[OSSR] Pathfinder Kingmaker

[Orca]

Will'o'wisps weren't much of a problem the first time we met them because I was playing a sorcerer with glitterdust. Blind=lose dex bonus=shattered wisps. By the next time we'd picked up communal resist energy and they were a joke. The trolls and some dragony thing called a peluda met as a random encounter were much more of a problem.

I find it odd that Glitterdust didn't prove to be just as effective against the trolls. But that said, I don't think Kingmaker was designed with the assumption that the players would be using good spells like Glitterdust.

Also, an annotate; my 3.5 group nearly got their asses kicked by a Will-O-Wisp the other day. It passed the save for Glitterdust and was trolling them with its 29 AC.

Does Pathfinder use the same monsters as 3.5? Because:

An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible.

Feats: Alertness, Blind-Fight, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Weapon FinesseB

Just sayin'.

The GM messed around with a few monsters giving the trolls a class level each for example, two for the leader. I can only assume that his change here included replacing that 'useless' blind-fight feat on the wisp.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Part 5: War of the River Kings

This chapter starts with the party being level 13. I think it’s generally agreed upon that level 13 is when 3.X officially becomes broken beyond all reason. Plane Shift + Greater Teleport enables PCs to go anywhere in the multiverse. Simulacrum officially makes its appearance. Wizards are quadratic and Warriors are hopelessly linear, having long since fallen by the wayside. Naturally, Paizo doesn’t change the module’s design one iota and continue to create premises that could work for level 1 parties.

Once again, we get many paragraphs of backstory for this chapter’s BBEG, because Crazy Hawt Fey Queen once more makes her triumphant return to backstory land. We’ll call the BBEG of the week this time around King Bard, since that’s what he took the most levels in. King Bard was tasked by Crazy Hawt Fey Queen to get a sword for her. He did this, but in rare display of intelligence, he realized he’d be cast aside the moment he stopped being useful to her. So instead, King Bard stored the sword in his royal vault and pretended he hadn’t found it yet. Crazy Hawt Fey Queen is hoping King Bard and the party’s kingdom will weaken themselves enough she’ll easily be able to take over in the next chapter. King Bard also has not one, but two artifacts. Both of which are technological, not magical. This seems really out of place. Like… why?

The Big Brained plan of King Bard is to have the PCs attend a tournament he’s hosting in his own kingdom and then attack their nation while they’re away. While there is some mass combat happening, much like chapter 4, War of the River Kings primarily focuses on the instigator of the conflict, ending with the party attacking King Bard in his castle. Which is pretty similar to how their spat with the Baron went in Blood for Blood…

It’s quite likely that some parties will simply not trust Irovetti’s invitation and won’t accept his invitation—likewise, PCs who use divination magic could well learn of Irovetti’s nefarious plans and refuse his invitation for that reason. That’s fine! Use the material presented in this adventure to react to the PCs’ choices—not to anticipate their choices. If the PCs decide not to go to the Crimson Celebration but instead decide to start exploring the Glenebon Uplands, Irovetti could simply attack their kingdom while the PCs are up in the Branthlend Mountains looking for giant wyverns or something.

I’m honestly kind of shocked. This is downright sensible for Paizo. Still kind of railroady and assumes the party won’t just shank King Bard with Scry ‘N Die as soon as they learn about his treachery, but way better than expected.

If the PCs don’t seem interested in attending the Rushlight Tournament, advice from one of their fellow NPC government leaders, or perhaps the result of a DC 15 Knowledge (nobility) check, could give some good reasons for taking part in the competition. Even if the PCs don’t compete in the numerous events, attending the Tournament is a great opportunity to meet other notables of the River Kingdoms and to present themselves as the rulers of the newest River Kingdom— failure to appear at this well-known and much anticipated event could be misinterpreted by other River Kings as a sign of weakness or even a deliberate insult or veiled act of aggression.

And we were doing so well… This on the same page as the last quote, by the way.

The tournament itself takes up 10 pages and it’s a slog to read through. The first thing that strikes me is that this relatively minor tournament has multiple level 11+ characters participating in it. This might be a personal quirk, but this bothers me. To my mind, you’d need something like the D&D equivalent of the Olympics to attract that many high-level characters to a competition.

Because the tournament has so many pages dedicated to it, I’m going to summarize it rather than cover every little detail. The events consist of archery, chopping wood (seriously?), boasting (wat?), and drunken jousting. The first event is pretty straightforward, it’s just an archery contest. The only thing noteworthy is the targets have hardness and you have to actually deal damage to them to score a hit. The wood chopping thing is also pretty simple, whoever chops the most logs in a minute wins.

Spellcasting is allowed, but only once the timer starts.

Did Paizo forget how long buffs can last at these levels? How is that supposed to work?

The boasting is literally just as series of skill checks. Intimidate, Buff and Diplomacy at DC 25 and then a Perform check at the end to score additional points.

Winning: For each skill check the boaster successfully makes during the three stages, award 1 point. Multiply the result of the boaster’s Perform check by the number of points he earned during the three stages—this final total is the boaster’s final score.

Am I the only one who thinks it unlikely that most PCs will be able to make a DC 25 Intimidate, Bluff and Diplomacy check? The drunken jousting consists of making Ride checks to see who goes first, followed by Bull Rush attempts. Everyone’s treated as Sickened, since they’re drunk.

It’s worth noting that in nearly every contest, one of the NPCs tries to cheat. A guy in the archery contest uses adamantine arrows, painted to look like steel ones. In the boasting contest, one NPC has a Bard friend influencing the crowd to give him an unfair advantage. In the jousting contest, one of the NPCs tries to directly attack one the players, hoping to provoke them into a battle and kill them. With the exception of that last instance, the party can expose the cheaters and get them disqualified. The guy who directly attacks the party is a level 15 Barbarian whose best ranged weapon is a masterwork longbow. Not even composite, just a normal, 1d8 damage, longbow. Good luck Barbarian guy, you’re going to need it…

The tournament is entirely a distraction and whilst the PCs are in attendance, King Bard’s forces begin their attack. I guess if the party learns of his plan before hand and attack him during the tournament, that’s the end of this entire chapter. What’s supposed to happen is the players fuck around with the mass combat minigame for a bit before invading King Bard’s castle and stabbing him to death there.

Of course, the mass combat rules are in the back, so we’ll be covering those later. We get more wilderness exploration and it’s as pointless as it was last time, worse actually, because the party should have Greater Teleport at this point. I’ll cover them briefly. We have an Awakened Mammoth who wants the party to kill a young Crag Linnorm, an advanced (CR 14) Wyvern, and a set piece for the next chapter.

One of the most notorious ruins in Thousand Voices looms amid the tangled underbrush and twisted trees here— the infamous Castle of Knives. This strange structure phases in and out of reality; since it’s detailed in the next adventure, if the PCs arrive at this location before you have access to Pathfinder Adventure Path #36, simply assume the castle is out of phase at that time.

Choo Choo mothefucker! Stay on those damn tracks!


Do you know I saw a review of Kingmaker that claimed it eschewed the typical dungeons that are so common in D&D/PF adventures? Yeah, I don’t know what they were smoking either. The next section is a dungeon, a haunted winery. This is also one of the very few good ideas that Kingmaker has. Naturally, Paizo have to fuck it up somehow, so let’s have a look.

The idea is that King Bard (Irovetti) was an adventurer once, so he knows how they think. He spreads rumors that his nation is building a super weapon that is capable of destroying an entire planet to lure the PCs into a trap.

