A Look Back at the Legacy

I started running Legacy of Fire in the winter of 2008/09, after my Spycraft game crashed and burned at inception. Tenandys and Matt started heckling me to run Legacy as something to do, partly because it looked awesome, and partly because they knew I was a fan of Al-Qadim and Arabian stuff. When we were at FanFare in Kalamazoo, I found the complete set, and picked them up at list-price, and things went from there. After a heavy turnover rate, with a lot of gaps and pauses, and with both Matt and I leaving the area for various periods of time, the game finally finished in July of 2011.

At the end, we had a grand total of eleven player characters, of which only five—Malak, Muji, Ashnale, Yantar, and Karek—were worth noting (e.g., played for at least one module).

In terms of character deaths, nobody died until End of Eternity (except Cedrik); between it and Final Wish, we had around ten deaths. Yantar managed to die at least four times in Impossible Eye alone. The players tell me he died a fifth time, which I don’t remember: basically, that he took a lot of damage from the AoO’s of the fire elementals guarding Shazatharad. This would be doubly humiliating since the killing blow would have been from Rayhan’s cone of cold, which the other PCs had him cast to wipe the room of elementals. Malak died twice fighting the bronze giant, and was Breath of Life’d back instantly. I think Karek died three times; the first was retconned, and the second two I were in Jhavhul’s lair, and again, remedied by Breath of Life. Ashnale didn’t stay long enough to die, and Muji avoided death at all costs.

Originally, I’d figured to run the adventure path as a lead-in to the City of Brass adventure box. Two things are preventing me. First is the fact that the group is scattered all over: I’m on the other side of the state, Tenandys is trying to move away, and most everyone else but Matt are college students who go home for the summer (and every few weekends).

The second is the simple fact of power creep: I assumed I’d have to do a lot of conversions from 3.5 to Pathfinder going into the series. Now, with the experienced characters equipped with some amazingly powerful equipment (and abilities), there’s no way I can run City of Brass and have it be anything close to challenging; the amount of work I’d have to do is more than most people would be willing to put in. Amongst other things, the PCs are a level or so higher than they should be to start, and their power level is way above what City of Brass starts at, so it doesn’t offer much in the area of rewarding challenges unless I go about reorganizing every encounter’s balance of monsters.

Without a challenge, I’m not sure it’s worth running: look, we can run it now if the players want. You all run into a building and kill everything, blow a few channel energies and here’s what you found. I don’t look forward to a sea of 5′ squares and AoO’s where the players always act first and kill the monsters in record time. It’s the same reason I don’t play mumorpugers: pointless grind. And the players are pretty attached to their characters and builds, so I’m not sure we could pull off one of those “these are the original PCs’ heirs, operating out of their parent’s manse” or something.

Thus the completion of the Legacy of Fire arc concludes this epic journey, with the PCs as legendary heroes whose renown will quickly spread from their home village of Kelmarane, and will spend the rest of their days performing the everyday duties of high-level adventurers in a small trading post.

The Good

• The Path has a pretty cool epic storyline, and like all Paizo paths, gives a strong sense of accomplishment: here, the PCs have not only fought back one major rival from an earlier age, but have saved Golarion from one of the primal terrors. (Having a very pious Saranrae-based group really helped.)
• The setting is wonderful, and it really comes through in the art. Golarion is pretty much the best of all worlds; yeah, I still love Dark Sun and Eberron, but Golarion is my new favorite stomping ground. Katapesh more than fulfilled its promise of being the go-to Arabian fantasy setting. It feels lived-in, and interesting, yet broad enough to drop anything I come up with into it. It has a great pedigree, from all the stuff Wolfgang Baur did on it, being the guy who did a lot for Al-Qadim.
• Like all Paths, things are already laid out for you: while I love coming up with my own plots and settings and stuff, there isn’t always time for that. Everything here felt very complete: you get new monsters, a complete module which is tied to other modules, and big chunks of Golarion fluff (along with game mechanics). Very well-rounded product line, and the best looking Path they’ve done to date.
• There was a very nice balance between combat and not-combat in the early modules, with plenty of interesting locales, plot points, and the like. I get bored with pointless combat, and find high-roleplay pretentious and non-productive. Legacy blended things very nicely: there are some dungeon crawls, and a lot of traveling, and NPCs to deal with, and so on.
• The first module is one of the best I’ve ran in a while. It had a great diversity of challenges, the best being the pugwampi gremlins: not dangerous in and of themselves, but a real threat, which made them really fun to use.
• It’s also worth noting that the transition from 3.5 to Pathfinder was very, very easy; converting monsters and other mechanics on the fly wasn’t hard, and with two Bestiaries, most of them were already statted up. Still, there lurk a few problems with the rules set…

The Bad

1.) Things became very tedious later on and the fun started to dry up. I’m not just bitching about combat being tedious, like I have been with the past posts; the game started to feel too long in the tooth for me. There wasn’t as much emotional investment: when the players started off, they injected a lot of personality in their characters, which made things awesome. Later on, this just vanished: roleplaying felt forced at times, Yantar and Karek came in too late to have the same established depth as Malak and Muji, and things fell into the “we’re going here and doing/buying/killing that” mode. More of a focus on watching XP tick up until the next level, so people could build their characters kind of thing. We ended up sticking to it just to finish it, which leaves me nostalgic for the first few modules, which had fantastic party cohesion and atmosphere.

