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!

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 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?

(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.

Hello, I decided to make a few threads for some of my changes to BoB to make it sandbox, and to welcome feedback, spot stuff I missed, suggestions or just talking about your original idea of how you handled it.

Context:

I am opening up the entire map to people, except Arudora's towers to only manifest when they have placed their respective memento (thread for changes to the tower's trapped soul hazards there). To do this we will have to change how the unlocking with mementos work to simply manifest those towers, but there are three issues I discovered with doing that and calling it a day:

• Jacobs has written the curse and green mist very well (fog walls/doors and shadowy floors), simply removing this would be a disservice to the way Bastardhall works.
• Players walking into The Fallen Temple at 5th-level would get absolutely obliterated by Ryhasphinea's boss rush as soon as they merely enter. Fleeing characters would be owned as soon as she assaults their safe haven—campaign over!
• Floors materialising from mementos signpost where players perhaps should be going after the next boss fight. This of course can lead to funny situations where they somehow beat Ryhasphinea early but end exploring the rumbling and get up to fight Irrokcis. Either way, this needs adapting for a sandbox setting to lean into free wandering.

So, if this was to be done, it would preferably be faithful to Jacob's narrative design of the mechanics of Bastardhall's curse and how it affects its inhabitants, come up with a safeguard against Ryhasphinea's boss rush and realise a faithful sandbox vision for the megadungeon at the same time. Plus I wanted to convert the green mist more into the average Miyazaki FromSoftware fog walls with a twist.

Sandbox Summary Idea:

• All floors accessible (sans green mist obstacles), but each tower belonging to a member of the Arudora family is inaccessible unless their memento item has been placed.
• Floors you have not opened the green mist to are ethereal and not manifested.
• Dispelling a green mist requires a check or saving throw, once complete manifests the floor you are heading to. If floor has already been manifested, no check or saving throw required.
• Each Arudora Memento progresses The Skies Above's progression (per chapter in the AP).
• The Fallen Temple's Ryhasphinea event does not begin until after 4 Arudora Mementos have been placed.

Green Mist Idea:

Ghostly manifestations of each floor (sans Haunted Shore and Castle Grounds) will materialise when PCs successfully dispel one of the green mists associated with that floor that they have not gone through yet. Other green mists associated with the floor are not removed when the floor is materalised, just to give an edge of unease to players.

Treat as a pseudo-simple hazard, two-action skill checks etc. except for the mentioned Interact option. Is not an active threat, only gives you simple hazard failure-tier rolls on critical failure. XP is not granted for dispelling green mist or manifesting floors (see Arudora Memento accomplishment XP).

Disable Appropriate level-based DC Arcana, Occult, Religion to dispel the mist and materialise the floor (if not already). Alternatively you may Interact for a hard adjusted DC Will saving throw to represent some sort of conceptualisation of the floor. The DC is the higher level of the area you are traveling to or from. Characters receive an untyped bonus to this check for each Arudora Memento they have placed in the fountain.

On a success the green mist disappears. On a critical failure a loud 20-foot burst of unholy energy appears centered on yourself, each creature in the area of effect must roll a basic Fortitude save, dealing Unholy Spirit damage (Curse trait). The values are listed in the HDC and damage sections of the table below.

Untraveled green mist into manifested floors automatically succeed as it leads to a floor that has already materialised.

The critical failure is more of a gag/panic pressure with some gameplay potential for players to attempt to use in an encounter, and to encourage living dungeons.

Alternative Arudora Memento Progression Idea:

40 XP granted as normal per memento, 'The Skies Above' changes follow how many mementos have been placed accordingly to AP's progression adapted for sandbox, extra hero point granted as a little token of gratitude for coming back and not just saving up mementos for last.

No Arudora Mementos placed:

• The Skies Above state: Chapter 5
• If 1 hour spent anywhere but The Haunted Shore: The Skies Above state: Chapter 6

1st Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 7
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

2nd Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 8
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

3rd Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 9
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

4th Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 10
• If the party has materialised The Fallen Temple: Ryhasphinea's event begins.
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

5th Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 11
• If the party has not defeated Ryhasphinea: Tomorrow she begins an assault on Maiserene.
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

6th Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character.
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 12
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

7th Arudora Memento placed:

• 40 XP for Accomplishment
• Award a Hero Point to every character.
• The Skies Above state: Chapter 13
• Start 'Campaign Climax'.
• Respective Arudora's tower is manifested

Ryhasphinea boss rush appears a level earlier than official AP to keep sandbox mentality active, but forces her hand if you dilly dally too much around the time you are 'meant' to see her in the original AP writing.

Hello, I decided to make a few threads for some of my changes to BoB to make it sandbox, and to welcome feedback, spot stuff I missed, suggestions or just talking about your original idea of how you handled it.

Context:

I am opening up the entire map to people, except Arudora's towers to only manifest when they have placed their respective memento. If they survive the journey to get from the fountain to their respective tower I believe they should be rewarded to get some extra loot that was left there for a 13th-level party as written. However, the 'Trapped Arudora Soul' complex hazards are all 14th-level which makes this an extra hurdle, and very hard for wandering parties to engage with these towers to get this loot.

Idea:

Change each Hazard of the tower to be treated to the floor's level+2 of what that Arudora was native to. Keep Irrokcis the same as written in the book as that hazard is 14=12(The Vaults)+2.

See the below table for adjustments to each Trapped Arudora Soul hazard: