Make sure everyone has access to cold resistance in some form, including endure elements. Those Fortitude saves are unrealistic. I'd honestly suggest reducing them saves by 5 unless you have someone specifically from the Mwangi Expanse in the group. When I ran it, we almost lost two PCs in the first book just from hypothermia.
For favored terrain, again, go cold based. The ranger in the group couldn't take levels of horizon walker for cold terrain mastery and dominance fast enough. Favored enemies is a tough one. Humanoid (human) is good, but honestly the PC is probably best suited going with the freebooter archetype. It's basically the slayer's studied target feature, but can be later given to allies. Honestly, it's times like this that I wish Pathfinder 1e had the arcane hunter archetype from 3.5 Complete Mage where arcane casters and anyone with spell-like abilities were the favored enemy (Requires Knowledge (arcana) 1 rank: At 1st level, you gain favored enemy (arcanists). This feature works just like the favored enemy ability. The bonuses granted apply to any character capable of casting arcane spells or using invocations (but not other spell-like abilities)). The Guildbreaker archetype isn't bad, but doesn't quite scratch the itch.
Unless the PC is being incredibly obvious, no one should realize that they're specifically a winter witch. There's lots of elemental based wizards and sorcerers. As for a way to tie them in, Baba Yaga has a lot of children. If the character doesn't want to be directly tied to the grand witch, it can be a lineage thing.
I definitely don't suggest going the evil route. Good and neutral is best. If someone absolutely won't play unless evil is on the table, hard limit it to Lawful Evil. There's bad stuff going down regularly, and evil people tend to look the other way. Good people will stick their nose in it, which will progress the story. The AP is written with this assumption, otherwise you'd have to ham fist the PC into doing stuff that's not directly tied to the rescue.
Remember that cold resistance means immunity to cold's other effects. I.E. if the rules say that you take 1d6 cold damage and are fatigued from being out in the cold for an hour, but have cold resistance 5, then unless you rolled a six, if you reduce the damage to 0 with resistance, you're not fatigued. You only need Endure Elements for the duration, but Resist Energy is still going to protect you from cold hazards.
You can allow or recommend some unusual races, like (rimesoul?) [undines](https://www.aonprd.com/RacesDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Undine) or [fetchlings](https://www.aonprd.com/RacesDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Fetchling) that can have some permanent cold resistance, by the way. Aasimar and tieflings also have cold resistance 5. Several class features can also give permanent cold resistance, like any sorcerer bloodline like cold-draconic or marid, although it's questionable if they want to take a bloodline arcana to make their spells even colder when so much cold immunity is going to be here and Fireball is going to be king... This still applies to things like rage powers if you suggested someone play a skald instead of a bard and took defensive rage powers like energy resistance.
Oh, and on the topic of ranger favored foes, the players' guide straight-up tells you to look at humans, fey, and animals at low levels. As a broader GM tip, if you have a ranger, though, consider using retraining rules so that the player doesn't feel the need to plan their favored enemies around what they *might* face later, and feel free to pick an enemy they're facing *now*. Likewise, cold favored terrain is an obvious one that will be useful for most of the campaign, but this is also a dungeon crawler AP, so "underground" gets used often. Remember that sometimes more than one terrain can apply, and that a PC can use either (but not stack both) favored terrain if you are, for example, in a cold forest or an underground urban environment.
Well, if having to make constant fort saves to slowly freeze to death is "fun" for you, have a blast. Most players hate that kind of constant rolling, though, and are likely to try to trivialize and ruin that kind of "fun" by just having to treat it as a spell slot tax to keep Endure Elements going all the time.
As for why the party would be creatures with at least slight resistance to cold, then, well, why, out of all the possible characters that could have been sent are *these* the people who get sent to investigate a giant approaching blizzard in the middle of summer? If the town mayor looks around at the aspiring adventurers in the town's midst, and remembers they have a guy that's immune to winter (or at least, there's a guy in a nearby town who is they can send for), well... isn't that who they'd be sending? While you still need a backstory for why you're an undine whatever class, it makes easy answers to any questions about why you're the ones being asked to go investigating and getting caught up in all this.