Granted, a large part of this is because I was trying to plow through the Path to get done with it. Being out of the area meant that I was driving three hours, running a game all night, crashing on somebody’s couch, and doing the same thing the next day, which added more of the “feels like work” atmosphere. But taking it slow and steady wouldn’t have finished off the module series, especially if Tenandys finally manages to detach himself, so it was a catch-22 either way. Still, I’ve seen this complaint mentioned in other reviews of people who ran adventure paths—usually the really, really long ones in Dungeon—so I’m not alone on this.

2.) Power creep is still a major problem with the system. I didn’t add in much in terms of treasure, and the PCs sunk everything they earned/found into making their weapons as powerful as possible. This is D&D; you expect that. Still, the sheer amount of power creep surprised me, and I can see why everyone says 10th level is the sweet spot to stop gaming. Having fewer players meant that everybody could sink a lot of money into their individual gear. Aside from the ludicrously expensive equipment they built, the players did the standard thing of power-building characters: this is d20, you expect that. Apparently the designers didn’t, because I got sick of seeing mobs of mooks which posed no threat at all.

3.) I have very mixed opinions on the APG. There’s a lot in it that I like, and a lot that I want to like, but seeing it in action tarnished it in my eyes. Most of the stuff the players used from it were godawful powerful. Notable was Karek’s Hunter’s Surprise rogue talent; he had five attacks per round at the end (via 2-Weapon and Improved 2-Weapon Fighting), and added +7d6 on top of his base weapon damage. To each attack. Didn’t even need to flank or deny Dex. Some things are also very badly worded; the worst one we found was Perfect Strike—compare its entry in the feats list with its description—which I see has yet to be clarified.

4.) Monks are still hit or miss. At one point, we had three players with monks; my guess is this is from their reputation in 3.5 as a broken/most powerful class. It’s still possible to break them in Pathfinder, but it takes work; none of the monk players power-built their monks, and generally didn’t know what to do with them, so by the end one had dropped and the other had dropped his monk levels. Yantar’s player spent a long time badmouthing monks to me a few weeks back, and sounded pretty bitter. On the flipside, he never bothered doing the staple “broken monk” things (using his dancing meteor hammer’s reach and trip abilities, getting secondary monk weapons to overcome DR when his hammer was dancing around, using ki points ever), didn’t have good enough stat rolls to have the necessary high Str, just the high Wis, and was the whipping boy in terms of treasure allotment. (I think he had a Ring of Prot, and a monk’s robe or a belt of strength, but that was about it.)

5.) I’ll get to some issues with CRs and party balancing—I’ve been meaning to do a series of posts on it, and that was before Tenandys and I talked over it. But let’s start off here. Designers have this idea that a group of low-level CRs constitute the same challenge as a single high-level CR of the same numerical value. Like, 4-5 CR7s being the same challenge as a CR 12. That just isn’t the case. Even CRs one or two higher than party level weren’t much of a challenge, such as the Get of Iblis, and the demon at the end of the first module. Again, it’s based around my party’s balance, lack of certain classes, abundance of others, and the fact we rarely had more than three people playing consistently.

My other big problem with CRs is looking at it from a logical metagame angle. Basically, the way the Challenge Rating system is set up, having one monster take on the group is akin to having Muji the cleric fight the other members of the party. We don’t expect the monsters to win, because otherwise the game ends, but is it really a challenge for the other players? The way the CR system is set up, it’s supposed to be: Muji’s a CR 14 creature (perhaps slightly higher from those bloodlines); the party is APL 14. Therefore, he’s a decent, but not great, challenge.  To have an adventuring party attack another adventuring party doesn’t work in the CR system, because that would be a CR about 5-6 higher than the APL. According to the way CRs are devised, Muji is a threat to the party, in which they should expect to expend 25% of their resources (a combination of hit points, spells, per/day abilities, etc.) to defeat. That’s just not the case.

Things I Learned

1.) This Adventure Path, like most others and most modules, was built for four PCs. Each challenge rating is based on the concept that it will be challenging to four PCs. The unsaid expectation is that these four PCs will fill the standard roles of “frontline warrior, skirmisher, magic-user, priest.” For most of the game’s life, we had two or three PCs, and never, ever had a real magic-user. Instead, we had a plethora of monks and roguelikes, meaning we were full up on skirmishers who were backed up by a priest.

As such, the PCs leveled faster (having less mouths to feed, as it were), and were pretty powerful by the end of the first module. Many combat encounters were either too easy or too hard: the PCs were high-enough level that they weren’t a challenge, but without a proper fighter or wizard, meant that things didn’t always go very smoothly. A lot of encounters ended with Malak nearly dead, but we managed to go through most of the path with relatively light (“relatively” “light”) death rates.

So, CRs are still as buggy as they ever were, and without having a balanced party (number of players and classes), things can go out the window right quick. It ends up with this irony: while things could be deadly, they were rarely challenging. (This is all from the GM’s perspective; I’m looking at monsters thinking “It lives for three rounds, always acts last, and at worst can kill one PC,” while the players are all recoiling from the huge Get of Iblis with untold horrible powers crawling forth from the pit.)

