A Guide to Fixing Age of Ashes by Kalnix

Introduction

I believe Age of Ashes (AoA) is a fantastic Adventure Path (AP) and was a great first AP for 2e. It does however have issues with it that an inexperienced game master (GM) won’t be able to notice. I started running Age of Ashes a couple months after it came out when it was one of the only APs released. I was completely new to GMing as well as Pathfinder Second Edition and because of this I was researching potential issues and solutions while I was running it.

Some stat blocks in Age of Ashes do not follow the creature/hazard building rules later released in the Game Mastery Guide (GMG). An inexperienced Game Master new to the system probably wouldn’t notice these things unless it was pointed out to them. A monster having 3 higher to hit than the table suggests sounds monumental to experienced Pathfinders, but unless you actually look at the table and check the numbers yourself you would never know. One other issue I have with Age of Ashes is that it has a great story but the players don’t learn most of it until the latter half of the AP. There are little hints and foreshadows along the way that are vital to the reveals near the end being but not enough and not properly spaced.

The goal of this guide is to identify and fix the pain points in this AP based on my experience running it as well as the experience of other GMs and players who have finished it. This will include mainly encounter rebalancing, increasing monster variety as well as tweaks to the story that I believe will increase players’ enjoyment of the AP. This guide presumes you have read the books. There will be mentions of location, monsters and story beats that will only make sense if you have read the books up to that point.

One final thing to note is that this guide presumes you are using milestone leveling. Changes to the AP do not take into account how this affects total available experience points and if you are running EXP you will need to add some EXP back in.

Key Terms

Each section of this guide will have key terms to help explain the change.

Rebalance means that it is tweaking an existing encounter numerically in some way, either a stat block or reducing the difficulty of the encounter.

Encounter Change means replacing what occurs in an encounter or removing it entirely.

Warning means a potential problem that I don’t think is such a big issue that it needs a change.

Story means a tweak to the story such as giving the players information earlier to help smooth out the flow of the story.

Suggestion is a note on what I think will improve that part of the book that isn’t a specific change.

Book 1 – Hellknight Hill

A fine starting book for an AP, with fighting, a bit of mystery and some foreshadowing of later books. My main issue with this book is the final boss Malarunk. He is such a lame and forgettable boss and it is very easy for the players to not even know of his existence by the time they fight him. What makes this more obnoxious is that there is a perfectly good villain, Voz, who is more interesting and is hinted at being evil for the entire book but you kill her about 5-6 rooms before Malarunk.

Rebalance - Snickers in the Smoke – Town Hall Fire: Have spectators fall unconscious on round 6 and die on round 8 instead of 5 and 7. This extra round might be what the PCs need to get everyone out alive. Run as written, the fire spreads really fast, half its size per round in additional squares. If you want to make putting out the fire easier, you could reduce it to 1/3rd squares minimum 1 per round though this drastically reduces how fast it spreads.

Standard fire unchecked, spreads 2 squares, then 3 squares, then 4 squares, then 6 squares etc.
Nerfed fire unchecked, spreads 1 square, 1 square, 2 squares, 2 squares, 3 squares etc.
Reason: This is a pretty hard encounter to 100% though it feels like the AP doesn’t expect you to completely put out the fire. It does feel awful to start an adventure and answer the “Call for Heroes” and then having NPCs die in a fire as your first encounter. These changes should make it a bit easier and make the PCs seem more heroic as they should be able to get more people out alive.

Warning: Voz is still in her book shop after the fire and this is explained on page 46. Make sure she is in her shop after the fire in chapter 1. I have seen people say that a PC died due to massive damage rules because of the spike trap in her shop but that is because the GM mistakenly had Voz be missing right after the fire.

Rebalance-A1-Goblin Dogs: Reduce the amount of Goblin Dogs in the first room of the keep from 3 to 2 reducing it from a Severe fight to a Moderate fight.

It is very easy to not have to fight these dogs but just in case, lower the difficulty as a Severe encounter for the first fight of a “dungeon” is a bit much.

Suggestion: For chapter 3, lock the doors to B12, B13 and B15. Add a key to them in either B8 or B11. Make the DCs to break them down/pick the lock DC 20 which is an Expert DC. This helps prevent the players from accidentally walking into a level 3 area while still level 2.

Suggestion: Don’t let Pib and Zarf die in B5. Not because they are important to the story but because they are precious “mitey dragons” and deserve to live out their lives in happiness with their trash pile in B11.

Now for the section of the book that needs the most work, chapter 4. It has 3 main issues that should be changed to improve the book.

