Category Archives: Pathfinder

15 Minute Work Day

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A frequent complaint one hears about D&D (and Pathfinder to a degree) is the 15 minute work day. The 15 minute work day is the potential for a party to want to rest after they use all of their big resources. This is often at the behest of the Wizard or Cleric of the party after they have used their more powerful spells.

This problem generally lines people up on two sides, both of which can be rather vocal about the issue. One side says this is a problem in nearly every D&D game they have played in and the other says they have never seen it in their games. These arguments usually fall between “it is a systemic problem it isn’t our fault” to “you are playing the game wrong, there is not a problem with the system”. This debate has been going on for a long time, occasionally resurfacing on various forums or twitter feeds.

Why bring it up today at The Iron Tavern? Conan. Conan and The People of the Black Circle actually.

Let me back up just a step though before I get into Conan and the 15 minute work day. I obviously have an opinion on the 15 minute work day, I think everyone does. I fall into the group of people that really has not seen the issue that often.

As a player our groups nearly always push onwards and our wizards tend to be conservative with their spells and manage their resources. That does not mean we adventure on until our resources are completely depleted, but we typically carry on for a good number of encounters before seeking out a place of rest. This has been the case for my local group, for the many organized play games I have participated in, a multitude of play-by-posts, and games I have played online in. Do the casters sometimes announce that they are running low on prepared spells? Yes. But the group as a whole typically pushed onwards.

From the GM perspective I have similar experiences. Players I GM for also tend to push onwards in adventures I run. Sometimes to the point where I actually think it might be best for them to rest up a bit before continuing. This experience is from many varied mediums as my play experience has been.

Given the number of different groups and situations I have a really hard time thinking this is a systemic problem as many like to state. To me a systemic problem would be widespread enough that I would have run into the problem in my playing of the game. I can see room for abuse by a 15 minute work day, but I don’t see it as being a systemic problem in the rules.

There has been one campaign where I found myself facing 15 minute work day scenarios. Kingmaker. The way the exploration portion of Kingmaker works the group will very often find themselves facing every fight at full resources. Now this is an example a systemic problem. As the Kingmaker Adventure Path is written, the PCs are only ever going to face one, two, maybe three encounters in a day during the exploration phases of the campaign.

Back to Conan. I recently started reading People of the Black Circle by Robert E. Howard. As I read that book a distinct thought tumbling around in the back of my mind was if GMs ran their games like that story, the 15 minute work day would never be an issue. The heroes (and even the enemy for that matter) have several moments during the story where they have no choice but to continue on regardless of the status of their resources or how depleted their forces were.

Conan and his companions cannot stop to wait or rest, even as they watch a good number of their forces perish. The girl must be rescued! To wait and recoup health, forces, or arrows is sure to meet with the untimely death or worse for the girl.

The defenders are heavy users of sorcery and at one point in the book are shown using various spells to defend themselves. As the battle unfolds Conan even remarks that they must have lost their capacity for magic as they further retreat. But those sorcerers cannot simply stop and rest! They have a fierce barbarian and his dwindling horde knocking at their doorstep!

Pacing as shown by example in People of the Black Circle is what GMs should strive to obtain. This puts the PCs in an exciting adventure with stakes that mean something to the characters. It paints that sense of urgency that will keep things moving forward and not a series of fight, sleep, fight, sleep and so on. The type of magic system simply will not matter, because it is irrelevant. The PCs must go on to be the heroes, to do otherwise simply ends in devastating failure.

Mini Review: Pathfinder Comic

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While at Gen Con this weekend I picked up the new Pathfinder Comic from Dynamite Entertainment. While I have not been an avid comic reader for many, many years, I was intrigued by what Paizo and Dynamite had lined up.

The comic is written by Jim Zub and illustrated by Andrew Huerta. There have been multiple covers illustrated by various artists, I have the Gen Con Edition which depicts a fierce looking Paizo-style goblin with a short bow.

This issue comes in at 40 pages long, though not all of that is comic. The comic book includes 10 pages of Sandpoint Gazetteer material, we will get to that in a moment. A small poster of the cover of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook comes folded up in the comic, a tactical map is on the flip-side of the poster.

I thought the illustrations in the comic were very good. Several of the iconics are included in the initial story. The feel of the art is different than one would find in the Pathfinder rules and supplements, but the essence of them is there in this comic book format.

Gen Con Cover

The writing was also good in this first issue. The story moved well and helped give a feel for the local environs before moving into the coming problem. I found myself smiling in amusements at several portions of the story!

The 10 pages of Sandpoint Gazetteer was a surprise to me. This portion was like a mini-Pathfinder sourcebook and written by James Jacobs. The Gazetteer is chock full of information about the locale the comic book story is taking place in. The stats for the town is included, sections on crime and justice, shopping, adventure hooks, NPC stats and more. There is even a one page full color map of Sandpoint included in the comic. 1st level stats are included for Seoni, Valeros, Ezren, and Merisiel are also in this section of the comic.

