ClownPrinceofFools comments on Despite running D&D, Pathfinder, and PF2e for almost 15 years, tonight I'll be running a fight against a dragon in a dungeon for the very first time.

[–] ClownPrinceofFools@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm planning to gm that adventure path soon, how has it been for you? Thinking of updating Ravirex to a mirage dragon, hoping to mess a bit with an old gm that will play.

permalink

fedilink

source

hideshow 4 child comments

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Thinking of updating Ravirex to a mirage dragon, hoping to mess a bit with an old gm that will play.

Fuuuuck, I had a similar idea but the ones I looked at didn't really fit, Mirage would be the perfect replacement. Go for it.

generally spoilery

In general, I've not found it as lethal as many report, but my players started with no PF2e knowledge and one had no ttrpg experience at all, so I structured the floors around introducing them to new mechanics, techniques, tactics, abilities etc.
Mr Beak and the shrine Corpselights on the ground floor are the biggest threats starting out - they can easily down a level 1 character on a crit and the Corpselights could potentially wipe the party in one with their beam attack. Killing a party member here did have the advantage of letting me run a long ass funeral for the dead character then bringing him back as a zombie in the deadtide event the next night though, so while the fights aren't necessarily fair they can help in establishing tone and characters personal motivations.
Middle floors will largely depend on how reckless your players are for kill count, but they should be familiar with the mechanics and be able to handle everything if they're careful and not afraid to flee if everything goes south. Middle floors suffer the most from the single-PL+3-enemy-in-a-small-room problem, but we found each fight generally brought something unique to the table and kept things interesting.
Last few floors are level dependent - if you're doing XP rather than milestone the party can easily get a level ahead of where they're intended to be by scraping each floor for loose experience like mine did, but it can just as easily leave them a level behind if they're regularly missing secret doors or ignoring sections of floors. If they're ahead of the curve the bottom floors have danger around every corner, keeping the party on their toes even in fights they're fully prepared for. If they're on milestone, fights like Ravirex will kill characters even with rolls as bad as mine. If they're behind Belcorra will TPK them as soon as they get there. There's less roleplay and engagement with Otari, but it has the most engaging and dynamic combat, and replaces the roleplay by moving the story down into the dungeon. Most of the actual story for the first 2 books is about Otari rather than the Gauntlight, but the third lets them actually engage with the BBEG and shutting down the Gauntlight, so it doesn't need the extra stuff from outside to keep the players interest.
Generally you can run the whole thing straight from the book, but it's worth browsing AV Expanded for ideas - I only took some choice pieces of the festival and a little of the expanded roseguard lore directly from it, but it helped with fleshing the story out.
Speaking of fleshing things out, it's worth finding your characterisations of the residents of Otari early, as they are you primary source of roleplay and if you establish them early it's pretty easy to get the party to start engaging them at every opportunity. Even though the story won't really deal with them in the last book, there's still plenty of reasons for them to seek out various services or advice from specific NPCs if they already know they exist.
The only thing I completely rewrote was Carmen Rajani and the Cooperative Blade. I think as written he's a sympathetic character who yearns for purpose, and letting the party work to redeem him makes for a better story and bigger moral dilemma when Urevian requests his soul (have Urevian meet the party and make the offer almost as soon as they get to his floor, so every time they go into a fight they know they could just sacrifice him and skip the floor). As part of that redemption I also made him one of the keys to unlock the lower levels instead of the Cooperative Blade (Vol settled down and hung up her sword immediately after defeating belcorra, so I decided it was her family that carried her spirit rather than the sword), which my players found corny but still preferred to the original plot when I told them about it later. He's way better as a morality pet than irredeemable dickhead.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 3 child comments

[–] ClownPrinceofFools@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

I like the remastered dragons in general feel a bit more different than the color categorisation. Thank you for the advice.

spoiler

___Am already planning on adding some things from AV extended, at least a trip to Absalom, as its right there and what's at stake after Otari. Still undecided on how to portrait Rajani, but the question will the party sacrifice an asshole to safe the day(themselves some trouble). Not sure if I want to go the add child to make sympathetic route from the extended version

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 2 child comments

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net [S] 2 points 1 year ago

spoilers

That's fair, one of my party is a Hellknight so for him stopping an army from invading Otari in exchange for a single soul was a no-brainer even with the morality pet angle. Eventually him and the rest of party came to a compromise that they'd just ask him nicely to sacrifice his soul to unknown eternal torments at the hand of a devil, and not push it if he declined. He turned them down so they did it the hard way, but the Hellknight still spent a lot of the floor requesting they go back and ask again.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net [S] 2 points 1 year ago

additional thing I just thought of

I didn't bother adding the child, in fact I didn't really change anything up until after he steals the sword - when they chased him to the smugglers cave I placed a bit more emphasis on backstory stuff like the sword being a physical connection to his family history and him trying to buy the sword back from the Menhemes in his pleading with them, and they decided they wanted to help him get the sword back legitimately rather than punish him - they convinced the mayor to let them hold onto the sword for safe keeping while helping Carmen stay sober and finding him more interesting work that made better use of his crafting skills than bashing out axes for the lumberers. They did stuff like mentioning around town that he made the equipment they used to defeat various terrors of the middle floors to rebuild his reputation in the town, and gave him additional emotional support after the Hellknight (nicely) asked him to kill himself. I rewrote his importance to the lighthouse, giving him additional motivation and reassurance, but even with him being a dick about everything at the start they found his backstory sympathetic enough to try and make him a better person.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent