Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Pathfinder Kingmaker Adventure Path

After listening to the Strand Gamers on RPGMP3.com and their Kingmaker game, I had a feeling that I would be running it someday. I ended up buying the first adventure in the path, Stolen Land, a couple of months ago. When my Kalamar campaign got somewhat derailed by Barbed Devils, it seemed like it was time for us to move over to Pathfinder from 3.5.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Changing Campaigns

Remember last post, where I said the trials of the tomb seemed trivial? Well, I just hadn't gotten to the hamatula (barbed devil).

It was interesting to see how the group approached the encounter. First, they assume since one statue started moving that they would all animate and therefore made a stone wall to split the room. Second, they were ready and prepped to attach a real statue, going so far as to ready an action to attack it in case it did move. (I'm glad that happened. I didn't want to look up rules for attacking statues)

And bad luck for the arcane trickster too, which set the whole ball in motion. Fail the trap DC by exactly 5, triggering it. Failed the will save on a symbol of fear which sent her running right by the real hamatula who dropped a fireball on her (good thing she had evasion), but she continued running.

It seemed that the group was especially stymied by the hamatula's powers. DR 10/good, immune to fire, resist cold 10. So a strength 10 fighter with high dex and an icy burst rapier didn't have much chance of doing appreciable damage. Add in the barbed defense and a fight of attrition is one that the hamatula will win.

The hamatula also got lucky and summoned another hamatula with a 5% on the percentile roll. That really made the difficult much harder.

I felt that I used the hamatula's hold person ability and grapple preference to target well. In the end, the arcane trickster died, the bard died, the elf fighter was greviously wounded (brought to less that 5 hp I think).

I think the druid did the right thing by summoning dire wolves to trip up the devils and slow them down just enough to regroup.

At the end of the battle, Chamele the Arcane Trickster was brought back by Aldoran using his scroll of reincarnate as a gnome.

I think it was at the point that the second hamatula appeared that the player's decided that starting the Kingmaker Pathfinder Adventure path now instead of waiting to finish the tomb was a good idea. I didn't intend for the hamatula's to be bleach for the campaign but it appears that they were regardless.