I found the comic a fun read and the Gazetteer was a neat addition. I am looking forward to see what the other issues in this line of comics has in store for the reader. Looking at the product listing on Paizo’s site appears to show that a similar format will be used in at least the next issue. I was certainly pleasantly surprised by this comic.

Updated Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play

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Late yesterday afternoon Paizo released version 4.2 of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Pathfinder Society (PFS) Organized Play is Paizo’s form of organized play for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The Guide is the “rulebook” for participating in PFS. The Guide sees updates throughout the year with the larger one typically coming shortly before Gen Con. This year has proven no different with the release of this version 4.2.

There were several major changes made with this release of the guide along with general clarification of rules in the guide. The major changes were listed on the Paizo Blog and a complete change log was posted to the Pathfinder Society Forums. I encourage you to check those locations for the complete details of the changes as I only intend to mention the larger changes and a couple of the smaller changes.

The larger changes that Paizo calls out on their blog are as follows:

  • Added three new races to character creation for all players to choose from: aasimar, tengu, and tiefling.
  • Scenarios and sanctioned module now have one unified set of rules for applying Chronicle sheets to pregenerated characters.
  • Added all hardcover rulebooks to the Core Assumption for GMs and advised that GMs can refer to the Pathfinder Reference Document for rules from any books they don’t own.
  • Updated text so GMs are now allowed to take boons when they are offered on a Chronicle sheet.

I am glad to see the scenarios and sanctioned modules having a unified set of rules for applying chronicle sheets to pregens. That just helps simplify things and make things a little easier to understand and handle correctly. I also think it is great that GMs can now take boons when they are offered on a Chronicle sheet. GMs work hard and it is good to see a GM able to get rewards to apply to their own character.

I am certainly not thrilled about the addition of the three races. I know a lot of people do like that change, but I have never really grown use to what I still consider “fringe” races. I am not a fan of GMing those races and even less of a fan of playing a character next to one of those races. My dislike of this rule is of course a personal bias. I suspect Mike Brock and Mark Moreland have heard frequent requests for these races and are just listening to the community.

While adding all hardcover books to the core assumption is likely a good thing, it does really increase the hurdle for a new GM to PFS. It is nice that Paizo says the PRD is a valid source for the rules removing the monetary hurdle of needing to own all of them, it still is a lot of rules for a new GM to PFS to be expected to know.

With this release of the PFS Guide several archetypes were cut from allowed for play:

  • Gravewalker Witch
  • Master Summoner
  • Synthesist Summoner
  • Undead Lord Cleric
  • Vivisectionist Alchemist

These archetypes are being removed either for not fitting with Golarion thematically or for power imbalance within organized play. I can respect that and think it is good that the campaign takes steps to correct some of these imbalances. I know I have heard numerous complaints about the Synthesist Summoner and it being ripe for abuse.

Let’s take a look at some of the changes from the change log that stand out to me.

First up:

“The leadership of this campaign assumes that you will use common sense in your interpretation of the rules. This includes being courteous and encouraging a mutual interest in playing, not engaging in endless rules discussions. While you are enjoying the game, be considerate of the others at the table and don’t let your actions keep them from having a good time too. In short, don’t be a jerk.”

I love this addition! So many times rule discussions can turn into something that sounds like two lawyers tearing apart the language used to make their case. Really, at the end of the day, Paizo just wants us to have fun playing this game. While the English language can be torn down to a finite point, use some common sense and try to realize we are here to play the game and have fun. The rules should facilitate that. Great addition!

Another added section is in regards to the Pathfinder Society Community:

You may not simply ignore rules clarifications made by the campaign leadership, including the campaign coordinator and campaign developer, on the paizo.com messageboards. GMs are not required to read every post on the messageboards, but GMs familiar with rules clarifications made by the campaign leadership (which have not been superseded by the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play or FAQ) must abide by these clarifications or rulings. If it is a significant clarification, it will be updated in the FAQ, and later in the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play if necessary.

I think this is a good move at trying to determine how the rulings on the message board are to work. Pretty much if you know something has been clarified on the message boards, but hasn’t made it to the FAQ yet, still follow it. Every effort will be made to add significant items to the FAQ which all GMs are responsible for knowing and following.

First Level retraining is noted in the change log. This is a pretty big deal and a good move for those getting their feet we with Pathfinder or Pathfinder Society in general. This allows a character to change anything they want with their character between adventures and before they hit 2n level as long as the PFS number remains the same. Exceptions to this rebuild will be listed in the PFS FAQ.