2.) I know that most monsters have a lifespan of five rounds or less, but most of them had a chance to do one thing and one thing only. Many of them—like the bodak with its death gaze—failed horribly. The most memorable ones to me were the ones that succeeded: the undead with the symbol of discord in Jhavhul’s manse’s throne room, the dragon turtle and its breath attack, the stegocentipede with its AoO range and chainsaw-template spines.

3.) The assumption I had about Adventure Paths was that they were like most modules: yes, you need to tailor bits to your party and group, but for the most part, you can get by with the adventure as written. After this, I don’t think that’s the case. The challenge level of each module ebbed and flowed; module 4 was a cakewalk, while module 5 had some true challenges (and PC deaths), and module 6 was pretty easy until we got to Jhavhul. After seeing this much power creep, I’d take things slower next time, and try to balance things so they’re a good challenge without being a.) a pushover or b.) deadly.

4.) Big monsters are a pain in the ass for players to fight; this is something I’ll keep in mind for when I’m playing next. It was rare for a PC to tumble against something huge, unless you’ve sunk a feat into skill focus (acrobatics), and while CMB/CMD streamlined everything, it makes tripping or grappling (the monk’s forte) nearly impossible.

Three Things I’d Do Different Next Time

1.) The Jackal’s Price needs work. A lot of work. The gnolls tracking the players would turn into a group of the Carrion King’s Rovagug-loving fanatics, which would make some more sense and tie them to the previous path. The end parts, with Father Jackal, the Seed, and the Captain of the Sunset Ship, is a fantastic story, but not a good adventure seed: it left the players confused and wondering what the hell just happened. I’d revise a lot of it, and beef up the rogues that attack Rayhan’s place, and try to tie them into the larger theme of Rovagug worshippers attacking the PCs.

2.) In general, I’d streamline a lot of the Path’s bits to fit together. In module two, I’d put the House of the Beast in a hidden valley or something, and use its set piece as the main entrance to it. (Not that this set-piece couldn’t use some work, but it’s the most memorable to me because of its floating lava-rock battle, which was awesome.) The City of Brass could use some tightening up; fewer low-level lizardfolk and more higher-level threats, for example. And I’d block off where Jhavhul is in the last module, so they actually have to fight through everything to get to him.

3.) The Final Wish also needs some revision. Unless the PCs were having trouble—like, a lot of trouble—those Janni would end up replaced by bigger and more powerful monsters. The cinematic battle in the church could use a lot of beefing up… like, doubling all the dice values, or making it last more than four rolls, or something.

Most likely, if I ran this again, it wouldn’t have nearly as many problems I as did with this run through. (What’s the only thing faster than a diviner? A diviner with a dread commando.) Between the power creep and the weird 3.5/Pathfinder balance, I don’t think I’d have the same issues if I had a different party. Well, instead I’d have different issues.

Would I Run This Again?

Anytime in the near future? Probably not; I’m still a little burnt out on d20 overload. Somewhere down the road? Definitely. There’s a lot I’d want to do differently, namely balancing it, and trying to squash down any power creep. And it was, overall, really fun and worth it. The first two modules are amazing, and I still love many of the ideas in the last three.

The path cost a chunk of money at $120, but overall it was worth it. At this point, I’m pretty burned out on the various aspects of d20 mentioned above, but this is more of a personal thing and less a problem every other GM will face. Most of my problems with the Path come down to the following:

• Mechanical issues such as balancing and power creep, the Legacy of 3.5
• Not having enough time to tailor the modules to my group, or to add more depth/description/fluff bits
• My love/hate of tactical D&D, where combat becomes very tedious

Again, all of these relate to my personal circumstances. If you’re interested in running it, seriously, go for it: this is a fantastic adventure path, filled with all sorts of awesome stuff. It’s my favorite story line out of all the Paths I own, which is a fair number. My players had rave reviews of the first half, which didn’t diminish as much as mine did for the finale. And that’s about all you could ask for in an adventure line: everybody had fun.

Legacy of Fire Review & Reflection – Endgame

At last, the conclusion! It was a long time coming, but after finding the Scroll of Kakishon, having a mini-odyssey across the planes, and accidentally releasing their arch-nemesis Jhavhul, the PCs have finally returned home… to a burned and battered Katapesh. Still, it’s a lot better off than their home of Kelmarane and the Pale Mountain, now occupied by Jhavhul and his minions.

Note: contains spoilers. I’ve actually seen a lot of traffic from search strings looking for a House of the Beast walk-through, so the spoiler note probably amounts to all of jack.

Dramatis Personae

Relatively the same as the last game, though Yantar the Monk was missing. He’d gone home for the summer, and while having another chair filled would have been nice, the big think he took away was Sp0oky the lucky cat.

• Malak: Ranger/Druid of Saranrae/Dread Commando,  Moldspeaker and gnoll hunter extraordinaire
• Muji: Cleric of Saranrae, massive mountain of a man, badger-summoner and healbot
• Karek: Rogue, hired muscle to help defend/serve at Rayhan’s villa, who discovered that Hunter’s Surprise + Improved 2-Weapon Fighting is one of the deadliest combinations in the APG rules.

The Final Wish by Rob McCreary

Because of planer exchange rates, the players were most interested in getting back to Katapesh after the last module to do some shopping; some of the last monsters were pretty damn deadly, so I can’t blame them for wanting an edge.