Malarunk is a lame final boss who comes out of practically nowhere. It is incredibly easy for the players to not learn of his existence in chapter 3 which makes this fight very anticlimactic.
Voz is a much more interesting villain than Malarunk and the clues of chapters 2 and 3 all lead you to her. Her journal is also the first time the players learn the name The Scarlet Triad and having it be name dropped at the end of a book makes it seem more important to the players.
Ralldar is a random level+3 enemy that doesn’t really have a great reason for being so strong considering he has no build up and no impact on the story.

To tie these three things together here is how I would change the final chapter.

Warning: Dmiri Yoltosha is effectively a Ranger NPC. Twin Takedown has the Flourish trait meaning that she can only use it once per turn and only against her Hunted Prey. Don’t be like me and accidentally let her use it multiple times on the same person in the same round. It is as dangerous as it sounds.

Encounter Change – C8: Remove Voz’s fight from C8, she is replacing the book boss, Malarunk.

Rebalance - D4 Ralldar: Voz snuck by the spiders in D1 and went the alternate path to D3 that doesn’t involve her fighting Renali. In D4 she made a deal with Ralldar, he lets her pass and she brings back his “servants” to worship him. She has turned some of the bones in his room into Skeleton Soldiers https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1900. Give Ralldar the Weak template. This fight is now a Weak Ralldar and 3 Skeletal Soldiers. This keeps this fight a Severe encounter but a level+2 with 3 level-3 minions is easier than a single level+3 creature.

If you do not want back to back Severe encounters, then you can just make Ralldar Weak and not add the skeletons as mentioned above. That makes this a Moderate encounter but the players are likely to have Renali, who is level 4, with them which should make it a bit easier.

Encounter Change: Remove the fight against Malarunk in D6. Voz and her skeletons have already killed him and the Cinderclaws. Change Voz’s fight in this location to be her and 3 skeleton champions. This is a Severe encounter for level 4 characters. This fight is now in the Ring itself instead of the cave before it.

Warning: This does potentially mean a player might trigger the Doorwarden, you could potentially have it attack both the party and Voz if this happens and make it a 3 way fight.

Story: Voz has not been in Alseta’s Ring long, a day or two at most and has been studying how to activate it. You can have her monologue about the Ring and maybe hint at some lore about the network. She can also make it clear to the players that Malarunk and the Cinderclaws were not from Isger, but instead the Mwangi Expanse explaining that these must be ancient Elf Gates to other parts of the world. However, Voz has a job to do and that is to get the information about the ring to the Scarlet Triad and she doesn’t want anyone else knowing about the portal network as that could be bad for her employer. Eventually she attacks the PCs trying to get rid of them and what they know about the Ring.

Book 2 – Cult of Cinders

Goals: Book 2 has a couple issues that my group experienced and that I have heard other groups have as well. The main ones are

A couple unbalanced encounters or incorrect statblocks according to the GMG creature building rules.
Spellcasters feeling weak in the beginning of chapter 2 because they don’t have expert spell proficiency yet but are up against a decent amount of 1-2 enemy encounters which casters are not great at dealing with.
The hex crawl drags on a bit too long even if the players have Renali to help scout and the elves to tell them where to go.

Suggestion: In chapter 2, allow the party to move/explore 2 tiles per day instead of one. This should speed up how fast they progress through the chapter in game as well as reduce the amount of times they need to roll to set up camp and roll against malaria and other diseases.

The alternative is to make the hex crawl more interesting by adding locations to all of the empty hexes but that is out of scope for this guide.

Encounter Change: Move the Black Pillar encounter to A12, the Green Pillar encounter to A5 and the yellow pillar encounter to A8.

Reason: Racharak, the creature at the black pillar, is a potentially difficult fight and is a level+2 monster which makes the level 6 casters’ spells feel bad as they are not yet expert. By moving that fight to the center of the map the players are much more likely to be level 7 by the time they fight this making it not as frustrating.

Rebalance - New A12: Lower Racharak’s to hit from +20 to +18 for their jaws, claws and tail attacks. Then lower their Thrown Rock to hit from +17 to +15. GMG monster guidelines suggest she should have high AC and either high to hit or high damage but she has all three of them at high. This change makes her to-hit be moderate. Rename the statblock to Spawn of Dahak and change the rarity from unique to Rare as there are other Spawns of Dahak in the book. This matters for Recall Knowledge and also to make GUST happy.

Rebalance - A16 - Bida: Give the Bida at the Red Pillar a +20 athletics. It is a grapple monster that is trivial to escape from RAW.

Suggestion: Consider changing some of the treasure here to be a +1 striking adamantine weapon to help with the golem in chapter 4 as well as the many in book 3. To do so, replace the Wand of Widening Lightning Bolts, Spined Shield and 540gp with a +1 Striking Standard Grade Adamantine Weapon.

Warning Chapter 3: Make sure you read chapter 3 carefully. Almost all of the fights have reasons as to why the encounters don’t all merge together.