A couple of allowed to carry-over spells were added:

A character may have one each of the following spells that carries overs from scenario to scenario: continual flame, masterwork transformation, secret chest, and secret page.

Another good change in my opinion. The continual flame question seems to arise a lot on the message boards. In following with the common sense reading of rules above it only makes sense that continue flame be allowed to last from session to session.

There are numerous other small changes listed in the change log that I am not mentioning here. I have covered what I consider to be the highlights along with some of my commentary on them.

The look and feel of the guide has really improved over the years as well. The layout and feel continue to more closely emulate one of Paizo’s normally released books. Very crisp and clean. The additional attention to the look and feel is important I think as people new to Paizo’s organized play system will have this guide as their first contact with the system.

While I am not a fan of the new races, there are a lot of good changes in the Guide this time around. Whether I agree with the new races or not it does show the Paizo staff is listening to feedback and not afraid to make changes. I do believe they have the best interests of PFS in mind when they make these changes.

Rise of the Runelords Unboxing

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I was a bit of a latecomer to Pathfinder Adventure Paths when they started. Well, more accurately, I was one of the ones thinking no way will this ever work. Of course a couple of years later as I start getting into the Pathfinder ruleset and checking out the Adventure Paths I realized the error of my ways. By that time however, Rise of the Runelords was already getting slightly more difficult to track down.

So when Paizo announced they were doing a Rise of the Runelords anniversary release to celebrate ten years in business and the five year mark of the Adventure Path product, I knew I had to get that book. Today my pre-ordered book arrived!

Technically the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary book is a hardback, not a boxed set. But the book arrived in a shipping box, so this post gets the title of unboxing! Plus I was excited to see it arrive!

Before I move to the pictures, here is what the book contains (from the Paizo product page):

  • All six chapters of the original Adventure Path, expanded and updated for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
  • Articles on the major locations of Rise of the Runelords: sleepy Sandpoint, the ancient Thassilonian city of Xin-Shalast, and others.
  • Revelations on the sinister magic of Thassilon, with updated spells, magic items, and details on tracking sin points throughout the campaign.
  • A bestiary featuring eight monsters updated from the original Adventure Path, plus an all-new terror.
  • Dozens of new illustrations, never-before-seen characters, location maps, and more!

And now the unboxing!

PaizoCon 2012 Banquet Commentary

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PaizoCon 2012 was this weekend in Redmond, Washington. PaizoCon is sponsored by Paizo of course and an event packed with Pathfinder fans. While I did not attend the event, thanks to social media I was able to keep up with the announcements that occurred at The PaizoCon Banquet that happened on Saturday night. The Banquet is where upcoming products are shown and secrets revealed.

Using what I have picked up via various social media locations including Twitter, Facebook and Paizo‘s own blog The Iron Tavern will take a look at some of the product announcements and comment on them. (I will provide a short summary of the announcement and then follow it with a comments section).

Ultimate Equipment Guide

The Ultimate Equipment Guide release is coming up quickly. The book will include all core source material and more. There will be pictures of each piece of equipment referenced in the core book and includes a section on mundane equipment. This book will use a new way to present the material and wondrous items will be presented by slot for those times your character is looking to fill a particular slot.

Comments

I am looking forward to this release. I like equipment and I am one of the types that even enjoys mundane equipment. I am likely looking forward to that chapter more than anything else! Having the equipment consolidated into one book will be quite handy and I see this as being an excellent resource for Pathfinder games (and possibly borrowing equipment for other games).

I certainly understand organizing wondrous items by slot, though it does lend to the feeling of the book being a shopping catalog for players. It will be interesting to see if it turns players into “shoppers” more so than they are now or not. Regardless, there has to be some organization system and I suppose by slot works as well as another despite the possible implication.

NPC Codex

This sourcebook was announced for November of this year and weighs in at 320 pages. It will contain one page per NPC and a statblock for every class in the core book. The builds in this book will alternate between typical builds and more atypical builds using even and odd levels as the differential.

Comments

I am in the middle of the road on this one. I will likely have a better idea of where I fall on this one after it is released. While there is certainly a need for NPCs and such, I feel like I have a good number to work now from various sources.

There is certainly something to be said in having them all in one place though. Also knowing that you can find a certain class at a certain level when picking up the book will also be a pro. At this point I am thinking this will be a good PDF resource for me, not sure I would go in for the physical product.

Ultimate Campaign

This book will be coming in the Spring of 2013 and cover what happens between adventures. Things such as improving skills, running guilds, building keeps, managing businesses and more will be included. Rules for waging war and building kingdoms will also be included as well as information for random background generation.

Comments

This book looks promising to me. There has long been an interest in some of the items that happen between adventures. Building ones estate, wealth, and such has been an area where GMs have frequently cobbled together rules for their campaigns. It will be interesting to see what the folks at Paizo come out with for this. This book could be a very valuable resource to cover all of those things between adventures we have typically run off the cuff or turned to previous edition rulebooks for.