Katapesh itself, however, was still in turmoil, having just bought off Jhavhul and sent him away, and the Pactmasters weren’t too keen on letting the PCs back into the city. Instead, they teleported to Absalom, and went from there.

The first half of the module is setup for the endgame: Nefeshti summons them back to the monastery, explains what’s been going on, and coordinates a planned strategic strike with the players. This part introduces a cinematic subsystem—liberation points, accrued from performing surgical strikes, and the more liberation points the PCs have, the better their allied army is doing.  It tries to be very epic and flexible in its handling of the d20 rules.

It’s pretty cool to have this “return to their roots” beginning, with the characters showing back up in Kelmarane. And the cinematic feel is a nice idea. The problem breaks down in the encounter balancing: after fending off CR 14s and 15s, the group suddenly found itself fighting… groups of four or five CR7s. Karek ended up soloing the first half while everyone shopped, in order to grind XP and get to the same level as everyone else, and managed to get through each of the four encounter areas without dying. (This was having converted the CR 7 Janni to Pathfinder, including their class levels.) They did give him quite a fight, with their Favored Enemy: Human bonuses, but couldn’t hold a candle to a 13th-level Rogue.

The final battle takes place in the Temple of Saranrae, with another cinematic subsystem: the PCs have to make character level checks, which represents how many thousands gnolls they’ve killed in a round, and how much damage they’ve taken/healed. The problem here is that there’s only four rounds of this, and it only does 4d6 damage… if the 13/14th-level PCs fail a DC 20 character level check. (I think it added in their favored ability modifier, too.) There’s no way this is a challenge to PCs of this level. And it doesn’t clarify if the cleric’s X levels of healing spells patch up the 4d6 damage the PCs are taking.

There’s also a few real combats in there, against a high-level gnoll cleric, and a battle surmounting the Brazen Tower splitting the Battle Market wide open, but these were also far, far less challenging than the encounters at the end of the previous module. Both the gnoll cleric and the last Templar were killed in one round, making that pretty anticlimactic. (And that was pumping up their hit points to try to avoid the whole one-round combat thing.)

So, while I love, love, love the cinematic flair and liberation points, the challenge level was underwhelming. The whole thing took less than two hours—closer to one—and didn’t invigorate anyone. The PCs had spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing for all of this, which in the end was just dull shopping; I had to sit there and watch them shop, because I couldn’t convince them how much of a cakewalk it would be.

The second part is a bit more interesting: tracking down Jhavhul to the Pale Mountain, and going up against him and his assortment of wish-fueled baddies. (Note that the distance between Kelmarane and the Pale Mountain is treated as a lot closer than it was in Howl of the Carrion King.) The PCs managed to slaughter their way through around the dungeon, avoiding most of the interesting fights, until they ran smack into Jhavhul.

A note to any of my players, or any other players, reading along at home: when the GM asks you multiple times if you were sneaking… say yes and roll your goddamn stealth checks.

So, they fled from Jhavhul down a side corridor, immediately saw three Efreet laughing and playing cards, and decided to mop these guys up. Karek ran in to clean house. These were illusions; the real, invisible Efreet smacked the living crap out of him with their great spears. After a few rounds of this, Jhavhul came flying in, and the noise attracted the attention of a bunch of other monsters.

What saved them here was Tempest’s whirlwind and weather control abilities; Malak blew everyone out of the room, except Jhavhul. Jhavhul’s stats are beastly; he has a bajillion strength, over 300 hit points, and one of the best weapons wielded by an NPC in the path. This barely saved him; he went for maybe three rounds, because as soon as Karek tagged him with his Hunter’s Surprise, Jhavhul was down over 200 hp.

Originally, I’d figured that Jhavhul’s death would be the lode-bearing death which caused the mountain to collapse and Xotani to spew forth. The mountain did collapse, as the PCs assembled the captured NPCs and grabbed as much of Jhavhul’s loot as possible, but in the end I went back on the plan to raise Xotani, and for good reason.

As easily as these PCs could trump anything within their bracket, Xotani has a number of features that would have ruined them: DR 15/Epic, Regen 40, some 800 hp, Firebleed, etc. If they tried to do their standard thing of charge-and-melee, they would have done a good chunk of damage (Tempest, Hunter’s Surprise, and Holy Smite) before being driven off (or killed) by the Firebleed, at which point Xotani would regen. When the PCs’ ridiculous magic items melted from the heat of the fire, they’d end up squashed by Xotani. If they took to their bathrugs of flying, Xotani would just ignore their ranged attacks and take off on a trail of destruction. I had a list setup of how everyone could chip in: all the NPCs, and potential GMPCs for all the characters whose players no longer showed up. Even that wouldn’t have mattered; after Rayhan ran out of [cold] spells, the game would pretty much be over.

Thus, things ended on a triumphant note, with the glorious heroes returning to their broken home of Kelmarane for a celebratory feast with all the rescued NPCs.

The Bottom Line

The last module was a long dungeon-crawl slogfest, which got a little tedious near the end. This one flew by, and though it had its challenges for the PCs, it was comparatively easier, faster, and shorter. I was still burned out from the Impossible Eye, and we ended up marathoning this last module in one night, so I don’t think it got the coverage or depth it deserved.

