Adding to Carrion Crown [PF]

[Tokuhara]

Now, I know that the Paizo Boards are chock full of threads for GMs on how to up the challenge of Carrion Crown, but I thought I'd ask the Playground if they had any specific extra encounters/tips/advice/fixes that'll give my party a campaign they'll remember.

I'm looking at dropping about 5-6 PC's into the Campaign basically cold (I'll e-mail the Player's Guide to them, but they won't know that this Carrion Crown has been "modded") and plan on tweaking the campaign to be slightly more difficult (party of highly experienced PCs).

And why did I pick Carrion Crown as the adventure path? The Gamer's Guide to Pathfinder: Haunting of Harrowstone. The adventure path sounded like a blast, so I got all 7 books (6 modules and the Player's Guide).

Thanks to anyone who posts in advance.

[Tokuhara]

Bumping to avoid obscurity

[Deathkeeper]

Well, first thing first is that you're gonna want to add extra baddies/levels to a lot of the encounters. My 4 PCs used a 20-point buy, only two of which used "powerful races" (and I halved their starting gold to compensate). Although they're all new players and I had to give them a few hints about mechanics like Counterspelling, once they figured that stuff out they REALLY steamrolled the Haunting of Harrowstone. Their biggest obstacle was disable device DC's since the door to the unique cursed items is made of metal (hard to break) and had DC 30 lock, which their unoptimized Ninja couldn't even attempt without a Harrow Card boost. The items are meant to be used against the prison's haunts, but the key is past half of them.
Maybe it was because they had a Cleric with the Sun domain and a Ranger with Undead favored enemy, but they barely got under half HP even when fighting the Splatter Man thanks to effective heal-botting.
Which ultimately means that as written six PCs will destroy it, so you're going to want to add minions and challenges. Consider not adding much loot to the lists even though there's more players than intended. For bosses like the Splatter Man and the Lopper, make Ectoplasmic Humans or even just Floating Skulls appear and distract the PCs from the boss so they don't go down in one turn. Splatty's main attack was to Maximised Magic Missile the whole party, but with 6 it won't work, so he's a LOT less threatening on his own.
Otherwise, here's a few tips I noticed with the first book which I've recently completed as GM:
1) The book implements a Trust system, but gives VERY few examples of how to gain trust. As in, it tells you what to do if they get past 30 but doesn't write much more than 30 points and makes them lose Trust every day. If you want to use it, consider adding points for good, diplomatic RP with townsfolk if you want to give a more normal town feel, or add NOTHING for a really rushed, paranoid feel.
2) Feel free to not add something like guards/town laws to prevent PCs from heading straight to the prison. My PCs practically made a beeline for it and at level 1 would have seriously risked death.
3) Do whatever you want with NPCs. I personally made Kendra and the town sheriff do a lot for the PCs. They caught Gibbs pretty early, and Splatty responded by sending hit-squads of skeletons on Kendra's house. Which, due to lucky rolls, she was never hurt by. My PCs are a bit scared of her.
I also made them frequently encounter guards fighting undead when it gets to the Rising Dead section. Since the sheriff often helped them, they were actually motivated to help the town out. I also did a bit with the whole "crush on the apocathery" thing they mentioned in the back of the book.
4) The Harrow cards, with 6 PCs, might be a bit broken. You may want to limit their acquisition/capacity.

That's the general stuff I can think of. Do you have a more specific question?

[Tokuhara]

I have been browsing the Haunting of Harrowstone and here's a few that I noted of, specifically with the "Bosses":

Piper of Illmarsh - I feel that the piper could be a challenge (especially with all of the remaining stirges +the giant stirge and skeletons), but his Hold Person/damage ability seems entirely too weak to be a real threat. I may remove the final clause to his dirge, but it may seem WAY too deadly if I do that.

Father Charlatan - I know he's very dangerous if used during say the Lopper/Splatterman fight, but I plan on banning the Detect Alignment radar spells and only allowing Paladins and Inquisitors to have the alignment radar abilities with a 1d4 turn recharge, but making Father Charaltan show up on Detect Magic as well. This is to avoid the party constantly having radar on. Good call?

