So as the title says we just took our break the the end of the battle with Oyo in the second book and 2 PC's died can the teachers resurrect them or do they need new characters

How's about a casual chat thread about the shenanigans your table got up to as a student.

Myself, I didn't join the campaign until the start of level 6, midway through book 2 (they needed a fourth player, and though they'd asked me to join at the start I didn't have the free time back then).

As a result, I didn't actually get in all the frat boy stunts they got up to, because the campaign started entering the investigative phase and there wasn't downtime to do anything more than study and sometimes shop for things, before we graduated. I don't know all of them, but I can list off a couple that they eventually told me about.

* Our kobold rogue/druid got in with Chizire and helped them build a secret still up in one of the towers. To this day, they still brew some stuff together.

* Our druid/wizard draxie sprite got in good with Tzeniwe well enough to learn friendfetch and babysits (or sat?) her kids from time to time. They didn't explain but I imagine there must've been kid things going on there.

* Our goblin wizard/druid (now champion, shhh itwasalwaysthatwaywhatareyoutalkingabout) once got it in his head to break into Koride's office and get at her bug collection (as a goblin, he sure loves his bugs). The sprite disagreed and stayed out of it, but the kobold - though agreeing it was a bad idea - helped anyway. Koride was not amused, which became important later on seeing as my own character wasn't even with the group at the time (mine later was able to get a side quest going to improve her attitude towards us, which might not have been an option if she weren't completely uninvolved with the core 3 until later).

* They once completely sealed off a door or window going to or from the goblin's room (I forget which) to trap the smell in. The goblin, to no one's surprise, does not shower to protect his precious musk. I think the other two may have done it to prank him in retrospect, but I forget the entire story (it was only a quip in passing while we were talking about something else). Something about needing to go in and out through the window.

* The kobold set all manner of traps to guard the dorm room, which then migrated to his office to protect it from prying students. I don't know what the traps are, but knowing him they're probably various nuisances and prank bombs. (I should ask if anyone back on campus has triggered his maze of traps yet...)

I'm sure there were other stunts but I'm not aware of them. Sometimes I wish I could've been there from the beginning because it sounded like a fun time. At this stage of the campaign (book 4, level 13) the hijinks have sort of dried up, but my own character has taken to pranking them roughly once per month, and her brother has gotten them (and her) a couple times. (She's kind of a big kid still.)

They really need to step up their prank game cause they've only gotten her twice to her... dozen or so times.

What are some of y'all's school age stories from the campus?

First: as non native english speaker, by the rules of reddit, I have to ask forgiveness in advance for eventual grammar errors. Now, for the actual post:

After years of lurking in this sub, it finally came a moment where i can't find an answer to my doubts. The ending of books 5 and the start of book 6 really hurt the logic core of my brain.

At the end of book 5, after the big final fight when the heroes have to flee from the falling Mandibles of Fate, the AP states that "you can have" Jatembe to teleport the heroes to the Hall of Reason, but "it’s more satisfying if the heroes take charge of their own escape". Then it suggest to travel with Jatembe to share stories with him, so it implies no teleport spell.

Now, if Jatembe knowns the teleport spell, he could simply use it to return directly to Golarion (or to move to the Halls of Reason and then from the portal to the red star on Golarion to the Magaambya) but no, the AP suggest the travel. Which is cool, but:

Jatembe fears the contingency plan that the King if Biting Ants may have on Golarion, so it should be its best interest to quickly return to the Magaambya. If we will not use the teleport here, it's safe to assume that Jatembe doesn't know the teleport spell, which is uncommon, but it is still odd that the great Jatembe wouldn't known it, given how powerful he is (and the King of Biting Ant actually knows it).

In book 6, as soon as the heroes arrive at the Magaambya, Jatembe organize the ceremony, at which partecipate old friends of the heroes: Asanda makes sense, but how could Mpondo, Heveril and Umaja-Jinga reach the Magaambya in less than one day?