Compared to The Impossible Eye, The Final Wish was far too easy for my players’ power level, and needed some serious additions (or revisions) to be a challenge. If we/I hadn’t been hell-bent to finish it that night, adding in some more higher-level threats, and replacing the Janni with something dangerous, would have helped mollify that. The cinematic aspects were a great idea, but the execution was lacking something. And even if the PCs had gone through every room in Jhavhul’s dungeon, the module would still be on the short side. (Probably for the best, having spent more time with Impossible Eye than we did on End of Eternity and Final Wish combined.)

In terms of plot, The Final Wish does everything right that it should. It’s a nice circular end—the return home—to a long, planer odyssey. The end boss we’ve been building up for the past few modules has his appearance, we see the last of the Templars (and Nefeshti), and even the Carrion King makes an appearance. (Heh.) There’s really nothing wrong with Final Wish, or the path’s arc, but my group drove this last module  into the ground. For the final part of an epic arc, I was hoping for some truly memorable/rewarding challenges—hence, Xotani—and between the power creep and the mobs of CR7s, I don’t think the module delivered.

Legacy of Fire Review & Reflection 5

Continuing on from yesterday, my thoughts on the different modules that make up the Legacy of Fire adventure path. The first two modules were awesome, the third had a lot of continuity issues (and some railroad problems), and the fourth was pretty good if a little too easy for the PCs. Now, we turn to The Impossible Eye. This one’s pretty long—again, why I broke up the second half into their individual modules; if I’d been smart I would have done this as I ran them—so beware.

Note: contains spoilers. I’ve actually seen a lot of traffic from search strings looking for a House of the Beast walk-through, so the spoiler note probably amounts to all of jack.

Dramatis Personae

More changeover. I’m not going to list all the various people who showed up only once or twice, which left us with a fairly small playing group despite having a cast of about a dozen PCs.

• Malak: Ranger/Druid of Saranrae/Dread Commando,  Moldspeaker and gnoll hunter extraordinaire
• Muji: Cleric of Saranrae, massive mountain of a man and king of the badgers
• Yantar: Monk/Tattooed Monk, who died more than everybody else combined
• Kerek: Rogue, two-handed sneak-attack monster, whose main roleplay contribution was to mock the Saranrae-ites’ constant “Praise be to Saranrae”

Matt returned from the harsh reality of his epic job prospect, and having Muji the cleric back was pretty helpful. Originally, he was a Cleric/Monk/Sacred Fist, but the conversion to Pathfinder left him pretty underpowered, so we continued to trim out the Fist and Monk parts as the game progressed.

The Impossible Eye by Greg Vaughn

The first thing I learned about Pathfinder was that constructs are still pretty dang tough. Brass Men have spell resistance and DR 10/Adamantine, which meant Malak was the only person dishing out any damage; though I should say that the brass dudes were less trouble than the big treasure vault riddle.

Two things about the vaults. First, the pictures depict MOUNDS of treasure; the descriptions mention MOUNDS of treasure. What you end up rolling for random treasure, per room, is somewhere around the lines of “3 gp 17 sp 120 cp and 500 gp in gems.” Mounds, I tell you. Easily two inches high. Plenty of running jokes about that. In the end, someone decided that the 500 gp in gems was where the “mounds” came from, being like 500 gold worth of agates or something, so that the characters were neck-deep in semi-worthless stones. (That’s about the closest I could come to having the mounds thing make sense with the random treasure allotment.)

Second, the riddle is really, really fucking obtuse. The only real way to get around it is by rolling a really high skill check, which nobody did; you can explain the riddle in all of its glory, and it still barely makes any sense. It’s a case of the designer being too smart for the players’ good; take note, designers: players always suck at riddles, and obtuse math puzzles, and obtuse math puzzles which are based around riddles, so don’t use them. Players suck at them. Always. Unless they’re Gary Fisting Gygax himself or something.

So we embarked on an entire session of dicking around in the vaults trying to escape. Which was pretty entertaining as a GM, since they got frustrated every time they took fire damage, and then more frustrated when they didn’t, and confused when they entered rooms that were empty. My players actually surprised me near the end and came up with the idea of trying to guess the animal symbols for the different vaults when they entered them… only, they kept coming up with the wrong animals. (“Gnoll” was one popular choice that I spent a lot of time vaguely trying to dissuade.)

Having bested the treasure vaults without casualties, the rogue went home, and the other players fell into the only trap in the entire module series. Then they fought the deadly Get of Iblis–fascinating backstory on those in the bestiary, ties right in with City of Brass—which was less dangerous and died quicker than the brass men. Even though it’s twice their CR.

Moving right along. The challenges in this module were very diverse: there’s a bunch of fire elementals, and all but the biggest three died to one cone of cold, and a number of lizardfolk, which can’t hold a candle to the PCs. Even the hellhounds and hydras are woefully inadequate for a ~10th-level party. On the other hand, there’s a div that put up a solid fight, a bonze giant that handed the PCs’ their ass, and when they first ran into efreet and fire giants at levels 9-11, they had some serious fights right there.

Having multiple factions is interesting, but not much is done with them: the only one that’s vaguely neutral (i.e., mostly non-evil) are the fire elementals who are creeping on Shazatharad, and the PCs’ wasted those with no issue. (I feel kinda bad for them.) Having a pious party meant that there’d be no trafficking with evil monsters, even if they were playing politics against the other factions. Besides, the factions were all kinda far apart, and by the time the PCs ran into the Vizier’s gatekeepers, three of the five factions had been exterminated.