Rebalance –B6, B11, C3- Charau-Ka Butcher: Make sure you use the updated statblock for the Charau-Ka Butcher from Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse (LO:ME) as the one in Cult of Cinders is very over-tuned. Also make sure Rage decreases the AC from 21 to 20 instead of increasing it to 22 as that is a mistake with the LO:ME version.

Rebalance - C2 – Clay Golem: Make the Clay Golem weak. Clay Golems are a nightmare and there is not a great path of retreat from this one. Even being weak it is still a level+2 creature that can prevent healing.

Encounter Change: Another potential solution is to replace it with a re-flavored Animated Furnace or some other construct around level 9 or 10 as golems can be very unfun to fight.
Warning: Cursed Wound states “The golem’s counteract level is equal to its creature level.” which would mean level 10 which is impossible for the players to remove and thus is a mistake. It should be the standard half level rounded up which would be counteract level 5.
Warning: Do note that RAW, a creature does not need to hit with a spell attack to trigger a golem’s weakness. “Harmed By Any magic of this type that targets the golem causes it to take the listed amount of damage (this damage has no type) instead of the usual effect.”

Rebalance - C6 - Wrath of the Destroyer: Remove the death trait from Face the Fatal Divine and Phantasmal Killer. Remove the save or die from the critical failure effect of Phantasmal Killer. THE DOOR already puts out pretty good damage for a complex hazard of its level, making it so it kills you instantly if you crit fail a save and then fail the next OR if it reduces you to 0 hp is too much for a trap of this level and is incredibly unfun.

Rebalance - C9 - Dahak’s Skull: This is a really cool and thematic hazard but it does way too much damage for what its level suggests, especially when you need to pull the gems out of the eyes to disable it and that requires climbing on top of it.

Lower the to-hit of the Eye Beam from +20 to +17 to match the GMG guidelines.
Lower the damage of the Eye Beam from 8d6 to 6d6. This is still a little bit over average damage for a level 6 complex hazard but much more reasonable than the 10 extra average damage the default statblock has.

Book 3 – Tomorrow Must Burn

A bit of backstory on this book first. It takes place in Kintargo, the capital city of the newly founded nation of Ravounel which is created because of the end results of the Pathfinder First Edition Adventure Path called Hell’s Rebels.

With that in mind, I have heard groups don’t like this book because they feel it leans too heavily on nostalgia baiting that AP. For example, it heavily involves the Bellflower Network which was important in Hell’s Rebels as well as mentioning Barzillai Thrune who was the villain of the AP. My group and I never played 1e at all and they still enjoyed this book. One of my players even said it was their favorite book. I did some research online about things like Barzillai and what he did so that I could have NPCs explain that to the players and it helped make the area feel more alive because you can see the results of a past AP in action. If you feel like your players will not like the story because you feel it leans too heavily on nostalgia the group doesn’t have, feel free to change it but that could require completely rewriting the book and that is out of scope for this guide.

Tomorrow Must Burn is where the AP gets notably better at balance. It uses multiple enemies rather than one or two big enemies and has fewer over-tuned stat blocks. The issue this book has is repeat enemies, a lot of repeat enemies. The same 4 enemy types get reused constantly which can get obnoxious.

Suggestion: A2 – A Tense Meeting: The book starts off with a member of the Scarlet Triad taking a member of Breachill hostage and wants the players to give him information he wants. Once you beat him the book just presumes the players will use the key they got last book and check out the portal. While Thropp doesn’t know that the players went through the portal in the last book, the Scarlet Triad does know where the portals lead. You could have Thropp slip up and accidentally mention he needs to meet up with Laslunn, a name from Voz’s notes in book 1 (Hellknight Hill page 53), and how he is meant to meet her in Kintargo and that this would be so much easier if he knew where the portal key to get there was. This hints at a couple things: where one of the portals leads, that the Scarlet Triad knows where the portals lead and that Laslunn will be important in this book.

Rebalance - B2 - Tree of Dreadful Dreams: This hazard REQUIRES adjustments. The tree has to-hit too high for its level, can Doom you, automatically grabs you on a successful Strike as well as 6 reactions for Attack of Opportunity which grab you. Also it doesn’t work RAW as it doesn’t have a reaction that triggers it like hazards should and also doesn’t list the DC you need to escape against as it doesn’t have an Athletics score because it is a hazard. The following changes may have over-nerfed this fight but considering it is supposed to be a Low encounter but actually has the potential for TPKs I am alright with that.

