Serpent’s Skull: Racing to Ruin (3) The Terrors of Taizon

The last act of module two turned out to be the shortest; surprisingly, the first part (in Eledar) was nearly as long as the race, which just seemed to buzz by in a couple of sessions.

Taizon was a letdown for the players. Part of the problem was that they confused it with Saventh Yhi, because they never read our damn wiki, so they wandered into an abandoned Azlanti outpost with four encounter areas. A bit underwhelming, but still, it ended up going over fairly well over two sessions. The players opted for a direct assault, scaling the walls and cleaning out the charau ka when they met them.

I made some changes to the end-battle locale, the ancient Azlanti temple within the ruins. As written, it’s interesting, but not Indiana Jones enough, so I borrowed a homebrew replacement posted on the Paizo forums. The puzzle it contained was interesting; the players managed to figure it out with only a little prodding, though they were fine with constant screw-ups and trial-and-error, so I’d make the fail results more extreme next time—if someone loses an arm, they’ll think about it for more than ten seconds, right?

Challenges!

Earlier in the module there were some harsh encounters. Several evil outsiders with high CRs (7 and up) were brutal enough to kill the eidolon and give the party something to think about. Plus the aforementioned ape-bears, which for CR 4s hit like a Mack truck; that was fun. After those high benchmarks, a host of CR 2/4 monkies is laughable. This is the biggest problem I have with Paizo writers: mooks are never a threat if your players are halfway decent with tactics and build.

So, I doubled the number of monkies, and they still weren’t that much of a threat. See, they’re all small. And though there were tons of them (I think eight for the final encounter, including the leveled boss), there was just enough to fit into an aqueous orb with room to spare. The ones that weren’t slain instantly or grappled by the eidolon. That’s about how it went for all of those stupid things, even after increasing their number by 35-50% and giving them max hit points… and the players were a level or so below where they should have been.

The Adventure Locales

The ruins have a couple of awesome locales; the main charau ka encounter is in a ruined temple falling into a tar pit, which makes for some interesting tactical choices. The end-target is a large dungeon ruin, another temple thing, nicely laid out and with a lot of variety.

The only locale that didn’t do much was the tower, which lead down and not up, into a sewer system that didn’t work for my group. It’s there in case the party needs/wants a stealthy access route; in my case, it was more set dressing since it was found after all the monkies had been slaughtered. The players considered the tunnels pointless and moved on.

Anything Else?

Nope, that’s pretty much all there is to Taizon. While interesting, I thought it was way too easy, even after I ad-hoc’d the difficulty up (yay GM fiat). My players getting confused over “Taizon as a waypoint” and “Taizon as Saventh Yhi, El Dorado of Golarion” didn’t help, since some of them had worked themselves up only to find… a large empty city.

I didn’t bother showing the map to them; I think that’s wasted opportunity. To be fair, there’s not much room left in the module—there was a lot to squeeze into this one, two bookend cities and a major freaking race. Taizon is left as this sprawling ruin area, something like 1800 ft. x 1400 ft., surrounded by a tall wall… and there’s two buildings, a pit, and a ruin with a tunnel in it. Huge overgrown walled area with nothing in it but easily slain monkies.

Also, as mentioned earlier… there’s no way the player characters won’t win the “race” without serious mistakes on the player side, and a lack of GM prodding to get them back on the rails. I get the need to make the PCs win—they are the heroes of this tale, after all, odds should be weighed in their favor—but there’s no sense of accomplishment since the faction calculations are only known to the GM. For all they knew, they were the last ones there, or another group was just over the hill. (They were something like nine days ahead of the next party slated to arrive.) Hence why I’d run a mini-Kingmaker hex crawler, tracking the various factions’ progress on a big ole map, if I ran it again.