Source: Variable; this quest could come from a spy whom Irovetti has fed false information, from rumors that some of Irovetti’s agents are developing a “super weapon” in a remote ruin in the Branthlend Mountain foothills, or from a officer or commander who’s been ordered to allow himself to be captured so he can “reveal” the information about the site under interrogation.

This is actually a legitimately clever trap that plays on the player’s expectations of how D&D works and how adventures are typically structured without being overly dickish. So, how did they fuck this up? The answer lies in the several paragraph long backstory for the winery. Basically, the sword that Crazy Hawt Fey Queen was looking for was hidden here and guarded by a hawt Fey lady named Evindra. Evindra taught the priests living at the winery how to make OMGWTFAWESOME wine, but…

It all came to an end when the church sent an awkward and embarrassing member to the abbey—a lecherous and somewhat deformed halfling sorcerer whose skill at gardening and cultivating vineyards only just kept him in the good graces of the church. They did not excommunicate him for his borderline acts of heresy, but rather entrusted him to the priests of Whiterose, hoping that the remote location would soften his eccentricities. Yet when the gardener first encountered Evindra, he became obsessed with her, and one night he stole her shawl and in so doing gained a considerable bargaining chip, for Evindra was a nereid, and her shawl contained a portion of her soul. The gardener forced Evindra into a watery form and imprisoned her in a beautiful water clock so he could keep her to himself.

Crazy gardener man was killed when King Bard claimed the sword from the winery and now, he’s a ghost that’s haunting the place. The ambush part of King Bard’s plan is pretty underwhelming, it consists of 4 level 6 Bards, 8 level 6 Fighters and a single level 12 Wererat Ranger. That last one is the only enemy that’s remotely threatening and his decent (+10) WILL save is the only thing keeping this fight from being a total breeze.

There aren’t very many other encounters here, besides the ghost man. A pair of advanced Shambling Mounds and 8 Will-O-Wisps. Ghost man is a Monk 4/Sorcerer 8 and his only good spell is Black Tentacles. The party can either fly over it or are immune via Freedom of Movement. I think his 13d6 touch attack is probably his most dangerous ability. I see ghost man being more annoying than truly dangerous since he’s incorporeal.

Evindra herself is discussed later in the module, which instead jumps straight to the big fight with King Bard. The authors seriously seem to think the party will actually siege the city he’s holed up in instead, flying over it or teleporting directly into his bedroom.

Irovetti’s palace is located at area 12 in Pitax (see the chapter on Pitax after this adventure). The building is one of the oldest in the city, built by an eccentric wizard who had a strange fascination with doors, twisting mazes, and strange architectural whimsies. The baffling structure fits Irovetti’s needs well, and the tangle of halls and doors makes it an easy place to get lost in and an even easier place for its denizens to defend. The palace certainly earns its nickname—the “House of a Hundred Doors.” In fact, the palace has well over a hundred doors, many of them secret doors.

…

The majority of the rooms in Irovetti’s palace are unkeyed. These unkeyed rooms consist of two types. The 5-foot square rooms are privies containing a single toilet. The 5-by-10 foot rooms are bedrooms, either for guards, servants, or guests...

Each of these unremarkable rooms contains a single bed, a nightstand, and a footlocker. The doors of these rooms can be latched from within but not locked (Disable Device DC 15 to open).

…

Oh god! Why would you make a map like this?! It’d drive both player and DM alike utterly insane!


Player: How many doors does this hall have?
DM: 17.
Player: Sigh… How many are identical and empty?
DM: … 12.
Players: Fuck this stupid ass dungeon!


I would never in a million years want to run this! Let the damn players kill King Bard in the opening and save everyone involved god knows how many sessions of opening fucking doors!


Then, we’re seriously expected to believe that Trolls with 5 levels in Fighter, +3 WILL saves, and no ranged attacks will be anything more than a speedbump for what is supposed to be a level 14 party.

King Bard himself is a Bard 11/Fighter 5 with some decent spells (Dominate Person, Greater Invisibility) and he has a Contingent Dimension Door, set to go off when he takes 10+ damage in a single attack. He also has the two technological artifacts I mentioned earlier, one is basically a +3 halberd that fires flechettes (treated as +3 keen adamantine arrows) and the other functions as a Rod of Rulership.

King Bard is accompanied by an Ogre Mage with 10 levels of Bard, the cheating Barbarian from earlier (assuming he’s still alive), 4 of the aforementioned level 5 Fighter Trolls, and 6 level 6 Fighters. I don’t see this fight being all challenging, especially if King Bard’s contingent Dimension Door will activate turn 1 and he’ll fuck off to his bedroom. Ogre Mage Bard will follow him if he takes enough damage.

It will not surprise you to learn that most of the castle is boring and devoid of interesting encounters, but there are a couple exceptions. There’s a Weretiger with 14 levels in Rogue (with a +6 WILL save), a Gargoyle with 10 levels in Rogue (+7 WILL save), an advanced Remorhaz that can’t fly and has no ranged attacks, and a Spirit Naga with 10 levels in Sorcerer. The naga would be threatening, except for the fact the spells she has suck. But that pales in comparison to the fact that King Bard cast Charm Monster on her and has her use Alter Self to turn into Crazy Hawt Fey Queen Lady so he can fuck her.

What the actual fuck Paizo?! Stop writing rape into your module! It’s creepy and you’re bad at it! The fact that Alter Self can’t actually do that in Pathfinder (humanoids form only) is just the icing on this disturbed cake. Seriously, what the fuck?!


With that bit of squick out of the way, let’s move on to the Mass Combat Rules. About 5 pages are dedicated to this and the mechanics are kind of obtuse. There’s a chart to calculate an army’s CR based on the number soldiers and the CR of each individual creature. A medium army (100 soldiers) adds a +0 to its CR, a small one (50) is -2 CR, Large (200) is +2 and so on. For example, 100 Ghouls would be a medium CR 1 army. In case you’re wondering why CR matters, it’s because that’s how you calculate the army’s HP. You multiply an army’s CR by their average hitpoints for their hitdice. So, our 2d12 hitdice ghouls would be 13 x 1, 13 HP. CR also determines your offense and defense values; your flat CR is your offense and your CR + 10 is your defense. To my amusement, it’s entirely possible to have a one-man army. You’re treated as a fine army, in terms of the mechanics, not that this system accurately represents PC abilities. Remember, being able to cast spells only modifies your offense and defense values.

An army must be made up of identical creatures.

Well, that kills a ton of strategy, doesn’t it? No mixing and matching creature types here. In general, these mechanics are super shallow.

Spellbreaker: You adopt tactics to disrupt spellcasting. Against armies with spellcasting ability, you gain +4 DV.

What tactics? Can they be countered? How do they work?

Construct/Plant/Undead: These armies always make Morale checks, but can never change their strategy from normal.

And if they’re intelligent, like the Ghouls in our example? What then, Paizio?

Energy Drain: An army that can energy drain reduces its enemy’s OV and DV by 1 each time it damages them. This reduction vanishes after 24 hours.

What if they’re all one hitdice creatures and would thus die if they got level drained at all? Should that reduction be permanent?

Fast Healing/Regeneration: Fast healing and regeneration allow an army’s hit points to recover in the same way that they restore hit points for individual creatures. A regenerating army that is reduced to 0 hit points is still considered defeated, assuming the victors can move among the defeated creatures and finish them off.

This is confusingly worded. What about the likely event they can’t finish them off?

Spell Resistance: If an army’s units have spell resistance, they gain a +6 bonus to their DV against armies that have the Spellcasting ability.