The stat block is missing a reaction with a trigger for the Tree to start the fight. Give it a new reaction called Grasping Branch with a Trigger: A creature comes within 15ft of the Tree of Dreadful Dreams. Effect: The Tree makes a Branch strike against the triggering creature if it is successful then it grabs the creature. The trap then rolls initiative.
The tree doesn’t state what the DC to Escape against is. DC by level is 27 so use that.
Reduce the to-hit of the tree from +26 to +23. According to the GMG Hazard Building section that is the to-hit a level 10 complex hazard should have.
Reduce the DC of Terrifying Visions from 31 to 29 to make it match up with the High DC for a level 10 Hazard.
Change the Attack of Opportunity so that it does not grab on a hit. This makes it so it is possible to retreat from the tree.

Rebalance - B4 - Rusty Mae: I am tweaking the item damage part of the stat block. Not because it makes the fight too hard, but because item damage is very annoying. You need to pull up the material statistics table, figure out what each item is classified as, then the players need to note down which item took how much damage. And then the very obnoxious part. If you break a martial’s weapon they can’t really fight unless they have a backup. If you destroy a weapon or armor then that player is out around 1k gold because they need to buy a new one.

Replace Rust with Destructive Strike: On a critical hit, the Rusty Mae’s claw Strike breaks the target’s metal armor, if any, in addition to dealing damage to the target. If the target has a shield raised, Rusty Mae breaks the shield instead.
Reason: I took this ability from the Adamantine Golem and it has 3 major upsides. The first is the item doesn’t take damage, it just goes straight to broken meaning you don’t have to track HP. Secondly, because it can only set an item to broken and not destroy it, the player isn’t at risk of losing 1k gold. Thirdly, broken armor still does things and the rules for broken armor can be found at https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=2

Encounter Change - Kite Hill – Gelugon (Ice Devil): Replace this devil with a Weak Gylou

Reason: I have heard reports from multiple GMs that this fight kicked their players’ asses even with Nolly helping them. Immunity to cold and fire is rough as well as having a 35ft fly speed meaning it can easily ignore any melee character that doesn’t have a ranged option. Furthermore, the best cantrip to fight a flying enemy is Ray of Frost because of its long range but the Gelugon is immune to cold. A Gylou instead only has an immunity to fire and a climb speed instead of a fly speed meaning melee characters don’t just get invalidated in this level+3 fight.
Story: Instead of spending its level 5 Dimension Door to enter Kite Hill you can instead have the Gylou pretending to be a normal person and Change Shape into their true form. This is still an eye-catching entrance but also saves the level 5 Dimension Door to retreat if it is wounded or if the players feel the fight is dragging on. Remember that the point of the attack on Kite Hill is a false flag operation by the Scarlet Triad to blame Nidal, not to kill the player characters. It just needs to cause destruction and get people blaming Nidal.
Another alternative is to just put the weak template on the Gelugon but that doesn’t fix the cold immunity and flying problem.

Suggestion: J7 – Jaggaki: The book calls out that Jaggaki will parlay with the party under certain circumstances but will always betray them. I would add that if the players help him discover the purpose of the chamber he is studying and tell him about it then he will let them pass without fighting. What helping a lich potentially figure out how to open a portal to Stonepeak does is up to the GM.

Reused Enemies: Tomorrow Must Burn reuses the Scarlet Triad stat blocks a bit too much. Here are the Scarlet Triad stat blocks, their level and what locations they are used in.

Scarlet Triad Sneaks lv6 (used 4 times): A2, Slaver Patrol, C1, E1

Scarlet Triad Thug lv7 (used 6 times): Slaver Patrol, C4, E1, H3, J3, J4

Scarlet Triad Bruiser lv10 (used 5 times): E2, F5, H1, J3, J4

Scarlet Triad Poisoner lv8 (used 3 times): H1, H2, J8

As you can see, you fight the same types of enemies a lot.

Encounter Change - C1 – Quay: Replace the Scarlet Triad Sneak with a Weak Hunter renamed to Scarlet Triad Ranger and given a pair of average manacles and the Efficient Capture ability the other Scarlet Triad stat blocks have. This makes the fight more interesting as instead of 4 melee combatants, it is 3 blood boars tanking for their ranged beastmaster as she pelts the PCs with arrows. You could even have her command a boar to attack her specific Hunted Prey.

Encounter Change - E1 – Smokehouse Yard: Replace the Scarlet Triad Thug with an Elite Monster Hunter renamed to Scarlet Triad Raider and given a pair of average manacles and the Efficient Capture ability the other Scarlet Triad stat blocks have. Replace the Blood Boar with a Scarlet Triad Ranger. This again gives a more interesting fight while reusing Blood Boars less. Now you have a barbarian that rushes into the fight, 3 sneaks trying to flank with each other all while there is a ranger shooting arrows from afar. It makes the fight more dynamic rather than 5 enemies that all want to just run into range.

Encounter Change - H3 – Tanessen Tower Eight Floor: To fit in with the theme of Barushak being a demon summoner, replace the Scarlet Triad Thugs with Demonologists from the GMG. Rename them to Scarlet Triad Demonologist and give them a pair of average manacles and the Efficient Capture ability the other Scarlet Triad stat blocks have.

