I want to add a little bit of a twist to the Sniper Attack encounter, as per usual taking inspiration from things folks have said elsewhere (in this case the discord).
This will take 2 forms:
Hey folks!
Paizo's newest rulebook Battlecry! recently released, and it's pretty cool! It has skirmish rules that essentially let PCs (and NPCs) take command of Troops of soldiers and streamlines some of how they interact to help simulate a larger battle! It's not a full-scale Battle in the sense of the Battle of Brindol (I tend to use the word the way Strongholds & Followers does), but it can work really well to zoom in on one specific front of that Battle. Since
Prompted by others on the RHoD discord (no idea how long that link will stay live), here's my attempt to integrate the Battlecry! rules into Part 4: Enemy at the Gates (doc here). I'm going to broadly use the structure on p169 under "Quick Skirmish Groups."
Let's jump in!
Hey folks!
We will be starting the Battle of Brindol next week, based on my previous conversion, and in our last session I ended up writing some impromptu rules for adjudicating their final preparations!
For context, they arrived with 1 day to spare (having wasted time in the Witchwood, slowly traversed the Blackfens, returned to Brindol, spend several days at the Hammerfist Holds, and then dealt with the Ghostlord), so I decided to basically give them one last chance to make an impact! Here's what that looked like.
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| Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth – J. M. W. Turner |
Something a little different today - I wrote a module! It is intended as a precursor to Rusthenge, giving the PCs a chance to get to know their home town a little bit and grow connected to it before being sent away from it. It is designed for 4 apprentices (level 0 characters with the "apprentice option"), though I ran it for 2 level 1 characters instead and it went fine. It's fairly short - I ran it for my partner (controlling both PCs), and it took about 3 hours.
The rest of this post is a bit of explaining my thought process, a bit of advice for running it - let's jump in!
Hey folks!
I finally finished running Stolen Fate, so I figured I should compile all those posts into one place! I'll also briefly comment on each chapter that I didn't remix or change, and include links to other resources I found on the internet.
Hey folks! Sorry for the delay on this, real life got in the way (see my previous post for brief details).
In this series so far, we talked about what Scenario Structures are, Pathfinder's Non-Scenario Subsystems, its Infiltration Subsystem (which is IMO the system's best example of Scenario Structure), and the Other Scenario Structures that Pathfinder 2e has.
Today's post will start relatively short, but it will be a living post, and I may come back and update it with other structures or resources. We'll talk about what Scenario Structures need and what things to consider when running them, briefly discuss Scenario Structures from other games that can be stolen without too much work, and we'll keep a running list of PF2 Scenario Structures as well as resources that might help folks design their own.
Lets jump in!
Hey folks!
To anyone following along my series on Scenario Structure, sorry for the delay! I'm almost done with Part 5, and have a couple partial drafts of new Scenario Structures, but unfortunately one of my games had a bit of an interpersonal blow up that led to a player leaving (ultimately for the best I think, but a bummer the way it went down). Dealing with this ate up a bunch of my time for side-projects, and that paired with all three of my campaigns entering new arcs (SoT is just about to start the final chapter; I finished SF with my partner and we are moving onto Rusthenge/7 Dooms; RHoD is about to head to the Hammerfist Holds) means that I am mostly focusing on content for my immediate games, at least for the time being.
Along those lines, today, we'll be writing up some visions! Specifically, I am planning on probably running a converted/edited Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus after the Red Hand of Doom, and want to seed as many elements from Elturel in Brindol as possible to help keep up the feeling of continuity. One of the coolest parts of the remix are the memory dives, including the Vision from Torm. My players never made it to Cinder Hill, and therefore haven't seen Azarr Kul, nor do they directly know that Tiamat is involved. Today, I'll be pulling all these threads together and creating a vision that the Helm of Iomedae's Sight might give to a member of the party as they enter the final stages of the war.
Let's jump in!
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| The Ring Goes South to Mordor |
In our last article, we talked about what I consider to be the best example of Scenario Structure in PF2 - the Infiltration Subsystem. We talked about its strengths, how it's used in adventures, and what changes or variations might be worth making.
