Turn the Whole Party into Eidolons? An adventure in the Beastlands, first time GMing. - OG Myth-Weavers

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Turn the Whole Party into Eidolons? An adventure in the Beastlands, first time GMing.

   
Turn the Whole Party into Eidolons? An adventure in the Beastlands, first time GMing.

Hi frends! How about that title huh? Allow me to explain.

One of my tabletop groups finished the Pathfinder Second Darkness campaign a year or so ago, and our GM would like to get the group back together again for a home-written adventure set ten years later, to get them to level 20. We played the campaign as a Mythic one, and ended at Level 16, Mythic 4. We had two Summoners (don't ask, it's worth its own thread), a Rogue/Inquisitor, an Arcanist and a Paladin.

His campaign will take us from level 17 to level 20, and myself and another player will each be running a two-part short game to take place between level 16 and 17. These two games are meant to be flavourful filler to get the group back into our old characters before the next campaign, so they will be more story-driven than combat.

The game I'm running will be the second of the two, and take place largely in the Wilderness of the Beastlands. With the two Summoners (one of them being my character) having Merge Form, I've been toying with the idea of having everyone else make an Unchained Eidolon for their character to transform into when they head to the Beastlands, as a type of cover in relation to the story.

It seems like a fun idea, but I'm also not really mechanically-minded when it comes to crafting adventures, and this will be the first Pathfinder game I'm running. I already know I'm going to have trouble designing mobs, and I'm also just wondering if it's too much work for the other players to make Level 16 Unchained Eidolons for an adventure that will last two, maybe three sessions. They seem interested, but it's still daunting and could slow the game down.

I'm also after some general advice on crafting mobs for higher leveled games and balancing encounters, as I've found a lot of mixed advice around online and would like some personal experiences. Numbers are not my strong suit - I have dyscalculia (number dyslexia), and while I won't let this stop me it would benefit me to find a way to streamline combat so that I can having engaging battles without constant stalling to math, with enemies that are still challenging. Yes I know, it's a stat-heavy game, still! I have been considering battles with puzzle-based resolutions. Has something like this been done before? Have you done it? I'd like to hear from you!

You always have the option of separating the fluff from the crunch. Point being, "turning into an Unchained Eidolon" doesn't have to mean the players have to spend a game session re-creating their characters using different mechanics. You can simply have them look like these creatures, but maintain their same abilities.

It's actually a common trope you'll see every now and then. You've seen it with Mystique in the various X-men movies, it's the entire premise of The Parent Trap, and even in A New Hope when Han & Luke were trying to break into the cell block to save Leia. The tension created from trying to pass for an actual $Whatever can make for good roleplaying .. and for some memorable fights when things go wrong.

It's also worth noting that I did this sort of thing a lot with character creation when D&D 4E was the current version. For all its other flaws, 4E was actually designed with the fluff/crunch separation in mind. At least half the 4E characters in my Sheets list are described in some manner that's almost entirely separate from the actual mechanics of their builds.

You may want to consider keeping it somewhat simple - if they're going to turn into Eidolons, then maybe they just get the base type template (like angel or demon or fey or whatever), and they gain the abilities as per that template according to their character level. That way, it doesn't over complicate things, but still adds something to be interesting, and it doesn't invalidate summoners who have gained Merge Form.

Otherwise, DrMorganes is on the dot - changing the fluff of the character may be more than enough.





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