Because there aren’t spell that don’t allow spell resistance…

Rock Throwing: An army that can throw rocks gains ranged capability and inflicts +4 damage during the Ranged phase.

Rock > volley archery. I also noticed there aren’t any rules for flying units with ranged attacks, so as written a bunch of Beholders could still lose to a force with no ranged attacks. I could go on, but I think at this point you get the idea.


Assuming the random encounters even get used, by far the most dangerous monster is a CR 16 ancient black dragon. Easily harder than any other encounter in the entire chapter.


War of the River Kings is terrible. It’s perhaps the crowning example of how not to design high level adventures and the assumption that you can design high level encounters just like low level ones. Next time, I’ll cover the last chapter of Kingmaker; Sound of a Thousand Screams. In which Crazy Hawt Fey Queen finally makes her presence known to the players. Hopefully it’ll take me less time to get the next part of this review written up. No promises. ????

[Koumei]

The more I read this, the more hope I have that the upcoming PC game will be decent, because this is a really shitty adventure path that was translated into a decent PC game so there is the possibility that lightning will strike twice.

Also I love how bad they are at creating "people with class levels". Sometimes it's bad in the wrong direction, like the Baron fight where you're just completely outclassed, but then you end up with the kind of crap where every noble in the room is level 11-15 and still just "free experience".

As usual, everything I say below is "what I recall from the PC game" and not a rebuttal or correction to the info you provided about the original AP.

You have multiple NPC party members who want to attend the festival in the PC game, so there's that. Also he is present for that and doesn't attack you yet - he's more interested in making you look foolish and weak, and making himself look great. I can't remember what other devious goals he has but you have all the time in the world to wander back and prepare for war before he even truly goes on the offensive. You also met up with prior attempts at propaganda. I think it's during or maybe after this that somebody steals your throne? But I can't even remember if he was involved with this or it was actually kobolds or something.

Going there lets you follow up on a few other things (someone tries to trick you into attacking a separate military group, there's an evil drug dealer, one party member wants to confront various people she's had dealings with before).

The tournament is mostly covered as a series of "choose an option and make a skill check" story book things that are kind of annoying to savescum but that's what you'll end up doing regardless. There is an athletics/American Ninja/Winter Wipeout/Takeshi's Castle type thing, and a boasting thing, and I can't remember if there's another. But each provides 2-3 different steps, each with a handful of actions. Each has one NPC trying to cheat, and each allows you the opportunity to attempt to cheat as well.

Then the drunken brawl, instead of jousting, which is just "no equipment, no casting, everyone run in and punch each other out". I was an alchemist and still won it, I think everyone else is a low-level "not fighting man". Maybe there's one monk who thus suffers less from being unarmed but suffers innately due to being a monk.

You can also embarrass the king and make yourself look really good, and you can really help out with the confidence and fighting spirit of your NPC bard who actually is a delight. They took a halfling bard and made them a character you like. They also have an actual gnome who is great. I feel like both Bioware and Obsidian could do to sit down and take notes, but they're off making completely different games (if they still exist?) so w/e. Oh and there are some really good magical items you can buy if you have crazy amounts of gold, and you probably do. You might not be able to afford everything you want, but you can certainly get a couple of +6 stat boosters and so on.

I think he only has one artefact, and it's...

a thorn which is the Fey Lady's love (not the object of her love, but the conceptual emotional capacity for love, torn from her "soul" and made manifest). The very thing that would, if she had it, at least in theory allow her to resist her curse and do something other than topple nations. Also because he has it, he's able to exert some degree of control over her. If you want the "secret" good ending of romancing Fey Lady, you need to get the item and give it to her - you can't just bypass it, nor can you keep it, and if you didn't stop an NPC from stealing the artefact eye from the Cyclops King back in Varnhold Vanishing (remember that chapter?), then he already gave the eye to her, she found the location, and took her love back so you've blown it.

Also this means she swapped it for a regular stick that looks like the artefact and he still thinks he's in charge. So when you fight him later on and he tries commanding her, she sets a naga upon him. It's very entertaining and you get XP for killing both king and naga. So there are some benefits to failing the previous thing and letting her have her magic stick.

I can't even remember what happens between the tournament and the invasion, but you have a good deal of time for adventuring. I don't even recall much in the way of his side of the invasion, just the bit where you wander over, do some sidequests while you're there (there's a door in a field which leads to a dimensional cellar where a guy is writing a book on fiend binding, and you get to find a whole bunch of fiends if you ever wanted enough Flaming Longswords to start up a specialty restaurant), then go kick him in the taint. Yes, it's a dungeoncrawl through a castle with a whole heap of basic enemy squadrons and stuff. I can't remember if there was anything fancy or interesting. The boss fight itself is not difficult, whether you face him (and his forces) alone or have a triple threat match with a naga.

I think after you capture this kingdom, you can start work on becoming actual royalty. Do this ASAP because it's great to be king/queen, but also because the crown is a fantastic magic item you want to have. Also once you defeat him the whole region is now open for you to wander around, doing adventurer things. It opens up a few other NPC side quests too.

[Grek]

King Bard also has not one, but two artifacts. Both of which are technological, not magical. This seems really out of place. Like… why?

It's a Golarion setting thing. The part of the map in which Kingmaker is set is right next to Numeria, which is in turn where the Iron Gods Adventure Path (AKA: Conans vs. Robo-Slaves of the Tech Wizards) happens. So obviously they've got to sprinkle some tech stuff around nearby. Obviously.

The authors seriously seem to think the party will actually siege the city he’s holed up in instead, flying over it or teleporting directly into his bedroom.

In my home game, we did end up besieging the city, if by besieging the city you mean having a 12-Headed Fast Hydra Zombie body-slam the wall down, followed shortly after by the stained glass window directly behind Irovetti's throne. Not because we actually knew that it was his throne, but because it was obviously the most kickass piece of architecture to burst through before demanding that Irovetti come fight us. IIRC our elected 'king' slide down the thing's tail and landed directly in the (now vacant) throne to make his announcement. I suspect that the GM encouraged us in this route specifically because of the aforementioned doors issue; he also had the Remorhaz burst through the ground right when we started looking at the doors, handily destroying them all before we could get the chance to start opening them. What a good GM.

[Thaluikhain]

chopping wood (seriously?)

Eh, we have that where I live, only they have to cut holes in a tree trunk and put wedges in as steps and chop another thing on top.

let’s move on to the Mass Combat Rules. About 5 pages are dedicated to this and the mechanics are kind of obtuse.

Mass combat rules for RPGs are supposed to be rubbish, it's a requirement.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Chapter 6: Sound of a Thousand Screams

(Did Paizo write the chapter name based on peoples’ reaction to reading this shit?)


This is it. The final chapter of Kingmaker. God this review took way longer than it should have…

I’m not going to make a pretense of pretending this chapter saves the entire adventure path. It doesn’t. It’s more railroading bullshit, just like the previous chapters. I will say that Sound of a Thousand Screams is much better than part 4 and 5, but those bits were so unspeakably awful, that that’s damning with faint praise, indeed. The party is supposed to be level 15 at this point and will end the module at level 17. Meaning, they shouldn’t have 9th level spells for Sound of a Thousand Screams. The reason for this will soon become apparent.

We finally get Crazy Hawt Fey Queen’s backstory. She fell in love with a Fey guy and then tried to build her own empire. The other Fey got pissy and took away her ability to love, turning it into a sword. She can’t find this sword because… reasons. Oh yeah, and there’s a prophecy that adventurers will break into her house and stab her to death with her sword. Her evil plan is to suck the Stolen Lands into the fey dimension (the First World) and, “bottle it.” No, seriously.

