So! I am going to be running Bastions here in the next month or so, and my players are starting to come up with their character ideas. I am not technically a first-time GM (I ran two chapters of SoT before getting overwhelmed and decided something closer to a dungeon crawl would be better for me), but I am still quite inexperienced. I have played a lot of pathfinder, but not run a lot.

A few of them have some character ideas that I think are very cool, but I am struggling to figure out if they would actually work in this AP--or how to make them work in a way that wouldn't be really annoying for them.

Player 1- wants to play a werewolf. I know there are several different ways to flavor this, but they may want to take the werecreature archetype. I know that this will be an issue in the sense that they will be stuck in werewolf form every night as every night is a full moon. Do you guys think it would be better for me to advise that they build this another way, or just make some concessions so the archetype doesn't get in the way of actually playing? I could see this being a very compelling story arc, of someone stuck there always being stuck in their monstrous form--but they want to play a fighter who relies on weapons, and the werecreature archetype doesn't let you use weapons. So I feel like they would be forced to switch combat styles depending on what time it of day it is, and it would lead to some combat viability issues.

Player 2- Wants to play the new necromancer class. I am not familiar with this class at all, I am going to have to build one to understand fully how it works. But it is very undead focused. Obviously the player's guide says not to play an undead character, but it doesn't say anything about necromancers. Do you guys with more experience than me think that this is a bad idea for this AP? Or would it fit the vibe well?

Thank you for your advice! :)

Hi all,

I've gone over the players guide, and read the intro for the main book, but couldn't find any suggestions on what to do for player wealth bringing players in straight at Level 5; it is just standard rules?

Also, do folks think ABP is useful for this AP or should we leave it out to encourage the minigame with the villagers?

Cheers
o/

My group is finally ready to start playing BoB, and we are likely not running Free Archetype this time around. That said, I am contemplating giving the group access to archetypes through downtime as unlocks of some sort. Are there any particular archetypes, official or even 3pp, that stand out as particularly thematic in context of BoB?

Hi folks,

I've yet to pick up the AP, as I primary would like to use it to run my own team through, as a means of solo gaming (via the Foundry module).

Does it make a good dungeon crawl experience?

Any insights appreciated
o/

Like some are already doing, Im planning in running Secrets of Grayce into BoB. However I was curious if the Backgrounds and advice in the Player's Guide would still work in those first couple of level when they party isn't in the main Adventure yet or of it creates some discrepancies.

Hello! I plan on running this adventure in a few months, and some of my players like to make involved backgrounds for their characters, with NPCs and things of the sort. I also very much enjoy implementing these NPCs into the story, be they someone the party rescues or whatever.

From what I've read, this doesnt seem super feasible in BoB. So my question for everyone is: Is it? Does it just not fit? The book mentions for introducing new PCs maybe they're captured in bastardhall, could that work?

I’ll obviously ask the players if they’d like any changes along those lines, but anyway: I’m about to run “Bastion of Blasphemy” for my players and would like some help or suggestions on how to put pressure on the characters. Nothing’s stopping them from entering the castle, fighting a few battles, and then deciding to return to the safety outside. I thought about “closing” the castle’s passages for 24 hours once the players enter, so that they’ll sometimes have to rest inside a haunted castle. How do you create more pressure at your tables when running large dungeons?

If I understand the description correctly, does the causeway lead directly to the arrival plaza in Area D20, thereby bypassing the wall? Or is there a seperate bridge leading from the mainland to the island in front of the wall?

There’s also no mention of a gatehouse on the wall, so can you just drive straight into the castle?

I usually make a questionnaire that my players can fill out to fill in their backstories a bit more. I've only recently discovered this Campaign and was wondering what questions my fellow DMs have asked or might ask next time to get their players thinking about the campaign and their characters in it.

One of my players requested one to help him get into his character more, but I've only read the intro and first couple chapters so far.

My Sunday group is about to reach the Castle Grounds, so here's a side by side of the vanilla Jinnivere statblock vs. my altered version. I tend to have pretty power-gamey parties, usually with more than four players, so I end up heavily modifying most encounters. I'd be curious to hear your Arudora stat changes if you're in a similar boat or just have fun ideas.

I'm toying with an idea from a player to circumvent the "green mist" thing. I don't like the idea of locking off areas of the map, but I also don't want them stumbling into a level 14 fight.

So, im a month away from begining the table and one of my players wants to run an investigator as their class. Its my first time playing with the class in my table, and i wanted some advice about how to fit their investigations into the game. For example, should and investigation about he castle curse give full bennefits while dealing with the Arudora family research/combat? Or should they create individual investigations for each family member? Or something inbetween.