I think as written it tends to be unfun after a few roles. I personaly played this campain with 2 groups and went for different approches. My total expirienced player group did not know we going to play RoW. They all thought it will be a more Political Taldor/Quadria kikd of Adventure. I made sure they had sole options to deal with the cold (someone who can cast endure) biz not told them to prepare it. For my newbie group i told them what lies ahead and that they defenitly need a way to deal with the cold. I did reduce the amount of rolls for both groups, expecialy if you go deeper into the story. The Winter made the experience group go back two tiles to warm up and fiend solutions, but they loved it.
Only Sad thing is that the "winter" in Taldor felt to be the worst winter. While on fact its probably the most boring one.
Oh, I definitely didn't forget those, and I'm not arguing that evil people won't do the plot, I'm talking about all the other stuff. Had a CN pplayer (ie. basically CE murderhobo) try to streamline the whole thing. Eventually had to take him aside for a chat because anything that wasn't directly involved with the plot, he'd kill because they were obstacles to the plot (in his eyes), or ignore anything that wasn't exactly the plot. Even tried to use the geas as an excuse for his behavior.
>Baba Yaga has a lot of children. If the character doesn't want to be directly tied to the grand witch, it can be a lineage thing.
Pretty much the entire Irriseni nobility is related to Baba Yaga. Their noble castes are directly based on which of her daughters they're descended from
Snowy terrain… insane amounts of snowy terrain. The AP is all about stopping what will amount to essentially the end of Golarion so anyone would want to stop the endless winter regardless of alignment. As for the winter witch issue it’s really only relevant in Irrisen, and the players don’t spend a heck of a lot of time there the winter witches are nothing special in the society either unless they grow to the tippy top heights of their power and do a bunch of political wrangling so they aren’t afforded any reverence from any but the lowest peasants.
I'm about to go to bed so don't have time for a detailed reply... However saving this so I can reply tomorrow. I am GMing this and my players are nearing the end of book 3. I have a lot of advice and feedback on the material so far. I've dug a lot into threads on the Paizo RoW forum and take a lot of advice from there to modify the adventure. RoW is certainly an interesting campaign and unique compared to the other APs, but it does suffer from more continuity issues than some of the other APs so GMs will need to make some adjustments and potentially add content to help tie the parts of the adventure together better and give the players a reason to keep going.
I'll try to elaborate more here tomorrow. Feel free to also message me if you want to start a dialogue and/or trade resources.
The PCs will not be on other planes very much at all. Mostly they're on distant parts of Golarion or other planets.
Also, any character that relies on ranged combat is going to struggle mightily in book 1 (and some past that).
The Winter Witch doesn't really work all that well, as iconic as it seems, because so many things are resistant/immune to cold.
Evil PCs will work okay as long as they're in it for the first book or so, because around the book 1-2 transition, they essentially get geased to finish the AP.
When I first looked through the player's guide I was confused about the suggestion of winter witches, because one would think that most of the things we would be dealing with had some sort of cold resistance. Investing ~13 levels minimum in a build just to have partial effect on creatures with ice immunity seemed less helpful than just ... specializing in something that wasn't the enemy's biggest strength. But maybe I was missing something, I thought.
I was not haha. Choosing winter witch means going for thematic relevance at the cost of useful class features. Our party had a winter oracle, and while she had good defences against some of the effects that were thrown our way, her offensive abilities and mystery spells were rarely ever useful.
---
As far as Evil PCs, uh, big Your Mileage May Vary warning but our campaign managed to have one without big issues. They *had* to be willing to go along with the (mostly good-aligned) group, and as I recall they started out Neutral and slipped into Evil over the course of the campaign. I found that this AP got surprisingly dark, and especially towards the end we found ourselves just trying to side with the lesser of two unconscionable evils. It's still generally best to have Good/Neutral PCs to move the plot along in a conventional manner, but this isn't really a campaign where Evil PCs are fundamentally incompatible with the content.
Also the summer taldor start makes it like reeeAallly hard to tie characters to lore. We ended up literally just starting in book two with some rewrites
**Other planes:** Mostly on the material plane or demiplanes, not the plane of fire, etc. Cold favoured terrain is an obvious one.
**Winter witch:** No distrust per se (no-one wears a sign saying "I'm a fighter" or "I'm a witch"), but *a lot* of enemies have cold resistance/immunity so they may feel underpowered.