Nyrissa began the long task of shaping Thousandbreaths and wearing down the boundaries between it and the Material Plane, so that someday the boundary between realities would crack and the region known as the Stolen Lands would bloom with life as it and Thousandbreaths merged. The War of the River Kings was but one of the steps toward this goal—by weakening the kingdoms that occupy the land she wishes to claim, she weakens the opposition to her goal. Now that both kingdoms are reeling in the aftermath of their war, Nyrissa prepares to draw the Stolen Lands into her realm and bottle it, an act that will leave a wasteland on the Material Plane and give her the perfect gift or bribe to repair the damage her reputation suffered with the Eldest.

Despite all the wordy setup, the premise is super simple. The party track down Crazy Hawt Fey Queen and kill her in her castle. But this is totally different from the last two chapters that involved tracking down the villain and killing them in their castles! This time, the castle is in another dimension!

The whole bottling the Stolen Lands thing starts out with bits of the First World bleeding over into the material plane in localized areas called blooms. The party is supposed to find the boss of each bloom and kill them, weakening the whole process of dragging their kingdom into the First World.

No monstrous template, simple or complex, is provided to allow GMs to create new First World monsters, because no two such monsters should be exactly the same. It’s better to simply advance these monsters by 10–20 HD and give them a new ability of your choosing if you’re looking to build new First World opponents; the rules for advancing monsters and creating new monsters in the Appendices of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary provide a wealth of advice on the subject.

What do you think this is, an adventure module? Figure it out on your own, GM! Lazy fucking hacks…


Anyway, once at least three of the blooms have been destroyed, the party will be able to enter the First World and make their way to Crazy Hawt Fey Queen’s castle. If you’re wondering why they can’t just use Plane Shift, it’s because the authors declared that won’t work. And just in case you manage to get the Gate spell, that also won’t let you skip the trek to Casa Da Hawt Fey.

The First World is a difficult place to reach, and mortal magic can be untrustworthy in providing a means of travel there. Plane shift does not normally allow travel to the First World, although it functions fine when used to travel to other planes from the First World. Gate is the only mortal magic capable of providing a guaranteed link to the First World, and even then the points at which a gate opens into the First World are subject to the whims of the rulers of whatever lands the gate leads to—a gate opened to Thousandbreaths always opens to the Byway (area A).

If the party got Wish spells via Planar Binding, I guess they can skip all this bullshit and jump straight to the end. I guess Paizo didn’t think of that, or they’d have suggested a way to screw you over for trying.

Destroying more of the blooms gets the party more XP and they have to deal with fewer encounters when they get to the First World. Killing the guardians of the blooms also powers up the sword Crazy Hawt Fey Queen was looking for.

Evindra, the sexy naked Fey from the last chapter, will give the party an exposition dump about Crazy Hawt Fey Queen and the sword. But once the blooms start showing up, the laidback pacing of Kingmaker suddenly goes away.

If there are still parts of the Stolen Lands the PCs have yet to (and wish to) explore, you should consider delaying this adventure until that itch for exploration is at least scratched, because once Nyrissa’s blooms begin to manifest, they come fast and furious. This is by design—the PCs should not have a lot of time to rebuild resources and recover between blooms, since the assault on their kingdom is meant to be a furious one. The events in this chapter take place over the course of a single month, with only a few days passing between each new manifestation of a bloom. This means that no kingdom management or development can occur once the blooms begin, since a kingdom phase lasts a month.

Unless the GM doesn’t feel like it.

Of course, assuming the PCs defeat all of the blooms and survive this month of destruction alive and with their kingdom intact, the adventure and campaign can immediately return to a more laconic pace if you desire. After the month of destruction, if the PCs have not yet fully explored Thousandbreaths or defeated Nyrissa, they’ll be rewarded for enduring that month by being able to tackle Parts Two and Three of this adventure at a pace of their own choosing—although if they take too long, you should feel free to have Nyrissa start a second or even a third round of blooms.

Am I the only one who despises these, “If the DM thinks you took too long!”, time limits? Because goddamn do I fucking hate them.


But now we move on the bloom encounters themselves. The first of which is a Swarm of Mandragoras that can’t fly and have only a single ranged attack (30’) that can only be used once a day. Another consists of a group of a level 12 Satyr Rangers and Advanced Ettins. The Rangers actually carry composite longbows with a decent full attack routine, so this encounter might be semi-interesting. Encounter number 3 is just weird, consisting of a bizarre dream scenario.

Whenever you describe a PC’s nightmare but before he wakes to endure the resulting spell effect, describe the nature of his nightmare and the fact that a giant black bird is looming over the horizon, watching. Give the PC a chance to react to his nightmare. If he does anything other than ignore the nightmare and confront the black bird in any way, describe the nightmare doing something horrific to his dreaming self, then have him awaken and endure the effects of the living nightmare as appropriate.

If, on the other hand, the character confronts the Nightmare Rook, he may make one of the following rolls— an attack roll (using his best weapon attack), a caster level check, or an Intimidate check. The DC for all three of these checks is 30. If the check fails, the PC doesn’t impress the Nightmare Rook—it laughs a raucous cawing laugh, and the PC wakes and must endure the effects of his living nightmare. With a successful check, the PC startles the Nightmare Rook and drives it off, and he wakens with a scream but does not suffer a living nightmare.

What kind of magical tea party bullshit is this?

A living nightmare manifests as a spontaneously cast spell that functions at CL 20th, focused on the sleeping victim of the effect. On this first night, only one victim succumbs to the effect, but as this bloom spreads, one additional victim succumbs each night—this bloom does not spread to additional hexes as much as it spreads to new victims in the same city. Any spell can manifest as a living nightmare, but you should make an attempt to have spells with particularly gruesome effects appear. One night, a person might be targeted by a creeping doom spell. Another, someone might wake from a dream about being strangled by an octopus to find himself caught in the area of a black tentacles spell. Summon monster and summon nature’s ally spells are an excellent way to have the monstrous antagonist of a nightmare manifest in reality to attack the dreamer and perhaps seek out the dreamer’s family, friends, and neighbors. You can use the table on page 16 to randomly generate a spell effect for each living nightmare if you wish. Living nightmares are mind-affecting fear effects.

Seriously... WTF? It’s so completely different than anything else in the module. I might like it, if not for the idiotic magical tea party crap.

The next encounter is far less inventive, consisting merely of 6 advanced Frost Giants that have Fast Healing 10. The next encounter is with a trio of Athachs and some unruly plants.

As the Knurly Witch’s gardeners, these athachs carry sickles and large bags of strangely pulsating seeds. They move through the brambles slowly, pruning back dead brambles and harvesting the eerie red seeds that periodically grow on the vines, only to replant the seeds in the ground. It is this act of pruning and seeding that keeps this bloom growing, and if all three athachs are slain, the bloom reacts by causing the brambles and vines to shriek and whip about in a frenzy. All creatures in the brambles at this time take 8d6 points of slashing damage from the thorns (DC 15 Reflex halves the damage). One round later, three foul-smelling pods of plant matter erupt from the ground at the locations where the athachs were slain—these pods take 1 minute to grow to full size, after which point three healthy new athachs emerge and return to work. In order to truly defeat the bloom, the three pods (hardness 5; hp 50; Break DC 25) must be destroyed.