Player Companion Line

The next volume will cover Varisia and feature a visual redesign. The idea is that these books are read in brief, five minute increments and are being designed to reflect that. Roads with distances will be added to the Varisia maps with this release.

The line is moving to a monthly release cycle and a rules index will be put in place to help make finding information easier.

Comments

I do not purchase as lot of the Player Companion Line presently. I pick one up here or there, sometimes based on reviews or if one covers a topic I have a particular interest in at the moment.

It will be interesting to see how the redesign affects my purchasing habits. Roads on maps sounds intriguing. More traits and crunch is a downside for me as I tend to feel overwhelmed by the amount of crunch via traits, feats, and archetypes as the Pathfinder line grows. I love the fluff, the crunch not so much. I am sure others enjoy the flow of mechanics with these releases, so I suspect this will prove a good move for Paizo despite my preferences.

Adventure Paths

Shattered Star is the next Adventure Path coming around the corner. This one sounds a little more like a traditional dungeon crawl. Expect gray maidens, giants, drow, a demi-lich and more from this one. Also players will be able to play as member of a Pathfinder faction.

Reign of Winter will be the next AP and brings Baba Yaga to Golarion. They announced some of the titles of each installment:

  • Snows of Summer
  • The Shackled Hut
  • Maiden Mother Crone
  • Rasputin Must Die
  • Revenge of the Witch Queen

Comments

Shattered Star will likely see my return to an Adventure Path subscriber. While I have enjoyed Paizo’s playing around the edges with the past few APs, I am looking forward to a return to a more traditional series.

Reign of Winter also sounds interesting as well. I like the area this is likely to take place in after my reading of Winter Witch and some of the scenarios from the Pathfinder Society Play.

Looks like a promising time ahead for the Adventure Path series from where I sit.

Paizo GameSpace

This is Paizo’s entry into the virtual tabletop space. Expected this summer this is a virtual tabletop that runs in a browser, no plug-ins required. It will be cross-platform as well. The VTT will not implement the Pathfinder rules system, but does include an initiative tracker and dice roller.

In efforts to minimize GM prep-work high resolution maps and tokens will be provided for adventure paths to get people up and running quickly with less prep. It will support zooming on the map and token movement. They were doing demos of this at the banquet.

The VTT will be free to use for people though it sounds like there will be pay for options for additions. The details to this are still being worked out at the moment. The primary motivation for this VTT is to provide a place for the community to play.

Comments

This strikes me as one of the big two announcements that came from PaizoCon. Gamers all around know Wizards has been working on getting a VTT out the door and to the public since 4e was announced. There have been some setbacks for them along the way and it seems that Paizo is possibly trying to fill this gap.

I think they are approaching this the right way for the moment. They have said that software is an evolving thing, so the plan is to release it early and possibly update as time goes on. The focus being to get something out there on the market and fix issues post release. By keeping the rules out of it that simplifies the project a fair amount.

The part of this announcement I am not a huge fan of is that I would like to have seen them support one of the existing free VTTs already out there. Either something like MapTool, the upcoming Tabletop Forge  or even the other newcomer, Roll20.net. These tools have a lot of the heavy lifting already complete or near complete and could readily take campaign files provided by Paizo.

I suspect Paizo is choosing to release their own simply for the control factor, i.e. they do not want to see what they base their releases on fold leaving them without a VTT. The other possibility is if they do manage to work the purchase of assets into their VTT for enhancements they stand more to gain by controlling the VTT as a whole.

I am interested to see how this one shapes up. VTTs are an excellent way to facilitate more people gaming.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

This was the other big announcement from the banquet in my eyes – a deck building card game from Paizo. This game is to be released at GenCon 2013 and the first set will have 400 cards. From what I have read so far it is a cooperative game and plays in about an hour.

Comments

I have mixed feelings about this. While I have no idea of the inner workings at Paizo it seems Paizo is trying to do a lot of things in a rather short time frame. We have the support of an MMO, card games, minis, VTT, and increasing the release cycle for some of their subscriptions. I just hope they don’t lose focus on producing high quality supplements and APs as we move forward.

There are some smart people that have been around this business for a long time though. I am sure they have looked at the market, the risks and what it can do for their business before these projects were given the go ahead.

With that said, I am not really in the market for a deck building game and will likely pass on this offering when it is released next year. Perhaps my initial thoughts about this game will change as the year passes.

Overall it looks like a very exciting PaizoCon Banquet this year! Lots of new things coming from Paizo as they continue to keep everyone in the RPG industry on their toes!

