Connecting The Fall of Plaguestone

Vilree

RHoD Masterpost

The Fall of Plaguestone works really well as introduction to The Red Hand of Doom with very few changes. You certainly don't have to use it as such though! If you're new to the system like our group was, I hear the Beginner Box is lovely (later edit: it's true, I've run it twice, and it's great!), and there's a followup adventure that I believe takes you to 5. And, of course, you can always just start at level 5 with RHoD. Spoilers for Fall of Plaguestone, by the way.

And here's a followup post on adjusting FoP encounter balance, especially for new parties!

Let's jump in.

Mechanical Changes

Mechanically, all that I did was replace any orcs with hobgoblins. The most common change was that lv0 orc brutes became lv1 hobgoblin soldiers. I didn't end up making any balance changes because of this, as I had a party of 5, but if you have a party of 4 I recommend applying the weak adjustment to the soldiers in "The Pen" (we can call them trainees), and making some adjustments to Part III. I pulled out two of the hobgoblins to be mounted scouts in the surrounding area, and played the hobgoblins very differently tactically than I would have orcs. It might be a good idea to reduce their number slightly for 4 players to account for both the level change and the better tactics, 

For the other orcs, I just replaced the Orc Ferocity trait on the alchemists, Graytusk, and the Sculptor with the hobgoblin soldiers' Formation, and replaced Lord Nar with Sergeant Nor using the hellknight armiger stat block (also with Formation) as it felt more appropriate. I would have liked to add a little more flair to such a potentially fun boss, but I ran out of time unfortunately.

Story Changes

I left the core of The Fall of Plaguestone alone, for the most part. Vilree is still in charge, seeking revenge on the people of Etran's Folly for wrongs done to her mother by trying to kill them all with the horrific poisonous gas called Veridian Vapor. Now, though, rather than being hapless idiot orcs that Vilree murdered and mind controlled her way to commanding, the hobgoblins have an agenda of their own. Specifically, the Red Hand somehow heard about Vilree's experiments and sent their own scientists to assist in her work and bring back anything potentially useful. This allowed me to build in another fail state to the adventure: will the Red Hand manage to escape with alchemical secrets that will make the party's life hell later? (spoilers: yes!) I never made any hard calls on how much Vilree knew about them, or whether her plans for domination were related to theirs or not, as it never came up in my game, but I imagine they were allies of convenience rather than fast friends by any means. Both sought to use the other for their goals of revenge and conquest.

On a broader level, part of the reason that the transition from Plaguestone to RHoD works so well is that a major focus of many of Etran's Folly's NPCs is the Goblinblood Wars. Many of them have deep and direct connections to that struggle, including both a PC (we had a 5th player join partway through and play as Noala) who fought in the wars personally and the apprentice of our party fighter (Peri from the "Last Delivery" sidequest) who lost a brother in the war. I think I actually should have done more to play up that aspect of the town's backstory, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

I'm not the most familiar with Golarion as a setting, and neither are my players, so I basically put Elsir Vale (where RHoD takes place) just north of Isger. I've read online that you could just set RHoD in Isger, and if you're familiar with that region then I wholeheartedly support you in that effort, but it doesn't seem worth it for my group. After the Goblinblood War, then, when the people of Isger were burning through the Chitterwood to exterminate the last of their foes, the goblins fled underground and emerged north of the Wyrmsmoke Mountains. There, an embittered Azarr Kul went on a solitary pilgrimage of rage and discovered an ancient temple to Tiamat, a goddess whose name has long gone un-uttered in the realms of men. From there, we're more or less back to the continuity of RHoD.

Assured Destruction

When all was said and done, the party succeeded in stopping Vilree's plan, and got out (mostly) alive (apart from one character who died fighting the Sculptor in Part II). But, three of the hobgoblins escaped: Graytusk, the archer, a soldier called Private Sordrog, and one of the Scupltor's alchemist apprentices who escaped with the formula for the Veridian Vapour. I'm very excited to make my players deal with that one later down the road! With a weapon like that, the Battle of Brindol might take a very different shape if the players don't first spend valuable time to correct their mistake.

Viridian Vapor (Virulent Disease 5). You can’t reduce the sickened condition or heal from damage while affected by viridian vapor. Saving Throw DC 23 Fortitude; Onset 10 minutes; Stage 1 1d6 slashing damage and sickened 1 (1 hour); Stage 2 2d6 slashing damage and sickened 2 (1 hour); Stage 3 dead.

Apart from that, I've got lots of fun stuff to play with as we move forward! Our sorcerer died in Part II fighting some wolves, and then walked back into town several days later, alive, with no recollection of the past several weeks. Our newest player who will be joining us soon is indirectly responsible for the sorcerer's father's death, and has personal beef with Immerstel the Red of Brindol. Our fighter is basically a dad, and has to handle both the wellbeing and training of Peri. And our Paladin is working on some homebrew lore for her Orcish homeland, a replacement for the Holds of Belkzan that has the potential for some fun game-of-thrones-y political shenanigans. All in all, we've got a lot to worth with!