The Lopper - Now, Lopper is a terrifying encounter by himself, but I may drop a couple ectoplasmics to beef up the encounter, since his tactic can be pretty scary (bleed damage that he likes to spread out).

Mosswater Marauder - This guy's entirely too squishy. I know he's a haunt, but 13 HP is really really soft. I may give him 30 and have the skulls act like "potions" for him, flying to him and healing him 1d6 HP, thus extending the fight a little bit.

Splatter Man - I have to say I like his tactics. Effectively making the PCs hurt themselves before taunting them and dropping Metamagic'd Magic Missiles on different PCs seems really fun, considering he's an 8th level wizard that with good tactics is a floating TPK waiting to happen. May give him a few cronies to pull "aggro," but I'm overall pleased with him.

Any suggestions for extra encounters is well-needed though, since the Trust Mechanic isn't great.

[molten_dragon]

Now, I know that the Paizo Boards are chock full of threads for GMs on how to up the challenge of Carrion Crown, but I thought I'd ask the Playground if they had any specific extra encounters/tips/advice/fixes that'll give my party a campaign they'll remember.

I'm looking at dropping about 5-6 PC's into the Campaign basically cold (I'll e-mail the Player's Guide to them, but they won't know that this Carrion Crown has been "modded") and plan on tweaking the campaign to be slightly more difficult (party of highly experienced PCs).

And why did I pick Carrion Crown as the adventure path? The Gamer's Guide to Pathfinder: Haunting of Harrowstone. The adventure path sounded like a blast, so I got all 7 books (6 modules and the Player's Guide).

Thanks to anyone who posts in advance.

Having run through 5 of the 6 books now as a player, I'll caution you against making the fights much more difficult than they already are. We're also a party of experienced players, and we've had several deaths, and a ton of near-deaths.

A lot of the fights in this module are already pretty overpowering. For example, our 12th level party just finished up the final fight of book 5, and it was against a 17th level witch, a 12th level witch, a 10th level cleric, a 9th level fighter, and 8 4th-5th level fighters.

[Tokuhara]

Having run through 5 of the 6 books now as a player, I'll caution you against making the fights much more difficult than they already are. We're also a party of experienced players, and we've had several deaths, and a ton of near-deaths.

A lot of the fights in this module are already pretty overpowering. For example, our 12th level party just finished up the final fight of book 5, and it was against a 17th level witch, a 12th level witch, a 10th level cleric, a 9th level fighter, and 8 4th-5th level fighters.

I've been hearing rumors that Carrion Crown is a high-fatality campaign, and since the group is used to low-fatality, it may be a nice change of pace. I feel Harrowstone is slightly under the bar, with the fight you just described being much much more in-line with the difficulty curve (though the witches are more floaty since they may have unoptimized spell choices/hexes)

[Deathkeeper]

I have been browsing the Haunting of Harrowstone and here's a few that I noted of, specifically with the "Bosses":

Piper of Illmarsh - I feel that the piper could be a challenge (especially with all of the remaining stirges +the giant stirge and skeletons), but his Hold Person/damage ability seems entirely too weak to be a real threat. I may remove the final clause to his dirge, but it may seem WAY too deadly if I do that.

Father Charlatan - I know he's very dangerous if used during say the Lopper/Splatterman fight, but I plan on banning the Detect Alignment radar spells and only allowing Paladins and Inquisitors to have the alignment radar abilities with a 1d4 turn recharge, but making Father Charaltan show up on Detect Magic as well. This is to avoid the party constantly having radar on. Good call?

The Lopper - Now, Lopper is a terrifying encounter by himself, but I may drop a couple ectoplasmics to beef up the encounter, since his tactic can be pretty scary (bleed damage that he likes to spread out).

Mosswater Marauder - This guy's entirely too squishy. I know he's a haunt, but 13 HP is really really soft. I may give him 30 and have the skulls act like "potions" for him, flying to him and healing him 1d6 HP, thus extending the fight a little bit.