Review: City of the Fallen Sky

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Author:  Tim Pratt
Publisher:  Paizo Publishing
Price:  Print – $9.99 / PDF $6.99
Pages:   384
Tankard Rating:  4.5/5

City of the Fallen Sky is a recent release in the Pathfinder Tales line written by Tim Pratt. Tim Pratt has had stories appearing in The Best American Short Stories and  The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror among others. He also has a Hugo award to his name and Rhysling Award for best speculative poetry. This is the first Pathfinder Tales novel by Tim Pratt.

The tale starts in the city of Almas, the capital city of Andoran, following an alchemist by the name of Alaeron. Alaeron maintains an alchemist lab in the city, formerly his father’s lab. We soon learn that Alaeron has an intense interest in relics and has had associations with the Technic League in Numeria where he made off with relics of the Silver Mount.

Soon Alaeron finds himself caught up in the affairs of lovely woman that has fallen afoul of a prominent crime lord in Almas. Left with little choice but to assist her in paying her debt to this crime lord, Alaeron, the woman named Jaya and the thief Skiver sent to make sure they stay on task. The trio is tasked with located the fallen floating city of Kho and retrieving some relics to bring back to the crime lord to settle debts.

The novel chronicles their journey across Golarion to reach the ruins in the southern reaches. Once there the reader learns more of the fallen city Kho and the trio’s challenge of retrieving a relic from the ruins all while being pursued by Alaeron’s past.

As noted the story focues on Alaeron, the alchemist. I found Alaeron an interesting character and also an opportunity to get a closer look at alchemists and alchemy in the world of Golarion. From the alchemists lab to how alchemy works within this particular fantasy world the reader soon learns how alchemy works in this fantasy world.

The other members of the trio are also interesting. Jaya, the woman that drew Alaeron into this debt to be paid off was glossed over a bit in my opinion. Some of this is pawned off with her story simply meant to be a bit mysterious. We do not learn as much about her as I might have liked.

Skiver, the brute rogue type, was an interesting character. Starting out as one you didn’t want to like the reader soon is drawn in to actually liking this character despite his rather ruthless ways. By the end of the novel I greatly enjoyed the character.

As I am a Pathfinder GM and player one of the reasons I enjoy Pathfinder Tales novels is the tour of Golarion the reader receives as they read the various novels. In this novel I learn more about Numeria, the cities of Almas, Absalom and then on to the lands of Osiron and on to the Mwangi Expanse. The description of the lands is of interest to both the non-Pathfinder gamer and to the GM to help give one an even better feel to the world of Golarion.

The pacing in the book is excellent, easily drawing the reader in to keep them turning pages. The balance between moving the story forward while providing enough detail to bring the world alive is excellent. There was enough action to keep the reader interested and on the edge of their seat without being too over the top.

I had two minor complaints about the tale. The first of which being that in some small portions of the book the descriptions of alchemists felt very “gamey”. You could feel the RPG mechanics oozing through in how an alchemists mutagens and potions worked. While true to the RPG it felt a bit jarring to the readery.

The other minor qualm was there were some portions of the book that felt very “Terminator”-like. This happened at several portions in the book and sort of broke my mind from the fantasy story at hand to visions of the Terminator movie.

Both of these were minor complaints and overall I found this book a very good read. I would certainly like to read more from Tim Pratt in the Pathfinder Tales line. This is yet another example of a very strong line of fiction being put out by Paizo Publishing. If you have not started reading novels from this line and you enjoy fantasy fiction, you are missing out.

4.5 out of 5 Tankards

Mini Review: Pathfinder Lite PDFs

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Paizo announced yesterday that they have released “Lite” versions of their hardcover rulebooks and Inner Sea World Guide in PDF format. The products released in this manner are:

These versions of the PDFs are created with the idea of being tablet or netbook friendly. Paizo has achieved this by simplifying and compressing the background in the PDFs and other minor export options to help speed them up on mobile devices.

As tablets have seen increasing use at the game table this has been a frequent cry heard on the Paizo forums to release the PDFs in a lighter format. The originally release PDFs have more intensive backgrounds and layers which often caused for slower rendering on tablet type devices (and even lower end laptops). Finally, Paizo has found a way that they are happy with to keep the quality of their product and answer the pleas for lighter weight PDFs.

Before I delve into how these new Lite PDFs perform, let me go over my current PDF reading setup and past performance.

I use a first generation iPad for a good portion of my gaming materials these days. I use it for notes, the occasional dice roller, web access and of course PDFs. I use GoodReader for my PDF reader on the iPad. It has some excellent features including Dropbox integration, annotation abilities, custom bookmarks, tabbed PDFs and with its read-ahead caching can provide a performance boost when reading PDFs synchronously.

Reading Paizo PDFs on the iPad generally has worked well. GoodReader caches the next page so at a normal reading pace things flow smoothly. The problem historically has been when you want to jump from section to section within a PDF, say as one might do at a game table. Here the delays were much more noticeable with the page redraw taking a second or two. For the most part this led me to hope I wouldn’t need to reference the PDF too much during game play because of these delays.