Things I Would Do/Did Different

The challenge level here was subpar. Whatever else I said about the rest of the path, Smuggler’s Shiv through Seven Spears, I take it back; Taizon was a cakewalk in comparison. If I was running this again, I’d replace the charau ka with serpentfolk—there’s three of them, leveled, in the homebrew puzzle, and those were a decent challenge that could still be overcome without serious issues by the PCs. Unless the group was underpowered—pick two: four or less characters, none optimized, a level under the adventure guideline—I wouldn’t use the monkies. Leveling them up is too much trouble, doubling didn’t work, and serpentfolk are more evocative (and fit with my evil plans).

This is also a problem I tried to circumvent in City of Seven Spears—a mob of 7,249 vegepygmies may have a CR high enough to beat down a demon lord, but they can only kill a demon lord statistically, because they will be mown down like wheat .

Depending on how much incentive/time I had, I might also add more stuff in Taizon. Or make it smaller. The map is great, with this varied terrain, an overgrown ruin sinking into the tar pits. And while the locales it has are awesome, there’s a lot of dead space on the map. Just a personal thing.

I would re-use the puzzle, because it was kind of fun, and the players got somewhat engaged with it… even though they kind of shrugged and started mashing gems together immediately. It got good feedback, which was a plus.

Addenda: Other Things I Did Different

Since the players were a bit behind the curve, and as part of my expanding the serpent subplots (with Yarzoth as the BBEG), I threw in some additional combat with serpentfolk raiders and their Young Fiendish T-Rex mount, following a dream sequence vision. To note my group’s power level, the party (down to four around 6th level; fighter, wizard, druid, monk) took on something like a CR 10-11 encounter and beat the T-Rex into a coma. I gave them enough extra XP to bump them to 7th.

Granted, it nearly wiped them out—the druid had one of his many near-death experiences, something that happens more than you’d think to a huge mondo-statted bear. Things were going surprisingly well for them until there was a lucky (unlucky) crit on my part for the Rex; without a few lucky rolls and quick thinking on behalf of the druid, they all would have bought it. Of course, when half the party decided to run off and leave their huge bear druid to die, focusing on a single enemy already locked down via hideous laughter, the near-death part starts to make sense… sometimes it takes two for a TPK.

The Bottom Line

A bit of a letdown ending to an otherwise decent adventure module. Again, I don’t blame Tim Hitchcock; he had enough material for half a campaign and had to squeeze it into one book. The setting has a lot of promise, and for a group closer to the suggestions—four players, med track, not as optimized—it would have been fine. Between their confusion and letdown over Taizon’s emptiness, and my letdown over the lackluster obstacles, Taizon was rather forgettable.

Serpent’s Skull: Racing to Ruin (2) The Race

Leaving Eleder begins the first major railroad section of the Path—choo! cho0! Racin’ the Rails! It’s a linear segment involving a number of set-piece encounters, and however many random encounters that you choose to insert. The goal: get to the ruin (har) of Taizon before everyone else. As written, that’s not as hard as it sounds.

While it didn’t look that bad at start, I forgot to consider that unless you’re up for rehashing various scenic descriptions and making a running travelogue, this kind of thing doesn’t convey either time or distance very well. It broke down into “Okay, so you travel for X days and then something happens” despite some attempts otherwise; from behind the screen it looked pretty tedious and dull, but apparently the players liked it.

The scripted encounters have a very nice blend of challenges, a few roleplay encounters, and some butting of heads with the rival factions. They’re also wide open to modification and customization, which I would highly recommend; merging set-pieces with random encounters, random encounters with random encounters, and adding more faction encounters—finding their old campsites, bumping into them, getting assaulted by rival faction hit squads—is a must.

Scripted encounters of note:

