The GM's Guide to "Agents of Edgewatch"
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Adventure Path Overview
- 3. Meta
- 4. Enemy Makeup and Composition
- 5. Party Makeup and Composition
- 6. Locations and Geography
- 7. NPCs
- 7.1. Primary / Major
- 7.1.1. Jonis Flakfatter — "The Infector" / "Father Infector" (NE male human high priest 15)
- 7.1.2. Olansa Terimor — "The Gray Queen" (NE female human city planner, master thief 20)
- 7.1.3. Reginald Vancaskerkin — "The Rumormonger" (NE male human entrepreneur 18)
- 7.1.4. Wrent Dicaspiron — "The Skinner" (CE female human cult leader 10)
- 7.1.5. Lieutenant Grospek Lavarsus, of Edgewatch (LN male human city guard commander 7)
- 7.1.6. Captain Asilia of Gyr, of Starwatch (N female human ranger 12)
- 7.1.7. Captain Shristi Melipdra, of the Sleepless Suns (LG male human guard captain 7)
- 7.1.8. Wynsal Starborn (LG male human acting primarch of Abasalom 17)
- 7.2. Secondary / Minor
- 7.2.1. Ama Uomi (LN female human architect 3)
- 7.2.2. Blune Bandersworth (NE male gnome architect, ex-thief, and illusionist 20)
- 7.2.3. Hendrid Pratchett (CE male half-elf serial killer 6)
- 7.2.4. Sergeant Moldun Ollo (LG male dwarf senior officer 8)
- 7.2.5. Detective Desdelen "Skinny" Bolera (NG female half-elf investigator 6)
- 7.2.6. Corporal Kerr Batiste (NE female human officer 8)
- 7.2.7. Cass Hamish, of the Garrote Sisterhood (N female human assassin 16)
- 7.2.8. Ziraya Al-Shurati, of the Muckruckers (LN female human investigator 7)
- 7.2.9. Captain Runewulf "The Unbeliever", of the Godless Graycloaks (N male human barbarian 13)
- 7.2.10. Kekker and Gref (LE male ratfolk smugglers 2)
- 7.2.11. Gage Carlyle (N male human casino owner 11)
- 7.2.12. Maurissa Jonne (N female human ex-brawler / gang leader 10)
- 7.2.13. Franca Laurentz (CN female elf bio-terrorist 13)
- 7.2.14. Lord Ganfen of House Kethlin (N male human administrator 12)
- 7.2.15. Jeremin Hoff (LE male human power broker 13)
- 7.2.16. Ralso (NE female half-orc thief 4)
- 7.2.17. Harlo Doleen (?? male human adjutant to Wynsal Starborn ??)
- 7.2.18. Kayln Pounch (NE female human priest of Blackfingers 12)
- 7.2.19. Miogimo (CE male zealborn criminal mastermind 17)
- 7.2.20. Il'Setsya Wyrmtouched (CN female ganzi arcanist 18)
- 7.2.21. Festival Committee / Grand Council
- 7.2.22. Godless Graycloaks
- 7.1. Primary / Major
- 8. Plot
- 9. Resources
- 10. Unofficial Errata
- 11. Colophon
1. Introduction
1.1. Mission Statement
This guide is for those who are running the Paizo Adventure Path Agents of Edgewatch.
It is a pretty wonderful adventure, albeit not without some problems.
In the course of the Editor's investigation, they have found of lot of links that are beneficial to the game master; thus compiled herein.
This guide seeks to be a compendium of useful knowledge about the Adventure Path, as well as an index to it beyond the published content.
Please enjoy.
1.2. Spoiler Warning
You're viewing a community-sourced Gamemaster's Guide to running the Agents of Edgewatch Adventure Path from Paizo.
This is entirely spoilers, by definition.
1.3. In Progress
As of March 2022, this guide is in progress and development. Your editor is compiling it as they run AoE for their group, so things will generally be added as the game progresses through 2021 and the first half of 2022.
See the Colophon for how you can help contribute.
2. Adventure Path Overview
Agents of Edgewatch is the story of the player characters – the titular Agents of Edgewatch – and their journey to understand and defeat the threat of the Twilight Four, a cabal of devotees to Norgorber in their attempt to take control of the Primarchy of Absalom.
In Book 1 ("The Devil in the Dreaming Palace"), the Agents will come up through the ranks.
In Book 1, Chapter 1 ("The Mean Streets of Absalom"), the characters start their jobs as Agents of Edgewatch with some basic tasks.
In Book 1, Chapter 2 ("Missing Persons"), the Agents investigate some missing persons.
In Book 1, Chapter 3 ("Into the Undercity"), the Agents follow up on a lead regarding the missing persons, traveling through the under-city to a secret entrance to a nightclub frequented by criminals.
In Book 1, Chapter 4 ("The Murder Hotel"), the Agents investigate the reason for the missing persons: a murder hotel operated by a Norgorbor cultist.
In Book 2 ("Sixty Feet Under"), the Agents will defeat the first of the Twilight Four – The Skinner – and her murderous cult.
In Book 2, Chapter 1 ("The Unusual Suspects"), the Agents are tasked to investigate rumors of an upcoming bank robbery.
In Book 2, Chapter 2 ("A Penny Saved"), the Agents put a stop to the bank robbery, catching the Copper Hand red-handed.
In Book 2, Chapter 3 ("Caught Copper-Handed"), the Agents take down the Copper Hand thieves guild in their hideout, uncovering their connection to cultists.
In Book 2, Chapter 4 ("Descent into Death"), the Agents delve into the Catacombs under the Ascendent Court to track down the Skinsaw cult and it's leader "The Skinner", the first of the Twilight Four.
In Book 3 ("All or Nothing"), the Agents will foil the plans of the second of the Twilight Four – The Infector – and his attempt to poison thousands.
In Book 3, Chapter 1 ("Street Justice"), the Agents trace from the Skinsaw Cult to a Docks gang who they worked with.
In Book 3, Chapter 2 ("The House Always Wins"), the Agents infiltrate an upscale Gala to steal a fearsome device from a casino lockbox.
In Book 3, Chapter 3 ("Deadly Games"), the Agents rush to the Blood City Games in the Irorium to head off a large-scale terrorist attack.
In Book 4 ("Assault on Hunting Lodge Seven"), the Agents will infiltrate The Infector's temple, capture, and hold them … but ultimately will be arrested and implicated in murder.
In Book 4, Chapter 1 ("The Noxious Retort"), the Agents visit an alchemical conference as cover to find ingress to the secret Blackfingers temple to capture The Infector.
In Book 4, Chapter 2 ("The Gervin Legacy"), the Agents will defend The Infector from waves of enemies intent on freeing him.
In Book 4, Chapter 3 ("A Wonderful Time in Harrowland"), the Agents will investigate a failed harrow-themed-park before ultimately being arrested along with Acting Primarch Wynsal Starborn.
In Book 5 ("Belly of the Black Whale"), the Agents will first infiltrate and then break out of prison, then turn their attention to the third of the Twilight Four — The Rumormonger.
In Book 5, Chapter 1 ("Dishonorably Discharged"), the Agents earn the trust of a crime lord by taking down rival gangs.
In Book 5, Chapter 2 ("Belly of the Black Whale"), the Agents infiltrate the notorious "Black Whale" prison complex in Absalom's Kortos Bay, to break Wynsal Starborn out.
In Book 5, Chapter 3 ("The Rumormonger’s Stronghold"), the Agents track down and defeat The Rumormonger in their trap-laden dungeon.
In Book 6 ("Ruins of the Radiant Siege"), the Agents will obtain an artifact they need to defeat the fourth of the Twilight Four – The Gray Queen – newly empowered by fulfilling the terms of the Twilight Four's contract with Norgorber.
In Book 6, Chapter 1 ("Runaway Excavator"), the Agents stop the rampaging excavator "Graveraker", and find an ally against the last of the Twilight Four.
In Book 6, Chapter 2 ("The Radiant Spark"), the Agents search for an incredible artifact called the Radiant Spark.
In Book 6, Chapter 3 ("The Gray Queen's Tower"), the Agents assault the Gray Queen's fortress.
The AP doesn't make it in-your-face obvious up front about the goals of the Twilight Four or their pact with Norgorber. Only in the Toolbox entry for Olansa Terimor in Book 6 is the compact revealed…
While most who aspire to divinity in Absalom dream of passing the Test of the Starstone, Olansa’s aspirations were both much more direct and much more grounded. She pledged her soul to the Gray Master alongside the other members of the Twilight Four so that when they collectively overthrew Absalom’s rightful standing primarch and installed one of their own into power, they would each receive a gift of immense divine power. There would be no need to dare the unknown dangers within the Starstone Cathedral—only a single momentous act of devotion to the God of Thieves. — cite:paizo-aoe-book6#page=90
3. Meta
3.1. Length
This – of course – is going to vary dramatically based on the table at which the game is being run, how many side-quests and how much character-service is done, &c.
Based naïvely on the idea that characters should advance in level every 3-4 gaming sessions, a Level 1 - 20 Adventure should take between 55 and 80 sessions, or 1 - 1.5 years at 1 session/week.
This seems to be supported by the experience at some tables, with people reporting "1-2 years" to finish an AP.
On the Paizo Forums, Kazimir_980 reports taking seven 3-to-6-hour sessions to get through book 1.
On Reddit, u/DragoldC42's group took 9 months for the entire AP.
u/Merithras asked a similar question that got some good responses, as well.
3.2. Difficulty
Like many APs, the Agents of Edgewatch is considered by some to be … "tuned hot" … "spicy" … "extremely deadly for PCs" … a "TPK machine". This is generally and especially true in the first few PC levels.
- This thread from u/Sachiel2014 has a lot of great detail about specific ways things might be difficult for specific parties and tables.
- On the Paizo forums, Calybos1 prompts a good discussion of the early difficulty of Agents of Edgewatch.
- VampByDay lists some specific concerns with early fights in the first two books of the AP.
- The bulk of the discussion at "Catacombs are a death trap" is about the general perception of the difficulty of these early APs.
- "Zandu the Devourer" was frustrated by repeated near-TPKs and PC deaths, and others shared their experiences.
- Some people saying this might be outliers, though.
- "u/BigNorseWolf" asks "Is Agents of Edgewatch a meatgrinder or is it PF2 ?", prompting a long thread of 142 comments. The following day, a since-deleted Reddit user asks "is Agents of Edgewatch a good AP to run, or is it too difficult/unbalanced?"; apparently, not done quite done, another 45 comments are added.
In general, in PF2E, when rebalancing encounters for a larger party, you should prefer "more weaker" enemies, not "single up-leveled" enemies.
- the PF2 math is too tight for even-stronger enemies
- too hard to land hits, too high chances of crits (both directions)
3.3. Quality
Tarondor made a guide to the Adventure Paths. HERE IT IS. They rank Agents of Edgewatch 16 out of 33. A poll they did of 142 people across Reddit and the Paizo forums, ranked Agents of Edgewatch 12/33. That puts it in the middle of the "Pretty Damn Good!" pack.
That same guide is referenced in response to u/spacemonkeydm's inquiry regarding reviews of Agents of Edgewatch.
3.4. On Being Police
Some tables will have objections or distaste for playing the role of police, or perhaps more specific practices like doing lethal damage by default or the AP-encouraged practice of "legalized theft" of property.
The AP has some text detailing ways to handle the main objections to how it assumes "policing" will be done in the way that it is written.
Even still, some people fundamentally feel aspects of this Adventure Path is somewhere between "in poor taste" and "downright offensive".
The main objections are:
- The immediate discretion of the Agents – rather than any formal judicial process and jurisprudence – is strongly encouraged.
- Pathfinder 2E RAW does lethal damage by default, and players take non-trivial penalties for attempting to do non-lethal damage.
- The PCs are encouraged by the AP to simply "requisition" any valuable gear or consumables they encounter from citizens in the course of their duty, in lieu of pay.
u/DragoldC42, reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e, 2021-05-02
"being able to confiscate property freely feels weird"
- The agents, as policemen, being able to confiscate property freely feels weird in this part of the adventure, when they are mostly dealing with ordinary citizens. My group didn’t really care that much, but it was a good topic to raise in session zero and clear out our preferences on anyway. It's very easy in any case to just give the characters a salary.In my experience, later on in the AP, when the agents are dealing with criminals and cults, it feels much more justified to use what they can take, or to give it back for a bounty.
- If even not immediately stolen by the Agents, loot returned to the police is effectively fenced and the usual sale value (50%) is given to the Agents.
- The Agents are tasked to, well, be police: to enact violence on behalf of the State to resolve disputes.
- The very first encounter is "beat a bunch of citizens unconscious".
- The Agents are tasked to – effectively — break up a labor action in the role of police, in Book 1 Chapter 2.
