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Dear players,

Last night's session.

As I indicated succinctly, the adventure is not written in a standard way. This was the first high level adventure for the Pathfinder line at the time and it reads more like a campaign setting book than anything else. Therefore I am left with a lot of text to read and merely a few suggestions of "what might show-up if your players go here... or there...".
That being said, Xin-Shalast is meant to be sand-boxy - Is that a word? It is now! - so it is down to the players to choose what to do next.
Again Rise of the Runelords has a lot more background for the GM to read than it is possible for the same GM to possibly tell the players about, so it is hard at time not to sound like reading Tolkien's Silmarillion.

I have adapted the adventure a bit, in fact built upon the good foundations from the author Greg Vaughan, to link locations together. If not, it would definitely sound like a collection of random encounters to you. I had the same problem with Wolfgang Baur's Fortress of the Stone Giants where the monsters in the dungeon must have appeared totally random, c.f. the "It's only a Kobold" moment.
So, here you are, with a very temporary cattle business to run, unless you are extremely good at making up a story when the not so gullible Lamia Harridans show up. I have also expanded a bit on what Morgiv (the Skulk) would know so as to hint at the need of collecting at least one Sihedron Ring per PC.

Scaling a 3.5 adventure to PRPG.

On the way home Ian and I discuss the fact that it is very easy to run a 3.5 adventure in Pathfinder up to around level ten. After that, the added raw power of a Pathfinder PC shows a lot and makes encounters too underpowered. The best example I could find was the CR18 NPC you will have to fight at some point when up in the actual Spires of Xin-Shalast (the title of the adventure). Originally a CR18 for D&D 3.5, Viorian Dekanti (Human Fighter 18) had only a +23 to hit on her first attack (she was always using power-attack 10); rebuilt from a collection like-for-like feats and newer PRPG feats that fit her character's style and specialisation (scimitar and shield); now she starts her attack sequence at +37, thus a +14 compared to her initial built (+4 without the in-built power-attack).
10 of these 14 are the "always 10 points of power-attack" from the old rule of choosing "-X to hit +X to damage", another 4 come from the "Weapon mastery, (blade, heavy)" added by the Pathfinder RPG system. With the change to the power-attack feat, it gives her +32 to hit with PA instead of the original +23.
Viorian 3.5 was a serious threat to a party of 15^th level 3.5 PCs.
Viorian 3.5 would be just a speed bump to a party of 15^th level PRPG PCs.

Of course, Viorian PRPG should again be a CR18 to an EPL (equivalent party level) 15.

The numbers I gave you yesterday were off by 1, I had forgotten the -1 to hit for size because Viorian is a large Human (permanently enlarged by Karzoug).

Calendar events.

I have added a couple of Rise of the Runelords events on the calendar. As discussed yesterday, I will be away the second week of July, but this will be a Legacy of Fire game. See the relevant thread with regards to Vague Connections being closed that week.

I have updated the game page.

Laurent,