• The first is a mini-dungeon, a salt mine full of wights, that the PCs plowed through; I changed its Loc-Nar knockoff to channel negative energy every few rounds to make the end combat more challenging. (Even without a cleric, ghouls weren’t a problem at this level, even with some tweaking.)
• My players went hog-wild on one of the roleplaying encounters, a traveling cockfighting ring that’s weighted against the PCs. My group almost passed it on, but a few last-minute bets initiated by the new guy started a spree of competition; when nobody was looking, they buffed up the chickens, and had one of the most intense fights all campaign.
• There’s a nice opportunity for a hippo ambush sometime later; if you want to put the fear of god into your PCs, there’s ample chance for a bull hippo to swamp their raft. I tried to point out the lizardfolk involvement in the affair—foreshadowing, you see—but I think that was lost on them.
• At one point, they are attacked by a group of CR4 bear-apes, name of “Chemosit.” These hit like a friggin’ Mack truck, so pull punches (or only use one) if your PCs are in a small group or aren’t up to snuff. If they are: throw in a third. I did, everyone survived.
• My group decided that the shrunken monkey heads with near-auto dispel evil, which I was pushing on them at all turns, were worthless, so they sold the one they won. Which made the fight with the possessed demon TOUGH AS ALL HELL. It killed the eidolon, almost killed two of the party tanks too; between is incorporeal (50% miss chance) and DR, it’s more than a challenge for the PCs. (Granted, if they had used the monkey heads, it would have been over in three rounds: Round One, ape attack, Round Two, ape dead, Round Three, dispel demon.)

There’s also one scripted faction ambush, which came just a little too late to be effective—druid wildshapes, maul/maul/maul/crunch. I was throwing them in at a constant basis, or having other encounters involve the desiccated remains of an earlier expedition’s scouts. They learned soon enough not to trust traveling merchants who didn’t have more than fifty feet of hempen rope and no rape whistles.

Challenges!

Things are starting to heat up, partly because the slow track dragged the PCs down a level from where their power levels exponentially (Bear Shaman was okay at 5th, brutal at 6th; Monk of the Sacred Mountain was worthless at 4th, highest damage output of the party at 6th). Three Chemosits gave them a headache—the monk lost 75% of his HP in the first round—and the shadow demon was a long, drawn-out, and bloody fight, ending with the death of the eidolon. The faction rogues all have solid poison that can paralyze, leading to a few coup-de-grace attempts on the Monk; he was probably the only one who realized just how damn close to dying he’d been. Later on, there’s a nice roleplay/combat involving some sirens and another demon which was interesting, if only because a third the party ended up charmed or dominated; it wasn’t as close as the earlier two fights, though.

The Adventure Locales

There’s some cool ideas in here, but to be honest, they’re all “Well I could have thought of that”-level. Kinda vanilla. The salt mine was cool, as was having a lost Chelaxian treasure shipwreck; the rest are mostly deviations on “native village,” “jungle,” “a different part of the jungle,” “jungle river,” etc., but with some new or interesting monster to fight. Hence why I saw spruce it up; some unique encounter locales would have rocked: a trail running under a waterfall or a bridge running over a gorge; a lost ruin campsite of some kind, maybe a rubble tower or a small ziggurat, some way station between Taizon and Saventh-Yhi.

(Also, there’s a heavy emphasis on demons here—makes sense, all the demon-worshiping stuff in the Mwangi, but that doesn’t fit with the other modules’ more varied, less-”stereotypical D&D” monsters.)

Why Did I Say It’s Dull?

Because the title implies “Race,” and as written… there ain’t no freakin’ race, Charlie. At best, the party can cut two days off their travel time from encounters, or add one day from another. Without Nkechi, they add a week to their travel times… but what group’s going to pass on orders to get a guide, which is effectively “go get some guy and XP”? If they go pell-mell for Taizon, and you assume the standard travel times as written on the chart, they’d have to sit in Taizon for something like a week before the next faction’s scouts arrived. There’s no challenge to it, which makes having a druid, or someone with high Survival, or mounts, or whatever, no advantage whatsoever to getting to Taizon first.

There are many ways to spruce up this adventure, and I’d recommend doing all of them. Stop, think, plan, look at the Paizo forums, Google, whatever. The race needs flavor that the module just ain’t got. Those 3-5 sessions spent on the trail were the dullest “race” I’ve ever been a part of; part of the problem was our roleplaying contingent had dropped out, so we’re left with chair-warmers and some “hurry up to get to the combat” folks, which didn’t help. About the time they got to Kalabuto I realized it wasn’t working, and no matter what I did to spruce it up, it just didn’t feel right.

V.P. Corbella's art is pretty hawt.

Random Encounters!

For the love of god, roll those ahead of time. Think of some that are entertaining, too, that combine well with the other encounters you rolled and/or the prefab ones in the module. I kept getting Rival Faction Team, so I’d combine them with things like “Natives” (killed some traveling merchants, tricked the PCs into moving as a group “for protection”). Or I rolled them into animal attacks. I also combined some of the set-pieces; namely, the murder-tree and the Geiers, along with some more (dead) faction members.

Also, have the faction teams show up every now and then, to try to make it feel more like a race. I think the Sargavan government was coming into Kalabuto as the PCs left, and the Pathfinders arrived at the sirens’ hut as the PCs were leaving in the morning.

Faction Roll-Call

My group went with the Pirates because they paid the most. The Red Mantis were the clear rival from very early on, though the Pathfinders haven’t seen eye to eye with them either; after knocking Gelik and the Pathfinder faction leader off their mounts, I have the feeling that bridge has been burned.

The Sargavans and Aspis Consortium have been out of the scene; I’ve figured they have more pressing goals, and are more interested in expanding their control/loot, respectively, to pay attention to the other factions’ infighting. Though I have the feeling the Sargavans might turn out to be racist pricks, given the natives’ feelings about “Chelaxian” rule.

(Sometimes I wonder about designers, given Sargava’s polemic bipolarity of “White Man’s Burden” colonials versus “Stab Whitey” natives.)

Things I Would Do Different

If I had to do it over again, I’d go all-out stupid with planning. I’d hash out a map of Sargava with a hex grid in Photoshop, then run a miniaturized variant of Kingmaker for the race: give the hexes terrain features which reduce/increase travel speed, divvy out the set pieces (and add some more!) between the areas, then have the party tell me where and how they’re blazing forth. I’d track the other factions’ progress to emphasize the race angle, maybe even open to the players. And have them take various routes; maybe the Pathfinders would pole up the river, while the Sargavan government would trek across the plains, and the Red Mantis would strike hard and fast through the Screaming Jungle.

I’d also have the major factions take routes with high overlap frequency over the players’ course, so that they’re stumbling into each others’ trails and abandoned campsites, seeing their campfires every few nights, maybe setting each others’ herd animals loose or scaring their native bearers away… all while the clock ticks down to discovering Taizon. It’d give an oppertunity for the other factions to get to Taizon. (Such as the serpentfolk, led by Yarzoth, who I took as the recurring villain.) Or at least have multiple factions make some progress, or make the PCs’ pull all-nighters through the jungle or something else disadvantageous to stay ahead. Granted, it should be weighted towards the PCs, but it shouldn’t be the cakewalk as written.

Kind of like those madcap race movies they had back in the ’60s mixed with… a real race, with everyone running neck-and-neck to Taizon. Yes, this is a helluva lot of work. And given how my current group’s going, it could be a lot of work for naught. But that’s what I’d do, dangnabbit; the module promises a race, and this is how I see a race being delivered. This module was just too railroad-y, too linear a race; I don’t mind the plot being a railroad, but I’m starting to see that “Sandbox-Railroad-Sandbox-Railroad” whiplash people talk about when Serpent’s Skull comes up.

The Bottom Line

All in all, this section has a lot of potential, but needs a lot of GM handwork to have that spark of awesome that other Path modules have. Work which I didn’t put into it, because I wasn’t expecting it (bad. move.) and because I’m sinking most of my time into City of Seven Spears. And Seven Spears demands that you do work GM magic and expand the module, running all over the place solidifying the existing Geo-political sphere, fleshing out encounter sites, beefing up monsters and hazards and diplomatic encounters. Otherwise, if you don’t, it’s the most fucking banal exercise in Vegepygmy genocide I’ve ever read.

Serpent’s Skull: Racing to Ruin (1) Eleder

I’m having a hard time keeping up with the blog posts I assigned myself; losing my computer for a month didn’t help, so now it’s finding the incentive and momentum to catch up on everything I should have posted. Such as my gaming liveblogs.