- And the kobolds go from protesting pay to being "extremely homicidal", to boot. Though as "Benchak the Nightstalker" points out, there is a "schism" in the ranks that is useful to highlight. "EdwinM" suggests taking it a different direction entirely, and "SilentCal" has another alternate scenario. "Data Lore" offers their modifications to the chapter.
There are a number of solutions to these problems:
- Pay the Agents a salary to keep in line with Treasure By Level without making it a direct outcome of their activities.
- Simply change the rules to make non-lethal damage default and at no penalty; give all magical characters the Nonlethal Spell Metamagic Feat (2).
- Note that the Adventure Path does include some item and spells specifically to help address these issues.
- Create some sort of deus ex machina (eg. a magical badge) that provides objective truth regarding the "Lawfulness" and "Goodness" (or at least Neutrality) of the Agent's actions while in the field.
- Use Automatic Bonus Progression to ease some of the pressure to provide loot.
Naurgul describes a clever RAW-mechanical way to help with the lethal/non-lethal damage issue, inside a larger thread on the topic…
For my group, all I changed was to apply PC dying rules to NPCs. […]
For my group, all I changed was to apply PC dying rules to NPCs. That allows my players to deal lethal damage until the last hit or try to save the enemy combatants after they fall down (which comes at the expense of actions that could have been used on ending the fight).
[…]
It seems to me that this is the best of both worlds, meaning I don't restrict my PCs too much but at the same time being nonlethal is not trivially easy to achieve either.
In the Paizo AoE Book 1 thread, "GreatGraySkwid" details their changes for the "Asset Forfeiture Loot System" and a Peacekeeper's Badge (along with some other Book 1 plot modifications).
u/Umutuku asks for some examples of play with the common alternative solutions, and the Roll for Combat : Agents of Edgewatch podcast has implemented some of these options, as well as others.
"thewastedwalrus" points out that the detestable real-world practice of civil asset forfeiture is not quite the same as what's outlined in the AP. But that opinion is not shared by all in the following worthy-of-reading comments.
GayBirdGM and Sporkedup both offer some counterbalance: there's plenty of bad things that the heroes are supposed to fight against because that's what these games are about, and the rest can pretty easily be worked around.
In response, u/Naurgul offers some interesting ideas…
Automatic Bonus Progression is a must I would say if your players are against this looting/fining/requisitioning thing. It really cuts down the amount of treasure the PCs need to have to stay competitive.
In my game I also had Kemeneles and Eunice organise a crowdfunding event behind their backs. […]
[…]
Finally, reformed criminals might offer some of their equipment as a gift. In my game Ralso gave them her ring of discretion as a gift for the help they're giving her to atone for her crimes and prepare for her upcoming trial.
In that same thread, u/GreatGraySkwid points to a Paizo forum thread from "Imnotgoodwithnames", specifically about using Earned Income as an alternative reward mechanism.
"u/PapaHemmingway" asks about ways to improve the AP, in part focused on these similar themes.
This is an area of running the AP where it will be important to be very clear with your players (and ensuring they're clear with each other) to make sure that everyone is playing a game they are comfortable playing.
On a different note, on the Paizo forums, "Evil Paul" highlights a few narrative themes that they feel are missing from the AP: "Investigations and Actual Police Work", "Police Corruption", "Politics, Legailities, Bureaucratic conflict", and finally "Difficult Decisions". In the thread, Naurgul links to some content expansions they made along similar lines.
"u/Repulsive-Ad7501" asks a question about an infiltration mission in B4C1, but the discussion mostly turns to various group's difficulty suspending disbelief for the AP.
3.5. On Being Adventurers, not Police
The AP makes a mention about running the game with the PCs as Adventurers, rather than as official police.
u/Amaya-hime asks for some clarity on how to do that. Plenty chime in with suggestions, and u/Naurgul has an idea to get them through at least Book 1. u/DandiAndy relays that their friend's game has a group of Vigilantes using the Free Archetype rules, which seems like a clever spin on the AP (though might require substantial editing to make work).
3.6. United Paizo Workers
In October 2021 – about 1 year after the final book of Agents of Edgewatch was published in December 2020 – Paizo labor organized and formed the United Paizo Workers.
Their logo is a reference to the Kobold Worker's Union from Book 1, Chapter 2.
3.7. Related Content
3.7.1. The Broken Scales and Balancing the Scales
On the Paizo Forums, "GreatGraySkwid" notes that while it will require some adaptation…
[…] The Broken Scales ties directly into the events of the AoE AP, and Balancing the Scales indirectly, as they both describe the havoc and aftermath caused by the mysterious activation and disappearance of a Graveraker prototype, an immense clockwork drill. Canonically, these events occurred in the year prior to the festival, but it's easy enough to move them (or some version of them) back to being approximately concurrent with the disappearance of Graveraker and tie them into the overall plot.
As many feel the Graveraker is not prominent enough through most of the AP, these scenarios might be useful for GMs or groups that want more of it.
4. Enemy Makeup and Composition
The following is a summary of the enemies and challenges as written in the AP, book by book. This can help answer questions about – say – the suitability of Champion focused on fighting undead (vs. elementals), to help guide the player's characters to meet the challenges in the AP.
4.1. Book 1
Summary by Type
| type | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 | ch 4 |
| humanoid | 8 | 15 | 4 | 4 |
| aberration | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| animal/beast | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| construct | 4 | |||
| devil | 1 | |||
| elemental | 2 | |||
| fey | 1 | |||
| fiend | 2 | |||
| ooze | 1 | 1 | ||
| undead | 4 | 3 |
Summary by Chapter
| chapter 1 | lvl | traits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6× Human | -1 - 2 | humanoid | N |
| 2× Goblin Warrior, "Grunka" & "Pelmo") | -1 | humanoid | CE |
| 4× Skeleton Guard | -1 | undead, skeleton | NE |
| 1× Cockatrice | 3 | beast | N |
| 1× Owlbear | 3 | animal | N |
| 1× Rust Monster | 4 | aberration | N |
| 2× Hyenas | 0 | animal | N |
| 1× Giant Viper | 2 | animal | N |
| 1× Almiraj | 1 | animal/beast | |
| 1× Flash Beetle | -1 | animal | N |
| 1× Ankhrav | 3 | animal | N |
| chapter 2 | lvl | traits | |
| 15× Kobolds | 0 - 2 | humanoid | LE |
| 1× Hunting Spider | 1 | animal | N |
| 4× Bloodseeker | -1 | animal | N |
| 1× Boiling Fountain | 2 | hazard | |
| 2× Dart Barage | 3 | hazard | |
| 2× Exploding Statue | 2 | hazard | |
| 1× Hampering Snare | 1 | snare | |
| chapter 3 | lvl | traits | |
| 1× Gelatinous Cube | 3 | ooze | N |
| 3× Ghoul | 1 | undead | CE |
| 2× Ratfolk, "Kekker" & "Greff" | 2 | humanoid | LE |
| 2× Calgini Creepers, "Tiano" & "Morviggus" | 2 | humanoid | CN |
| 2× Vargouilles | 2 | animal/beast, fiend | NE |
| 1× Grick | 3 | aberration | N |
| chapter 4 | lvl | traits | |
| 1× Mimic | 4 | aberration | N |
| 1× Hidden Chute | 3 | hazard | |
| 1× Flying Guillotine | 5 | hazard | |
| 2× Summoning Rune | 5 | hazard | |
| 2× Cinder Rat | 3 | elemental | N |
| 1× Barbazu Devil | 5 | devil, fiend | LE |
| 1× Canopy Drop | 4 | hazard | |
| 1× Giant Viper | 2 | animal | N |
| 2× Humanoid | 2 | humanoid | NG, CG |
| 1× Redcap | 4 | fey | CE |
| 1× Humanoid, "Ralso" | 4 | humanoid | NE |
| 2× Soulbound Doll | 2 | construct | NE, CE |
| 1× Attic Whisperer | 4 | undead | NE |
| 2× Animated Statue | 3 | construct | N |
| 1× Gas Trap | 5 | hazard | |
| 1× Plunger Chute | 3 | hazard | |
| 6× Pickled Punk | 1 | undead | NE |
| 4× Shredskin | 2 | undead | NE |
| 1× Ochre Jelly | 6 | ooze | N |
| 3× Wight | 3 | undead | LE |
| 1× Binumir | 3 | undead, incorporeal, spirit | LE |
| 1× Human, "Henrid Pratchett" | 6 | humanoid, serial killer | CE |
4.2. Book 2
Summary by Type
| type | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 | ch 4 |
| humanoid | 15 | 9 | 14 | 15 |
| aberration | 1 | 6 | ||
| animal/beast | 7 | 1 | 7 | |
| construct | 2 | 8 | ||
| daemon | 1 | |||
| devil | ||||
| elemental | ||||
| fey | ||||
| fiend | 2 | |||
| leshy | 4 | |||
| ooze | 2 | 4 | ||
| undead | 12 |
Summary by Chapter
| chapter 1 | lvl | traits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2× Wasp Swarm | 4 | animal, swarm | N |
| 2× Ether Spider | 4 | beast, ethereal | N |
| 1× Xill | 6 | aberration, ethereal | LE |
| 2× Riding Dog | 2 | animal | N |
| 14× Humanoid | 2 - 5 | humanoid | CE/LE |
| 1× Bugbear Tormentor | 3 | humanoid, goblin | NE |
| 1× Bunyip | 3 | animal | N |
| chapter 2 | lvl | traits | |
| 9× Humanoid | 2 - 4 | humanoid | LE |
| 1× Dig-Widget | 5 | construct | N |
| 1× Skinstitch | 5 | construct | N |
| chapter 3 | lvl | traits | |
| 10× Humanoid | 5 - 8 | humanoid | CE/LE |
| 2× Vaultbreaker Ooze | 5 | ooze | N |
| 1× Hallucination Powder Trap | 6 | hazard | |
| 1× Spinning Blade Pillar | 4 | hazard | |
| 2× Tiefling Adept | 3 | humanoid, tiefling | CE |
| 2× Weretiger | 4 | human, humanoid, werecreature | NE |
| 1× Basilisk | 5 | beast | N |
| chapter 4 | lvl | traits | |
| 2× Giant Animated Statue | 7 | construct | N |
| 6× Skeletal Champion | 3 | undead, skeleton | NE |
| 1× Dullahan | 9 | undead | LE |
| 1× Nightmare | 6 | beast, fiend | NE |
| 1× Roper | 9 | aberration | CE |
| 2× Black Pudding | 7 | ooze | N |
| 1× Hands of the Forgotten | 8 | hazard | |
| 1× Life Magnets | 7 | hazard | |
| 1× Tyrroicese | 10 | construct, ooze; unique | NE |
| 1× Ochre Jelly | 6 | ooze | N |
| 1× Ofalth | 10 | aberration | CE |
| 1× Tick Swarm | 9 | animal, swarm | N |
| 3× Otyugh | 4 | aberration | N |
| 4× Fungus Leshy | 2 | leshy, fungus | N |
| 1× Skitterstitch | 6 | construct, mindless | N |
| 1× Spider Swarm | 0 | animal, swarm | N |
| 2× Bone Skipper Swarm | 6 | animal, swarm | N |
| 1× Ofalth Zombie | 7 | aberration, undead, zombie | NE |
| 1× Ceustodaemon (Guardian Daemon) | 6 | fiend, daemon | NE |
| 1× Flesh Golem | 8 | construct, golem | N |
| 2× Skinstitch | 5 | construct | N |
| 2× Army Ant Swarm | 5 | animal, swarm | N |
| 14× Humanoid | 5-9 | humanoid | CE/LE |
| 1× Dig-widget | 4 | construct | N |
| 4× Excorion | 7 | undead | NE |
| 1× human, "Wrent Dicaspiron" - "The Skinner" | 10 | humanoid | CE |
4.3. Book 3
It might seem like something's missing with Book 3, but the majority of Chapter 2 is a casino heist using the Infiltration Rules from the Game Mastery Guide.