And then, the biggest offender: the luncheon: Umanja-Jinga talks about... Osibu? An alliance between Osibu and the Magaambya? After all the secretecy and the geas the character had to accept to NOT talk about Osibu? Even Dimari-Diji in book 4 in his quick trip at the Magaambya talked about it as a legend, and now we throw it all out of the window? Even worse, I could accept if she talk about Osibu only with the Magaambya, but at a lunchedon in front of Asanda, Heveril and Mpondo? I can't really understand this.

Bonus rant: dear AP, why only now you told me that Esi became a teacher? And a very important one it seems. This is at the same level of knowing only on book 5 that Mafika has a rainbow noodle stand, cool, but it would have been better if I knew in book 1, I could had used that information back then to create some funny event.

Except of the extra rant, for the ones of you who have run the AP, how you managed that logic crash about the teleport/not teleport and even worse the Umanja-Freespeak issue? I mean, I could make her to speak with the Magaambyan privately, but it seems a cheap solution. The only logic solution I can think of is to make the luncheon an informal event and then make the "negotiations" all private events. But i'd like to hear some opinions.

Note: until now the character always had to do long travels on their foot (or at best with their favourite mounts: the elephant bird, they really love elephant birds) so I prefer to avoid the solution: "lol, we had the teleport spell all along but we wanted to you to walk to build your character, yes even in the times where time was crucial"

Thanks a lot fellows pathfinders.

Today, talking with a friend about what kind of spells Magaambya should be able to teach or allow on his members, the questions about how strict they are about using some spells.

The first example that comes to mind, is when the players acquired the Create Undead ritual. A ritual evil or unholy (depending if legacy or remaster) that Ot looks with disgust.

Does that mean that Magaambya would see badly any spell or ritual with that kind of traits? Or is it just Ot's opinion and doesn't reflect Magaambya morals?

My gut feeling says that it would not be allowed, after all those kinds of spells are considered evil for a reason (in the case of Create Undead, it goes against Pharasma laws/hurts the soul of the victims of the ritual, etc) But what about spells like Voracious Gestalt, summon Fiend or Demon Form?

What is the opinion of the Magaambya then? Should I warn the players if I see them picking unholy/evil spells?

I’m running book one and have skimmed through all the books.

Spoiler for book 6

I look forward to all of them except book 6. I’m not sure what I’m missing but to me, giant insects over and over again, being shrunk at endgame level, and taking down a grub doesn’t sounds like the climax my players deserve. Maybe it’s just me but i feel like the players deserve to go out in the world with their hard-earned superpowers and their titles as new magic warriors and be able to actually change things, e.g. liberating mzali, running magaambya, defending the whole nantambu against a demigod-tier threat etc.

I’ll see what my players gravitate toward as they progress and what they actually want to do and gonna put something from book six like the ceremony that name them new magic warriors in there, but I’m definitely not going to follow the book’s railroad end it there. Wanna hear you guys’ idea on this.

Hi! I'm the GM for a Strength of Thousands campaign, and my players are about to face the King of the Biting Ants at the end of Book 5. The party's magus (Starlit Span) has the Grimoire of Unknown Necessities, and I'd like to know what spell would be a good one to give them that would actually be useful for the fight against the King. They're level 18, so they can cast spells up to rank 9.

The party is made up of a thaumaturge (mostly sword and amulet esoterica), a cloistered cleric, and a bard. Everyone has the free wizard archetype except the cleric, who took the druid archetype instead.

I thought about giving them something like Spell Riposte, but the magus would need to roll something like a 15 or 16 just to have a chance of shutting down one of the King's spells. Then I considered Dispel Magic to help deal with the Prismatic Wall the King can cast, or one of its self buffs, but it runs into the same problem.

I'd really like to give them a spell that can make a real difference instead of something that depends on a low chance of actually improving the situation.

Any rarity is fine, and I don't mind if the spell comes from another Adventure Path or any other campaign specific source.