Welp, the first half of Racing to Ruin, the second module in the Serpent’s Skull adventure path. Since it’s the second module in the line, it’s main purpose is grinding the characters up to the effective levels of play (the 6-10 sweet spot), and building upon the adventure hook at the end of the first module. (It’s sad, but I’m starting to see Adventure Paths less as the awesome adventures as they appear on the surface, and more as their metagame flowchart cores, the semi-formula they tend to follow—I really need to play more than I run.)

Racing to Ruin starts the characters out in Eleder, after escaping the horrors of Smuggler’s Shiv. Besides giving the players a chance to do some much-needed shopping, it triggers the first major plotline of the Path: the factions seeking the lost city Saventh-Yhi, each of whom sends a representative (last module’s NPCs) to hire the players as trailblazers.

The PCs’ time on the Shiv kind of pigeonholed their NPCs. They didn’t want anything to do with the Pathfinders; I’d made Gelik kind of an odious little shit since he kept failing morale checks and nobody wanted to cheer him up (or talk to him), and besides, I get kind of tired of everyone making Pathfinders into absolute badasses, so I tend to screw with them, like the eccentric old guy in Legacy of Fire who ran an inn (Roderous?) outside Katapesh proper.

Eando Kline, for example, is a badass Pathfinder. Not everyone is Eando Kline. Case in point, the rogue Pathfinders in Entombed with the Pharaohs; yep, one of the groups’ first prime-time appearances, and it’s rotten members abusing the system. (A system which is kinda rife for abuse, too.)

Anyways. Ishirou and the Aspis Consortium didn’t interest them enough—”they’re evil! waugh!”—and as much as they liked Sasha, they didn’t like the Red Mantis. Besides, Sasha isn’t too keen on the Red Mantis, which they knew, and so I had her dragging her feet and only doing it because she had to. Between Jask, another favorite NPC, with the Sargavan Government, and Aerys with the Shackles Pirates, they went pirate because they paid better.

First, postcolonialism in action. Reinforcing the weird geo-politics of Sargava, we end up with a small rebellion of native terrorists. (Yeah, the way to avoid dated “white man’s burden”-style ethnocentric tropes is totally to deal with the issue by having natives who want to stab whitey.) These thugs were easy XP for the party; after fending off some arsonists, they freed a hostage down at the whaling company, where they ended up taking some heat.

Next, their duty was to find an eccentric cleric of Gozreh living as a hermit off on a cliff (Nkechi by name) for the expedition to use as a guide/healer, and perform some tasks for him. Party is leaning very good-ish, since they avoided killing a number of animals/natives that didn’t have to be killed. Of course, this came right after they were berated for killing a bunch of giant crabs.

Nkechi’s dream sequence was pretty hawt. I’d planned to have the PCs’ animal totem stats written up on flash cards, but never got around to it; even with twenty minutes of frantic scribbling and some ad-hoc as to a porcupine’s stats (stupid thing’s now in Bestiary 3) and it went pretty well. I managed to cue my description of the dream-fugue rise and fall of Saventh-Yhi to my background music, which astonished and enthused most of the players. (Ah, the student has become the master.)

From there, they set out on the trail, which I’ll cover next session.

Besides losing and gaining an oracle, who happened to be some of the more interesting PCs, things had already settled by now. I’m finding most of my players are more on the hack-n-slash than roleplay side, despite what I’d advertised/been told; no bonus roleplay XP awards here I guess.

The Slow Track

It’s actually going very, very nice; Smuggler’s Shiv was essentially an XP gold mine, with all its crabs and cave fishers and other vermin to exterminate, so they ended ahead of schedule there and stayed on track for the first section of Racing/Ruin. Not that they’d have had much problem regardless; CR 2′s are only threatening to 1st-level characters and bad builds.

Class Effectiveness

Of course, this is also the low levels of the game; the fighter and druid with bear cub companion were the power characters here. (Druids, power class, ducking fuh.) The party monk was still having trouble hitting and dealing damage, and the summoner was banally weak, though his eidolon was on-par with the party tanks. The new oracle was a pure healbot, which made me feel a little sad inside—play a cleric, I say, so you can cast all sorts of awesome buffs!—though he saved multiple people from being brutally murdered, and thus his life’s mission was complete. The wizard was just starting to get into his own spell-wise.