Today, unfortunately, we're going to be a bit more negative. We're going to be talking about Pathfinder 2e's other Scenario Structures, or, in many cases, the lack thereof. We'll start by talking about the other "official" Scenario Structure - Hexploration (yes, this is the only other "official" one) - before going into the less defined structures. This includes Investigations (essentially several Research libraries stapled together in Gatewalkers), Dungeon Crawls (which do not have explicit rules in PF2), Linear Sequences (where things just happen in a given order), and various less detailed structures in APs. We generally won't be going into quite as much detail for each of them, but there's a solid chance I'll remake some or all of them in Part 5.
We've got a lot to get through, so let's jump on in!
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| Source |
Today, we'll be talking about the Infiltration Subsystem, which is in my opinion Pathfinder 2e's best example of a Scenario Structure.
Let's jump right in!
Hey folks!
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| by Satibalzane on Deviant Art |
Part 1 hogged all the intro space, so we're gonna keep this intro short. Let's jump in!
Somethings been rattling around in my head for a long time.
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| The core structure of the Alexandrian Dragon Heist Remix |
I've been running RPGs for about a decade now. I started with 5e when it was pretty new, had a good time, and slowly became disenfranchised with its myriad problems. Along the way I found a lot of great advice, especially from Matt Colville and The Alexandrian, but for a long time I mostly ran either published modules or homebrew adventures that were in a similar style.
When I switched to Pathfinder 2e in 2020, I didn't really have problems with the rules themselves. There are still things that don't quite match my preferences, and certain things that I'd probably have done differently, but for the most part the system just works. If I'm too tired to make a call, the game has me covered. I don't have to worry about PCs accidentally becoming overpowered or trivializing an encounters due to a broken rules interaction. And if I do have the energy to make a call that's outside-the-box, or the players come up with an idea clever enough that I want to let them trivialize an encounter, I always have the freedom to do so.
With less work to do hammering the rules into place, however, I could focus more on the adventures themselves. My first real project on this blog was Remixing Strength of Thousands Book 2 in the style of the Dragon Heist Remix, where I deconstructed the grab bag of random quests and put them back together into a more cohesive whole. To date, it's my second most popular series after my Red Hand of Doom Conversion. Ever since, most of my blog has been doing the same - tinkering with adventures to make them more fun to run and play - but the series that finally crystalized my main point today was the one about Negotiations in Mzali.
Now, you might say, "Why do you need to tinker with Pathfinder 2e Adventure Paths? They are so much better than 5e adventures!" And that's true! Genuinely! I love APs, but they still often have problems of their own. Probably the most common complaint about them is about how over-complicated a lot of subsystems are, and I think that is often true! If you've been following this blog for a while, however, you might guess that to me those are just symptoms of a larger issue: structure.
This series is about Scenario Structures: what they are, why they're important, and why Pathfinder 2e would benefit from more of a focus on them. That's right, I said series - as you might be able to tell from the length of that intro, this is a topic I've thought a lot about, and it's gotten a bit away from me. Here's my plan for this series (I'll update it as things develop):
Let's jump into Part 1!
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| I wish our Bugzilla was this cute... |
My group is gearing up for the epic finale of Strength of Thousands, and I'm super excited! I love the concept of a massive larva breaking free, wrecking havoc on the place the PCs have spent the last several years (both in-game - for my group, it's been about 7 years - and out-of-game - we've been playing for almost 4 years!), and the final ritual is a really appropriate finale to a magic school AP.
Perhaps my favorite thing about this chapter is the "Coming Late" section of the three encounters under "The Larva Spawns" - making the choice of what order to do these in matter is amazing design, 10/10. Unfortunately, this design doesn't extend to the rest of the chapter, and the PCs have effectively limitless time to complete the other encounters with no consequences for wasting time!
My least favorite thing, however, is just how many combats there are. It's kind of overwhelming! Most of them are low or trivial threat, which is great for making the PCs feel baddass but bad for giving enough XP to fill out a chapter (IMO less important in the finale where they're already level 20, but the design intent is clear). So, there's a ton of them!
In this post, I aim to address both of those in one fell swoop! Essentially, the PCs will have limited time. Prioritizing some fights over others might gain them allies that they can dispatch to solve those situations for them! And for every situation the PCs don't successfully resolve in time, the final waves of enemies get harder as there are fewer allies in other areas to draw them away.
Hey folks!