All I see is a bunch of dumb melee brutes that can’t fly. I doubt this will challenge the party in the least. Encounter #5 is with a trio of advanced Purple Worms. Same problem as the last one. The 6th encounter is with a troll with 11 levels in Fighter (+7 WILL save) and 6 advanced Dire Tigers. I’d be complaining about how none of them have ranged attacks, but…

The Misbegotten Troll is seeking a new and beautiful bride, and after countless years preying upon fey, he’s looking for some variety—a human or halforc bride in particular.

the Misbegotten Troll, who hitched a ride into this world in hopes of finding himself a new bride—the Misbegotten Troll is somewhat rough on his paramours.

I can’t even make a joke about how fitting his name is, I’m too busy be squicked out by Paizo’s obsession with rape!

(Skipping ahead to when the party finds his lair.)

This small clearing is lit by ghastly yellow-green light that flickers like torchlight. The sources of the light are dozens of female human heads that hang by their hair from spikes on the outer edge of a towering beehive-shaped structure in the center of the clearing—these heads function as horrific lanterns, with the light emerging from empty eyesockets and gaping mouths. Worse, the eyes and lips of several of these grisly lanterns seem to be twitching and writhing as if in pain.

The dozens of severed heads that decorate his strange home are the remains of his previous “wives,” unfortunate victims harvested from across Golarion over the past several hundred years.

This isn’t going to make the players hate the troll for being evil, it’s going to prompt them to wonder aloud what the ever-loving FUCK is wrong with the module writer!

And then there’s the magic item the troll carries.

Necklace of Lovelies
Aura abjuration (evil); CL 17th
Slot neck; Price 36,000gp; Weight 4 lbs.
This repugnant and cruel magic item consists of a chain of cold iron on which dangle six tiny, cold iron cages, each of which contains a living but miniaturized pixie.

While the pixies are free to shriek and yell and cry, the item prevents them from taking any action that would directly free them from their cage and suppresses all of their supernatural and spell-like abilities.

As a swift action, the wearer of a necklace of lovelies can redirect hit point damage inflicted on him from any single attack or effect that damages him onto one of the pixies on the necklace—doing so automatically kills the poor pixie in a tiny explosion of blood. Once all of the necklace’s pixies are dead or released, the necklace becomes nonmagical.

This is just grimderp. I’m not repulsed, I’m rolling my eyes at this point. Also, you can’t take a swift action on someone else’s turn, so this item is useless.


The next encounter is a mass combat sequence.

This is a mass combat encounter that utilizes the rules for such presented in Pathfinder Adventure Path #35. If you don’t have access to that book, you can simply ignore this event, or run it strictly as a narrative encounter in which Nyrissa’s gibbering army surges against the city’s walls but is defeated through a heroic defense of the city.

The final encounter only gets run if the party delays their trip to Crazy Hawt Fey Queen’s castle for too long. The Lesser Jabbwerwock, a CR 20 dragon with DR 15/Vorpal, fast healing 10, and what amounts to a breath weapon (60’ line every 1d4 rounds, deals 20d6 sonic damage). It also has eye rays that it can fire two of each round that each deal 15d6+6d6 damage, but their range isn’t clear. The Lesser Jabberwock has an impressive full attack routine, and it creates strong wind in a 30’ radius whenever it makes a full attack. Its flight speed for a dragon is really slow (60’), so I could easily see the party just engaging it entirely with ranged attacks.


Each bloom the party destroys yields a, “trophy”, and they need three of them to enter the First World via a portal in the Castle of Knives mentioned in the last chapter. Weirdly, the module itself allows an alternate method.

A DC 35 Use Magic Device also allows a character to trick the portal into allowing any creature to pass through it for a minute per successful check.

Assuming anyone in the party took UMD, that check should easily be doable. But of course, we can’t have the party going too far off the rails!

Any character who tries to fly above the wood’s tree line discovers an unsettling truth about the reality of this realm—there seems to be no world above the canopy. No matter how high she flies, the tops of the trees extend to what seems to be 200 feet above her. Only the Nightmare Rook (see area D) can actually travel above the treetops of Thousandbreaths.

It’s a cool visual, I guess.

Regardless of the speed or method used to navigate a path or river, it always takes 1d4 hours to reach the next glade. Check for wandering monsters once each time the PCs use a path or river to travel to another glade. Every time the PCs move onto a pathway, there’s a 50% chance the pathway is perilous in some way—roll on the Pathway Perils table to determine in what way.

I see nothing to indicate the party can’t just use Teleport to skip all this bullshit. Even if that didn’t work, Wish will.

A. Entering Thousandbreaths
This area is where the gate in Thousand Voices at the Castle of Knives leads to—an archway called the Byway, formed by a pair of beautiful women carved from iron. The statues make an arch with their raised hands, while in their other hands they hold high a sword that bears a striking resemblance to Briar. Indeed, the first time Briar is brought through this gate, it gains a Sharpness Point—as this occurs, both it and the two blades held by the statues momentarily glow with green light. Nyrissa notices this effect and thus knows when Briar enters Thousandbreaths, but she does not react. If the sword is in the hands of her agents, they’ll bring it to her soon enough, and if it is in the hands of her enemies, she does not want to confront them and instead hopes that the various perils of Thousandbreaths finish them of before they reach her.

In other words, Crazy Hawt Fey Queen isn’t the least bit proactive and is just going to lounge on her throne until the PCs show up. Why even have know when they enter her realm if she doesn’t do anything about it?

Any of the bloom encounters the party skipped will show up in the First World, which gives them incentive to destroy every bloom. Let’s talk about the First World encounters. We have a group of 4 Lightning Treants that actually have ranged attacks, though any type of Energy Resistance shuts them down hard. There’s a Frost Giant with 8 levels in Barbarian and no ranged attacks. The Nightmare Rook is just an advanced Roc with a fear aura. A giant Mandragora that only has a 30’ radius scream (1/day) for a ranged attack. A pair of Winged Owlbears, another trio of advanced Purple Worms, and 6 advanced Dire Tigers.

By far the most interesting encounters are an Annis Hag with 13 levels in Cleric and a Black Dragon Wyrm. The spells the Hag picked largely suck, but at least the dragon will prove to be a decent fight.

It’s worth noting that every time each of these encounters are cleared, there’s a chance it disrupts the entirety of Crazy Hawt Fey Queen’s realm. Defeating all of them will guarantee this happens.

When Thousandbreaths is uprooted, it manifests entirely within the forest of Thousand Voices in the Stolen Lands, its glades replacing 10 different areas in the forest, with the House at the Edge of Time merging with the Castle of Knives. When the uprooting occurs, the sound of a thousand screams tears through the air, a horrific noise as the realm expels its thousand breaths at once in a traumatic death. The denizens of the glades are traumatized by this event, and all surviving guardians (with the exception of those who were inside of the House at the Edge of Time when the transfer occurred and the two non-natives—the Knurly Witch and Ilthuliak) become staggered as long as they remain on the Material Plane. Creatures permanently staggered in this manner are reduced in CR by 2.

This also debuffs the final boss, more on that later. Now, for the final act of Kingmaker, Crazy Hawt Fey Queen’s castle.

While in Thousandbreaths, the lake surrounding the House is effectively bottomless—just as one can fly upward and never rise above the tree level, one can swim down into the lake without ever reaching the bottom— but fortunately the surface is never more than a few hundred feet away should a swimmer elect to return.

I doubt the party would think to enter via the lake, anyway, but fuck you for trying to be creative. The entrance is guarded by a Linnorm that has a lot of immunities and a breath weapon, so at least it’s not a total pushover.