Splatter Man - I have to say I like his tactics. Effectively making the PCs hurt themselves before taunting them and dropping Metamagic'd Magic Missiles on different PCs seems really fun, considering he's an 8th level wizard that with good tactics is a floating TPK waiting to happen. May give him a few cronies to pull "aggro," but I'm overall pleased with him.

Any suggestions for extra encounters is well-needed though, since the Trust Mechanic isn't great.
I'd agree that the Piper could use some help and and Marauder is awful as-written. My party killed him without even using any Positive energy, they just smashed the heads and he died.
Splatter Man can be strong if your party has low health, but what happened for us was that even with Maximised MM the cleric just channeled five times in a row and that worked out pretty well for them. I think it's pretty balanced. Same for Lopper. He could use some help for 6 guys, but he has cool tactics.
Charlatan's another story. I wouldn't let Detect Magic work, because Detect Undead and Pally/Inquisitor abilities should suffice. He can be a serious problem with his instant KO, but my party blew the DU scroll as soon as they saw the "empty" room with a chained body. I ended up triggering the event when they started unloading Channel Energy into him, so he really didn't do much besides hurting the Rogue to half HP.

As for encounters, the "ghostly" encounters in the back of the book work. I didn't add too much because I can't meet very often and wanted to get to the good part. Although I did let them do a Diplomacy check to get the sheriff to ask out his crush for Trust points :smalltongue:


I've been hearing rumors that Carrion Crown is a high-fatality campaign, and since the group is used to low-fatality, it may be a nice change of pace. I feel Harrowstone is slightly under the bar, with the fight you just described being much much more in-line with the difficulty curve (though the witches are more floaty since they may have unoptimized spell choices/hexes)

Like I said, I'm not sure what it was, but my party really steamrolled Harrowstone. It's entirely possible that their luck will run out in TotB.

[molten_dragon]

I've been hearing rumors that Carrion Crown is a high-fatality campaign, and since the group is used to low-fatality, it may be a nice change of pace.

It's definitely been that way so far. It seems like it's mostly towards the end of each book where the fights get really nasty.


I feel Harrowstone is slightly under the bar, with the fight you just described being much much more in-line with the difficulty curve (though the witches are more floaty since they may have unoptimized spell choices/hexes)

Yeah, if I remember right, the only really nasty fight in HoH was with the splatter man.

[Tokuhara]

I've read that the Piper has caused more TPKs than any of the other "bosses" in HoH, but maybe they forgot the 1/day effect and maybe if Skeletons were bullrushing people out of windows. Maybe.

And I see Father Charlatan being owned by the DU Scroll. Again, I know my players, and I'm going to keep much of the "This is Horror" aspect of classes on the side so the party can realize that they are in a little over their heads.

[Deathkeeper]

I've read that the Piper has caused more TPKs than any of the other "bosses" in HoH, but maybe they forgot the 1/day effect and maybe if Skeletons were bullrushing people out of windows. Maybe.

And I see Father Charlatan being owned by the DU Scroll. Again, I know my players, and I'm going to keep much of the "This is Horror" aspect of classes on the side so the party can realize that they are in a little over their heads.

Well, if you're a party who get bad save rolls, the piper COULD immobilize the entire party at once. Which would be problematic. Especially if one of them got insta-KO'd by Charlatan.

[Tokuhara]

I've read that the Piper has caused more TPKs than any of the other "bosses" in HoH, but maybe they forgot the 1/day effect and maybe if Skeletons were bullrushing people out of windows. Maybe.

And I see Father Charlatan being owned by the DU Scroll. Again, I know my players, and I'm going to keep much of the "This is Horror" aspect of classes on the side so the party can realize that they are in a little over their heads.

[Tokuhara]

Well, if you're a party who get bad save rolls, the piper COULD immobilize the entire party at once. Which would be problematic. Especially if one of them got insta-KO'd by Charlatan.

Yeah, my party has a player we call "Sir One's-a-Lot"