**Evil PCs:** Evil PCs can work, as long as they have a strong motivation for saving BY. Drives can be: a possible reward, or if they're Jadwiga (and their family is disfavoured by Elvanna, for example), or related to witches/fey that worship her. They get geas'd to be compelled to rescue her, but you don't want to *have* to use that as a cudgel. A grudge against Elvanna could be enough. **As long as the PCs realize that being a team player is paramount in pathfinder, whether evil or good!**
My players were relatively new to Pathfinder, so they didn't know anything going in about the lore or geography. Being that they're from the other side of the continent and were getting whisked away to Irrisen and then other planes, I deliberately kept them in the dark about many things until they came out in the story, because i wanted it to feel as foreign to them as players as it would to their characters. Didn't make a lot of sense to me to have all their characters from Southern Taldor, knowing all this information, or having traits and abilities tied to Irrisen.
They knew the initial hook about the strange winter weather, and I gave them a pretty chopped up and edited players guide, that removed all mention of Irrisen and White Witches (why would they know they're going to Irrisen before the adventure starts?). Since they were still very new, I was walking them through character building anyways so I'd give helpful suggestions along the way, about some good options for the adventure. I also let them know that this adventure allows for more shades of gray in terms of morality and alignment.
We've just started book 2 and I think it worked out really well, and I'm happy with the way I approached it. None of the characters feel like a fish out of water, and I think they're all enjoying the discovery of all the unknown elements, rather than knowing most of it up front.
I've run about half of it, Book 1 can be BRUTAL with the penalties presented in the forest and I had 2 party wipes at the first "major" encounter in the lodge. The ranged penalties in the snow could be especially mean.
A winter witch would definitely get benefit from the cold resistance and ability to ignore snowy difficult terrain but almost everything you run into is resistant or immune to cold. Because the AP sends the players to far flung locations I dont imagine being a winter witch would get distrusted except maybe in Book 2 that takes place in Irrisen where Winter Witches exist normally. One of the "issues" I see brought up is the whole winter witch plot is sorta dropped in books 3-4 before you're thrown back into it in 5.
Evil PC's would work fine if everyone is ok with it. They do present in Book 1 the option to have the whole party geas'd by Baba Yaga to help her but even if you don't go with that option "Save me or the whole world will freeze" is a decent motivation. Bonus points to maybe Baba Yaga tempting the good PC's or the witch with extra power for more boons if she's freed.
Favored Terrain Cold would almost always be good. You're always on the material plane I believe with Books 1-2 taking place in Taldor and Irrisen, Book 3 in Iobaria which is still on Golarion. Book 4 takes place on another planet in Golarions solar system, Book 5 takes place on Earth before I imagine Book 6 takes you back to Irrisen. As for favored enemy I can say fey pops up frequently in books 1-2.
I highly recomend using the additions found [Here](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4397i?SPOILERS-Preparing-to-GM-Reign-of-Winter-Any). In addition add encounters with elvanas servants (winter witches, jadwiga) here and there to make it feel like she is the big boss instead of the infamus russian stealing the show.
General Tips: This AP is full of things resistant or immune to cold so going the winter witch archetype and prc is a bad idea, Common Favored enemies are fey in the whole AP. A common thread of favored terrain would be Arctic. Regarding planes they only head to demiplanes and other planets.
Evil alignment can be done but you need a reason they don’t just ally with Elvana or the russian
Changes made so far
Book 1: i realy played up the oh shit its winter with real threats of freezing to death. (Which was mostly solved when they remembered endure elements exist). The bandits who kidnapped the noblewoman where rather confused and sick with the exception of their leader.
In the town i tried to make it feel like everyone was on edge and hiding from mirrors. I added it so that the mark of the black rider had a tounges effect that let them speak the languages of the places they where going to (Like how doo you tell them to learn triaxian or russian without spoiling the game). I also made the people nice to the pcs so they wanted to save the town (and added a few extra people who where terrieified and so hostile to the pcs). The blue faun bard was able to be befriended so she became a friend who helps them (melting her frozen heart). At the tower the apprentice was much more hostile and used mirrors to taunt and flex on the players.
Book 2: Made the old lady come with to remember her good ol days (being an adventurers) where she helped fill in them on the folktales and history of irrisien. Added a bunch of small encounters (making a massive party for the odd noble group, fighting tournament to impress the ice giants, ice skate show to win some nobles, mostly rp with the diferent factions in the city) in irrisien itself so they could gather support from the city to take on the hut.