Summary By Type
| type | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 |
| humanoid | 15 | 2 | 11 |
| aberration | |||
| animal/beast | 4 | ||
| construct | 1 | ||
| daemon | 1 | ||
| devil | |||
| elemental | 3 | ||
| fey | 1 | 2 | |
| fiend | 1 | ||
| leshy | |||
| ooze | |||
| undead | 2 |
Summary by Chapter
| chapter 1 | lvl | traits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14× Gang Tough | 6 - 9 | humanoid | N/NE |
| 1× Meladaemon (Famine Daemon) | 11 | daemon, fiend | NE |
| 1× Avarek | 8 | fey | NE |
| 1× Alchemical Golem | 9 | construct, golem | N |
| 1× Gang Leader, "Bloody Berleth" | 11 | humanoid, orc | NE |
| chapter 2 | lvl | traits | |
| 1× Bouncer | 8 | humanoid | N |
| 2× Svartalfar | 8 | fey | LE |
| 1× Half-Elf Occultist, "Scathka" | 12 | humanoid | NE |
| 1× Velstrac interlocutor, "Ekimilixus" | 12 | fiend, velstrac | LE |
| chapter 3 | lvl | traits | |
| 4× Eberarks | 10 | beast, fire | NE |
| 2× Irorian Skeleton | 11 | undead, skeleton, mindless | NE |
| 3× Elemental Tsunami | 11 | elemental, water, aquatic | N |
| 8× Shikwashim Mercaneries | 9 | humanoid, lizardfolk | NE |
| 1× Elf, "Franca Laurentz" | 13 | humanoid, elf | CN |
| 1× Hill Giant | 7 | giant, earth, humanoid | CE |
| 1× Lizardfolk, "Oggvurm the Merciless" | 14 | humanoid, lizardfolk, ravenile | NE |
4.4. Book 4
Summary By Type
| type | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 |
| humanoid | 49 - 64 | 15 | 3 |
| aberration | 2 | 3 | |
| animal/beast | 2 | ||
| astral | 5 | ||
| celestial | 1 | ||
| changeling | 1 | ||
| construct | 3 | ||
| daemon | |||
| devil | |||
| dragon | 1 | ||
| elemental | |||
| fey | 1 | ||
| fiend | 2 | 1 | |
| leshy | |||
| ooze | |||
| undead | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Summary by Chapter
| chapter 1 | lvl | traits | A |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1× Leukodaemon (Pestilence Daemon) | 9 | fiend, daemon | NE |
| 1× Ankou | 14 | fey | LE |
| (13 + 5d4)× humanoid | 5 - 6 | humanoid | CE/NE/LE, CN |
| 19× humanoid | 9 - 12 | humanoid | CE/NE/LE, CN |
| 1× Bugbear Tormentor | 3 | humanoid, goblin | NE |
| 1× Lich | 12 | undead; rare | NE |
| 1× Changeling Exile | 3 | changeling, humanoid | CN |
| 1× Secret-keeper, "Velberi Jallist" | 14 | humanoid | NE |
| 5× Poison Eater | 8 | humanoid | CE |
| 1× Balisse (Confessor Angel) | 8 | celestial, angel | NG |
| 1× Jorogumo | 13 | humanoid | NE |
| 2× Joro Spider | 8 | animal | N |
| 1× Stabbing Beast | 15 | fiend, herald | NE |
| 1× "Jonis Flakfatter" - "The Infector" | 16 | humanoid | NE |
| chapter 2 | lvl | traits | A |
| 12× humanoid | 9 - 12 | humanoid | |
| 3× Clockwork Assassin | 13 | construct, clockwork | N |
| 5× Shining Children | 12 | astral | CE |
| 3× humanoid | 13 - 14 | humanoid | NE |
| 1× Lesser Death | 16 | undead, rare | NE |
| 1× Leng Spider | 14 | aberration, dream, uncommon | CE |
| 1× Quelaunt | 15 | aberration | CE |
| 1× Demilich | 15 | undead, rare | NE |
| chapter 3 | lvl | traits | A |
| 1× Cornugon | 16 | fiend, devil | LE |
| 1× Shatterling | 14 | fey, uncommon | CE |
| 2× Uthuls | 14 | elemental, air | CE |
| 1× Zaramuun | 16 | elemental, earth | CE |
| 1× Banshee | 17 | undead, spirit, incorporeal, uncommon | CE |
| 1× Zomok | 16 | dragon, plant | N |
| 3× Will-o-Wisp (variant) | 13 | aberration, air, uncommon | CE |
| 2× humanoid cultist | 14 | humanoid | NE? |
| 1× The Rabbit Prince | 17 | humanoid, halfling | CE |
4.5. Book 5
Summary By Type
| type | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 |
| humanoid | 11 | 46 | |
| aberration | 1 | 4 | 2 |
| animal/beast | 2 | 1 | |
| astral | |||
| celestial | |||
| changeling | |||
| construct | 1 | 4 | 24-27 |
| daemon | |||
| devil | |||
| dragon | |||
| elemental | 2 | ||
| fey | |||
| fiend | 5 | ||
| hag | 3 | ||
| leshy | |||
| plant | 7 | ||
| ooze | 7 | ||
| undead | 9 |
By Chapter
Note: The approximately 50 humanoids and undead involved in the "The Shoot-Out" at the House of the Planes at the end of Chapter 1 are not included below, since the actual fight will be highly variable.
| chapter 1 | lvl | traits | A |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1× Zealborn, "Miogimo" | 17 | undead, unique | CE |
| 3× Shadow Guard | 11 | humanoid | CE |
| 8× Zeal-Damned Ghoul (variant) | 10 | undead, ghoul | CE |
| 1× Garrote Master Assassin | 16 | humanoid | LE |
| 6× Carnivorous Mushroom (Giant Flytrap) | 11 | plant, mindless | N |
| 7× Children of Venom | 13 | humanoid, ooze; uncommon | NE |
| 1× Terotricus, "Agoltholch, Bringer of Rot" | 19 | fungus; rare | CE |
| 1× Naga, "Mother Venom" | 17 | aberration; unique | NE |
| 1× Wemmuth | 15 | plant | NE |
| 6× Bloody Barber goon | 12 | humanoid, rogue | CE |
| 1× Iron Golem (variant) | 14 | construct, golem, mindless | N |
| 1× Gangster | 17 | humanoid, tiefling; unique | CE |
| chapter 2 | |||
| 2× water elemental vessel | 16 | elemental, water | N |
| 34× Black Whale Guards | 12 | humanoid | LN |
| 1× Prison Warden, "Lord Guirden of House Gixx" | 19 | humanoid | LN |
| 1× Night Hag (variant) | 16 | fiend, hag; unique | NE |
| 2× Sea Hag | 16 | hag; unique | CE |
| 11× Tiderunner Aquamancers | 13 | humanoid, azarketi; uncommon | N |
| 2× Mukradis | 15 | beast | N |
| 3× Lusca | 16 - 18 | aberration, aquatic | CE |
| 4× Clockwork Assassin | 13 | construct, clockwork, mindless | N |
| 1× Ixusoth (hyakume brainwasher) | 15 | aberration; unique | NE |
| chapter 3 | |||
| 1× Reginald Vancaskerkin | 18 | aberration, humanoid | NE |
| 18-21× Clockwork Injectors (clockwork assassin) | 13 - 14 | construct, clockwork, mindless | N |
| 1× Shemhazin (mutilator demon) | 16 | fiend, demon | CE |
| 1× Kraken ("Lavialar") | 18 | beast, aquatic | NE |
| 5× "Pulping Golem" (Iron Golem (variant)) | 14 | construct, golem, mindless | N |
| 1× Shoggoth, "Pool of Secrets" | 19 | aberration, amphibious; rare | CN |
| 5× Glabrezu (treachery deamon; "lie-masters") | 13 | fiend, demon | CE |
| 1× Clockwork Amalgam | 20 | construct, clockwork, mindless; rare | N |
4.6. Book 6
Summary By Type
| type | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 |
| humanoid | 2 | ||
| aberration | 3 | 1 | |
| animal/beast | |||
| astral | |||
| celestial | 7 | ||
| changeling | |||
| construct | 6 | 1 | |
| daemon | 2 | ||
| devil | |||
| dragon | 1 | ||
| elemental | |||
| fey | |||
| fiend | 1 | 2 | 15 |
| hag | |||
| leshy | |||
| monitor | 10 | 6 | |
| plant | |||
| ooze | 3 | ||
| undead | 6 | 2 |
By Chapter
| chapter 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1× Time Dragon, "Veksciralenix" | 20 | dragon, time; unqiue | N |
| 5× Hegessiks | 15 | monitor, protean | CN |
| 4× Overdrive Imenteshes | 17 | monitor, protean; rare | CN |
| 1× Gnome, "Blune Bandersworth" | 20 | humanoid, gnome; unique | NE |
| 3× Blune's Illusory Toadies | 16 | protean, incorporeal | CN |
| 1× Nenchuuj | 19 | fiend, sahkil | NE |
| 1× Hestriviniaas | 22 | monitor, protean | CN |
| 3× Hundun Chaos Mages | 18 | aberration | CE |
| 1× Ganzi, "Il’setsya Wyrmtouched" | 18 | ganzi, humanoid | CN |
| chapter 2 | |||
| 1× Agent Of The Gray Queen | 19 | fiend, daemon; rare | NE |
| 3× Slithering Rifts | 18 | ooze, mindless; rare | N |
| 3× Camarachs | 17 | monitor | CN |
| 3× Radiant Warden | 18 | construct | N |
| 1× Living Mural | 19 | construct; rare | CN |
| 5× Ghaeles Of Kharnas | 17 | celestial, azata; rare | CG |
| 2× Adamantine Golem | 18 | construct, golem, mindless; rare | N |
| 2× Lich | 13 | undead; rare | NE |
| 4× Graveknights of Kharnas | 17 | undead; rare | NE |
| 3× Maruts | 16 | monitor, aeon, inevitable | LN |
| 1× Astral Deva, "Ulressia The Blessed" | 19 | celestial, angel; unique | NE |
| 1× Rhevanna, "Mikiros" | 22 | fiend; rare | NE |
| 1× Planetar, "Avsheros The Betrayer" | 23 | celestial, angel; unique | CE |
| chapter 3 | |||
| 2× Agent Of The Gray Queen | 19 | fiend, daemon; rare | NE |
| 1× Chaos Gulgamodh | 21 | construct, mindless; unique | CN |
| 4× Shemhazians (mutilator demon) | 17 | fiend, demon | CE |
| 1× Eremite, "Xirikles" | 20 | fiend, velstrac | LE |
| 2× Excorion Paragon | 18 | undead; rare | NE |
| 1× Daemonic Skinner | 20 | fiend, daemon, humanoid; unique | CE |
| 3× Purrodaemon (War Daemon) | 19 | fiend, daemon | NE |
| 1× Daemonic Preacher | 22 | fiend, daemon, humanoid; unique | NE |
| 1× Alchemical Horror | 21 | aberration | NE |
| 1× Daemonic Infector | 22 | daemon, humanoid; unique | NE |
| 1× Olansa Terimor, "The Gray Queen" | 23 | daemon, humanoid; unique | NE |
| 3× Astradaemon (Void Daemon) | 17 | fiend, daemon | NE |
5. Party Makeup and Composition
On the Paizo Forums, some folks discuss restricting or justifying the various archetypes.
For me, I think my character will be a Shoony Investigator named McGruff.
On Reddit, "u/Blarg96" asks about the possibility of being a mounted character in AoE, the general consensus that this almost-entirely-inside-the-urban-environments-of-Absalom adventure is not really the best setting for a mounted character.
"u/Alvenaharr" asks about an Intimidation build for AoE, which gathers a good few responses.
"u/DM_From_The_Bits" asks about a 5-character party to help with the difficulty of the AP.
5.1. Alchemist
An Alchemist character who is a follower of Norgorber – even in his less-offensive "Blackfingers" aspect – might still create dramatic tension with the party, as it becomes clear early on that the Agents are on the trail of a muder cult of Norgorberites.
A plot point in Book 1 and then the end of Book 3 is the poison called "Blackfinger Blight".
A key event in Book 4 is the "Noxious Retort", a world-class Alchemical conference at the Norgorber temple in Absalom; the PCs will need to infiltrate this conference to advance the plot.
The Temple of Norgorber and its NPCs can be used to great effect to provide foreshadowing, or even just as a downtime location if the PC wants formula, reagents or poisons. Be mindful of the information the PC gives up, and the roles of the NPCs in Book 4, if you go this route.
On the other hand, "DragoldC42" points out that this does lead to lots of enemies with poison resistance…
([Poisoner-archetype was] Bad choice for the AP in retrospect, there are a metric ton of poison resisting enemies in this campaign)
5.2. Champion
There is a non-trivial presence of undead throughout the AP. A Champion who takes Shining Oath will have plenty of opportunity to weave that into their play:
You’ve sworn an oath to put the undead to rest. Add the following tenet to your champion’s code after the other tenets: “You must end the existence of undead you encounter as long as you have a reasonable chance of success; in the unlikely event you find a good undead, you can try to work out a more peaceful way to help it recover from its undead state rather than destroying it in combat, such as helping it complete its unfinished business and find peace.”
As a central part of Book 5 is teaming up with the "zealborn" undead master criminal Miogimo to advance the Agent's interests, this oath can create plenty of dramatic tension to play out, as well.