Encounter Change - J3 – Guard Post: Replace the Scarlet Triad Thugs with Demonologists. This also makes the fight slightly more interesting as you have mages with higher level martials in the way, rather than just 4 martials in the same small room.

Encounter Change - J4 – Slaver Barracks: Replace the Scarlet Triad Bruiser with a Raja Rakshasa pretending to be a Scarlet Triad Bruiser. Make the players think they are fighting yet another bruiser and then get surprised when the stat block they got too comfortable with starts throwing spells. If either of the Rakshaha escaped from Longroads Coffee House this is a perfect place to reuse them, you could even have the “Bruiser” look similar to the human they were impersonating in the Coffee House.

After the changes this is where the stat block distribution lands:

Scarlet Triad Sneaks lv6 (used 2 times): A2, Slaver Patrol, E1

Scarlet Triad Thug lv7 (used 3 times): Slaver Patrol, C4, J4

Scarlet Triad Bruiser lv10 (used 4 times): E2, F5, H1, J3

Scarlet Triad Poisoner lv8 (used 3 times): H1, H2, J8

Scarlet Triad Demonologist lv7 (used 2 times): H3, J3

Scarlet Triad Ranger lv6 (used 2 times): C1, E1

Scarlet Triad Raider lv7 (used 1 time): E1

Book 4 – Fires of the Haunted City

Now we are getting to the amazing parts of Age of Ashes. Books 4, 5 and 6 are fantastic and are much better than books 1, 2 and 3 in my opinion. The location of this book is amazing and there is finally the first dragon fight of the AP (no I don’t count the Bida in book 2). Also, most of the fights are pretty well balanced. Any tweaks to fights will be to improve fun, rather than for balance reasons. Story wise I don’t think book 4 needs any major changes besides pulling some story reveals from book 5 to this book as book 5 is loaded with lore drops and book 4 has very few.

Rebalance - A1 – Carnivorous Crystal: This monster has an oversight in its Crystallize ability that needs to be fixed. If it has a creature engulfed it can force that creature to make a Fort save or be slowed. If it is already slowed it becomes petrified. The oversight is that being engulfed already slows you meaning you just skip to petrified on the first failed save. Instead, replace “If the creature is already slowed” with “If the creature is already slowed because of Crystallize”. Furthermore, petrification effects like Flesh to Stone or the Basilisk’s Petrifying Gaze have the Incapacitation trait so add the Incapacitation trait to Crystallize.

Encounter Change - B4 – Grikkitog: Remove the Grikkitog and replace it with something else. It is just an incredibly unfun monster to fight against. What I did was have the wall to the kitchen be blocked up by the Gugs and put a Weak Quelaunt in the room instead and had it be feasting on the emotions of an actual ghost dwarf bound to the room. If the players retreat from the area the Quelaunt might feel like the Gugs have weakened and try to break out of the room to fight them or scare them off. If the players talk to the ghost dwarf he will ask them to bring something from his body back to his wife in Kovlar, if they do so and come back here to prove it to him then he will be able to rest in peace.

Encounter Change - D1 – Stone Golems: This is the 2nd of 4 times the AP throws Stone Golems against you. If you want a different golem, I would suggest replacing them with Weak Iron Golems as this lets the party learn about Iron Golems before the Embermead fight later in the book. An alternative if you don’t like golems is Elite Spiral Centurions which is what I did. The 10 hardness can be kind of difficult to overcome though so my party spent a lot of resources and then retreated.

Story - E7 – Zuferian’s Room: Include a letter from Embermead stating that the Triad has completed their primary objective in Saggorak (this is referring to getting the Orb of Gold Dragonkind Shard from Veshumerix but don’t tell the players that yet) and to continue working on destabilizing Kovlar so that they can eventually have a closer base to Jewelgate. This hints that the Triad is up to something and makes it clear that securing the Auidara in each area is not the Triad’s main goal.

Suggestion - Exploring Saggorak: I would recommend running at least one or two encounters so that Saggorak feels dangerous to traverse. If you want to make up your own encounters against undead this is the perfect part of the book for it. One of the encounters should be Gogiteths because they are such a cool monster.

Warning - F1 – Soulbound Ruin: I think this is a really cool set piece. The issue is that it is a creature that is actually ghosts hiding in a wall that can’t move and slowly resets itself over time and can only truly be defeated in a certain way. That is just what a Haunt is, except for some reason this has a creature statblock. I think the creature is balanced, but you might want to be upfront with your players that this is a creature even though by pretty much all definitions it should be a complex hazard.