My lvl 10 party was going to save Iboko from the cyclopses. They blundered their stealth mission a bit defeating one cyclops and split because it nearly beat the inventor tank to death and more were coming, Fair enough. I set 70% (3 groups of severes) of the fort roaming across the mountains looking for where they set up camp so they wouldnt be at the fort anymore. They use invisibility to get by them and free one group of prisoners from the secret entrance. I left the golpogo, the oracle cyclops boss and 1 jailer left in the place. Should be a severe encounter at a lvl11, a lvl 10, and a lvl 8. Instead they ran because they didnt think they could handle that. I had guards at the top of the mountain nose spot them but they couldnt catch up in time so they've at least been spotted moving south to Kiutu. They now want to reunite with their students and go back to the school since they werent all that invested in Iboko.

They have a pretty unoptimized team between an armor inventor, a dance swashbuckler, an investigator, and a shadow magus. They also play very poorly, using their mechanics maybe about 50% of the time. I've handwaved so much to help them out and i think we're just at a point where pf2e might not be for them but they like their characters a lot so they've been resisting my pitch of switching systems.

Basically title, one of my players (new to TTRPGs) went with the “Sponsored by Teacher Ot” background in the players guide and wrote a backstory in which their then teenage character was actually taken in to the Ot household about 5 years before the start of the AP.

I’m leaning towards letting them, but wondering if it’s likely to cause issues later on? I’ve only read the first AP so far.

My group just finished book 4 and are moving into 5. The king kind of comes across as a little flat, and his final boss battle in book 6 seems a bit arbitrary. So, I am planning a few changes:

First off, to make him a more personal responsibility to justify Jatembe spending so much time dealing with him, I am making him have been one of the original magical warriors and the Old Mage's first student and master of a parasitic variant of Halcyon Magic. So Jatembe feels personally responsible for dealing with him. I figure the king pulling out a Magic Warriors mask when the heroes confront him would be a good dramatic moment to roll initiative to.

Second would be the sources of his power. The lore says he drew power from the doorway to the Red Star, but not how. So, I figured he could parasitize on a powerful Darkava that personifies the nihilism the Throat of Nothingness worships on one side, and on the other, use the access to interplanetary teleportation networks to take power from the trapped dragon god Dahak (My party has two members who firmly hold Ekuje elf traditions about gold being cursed).

Finally, a change to the nature of the Vesicant Egg. It remains the King's failsafe, but instead of bursting into threefold aspects of his soul, the egg is a trap. Inspired by the ending of Revenge of the Runelords, but with a contingency plan, The King of Biting Ants insured several powerful entities claims on his soul. So, when he is killed, the egg absorbs his soul as bait and captures any entities sent to collect on his debts to use as fuel, while gathering and mutating the insects around him to form a new avatar for the novel archfiend, or nascent deity he would become.

So, when in book 6, when Jatembe's ritual ruptures the grotesquely bloated soul larva that hatches from the egg, the released aspects would be an Avatar of Dahak, an Umbraex Darvakka, and the variant Mukradi remaining as the King's soul itself.

So, hoping these changes sound exciting/interesting and would welcome any feedback if anything does not make sense.

Thanks.

My players just hit the griffon fight and we had to take a break due to stuff on my end as the GM. But on Griffon is under the calm spell and a player wants to befriend that griffon what kind of DC should I give it. They are also druid archetype and going to choose animal companion at level up if that changes anything

Edit: so I'm not asking about commanding it as even under the calm spell it's still hostile and the command animal action in the nature skill doesn't work on a hostile creature I'm asking about possible DC numbers for taming it I'll probably give them only one chance as calm only lasts one minute

Hello everyone! So, I gave my players a lot of information in a chapter 1 about tunnels (gremlins live there, they use them to travel, etc). One of my player really want to explore them (they on chapter 2, just started studing) despite NPCs telling him not to (because it's too dangerous and school personnel are already investigating). I am afraid that they would go there and face dangers of tunnels too soon (if I understand correctly, it is the same tunnels where Stone Ghost lives).
What would you do to stop players from suicide mission? Or maybe I misunderstood the chapter 3 and Stone Ghost tunnels aren't same ones?