Hypnotism is still an awful spells—particularly if you’re lazy in using it. Though in the next section, he took scorching ray, which gave the party some much needed artillery, and had been dropping enlarge person on the fighter.

The Adventure Locales

Even though they’re just screwing around in Eleder, I thought the locations were solid. The whaling company was particularly cool; it’s a nice seedy location, and some of its environment became challenges (the machine-trap, flaming blubber). Nkechi’s cliff and quest areas were basic, but made good use of the environment.

The Challenges

The first half is mixed: the whaling station was hardcore, but the rest of the module was standard fare and didn’t push any near-death experiences. The average mooks weren’t worth noting; the Nkechi-based challenges were either out-grappled or dealt with without resorting to bloodshed. (Save the aforementioned mook crabs.)

I thought the kelpie would thrash the druid, since he went in solo and it was several CRs above him. He summoned a squid, which resulted in the kelpie getting pinned as the eidolon swam in, and that was the end of that.

The whaling station, though… the autobot druid transformed and rolled out as a raptor, heading for the hostage, who happened to be Sasha (punishment for talking the PCs’ out of siding with the Red Mantis). The rest of the party slogged their way through the mooks, while raptor druid took the leveled boss in the teeth. Quick work from the oracle saved his bacon. Meanwhile, the monk investigated the side buildings, looking for snipers he couldn’t find (who perpetually shot him in the ass). It was a lot tougher than the combats on the Shiv, and the druid almost bought it. (Well, save for his backup points and that scroll of raise dead the party’s probably forgotten about.)

I made the dream-serpent into a form of Yarzoth, who is becoming something of a recurring villain in this piece. I was hoping she’d pummel at least one PC back into the waking realm, them being just in animal form and all; while several PCs were cutting it close health-wise, she was soundly thrashed.

Things I Would Do/Did Different

To be honest? Not much. The first half of the module is smooth and simple, and fills its duty of setting the PCs on the trail towards Saventh-Yhi. And giving them a bunch of cake challenges on the way. I did add a few more encounters with the revolting natives, which was about it on that end.

The biggest problem I see here is trying to get the PCs to bite on the whole “expedition to Saventh-Yhi” thing, which may thwart other groups. (To be honest, I didn’t pick up the rest of the path until after my players had consigned themselves to a faction.) I had the NPCs’ pitch it as El Dorado with dollar-signs in their eyes; between that and a general malaise that they were hooked on the Canned Adventure Railroad, they decided to bite and soldier on. Though I’d rather it had been more of a natural “Well shit, let’s go do that” kind of thing.

Sadly, despite all my assurances and needling, not one of them took the plunge and bought a loot donkey for eight damn dollars. I’m going to need to look at their loot inventory and make sure their accumulated wealth/ill-gotten gains aren’t slowing them down.

Serpent Skull: Thoughts on Smuggler’s Shiv

I haven’t been keeping up as much as I’d like, because I started running the Serpent Skull adventure path last month, and haven’t even mentioned it yet. Theoretically I was thinking of liveblogging it (well, kind of) like what I started to do with my Starblazer  game, but that went out the window with all the computer problems of late. So rather than catching up on part of the module, here’s the whole damn thing.

To be honest, Serpent’s Skull is about fourth in my list of want-to-run Adventure Paths, behind Kingmaker, Carrion Crown, and the upcoming Skull & Shackles. But there is a personal interest in the path: it’s almost exactly the same as a campaign a friend of mine has run (rather, tried to run) three or four times. Compare the basics: characters are shipwrecked on a jungle continent ruled by yuan-ti and populated by ancient ruins, namely of a fallen snake-god whose name starts with Y. There’s more than that, some being spoilers.