Warning - F3 – Robe of the Archmagi: A while back Robe of the Archmagi was White for good, Gray for neutral and Black for Evil. Paizo errata’d that to Gold for good, Light Blue for neutral and Red for evil. This Gray robe is therefore now a Light Blue robe.

Warning - H1 – Elite Mukradi: Mukradi are very scary monsters. Resistance to 3 major elemental damage types, breath weapons, and a save or die. I don’t think it is so egregious it needs a nerf but this is probably more difficult than the Moderate encounter rating suggests.

Story: As part of the Embermead fight, if the players get her to slip up and reveal information, have her accidentally reveal that she promised Veshumerix that she would release a manifestation of Dahak in exchange for a Shard of the Orb of Gold Dragonkind. You could also have this be in a journal after the fight. As written, the Triad gathering the Shards is revealed as part of the heist in book 5 or Uri’s journal at the end if the players skipped/failed the heist. I believe revealing this in book 4 is better. It explains why Embermead is dealing with Veshumerix and helps answer the question posed by Laslunn’s journal at the end of book 3. Furthermore, the real reveal of the heist section in book 5 isn’t that they are gathering the shards, it is that the orb has already been remade and which is a bigger reveal if the players already knew that the Triad was gathering the shards. You can use the Recall Knowledge check from AoA book 5 page 30 if the players want to learn more about the Orb. The actual plan is to use the Orb on Mengkare but Embermead does not know that nor who Mengkare is.

Suggestion: The Dragon’s Domain: This map is surprisingly small for what is effectively a dragon’s lair. I would change it so each square on the map is actually a 10ft square rather than a 5ft square.

Book 5 – Against the Scarlet Triad

The penultimate book in the AP and one of my favorites because of chapter 2. The players finally go to Katapesh to take on the Scarlet Triad at their HQ and realize you can’t just stab all your problems away. Finderplain at the start of the book feels a little out of place story wise but it is a good enough reason for the players to have a friendly NPC with them in Katapesh and most GMs I have talked to said their players really enjoyed how strange the gnome city is.

Also I remade the maps for this book and you can find them on my github. I haven’t turned it into a Foundry module but I might in the future.

Encounter Change - Duskgate Waystation: Cut all the fights in this Waystation. One of the fights is against Stone Golems for the 4th and final time in this AP so nothing lost there. At this point in the AP, players have learned that entering a Waystation means combat. Subverting this expectation by making the Waystation have no combat is very unsettling for the players. Once they decide to leave the Waystation after wandering its empty halls they are met with the Promise of Fire which is a fantastic payoff for all the tension.

Suggestion - Chapter 2: Add a new downtime activity called Investigate Guild to this section using the same DCs as Build Connections.
Critical Success: You learn the starting and current support points of two guilds as well as their Favored Skills.
Success: As critical success but only one guild
Critical Failure: You can’t Investigate that guild for a week but other players still can.

Reason: Chapter 2 is one of my favorite chapters in the AP because of how varied and interesting it is while also having a time limit long enough that you feel you have to optimize which guilds to gain favor with when you actually have days of wiggle room (my players got enough guilds on their side with 4 days to spare). However, the chapter has one thing that I really disliked, which was the players didn’t know if they had a guild on their side. With some guilds needing quests, others needing victory points and one guild needing a quest and points it felt hard to be making progress when you don’t know how close you are to getting a guild on your side. I understand the author wanted it to be a big reveal at the end of the chapter but I don’t think that is worth keeping the players in the dark.

Encounter Change - Blood on the Sand Phase 3 Guildmaster’s Duel: The default fight is fine but Calikangs are not that interesting. I propose replacing them with two fighters well renowned in the city who retired but are coming out to fight the PCs as one last job. For 4 level 16 PCs you can replace the 4 Elite Calikangs with two level 15 enemies to keep the fight Severe. Here are some suggestions of potential enemies you can use. Make sure to give them each a cool nickname they earned in the arena.

Warning - C22 Adamantine Golem: This monster is unkillable unless you have a vorpal weapon (which there are no vorpal runes in the AP) or have a 9th level dispel magic. You can add a vorpal weapon somewhere hidden in the Red Pyramid if you want but do note that this is not a required fight, the players can just go the other path towards Uri.

Suggestion – C23 – Portal Key Replacement: Up to this point every portal key was also a useful item but the final portal key is not which is a massive letdown. Here is the item I made to replace the portal key with. The formatting of the statblock was created using https://template.pf2.tools/

Story: As of Lost Omens Firebrands, in the year 4722 Katapesh makes slavery illegal. I would tie this into the end of this book after the Triad has been defeated. Have the Pactmasters be upset with what slavery has done to their city and mention to the PCs they are going to start work on outlawing it. In the epilogue of the AP, talk about how this comes to pass and slavery in Katapesh is outlawed.