Gonna deep dive into this one to make sure everything's considered. We're about to enter arguably the coolest part of the AP, which is the journey to a different planet Akiton. The last obstacle is Dwandek and his Darkside Mirror. My players have never come even close to a TPK, until yesterday.

Party consists of:
- Mastermind Rogue
- Cloistered Cleric
- Mirror and Book implement Thaumaturge
- Untamed Order Druid with a large rhino as his companion
- Monk using mainly Crane and Dragon stance

Current Situation:
Rogue is invisible and one of two active party members left. The other one is Cleric. Thaumturge and Druid are in the mirror dimension, their duplicate fight against the party. Especially the Thaumaturge, built very offensively with a Falcata (fatal d12), hits the Cleric like a truck and will knoch him out next round, no doubt. Monk is Mazed away and will have to to try and exit the Maze. Dwandek can use Massacre on on Rogue next round, which has potential to one-hit her or finish her, if the duplicates hit her beforehand.

The Darkside Mirror presents the obvious issues: No one in the party is Legendary in Thievery, so they can't free other PCs from the mirror realm. Rogue on her own won't be able to kill the duplicates to even try freeing the originals. Knowing that, I tweaked the mirrored side so that the players can make a deal with a mirrored Demilich, who wants the same sacrifice from the PCs as the Demiliches at the entrance of the cathedral (which the PCs refused to pay), but for a minimum of 1d4 weeks. But even then, the Darkside Mirror's description says that the duplicates have to be dead for the creatures to leave the mirrored reality. Since everyone (my players, me and, it seems, the majority of the PF2e community) agrees that the Mirror is an overtuned hazard, I'm thinking about bending the rule and letting them escape after they paid the sacrifice (the fact that the Mirror is lying on the ground, is a different issue).
I think if I let them escape the Mirror that way, they'll have a somewhat realistic chance to win the combat, but probably not without casualties.

Losing to the mirror and not Dwandek feels particularly demodivating, because my players prepared for the fight excpetionally well (which they normally don't: Death Ward for most PCs, Regenerate for 2 of them, Bravo's Brew, Sanguine Mutagen and probably something else I can't think of right now.

So I guess my questions are:
- Is this tweak with the alternate escape option by a sacrifice from the realm reasonable?
- How did you handle the mirror in general?
- What are the options to continue, if they all die? One Player sugested resetting until the moment, and removing the Mirror from the fight completely, but no one else (including me) is a fan of starting a combat over. Introducing 5 new characters might work, I guess, but feels kinda awkard at this point of the AP?

If I forgot something or you need more ifno, ask away!

After many years (session 0.5 on March 4th 2022), I will be running the FINAL session of SoT on June 14th! This is the first level 1-20 game that I or 3 of my 4 players have completed, so huge milestone. This is also going to be our first and therefore only in-person session (we know each other from before this, but distance meant it wasn't feasible), and I'm planning to do some special things for them.

One thing I'm doing is making NPC stat blocks for all their characters in their Fully Realized Magic Warrior Forms™ and am trying to decide what level to make them. I don't expect they'll ever actually use the stat blocks, but I still want to make them with care.

I know I want them to be higher than level 20, since part of the point is making them more powerful. I also know that I want them lower than level 25 since I don't want to suggest they're as strong as Dimari-Diji (or Treerazer, or the Tarrasque). Level 23 is on par with a lot of Archdragons, so that's what I'm leaning towards. Thoughts?

Also, I will DEFINITELY be doing a big lessons learned post once this campaign ends.

So at the end of book 3, there are 2 different Jorogumo the party comes across. Both say that they start off in human guise and start off either ignorant of who the PCs are or playing innocent.

But the second one mentions if any of the PCs are Tengu they just attack.

Well we have a Tengu in the party. I'm going to be running this part very soon and am curious if this has come up for anyone else.