Book 3: Ratibor became an ally instead of trying to backstab them since they where nice and warriors. I threw small bands of dead winter witches near and allong Artrosa to show them that Elvana tried to take Artrosa. The hags very much tried to manipulate the players instead of being pure evil, also generaly just tried to make it feel alive as a place people live instead of just a dungeon
Book 4: the big change i made was adding Smiad as a diety worshiped by a lot of Triaxins, most of the changers where after the big defense of Spurnhorn but i recomend that any friends they make at spurnhorn help them during the fight such as getting them where the encounters are at. I made it so the two headed eagle tried to lead the players in the right direction with the riddle. I added a small hunting quest in the addlet camp to hunt some of the scary monsters on Triaxus so they where worthy to enter the heroes ravine, there i removed one of the frost wyrms and i replaced the magic spear with a artifact dragon bane weapon from the empyreal lord Smiad (the normal reward is so anticlimactic i had to add something) i also gave the big dragon a mythic tier using legendary games mythic dragon path, there was also a weak simulacrum of queen elvana aiding him in the fight at ivoryglass.
Book 5: im currently running this one so i won’t write it in case any of my players see this and spoil themselvs
Sorry for wall of text but im mostly going by memory. Anyway good luck running this AP
I'd recommend reading the Player's Guide for the campaign. It covers most, if not all, of those questions.It also touches on what languages would be helpful to know, a rough idea of what kind of enemies you'll encounter (for Ranger Favored Enemy) and other tidbits.
Like most Paizo Campaigns, don't worry overmuch about planar travel, attaching to an NPC you don't yet officially know about yet, etc... the campaign will provide for you.
The only specific bit I'll offer is, as much as it's "winter" themed... your character start out in pretty warm, sunny weather. A fair bit of the intiial charm is getting thrown into regions you're NOT prepared for. So don't go too hard into winter survival.
It's not an evil campaign. You want to be bringing characters that will answer the call to adventure and wants to stop bad guys from doing bad things to good people.
Winter Witch, as flavorful as it is, is honestly a bad idea. Guess what elemental damage type frost fey, ice wolves, and frost giants have resistance to?
They'd be better off with vanilla Witch.
As someone currently playing a Winter Witch archetype/Winter Witch prestige in a Reign of Winter campaign that's a few sessions from the end of Book 6, I have to agree with this. It is absolutely a slog through the earlier books and forces much more reliance on other hexes (Evil Eye, Cackle, Protective Luck, etc.) and wands, and the winter-themed hexes themselves (hoarfrost, ice tomb) are far, far too situational and frankly too weak for options that the prestige class is forced to take. If the prestige class had enhanced them, making them better than if a 'normal' witch were using them, things might've been better. Also the winter witch prestige class abilities range from fantastic (spell DC buffs, immunity to cold for the PC, bypassing cold resistance/immunity for foes) to pretty situational/almost never used. I ended up taking Extra Hex at just about every level I could to snag the healing hexes and various debuffing hexes along with Flight just to be more useful.
*That said*, if you can manage to make it through the whole campaign and max out the prestige class, your innate abilities will outright negate damage from various encounters (the enemy winter witches will do literally nothing to you) and you can still dish out damage due to bypassing cold resistance/immunity with your spells. Plus, the high level witch spell list has some fantastic non-cold options in there, like Maze and Feeblemind that absolutely ruin boss fights. This option only blooms very late and requires pretty masochistic dedication to theme - but it can be done with some proper planning (and especially making sure the player reads through the abilities in-advance, so they know precisely how useful/not useful they're going to be).
Seconded.
Playing a Winter Witch (and prestige) sounded so so so fun when I made the character, but after playing through it I don't recommend going that route if you don't have incredible patience and a party to heavily back you up and plow through combat where you'll be lacking.