The biggest cool moments were near the end. When the ancient dwarven overseer undead, who’d proclaimed himself king of the manse, dropped his symbol of discord on the PCs… well, it was the only time in the module they failed a relatively decent Will DC (something like 19 or 22 IIRC). Watching them get into fights was pretty awesome; having Malak finish off his fight with Yantar by pitching him into the pit behind the throne was hilarious, because it became the Fourth Death of Yantar due to falling damage. (Muji and Karek were in the pit already, where Muji was helping the dire sabertooth flank Karek, since they got into a heated religious debate. Yantar’s falling corpse almost knocked Karek unconscious.)

The other came at the end, when the PCs had reached the peak of the manse. They’d seen Aberzjerax flying around already, and were gearing up for a fight; given that converting his stats to Pathfinder give him an AC of 34/36 or so, with spell resist and the ability to leave the Vizier’s curse to demand healing, and a twelve-die breath attack, that could have went in all sorts of interesting ways.

Instead, the PCs were pretty surprised—and a little annoyed—when Ezer popped out and attacked. Ezer’s melee attacks make him a tank, but the sad part is that the players technically dropped him on one round: Karek tagged him with his Hunter’s Surprise, and dealt over 200 damage in one round (dual-wielding with improved two-handed, plus full sneak damage per hit).

That being damn anticlimactic, I upped Ezer’s DR from 15/magic to 15/epic, which dropped the damage dealt to… roughly 60% of his total. Sigh. These boss NPCs will last at least two rounds, no matter how much I have to fudge/manhandle/outright cheat. Instead, the dragon dropped in and began to breathe in for his breath attack; he didn’t get a chance: everybody ran away except Malak, who blew Ezer away in one swing.

After some haggling over the titular Eye, the module was done, and the PCs planeshifted back to Katapesh for some shopping, because they lacked Malak’s “child of the nightstalls” trait to give them discounts on the Plane of Molten Skies.

The Set Piece that I can’t be bothered to name

This set-piece was so much of a waste that I didn’t bother running it. While I like its flair and creativity, it reads like an aborted Pathfinder Society module and not like the previous, actual set-pieces. Literally, the PCs show up, either piss off the azer and attack, or barter for a way to go home; then there’s a 50-50 chance the PCs either get planeshifted or fall into a fiery pit and are attacked by a purple worm. There’s really nothing to this module: it’s an interesting locale, but one thoroughly unnecessary for two reasons.

First, it requires is also if the PCs are total chumps and can’t figure out a way to get back to Golarion, when both Rayhan and Muji—not to mention Iavesk and Shazatharad—have plane-jumping spells. As written, there’s no need for this set-piece, unless three of the major friendly NPCs bite it and aren’t raised somehow. Oh, and it also requires the PCs to have no wizards or priests. Ugh.

Second, there’s still a 50% chance that the PCs will walk up, roll diplomacy, and suddenly be transported home. That’s right. Statistically, half the adventurers who use this set-piece don’t need any of the description or stats or anything; they just walk up and bam, they’re home. At that point, you’re only using about two paragraphs of a five-page set-piece. And if the PCs don’t have a route home, this set-piece is worthless: either they get home, all’s well, or they kill some stuff and have to find yet another way back to Golarion.

You could argue that the PCs could always just fail, and make it into an encounter area that’s always got a combat sequence. (Of course, again, this assumes they don’t just have Shazatharad wish them home, or have one of the casters pull a planeshift, and actually stick around to find out about this place.) At this point in the game, my players were level 14, and would have crushed that purple worm in about one round. The lake of fire would be more of a problem, as it was right before they went out and bought themselves carpets of flying (5′ x 5′ ones, so they’re really more bath rugs of flying).

TL;DR: I really, really dislike this set-piece. I think it’s a waste of space, and given the amazing stuff in the City of Brass box set—published by Necromancer, who is really, really close to Paizo—there are much more interesting locales to explore. This is the city that has the Minaret of Screams for frak’s sake, and we get a group of weird azer who worship a fiery purple worm, with a 50-50 chance the PCs will fight them. I can see why set-pieces were dropped from later paths, which is a shame, since the first three were phenomenal, and the fourth was pretty awesome despite the fact it didn’t really fit in with the path as-written. This one is just… lacking.

The Bottom Line

In hindsight, this one had a lot of great moments. The sub-basement/vaults was particularly memorable, even though the puzzle flies above the heads of MENSA members. Finding the efreet statue from the cover of the original PHB was great. The end battle with the dragon and Ezer was great. Some of the battles were pretty interesting; previously, the PCs had just steamrolled everything in their path, but the bronze giant, the div, and some of the other big monsters really put up a fight here. When they first ran into fire giants, that too was challenging, and the efreet are great for their various tactical spells. (I love casters.)