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| From Shadowdark RPG |
This is a weird one, because it's part 5a of a series for which I have not yet published part 1 - the overall series is about what I see as a need for more thoroughly fleshed out Scenario Structures in Pathfinder 2e. I have part 1 about 90% done, and the other parts are well under way as well, but I decided to go ahead and publish this one first because I think folks might find it useful! (Note: I have now finished it! See link above.)
Today, we'll be outlining a core dungeon procedure for PF2 that aims to fit as neatly into PF2 as possible without changing any rules. Ideally, it should work even if you implement it in an existing AP without doing a whole bunch of extra work. I'll also include some extra credit for if you do want to put in the work, or you want to change more about how you run dungeons.
Let's jump in!
Dwarves! Everyone loves Dwarves... unless they're on the receiving end of their mighty axes! The Red Hand therefore did everything it could to keep those axes FAR away...
This post includes three things across two documents. First, basic details about the Hammerfist Holds. Second, some miscellaneous sidequests and sandbox/travel details. Third, and most importantly, the case of the Absent Clanlord, which the PCs must navigate in order to gain Dwarven allies for Brindol's defense!
Hey folks!
| From Tiny Fables by Josiah Moore |
So, in each section I'm going to start with what the book already includes (so I don't have to find those details in the middle of a 10 paragraph section), and then below that I'll add in some new changes of my own to help streamline things.
Let's jump in!
Hey folks!
Today we're going to be talking about the sidequests/sandbox elements for The Blackfens! I actually already added the Document to the bigger Sandbox post (sorry for the delays, I was waiting to flesh out the last section), and will let it speak for itself mechanically, but I want to add some more context and fiction here.
Let's jump in!
Hey folks!
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| Unshadowed Koride |
Probably a short one today, but I wanted to flesh out the Mystery in Book 6 Chapter 1 a bit more. You can just run it as written, though I'm already kind of revamping the Influence in Chapter 1 - but what if your players disagree?
In my game, one of my players basically noped out of the social challenge early to go check in on Koride, after being very suspicious that neither she nor most of her classmates were present. The rest of the party stayed to chat, but she basically gave polite greetings (hero-pointing a failed check to do it without giving offense) and went off on her own!
I kept the focus on everyone else in the moment and finished up that encounter, but now I've got to figure out what her investigation might look like!
Hey folks!
We just finished Chapter 1 of Book 3 - a fairly chill search for all the remaining cards (bar one) - and now it's time to prep the rest of the book!
I was going to keep this relatively contained, but it being me, I ended up prepping the rest of Book 3 in one go. Sorry it's a little sprawling, hopefully it's helpful!
Here there be spoilers. You have been warned!
Hey folks!
Today's post is a mix of theory and an actual play anecdote from my ongoing Red Hand of Doom game. It's not breaking particularly new ground - there are a ton of other bloggers that have tackled this topic (I'll list several of those posts at the end, for further reading). However, it's advice that I think a lot of Pathfinder players in particular would really benefit from hearing (and also 5e players, I guess - really anyone who tends to play more linear modules/APs).
It can be really easy when running a more linear adventure to focus on just keeping things moving, on getting from one plot point or location to the next. Some adventures take this to the extreme and do not function as a result, but even adventures that are on the spectrum of decent to good (like most Pathfinder APs) can fall into some of the same traps. In addition, while I agree that Pathfinder is great for improvising a lot of things, there's also so much going on, so many rules, that a lot of newer GMs in particular often feel overwhelmed and struggle to do so.
So, today we're going to talk about Chrono Trigger, Red Hand of Doom, APs, and the importance of choice. To be clear, I will NOT be arguing that you not run APs - instead, I'll be giving advice for capturing the best part of roleplaying games even when you do.
Let's jump in!
We're moving into the final book of Strength of Thousands! Exciting stuff. That means we probably have about 8 months of play yet, give or take (we play fairly slowly haha) - bittersweet! But I'm really looking forward to this book, it looked really freaking cool on a first readthrough, and I'm excited to see what this group does next!
I'm not sure how much of this book I'll want to change - my guess is most of the changes will be small tweaks to make it easier to skip combats that don't matter and were just inserted for XP - but I know that there is a bit that I want to tweak about the first part of Chapter 1, and a decent amount that I want to flesh out.
Let's jump in!