Granted, some of these cons were taken in stride when with the iPad I could carry my entire Pathfinder book collection in one slim device. It made attending conventions much easier on the back than it used to be and freed up room for snacks in the backpack! Still, I was certainly one of the people hoping for a less heavy PDF of the various Paizo products for the iPad.

This morning I loaded up several of the new Lite PDFs on my same iPad with the same PDF reader software. I worked with the Advanced Players Guide, Bestiary 2 and 3, Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat. They all worked quite well on my iPad. The page turns were smooth, I could jump around using the Table of Contents with speed and then page forward and backward from that spot with minimal delay.

The Lite versions of the PDF are definitely much improved over their heavier weight PDFs I had been using of the same books. I still need to see how they do at a full game session, but I suspect this week I will be leaving my hardcover books at home on the shelf and just relying on the iPad this week.

This is one of the many reasons so many gamers really feel Paizo really gets us gamers. Paizo already had my money for all of the PDFs in question. They aren’t really making anything more from me by releasing these lighter weight versions of the PDF as I already owned them. But they listened to their customer, found a way to release these PDFs in a manner which met their production standards and ran more smoothly on the ever growing number of tablets at the gaming table.  Thanks Paizo for listening!

Tankard Rating

5 tankards out of 5 tankards

Review: Pathfinder City of Strangers

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Author(s): James L. Sutter
Audience: GM/Players
Price: Print – $19.99 / PDF – $13.99
Pages: 64

While I typically try to review items that have been released within the last two or three months, I am making an exception for City of Strangers. I picked up in preparation for an upcoming Play-by-Post game that is going to take place in Kaer Maga in the region of Varisia. I wanted to have some more information for my character build and this looked like the book to have. I am very glad I picked this one up, it does not disappoint!

Oh, and did I mention Kaer Maga sits atop a massive cliff and has been built in the ancient ruins of a fortress?  With six sides composed of eighty foot high stone walls, the city is an impressive sight sitting atop this massive cliff.

What is in this book

City of Strangers is a 64 page that is part of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting series of books from Paizo. This book is dedicated to the city of Kaer Maga which is located in the Varisia region of Golarion. The book includes a map of the city, history of the city, an overview of the city districts, the people of Kaer Maga, the area beneath Kaer Maga, a prestige class and a new monster.

Inside the front cover is a relatively detailed map of the city. The districts and locations described in further detail in the book are marked. The map was well done and helps the reader put things in relation to each other at a glance.

The first portion of the book is the introduction which delves into the history of the city and then moves into a look at the city from an overview perspective. The various districts are touched upon, brief mention of the Undercity and the stat block for the city is listed.

The next section begins the in-depth review of the city. We get a closer look at the geography of the city including a description of its location and the appearance of the city once inside. We learn more about the eleven districts of the city and how eight of them are in the ring or the wall around the city and the remaining three are in the open air core of the city. This section also covers the resources and economy of the city.

This chapter then moves into a more detailed look at each of the districts within Kaer Maga.  Each district receives attention to what makes it unique from the other districts, a brief mention of certain notable locations and a mention of influential NPCs in that district. Within this section are some sidebars that include a magic item, a closer look at slavery in Kaer Maga, city plot hooks, and more.

The next chapter covers the people in Kaer Maga. It leads with the various Pathfinder classes and how they fit into the city. A similar approach is taken with the races as well. Next up in this chapter looks at the government in Kaer Maga and the city’s relationship with cities and bordering regions, followed by a look at religion in Kaer Maga.

This chapter then moves into a look at key players and factions within the city. There is everything from arcane power groups to golem making families of power to rival gangs in the Oriat district and more. There are many factions at work within the city and this section of the chapter helps describe each of these to the reader.

The next chapter in the book takes an in-depth look at what lies beneath the city of Kaer Maga. Built atop towering cliffs there is plenty of room for an undercity. The first portion covers the Halflight path which is an underground trade route that works its way up to the top of the cliffs. Going on from there the chapter talks about the rest of the Undercity and includes a well drawn map to give perspective to each section. A full page random encounters chart helps the GM have an idea of what one is apt to encounter beneath the city proper.

A new prestige class is included in this book as well, the Bloatmage. The Bloatmage is a mage that has figured out how to get their bodies to produce more blood than normal to gain greater spellcasting abiltity.

A new monster called the caulborn are also included in the book. These creatures were one of the early settlers of this mysterious city that is mentioned in the history of the city.

Thoughts about the book

The artwork and cartography are both very well done in this book as I have grown to expect from Paizo products. The map on the inside cover of the book is very well done and the map of the Undercity later in the book really helps give a perspective as to how things are situated under the city itself.