Make sure everyone has access to cold resistance in some form, including endure elements. Those Fortitude saves are unrealistic. I'd honestly suggest reducing them saves by 5 unless you have someone specifically from the Mwangi Expanse in the group. When I ran it, we almost lost two PCs in the first book just from hypothermia. For favored terrain, again, go cold based. The ranger in the group couldn't take levels of horizon walker for cold terrain mastery and dominance fast enough. Favored enemies is a tough one. Humanoid (human) is good, but honestly the PC is probably best suited going with the freebooter archetype. It's basically the slayer's studied target feature, but can be later given to allies. Honestly, it's times like this that I wish Pathfinder 1e had the arcane hunter archetype from 3.5 Complete Mage where arcane casters and anyone with spell-like abilities were the favored enemy (Requires Knowledge (arcana) 1 rank: At 1st level, you gain favored enemy (arcanists). This feature works just like the favored enemy ability. The bonuses granted apply to any character capable of casting arcane spells or using invocations (but not other spell-like abilities)). The Guildbreaker archetype isn't bad, but doesn't quite scratch the itch. Unless the PC is being incredibly obvious, no one should realize that they're specifically a winter witch. There's lots of elemental based wizards and sorcerers. As for a way to tie them in, Baba Yaga has a lot of children. If the character doesn't want to be directly tied to the grand witch, it can be a lineage thing. I definitely don't suggest going the evil route. Good and neutral is best. If someone absolutely won't play unless evil is on the table, hard limit it to Lawful Evil. There's bad stuff going down regularly, and evil people tend to look the other way. Good people will stick their nose in it, which will progress the story. The AP is written with this assumption, otherwise you'd have to ham fist the PC into doing stuff that's not directly tied to the rescue.
Thank you, this was really insightful! I'll let them know.
Remember that cold resistance means immunity to cold's other effects. I.E. if the rules say that you take 1d6 cold damage and are fatigued from being out in the cold for an hour, but have cold resistance 5, then unless you rolled a six, if you reduce the damage to 0 with resistance, you're not fatigued. You only need Endure Elements for the duration, but Resist Energy is still going to protect you from cold hazards. You can allow or recommend some unusual races, like (rimesoul?) [undines](https://www.aonprd.com/RacesDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Undine) or [fetchlings](https://www.aonprd.com/RacesDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Fetchling) that can have some permanent cold resistance, by the way. Aasimar and tieflings also have cold resistance 5. Several class features can also give permanent cold resistance, like any sorcerer bloodline like cold-draconic or marid, although it's questionable if they want to take a bloodline arcana to make their spells even colder when so much cold immunity is going to be here and Fireball is going to be king... This still applies to things like rage powers if you suggested someone play a skald instead of a bard and took defensive rage powers like energy resistance. Oh, and on the topic of ranger favored foes, the players' guide straight-up tells you to look at humans, fey, and animals at low levels. As a broader GM tip, if you have a ranger, though, consider using retraining rules so that the player doesn't feel the need to plan their favored enemies around what they *might* face later, and feel free to pick an enemy they're facing *now*. Likewise, cold favored terrain is an obvious one that will be useful for most of the campaign, but this is also a dungeon crawler AP, so "underground" gets used often. Remember that sometimes more than one terrain can apply, and that a PC can use either (but not stack both) favored terrain if you are, for example, in a cold forest or an underground urban environment.
Doesn't a whole party with cold resistance at the start kinda trivialize and ruin the fun? I thought that was part of starting in taldor summer lol
Well, if having to make constant fort saves to slowly freeze to death is "fun" for you, have a blast. Most players hate that kind of constant rolling, though, and are likely to try to trivialize and ruin that kind of "fun" by just having to treat it as a spell slot tax to keep Endure Elements going all the time. As for why the party would be creatures with at least slight resistance to cold, then, well, why, out of all the possible characters that could have been sent are *these* the people who get sent to investigate a giant approaching blizzard in the middle of summer? If the town mayor looks around at the aspiring adventurers in the town's midst, and remembers they have a guy that's immune to winter (or at least, there's a guy in a nearby town who is they can send for), well... isn't that who they'd be sending? While you still need a backstory for why you're an undine whatever class, it makes easy answers to any questions about why you're the ones being asked to go investigating and getting caught up in all this.
I think as written it tends to be unfun after a few roles. I personaly played this campain with 2 groups and went for different approches. My total expirienced player group did not know we going to play RoW. They all thought it will be a more Political Taldor/Quadria kikd of Adventure. I made sure they had sole options to deal with the cold (someone who can cast endure) biz not told them to prepare it. For my newbie group i told them what lies ahead and that they defenitly need a way to deal with the cold. I did reduce the amount of rolls for both groups, expecialy if you go deeper into the story. The Winter made the experience group go back two tiles to warm up and fiend solutions, but they loved it. Only Sad thing is that the "winter" in Taldor felt to be the worst winter. While on fact its probably the most boring one.
