absalomarchives.bsky.social
Account for the YouTube Channel The Absalom Archives, a channel dedicated to covering Pathfinder Lore and stories.
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Never gonna remaster Secrets of Magic, your Magussy was too perfect from the start
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Dani you are gorgeous
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It makes sense. You're from the northern hemisphere, so southern hemisphere ass is just magnetic to you
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As if is ever stop paying her attention
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O///O
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10日目11日目 リーンとガイア
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And that's every book. Thanks for reading y'all, I'm gonna get some sleep now *flops over and dies*
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And of course Kazavon comes in at the end, acting as a puzzle/fight. Big power house dragons are always fun to try and fight.
The Sunken Queen is also a very quick dungeon to end on, which is good because the castle was probably a long haul to clear.
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Solo bosses in TTRPGs almost never work out, and Ileosa's fight being her and her clone back ups works mechanically and thematically. I love it. The blood dragon is also a good "big danger" to keep eyes off the Bard Queen.
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Ileosa's master plan here is a fantastic thing, showing off her vanity and cruelty while creating a ticking clock to go against. It also helps make the final fight against her interesting.
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Much more "quality over quantity" here. The fake out with Illeosa also works pretty well. The PCs and the city have no reason to think she's not here. Hints at her true location are plentiful enough that a group shouldn't feel stuck once they liberate the city.
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The rest of the adventure is great though. Castle Korvosa is a big space with lots of encounters, but not *too* many. Unlike the packed Scarwall, the Castle here has a lot of empty space to explore and create a feeling of lived in space.
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Trifecta feels like busy work. He just kinda exists and acts as a warm up for the dragon fight that shows off Sabina's betrayal. The "make my underlings wish bad stuff on the group" idea is cool, but I think would have worked better somewhere in the castle.
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Book 6. Time for the confrontation. IMO while 4 and 5 didn't work super great, this book makes up for it. Very good climax. Only a few things I think don't work as well as they should.
youtu.be/XPyuXSyL6oU?...
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It's also just kinda packed with encounters. There are so many fights in this book and chaining them back to back is easy to fall into. And high level combat can be a game of rocket tag sometimes. Exploring 3-4 rooms and then resting cause you're out of spells can be boring.
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And of course, there is a cool sword waiting at the end, PCs love cool swords. The other main downside of Book 5 is just how different it is from Books 1-3. It's completely out of Korvosa and that can be a breath of fresh air or an annoying detour depending on the group.
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Laori Vaus is one of the more interesting NPCs we've seen so far and I like her contrast of being happy and cheerful while worshipping the god of pain. Her and Sial's little arc is fun and offers a lot of role play options for players.
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The soul anchor stuff also gives you a good reason to explore the entire location, and keep a strong boss monster in reserve. The downside though, is that dungeons over all can become a slog for certain groups.
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Now here is a dungeon ass dungeon crawl. It's a huge castle full of monsters ready to kill you. And some of those monsters are really cool.
youtu.be/G7Ym3hJtmuc
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It also really doesn't gel with how Book 5 sends the PCs off to Scarwall for a long, long dungeon crawl. It makes more sense to lead there from the Cinderlands and detouring back to Korvosa just throws the pacing off. Some cool fights though.
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The Longacre building stuff also has a lot of NPCs with complex backstory that we have no reason to ever find out about. It was fun to talk about, but I don't know how interesting it would be to play through.
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The Cinderlands parts just don't connect properly in my opinion. Nothing shows that more than Part 3 of the book sending the PCs back to Korvosa for another dungeon crawl under a building.
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Alright, Book 4 is kinda where the AP starts to stumble. The Shoanti are a cool culture and spending time with them is neat, but a lot of the stuff around them is just kinda... Not super relevant to their culture.
youtu.be/bZqkNpkz9tE
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Also, their dungeon is a cool idea but can easily turn into an annoying and hard to track mess. Logistics of it are neat though.
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By contrast, Pilts as Emperor of Old Korvosa is... Kinda meh to me. He just doesn't have the right amount of zing to him. I think if I was rewriting the adventure, I'd connect him and the Arkona family a little more.
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The Arkona's are pretty good antagonists. They do have the issue a lot of TTRPG antagonists do where the players can just ignore everything cool about them and kill em.
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Ileosa's moment surviving an assassination attempt is really good for escalating her as a threat. It's easy to think she's weak cause she doesn't have traditional looks of power. But she's not weak in the least.
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Book 3 continues to be strong and takes advantage of Korvosa's geography really well. Old Korvosa being an island makes it easy to isolate and do a very "Escape from New York" adventure.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgdu...
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But the premise is very very strong and unique. It sets the stage for Ileosa's horrible actions going forward and establishes her as the horrible villain the adventure needs.
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The dungeon at the end is pretty good, and the "boss" at the end does a good job of doing multiple phases without seeming too cheap.
The dungeon at the end otherwise is kinda just there though. Probably the weakest part.
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The entire premise is pretty unique. A disease ravages the city and the PCs need to stop the spread as much as possible.
It's not perfect, kinda defaulting to a dungeon crawl at the end, but I think it's very strong.
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On to Book 2, which I think was a lot better. Honestly I think Seven Days to the Grave is my favorite book of the Adventure Path.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wABB...
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So favorite thing: The opening sequence.
Least favorite: The semi-random feel of the other parts of the adventure. This is something Curse kind of struggles with.
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It has a few toes to later stuff but those are all vague. Ileosa is a great villain later on, but she lacks a lot of presence early on.
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I was originally a little down on Edge of Anarchy, but I think it does have a strong hook at the start. The opening with Gaedrin is great. The only issue I have with it is that the events could basically go anywhere. It doesn't feel Curse specific.
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Nah, Earth/Air Kineticist.
Only way to get rid of that kind of edge is to sand them down.
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Either a Rouge-lite character or a party member in a turn based RPG.
And obviously I would, she looks like a great character to play with.
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I believe you
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Reposted because the original version didn't embed the video