"u/ccekim" asks about how a LG Champion can reconcile undercover police work with their tenants.
"u/Slow-Host-2449" asks more broadly about oath selection for a Champion. A lot of this discussion is about the enemy types encountered, so see the Enemy Makeup and Composition section of this guide for more detail.
5.3. Gunslinger
5.4. Investigator
5.5. AP-provided Archetypes
5.5.1. Edgewatch Detective (Player's Guide, Level 2)
5.5.2. Jalmeri Heavenseeker Archetype (Book 2, Chapter 3/4, Level 7)
5.5.3. Provocator Archetype (Book 3, Chapter 3, Level 12)
6. Locations and Geography
6.1. Precipice Quarter
6.1.1. Tipsy Tengu
6.1.2. Radiant Festival
There is some confusion about the size of the Precipice Quarter in relation to the Radiant Festival grounds.
First of all, there's a map of the Precipice Quarter. At first I thought it was just a small part of the district but after looking at it closely its general shape seems to fit neatly to the full district. But later I checked the Paizo forums and I saw someone saying that the map is supposed to represent about 25% of the district according to some Paizo staff (there was no specific link to the quote).
In some readings, the map of the Radiant Festival grounds is co-extensive with the Precipice Quarter.
In the correct reading, the Radiant Festival grounds are one smaller part in the south east corner of the Precipice Quarter.
This is clarified in this comment from "Moximus" on the Paizo forums, overlaying the festival grounds at:
While "not directly involved with the Adventure Path", James Jacobs thinks that there's a tyop in the map scale, given Moximus images.
However, if you adopt the former position, you might be interested to see Naurgul's map of a patrol route through the Quarter.
Along with the rest of their excellent maps, narchy provided a version of the festival grounds map…
I made a larger version of the festival grounds map a while ago, and I've finally gone back and finished it.
I have tried to recreate the various attractions as they are described in the books, and also included some areas with regular city buildings as they are needed for various encounters. Also, the festival grounds don't occupy the entire quarter - at least that's my interpretation!
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following related to the Radiant Festival:
6.1.3. Edgewatch Station
The nature of the Edgewatch Station is also up for some interpretation.
In some readings, supported by the text, the Edgewatch precinct station is a run-down, ramshackle affair, quickly constructed. "Moximus" relays some great imagery for their version of the precinct.
In other readings – often correlated with an Edgewatch that can afford to provide a salary to its Agents – the Edgewatch precinct is a newly-constructed building with all the refinements.
Paizo forums users Bast L. and Sovaka have both provided maps of the Edgewatch Station.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following of Edgewatch Station:
6.1.4. Knight's Marvelous Menagerie
6.1.5. Dragonfly Pagoda
6.1.6. Beldrin's Tower
- Beldrin's tower in Precipice Quarter ends up being the place of the final confrontation. It should at least be mentioned earlier, implant the idea of visiting it for a tour while the festival is going on.
6.1.7. Radiant Festival
- The story of how the radiant festival started gets explored in book 6. I had a float featuring the half-angel in the parade
6.2. Foreign Quarter
6.2.1. Irorium / Blood City Games
- Sleepless Suns
- Book 2, Chapter 3
- Copper Hand Hideout
- Book 3
- Irorium / Blood City Games
- The Irorium will be the setting of a big part of book 3. Make sure to mention it a few times. I had Oggrum (one of the gladiators the PCs will have to fight eventually) get a float in the radiant parade advertising his exploits.
6.3. Ascendant Court
- Godless Graycloaks
- Book 2, Chapter 4
- The Catacombs, Skinsaw Cultists, The Skinner
- Book 4
- Temple to Norgorber, Noxious Retrort
6.3.1. Noxious Retort / Temple of Norgorber
- The Noxious Retort is an annual alchemical conference taking place at the Blackfingers temple. It will be showcased in book 4. Make sure your players learn about it beforehand if they are into alchemy or if they try to learn about Norgorber temples in the city.
—
6.4. The Puddles
- The Muckruckers
- Book 2, Chapter 1
- Smugglers
6.5. The Docks
6.5.1. Crestwatch
Book 3, All or Nothing describes Crestwatch as follows:
Crestwatch is a pinewood boathouse that was raised and converted to serve as the Harbor Guard’s headquarters several hundred years ago. It’s situated on the waterfront between a maze of marinas, overlooking the water from barnacle-crusted pilings. As the district has grown, the building has been augmented with new upper stories for offices and expanded laterally with temporary holding cells and entire warehouses of confiscated evidence. The base of the boathouse has remained largely unchanged: a wide-open storeroom with knotty floorboards and creaking staircases that ascend to the upper halls.
— cite:aoe-paizo-book3#page=9
Absalom: City of Lost Omens describes Crestwatch as follows:
A squat stone building with a 100-foot-high minaret marks the administrative center of the Docks. The Harbor Guard houses its barracks and headquarters on the east side of the building, while the Dock Council contains its meeting chambers and offices on the west side.
— cite:paizo-lost-omens-absalom#page=126
The particulars of the description from Book 3 are not at all important to the plot, and the more-recently-released details from Absalom: City of Lost Omens is probably the "more"-canonical description to use, if you care about such things.
6.6. The Coins
- Token Guard
- Book 2, Chapters 1-2
- Bank leads, Bank Robbery
6.6.1. Lucky Nimbus Casino
- The Lucky Nimbus casino will play a role in book 3. Make sure to mention it exists. I had an elaborate float advertising it in the radiant parade.
6.7. Eastgate
6.7.1. House of the Planes
In Book 1 Chapter 2, the Agents will come to Jeremin Hoff's speakeasy to follow clues.
In Book 5 Chapter 1, the Agents will return to this neutral ground to participate in a negotiation among various gangs.
Book 1 has flavor of the various rooms, but Book 5 has the map. :)
- House of Planes will be revisited in one of the later books. So it should probably be mentioned a few times. In book 2 I had my PCs track down one of the smugglers there after a botched attempt to raid their base of operations.
6.8. Kortos Bay
6.8.1. The Black Whale
- The Black Whale is a prison for important political prisoners that is visited in book 5. Give it a brief mention maybe at some point when appropriate.
6.9. Starwatch, Starwatch Keep
- Starwatch will eventually (in book 3) adopt the PCs and Starwatch Keep is where they'll get some offices of their own. Have them visit it early on if they want or make sure they've heard it at least. Same goes for Fort Tempest, make sure they've heard it exists.
7. NPCs
There are dozens more NPCs throughout Agents of Edgewatch. The following are called out for being a bit more notable than the rest, either because of multiple intersections with the plot, or notable details about how to run them as the GM.
7.1. Primary / Major
7.1.1. Jonis Flakfatter — "The Infector" / "Father Infector" (NE male human high priest 15)
7.1.2. Olansa Terimor — "The Gray Queen" (NE female human city planner, master thief 20)
Olansa Terimor is the ultimate enemy of the Adventure Path. As written the AP only brings her up very incidentally in the first three books, and then has them speak to the Agents in passing at the beginning for Book Four.
On the Paizo Forums, user "OmegaZ" details how they planned to change Terimor to be a more reasonable final boss for the Adventure Path.
"u/Excaliburrover" notes that – quite unfortunately – Paizo does not provide any non-spoilery art of this key NPC, but "u/GeoleVyi" notes that it's not quite as bad as it seems.
7.1.3. Reginald Vancaskerkin — "The Rumormonger" (NE male human entrepreneur 18)
- Vancaskerkin ends up being one of the main antagonists. Make Vancaskerkin prominent, especially through his tabloid Eyes on Absalom. Don't forget to tell the PCs about the frontpages of the paper (especially the ones that they are featured on), invite them for interviews, make them trust him as a partner they can go to ask for help. My players certainly have. For book 2 Vancaskerkin will show up and warn the PCs about Pratchett trying to publish his memoirs from prison to create a favourable impression to the public before his upcoming trial.
"Lord Shark" notes that "The Rumormonger" is a bit too obvious of a name for Vancaskerkin. GayBirdGM shares that that is precisely why they changed it to "The Reaper" for their game, "EdwinM" went with "The Whisperer", and "The ShadowShackleton" went with "The Preacher". "AlastarOG" thinks y'all're overestimating your players. ;)
"u/higoram" posts some OC art of Reginald Vancaskerkin.
7.1.4. Wrent Dicaspiron — "The Skinner" (CE female human cult leader 10)
7.1.5. Lieutenant Grospek Lavarsus, of Edgewatch (LN male human city guard commander 7)
- Lavarsus ends up getting manipulated by the antagonists and arresting the wrong person. Play up Lavarsus as full of pride and incompetent
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following of Edgewatch Station:
7.1.6. Captain Asilia of Gyr, of Starwatch (N female human ranger 12)
A stern-looking human woman with a shock of white hair and an impressive tricorn sits behind a broad, imposing desk. She stands and introduces herself as Captain Asilia of Gyr (N female human ranger 12), leader of Starwatch and commander of the warship Hurricane Wings, and gestures for the agents to sit down, gesturing to the room’s comfortable chairs. — cite:paizo-aoe-book3#page=6
7.1.7. Captain Shristi Melipdra, of the Sleepless Suns (LG male human guard captain 7)
7.1.8. Wynsal Starborn (LG male human acting primarch of Abasalom 17)
7.2. Secondary / Minor
7.2.1. Ama Uomi (LN female human architect 3)
Introduced in Book 1 Chapter 2, Ama returns briefly in Book 6 Chapter 1 to help the Agents if they were kind to her in Book 1.
7.2.2. Blune Bandersworth (NE male gnome architect, ex-thief, and illusionist 20)
7.2.3. Hendrid Pratchett (CE male half-elf serial killer 6)
While Pratchett is the BBEG of Book 1, they are fundamentally disconnected from the events in the AP, and as such are only a minor NPC.
I have to say, Hendrid Pratchett is one of the scariest and abhorrent monsters I've ever seen for Pathfinder. Facing this guy is worse than facing a Shoggoth, at least you expect the eldritch horror to come if facing one of them or know that they're around.
This guy is an act to follow for Chaotic Evil Villians, he's a charismatic manipulator to where he's easily so trustworthy to any person that would interact with him, yet so demented that the more you begin to peel away at his alibi and hotel, the darker tones start to kick in and break away at you mentally with each of his heinous crimes.
His form of revenge on getting hit with a mug is peeling away the skins of the four adventurers or mentally torturing two people to kill each other and make fake escape attempts that end up in vain, only for them to become scarred that they can't even trust the help that comes to save them. The fact that he keeps Ralso tied psychologically by having two dolls to act as her replacement sisters and his other demented works of art. And let's not forget the two ghosts he keeps as children to see him as a father figure.
James, congratulations. I am literally scared of this guy.
7.2.4. Sergeant Moldun Ollo (LG male dwarf senior officer 8)
In contrast to the blowhard Captain Lavarsus, Sgt. Ollo keeps Edgewatch Headquarters running, and is likely to be a friend and ally to the Agents.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following:
7.2.5. Detective Desdelen "Skinny" Bolera (NG female half-elf investigator 6)
Introduced in Book 1, the GM is encouraged to use Bolera at a few points throughout the AP, but is never more than a minor NPC.
The AP-specific "Edgewatch Detective" Archetype has a Feat named after Bolera: Bolera's Interrogation.
7.2.6. Corporal Kerr Batiste (NE female human officer 8)
Presented in Book 1, Corporal Batiste is described as corrupt, which presents the NPC as either a foil or resource to the agents later in the AP.
7.2.7. Cass Hamish, of the Garrote Sisterhood (N female human assassin 16)
Cass Hamish is one of the notable npcs in the House of the Planes in Book 1, Chapter 3, and can come back again in her professional capacity in Book 5, Chapter 1.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following of Cass Hamish of the Garrote Sisterhood.
7.2.8. Ziraya Al-Shurati, of the Muckruckers (LN female human investigator 7)
7.2.9. Captain Runewulf "The Unbeliever", of the Godless Graycloaks (N male human barbarian 13)
"as he is more colloquially known, Runewulf the Unbeliever." — cite:paizo-aoe-book2#page=28
7.2.10. Kekker and Gref (LE male ratfolk smugglers 2)
Encountered as smugglers in the undercity in Book 1 Chapter 3, Kekker and Gref can come up again in the alchemical conference "The Noxious Retort" in Book 4 Chapter 1.
7.2.11. Gage Carlyle (N male human casino owner 11)
- Book 3, Chapter 2
- Owner and proprietor of the Lucky Nimbus Casino
7.2.12. Maurissa Jonne (N female human ex-brawler / gang leader 10)
7.2.13. Franca Laurentz (CN female elf bio-terrorist 13)
7.2.14. Lord Ganfen of House Kethlin (N male human administrator 12)
7.2.15. Jeremin Hoff (LE male human power broker 13)
Introduced in Book 1 Chapter 3, Hoff will come back up in Book 5 Chapter 1, but is generally not a plot-critical character.