Book 6 – Broken Promises

My favorite book in the AP. Awesome set pieces, great story payoffs, an interesting villain that is also redeemable. Most of my changes to this book aren’t technically needed but I feel will make the book better. I do have something to admit though, when I said I ran the entire AP I lied. Because of some prior commitments from one of the players it was either finish the campaign early or wait 6 months to do the last chapter. So I had to skip all the fights in chapter 3 except the final battle. However, this does mean the players only have 1 fight to use their cool level 20 abilities so I am not suggesting other groups do that.

Suggestion - Event 3 - Reality Rip: Do not spawn new Mariliths after 10 rounds. The First Wave is already 3 encounters at the same time where you need to prioritize targets to try and protect your home which is a fantastic start to the final book. The First Wave took my group 14 rounds and I believe 5 or 6 hours to run though and I could tell they wanted to be done with it by the end. Change the victory point to be gained if you defeat all the events before round 14 begins.

Suggestion - Wave 2: Allow the PCs a bit of rest between the encounters to heal up, around 10-30 minutes depending on what event they just did and what the next one is. Do not force them to move to the next event without at least some time for healing and make it clear that they can take small breaks, but a full night's rest is out of the question.

Encounter Change - Event 4 - Monument Circle: Replace the 3 Animated Dragonstorms with an Ancient White Dragon, Ancient Black Dragon, Weak Ancient Green Dragon, Weak Ancient Blue Dragon and Weak Ancient Red Dragon. Increase the number of rounds it takes for a water tower to be destroyed to 4 to make up for the fact that there are now 5 things attacking towers instead of 4. These dragons should still follow the directives in the book where they will attack a tower unless provoked and then fight the PCs until they leave it alone for a round or it is dead.

Reason: Fighting one of each chromatic dragon is awesome.

Encounter Change - Event 7 - Storming Giants: Change the three Dragonstorm Fire Giants to three Elite Ximtal

Reason: I feel this encounter is the pinnacle of only having Bestiary 1 being detrimental to the AP. This is just a scaled up Fire Giant with one new ability and it is just not that interesting for a level 18 creature.
Alternative fight is to replace the 3 giants with 2 Guthallaths. I will warn you, that Annihilation Beam is VERY dangerous so while this is still a Severe encounter, it might be much more deadly than the original encounter. I almost lost a level 18 character in a fight against one Guthallath which is why this isn’t the main suggestion even though it fits narratively.

Warning: Event 8 – Balor: If you hit a Balor with a melee weapon it can melt it. It can’t destroy it in one attack but it might break it. I didn’t change it and it was fine because all my melee martials had backup adamantine weapons for all the golem fights. If your melee martials do not have backup weapons this fight might be harder than it first seems.

Suggestion: An Audience With Emaliza: If the players agree to ally with Emaliza, she will give them each a level 17 or 18 Apex item.

Reason: So chapter 2 revolves around a dilemma: do your players trust Emaliza or Inizra when they know that Uri has a sister in Promise who is trying to do something evil? My players were suspicious but not 100% sure that Emaliza was Uri’s sister especially when they then met Inizra. Then Inizra gave them loads of stuff and they automatically trusted her and decided Emaliza is evil. My solution to this is to have both sides give them items to make it a little less clear who to trust as well as get them their needed Apex items.

Story - Chapter 2: Change it so that council members no longer have a last name and replace it with “of Hermea” and that this is enforced by the Contract of Citizenship. This prevents the obvious question to ask “What is your last name?” knowing that if it matches Uri’s last name that is probably his sister.

Suggestion: Emaliza: You can fight Emaliza at multiple different points of the campaign but what you should do is replace Prismatic Sphere with practically any other level 9 spell. That thing is a rules nightmare as it tells you to go read Prismatic Wall to learn what it does and that tells you to read Chromatic Wall. Much easier to replace it with some other spell than figure out what on earth Prismatic Sphere is supposed to do.

Warning - Huntergate Node: The Tzitzimitl was reprinted in Bestiary 3 with updated numbers, make sure to use that version instead of what is in the book.

Rebalance - Jewelgate Node: Ilgreth has 28 AC as a level 20 creature which is just wrong. Give him 45 AC which is High for a level 20 creature. The saves are also wrong so make them +30 Fort, +33 Reflex, +36 Will which is Low, Moderate, High according to the GMG rules.

Suggestion: Dreamgate Node: Replace this encounter with something more fitting for your group. I am not suggesting a specific encounter to change this to.

Reason: This is a really boring encounter and thematically is lame. It has you fight Barzillai Thrune as if the players lost in Hell’s Rebels but unless your players played that AP or remember one of the times he was mentioned in book 3 this just feels like a guy trying to get you to sign a contract and then you say no and he was actually a Pit Fiend and then you fight. But also a second Pit Fiend just sort of shows up and also fights? Easily the worst node, especially compared to Vengegate Node or Huntergate Node.