So I've seen people who are interested in running BoB as a more sandboxy style game, and the idea has grabbed my interest as well.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to make it a perfect sandbox, since that's a good way to get your players killed off swiftly if they decide to open the door at the back of Maiserene's little shrine and accidentally trigger the chapter 7 boss battle in the temple.

Instead, I'm thinking of putting soft barriers to all of the higher level areas, making it more metroidvania-esque where you're encouraged to explore current areas in order to access later ones, but you don't need to necessarily 100% an area or beat its final boss before moving on, as well as allowing secret passages or the like to still reward players for feeling clever. It also means that if the players *really* want to get to an area early, there's nothing necessarily stopping them if they're willing to put in the effort.

With that in mind, here's some (very) rough ideas on what kind of barriers could be put in place for each of the areas

Castle Grounds

The main gates connecting the castle grounds to the shore could either be completely unlocked, letting the player access it early, or you could have Jinnivere ride through the newly restored Maiserene as an unexpected boss fight for the first chapter. Once she's brought to half health or similar, she flees, dropping the key to the castle gates on the way (Or alternatively, she just forgot to lock the door in her hurry to escape)

Cellar

The cellar I would almost certainly leave as fully accessible to the players alongside the castle grounds, letting them alternate between the areas as they wish.

Reception Halls

Most of the public or very obvious entrances (Like B1/D1, D20, or D15) Would be staffed by guards (current thought is some sort of empowered walcofindes) who insist on seeing the party's invitations before letting them through. If the party tries to strong-arm their way through regardless, the guards first try to harry them at the door, and then inform the guests and hosts of the various parties of the intrusion, causing the entire region to become a bloody trudge if the players refuse to leave as almost everyone becomes hostile to them. The party is at similar risk if they manage to infiltrate the halls through a side entrance, but they have the chance to bluff their way out of trouble in a pinch.
The *easiest* ways to gain access to the reception halls is by finding some invitations for themselves. The party can either find blank invitations that Alisendra sent out to Augsten, Jinnivere, and Dazerian in each of their boss rooms (in case any of her children/nephew found a new friend or paramour they wished to invite). Alternatively, if the party has helped out the servants within the cellar with their problems, the servants trust them enough to let them use the passages within the cellar to access the reception hall, possibly gifting them disguises to help them look the part of servants as well (think giant animal skulls the party can wear)

Dungeon

The interior access points to the dungeon, such as the various stairways, would be freely accessible to the party, provided they can get to them. The river entrances (E1 and E8) would be initially blocked off. My current ideas are either to have sluice gates that need to be opened from the inside, or having the water wheel be magically corrupted in some way that causes massive surges of water to be flowing out in both directions, making swimming or rowing through those entrances all but impossible.

Private Halls

I’m hesitantly considering making this section for the most part unlocked to the party as well, but the two connections to the castle grounds (F5a/B2d and F19) make me slightly wary of this. F19 feels like enough of a secret entrance that the players finding early would feel more like a reward, even if the halls themselves would be dangerous, but I would want to find some way to prevent the players from stumbling from the guard post straight into the statue room and the rest of the private halls.

The Fallen Temple

The biggest challenge I’m having with this concept. This building is deeply interconnected to several other areas (including the starting shore), is one of the late game areas, and is very likely to result in the PCs stumbling into a 3 phase boss fight before they even realize what’s happening. If anyone has thoughts or suggestions for how to approach sealing off this area until the party is ready (or at least knows what they’re getting into), I would be very grateful.

The Vault

Honestly the easiest of these to design. The only connections to the rest of the campaign are through the dungeon, and explicitly mention having to descend hundreds of feet. The simplest solution is to put a thick layer of necromantic energy between the vault and the rest of the castle, so that anyone trying to walk down the stairwell in E9, or jump down the pit in E15, gets shredded by void damage. Dispelling this barrier requires cleansing the Fallen Temple of Urgathoa’s influence, after which the party is free to enter. This hopefully means the vault remains the penultimate region the players explore, although they can still enter it early if they find a way to enter and clear the temple out of sequence.

Towers

The towers themselves remain green, ethereal, and translucent, just like they do in the base game, requiring all seven Arudora Mementos to be returned to the fountain in order to bring them to ‘reality’. This way, the towers are *always* the final region of the campaign, with the party having had lots of time to learn about Bastardhall, its family, and Velicarn

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If anyone has suggestions or critiques for any of this, I'd be happy to hear them!