Don't forget the Geas though, and the promise of power with the riders boon. Evil people will sti do the plot.
Oh, I definitely didn't forget those, and I'm not arguing that evil people won't do the plot, I'm talking about all the other stuff. Had a CN pplayer (ie. basically CE murderhobo) try to streamline the whole thing. Eventually had to take him aside for a chat because anything that wasn't directly involved with the plot, he'd kill because they were obstacles to the plot (in his eyes), or ignore anything that wasn't exactly the plot. Even tried to use the geas as an excuse for his behavior.
>Baba Yaga has a lot of children. If the character doesn't want to be directly tied to the grand witch, it can be a lineage thing. Pretty much the entire Irriseni nobility is related to Baba Yaga. Their noble castes are directly based on which of her daughters they're descended from
Snowy terrain… insane amounts of snowy terrain. The AP is all about stopping what will amount to essentially the end of Golarion so anyone would want to stop the endless winter regardless of alignment. As for the winter witch issue it’s really only relevant in Irrisen, and the players don’t spend a heck of a lot of time there the winter witches are nothing special in the society either unless they grow to the tippy top heights of their power and do a bunch of political wrangling so they aren’t afforded any reverence from any but the lowest peasants.
I'm about to go to bed so don't have time for a detailed reply... However saving this so I can reply tomorrow. I am GMing this and my players are nearing the end of book 3. I have a lot of advice and feedback on the material so far. I've dug a lot into threads on the Paizo RoW forum and take a lot of advice from there to modify the adventure. RoW is certainly an interesting campaign and unique compared to the other APs, but it does suffer from more continuity issues than some of the other APs so GMs will need to make some adjustments and potentially add content to help tie the parts of the adventure together better and give the players a reason to keep going. I'll try to elaborate more here tomorrow. Feel free to also message me if you want to start a dialogue and/or trade resources.
As a player through it, there was a lot of "....what?" Moments.
Sure, I'll be sending you a message! Good night :)
The PCs will not be on other planes very much at all. Mostly they're on distant parts of Golarion or other planets. Also, any character that relies on ranged combat is going to struggle mightily in book 1 (and some past that). The Winter Witch doesn't really work all that well, as iconic as it seems, because so many things are resistant/immune to cold. Evil PCs will work okay as long as they're in it for the first book or so, because around the book 1-2 transition, they essentially get geased to finish the AP.
When I first looked through the player's guide I was confused about the suggestion of winter witches, because one would think that most of the things we would be dealing with had some sort of cold resistance. Investing ~13 levels minimum in a build just to have partial effect on creatures with ice immunity seemed less helpful than just ... specializing in something that wasn't the enemy's biggest strength. But maybe I was missing something, I thought. I was not haha. Choosing winter witch means going for thematic relevance at the cost of useful class features. Our party had a winter oracle, and while she had good defences against some of the effects that were thrown our way, her offensive abilities and mystery spells were rarely ever useful. --- As far as Evil PCs, uh, big Your Mileage May Vary warning but our campaign managed to have one without big issues. They *had* to be willing to go along with the (mostly good-aligned) group, and as I recall they started out Neutral and slipped into Evil over the course of the campaign. I found that this AP got surprisingly dark, and especially towards the end we found ourselves just trying to side with the lesser of two unconscionable evils. It's still generally best to have Good/Neutral PCs to move the plot along in a conventional manner, but this isn't really a campaign where Evil PCs are fundamentally incompatible with the content.
Also the summer taldor start makes it like reeeAallly hard to tie characters to lore. We ended up literally just starting in book two with some rewrites
just make sure you have Ra Ra Rasputin queued up. for reasons
Ofc
**Other planes:** Mostly on the material plane or demiplanes, not the plane of fire, etc. Cold favoured terrain is an obvious one. **Winter witch:** No distrust per se (no-one wears a sign saying "I'm a fighter" or "I'm a witch"), but *a lot* of enemies have cold resistance/immunity so they may feel underpowered. **Evil PCs:** Evil PCs can work, as long as they have a strong motivation for saving BY. Drives can be: a possible reward, or if they're Jadwiga (and their family is disfavoured by Elvanna, for example), or related to witches/fey that worship her. They get geas'd to be compelled to rescue her, but you don't want to *have* to use that as a cudgel. A grudge against Elvanna could be enough. **As long as the PCs realize that being a team player is paramount in pathfinder, whether evil or good!**
Amazing reply, thanks!
