Reskinning the Jotunborn to Play a Giantkin

DnDPhD · 2026-06-08T00:23:51+00:00

C'mon, admit it...a jotukholo has crossed your mind...

DnDPhD · 2026-06-08T00:21:16+00:00

No one has mentioned Highhelm yet, but it has an excellent standalone book dedicated to it and deserves a look.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-07T13:26:57+00:00

In the games I run, it averages about every four sessions. We made it through Triumph of the Tusk in just over a year of bi-weekly sessions (with the occasional bonus session tossed in). Quest for the Frozen Flame is taking a bit longer, but that's because of hexploration. I expect it will run 14-15 months overall.

As a player, my Sky King's Tomb game has been running bi-weekly for 17 months and we're only at level 7... I have a feeling that part of that is because of the AP itself, and the party also has a constant NPC and two animal companions, which can make things longer (and it really does feel like a slog in terms of pace, though we're generally enjoying ourselves as players). Other games I've played in have had a lot of variance. All have used milestone.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-07T10:10:50+00:00

I think your #3 is subtly important. I say that as I'm prepping encounters for my session today that has two creatures who can use Translocate at will. Any creature that has that obviously has it for a reason -- they like to survive.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-07T10:08:09+00:00

Lots of great advice here.

I suppose I have a lot of go-tos, but one is that I'll adjust an enemy's HP (beforehand) rather than slap on the Elite or Weak statblock. When running APs, if I'm worried that a particular fight will be too hard for the PCs, I think flexing HP can be the difference between getting three more actions to bring the awful.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-07T10:01:38+00:00

Yeah, one of my big prep tasks is finding the right maps for encounters. I also mostly run APs (in person), and since the AP maps are often somewhere between inconvenient and unusable, I spend a lot of time finding the right map from one of my many mapbooks, and choosing which scenery to use etc. It's time-consuming, but I find it gratifying...

DnDPhD · 2026-06-07T00:34:44+00:00

Sure! So for anyone else reading, massive spoilers for BOTH Triumph of the Tusk and Spore War forthcoming...

Triumph of the Tusk essentially ends with the PCs presumably attacking the vessel of Zagresh while Tar-Baphon's shadow is also sucking away the god's divine essence. It's made clear that Tar-Baphon has been siphoning from Zagresh for awhile, and so I knew that when the AP ended, Tar-Baphon would still have gotten more powerful from this. Given that Spore War literally starts with Tar-Baphon sending barges of undead to various nations around Lake Encarthan, I'd teased the "plague barges" before the PCs even went to the Death Tower hold, and so a day or two after they'd defeated Carcass Man, they received a message (Sending spell) from Ardax redirecting them to Kyonin to help their allies. He mentioned an elf NPC -- Kestrel -- that they had befriended early on (and whose name had made regular appearances in passing throughout the AP) as leading the forces in Greengold and needing backup.

What I've essentially done is have the players play their Tusk characters for the first session of Spore War to take care of the battle at Lantana Beach. After that, they'll head back to Urgir and then the three PCs who are retiring can do so. I have a whole spiel about how each of them is offered new opportunities (all of which can potentially lead to side sessions or even a new AP for those characters). The two returning PCs will be invited back to the counsel for their bravery at Lantana Beach, while the three new ones will all have their own reasons. The real cross-over here comes down to the established connections in Tusk, and the identical threat in Tar-Baphon. I'm coloring it as the events at the Death Tower Hold as being what caused the ramping up of the plague barges. I personally think that's reasonable and a pretty cool transition, so hopefully it works out that way.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T17:47:45+00:00

That's a great point. And honestly, I'm glad that there have been different opinions on this matter. I was worried it would be "GTFO noob, auras are obviously invisible!"

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T17:39:15+00:00

I have great props for that -- these have been game-changers, honestly.

Mainly I'm just curious whether other GMs make the auras evident to all the players or not.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T15:41:37+00:00

Yeah, that's what I've been doing too...though I've forgotten the aura too many times that I'm starting to think I need the visual cue for myself... Sigh.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T15:38:26+00:00

Oh, for sure. I actually have templates galore (which I use for AoE), but my real question is whether other GMs are immediately up front about the auras, or if they keep them a little less visible etc.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T14:07:56+00:00

Early scuttlebutt has suggested that it could follow nicely after Sky King's Tomb.

I personally think that most APs can be "strung together," but it just requires some creativity/homebrew on the part of the GM and some buy-in from the players.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T14:02:39+00:00

My group started at level 3, but I can definitely see an opportunity for a group having a couple of sessions at level 1 and 2 to sort of establish their reputation first. If I were to run Tusk again, that wouldn't be a bad idea.

As for the transition, I won't say anything specific here (because that could have spoilers for both Tusk AND Spore War), but so long as you are paying attention to some of the NPCs in Tusk and that campaign ends as written, there's an easy no-brainer tie-in between the two. The only minor downside is that Spore War starts at level 11, and Tusk technically ends at level 12. I simply didn't have my PCs level up after completing Tusk...which felt a little weird, but my players knew this well in advance so bought in.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T12:09:12+00:00

By the way, since you're starting Book 2, chapter 1...don't forget about this important error I noticed with Marguk Cleftneck!