House Features
The House exists in the past and the future, the maybe and the never. One room may be clean and bright, with liveried servants and gaiety, while others are collapsing and decayed. Some have been damaged by the arrival of the PCs who slew the Queen yesterday and will do so tomorrow in this land of the impossible. Yet as strange as these warpings in time may be, stranger still is the fact that they remain constant, as if a storm of fractured time tore through the structure, only to be frozen forever in the middle of a chaos of a hundred different eras. This is how the House was when Nyrissa created it so long ago, and how it will remain—until the uprooting of Thousandbreaths.

Cute. In terms of crunch, the house resets after 24 hours, undoing any changes the PCs made to it. All this does is encourage them to skip all the encounters and skip straight to the boss. Let’s go over the encounters… We have 12 level 10 Ghost Rogues, which will make any Fighters in the party cry little Fighter tears, the Lesser Jaberwock if the party didn’t kill it earlier…

And a weird dragon plant, that flies and has a breath weapon. There have been a lot of dragons in this chapter… We also get 4 CR 14 weird Fey that fly and have some SLAs. There’s an animated object. The hag from earlier flees here if the PCs failed to kill her.

But by far the most threatening encounter in this castle is a Worm that Walks with 17 levels in Wizard. He even prepared some actually good spells, like Time Stop, Polymorph Any Object, and Reverse Gravity.

Before Combat The Wriggling Man casts mind blank every day, and activates his ring of invisibility as soon as the PCs enter the House at the Edge of Time. He casts overland flight and resist energy (cold) once updates from Nyrissa convince him the PCs will soon be entering this room.

I think this officially makes him the smartest and most optimized NPC in the entire adventure path.

During Combat
As soon as the PCs enter the room, the Wriggling Man, who stands near the throne but is invisible, casts time stop. He has at least 2 rounds to cast spells while time is stopped—he first casts quickened shield and then summon monster IX to summon an astral deva. The next round, he casts telepathic bond on the deva so he can communicate with it silently and quickened fire shield (chill shield) on himself. If he has enough time during time stop, he’ll also cast quickened resist energy (acid) and protection from energy (sonic) on the third round, mage’s sword on the fourth round, and reverse gravity on an area where he can affect the most walking PCs. When his time stop ends, he telepathically commands the summoned astral deva to imperiously demand that the PCs leave this place, claiming that they tread upon the works of one under the protection of Heaven itself. This is, of course, a lie—the Wriggling Man doesn’t expect the PCs to fall for it, but the tactic does amuse him and it could work, especially if the PCs don’t ask to make Sense Motive checks to see through the angel’s forced lie.

Casting spells with verbal components makes noise, the party is going to realize he’s there. Goddamn it Paizo…

We still have more encounters to go through. Four Advanced Elder Air Elementals, a pair of Advanced Wyverns, and 8 templated Nymphs. They have 7th level Druid casting, a gaze attack that deals CHA, STR and CON drain (DC 20 FORT negates), and a touch attack that can render the victim helpless if they fail a DC 20 FORT save (they also take some DEX damage).

Nyrissa once counted these nymphs her sisters and friends. Their beauty rivaled her own, but when Nyrissa suffered at the hands of the Eldest, these six did as well, and Nyrissa had the Nightmare Rook pluck out their eyes. These six defaced nymphs can still see and utilize their gaze attacks, but their beauty has been forever marred. They know that Nyrissa is responsible for their unending pain, but cannot bring themselves to hate her for it—instead spending their days in constant pain and servitude here. When they notice intruders, they silently move to attack, tears of blood running freely down their cheeks.

Seriously Paizo? This is just grimderp bullshit. Anyway, if they all use their stat draining gazes, they could be problematic to fight, but they don’t have any immunities and their spell selection is pretty bad.

But we have more encounters! A trio of advanced Devourers, a Medusa with 12 levels in Sorcerer (and terrible spell selection), and a trio of plants that can’t fly.


Now for Crazy Hawt Fey Queen herself. She’s hiding in a pocket dimension courtesy of an artifact, because of course she has an artifact. Paizo doesn’t know enough about their own fucking game to design villains without making up artifacts that let them do whatever they want.

For all of the impressive features possessed by the House at the Edge of Time, none can match Nyrissa’s greatest creation—an extradimensional tower known as the Fable. This region exists as part of the House, but not wholly in the same place or time. The Fable consists of four similarly sized but overlapping circular rooms, each 20 feet in diameter and 20 feet high, but each quite different in contents.

In order to open a portal into the Fable, a character must physically contact the portal trigger and focus his mind on opening the portal by concentrating on a specific image. All four portal triggers radiate strong conjuration magic—a legend lore or vision spell can identify their use and the thought image that activates them, as can a DC 35 Spellcraft check made with the aid of detect magic. Alternatively, a DC 30 Use Magic Device check can blindly activate a portal.

Again, I would not blame the party for flipping the module off and just using Wish.

M7c. This chamber is a plain circular room with stone walls, floor, and ceiling, lit by several dancing lights floating near the ceiling. A statue of Nyrissa stands in the center of the room, one arm held out as if in greeting. It is in this room that the Fable’s power is concentrated, and where Nyrissa spends much of her time—in this room, she can observe every single room in her House simultaneously as if via clairvoyance/clairaudience. She can also use the Fable to immediately destroy any of her allies (but not intruders) in the house by simply snuffing out their lives and causing their bodies to burst. Nyrissa only uses this ability to destroy an ally who has become controlled by or seems to be allying with the PCs—an event likely to occur only with the unfortunate mephit in area K20, but if the PCs manage to dominate or charm an important ally, Nyrissa opts for its destruction as well. Likewise, if the PCs are about to learn something important, the nymph may well send her closest allies to intercept the PCs.

And this is just Gygaxian fuckery.


Now for the final boss encounter. Crazy Hawt Fey Queen is a level 6 Sorcerer Nymph with 10 levels in Mystic Theurge. The first time I realized this, I burst out laughing. Mystic Theurge? Seriously?

Her spell selection largely sucks, too. Her best spells are Maze and Antilife Shell. All the better to fuck with the Fighter, I guess. Assuming they didn’t suffer a mental breakdown 4 levels ago… Crazy Hawt Fey Lady at least has good AC (51), as well as saves in the 30s and 40s.

Protection from Decapitation Nyrissa has used a wish from a ring to gain a special defense against beheading—the first time she is beheaded by any effect (including a vorpal weapon), the wound immediately heals after it is dealt, effectively inflicts no damage, and does not decapitate her.

Fuck you Paizo. I bet the module writers are the sort of assholes who’d try to fuck over any player who wished for anything similar…

I think Paizo realized that their final boss might be too much for the sort of groups they designed this module for, so they offered the players some plot hax bullshit. The artifact sword grants SR 30 for its wielder in this fight and hitting Crazy Hawt Fey Lady with it prompts a DC 40 FORT save or she’s staggered. She passes this save on an 8 or higher.

But if the party uprooted her realm by defeating all the guardians on the way to her castle, she gets fucked up.

Nyrissa becomes horrifically distracted by the pain and despair being forced wholly into the Material Plane inflicts on her. On the first round of combat on the Material Plane, Nyrissa acts as if confused. Every 1d4 rounds, she automatically becomes confused again. In addition, she is constantly shaken and fatigued while on the Material Plane, and must make a DC 35 Concentration check in order to cast any of her spells.

Her Concentration mods are +31 for her Druid casting and +30 for her Sorcerer casting.

Winning this fight ends the adventure, but Paizo have some post game material lined up if the GM and players alike aren’t ready to end this long, long campaign by now.

