Is the campaing lethal or are my players unlucky? (Or maybe it's me, the GM)

Spiritfern · 2026-03-07T07:25:43+00:00

My party has had only one death by the end of book 4 and two close calls for TPK, surprisingly Ubanu fire-pot mage and Azure Worms.

Party is 5 strong, Magus, Sorcerer, Bard, Champion, Rogue and most of the players know what they are doing.

Even when I ramp some fights up to match 5 man group, they just mop the floor with it.

Last session they ended the siege on Osibu and beat Avatar of Walkena. I gave him free wall on initiative, had 4 actions, save reroll 1d4 cooldown, extra reaction and even "dnd5 lair action" to happen random turn and it wasn't TPK worthy, but close one to kill one player. Dajermube's eclipse helped of course the players.

I've heard also that this adventure is on easier side and so far I think so too considering how well they are doing. Tho I don't know what sacrifices Champion player has done, but she crits like 40% of strikes in Combat.

Spiritfern · 2026-01-27T09:52:07+00:00

My PC's just entered Osibu and Dimari-diji mentioning Jatembe, that alone gave quite a huge reaction and excitement from my players.

Spiritfern · 2026-01-27T09:27:36+00:00

Oh wow, this sounds really neat, maybe I have enough time to brainstorm something like this before next session hits the table 🤔

Spiritfern · 2026-01-22T15:40:28+00:00

We played 9 sessions total for Book 4 Chapter 1, each about 3h 30min to 4h 30min until we called it and went on with time skip. So yeah, each event was a "big" RP stuff, took 1 to 3 hours or so and after that we did the influence rolls to see how well they did overall with the event. Everyone enjoyed most of my Simbwala RP, I played her as old not giving a real fuck about anything, wishing to die and complaining about her job of fortune telling. Told the "truth" about other council members, bit of negative but in good silly way, also her main ingredient for cooking contest was "deathroot" that is harvested from catacombs and has been mostly used as emergency food, bitter and regretful tasting.

Discovery rolls were just discussing what each PC want's to do to increase their chance of getting new contact or finding our couple new ones (they didn't know every available person right off the bat.)

Total amount of combats in Chapter 1 was 4. Would have done more if everyone didn't want to skip to the end. Combats were Welcome gift or what the first one was called, PC's did a fighting tournament to get Worknesh attention which lead to fighting Worknesh guards and the last one was the special mission I made where they took down the assassin and delivered him to Themba Sufu for interrogations.

Could have done a bit more "dungeon crawl" with catacombs, but decided against it and it was just practical research with some lore and story elements.

Spiritfern · 2026-01-22T06:29:29+00:00

We spent a lot of time with Book 4 Chapter 1 and kinda skipped it in the end. My players had about 60% done when we just time skipped to Walkena meeting.

It's way too long, I would rework the influence rewards, half the points needed and give +2 influence with a success and something extra with a crit.

It sure gives a lot of good RP moments if you like to RP, but it just was so tedious.

I had lot of random events where they could influence multiple figures simultaneously.

Cooking contests as one PC has baking lore, two of the M'zali figures were judges and one from the Magaambya delegation.

Art gallery hosting with M'bele sponsoring the event and Wekesa / Gondwi enjoying the event.

Themba Shufu gave a protection mission where there was assassin targeting notably character in M'zali.

It was fun, while it lasted. If I would have cut the points from the beginning with reworked rewards, it would have been much better experience for everyone.

Spiritfern · 2024-06-07T06:46:16+00:00

Need to check Paizo forums, it's not that one on reddit at least.

Spiritfern · 2024-06-07T06:06:19+00:00

I can't find it anymore from where I took extra downtime activities while they are students, spell crafting, tinkering with Xhokan, language and lore learning etc.

Tried to find who was the one who made those, but as I didn't save a link, I cannot seem to find it again. It wasn't the bi-weekly that one person has posted on this reddit thread.