7.2.16. Ralso (NE female half-orc thief 4)
7.2.17. Harlo Doleen (?? male human adjutant to Wynsal Starborn ??)
- Harlo Doleen ends up getting murdered which is a major plot point and twist. I made him be an acquaintance to one of the PCs. The PC used to be a slave and Harlo used to be his master. They have an awkward relationship now after not seeing each other for more than 3 years.
7.2.18. Kayln Pounch (NE female human priest of Blackfingers 12)
7.2.19. Miogimo (CE male zealborn criminal mastermind 17)
7.2.20. Il'Setsya Wyrmtouched (CN female ganzi arcanist 18)
7.2.21. Festival Committee / Grand Council
- Some members of the festival committee and the grand council will end up playing major roles in the final books. So they should be introduced and interacted with early. I had my PCs give a brief 5 minute presentation in front of the radiant festival committee at the palace in Wise Quarter about their discovery of a potential bank heist plot.
Specifically the following notable NPCs are members of the Festival Committee and/or Grand Council:
7.2.22. Godless Graycloaks
It's not quite stated strongly enough in the Player's Guide that the Godless Graycloaks are explicitly and strictly atheist.
8. Plot
8.1. General
- Though limited by being created before the final two books were published, on the Paizo forums, "IcedMilk" outlines some of the larger plot threads that might warrant foreshadowing.
- On reddit, in thread titled "Advice on starting", "u/ognir-rrats" asks for advice for folks starting the AP. This is a mix of general Pathfinder 2E tips, plus a bit of detail on the encounters in the first few chapters, and the AP overall.
- "u/Laz_r_us91" asks about jumping into Book 2 at 5th Level. "u/DramFan" asks about how/where/when to integrate a party at 5th level into the AP.
- "u/Madomb01", has a clever idea involving the players applying to be Edgewatch Agents at Level 0 and going through basic training.
- "u/Meamsosmart" recounts some details of completing the entire AP as a character.
- "u/Excaliburrover" – a name appearing throughout this guide's citations – posts "GM finished Agents of Edgewatch AMA" on Reddit.
8.2. Book 1: "The Devil in the Dreaming Palace"
8.2.1. Title … spoilers, Paizo!
Just the name of this book is a spoiler combined with the fact that the Party meets Pratchett, who identifies himself as the owner of The Dreaming Palace in literally the first encounter the PCs have in the game. :( Even Players who are not trying to spoil themselves might come across the book name on the internet, including AoN.
Since you can't change the book name, there are a couple of options:
- Rename the "Dreaming Palace" hotel. The name is not particularly important … feel free to change it.
- Skip the Pratchett+Ralso encounter in the Tipsy Tengu entirely (see [FIXME] link to below).
8.2.2. Book 1, Chapter 1: "The Mean Streets of Absalom"
- Noise Complaint / Tipsy Tengu
As mentioned earlier, the title of the book matches the name of the hotel that the primary atagonist tells the party in their very first encounter.
It's a strange decision the AP authors made, here.
Changing the name of the "Dreaming Palace" will preserve the suspense throughout the book, and is recommended.
Also, just skip the encounter with Pratchett and Ralso in the Tipsy Tengu entirely.
The encounter serves two purposes:
Foreshadow Pratchett. There is no particular need to do so, and this extremely brief encounter doesn't particular serve to do so well in any case.
The chance encounter with the book villain in the very start is a bit too obviously foreshadowing- seeing the owner of the dreaming palace in an adventure named this way does not give much room to doubt. I found it not really disrupting, as the players could make some disconnect, but for another GM I would advise to just change the name of Pratchett's hotel.
- Provide a reason why the skins of the drunk adventurers are flayed and hanging in Pratchett's trophy room (they broke his nose). Pratchett has plenty of motivation to kill anyone he wants (he's a sadistic serial-killer dick-hole), so there's no need to motivate this.
Smoagendash II describes some interesting variations they made in this first book.
Posting on Reddit, u/Kraydez provides a link to their remake of the Tipsy Tengu map, in DungeonDraft.
- Missing Persons
- "Panic at the Zoo" / Knight's Marvelous Menagerie
The Menagerie encounter has a bit of a reputation for being rough.
You have some options.
- the deadly zoo encounter- which includes two different monsters with the ability to petrify the party as well as a buffed rust monster, against which the party has to pace without a real chance to take 10 minutes of rest- is too much for most level 1 parties, including mine.
I gave my players the option to just tie up the monsters with rope after a successful grapple check, and this gave a much easier win condition to the combats while still being hard enough considering they had to go all over the zoo with no rests.
Responding to a concern from "Johnico" that the Rusty fight is "crazy", Deadmanwalking notes that rust monsters are generally offensively weak, so if actions are used correctly, it should balance out okay.
u/darkboomel asks about how reasonable it is to nerf Book 1, Chapter 1 enemies, then follows up a couple of weeks later, describing how they re-tooled this part of the AP.
- Blackfinger Blight
Blackfinger Blight is introduced in Book 1 Chapter 1 as the cause for the behavior of the animals in the Menagerie.
The zoo creatures themselves are acting unusually aggressive, with a starting attitude of hostile. This is the result of a rage-inducing serum called blackfinger blight. An agent of Jonis Flakfatter, one of the city’s high priests of Norgorber (and an important antagonist later in this campaign), tested his latest formulation by introducing the contagion into the animals’ water supply. — cite:paizo-aoe-book1&page=13
It doesn't show up again until it plays a part in the climax of Book 3.
If your part contains an Alchemist, you might want to insert some detail for them to learn.
- The Graveraker goes missing
The AP makes a point of the Graveraker going missing at this point.
It is extremely easy for a/ you to miss this point here in the text and b/ for the party to not notice the detail; it's another piece of foreshadowing that can get a bit lost.
The Graveraker does not come up again until Book 4, but is an important plot point much later in the AP; the party will have a critical encounter within its strange extra-dimensional interior!
Many folks recommend making more of a point of it.
- The Graveraker becomes an important plot point in the 4th and 6th books, Yet after it disappears somewhere in the start of this book, no mention of it exists in the AP for three whole books- at least not in a way major enough to remind the players it exists. My group totally forgot about it by the point the twists happened. I would advice all GMs running the AP to find ways to bring the Graveraker up a few times. Also, no art of the Graveraker exists in the AP at all. I would have really liked to see what it is like!
OmegaZ planned to stage an event to make its disappearance conspicuous to all.
GreatGraySkwid disagrees a bit, and has some good perspective about the Gravewalker going missing…
The whole point of Graveraker's disappearance happening off camera is so that the actually qualified Agents of Edgewatch (i.e., not "our" party) can be dedicated to tracking down an established and well-known exhibit of the Festival, leaving our teams of rookie misfits to investigate a batch of people who may or may not actually be missing. If you emphasize it happening in front of your team, it's goes from being a Chekov's gun to a massive red herring, as you get them all riled up wanting to pursue a mystery there are no leads for them to follow and no way you can allow them to solve until several books later.
- The Graveraker will show up again in book 4. Show Bolera working on the Graveraker case. In my game, she's slowly uncovering some clues like mentioning that she thinks it was no coincidence that the zoo attack and the Graveraker theft happened at the same time, interviewing the inventor and making some vague references about a missing power source and the involvement of the radiant festival committee
- XP
8.2.3. Book 1, Chapter 2: "Missing Persons" / The Dragonfly Pagoda
Unofficial Errata The encounters in Chapter 2 are spec'ed for a level 2 party, so level the party to level 2, no matter what the guide at the front of the book says.
Bast L. notes that if the Agents try to do the right thing and negotiate with Doopa, as-written, they're then thrown into a beyond-extreme encounter. Downthread, LarsC has an idea.
8.2.4. Book 1, Chapter 3: "Into the Undercity" / House of the Planes
- The Back Door
The drug "grolna" referenced in Chapter 3 is not at all significant to the plot of the AP.
- The House of the Planes
This section is intended to provide leads to Ralso and Pratchett, and to tie the missing stone masons to Ralso.
As written, it is extremely heavy-handed. Literally every NPC knows something absurdly relevant about Pratchett or Ralso.
In terms of priority, the following things "must" happen here:
The party should meet Reginald Vancaskerkin, and ideally they should like him.
- Reginald Vancaskerkin is described in the book as someone who is "oily, nosy, and of questionable moral fiber", while the later books seem to think he has become a fan and friend of the party, at least until he backstabs them. I would advice playing him as someone who your players would like, and not a walking red flag as my reading of the first book alone implied to me.
- The party should find out that Ralso fenced some Minkainan stone mason tools, and she works at the Dreaming Palace.
- [Read The Alexandrian and invent two more clues, in case they don't find that one.]
Everything else is gravy.
- While Hoff will come back up later in the AP (Book 5), Hoff is not a plot-critical character.
- Book 5 does have a map of the House of the Planes, and I'll recommend using it. The location is interesting, even if this is just a social encounter.
"MathNerdGord" provides an alternate puzzle – a "reskinned knights/knaves type puzzle" – for this section if you think your party will find the one in the book not challenging enough; others follow up with their puzzle variants.
"u/queengodiva" asks for some help on how to run the House of the Planes NPC/infodump, with some good options and feedback presented.
8.2.5. Book 1, Chapter 4: "The Murder Hotel" / The Dreaming Palace
- Content Warning
This dungeon is no joke, either difficulty-wise or thematically … especially thematically.
You should make sure your Players are comfortable with the content here. It's more important to make sure of that than to prevent spoiling things.
Some people are going to have serious problems with – for example – mutated, deformed fetuses kept alive in jars! Some people might have real-life bad experiences with voyeurism or being spied on!
It is of course okay if they do, and it's your job to only challenge them as much as they are comfortable being challenged.
Be kind.
- The Dreaming Palace
u/Excaliburrover has some concerns with the pacing/leveling in the Dreaming Palace, specifically with the hazards that can deliver PCs — basically – directly to the boss 1 level early.
My issue is with the fact that the players are supposed to get from lvl 3 to lvl 4 mid dungeon but there are 2 occasions in which they might skip right trough. It would be climactic for sure to meet the final boss right away but it would spell the end of them as well
u/Naurgul has some good advice if players get too close to Pratchett too soon…
- First of all, the PCs aren't that likely to fall into the pit traps, especially the second one leading directly to the chamber next to Pratchett. After falling into one or two traps they will probably stop barging into the rooms haphazardly.
- Second, they can always run away upstairs. Just make sure to use descriptions to give them subtle hints that Pratchett lies behind that final door.
"u/kenvalbrandur" has a question about Pratchett's office layout.
"u/UnfortunateHyrbrid" asks for some Dreaming Palace help, and receives it in spades.
"u/murshawursha" asks if the whole AP is as hard as Book 1 and The Dreaming Palace in particular.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following related to the Dreaming Palace:
- Hendrid Pratchett
- Ralso
- Ralso in the Dreaming Palace lobby
- Pratchett's Dungeon – Pratchett only
- Pratchett's Dungon – Pratchett and the Binumir
On the Paizo forums, user Kneymo describes how they went radically off-script, and converted the entirety of The Dreaming Palace towards a different theme.
- Hendrid Pratchett encounter
Experiences with this encounter vary, but it is a Severe 4 encounter, and based on the time and physical constraints of this dungeon crawl, the party will likely be encountering Pratchett with below-full health and limited resources (consumables, spells) remaining.
On reddit, u/SanityIsOptional suggests a varied action spend from Pratchett to help smooth the encounter for the PCs:
From my experience running him: Make sure he's spending actions to move around and using intimidate on the players. Essentially eat up his actions on thematic and interesting things that aren't attacks. Especially if they end up harassing the players or making the characters angry at him. He shouldn't be taking the party seriously, and should be trying to taunt them at least in the start of the fight.
This goes both ways, too. As in PF2 generally: the party using actions to force enemies to spend actions is of good utility.
The group i played in managed it. But it was tough as All hell. Try to convince you players to start using stuff like grapple, trip or disarm. Actions wasted because of those are actions he isnt using to kill the players.
The Binumir are also a challenge. As u/narchy notes:
The ghost twins scream is a REALLY nasty one. The fighter and champion in our group failed the save, which means no AoO or Retributive Strike.
The fight gets much easier if the PCs take out the children twin ghosts he has with him with RP instead of fighting. If they are reminded of their former lives they don't attack. So maybe give them a few extra hints about that. For example if they try to recall knowledge on them ask if they use society or religion; a successful society check should be enough to remind them of the twins they read about in their missing persons reports.