Rebalance: Duskgate Node – Xotani: This one actually comes from the developers, but change the Regeneration to Fast Healing otherwise Xotani is unkillable.

Encounter Change - Duskgate Node: Change this fight from three Xotani, to one Xotani and 4 Elite Xotani Spawn. An alternative is an Elite Xotani and 3 Elite Xotanispawn

Reason: I have heard this called the hardest fight in the book and maybe even the AP. I did not run it so I am unsure of how dangerous it is. However, I have had multiple GMs tell me that they swapped out some of the Xotani for Xotanispawn. Also, fighting 3 of the same unique monster just feels weird.

The Final Battle

Here it is, the final battle of the AP, just the heroes against a dragon god and sadly to say, as written this fight sucks and every GM I have talked to changed it in some way to make it more interesting. While Dahak is a level+4 solo boss fight that just isn’t that scary at level 20 when the players have access to pretty much anything they want. His damage isn’t that high for his level, most of his spells are damage or utility instead of debuffs or buffs. The Anima Invocation also gives the players 1 Good damage on their strikes which effectively translates to each of their attacks doing an extra 27 damage because of his 26 good weakness. Combine this with the buffs from cleansing the nodes and the players will walk over this fight unless you just have Dahak use his massive 200ft fly speed to get in, attack once and leave every turn which is not a fun final boss fight.

Goal: To make the fight more interesting. The final fight not being that hard isn’t a bad thing, the problem is it isn’t hard AND it isn’t interesting so it just kind of falls flat.

The arena itself is kind of interesting, a large cave with ways for the manifestation to effectively “teleport” around the map as well as a big pool of acid/fire in the center that does a LOT of damage if you fall in it. Not the best arena, but better than just a big flat field.

I am going to add a complex hazard to this fight that is a little different than most.

The Well of Venoms is going to be the hazard and the way it works is at the start of the round it will telegraph where it will affect, choosing a 40ft burst that has the most PCs in it. At the end of a round it will spew Venom at that area and any player still in the area at the end of the round takes the damage as if they fell in the pool (15d6 fire 15d6 acid that ignores immunity and resistance) with no save. The point of this hazard is to be dangerous but avoidable to make the PCs move more. This in turn lessens their action economy advantage over Dahak. Because their action economy isn’t as high you can play Dahak more aggressively and not just have him be 100ft in the air at all times. At half health, you can start a “phase 2” where the pool targets two non-overlapping 40ft bursts.

I also suggest changing out Dahak’s spells. He has a lot of spells that aren’t really meant to fight the PCs, for example both his 9th level spells, Massacre and Telepathic Demand, just don’t work on the PCs. Having high level spells that just don’t matter in the final fight is lame. Moment of Renewal is a good one as because of his massive CON score and high level it heals him for 240 hit points.

One small change is to make Dahak a 6x6 instead of a 4x4. There are monsters in PF2 that are bigger than a 4x4 such as the Mu Spore and I feel it increases the tension of a fight to see a creature size that shows up on maybe 2 monsters in the entire system.

Another thing you could do to make the fight harder is nerf Anima Invocation. I think the easiest thing to do is remove the 1d10 extra good damage and 1 extra good damage from the critical success and success respectively. This means the players don’t inherently do an extra 26 damage to Dahak every time they hit him. Also lorewise it makes sense, the ritual even states “This shift from an offensive effect to a defensive one results in a much less dangerous spell that helps to protect against Dahak.” so removing the offensive aspect and making it purely defensive fits. This will make the final fight take longer and doesn’t really make Dahak more of a threat, he just won’t die nearly as quickly.

The suggested changes above are based on what I did for my game when I ran the fight but with some tweaks. Here is what I did and why I felt I needed to change it for this guide.

I had a 6x6 Dahak mini and seeing the size difference between the Dragon God and the party members was much more impactful than I thought it would be.

I ran this fight in person and as such only had a 46x30 battlemap. Because the area was so much smaller than the actual map in the book I put the pool in the center and divided the map into 8 sections. Instead of a 40ft burst it targeted an entire section with the most PCs. This worked on the smaller map but doing that on the full size map the book uses would make it impossible to escape the area which is not the goal of the hazard.

It would choose an area one round and actually do the damage on the next giving the players ample time to move. My players liked this but said it was too easy so when Dahak was at half hp I changed it to target 2 areas but it was still really easy to dodge which is why I suggest having it target and attack each round instead of every other round.

As I had 6 players, I scaled the encounter by having 3 level 19 minions in the fight that related to the PCs in some way. In my case it was a Tzitzimitl for the rogue and wizard, a Sard for the 2 druids, an Eremite for the barbarian and Dahak himself for the monk.