Granted, the details in Serpent Skull can be a lot different—the PCs are shipwrecked and lost from civilization for only the first module, for one—but the staggering similarity is almost paranoia-inducing. Having played in a campaign where the PCs have nothing, are plagued by diseases, and have to fend off evil reptilians, I felt the need to inflict this on others. Also, I’m taking the slow path, in order to add in more set-pieces and encounters and whatnot (and hopefully put off more of that high-level bloat).

Anyways, Souls for Smuggler’s Shiv. I love low-level D&D adventures, before things like caster supremacy and the Christmas-tree effect and other high-level issues show up and the game starts to break down into excesses of stat-crunching and numbers-balancing. (No, I’m not still jaded on tactical class/level RPGs, why do you ask.) There’s a real sense of player fragility, at least as a GM; one unlucky crit and somebody’s character is toast, with no way to bring them back. Normally that means pulling punches, and the basics—not being an adversarial dick GM for one. But here, the encounters seemed balanced nicely on the PCs’ side, without even factoring that I have a six-man destruction squad.

Which is, compared to my Legacy campaign, strangely caster-heavy and rogue-averse: in rough order, barbarian (going for oracle/rage prophet), druid (going for bear totem ass-beater) with bear-cub familiar, fighter (vanilla greataxe halforc), wizard (focus on mind-affecting, namely hypnotism), monk of the sacred mountain (built to stand in one square and punch things), and summoner with a serpentine eidolon.

I only knew one of my players going in, so the module was more everyone getting used to each other and all that; oddly, they ended up being the most tactical RPG group I’ve ever had, and also emphasized co-ordination and teamwork (aid another, buff spells, and flanking, for starters). For example, there were a couple of times where would have been a miss turned into a hit because somebody had cast guidance beforehand; those little +1/+2 support bonuses made a big difference on several make-or-break occasions.

The actual adventure is pure sandbox: explore an island, kill its hostile flora and fauna, find some hidden loot, delve a few dungeons. There’s a number of complications for the PCs to handle, which is what makes the adventure memorable: it’s a real slog, between caretaking NPCs, fending off disease, and building shelters. The adventure consists of a dozen or so set-pieces, along with fifteen shipwrecks and a bajillion “animal lairs” for the PCs to loot, along with a pair of hidden ruins for the obligatory dungeon crawl.

At first, the players just wanted to make for the lighthouse and get back to civilization, but midway through they heard about the Treasure Pit from one of the NPCs, and between that and the NPC shipwreck quests, ended up exploring a good chunk of the island. (They only missed 2-4 of the named and number locations, along with half the predator dens and a handful of shipwrecks.) The last pair of dungeon set-pieces went over well, though in hindsight I should have built the shipwrecks as mini-dungeons, ala the various dungeons in the Elder Scrolls games. The shipwrecks and lairs, as well as most of the island, is somewhat insubstantial, existing in a void.

It’s as close to Morrowind in d20-form as we’ll probably ever see. It’s a neat idea, but I think I like the hex-crawling of Kingmaker better. That had the gamey element of hex exploration as a method to gauge time and space; with Smuggler’s Shiv, it’s a number of set-pieces seperated by blank parts of the map (“jungle”) and random encounters: I had to work at trying to add a sense of depth and world. Unless you’re up for a lot of jungle description, or tons of random encounters, this kind of thing is better for video games. I still ended up liking it for the freeform nature, diversity of written quests, and ease of inserting new material.

The Non-Player Characters

As for the NPCs, a major factor of this module: the players took to ex-Sargavan Jask immediately, not just because he’s a cleric but because he rolled really well for skill checks the PCs failed, such as explaining what the hell Smuggler’s Shiv is. It took a while, but they realized the NPCs were a good source of intel and quests; they really, really hated Gelik Aberwhinge, and Sasha drove the barbarian up a wall. (Yeah, those were the NPCs I added the most character to; what of it?)