And u/larstr0n (GM, Tabletop Gold podcast) recommends using the Binumir the scale the combat on the fly:
If you're concerned about Pratchett, there’s a lot of room to run his ghost twins suboptimally and use them to ratchet the tension up and down depending on what level of peril you’re looking for.
Stepping back a bit, u/Unconfidence finds this encounter "exemplary of the stuff I don't like about Paizo's APs.":
This combat made me think that either the people who made this system really didn't understand the way poison interacts with death & dying, or that I am missing something about it. Because like, going to the ground with persistent damage, that's death. And we certainly had three of our six party members at high levels of Wounded.
It's extremely dicey and pretty exemplary of the stuff I don't like about Paizo's APs. The entire "difficulty" seems to be in high numbers and a serious risk of a few bad rolls dooming a character or a party, despite any of their best choices. I would seriously suggest any DM running this consider putting Alchemical Antidotes or something of the sort somewhere in the Inn, or I dunno, something.
[On Rebalancing]
I had six PCs so I added an extra "body" to the Binumir (like an eatin, I gave them both two actions) and a few Zrukbats to the encounter, just to give them some more bodies to deal with
"u/memnoch_87" asks how the party is supposed to handle Pratchett.
- Pratchett Escape/Chase
Here's some potential obstacles for this chase scene along with some example checks that the characters could use to bypass them:
- secret door closes behind him (acrobatics to jump in before it closes, athletics to hold it open, thievery to re-open)
- flaming mass (acrobatics to jump through, athletics make a path, or they can just walk through it and take some damage)
- Pratchett throws down the shelves with the jars in E31 (Athletics to throw them out of the way, Acrobatics to squeeze through the gaps, maybe some spell)
- leftover monsters attack (acrobatics to tumble through, Athletics to shove away, recall knowledge or deception to distract them)
8.3. Book 2: "Sixty Feet Under"
8.3.1. Book 2, Chapter 1: "The Unusual Suspects" / Bank Robbery Investigation
While ultimately pretty linear, this chapter has a bit of an open-world / sandbox feel, putting choice into the party's hands.
is a very strong point in this book- a less structured investigation sequence gave an almost "open world" feeling while playing, with the party able to choose the pace and theorize on where the robbery will take place. Running this section was a lot of fun for me!
Instead of being given all the leads they are at the beginning of this book […]
Instead of being given all the leads they are at the beginning of this book, they instead only learn from Ralso that there's a group of thieves called the Copper Hand who are definitely planning to rob a bank using the radiant parade as a cover. From there I'm expecting the players come up with the following lines of investigation more or less on their own:
- Get the route of the parade and compare it with the addresses of known banks: This will yield them a number of banks that are possible targets. I'm planning to include the 3 possible targets mentioned in the original but I'm also adding "Chadraxa's cheap loans" and "Vault of Abadar" as banks that the parade will pass by, maybe even some more.
- Investigate the possible targets: This should be largely the same as the original except I'm gonna make a point of emphasising how big the Penny & Sphinx garden lawn is and how far away the main bank building is from the road.
- Figure out where security is weakest: That should yield the information that the Token Guard is the most easily corruptible and unscrupulous district guard. (And that the Vault of Abadar is extremely well-guarded and unlikely to be the target)
- Investigate the float makers: Some gathering of information in the Ivy District (where one of my PCs hails from) will yield the information that is available at the tannery in the original story, i.e. an apparatus has been stolen that was used in a play to make it look like Aroden was raising the Starstone out of the ocean.
- Ask the other district watches if they've heard of the Copper Hand: That should yield an answer from the Stilt House. This is similar to the original story, except after they get the ledger at the smugglers' lair, they will not learn the exact location of the heist… but I'm not sure exactly what they should learn, probably something about what kind of supplies the thieves have purchased from the smugglers, e.g. sails and caltrops and stuff.
The final clue is the new PC joining the ranks. […]
In response to a question about how to recover if Droan burns the incriminating secret journal, Naurgul outlines multiple ways to do so.
At this point, some people notice that not all the toolbox items are actually included in the pre-written adventure path, such as the Ethersight ring. Michael Sayre suggests having Rohka Stoneswarn give it to the PCs to help with her ether spider problem.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following related to the smuggling ring encounter:
8.3.2. Book 2, Chapter 2: "A Penny Saved" / Bank Robbery
The robbery itself is okey - The robber's plan is kinda silly and they are bound to fail, but it felt good having the party stop them and save the day anyway. I feel that a GM taking the time to improve this scene could make it into a much better moment than I had.
I expect my party will stand guard at the PS&T, and BOLO for greasepaint/clowns, or anything that might get them over the fence.
It started off by wanting to provide some drama/tension with some red-herring floats. Taking clues from many other posters here and on reddit, I also wanted to incorporate some entities/foreshadowing from the AP.
[…]
Then it came to some "filler" floats. I figure the Parade has order-of-175 floats, takes about 3 hours, and has a ~12mi route in order to hit all the districts/quarters.
Naurgul offered their details, too, and GreatGraySkwid supplemented with a number of business and locations from the Pathfinder Chronicles Guide to Absalom.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following related to the Bank robbery:
"GreatGraySkwid" offers…
I wanted a tile of a mast w/ sails to drop on the map during the bank robbery but couldn't find one, so I hacked this together in the GIMP, and thought I'd share it in case anyone else might want it:
Paizo forum user "Naurgul" detailed their extensive expansion of the bank robbery investigation.
8.3.3. Book 2, Chapter 3: "Caught Copper-Handed" / Copper Hand Hideout Takedown
felt a bit disappointing in my group, because there was an expectation that another investigative part would follow the format of chapter 1. But the infiltration into the copper hands hideout was still an enjoyable dungeon. Our unlucky elf rouge got a minor case of lycanthropy from this part though- nothing a visit to a temple could not fix, but this could have messed with some plans.
It's here at the very end of Book 2, Chapter 3 that we learn some pertinent backstory…
For the past few months, she explains, the Copper Hand has worked with a murderer named the Skinner and her cultists under threat of violence. — cite:paizo-aoe-book2#page=27
8.3.4. Book 2, Chapter 4: "Descent into Death" / The Catacombs and The Skinner
You will want to get a read on your group's (dis)like of dungeon crawls for this one. The dungeon itself is already large with prewritten encounters, and the AP does have tables for random encounters in addition.
As the agents explore the Catacombs, keep track of how long the party is spending in the dungeon. For every 8 hours that passes in the game world, there is an 80% chance the agents run into a random encounter. — cite:paizo-aoe-book2#page=31
In the AP's narrative, the missing Graycloaks contingent has been down for "several days"…
"It’s been several days since my team of Graycloaks descended into the Catacombs […]" — cite:paizo-aoe-book2#page=29
…so being down at least a 1-3 days would not be unreasonable.
as a dungeon crawl was too long for our taste. It took us 3 whole 4 hour sessions to get through it. And even with plenty of side quests happening in there it was still a too long section of mostly combat in an otherwise more RP balanced adventure. I would advise any GM's who feel the combat becomes repetitive in their groups to shorten this part- there are enough simple encounters to cut out of it without losing anything important
u/DocTam suggests pushing holy water to help with the crawl, generally:
I think providing/encouraging the party to get Holy Water is the best way to make the dungeon manageable; since it makes the hardest fights much easier. Books 3 and 4 have been much more manegable difficulty wise; so don't despair too much.
Paizo forum user "The Rising Phoenix" has produced a number of 3D renders, including the following related to Chapter 3:
- The dullahan Frefferth and his unholy steed Polora
- The Skinner, Wrent Discaspiron — solo shot of her, partially hidden in the darkness
- The Skinner's Lair (empty)
- The Skinner, in her lair
Tyrrociese and the Ofalth might need specific handling.
As written, they are both level 10 (APL + 3) creatures. In direct combat with the party, even on their own, these are potentially very deadly encounters.
First, the Ofalth.
There are multiple strategies to account for this.
u/larstr0n (GM, Tabletop Gold podcast) strongly advises…
I strongly advise, for that monster, taking the book’s advice and having them engage the ofalth in the next room in battle. In my game,I kept the ooze focused on the party enough to freak them out, and then strung out a kong vs Godzilla fight between the two big bads. This approach kept my party challenges and made for a memorable, cinematic encounter.
"Deriven_Firelion" agrees, the ofalth was brutal, even leveled down.
u/valahan23 has a number of recommendations…
I'm currently running AoE and we finished up the catacombs about a month ago. Overall, I'm not a fan of Book 2. I Think the author is the type who loves theory crafting monsters without really thinking about balance. I first noticed this with the copper hand illusionists in chapter 3 that are supposedly level 5, but are a full wizard/rogue. Their spell DC was higher than the party's optimized level 6 wizard. I'd be fine with that if they weren't also a full blown rogue.
I ended up making some changes to to the eldritch ooze TYRROICESE cause I personally think that monster was just poorly designed. This is pretty much entirely was because the ooze template was used without really looking at how oozes work.
- Not all oozes are immune to slashing/piercing (gelatinous cube), but those that are also have the split trait, basically cutting them in half with the HP split between the two. The benefit to splitting them is that you can then have your caster nuke them with AoE. The eldritch ooze got the benefit of immunities without being able to be split. (So I got rid of these immunities on the eldritch ooze)
- Oozes are usually immune to critical hits/precision damage because they are just a blob of ooze so they don't have specific spots to hit for more damage. The eldritch ooze is a large suit of armor basically being piloted by an ooze. (I removed it's immunity to precision damage with the reasoning that the rogue and investigator would be able to find weak points in the armor to attack)
- Lastly I made his pseudopod burst follow the standard MAP rule. As letting a solo encounter have 3 attacks at +23 when the party's AC is in the high 20s was just insane to me. His chance to crit was way above 50% with an average crit doing around 46 damage.
Even with these adjustments it was a super close fight with most of the party unconscious and the remaining members sitting around 10-20 HP when they defeated it.
Then, Tyrroicese.
the fucking Tyrroicese in book 2 of Agents of Edgewatch is probably the single most bullshit statblock I've seen printed for this game
That said, the fucking Tyrroicese in book 2 of Agents of Edgewatch is probably the single most bullshit statblock I've seen printed for this game, and is a ridiculous encounter for the level it's fought at. I would suggest nerfing it heavily or even just entirely skipping it, as it's got basically no plot relevance and exists solely to grind some PCs down to a fine powder. Let's talk a little about what's wrong with this thing.
It's a PL+3 creature with immunity to piercing, slashing, critical hits, and precision damage. Are you a rogue? Get fucked. Are you an archer? Get fucked. Are you anyone using any weapon that isn't bludgeoning? Get fucked. Did you get lucky and roll two nat 20s on your attacks? Get fucked. It doesn't even split when taking damage it's immune to like other oozes so you can blast it with AoE - nope, it's just immune. Not only that, but it summons an ochre jelly with 1 action and can keep quickening it. It can move 45 feet every round as a free action, ignoring difficult terrain. It can hit three people with its 15-foot reach 2d10+13+1d6 attacks with no MAP for 2 actions. That reach is enough to hit nearly the whole room that it's in. It's got motion sense, so invisibility and darkness and blinding effects won't help. And to top it all off, when it inevitably downs someone, it can subsume them as one action to get 30 HP back and use their fucking feats and abilities. Like, who the fuck designed this and thought it was a fine thing to throw at a level 7 party? As a random irrelevant dungeon boss with no plot relevance other than having eaten one of the stranger guards they were told to find, no less?
Be mindful about what types of damage your party can do, vs. what Tyrroicese is immune to…
That didn't went well in my group. We had two damage dealers in our group at that time, two fighters. One used a great pick and the other used arrow. So that creature was immune to the main damage dealers of the party.
I had to go out of Encounter Mode and we started a skill challange scene… Up to this day my players remember that fight as "how unfair is PF2e". I wished I have removed that creature from the adventure.
Tyrroicese has no senses but motion sense. Therefore I ruled that it will only be able to sense a PC that used a move action on its turn, and a PC that acted in a space Tyrroicese knows about without moving will be hidden from it.
My players figured this out by seeing how the creature reacts (with the help of a recall knowledge from the investigator) and were then able to strategize on that (the monk drew aggro by moving, and the rest stood as still as they could while sniping at the monster)
u/OmniscientIce's party took 3 attempts to take out Tyrroicese, but with a satisfying conclusion…
I pulled out DarkSouls boss fight music for the fight. Made sure to really hype up how scary this thing was and that killing it first try isn't everything.