Fury of the First World: With the defeat of Nyrissa and her attempt to draw the Stolen Lands into the First World, the frontier realm returns to a state of near tranquility. But such is not the fate of the First World. Soon after the PCs return to their capital, one of the rulers of the First World, Magdh the Eldest, appears before them, demanding recompense for the destiny and future deeds of Nyrissa that their intervention has altered. Only by seeking the forgiveness of the First World’s rulers can the PCs save their nation from the vengeance of that insane other dimension. See pages 57–59 for more details.

Fuck it, let’s just wrap this up and be done with this damn adventure path.


Final Thoughts

Kingmaker is a classic example of a great idea with a miserable execution. It does such a bad job at its premise, the only thing worth stealing from it is the concept itself. The rest can safely be jettisoned. The module is too damn hard in the early chapters, with random encounters easily leading to TPKs, and it clearly wasn’t designed for even moderately optimized characters in the latter chapters. Or high-level characters in general. It’s just a mess of bad design and perhaps the worst example I’ve ever seen of designing what are fundamentally low level adventure scenarios for high level characters.
From your comments on this thread, it sounds like the video game is much better, fixing some of the more questionable design choices Kingmaker made. But the Kingmaker Adventure Path is a colossal disappointment. And the worst part? I heard some people saying this is the best module that Paizo ever made! LOL what?!


And with that, I’m finally done with this review. I apologize, that took far, far longer than I ever imagined it would. I think it’s going to be a good long while before I do another OSSR, I need a break after this one…

[Koumei]

That's a terrible end to a terrible path. Suffice to say, the PC game handles this very differently in a lot of ways - the blooms are actually separate things that happen earlier throughout the game, she hops into your dream at one point earlier (no waking-up-to-spell-effects) and you can later on do the same to her, I don't think the Rook is even there, the tormented nymphs are probably just the hollow ladies that manipulated not-Armag earlier on... and her backstory (and optional final chapter) are different:

-She tried to steal divinity and become an Eldest in the First World
-The Lantern King (a giant fiery pumpkin head, and an Eldest) thwarted her efforts, and issued the following: "how can you steal a kingdom without practice? Go to the mortal world, and for every kingdom you topple, one speck of dust will fall into this cup. When it is full, present it to an Eldest to drink, and you will be forgiven."
-He also stole her love and turned it into the artifact thing and hid it in the mortal world to help encourage her to play ball.
-After you defeat her, she surrenders and her kingdom topples, and the final piece of dust enters the cup. Your options here are to let it be (in which case the Eldest plays his final joke, giving her what she wanted and turning her into an Eldest - cursed to forever drink the dust from her own chalice), kill her (in which case you trigger the final chapter because you ruined his entertainment - he throws a hissy fit like any god), or get pissed off at him and declare war (final chapter is triggered). Nyrissa will work with you in this case, if you've been nice to her.
-You get hit with a curse of arbitrary fuckitude, a straight-up percentage reduction on your damage, hit points and basically everything else, a numeric penalty on d20 rolls, 100% spell failure on spell levels 1+, a chance to convert any of your successful attacks into a failure and a chance to convert any enemy attack against you into a confirmed critical hit.
-Previous foes are reformed in a ghostly manner and you have to fight them again. With each victory, the curse is partially lifted. You can end up being "just about at full power" (and reaching level 20 thus being stronger) if you do all of these. Also if you rush through, things like "I previously cast Shapechange, go ahead and check the duration" can basically see you through the whole thing there - it doesn't dispel active spells cast before this.
-You have a very small time limit to do all of this, basically you only get one or two rests in between all your combat and travel.
-Then go fight pumpkin head. Nyrissa (if alive) will join the fight and presumably can add something beneficial. I don't know, I can't remember what her actual stats are like. I just threw a whole pile of exploding flasks at the pumpking and that worked pretty well.
-You can't kill him, but you can make him concede. At which point you can turn against Nyrissa (if alive) and side with him, getting some measure of divinity in exchange, and presumably he fucks you over if you do this, or you can side with her for "probably-eternal" war against him but a measure of power and immortality, or you can tell them both to fuck off to the First World and sort it out themselves and leave you alone.

Oh and also there's a whole lot less rape and grim-derp.

The Castle of Knives also has special encounters with each of your NPC companions. One of them will die no matter what, and that's a shame, because she adds a lot. There is one case of "One of these two will die, slain by the other, and that's that" unless you did a lot of work earlier (and sacrificed one of these two for a fair stretch of the actual game, dead up until you meet again here). All of the others are presented with something designed to kill them, but if you completed their personal NPC quest stuff, they pull through and survive. I understand the games trying to find ways to thin your numbers before the final conflict, it makes some sense and also means not having to say "Oh but for the final boss that threatens the whole world, you can only take four people with you".

Had I read through the AP (or played it) first, I certainly would not have bought the PC game.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Thanks for soldiering through it. Makes me wonder how exactly this would look if it were a good adventure path. Or does the fuckery of social interactions combine with the fuckery of high level play to make such a thing impossible?

[Anon_issue]

Now for Crazy Hawt Fey Queen herself. She’s hiding in a pocket dimension courtesy of an artifact, because of course she has an artifact. Paizo doesn’t know enough about their own fucking game to design villains without making up artifacts that let them do whatever they want.

To be fair, magic in DnD has always been like this. Except for a few grandfathered spell lists and mechanics DnD magic has never been internally consistent in terms of how magic works, how difficult it is to do various things, etc.

DnD magic isn't even thematically consistent. Some caster classes are Lovecraftian flavored, some have a storybook/fairy tale feel, and some are just cargo culting all the way down.

[JigokuBosatsu]

If anything the goofy NPC artifact stuff is the rule instead of the exception.

I'd love to see a setting where more rational mages try to figure out exactly why that is.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Now for Crazy Hawt Fey Queen herself. She’s hiding in a pocket dimension courtesy of an artifact, because of course she has an artifact. Paizo doesn’t know enough about their own fucking game to design villains without making up artifacts that let them do whatever they want.

To be fair, magic in DnD has always been like this. Except for a few grandfathered spell lists and mechanics DnD magic has never been internally consistent in terms of how magic works, how difficult it is to do various things, etc.

DnD magic isn't even thematically consistent. Some caster classes are Lovecraftian flavored, some have a storybook/fairy tale feel, and some are just cargo culting all the way down.

My objection is less of a lack of consistency and more the tendency for there to be a stubborn refusal to find solutions within the game engine and instead make up bullshit artifacts.

Pathfinder has spells that create Demiplanes and spells that allow people to magically spy on others. Why not have the BBEG use those instead of giving her an artifact?

[saithorthepyro]

Because Paizo doesn't like acknowledging the existence of higher level spells anyway?

[Harshax]

I don’t know ... weird artifacts that do things a player could construct by using the spells and rules as written is just the way D&D plays. I think moments like this are when old-style adventure design highlights the fact that players and the MC are playing two different games. PCs are setting goals and plotting a path to success. MCs are just interjecting rules to keep their gamers interested while framing a narrative.

[Anon_issue]

My objection is less of a lack of consistency and more the tendency for there to be a stubborn refusal to find solutions within the game engine and instead make up bullshit artifacts.

Pathfinder has spells that create Demiplanes and spells that allow people to magically spy on others. Why not have the BBEG use those instead of giving her an artifact?

My point, though is that the entire DnD magic system is a bunch of bullshit artifacts.

Like take the 3.5 version of scry. That's a fourth level spell. But why? what about that spell makes it fourth level for wizards/sorcerers? Or fifth level for clerics?