In the end, though, it all got a bit tedious for me. I have a love/hate relationship with D&D, and the hate is mostly towards big dungeon crawls: open a room, traverse some 5′ squares, kill some monsters, take their stuff, repeat. For several months. There’s not much to do in here, roleplay-wise, since one NPC is trapped (Shazatharad) and the other is feebleminded (Iavesk). There are a lot of azer Mamelukes, and kobold croupiers/baristas, and Gilbans the fire giant, but that’s it. Not that I don’t get bored with high-roleplay games, which I find a bit pretentious at times, but pure combat can be the most boring thing imaginable. When I close my eyes and start to see 5′ squares and attacks of opportunity floating by, it’s about the time I know I need some more gaming variety.

I think it could have used a lot more info on Jhavhul, too: the backstory has largely eliminated Jhavhul, focusing more on the end-boss and Jhavhul’s brother. In hindsight, I’d add in some more of Jhavhul’s past; currently, the only big bit was the pyramid to Ymeri that the PCs’ largely ignored. (Because there wasn’t much in it.) This is his house, after all; finding something in here to use to his disadvantage (other than Shazatharad) would be pretty cool.

For what it’s doing, Impossible Eye is impressive. Exploring the manse is pretty fun, and it’s a reward to the PCs all in itself. And if you’re into a good hack-’n-slash adventure, this one will make up for the rest of the series’ location- and plot-based encounters. It’s easily on-par with the Howl of the Beast dungeon, but by this point in the game, I’m getting a little tired of doing nothing but rolling dice for monsters that are only a challenge a third of the time, and who last three rounds or less. Not so much a complaint about the design, and more my love/hate relationship with d20.

Legacy of Fire Review & Reflection – Continued

Having finally finished my long-running (kinda) Legacy of Fire game, I figured to continue to review/reflect from my earlier post. Instead of lumping the entire second half of the adventure path into one post, I’m divvying it up three ways, to make it easier to read, and allow more time on each module. Without further ado…

Note: contains spoilers. I’ve actually seen a lot of traffic from search strings looking for a House of the Beast walk-through, so the spoiler note probably amounts to all of jack.

Dramatis Personae

We had quite a bit of changeover in the players/characters department, which is the fatal flaw of any game involving a lot of college students. (Particularly ones who go home for the summer, or complain about having class in the morning.) This module had the worst changeover: of the three characters who started in the first module, two of them (Muji the Cleric and Ashnale the Paladin, both of Saranrae) dropped out in this one, and replacements had to be found. We also lost Kobold the Nobald, but that just meant I didn’t get/have to roleplay the annoying mephit.

• Malak: Ranger/Druid of Saranrae/Dread Commando,  Moldspeaker and gnoll hunter extraordinaire
• Yantar (Monk)and Karek (Rogue), hired muscle to defend Rayhan’s villa. Also, another monk who showed up twice, and the world’s worst wizard, who were largely forgotten
• Jawari: Druid/Wizard/Arcane Hierophant,  owner of many fine cats, all of them egregiously in heat

The first thing that happened was an immediate shift over to Pathfinder from 3.5. The actual transition was interesting; it went over seamlessly for the most part, and conversions were a snap thanks to The Archives of Nethys and d20PFSRD. The big thing I noticed was that the monks were a bit underpowered compared to 3.5 monks, partly because of build optimization (or lack thereof), and partly because of the abundance of big enemies (making it hard to tumble/make combat maneuvers against). It was a hassle converting back and forth, but it was relatively easy; monsters and the PCs were the only big changes.

The End of Eternity by Jason Nelson

The last module left our brave heroes, having freed Rayhan from the clutches of a largely unexplained plot, sitting around Rayhan’s place drinking tea and ruining property values. This module starts off with Rayhan reading the scroll and sucking everyone into the map, freeing Jhavhul to wreck havoc amongst the world. Whoops, heh.

Again, this didn’t fit the characters’ motivations in the slightest—they wanted to lock the map away so that nobody could potentially use it to free Jhavhul—but everyone was willing to roll with it, since it’s how the path works. As was pointed out by one player, it made sense in the grand sweeping scheme of things: the beginnings of a lengthy odyssey for the PCs, culminating in an epic showdown.

Jason Nelson was kind enough to forward on the draft of this module after seeing my post, and a major shout-out to him for that. It contained a lot more information about how Kakishon was structured, and about the various factions, including a bit of information that was lacking from the printed version. It also had a lot more encounters, and more detail on the islands not visited as part of the main quest.

And there’s plenty of room for expansion, too. It took a little nudging for the PCs to figure out how to use Kakishon’s built-in ship courier service, and after the PCs stopped off past the end of eternity (first thing and all), they went on a tour of Kakison to see all the sights and kill some monsters. Given time constraints, I ended up going over this one a lot faster than I’d wanted to; not as much time to explore Nex’s ancient ruined pleasure plane, more time working between the three factions.

The first battles were with a crew of leveled gnolls; Muji (PNPC) and Ashnale (before he dropped) wandered into the gnoll village alone, assuming they were just low-level thugs like before. Then one rolled a crit on Ashnale, and it was on. The various hydras were circumvented by high-level wild empathy + feats. I threw in a few other monsters on the various islands to shake things up—a coeurl, from van Vogt’s Voyage of the Space Beagle, which was statted up by Paizo during the Legacy of Fire series, and a dracodile from the Monsternomicon. Neither were particularly deadly; nor were the group of remorhaz encountered on the frozen island. More of a complaint about how the party fit within the CR brackets than with the module’s design.