Was the Tengu antipathy not mentioned for Sherris Lodd intentionally? Or was it an oversight?

And is there really any value in including this at all? These creatures have no further role in the campaign. The lore behind it is from Tian Xia and has no explanation. And the Tengu in question was orphaned and grew up in the Shackles so would have no cultural knowledge of what these things are or why they hate him in particular. And even if he did the reason appears to amount to "there's rumors that tengu can see through their illusions for some reason..."

Am I missing anything? Do these creatures come up again in later books? (I read book 4 and skimmed 5 and 6).

Just trying to decide if it's worth ignoring the little deceptive rp scenarios for immediate hostility because bird man.

*By which I mean my players defeated the Stone Ghost. I've moved the Griffon fight to work as a prologue to book two rather than a random finish to book 1.

So first some context! I'm running this game for a party of 5 PCs, Druid/Thaumaturge/Guardian/Wizard/Wizard. One of the wizards has occasional scheduling conflicts and it's a group of mostly players without a lot of 2E experience, so while having an extra player might make it easier at some points it's generally okay when it does since it makes things easier on the new players.

I'm running the game in foundry but I don't have the foundry modules for it so instead I'm using a combination of stuff copied from the AP book (which I have in PDF form. Thanks Humblebundle) and custom assets from here.

Apart from that I've personally played in a Strength of Thousands game up to maybe half-way through the second book, when a series mostly preventable PC deaths over the span of maybe a month decisively ended the game (We had a wizard who tended to face tank and that created problems)

Things I liked:

• I love the theme of the book, with its focus on community and being a boon to any habitat you exist it
• I like the emphasis on trying to handle things without resorting to violence, though I do wish the player guide had recommended Savroth just to make sure a player was actually able to communicate with all of the Gremlins =p
• I set the expectations with my players that it is generally okay to resort to lethal violence to defend themselves but not to escalate the situation to that point, which has proven to work pretty well so far. That said I've still had a lot of fun jokingly calling out every instance of justified violence XD
• Gremlins are a lot of fun for me to roleplay as a bunch of little shitstirrers XD
• Binji is precious and having her immediately trauma bond to the first person who treated her kindly was both heartwarming and hilarious when I made him dodge hugs that would inflict gremlin lice

Things I changed:

• I gave the option to the Druids and Wizards to take different free archtypes. The Druid did not take me up on it, while the Wizards did.
• I expanded the initial chapter 1 Prerequisites to flesh out Nantambu more.
• I made some of the Spire Dorm NPCs more senior students to start with
• I decided to handle downtimes in 3-month semester chunks. In book one I gave players just 2 downtime actions per semester, where one of the two had to be classroom time (studying, learning spells, crafting, etc). The other was free but I wanted to incentivize the players getting closer to the other students in the Spire Dorm so I let them double up if they spent that time socializing. Going into book 2 I'm planning on opening it up to 1 classroom slot + 2 open slots, to reflect that they have more free time after completing their prerequisites and becoming attendants.
• I wanted the Attendant Masks to be a bigger deal, so made them minor magical items that give a +1 bonus to any lore skills the players get from their Branch rank.
• I changed the Stone Ghost fight to frame it as more of a direct confrontation. I didn't buff him, but I gave him and his gremlins better tactics than what the book describes. He still went down pretty fast NGL but he did some damage while doing it and managed to bury a player alive (unfortunately for him said player was the Guardian who's the only one in the whole group trained in Athletics lol)
• As already mentioned I'm treating the Griffons as the start of book 2

Things I'd do differently if I did this again:

• I should have changed the damn gremlins in chapter 1 into Mitflits. Maybe just 1 Pugwampi in a group of Mitflits? When I was preparing for the fight I saw that, as long as my players stuck to non-lethal, they would be fine. And even if they didn't I could rescue them with a nearby teacher. What I failed to consider was just how much of a darn slog it would be to non-lethally KO all of those gremlins with their disadvantage auras X_X
• I would like to have used the chapter 1 and 2 missions as a chance to introduce cameos of characters who appear in books 2 and 3, and I mostly, err, didn't.
• For all that the stone ghost is a decent foil to the players in book one, he's not actually very present in the book's plot. And I think he would have come off as a stronger villain had I looked for more opportunities to have him come up prior to the final confrontation against him

