Journal

[1E] I feel like I should share some of the things I've been doing with the Iron Gods AP. I spend a fair amount of time prepping by reading other peoples' experiences so I'd like to contribute. I make a lot of adjustments because I love working with the rules and helping my players have strong characters. This also means a lot of upbalancing encounters. I also have a preference to not remove player agency with hard CC abilities, so I try to balance around that.

My players are a human bladebound magus (custom nanite variant) with focus on shocking grasp "A", a luck/liberty human cleric "J" of Desna, a shadow patron tiefling witch "Q" focusing on CC, an android telekineticist "W" who was adopted by Khonnir Baine, and a slyph arcanist "Z" focusing on battlefield manipulation.

DM philosophy: I prefer to give my players what they want. I want them to make cool characters and do cool things with them in challenging situations. I tend to offer them stronger-than-normal options, minimize loss-of-agency effects (like stuns), and defer to the players' advantage in the case of a rule dispute. For rule disputes or confusion I give the players the benefit and rule later with a page. I had to do so with things like in-combat fascination, complexity of confusions, and perception/hide effects of invisibility. I also like to make new things, like spells or items or prestige classes.

House rules overview:

-I give my players bonus feats based on elephant in the room feat taxes.

-I allow players to either select weapon- and spell- in groups or individual effects; grouped effects can be retrained once ever week/book and individual effects can be retrained every day.

-All characters get max HP per level: This benefits debuffers over burst damage dealers; once SoLs land then enemies are nearly out of the fight. But even so the magus deals massive amounts of damage against bosses. Sometimes 70% of their health with one round.

-Each character gets a bonus feat from a selection at the end of each book. These are tech themed and help the players use technology more easily.

-Racial FCBs can be freely chosen. They're usually not well balanced against the race and class. Humans also get some of the best despite being strong at every class. Q picked the ratfolk hex extended. W picked the ghoran gather power improvement. Z picked extra arcane pool.

-Hardness was changed to be more like DoW2 and have more counter options. "Hardness X" reduces nonmagical physical damage by X and magical/energy damage by X/2. Hardness is ignored by adamantine, disintegration, force, and anything the character is weak against (typically electricity). Medium noncombat robots have a hardness of 5, medium combat robots of 10, and larger robots gain even more.

-Spell combat does not provoke attacks from casting a spell. I think having to navigate casting defensively in order to use the primary class feature as intended is too punishing for the magus.

-Kineticists only take nonlethal damage from burn when they reach their maximum allowed. This made out telekineticist very tanky with lots of burn dropped on extra temp HP. He eventually started dropping the shield so that he wouldn't waste healing from channel energy.

IG 1 opens with the Numerian town of Torch. The eponymous purple flame that the townsfolk use to smelt skymetals has gone out and several expeditions into the caverns underneath had gone missing, including the important councilor, Khonnir Baine. The town's economy is paralyzed, waste that would be dumped in the torch piles up in the street, and the vicious Technic League expects tax payments soon. The players are enticed by an offer of gold to recover Khonnir. The town council would use a scroll of resurrection to revive him or give the scroll to his saviors if it is not needed. W is more motivated by his connection to his adoptive father and the well-being of the town.

The players connect with councilor Dolga Freddert to confirm the reward and muster their forces. A and J are excited to destroy robots rumored to be lurking in the caverns. Q feels that there is something that represents life beyond Golarion under that hill. Z wants the freedom that only cash can provide. The party is directed toward the helpful councilor and iron priest of Brigh, Joram Kyte. Joram gives them a water breathing spell so they can access the caverns from the bitter pond at the base of the hill. When they reach the end of the aquatic tunnel, a band of ratfolk surprises them. They demand money or supplies with the threat of crossbows, spears, and a technological canister. Z quickly drops most with a color spray. A and W dispatch the last standing ratfolk as well as the helpless ones. Exploring further into the cave they find a large flowering plant and two plant-animated corpses. The players decide to attack, not aware of how resilient these enemies are. A is caught by the plant's pheromones. She walks up to the plant and it tries to lobotomize her. She escapes with minor trauma as the party slowly hacks their way through the bodies. The party has exhausted many of their resources and HP by this point, so they return to Khonnir's home to rest. When they approach the building they hear a shriek from inside. W unlocks the door to the foundry and finds a robot menacing Khonnir's other adopted child, Val. Although the damaged robot was no real threat, the adventurers heroically destroyed it.

