 'get' the orcs, kobolds, goblins, etc.
Stouthart
I ran it last year and we had a blast. The player's really got into the nation building and made some interesting choices during the campaign that I went along with. Like instead of wiping out a band of Kobolds they befriended them and ended up recruiting them take over and work a local mine. Some of them were even trained as sharpshooters and became members of the town guard!
I know kobolds are listed as evil but I always maintain that this is just the popular opinion of the 'civilized' races. They just don't 'get' the orcs, kobolds, goblins, etc.
Stouthart
Epametheus
First Post
Having played all the way through Kingmaker -
Yeah, we domesticated the kobolds. Our gnome summoner also started rearing owlbears.
Kingdom building was neat at first, but was a serious chore by book 5. We also had about 12 districts worth of cities and were using an excel spreadsheet to track everything.
The mass combat system in book 5 was a little disappointing, though it may have been in part because our group was calculating something wrong - our nation had a great economy, but the cost of keeping a decent unit in the field was so high we could only field like 3 units at a time. So we decided to bypass the mass combat entirely by going straight for the enemy ruler in a commando strike.
The final boss of book 3 is interesting - his offensive power isn't amazing, but he has high DR and a lot of immunities. Fortunately, in our game he got stuck between a wall and my paladin.
The final boss of book 4 was one of the hardest fights of the campaign. The summoner's eidolon was killed like 4 times in that battle.
The Palace of Doors in Book 5 was pretty neat to raid. Though our maul of the titans helped with the Doors part. It was pretty funny when my paladin came through a wall right into the throne room.
The Forest of a Thousand Screams is pretty messed up. The forest can spit out random encounters that are significantly more dangerous than any normal encounter in the module.
Yeah, we domesticated the kobolds. Our gnome summoner also started rearing owlbears.
Kingdom building was neat at first, but was a serious chore by book 5. We also had about 12 districts worth of cities and were using an excel spreadsheet to track everything.
The mass combat system in book 5 was a little disappointing, though it may have been in part because our group was calculating something wrong - our nation had a great economy, but the cost of keeping a decent unit in the field was so high we could only field like 3 units at a time. So we decided to bypass the mass combat entirely by going straight for the enemy ruler in a commando strike.
The final boss of book 3 is interesting - his offensive power isn't amazing, but he has high DR and a lot of immunities. Fortunately, in our game he got stuck between a wall and my paladin.
The final boss of book 4 was one of the hardest fights of the campaign. The summoner's eidolon was killed like 4 times in that battle.
The Palace of Doors in Book 5 was pretty neat to raid. Though our maul of the titans helped with the Doors part. It was pretty funny when my paladin came through a wall right into the throne room.
The Forest of a Thousand Screams is pretty messed up. The forest can spit out random encounters that are significantly more dangerous than any normal encounter in the module.
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