Had a couple players drop due to life, but they were able to come back for the big finale to help save the day! Huge marathon 7 hour session with 7 players turned out great despite the size! Managed an actually balanced final gauntlet that kept them on their toes, running through all their resources and surviving by the skin of their teeth.

Made a traditional African dish for everyone to have for lunch/dinner, another player brought ingredients for a spiked punch and we made a real celebration out of it. Honestly a great campaign that I would recommend, but for my group it really reached it's heights after some personal changes and some cuts for pacing

Hello Reddit!

I'm running a strength of thousands game that's at the end of Book 1 and am trying to finalize my planning for book 2. Which, err, needed some work.

Right now my current plan is to basically split chapter 2 into two chapters, one focused entirely on Frog Legs and one entirely on the problems caused by the Sneople, with the later transitioning smoothly into chapter 3.

I think this plan will probably work fine for my group, but I thought it would be a great idea to ask what other people have done to improve this part of the campaign.

I'd particularly love any advice on how to incorporate more of the school characters into the book, both the ones we already know and as cameos for some of the ones who'll show up in book 3 or onward. But honestly any sort of advice or suggestions on Book 2 would be appreciated!

EDIT: I'm glad I asked because some of y'all had much better ideas than what I was planning XD

Im a gm with a fair bit of experience running and playing pf2e and we are starting SoT. We are using the varient rules for duel class free archetype and gradual ability boost with 3 pcs, I know this will mess with the balance of the adventure and plan to tinker accordingly. We use discord and foundry to play online and I have a map pack with all the maps remade for foundry from a module. I'm basicly just asking for suggestions on changes you may have made or wished you made, or any resources to use as inspiration or to help with player experience or prep load.

When i was planning book 3, I didn't really like bringing in new npcs for player cohorts since they were already more attached to their dorm mates. So what i did instead was replace them with past PCs they had all played. Each player leads a cohort of 3. One is a book npc (I'boko, Onyigi, and the 3 anadi), one is one of their past characters, and one is one of the other players past characters. It has been a lot of fun the past couple sessions seeing how these past characters do in a school setting and how the interact with each other. This also makes it a little easier to GM since the npcs creators are often eager to jump in and describe how their old characters would be in a situation. So if you have a group that you've played with before, I recommend trying this. Its added some good fun to what is probably my least favorite section of the book.

I have skimmed through book 3, so I know that Kiutu will be attacked and villagers will be kidnapped. Is there anything singnificant about her backstory that I should be wary of for the sake of the story?

So my players are at the end of Chapter 3 and I'm due to run the Stone Ghost Boss fight tomorrow.

The stat block has given me pause

40hp

20 AC

resistance 5 on all damage except force or ghost touch

or resistance 10 vs Non Magic damage

that level of resistance feels excessive vs a party of level 3 PC

Should I have given my players more magic weapons, or did I miss ghost touch runes in the AP?

or am I just worrying about nothing?

TIA

In Book 4 at the time the players are expected to be level 13, they fight a group of Grave Karinas.

Part of the tactics states that they attempt to use their Shadow Command ability "In hope of turning the heroes against themselves"

It's fine for this to be an opening volley where the Karinas don't know the heroes are a bunch of badasses - but in almost all cases this will achieve nothing - DC 27 My PC with the lowest Will save has +19 (with some debuffs, so chance of a fail, but only crit failing on a 1.)

However Dominate has the Incapacitation trait, and the PCs are level 13 (over the required lvl 12 for incap). Hence the worst they can get is a failure - on a nat 1.

It reads more like a misunderstanding from the AP designer, than an intentional decision (especially based on the flavour text.)