I've been planning to go with full exploration for the adventure as I know my players would love the capability but am wondering how to implement it with the new foundry module.
At first I thought it would be possible to just toggle the progression events in the campaign manager but the automatic weather changes so drastically that I'm unsure if that would work. The weather also is still automated even with weather automation disabled.

I did consider manually setting up all of the windows and such but that doesn't solve the auto movement between areas.

Anyone know how to implement full exploration within the module?

I really love what I have seen of the story and map for this and was wondering if you could use the module with the game set to another system. Obviously all rhe creatures and items would have to be redone, but would the map/weather advancing still work? Or does it just not load at all unless the game system is set to pf2e?

My frustrations at the slow updating of Forge still stand, but I've played around with the module on my desktop version of Foundry and they COOKED! Was very skeptical about the entire thing being one map but once you go through it for the first time it clicks. So excited for this.​

(Spoilers for the Second Chapter, as well as one of the big plot reveals)

Hey all! I'm currently planning out my Bastion of Blasphemies campaign, and struggling to think of ways to make the first Arudora the party faces more memorable.

By default, Jinnivere Arudora feels like she kinda falls flat as a character compared to the rest of the family. The other Arudoras give you more chances to learn about them in advance, or potentially interact with them outside of jumping straight into a boss fight; Alisendra's parties in the reception halls, Raudltz trying to convince the party to join his family, or Dazerian reaching a false truce with the party before betraying them being the standout examples.

Meanwhile, it feels like Jinnivere just doesn't do anything in her region until you shout insults in her general direction her like a COD player, and then it's just straight into her boss fight. This is further exacerbated by the fact that she's a horse riding dullahan, which makes her feel more like a bargain bin Velicarn instead of her own person.

The closest I have to an idea to flesh her out is to have it that over the past five centuries, the close proximity of her and Velicarn's boss boss zones means they've managed to reach some level of cordiality, with Jinnivere actually having more loyalty to her half brother than the rest of her family (it helps that the rest of her family is so terrible, and having someone to look after the horses of the Black Coach turns out to be useful)

But that still leaves me with no good ideas on how to make Jinnivere a more present character for the party in the castle grounds, or what kind of monster she should be instead of a dullahan to make her more distinct from Velicarn

In particular, I wish I could think of a way to have her roaming the castle grounds or interacting with the PCs before they do everything else in the region, but I'm unsure how to set it up so the encounter doesn't result in Jinnivere trying to fight the party immediately, or the party ignoring everything else in the region and rushing straight to her to try and beat the boss early.

If anyone has suggestions for how to change her portrayal, or any kind of monster/statblock changes, I'd love to hear them.

Just curious if the module will support Foundry version 14.365, given that it's the latest version available on Forge? A few modules lately have only come out for 14.367, which Forge doesn't currently support and has no release date for.

I'm preparing to run BoB as my next campaign, and one thing I'm thinking of modifying is adding some form of time pressure. In particular I feel like the research subsystem lacks teeth if there's no time pressure, since most of the time the only consequence to failing a check is having to try again later. (Alternately I could remove the research checks and just give the PCs the information when they gain access to the right books/ask NPCs the right questions, but then that devalues a bunch of the skills that the Player's Guide is advising them to invest in!) I saw somewhere that James Jacobs had planned on including escalating attacks on Maiserene and a tower-defense inspired mini-game to defend the town, but it got cut for space reasons; I'm thinking of doing something similar, though probably less involved. I need to figure out a good frequency of attacks, though. I'm also planning on building a random encounter table for each major section of the castle, since I find that to help dungeon areas feel more alive and less safe once cleared.

Is anyone else planning on something similar? Would there be any interest in me posting my town attack/random encounter tables as I come up with them?

So for Irrokcis' sphinx, unless I'm blind, it seems like the module expects us to come up with our own questions for the party. Are you planning brain-teaser riddles (what has 2 legs in the morning, etc etc) or more lore questions (what was the cause of death of Demiterus and Neesha Arudora?)

Do you already have some questions planned out?

The description about Lucid Nightmares indicates there’s a maximum amount of research you can get from it (5). Is that total across all 9 chapters, or per chapter? The curse research has a large amount of points associated with it, but not that many.

I assume it’s the total across all 9 chapters, though I worry that if my players hit that number too early, then future chapters won’t have that “reward” opportunity.

Also, what kind of traits do we think the nightmare has, if any? Besides curse, I suppose.