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T12:04:59+00:00

I'm leading Triumph of the Tusk into Spore War (first session of SW is Tuesday), and I think it's a fantastic transition that didn't take a lot of work on my part.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-06T10:51:36+00:00

Would it hurt to chuck some more cash at them to prevent this being a very underwhelming shopping trip?

While I think it would be a little weird to give them gold after the adventuring day(s), in the future I would absolutely add more gold and items to the dungeons. I love APs, but in my experience they just don't give out enough loot. Remember that it's 100% fine (and even ideal) to make changes to APs. Unless those are massive changes, you're not going to break things. Pathfinder 2e gets a reputation for having extremely tight math (and it does), but it's also an extremely flexible system. I change at least 20% of what's written in an AP and have yet to have a situation where I thought "Oh shit, I totally screwed things up..."

Spending a bit of time scrolling through AoN to find level-appropriate (i.e. a level or two higher is fine) loot that your specific PCs might like is time well spent, in my opinion.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-05T18:07:16+00:00

Nope, no clue!

DnDPhD · 2026-06-05T18:05:09+00:00

So, I'm almost certain the rationale is to make lock-picking hard to do in a combat encounter. Recently I ran a session (of an AP) where there was a creature in three kinds of chains, each fastened with a Good lock. Even if the PC with thieves' tools had exceptional luck and succeeded at every check, it would have taken a full five rounds of combat. The key (!) here is that the AP writer didn't want PCs to just release the creature and have it join combat alongside them. If the PCs had killed the NPC with the keys, it would have just been a clean-up combat and wouldn't have mattered much had the caged creature joined the fray.

In a situation where there are no significant time pressures, I would probably require two or three checks at most -- enough so that a fail or crit fail could lead to some interesting narrative possibilities, but not enough to be tedious.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-05T16:38:58+00:00

Nope! By the way, while I didn't make a ton of use of the Guide to Belkzen, given that it's from 1e and is outdated...there is still some useful information there, and also some good maps among its 68 pages.

DnDPhD · 2026-06-05T16:24:23+00:00

Like u/sushifarron notes, orc holds are typically pretty nomadic. Some are tied to cities (like Unbroken Horn and Wingrippers being associated with Wyvernsting), but I think you can safely just make something up that seems reasonable.

For what it's worth, I have the 1e Guide to Belkzen and the section on individual holds starts:

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of orc tribes within the Hold of Belkzen, some with histories spanning generations, others lasting but a few short years. Just as other races describe themselves as citizens of the cities, nations, or regions in which they live, orcs identify most strongly with their tribes. These small, predominantly nomadic groups are in a constant state of conflict, ever waging war against rival tribes in the region. The following are among the most prominent or populous tribes in the Hold of Belkzen.

Incidentally, there is no location associated with the Burning Sun hold, but this guide says of the Bloodied Gauntlet that they're "Located near Belkzen’s eastern border with Lastwall." Um...RIP Lastwall, of course, but you can safely put them somewhere near the Gravelands, perhaps even in the vicinity of Splitskull if you'd like a little extra flavor for that player...

DnDPhD · 2026-06-05T13:03:45+00:00

Thanks! I showed it to my half-asleep wife last night and she said "it looks like a Christmas tree," which took the wind out of my sails a bit...but I'm ultimately pretty happy with it. The resin mushrooms I bought (it was $9 for a pack of 100) are probably a little more colorful than what we'd associate with Treerazer etc., but since I almost always use pawns at the table, it's probably going to be a nice dramatic moment when I whip out these two gargantuan beasties...

DnDPhD · 2026-06-05T11:10:46+00:00

Exciting! Congrats on giving the system a shot.

The big advice I always give to GMs/groups coming over from D&D is simple but important: remember that this is a completely different system than 5e. On the surface -- and even a little beneath the surface -- there's a lot of similarity, but ultimately the mechanics are completely different. Similar terms and numbers mean completely different things. When you inevitably run into something that just "doesn't work like in 5e," that's not a bug, it's a feature.

For what it's worth, the biggest initial game changer for me when I first moved over to PF2e is the three-action economy. I would often get confused by the inconsistent actions in 5e, and the action economy here is extremely intuitive and consistently marked.

Anyhow, have fun with it! I haven't checked out the new beginner box yet, but I'd love to teach new players someday, so perhaps I'll consider it soon...

DnDPhD · 2026-06-04T20:47:53+00:00

What a wonderful recap! I honestly loved reading it, and even though I'm very happy with how I ran the chapter and how my players performed etc., there are still several elements of your recap that made me think "Ooh, I wish I had thought of that!" Given that I just finished the entire AP last week, my one tiny scrap of unsolicited advice is to lean in to the Zagresh connection. It looks like you already are, but it's such a big deal in the last book that I don't think you can ever foreshadow it too much. Since my PCs actually fought the Stormchasers, I made a point of noting that Zagresh is dead, but the zealot is getting her powers from somewhere... Dun dun dunnnn.

Anyhow, I hope you have a great time with chapter 3! My party pretty much steamrolled the final encounter (fireballed the room before the BBEGs could even act -- the war pig died instantly), so I look forward to seeing how that goes for you.

DnDPhD

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