The next day, the party carefully makes their way further into the caverns. They catch two skulks unaware but hold back their violence this once to gather information. The skulks demand that the adventurers meet with the skulk leader, Sef. The skulks had set up some huts near a large metal wall and a deep pit. Sef tells them that a purple-haired woman had offered to help the skulks if they kill anyone who tried to pass through the metal wall. They had killed several people and were starting to doubt that the woman would ever return to make good on her deal. The skulk would allow the players to pass if they retrieved a special rope stolen by gremlins, as well as helped the skulk bring more of their kind up from the dangerous subterranean system that lied below the pit. Understanding that skulk have no interest in peaceful settlement, the players fight the skulk. Sef was misfortuned by Q and useless for the whole fight. The party takes the skulks' spoils and use a key-card to go through the wall. Inside is a metal passageway packed with mangled junk. Two robots, similar to the one fought before, attempt to fix a technological door. W tries to help by levitating thieves tools over, but causes the door to malfunction. The robots attack the players as the door arcs electricity down the passage. With the help of the random bolts, the players destroy the robots.

>!The opening was as written. W was worried about Khonnir and the rest of the players converged on the town hall hearing about the reward. A, J, and Z wanted to kill robots. Q wanted to find some aliens. The players swam through the underwater tunnel to the hidden caverns. They were ambushed by some ratfolk with a timeworn fire extinguisher, for selectively blocking line of sight. The ratfolk wanted to mug the players. Z went early and knocked most of the rats out with color spray. They were quickly CdG'd. The next fight was against two yellow musk zombies and one yellow musk creeper. The magus was separated by the pheromones and the zombies were tough. The magus made a big deal about getting her head drilled by the musk. When they met the skulk, they were suspicious of their evil tendencies, but agreed to all meet Sef together. Sef told them about the purple-haired woman's deal to guard the passage and her recent absence. Sef offered the players passage if they both retrieved a polymer rope from gremlins in the caves and then helped the skulk lift their supplies and the rest of their tribe up the hole in the cave whence they came. The good cleric and W didn't want to populate the caverns with untrustworthy skulk so they had an all-out fight with the skulk. Misfortune made Sef useless. After defeating the skulk, the party rested, showed some tech stuff to the travelling merchant, Sanvil Trett, and leveled up to 2.

They also rescued Val Baine from a not-very-threatening repair robot. They skipped meeting Garmin, the casino owner, because they thought it was a trap. They also avoided the cave areas with the slimed halflings, the russet mold, and the gremlins. The players entered the door in the buried metal wall and found two repair robots trying to repair a malfunctioning door. The telekineticist tried to help by poking at the controls from a distance, but ended up triggering the door, which provoked the robots. The players fought the robots while electricity arced from the doorway, mostly hurting the robots. After some empty rooms, they entered into the habitat dome. The undead lord kasatha warned the players to leave the sacred ground while skeleton kasatha surrounded them. When the players decided to fight, the skeletons converged on the players two every turn while the lord possessed and empowered one skeleton at a time. The undead lord was quickly destroyed by a critical shocking grasp. The players explored the domed area, defeated an advanced, shelled alien, read the kasatha's prayers to Zyphus, and restored functionality to the environmental controls. The players caught some lost ratfolk and orc scavengers off-guard and quickly CC'd and killed them. A surviving ratfolk was interrogated by the party, but their bluff of "You hit your head and you're tied up for your own good" didn't go over well. The players found a room with interesting looking tools, but slimes started to emerge. Everyone but the witch got out safely, so they had to fight their way back in to save her. When the players found a blood-drinking cerebric fungus alien they just noped on out. A fight with a medical drone wasn't too difficult, but they finally found the surgical room with Khonnir. The magus was forced onto the operating table and injected with the same nanites that were incapacitating Khonnir. The PCs had a difficult time dealing with hardness, but shocking grasp got them through it. They finally were level 3.

Khonnir Baine was alive, but comatose. Sanvil heard about his nanite infection and decided to make his move. He broke into the Baine house, stole some of that nanite blood, and was about to kill Khonnir when the players found him. Sanvil tried to fight, but he was misfortuned, blinded, outlined, grappled, and entangled. His only option was to go out with a bang. He activated two grenades, killing himself, khonnir, W, and Val. The players were shocked by brutality. Sanvil planned on using the only known vial of this nanite blood, his knowledge of the tech under torch, and the circumstances of the town to negotiate a governorship with the technic league over control of the town. W was resurrected using the reward from rescuing Khonnir. The town cleric, Joram, loaned Khonnir a raise dead scroll.!<