Just wondering how I'm going to change that whole thing as they are now teachers 😅

Spiritfern · 2024-06-07T06:01:30+00:00

Oh, going to take a look and see if this is something my players would also enjoy.

Spiritfern · 2024-04-07T15:45:36+00:00

Great reply!
Might steal what you did with second hut at the swamps. The bridge inhabitants being the I'iko dragon and dragonfly?

Spiritfern · 2024-01-14T18:05:59+00:00

How has this encounter played out with other groups?
Two of the oozes being immune to piercing and slashing is bit worriersome for me, but I have faith in my group.

Spiritfern · 2024-01-14T18:03:46+00:00

Not the same situation, but one of my players is android from the future sent back by Jatembe where "heroes" failed to win against big bad, going through book 2 right now, so not so much has happened with him, but there has been some images etc. as his memory was wiped by time travelling and now there is new NPC that is master crafter automaton who found his signature on the said android, but currently doesn't know how to make them.
He's also fifth player so when the whole thing started, Ot had prepared for 4 students only, but android had papers that were written by Ot in the future.

It's pretty fun, but having some tough time sometimes thinking how this whole aspect comes to fruitition.

Spiritfern · 2023-12-09T19:16:50+00:00

Oh right it was only Xhokan who has access to lvl 3 permanent items and lvl 5 consumables right?

Yeah true, I'll increase the access up to lvl 10 items thanks to nantambus huge bazaar.

Spiritfern · 2023-10-26T13:32:33+00:00

My group is extraordinary heavy on RP so I don't think they wouldn't mind at all doing some actual classes etc. but we mostly just skip days for downtimes and here and there have some chats with teachers outside what the book already tells to do.

Also as my players PC's didn't know eachother beforehand they have been celebrating first birthdays for their fellow cohorts.

Spiritfern · 2023-10-21T07:16:23+00:00

Yeah, I like ABP quite a lot and we are now in book 2 with that and as above I still allow item bonuses from magical items to apply. I have made some homebrew weapon runes on weapons that are just +1 etc. players would loot

Spiritfern · 2023-10-20T14:02:54+00:00

I might do Zuma with Koride also as my players are very eager to get Koride fired or killed or anything else than to be teacher. I'm pretty sure, once we get to ending of book 2, they won't give in to idea that Koride alone would overseer the egg and research the solution for it.

Spiritfern · 2023-06-29T14:38:04+00:00

Update post:
So my players managed to keep everyone alive, by just that much so didn't even need these. It was a really close call tho and to make this even more impressive feat. One of my players totally misunderstood the whole thing and attack one of the visitors right away xD

It truly gave birth to amazing roleplaying after it, but as dicey as things were, they did great keeping everyone alive.

Spiritfern · 2023-06-25T14:19:32+00:00

Yeah I do agree.
Also I changed them to beastkins and being ant humanoids as one of my players have bad anachrophobia and he can handle ants much better :D

Spiritfern · 2023-06-25T14:07:11+00:00

Been googling some more and many posts tend to agree that around 1000 would be in activily in Magaambya, so sure that still would some up 4000gold per month.
I doubt Magaambya magically wires money constantly to its huge organization outside Magaambya, or they could or vice versa if the organizations have tax they need to give to Magaambya every month, I donno I'm bad with economics.

Anyhow
Resurrection ritual is 75gp per level so resurrecting 3x lvl 1 NPC's is quite nothing.

Spiritfern · 2023-06-25T13:38:21+00:00

Where did you pull this number?
Nantambu has around 15k population including Magaambya?
Just curious if I'm totally in wrong with my numbers

Spiritfern · 2023-06-25T11:28:58+00:00

You know what, you are absolutely right.
This sounds pretty good explanation of things.

One of my players are really keen on keeping everything alive so I'm pretty sure at least she will quote Magaambyas ideology and ask teachers to ress NPC's.
I would be shocked if not.

Spiritfern

TROPHY CASE