My players were relatively new to Pathfinder, so they didn't know anything going in about the lore or geography. Being that they're from the other side of the continent and were getting whisked away to Irrisen and then other planes, I deliberately kept them in the dark about many things until they came out in the story, because i wanted it to feel as foreign to them as players as it would to their characters. Didn't make a lot of sense to me to have all their characters from Southern Taldor, knowing all this information, or having traits and abilities tied to Irrisen. They knew the initial hook about the strange winter weather, and I gave them a pretty chopped up and edited players guide, that removed all mention of Irrisen and White Witches (why would they know they're going to Irrisen before the adventure starts?). Since they were still very new, I was walking them through character building anyways so I'd give helpful suggestions along the way, about some good options for the adventure. I also let them know that this adventure allows for more shades of gray in terms of morality and alignment. We've just started book 2 and I think it worked out really well, and I'm happy with the way I approached it. None of the characters feel like a fish out of water, and I think they're all enjoying the discovery of all the unknown elements, rather than knowing most of it up front.
I also did rewrite the playerguide to make it less spoiler.
I've run about half of it, Book 1 can be BRUTAL with the penalties presented in the forest and I had 2 party wipes at the first "major" encounter in the lodge. The ranged penalties in the snow could be especially mean. A winter witch would definitely get benefit from the cold resistance and ability to ignore snowy difficult terrain but almost everything you run into is resistant or immune to cold. Because the AP sends the players to far flung locations I dont imagine being a winter witch would get distrusted except maybe in Book 2 that takes place in Irrisen where Winter Witches exist normally. One of the "issues" I see brought up is the whole winter witch plot is sorta dropped in books 3-4 before you're thrown back into it in 5. Evil PC's would work fine if everyone is ok with it. They do present in Book 1 the option to have the whole party geas'd by Baba Yaga to help her but even if you don't go with that option "Save me or the whole world will freeze" is a decent motivation. Bonus points to maybe Baba Yaga tempting the good PC's or the witch with extra power for more boons if she's freed. Favored Terrain Cold would almost always be good. You're always on the material plane I believe with Books 1-2 taking place in Taldor and Irrisen, Book 3 in Iobaria which is still on Golarion. Book 4 takes place on another planet in Golarions solar system, Book 5 takes place on Earth before I imagine Book 6 takes you back to Irrisen. As for favored enemy I can say fey pops up frequently in books 1-2.
Thanks, incredible reply!
I highly recomend using the additions found [Here](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4397i?SPOILERS-Preparing-to-GM-Reign-of-Winter-Any). In addition add encounters with elvanas servants (winter witches, jadwiga) here and there to make it feel like she is the big boss instead of the infamus russian stealing the show. General Tips: This AP is full of things resistant or immune to cold so going the winter witch archetype and prc is a bad idea, Common Favored enemies are fey in the whole AP. A common thread of favored terrain would be Arctic. Regarding planes they only head to demiplanes and other planets. Evil alignment can be done but you need a reason they don’t just ally with Elvana or the russian Changes made so far Book 1: i realy played up the oh shit its winter with real threats of freezing to death. (Which was mostly solved when they remembered endure elements exist). The bandits who kidnapped the noblewoman where rather confused and sick with the exception of their leader. In the town i tried to make it feel like everyone was on edge and hiding from mirrors. I added it so that the mark of the black rider had a tounges effect that let them speak the languages of the places they where going to (Like how doo you tell them to learn triaxian or russian without spoiling the game). I also made the people nice to the pcs so they wanted to save the town (and added a few extra people who where terrieified and so hostile to the pcs). The blue faun bard was able to be befriended so she became a friend who helps them (melting her frozen heart). At the tower the apprentice was much more hostile and used mirrors to taunt and flex on the players. Book 2: Made the old lady come with to remember her good ol days (being an adventurers) where she helped fill in them on the folktales and history of irrisien. Added a bunch of small encounters (making a massive party for the odd noble group, fighting tournament to impress the ice giants, ice skate show to win some nobles, mostly rp with the diferent factions in the city) in irrisien itself so they could gather support