If you succeed in casting scry (the target makes a will save) you can see the target for 1 minute per caster level, but why? why not ten minutes or five minutes per caster level? Why not have a skill roll for that or another save? If the target moves, the sensor follows the target at a max speed of 150ft per second. Why isn't it instantaneous? Where did the number 150 come from?

Every magic system has arbitrary effects (you have to make up the number somehow), but DnD has no underlying system or philosophy for determining what happens or what the limitations are. Every spell is its own weird stand-alone thing that may or may not have anything to do with anything else. For that reason I don't really mind one-off stuff that only appears in like one module, because it's not really a deviation from the status quo. The only benefit Scry has over some random necklace is that Scry gets referenced more often.

[Foxwarrior]

My point, though is that the entire DnD magic system is a bunch of bullshit artifacts.

There's a big difference between bullshit artifacts you've read and ones you haven't. All magic systems are a bunch of bullshit artifacts, the ones that seem like they are less like that just put more of the made up nonsense into a place the player is supposed to be able to memorize. Shadowrun's list of things magic can and can't do is also a bunch of bullshit artifacts, it's just a promise that "even if you haven't read a specific spell, you can rule out some possible functionality you might think it has"

But still, if in D&D you stick to using spells that are in the PHB, then players who have read all the spells in the PHB can make more informed decisions about what the BBEG can do than when playing Shadowrun against a BBEG that uses some secret made-up magic that follows the Shadowrun magic rules.

Sorry for bringing Shadowrun into this, it just happens to be a handy example.

That said, nowadays I play Tome, where each player brings in one or more classes nobody's read before, so insisting that the module mustn't include new abilities for the BBEG seems a bit weird.

[GâtFromKI]

Am I the only one who thinks it unlikely that most PCs will be able to make a DC 25 Intimidate, Bluff and Diplomacy check?

Any level 10 Pathfinder vanilla Bard will succeed. At that level, they have 3 Versatile Performances, that's 6 skills they roll with Perform. And since there aren't that many skills that can be versatilized, they should have Intimidate, Bluff and Diplomacy (... and probably Sense motive, Acrobatics and Flight). On top of that, they have some Performances to roll high on the last roll...

Add in Glibbness, a Circlet of persuasion, Heroism...

one NPC has a Bard friend influencing the crowd to give him an unfair advantage.

Wait; what ?

Bards auto-win this contest. Why the hell would they influence the crowd to help a non-bard friend ? This bard should be playing the game and win fair and square.

Isn't the BBEG of this part a bard named King Bard ???? Why isn't he just competing and winning this contest ?????? Why does he need some cheap trick to make the PCs lose ? THIS IS FUCKING STUPID !!!!!!!! HELP ME UNDERSTAND THIS STUPIDITY !!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's a terrible end to a terrible path. Suffice to say, the PC game handles this very differently in a lot of ways

Video games don't have to handle Flight, Scry'n'Fry, Plane Shift, Gate (except maybe as a summon spell), Wish...

I mean, yes, the story seems better. In the other hand, it's easy to make a sensible gameplay with a railroad when you don't have to handle any high level stuff; when "high level" means "HP*10, DPS*10... and a color swap!"


Note: I didn't play the game, but a friend of mine does... He said to me his character can fly. In the game, it means "+3 AC against melee attack from non-flying opponents". I think it's even more retarded than throwing non-flying melee bruisers against level 10 PCs...

[themadimp]

Isn't the BBEG of this part a bard named King Bard ???? Why isn't he just competing and winning this contest ?????? Why does he need some cheap trick to make the PCs lose ? THIS IS FUCKING STUPID !!!!!!!! HELP ME UNDERSTAND THIS STUPIDITY !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Case in point, the King of Pitax is named Castruccio Irovetti; he just has a bunch of levels in Bard.

The PC version of this did things a lot better, and I don't recall any specific instance of rape there. But it still has some of the same issues - the early game is balls-hard unless you have a very solid makeup or some mods, while once you get past the first Big Event, it gets easier.

I will say that the PC game once again does something much, much better - it spreads out some of the disasters and really hammers home the First World stuff. Seeds in people's stomachs that open portals to the First World that spawn Fey monsters out; yearly-ish events that culminate in big showdowns, etc. Overall it portrays the Fey much, much better than this module ever does, and it's nowhere near as dickish.

[magnuskn]

From your comments on this thread, it sounds like the video game is much better, fixing some of the more questionable design choices Kingmaker made. But the Kingmaker Adventure Path is a colossal disappointment. And the worst part? I heard some people saying this is the best module that Paizo ever made! LOL what?!

Mostly from the people who really, really, really like sandbox gameplay, because the AP delivers that in spades. But the story was consistently so poor and "fill in the blanks yourself, GM" that during module two it was the only adventure path I ever cancelled, because of the joyless experience it was for me. And I suffered through the entirety of Wrath of the Righteous, which has the most overtly broken system (Mythic) which Paizo ever published. I can only hope the guys at Owlcat Games will get the balance down better than the writers at Paizo, however the quality Pathfinder: Kingmaker had in its CRPG adaptation makes me pretty confident that they will.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

They'd better let me use Raise Dead in-universe more. I've been playing the game over the past few weeks and I can't help but feel like character deaths are unnecessary when I can go buy a scroll for a pittance and fix the problem.
Except for Maegar Varn. That dude's soul is completely fucked forever.

[magnuskn]

Eh, I bought 200 scrolls of Mass Heal and about 50 scrolls of Resurrection when I got to the last chapter, so you'll have enough money for that, I assure you.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I mean in the story, dude. I showed up to my capital after it got invaded by monsters, and one of my advisors was dying from the assault. I called him a dumb pussy, and then he died. This man SELLS Raise Dead scrolls! Like, dude, do you just have one on you right now? I can use it. Right here. We even have another cleric in town who can read it.
Am I just such a huge asshole that people would rather die than give me advice?

[magnuskn]

I mean in the story, dude. I showed up to my capital after it got invaded by monsters, and one of my advisors was dying from the assault. I called him a dumb pussy, and then he died. This man SELLS Raise Dead scrolls! Like, dude, do you just have one on you right now? I can use it. Right here. We even have another cleric in town who can read it.
Am I just such a huge asshole that people would rather die than give me advice?

Yeah, well, that's a long tradition (or technical limitation) of a gazillion video games, where NPC's you could have saved via healing still expire and can't be brought back.

For an in-game lore reason, Pharasma (the neutral goddess of death, birth, rebirth, fate and prophecy) has the ultimate say over who can come back and who goes straight to the afterlife and cannot be brought back, ever. Just assume that it was the time for the now dead person to go and stay forever dead. Still doesn't explain why you can't even try to bring that person back, but again, technical limitations and so on.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

So the guy who's loyal to me and wants to do right by my subjects is ready and fated to die, but the asshole emo dwarf in my party who constantly whines about death and the end of all things... I can bring him back multiple times a day?

Final Fantasy 5 is still somehow the only major example I can think of where people actually tried to heal a dying character in-universe and failed to do so, with good reason. With D&D resurrection it's even sillier.
But yeah, video game limitations. It's what I expected, but I'm going to bitch anyway.

[magnuskn]

You can always take it up with Pharasma. ^^

[WalkTheDin0saur]

Did Golarion make a god responsible for that shit? I preferred the default excuse where it was up to the individual person on an instinctive level, sort of like "deciding" whether to become an undead.

Still not Wall of the Faithless bad. I think I just don't like gods in fantasy as anything but boss monsters.