This book is definitely heavy on the fluff side, which is a positive to me. There are so many things going on in this city that the plot hooks for running in this city just leap out at a GM considering running a campaign in or near this city. If for some reason these ideas aren’t leaping off the page at you there are sidebars to help jumpstart your creativity.

The districts and factions in the book are well detailed, but still leave plenty of room for a GM to work their own ideas into the city. This blend caters to both GMs wanting ready-made organizations and structure as well as the GM wanting to bring their own flavor to the table.  For some reason the rivaling street gangs in Oriat were particularly appealing, likely because it brought modern day gang issues into a fantasy setting.

I also really liked the imagery this city brings to mind. It is easy to picture it perched atop these huge cliffs above the valley floor far below, thick walls that hold entire city districts within them. Coupled with an undercity that spans multiple levels for those that want to adventure underground there is a lot to experience in Kaer Maga.

The Bloatmage Prestige Class had lots of flavor to it and could see it being useful for an NPC. Not sure I would ever consider it for a PC, but certainly some fun to be had for GMs. The caulborn monster was an interesting critter, especially given the history of Kaer Maga. One can always use more critters, right?

I would definitely like to continue to see treatment of various cities in Golarion as Kaer Maga received in City of Strangers. I was very impressed with this book and cannot believe it took me this long to stumble across it.

Final Rating

I rate this book as a 5 out of 5 for its fluff content. The content is well done, interesting and just jumps out at you with ideas as a player and GM alike. This book has a minimal amount of crunch in it and while I like the flavor of it I rate it a 4 out of 5. Overall I give this book a 5 out 5 tankard rating. All city supplements should be more like this one.

Tankard Rating

5 tankards out of 5 tankards

Kingmaker: The Plague

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The Plague of Darkness by Gustave Dore

The Kingmaker Campaign I am running has finished book five of the Adventure Path. Looking back at some of my older posts here at The Iron Tavern it looks like we started book five in mid-December. Given the holiday schedule, not too bad to be moving into book six by early February.

The players have now waged mass combat against a threat to their kingdom which they handily turned aside. In addition they made an attack on a city that they believe were behind the attacks.

The most notable event during the siege was the druid unleashing the bubonic plague upon the city just prior to their infiltration. That ran its course for longer than they would have liked with some rather significant casualties within the city and even some spreading to the countryside around the city in question.

As the GM I tried to play out the effects of the plague in a manner that made it have significant consequences without being mean about it. So I looked over the disease in question and figured out the DC needed to avoid contracting it and the necessary number of saves to cure. It had a pretty respectable DC, which didn’t seem like it would bode well for the common folks in the city with a DC that high and the need to have two consecutive saves to cure it.

Another player with much more of a math mind than me helped me make some very rough, ballpark statistics on an appropriate percentage of death amongst the people that contracted the plague. For our approximations we split the types of people into commoners and experts, elite commoners and experts and warriors and then elite warriors. With a generic fort save modifier for each of those groups in mind the player in the group worked up his math magic and came back with some numbers.

First the very rough numbers on how many people would contract the disease if exposed to it.

  • Commoner: 16 in 20
  • Elite Commoner: 14 in 20
  • Expert: 16 in 20
  • Elite Expert: 14 in 20
  • Warrior: 14 in 20
  • Elite Warrior 12 in 20

Already it looks like the plague will spread pretty quickly. Next was to figure out about how many folks would die of the plague and if they were not receiving much if any aid – magical or otherwise. Those very rough numbers came out looking like this:

  • Commoner/ Expert: 40.96%
  • Elite Commoner/ Expert: 16.807 %
  • Warriors: 11.7649%
  • Elite Warriors: 2.79936%

Not a good day to be a commoner or expert!

It obviously did not take long for the characters to realize the gravity of the situation. Once they realized the plague was starting to spread and quickly they sent much aid to the city in question. They actually reacted pretty well. They had wands of remove disease sent, anti-plague medicine and boosted the ranks of healers in the city rather significantly. This was all in addition to a quarantine of the entire city enforced by the armies they happened to have around it.

So next up my math minded friend made some assumptions about the amount of healing and aid available and came up with a much improved death rate when factoring in the assistance.

  • Commoner/ Expert: 24.01 %
  • Elite Commoner/ Expert: 7.776%%
  • Warriors: 1.5625%
  • Elite Warriors: .16384%

While the commoners are still having a rough time of it, their odds of survival definitely increased.

Those numbers are all very, very rough and in a rather large ballpark. There were many variables we did not fully account for and possibly overlooked. But they sufficed for a quick work-up to help establish the large ballpark to play in.