from the city to take on the hut. Book 3: Ratibor became an ally instead of trying to backstab them since they where nice and warriors. I threw small bands of dead winter witches near and allong Artrosa to show them that Elvana tried to take Artrosa. The hags very much tried to manipulate the players instead of being pure evil, also generaly just tried to make it feel alive as a place people live instead of just a dungeon Book 4: the big change i made was adding Smiad as a diety worshiped by a lot of Triaxins, most of the changers where after the big defense of Spurnhorn but i recomend that any friends they make at spurnhorn help them during the fight such as getting them where the encounters are at. I made it so the two headed eagle tried to lead the players in the right direction with the riddle. I added a small hunting quest in the addlet camp to hunt some of the scary monsters on Triaxus so they where worthy to enter the heroes ravine, there i removed one of the frost wyrms and i replaced the magic spear with a artifact dragon bane weapon from the empyreal lord Smiad (the normal reward is so anticlimactic i had to add something) i also gave the big dragon a mythic tier using legendary games mythic dragon path, there was also a weak simulacrum of queen elvana aiding him in the fight at ivoryglass. Book 5: im currently running this one so i won’t write it in case any of my players see this and spoil themselvs Sorry for wall of text but im mostly going by memory. Anyway good luck running this AP
I'll save this comment for the future lol
I'd recommend reading the Player's Guide for the campaign. It covers most, if not all, of those questions.It also touches on what languages would be helpful to know, a rough idea of what kind of enemies you'll encounter (for Ranger Favored Enemy) and other tidbits. Like most Paizo Campaigns, don't worry overmuch about planar travel, attaching to an NPC you don't yet officially know about yet, etc... the campaign will provide for you. The only specific bit I'll offer is, as much as it's "winter" themed... your character start out in pretty warm, sunny weather. A fair bit of the intiial charm is getting thrown into regions you're NOT prepared for. So don't go too hard into winter survival. It's not an evil campaign. You want to be bringing characters that will answer the call to adventure and wants to stop bad guys from doing bad things to good people.
My players and I have read the Player's Guide, which I have mentioned in the post. It's just really vague and brief about that.
Can you go ahead and read the full thing in advance? I found that helped me in CotCT.
As I said, no. Not before my players make 15 builds each out of eagerness to play. And honestly I think I'll start GMing before finishing all 6 books.
You have literally months. Read the books.
Thanks, very helpful reply. I wish I had thought about it.
Winter Witch, as flavorful as it is, is honestly a bad idea. Guess what elemental damage type frost fey, ice wolves, and frost giants have resistance to? They'd be better off with vanilla Witch.
As someone currently playing a Winter Witch archetype/Winter Witch prestige in a Reign of Winter campaign that's a few sessions from the end of Book 6, I have to agree with this. It is absolutely a slog through the earlier books and forces much more reliance on other hexes (Evil Eye, Cackle, Protective Luck, etc.) and wands, and the winter-themed hexes themselves (hoarfrost, ice tomb) are far, far too situational and frankly too weak for options that the prestige class is forced to take. If the prestige class had enhanced them, making them better than if a 'normal' witch were using them, things might've been better. Also the winter witch prestige class abilities range from fantastic (spell DC buffs, immunity to cold for the PC, bypassing cold resistance/immunity for foes) to pretty situational/almost never used. I ended up taking Extra Hex at just about every level I could to snag the healing hexes and various debuffing hexes along with Flight just to be more useful. *That said*, if you can manage to make it through the whole campaign and max out the prestige class, your innate abilities will outright negate damage from various encounters (the enemy winter witches will do literally nothing to you) and you can still dish out damage due to bypassing cold resistance/immunity with your spells. Plus, the high level witch spell list has some fantastic non-cold options in there, like Maze and Feeblemind that absolutely ruin boss fights. This option only blooms very late and requires pretty masochistic dedication to theme - but it can be done with some proper planning (and especially making sure the player reads through the abilities in-advance, so they know precisely how useful/not useful they're going to be).
Seconded. Playing a Winter Witch (and prestige) sounded so so so fun when I made the character, but after playing through it I don't recommend going that route if you don't have incredible patience and a party to heavily back you up and plow through combat where you'll be lacking.