It took my party three attempts to defeat it. […]
When they finally defeated the monster it felt like an incredible achievement that they'd earned together. They got a ton of XP and then found the remaining GreyCloaks in the next room. I consider the fight a highlight of the dungeon. It just needs to be given the attention and respect the foe deserves.
u/Excaliburrover highlights a problem with The Skinner's "Chain Up" ability at the end of Book 2…
I'm a bit scared for the Chain Up ability of the Skinner written as is. […]
I'm a bit scared for the Chain Up ability of the Skinner written as is. Restrained is a very "1e" condition and my players are not used anymore to not be able to play their turn. Also the DC to get free is abnormally high so you need a teammate to smash the chain for you.
Consensus in the thread is that it is broken, and an Escape DC of 32 is more reasonable.
8.4. Book 3: "All or Nothing"
This is probably my favorite book in the AP! It was the best at not only giving varied scenarios to play in, but also providing GM tools to expand and enhance those parts to their liking.
8.4.1. Book 3, Chapter 1: "Street Justice"
which involves resolving a gang war in the docks has some very flavorful NPCs with interesting personalities, one of which (Maurrisa) Became a recurring NPC in my game. This part is also relatively free in its structure and contains some moral choices to make.
"Billiam8817" makes the good point that Maurissa Jones and the Washboard Dogs are fully aware that they are supplying victims to the Skinsaw's murder cult, which should really put them beyond the pale for being coöperated with. "Evil Paul" agrees, and thinks this needs some "heavy editing" by the GM to make work. "O.W." reiterates that the Agents do not have to work with her, and outlines some tactical options for fighting her.
"Naurgul" nit-picks that in Narchy's map of the Sweeper Schoolhouse map remake, the windows on the east side of the building are not supposed to be boarded up; narchy responds that it'll be corrected in the "inevitable HD remake!" :)
8.4.2. Book 3, Chapter 2: "The House Always Wins"
The casino heist is a very interesting chapter as well. Somehow the casino games given did not translate well into our VTT experience, But the inclusion of so many mechanics and tools to make the heist interesting is just great! I am sure many GM's can make good use of this part- even as inspiration for home games.
AlastarOG's players are interested in making a copy of the vault key. "O.W." provides excuses for saying "no". "KyoYagami068" gins up a new Obstacle to fit the bill…
COPY THE VAULT KEY - OBSTACLE
Infiltration Points 8 (group);
Overcome DC 27 Crafting or Arcana or DC 29 Thievery. At least 2 Infiltration Points has to be gained using Arcana, because the key have arcane runes in it.
"Evil Paul" points out the heist represents the police being tasked to break into a legitimate business without any warrants to steal property. If you even allow this at your table, what if they just say "no"? Some discussion follows in the thread. One idea is to make Gage Carlyle a mobster or mob banker, to provide an excuse for the Agents to make their warrantless expedition, allowing the intended "Oceans Eleven" feel, rather than "legalized theft by agents of the State". "Deriven_Firelion" believes very strongly this does not make any sense with how the rest of the Chapter is detailed; they make some good points. "thewastedwalrus" reminds us that the chapter intro describes why the Agents are tasked to behave as they are.
You can, too, simply give the Agents a warrant, facilitated by Captain Asilia of Gyr of the Starwatch.
A few months later, "Deriven_Firelion" reported how they changed the heist at their table.
The Svartalfar Killers have a 2-action "Spell-Imbued Blade" that looks very similar to a Magus' Spellstrike. You might want to adopt the same MAP penalties as Spellstrike (counts as two attacks applied after the Spellstrike) to keep some fairness.
8.4.3. Book 3, Chapter 3: "Deadly Games"
Gives the characters the task of dealing with a bomb threat in the middle of a gladiator tournament. The scenarios given in the AP itself are quite basic. But the tools provided, the various arena game mechanics and the flavor text-gave me plenty of inspiration to expand this part into a mini tournament arc- which was probably the highlight of the campaign! I highly recommend customizing this part to your group's liking.
I have made another post in the past about a stat problem with the final boss of this chapter- it has a mistake with its AC that makes fighting him a breeze, so you might want to check it out before you run it.
Unofficial Errata: Oggvurm the Merciless is stated with an AC of 24; it should probably be 34, for a level 14 character.
The AP mentions 2 creatures that do not exist in Pathfinder 2E…
Promoted in conjunction with the Radiant Festival, this year’s Blood City Games boasts a wide array of combatants, both humanoid and non-humanoid. Creatures such as a two-headed rukh from Osirion, a miniature barometz raised by druids in Kyonin, and a particularly ornery peluda from the River Kingdoms are featured on the bill. However, most fans are abuzz about the return of the iruxi champion, Oggvurm the Merciless — cite:paizo-aoe-book3#page=48
A rukh is a giant two-headed vulture-like magical beast, that does exist in Pathfinder 1E.
A peluda is a large fire dragon of swamplands and bogs, and has been brought forward to PF2E.
On reddit, u/GamestingWeasly asks if there are any maps for the Irorium, besides the problematic one from the AP. u/Naurgul quotes the AP, which suggests just using a generic map for a subset of the rather large space.
8.5. Book 4: "Assault on Hunting Lodge Seven"
8.5.1. Book 4, Chapter 1: "The Noxious Retort"
After a quick starting dungeon, this chapter including my favorite dungeon experience of the AP. The blackfinger temple- with the convention in it's upper floor, the puzzles, the interesting monsters, and the reasonable length of it- was a very fun dungeon crawl!
8.5.2. Book 4, Chapter 2: "The Gervin Legacy"
In which the agents hole up in a haunted safe house to keep a watch over their prisoner, is another interesting chapter. It is divided into parts which feel tower-defense-like (protecting the house from assassins) and a small dungeon crawl in the basement. After cleansing the haunted house and defending it for so long, my players grew attached to the hunting lodge, so I gave them the deed to the house as a gift from the city as thanks for their service. The fact that the hunting lodge does not cointain any toilet in it became somewhat of a joke in our group, and the players announced they are building one in the house after they acquired it.
Small note about the final boss of this chapter- The lesser death is a tough monster- with its disadvantage aura and high attacks, definitely has a potential to kill a PC. My players have managed to exploit its teleporting reaction to trap it inside the house vault (which I stated to be teleport proof). That was a very proud GM moment for me, and I rewarded their creative thinking with a homebrew item that the lesser death bargained for its freedom.
8.5.3. Book 4, Chapter 3: "A Wonderful Time in Harrowland"
the investigation of harrowland was not interesting for my group. I think that we are all missing the excitement about all the harrow lore in there- so it felt like we were missing half the fun in there. Still, I imagine that for a group with more golarion lore background this could be a nice theme dungeon.
The end of the book features the twist of Reginald framing the party. This did not land that well in my group for a couple of reasons:- The framing plot depends heavily on the Graveraker. About which most of my party forgot by the time they got to this point. Foreshadow it more!- Reginald was obviously evil from the first time they met him. So the reaction was more of "Oh finally he shows he is evil and we an go kick his ass" and not the seemingly intended shock.
8.6. Book 5: "Belly of the Black Whale"
This book has a nice change of pace from the previous ones- The agents have to work now outside the law, as their badges have been taken from them after they were framed. This gave the players many opportunities to test the moral compass of the characters, and how much are they willing to do outside the law to get their goals. Good RP stuff!
8.6.1. Book 5, Chapter 1: "Dishonorably Discharged"
deals with gaining enough favor with a crime lord to get the secrets on how to break out the Starborn from the Black Whale prison. Miogimo the crime lord is a good [foil] to the agents, showing how taking justice into their own hands can make them end up. Overall, the chapter gives plenty of roleplay moments to shine.
8.6.2. Book 5, Chapter 2: "Belly of the Black Whale"
Unofficial Errata: The Unfettered Mark ritual is an order of magnitude too expensive.
is about the jailbreak from the black whale prison. The dungeon itself in there is decent, but I needed to put extra work in to make it feel more like a prison. Things like patrol routes, and more details about the day to day management of the prison are lacking the way they are presented in the adventure, I think this section could benefit from some clearer details.
After the prison break, the chapter goes again into a bit of an investigation- where the agents need to find the evidence to clear their names and catch Vancaskerkin, in my group at least we mostly glossed through this part, because some details and npc's presented in the chapter were not working well with the way things occurred in my game. This still seems like a nice scenario.
8.6.3. Book 5, Chapter 3: "The Rumormonger’s Stronghold"
is the clockwork dungeon of Vancaskerkin. The dungeon itself is quite cool to run. There are different difficulty levels for many encounters, some cool monsters and a few secrets to discover. Reginald himself was a bit underwhelming (At least to the power level of my party), My solution was giving him 2 clockwork abilities at once, instead of just one, to up the danger- worked quite well for me!
Another great thing about the showdown with Vancaskerkin is the alternative win condition against him- instead of killing the villain, the players have an option of resolving the conflict by exchanging his mind using a machine he has build. My party went for this option, and Regi-mouse became a cannon part of our Golarion.
In my opinion, the fight against Reginald felt like it should have been the final one of the AP. He was behind all the troubles the agents faced so far, and by defeating him, clearing their names and redeeming Starborn in the eyes of the public, the agents can feel satisfied with their victory. I'll explain my reasons for this below- but to keep a strong thematic sense, I would advise to finish the campaign here- and avoid part 6. It is a perfectly self-contained ending by this point.
8.7. Book 6: "Ruins of the Radiant Siege"
Sadly, this last part of the AP is also the weakest in it. It has many interesting ideas, but I'm afraid that as written, it feels off from the rest of the AP, and does not contribute much to the story other than continuing it to level 20.
Firstly, the big villain is someone who was basically invisible to the players! Olansa shows up one time before this book, and this is just to shake the characters hands and go away. At least the AP makes her presence clear enough to the GM before this point, so some foreshadowing can be added- but this is work the GM cannot be aware of unless they kept reading ahead, in detail, and realize Olansa is not properly foreshadowed anywhere. It feels especially hollow facing Olansa after defeating Reginald- who was there plotting since the start of the game, and the characters have a really good reason to hate.
This could be a minor thing should Olansa have been an interesting villain, but as she stands in the book, she has no motivations. Her backstory seemed shallow, it is unclear what, if anything, she would do should the characters fail to dethrone her- the book gives no clue for us. It is unclear what her motivation to take the throne is other than to get more power. This came off to me very one dimensional and boring.
Thanks to a suggestion I saw in the Paizo forums, I altered her in my home game to have the plan to steal the whole city of Absalom into a demiplane, where she can rule it with an iron fist forever. But if you run it as is from the book, she is stated to do next to nothing but sit in her tower and wait to be defeated, other than maybe messing up some beurocracy in the city.
Secondly- This part of the adventure is a major change in tone from the rest of the AP.This is even said on page 3 of the book, where the writer explains the agents are now too strong for criminals to be a problem for them. So they should retrain their social skills and get ready for some extraplanar monsters popping in their way. I feel it's a bad note to finish a campaign focused on using diplomacy to solve problems by throwing hordes of daemons and crazed proteans at the party, and would have much preferred the adventure to stick to the spirit of the previous books.
The chapters themselves are basically 3 big dungeon crawls, with no goals other than to clear them out and get the relevant plot cupon. To the adventure's credit, the design of the dungeons is interesting, but as someone who likes shorter- more concise dungeons, They felt like they are dragging on too much, with plenty of filler fights and encounters over the xp budget. Filler fights are a common thing in any AP, but a book comprised of mostely filler fights is dull to run in my opinion.
8.7.1. Book 6, Chapter 1: "Runaway Excavator"
has a dungeon happening inside a giant mech. This is a very cool idea, and one that was foreshadowed before with the Graveraker (Though, not too well). The most disappointing thing to me about this part, is that we never got any detail's on how the Graveraker even looks, not to speak about any illustration. Without those, it was hard to make sense of the situation, it felt undefined in a disappointing way.
This dungeon also features the crazed proteans- who are stated to attack the characters on sight, and no alternative means of defusing the situation are given to the players, not even some reasonable solution like promising to free them. I chose to allow such a solution to my players. But without it there was next to no content in this dungeon as most of the rooms are fights with said proteans.
Another thing happening in this chapter is the introduction of Il’setsya Wyrmtouched, who appears out of nowhere to give the party their next quest location, and escorts the party as a GMPC from then on. I chose to leave her out of my game, and tie the plot advancement to other things .GMPC is an idea I dislike, and it felt cheap to me to make the plot development of a story nearing its end happen by a random character appearing out of thin air.
I also think that actually using her as written- where she has some "triggers" later on In the book which cause her to act in a rash way and probably against the interest of the party, and also possibly steal the show in the final bossfight weather the party took her in or not- would be frustrating to deal with as a player. I'm sure some GMs can pull this off well, but I am not one of them.
8.7.2. Book 6, Chapter 2: "The Radiant Spark"
In this chapter, the party needs to delve into another dungeon- the ruins of an ancient fort constructed by an evil archmage bent on conquering Absalom with an army of mind controlled angels- in order to find the item that will allow them to face the final boss.