My players are pretty cagey, though, and wanted to go around to all three factions to figure out which one to align with. Of the three, Dilix Mahad is the least like a true faction; generally she follows suit with the players. The Proteans were sympathized with, but the players (being good and more on the lawful side) didn’t buy into their “destruction is creation” bit. The last group, of shaitan earth-genies, are set up to be the general adversary; when the players started heckling the shaitan about why they didn’t stand up to Jhavhul when he ruled the plane, it sealed that deal. They had set up a diplomatic-dinner with the shaitan, and had a “bond of salt” that the PCs ended up breaking. Ashnale had been largely nice to the sphinx, and the fact that sphinxes saw a major power boost—and had symbol of sleep—ended up being pretty helpful, dropping most of the shaitan into slumber before things could get nasty.

My biggest complaint is one minor detail that my players managed to overblow all the way to 11. After hearing the rumor about an azer smith who hated Jhavhul, they set off to get some of the flint from the big flint spire in order to appease him. (I thought the massive anti-magic corpse and giant flint spire was pretty badass, in an Exalted way—what does the archmage use to kill an anti-magic creature? Gravity—but the players thought otherwise. Ah well.) Anyways, the azer supposedly loved flint from this mountain, so the PCs decided to spend six years excavating the mountaintop, then another six years dragging a block of flint the size of a Yugo through a volcano to the guy’s forge.

Needless to say, I went with the draft version, in which the smith laughs in the PCs’ faces and tells them it’s some kind of urban legend crossed with a stupid pledge dare—he’s more interested in the “useless but bring them anyways” crystals that grow at the top of the rock. In the future, I’d either axe the rumor, or otherwise circumvent the whole breaking out of mining picks, pulleys and levers. (Players: proof that no GM plan survives past contact.)

Also, I realize shaitan using earthmeld makes sense, but having the shaitan end-boss keep the captured protean in the Earth Seed was a little weird. Especially since somebody referenced it as his throne, and the players kept referring to the Earth Seed as “Obherak’s rock chair.”

Set Piece – Waves of Kakishon by Ashavan Doyon

The last session that Ashnale and the “wizard” showed up to was when they both left early; having nothing else prepared, I picked up the set-piece and inserted it into the module. Normally, the players are supposed to find out about the existence of some antediluvian dragon turtle, who has some turf war going with sahuagin, from some local fishermen.

You can probably see where the issues start to crop up: the only real “locals” in Kakishon are the gnoll tribes the PCs were hell-bent on putting to the torch, and it’s a bit crazy of Nex to put a dragon turtle, much less sahaugin and ancient oceanic civilizations, in his pleasure plane. Given that this set-piece isn’t on the back cover or in the Paizo.com description, this one has the distinct feel of being shoehorned in at the last minute.

There’s really not a good way to fit the backstory in, so the dragon turtle just swam up to the PCs when they got on a boat next, grabbed all the NPCs and PCs of players who weren’t there, and sank the boat. Luckily, the animated minotaur helmsman had some potions of water breathing, otherwise this adventure wouldn’t have taken place. (Having to think up something else wasn’t such a big deal; having the players, enthralled by the last three set-pieces, keep asking about the next one was.)

The rest of the set-piece is pretty straightforward. The dragon turtle has a lair. There are other things in the lair. The PCs kill all the other things in the lair, while descending in the water into the lair, until they reach the bottom and kill the dragon turtle. It’s a sad story when three PCs (Malak, Yantar, and Kerek) could take on the various sharks and the turtle itself without losing a player, but they came close to losing two: it bit and grabbed Malak in one round, and used its breath attack on Yantar the next. One scorched PC in its mouth (less than 10 hp), one scorched PC floating outside (less than 2 hp). Ouch.

The Bottom Line

All in all, things went pretty smoothly. The PCs gained a plane to explore, which only they know about. Jhavhul was immediately set up as the main antagonist, working back in Katapesh while the PCs flailed about elsewhere. The combat wasn’t terribly challenging, and I’m not sure why; the replacement PCs were all a few levels lower than the starter PCs, and of them, only Yantar and Karek managed to stick around for any period of time. I ended up liking the module, to a point: losing two original players made the original modules that much more nostalgic. End of Eternity, however, has a lot of things to do, a good balance between combat, roleplaying, and exploration, and was far and above better than the previous module.

Again, having the draft on hand gave me a ton more ideas for Kakishon, and I wish I could have switched to the slow-track and done a lot more with it. Jason Nelson really went overboard, so I can see why space constraints left most of it on the cutting room floor, and the most important parts were left for the printed version. The big part that was cut was a major dungeon-slog leading into the shaitan’s fortress; my players aren’t huge on breaking out the graph paper and doing the marching order/10 x 10 rooms thing, so I saved that for the next module.

While the set piece was a bit disappointing in how hard it has to be modified to actually work its way into Kakishon, it ended up being the most memorable of the set-pieces I ran. Since only three players showed up for it, and they all survived (more or less), I gave them all a Turtle Soup achievement feat in an attempt to get the other players to show up more. Guess that backfired.

The module ended with the characters finally freeing the proteans, setting Kakishon adrift into the multiverse, and using the Earth Seed to transport themselves out of the scroll… where they find themselves in the middle of a fiery treasure vault, with huge brass figures charging them from doors of roiling fire. Check back in a day or so when we get to The Impossible Eye.