Tomorrow night we make the transition from book five to book six. We typically handle kingdom activities on a set of message boards I maintain for the group. So many months have gone by in kingdom time, buildings and walls have been rebuilt and the kingdom treasury is nearly overflowing with wealth due to the magic item economy.

The 8 Year Old GM

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Iron Tavern readers have certainly noticed I have written about the Pathfinder Beginner Box a fair amount. Everything from Beginner Box Anticipation, Hero Lab for the Beginner Box, mentions in weekly reviews and just earlier this week an actual play account of playing the Beginner Box. All of this has led to a final post about the Beginner Box, my eight year old son, whom we will call X, GMing his own adventure.

X has been studying the books in the Beginner Box since he received it in December. He will ask the occasional question out of the blue “What is DR?”, “Tell me more about alignments”, “Dad, why don’t black dragons deal acid damages with their bite too?” and several more over the past weeks.

A little over a week ago he started mentioning that he wanted to try to run an adventure. I told him we could take a week off our normal weekend game and he could run what he had come up with. I showed him how the creatures had challenge ratings and gave him a rough idea of how he could use those to gauge semi-appropriate encounters. He picked up on the concept and ran with it.

So this past weekend he announced he was ready to run his adventure. I built up a quick Dwarven Barbarian and advanced him to second level. His younger sister broke out her 2nd level cleric and we took along Merisiel as a pre-gen. While I put the finishing touches on my character he took care of rolling out my battle mat, getting the wet erase markers ready and picking out his pawns he would need for the adventure.

He started us off in Sandpoint with the mayor summoning us for some assistance. Apparently various weapons and minor valuables had been taken from people’s homes over the course of the past five nights. The mayor requested our help with investigating and tracking down who was responsible for these thefts. We did some dialoging with the mayor and then headed off through town to check out the most recent house that had been burgled.

We approached cautiously and observed the house for a bit to make sure it was not being watched. Then we approached and searched around and found tracks. The tracks were not human tracks he said and after a knowledge nature check we were able to determine they were lizard, web footed like tracks. We also found some scratch marks on the door from some sort of clawed hand.

We then talked to the owners of the house and asked to see the locations where things had been taken from. X did a pretty good job of playing this out and seemed to pick right up with responding to the questioning.

Soon we found ourselves heading out of town and towards the swamps. We traveled for a bit and found a roguish looking individual whom we spoke with. We dialoged a bit with him and learned of some lizard, frog like creatures off the main trail in the woods. Sounding like someone we might be interested in we headed off that way.

We traipsed through the woods a bit and came across an enormous tree where we encountered a few goblins, several of which tried to sneak up on us after we had already engaged the first few.

With those goblins dispatched we found a hole that seemed to lead into an area near the tree roots. My dwarven barbarian promptly went in and we encountered several giant centipedes. The fight was a bit on the tough side with Merisiel getting poisoned multiple times, but we were victorious.

Unusually enough we found two boggards who had been prisoner beneath these tree roots. We quickly realized their feet could have made the prints we found in town. With information from the two we found we plunged further into the woods.

We met a trio of people that we thought could possibly be bandits but it never came to blows, so we simply used information from them to further close in on the boggard camp. As we headed that way we did encounter an abandoned building of sorts which we checked for more clues, but found little else than a series of traps!

With that we reached the final encounter. Up until this point all of the encounters had been fairly balanced. It seems X is a chip off the old block and is a firm believer in tough final encounters. Turns out these six boggards had a boss. Their boss just happened to be a young black dragon!

We fought and we fought hard, but in the end the party fell one by one, finally losing our cleric which soon led to my barbarian falling in battle as well. We actually managed to take the dragon down, but the remaining boggards made easy work of a bruised and battered party at that point. I think this encounter worked out to the ballpark of a CR7/CR8 encounter. Just a tad much for us!

All in all X did a great job running this adventure. Frankly, given the number of mock battles he likes to play through on his own, I expected it would be one encounter of random monster after another. He surprised me with opening with an investigative scenario and handling the investigation questions pretty well!

From there he dropped in some roleplaying encounters on the road (ideas he said he picked up from the Game Master’s Guide) before reaching our first actual combat encounter. He chose interesting terrain for that encounter and the dug out opening under the tree’s roots was a nice touch. His dropping some boggard prisoners in there was a great link to the actual enemy who had been causing the town’s problems.

The final encounter was a little overwhelming, which I chalk up to inexperience. We’ve all been there I think where an encounter turned out a little tougher than originally intended. The fact the boggards had a big boss orchestrating the whole thing was great though!

To me this really helps show how awesome the Pathfinder Beginner Box is. It enabled an eight year old boy with an interest in the game to learn the rules to the degree of actually being able to run a session himself. He did this with only a few questions of me as he studied the rulebooks and pieced it all together himself. I fully consider the Pathfinder Beginner Box a success in bringing the game to people new to the hobby – both young and old.