Before entering the dungeon, there is a section involving the use of the research mechanics. Where the party needs to balance spending more days getting prepared to the dungeon and gaining advantages in it with the risk of getting caught by the deamonic agents of Olansa.The way my game played out; the agents had too much stress on them to be able to research calmly for days as the adventure assumes- so we largely ignored this mechanic. But this is a cool concept.
The dungeon itself is nice. Though for some weird reason, the majority of creatures and hazards in it have access to some variation of the prismatic spray spell. So the dark tone of the location, at least in my group, was hurt a bit by having rainbows assault the characters every fight.Also, there seems to be an issue with the room size in the map- for example a room meant to house 3 gargantuan creatures is physically too small to contain them.
The boss of this chapter- a fallen planetar- has a problem in his stats. He possesses regeneration that can only be deactivated by evil damage, something which the lawful good party, Which the players guide instructs to make, will have no access to, meaning the PCs are unable to kill him in most conceivable groups. I decided to ignore this fact and just treat it as fast healing, not sure if there was a good reason to have it there in the first place.
8.7.3. Book 6, Chapter 3: "The Gray Queen's Tower"
Dungeon number 3 in this book is an assault on the tower where the main villain is sitting and… going slowly insane, waiting to be killed. Really this calls for a change from the GM.For me, I upped the stakes by having Olansa launch a daemon attack on the citizens of the city- and the players have to stop her before she kills everyone.
The cool part about this dungeon, is the boss rush nature of it. To get to the final boss, the agents combat against the reincarnations of the 3 bosses from earlier in the campaign. (There are also many filler fights in this chapter, which serve no purpose in my opinion- the players are level 20, they don’t need to grind anymore.)
As written the boss rushs are cool fights, with enough to challenge the 20th level characters, the only thing I would change in there is to enlarge a bit the rooms they are found in, because they are too small for a dynamic fight to take place in them.
The problem is, these fights are not going to run as written, unless your players specifically avoid it there is an easy way to steamroll this entire dungeon-The artifact the players gained in the end of chapter 2 allows them to indefinitely mind control all the daemons present in there. I let my players have some fun with the pokemon-esqe gameplay of capturing all the demons (actually demon capturing sounds more like SMT but I digress) , until I had to ask them by the end to not use the artifact they were given- or the game would not be fun.
Olansa as a final boss is also quite unimpressive. Her ability to turn invisible even to see invisibility feels cheap, and the poison on her weapon- Teats of death- Is irrelevant to the combat because of its 1-minute onset time. Even with her artifact equipped she is just not a very interesting or challenging opponent as written. I heavily altered it for my session and would advise doing the same to any other GM to make sure the ending of the campaign is properly epic.
9. Resources
9.1. Chat
9.2. Actually Plays
9.3. Missing Persons Casefiles
On their blog, Paizo published "Edgewatch Cold Case #1556.1, Evidence A" in July 2020, a letter discovered under a table in the Tipsy Tengu, a piece of evidence regarding one of the missing persons that form the basis of the mystery in Book 1.
On the Paizo forums, "OmegaZ" summarizes the missing persons as outlined by the book, and "Naurgul" offers a list of detail beyond the handful of Missing Persons cases described in the AP…
Date: 2 Sarenith 4720
Name: Archibald Knight & Minera Frum
Description: Owner and vet of menagerie. They used to elope together but always returned on the same day. Their last outing was a week ago and they still haven't showed up.
Witness: Remy, zookeeper
Date: 1 Sarenith 4720
Name: Kemeneles
Description: Taldan wizard. Studied at Arcanamirium decades ago. Possible connection with another mage from his days there. Case should be moved to Learned Guard, it's their jurisdiction.
Witness: Eunice, apprentice wizard
Date: 28 Sarenith 4720
Name: Cody
Description: homeless
Witness: Esker of Ormuz
GM Notes: Esker did not witness the disappearance with her own eyes but knows Cody -despite her warnings- used to beg the passerby to take him with them and feed him / house him. She suspects the Aspis Consortium is behind the disappearance.
[…]
Inspired by this, jsled offers their list, as well.
GreatGraySkwid's players created a full-on murderboard to track the details. :)
On the Paizo forums, "Chan Wakhan" links to some player handouts for the missing persons case notes. This was also posted to Reddit.
9.4. "Eyes on Absalom"
GreatGraySkwid "reworked" the front page of Eyes on Absalom for their campaign…
I have reworked the Eyes On Absalom front page to tie into my campaign, with the conceit that it's published the morning after the Dreaming Palace raid, and so just covers pre-Chapter 4 events. My intent is to use it in Lavarsus's debrief, that he's furious they apparently leaked details of ongoing investigations to Vancaskerkin and made themselves out to be heroes in the process (something that is entirely Reginald's doing, not that it matters). Should be fun, and wanted to share before my session this Saturday (constructive criticism encouraged!): Eyes On Absalom, Desnus 20, 4720
"AlastarOG" created "an elaborate stream of [articles]" for their game, for your inspiration.
9.5. Journal Entries / Notes / Handouts
9.5.1. Book 1 Chapter 4: Pratchett's Journal
u/corpboy has shared a 16-page original creation that is Pratchett's journal, encountered next to his dungeon in the basement of the Dreaming Palace. It includes references into some other world lore, as described in the reddit thread.
9.5.2. Book 2 Chapter 1: Investigation Leads
9.6. Maps
9.6.1. narchy's maps
User narchy has provided a full collection of all the maps, "remastered". They're quite nice.
I have finished the final book of the awesome Agents of Edgewatch AP, which brings to an end 7 months of working on these maps! I may go back and tweak a few of the earlier ones, but uiltimately I am really happy with how these turned out.
You can download them (books 1-6) from Google Drive for you to use as you wish.
The maps for all books are also available as Foundry VTT module, containing all the scenes with walls/doors/windows etc.
As always, feedback welcome! If you want to contribute to my Pathfinder book buying addiction, a coffee is always appreciated - www.ko-fi.com/narchymaps :)
Assets are from www.forgotten-adventures.net
9.6.2. Edgewatch Station
9.6.3. Tipsy Tengu (Book 1, Chapter 1)
9.6.4. Knights Marvelous Menagerie (Book 1, Chapter 1)
9.6.5. House of the Planes (Book 1, Chapter 3; Book 5, Chapter 1
Note that while no map is provided when this location is encountered in B1C3, a proper encounter is located here in Book 5, and a map is provided there.
9.6.6. Copper Hand Hideout (Book 2, Chapter 3)
9.6.7. Catacombs (Book 2, Chapter 4)
9.7. Audio / Background / Ambiance
In Discord, "Naurgul" outlines their audio selections for Book 1:
for general Absalom vibe I am using the album Antakya (by the band Quandro Nuevo) https://youtu.be/Rhw5djhjbvg?list=OLAK5uy_kD5znh6GPMgEkCpeCIt7DsmSXnCHvpa6g for example the tracks "Antakya No.1" and "Antakya No.2" for strolling through the city, "Inside the Orthodox Church" for temples, Dadachi No.1 & No.2 for meetings, especially in social places like taverns, "Antiochia" for when mysteries arise etc. for book 1 specifics I've used: Lavarsus chastising the PCs: full metal alchemist (old series) OST 3 "carefree" https://youtu.be/KUGfSGCmVGA tavern brawl: antakya quadro nueveo "dance through the tavern" https://youtu.be/Rn58xhYA-IY patrol: mediaeval baebes Worldes Blysse "Erthe upon erthe" cockatrice: Naruto Movie 2 Official Soundtrack "21 - Suna Bunshin" owlbear: Shadow of the Colossus - "Grotesque Figures" Piano https://youtu.be/q-rXHfu_-OM the bastard: Over the Garden Wall OST "03 - You Have Beautiful Eyes" detective bolera theme: Dexter OST "10 - Can't Hide" pagoda strike: Tooth and Tail OST "01 The Food of Beasts" https://youtu.be/GXnImIYY68k pagoda fight: full metal alchemist ost 1 "12 - infiltration" undercity exploration: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood OST 1 "18 - Beneath the City" https://youtu.be/5UJ6U_wwMbo undercity fight: Celeste B-Sides "02. Old Site (Black Moonrise Mix)" https://youtu.be/6eeIEMOQw4s house of planes: planescape torment ost tavern, bastion ost sole regret, tooth and tail ost fuel of the firebrand murder hotel: the normal floors were basically all from the over the garden wall soundtrack (for example my players loved this combat music https://youtu.be/XCTsH7yXdxg and the auntie laurna theme was used for ralso exposition) the basement was a mix between over the garden wall and dexter soundtrack
9.8. Landing Pages
9.9. Art, Fiction and Original Content
9.9.1. "Wrent's Confession", Book 2/3 Transition by KM Kovalcik ("u/zombkat")
On reddit, KM Kovalcik (u/zombkat) posted a bit of fiction detailing the crimes of Wrent Dicaspiron, set in the interstitial between Books 2 and 3.
My players are about to move onto book 3, and I was unhappy with Wrent confessing a whole bunch of story stuff off-screen. My players did not interrogate her themselves, and I wanted some time to do some fiction writing. I wrote out her confession as if being interviewed by a priest of Sarenrae who wanted to see if it was possible to redeem her, or at the very least determine if her ramblings were truthful.
9.9.2. "Agents of Edgewatch as a 90s TV show", from "narchy"
narchy created the following videos for their group:
9.9.3. "Agents of Edgewatch - Murder Hotel" by "BlackZack"
9.9.4. Vancaskerkin by "u/higoram"
9.10. Journals and Blogs
In May 2022, u/Kwintak announced a Facebook journal/blog on running the AP, which appears to have stopped updating in December 2022.
10. Unofficial Errata
10.1. Player's Guide
A curious sort named Efrixes askes on the Paizo Forums about a "hamster-like creature is on page 2 in the player's guide?". Ron Lundeen clarifies that it was "cut for space".
10.2. Book 1, Chapter 1
- The name of the pub in the first encounter is referred to as "the Arcadian" in the description of Pratchett on page 89 of Book 1, but it is the "Tipsy Tengu" everywhere else, of course.
10.3. Book 1, Chapter 2
- The encounters in Chapter 2 are spec'ed for a level 2 party, so level the party to level 2, no matter what the guide at the front of the book says.
- The wings on the Dragonfly Pagoda are backwards.
10.4. Book 2, Chapter 3
10.5. Book 2, Chapter 4
- In D15 (Sanctuary), one of the cadets is listed as "Kirsta Malopedes" but referred to later in the text as "Cadet Pennington". — cite:paizo-aoe-book2#page=41
War Razors are listed in stat blocks as doing "piercing" damage; it should be "slashing".
OK, I thought I was losing my mind reading through the Sanctum, last night […]
OK, I thought I was losing my mind reading through the Sanctum, last night, but War Razors are typoed consistently in this book as being Piercing weapons. AoN has them as Slashing, as is, of course, the only reasonable option.
- The Escape DC for The Skinner's "Chain Up" ability seems absurdly high.
10.6. Book 3, Chapter 3
In E11, the room is described as:
Two long, tin tubs, each covered in rust but filled with boiling water, occupy the northwest corner of the room. — cite:paizo-aoe-book3#page=55
Tin does not have iron, and thus not rust.
- Oggvurm the Merciless is stated with an AC of 24; it should probably be 34 for this Level 14 creature.
10.7. Book 5, Chapter 2
- GM's consensus is the cost for the Unfettered Mark ritual – approximately 12,000 gp per character – is way out of line with Treasure By Level if characters are regularly spending their gold, and especially if using something like Automatic Bonus Progression where free currency and saleable gear is even less present. Knock a zero off the end of it.
11. Colophon
11.1. Licensing
This work is generally licensed as Creative Commons By-Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike, International, Version 4.0.
This work is a collection of quotes, links and original content regarding running the Paizo Adventure Path Agents of Edgewatch.
Copyright of the quoted forum posts and comments is held by the respective original authors.
Block quotes appearing herein have been licensed by the authors, generally in terms "compatible with Creative Commons By-Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commerical, version 4.0". See "meta" for more details.
This work – "The GM's Guide to Agents of Edgewatch" – uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., used under Paizo's Community Use Policy (paizo.com/communityuse). We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. "The GM's Guide to Agents of Edgewatch" is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, visit paizo.com.
11.2. Sources and Contributing
The source repository of this Guide is https://github.com/jsled/gms-guide-to-agents-of-edgewatch. Contributions as pull requests are welcome. Contributions in other forms will be considered.
The primary hosting of this Guide is https://asynchronous.org/gms-guide-to-agents-of-edgewatch.
11.3. Editor
The editor of this Guide is jsled.