Disease, Shelter, and Food

Having a pair of characters with high Survival and aid another meant that building shelter and finding food was never a problem; a “bad” roll was still higher than the DC by about five. Disease, on the other hand, ravaged the NPCs and the monk, and eventually the barbarian got brainworms.  Aside a few potions they found, the PCs ended up relying more on aid another and Heal to have the diseased make their saves. I also ended up being too nice with items, but rather than stacking them in a heap next to the PCs on the beach, I put all but one or two on the shipwreck (requiring a DC 20 Swim check, RAW). (Other bits—anything easily damaged by water, or heavy—mysteriously sank.) It got the PCs started on their investigation, working a lot better than just finding their crap next to them.

The Adventure Locales

There’s a good balance here; naturally, the players liked the treasure pit, and for some reason the crab-house of Pezock. I don’t think they fully understood all the implications of the story-hint-based locales, but that’s about it. Again, most of the shipwrecks and lairs existed purely in the void; I liked being able to draw up my own battle maps, but that’s about it.

The Challenges

At first level, a pair of spider swarms against a group of horribly unprepared adventurers are unfair. Other than that, nothing was too challenging; then again, I have six players. After exploring most of the island, having run into nothing more potent than those spiders, the group tackled one of the module’s end-boss; it had flying, but wasn’t, and was soundly thrashed, even after I’d pre-built it to have more hit points. Actually, there were a few tough battles: a random encounter on a shipwreck involving 2d8 grindylows and the monk failing a Perception check. Still, while the monk dropped, they slaughtered those things. Also, shocker lizards are brutal in pairs (they shocked at least two people down) but worthless on their own.

After that, they took on the entire cannibal village; it was a nice epic-yet-harrowing battle, with a few PCs dropping into the negatives, taking on twenty-odd cannibals, two named-and-numbered, and a couple of beasts (rock lobsters using giant crayfish stats) I’d thrown in. Nothing they couldn’t handle, as each player took an NPC as a bonus, so while things got rough at points the result was never in question: a dozen level 2-4 N/PCs against an army of minimal-level mooks with two leaders.

As for non-combat challenges, those would mostly be the other castaway NPCs, and Pezock, existing castaway NPC. When they realized these quests gave them some great bonuses, they started actively pursuing the shipwrecks and whatnot that each castaway needed to fill their quest.

Things I Would Do Different Next Time

1. Add more depth to the bare-bones encounters, namely the shipwrecks and lairs. Not that I didn’t already, but after pillaging eleven wrecks, or fighting yet another giant crab, it began to get tedious. (I don’t get the same grist of world depth in this path as Legacy or Runelords, partly because there’s no set city to flesh out, and only a handful of NPCs.)
2. Vary the encounters. Again, I did that, coming up with a different random chart for random encounters and shipwreck denizens. Still, once you’ve fought four giant crabs, you’ve fought them all. That said, the new monsters in the module were pretty slick, and I ended up using most of them; the sea scorpions were fun, but best was the large sea urchin that always made its Reflex saves (even with its -2 base save!). Oh, those hilarious urchins.

That’s about it; the module was very well constructed as-is, and its broad open nature allows the GM to drop in all sorts of new encounters and locales. Feedback was positive but lukewarm about the Shiv itself, which is to be expected—it’s intentionally miserable, with the rain, disease, cannibals, and NPC quests. What warmed people up was the adventure hooks near the end: clearing out the cannibal village, and finding an ancient ruin which spoke of Golarion’s El Dorado: Saventh-Yhi. Also, leaving the Shiv for Eledar helped.

[Pathfinder] News: Pathfinder Online In The Works

Paizo has just announced (literally, earlier today) their intent to get into the world of computer gaming by licensing the Pathfinder rules and world for an MMO, with games in the works. It’s going to be (loosely) based around the Kingmaker adventure path, second in popularity only to the originator, the Rise of the Runelords path. And Kingmaker is a perfect fit: it’s open, it’s broad, it’s established, and it’s a perfect building ground for empires to rise and fall.

I’ve been kind of curious why Paizo hasn’t branched out like this yet: yeah, economic feasibility, spreading the game’s IP out, the risks of developing games, and all that. But licensing Golarion means money, it broadens the label’s appeal, gets new players interested, and besides, we haven’t had a good tabletop-based CRPG since, what, Baldur’s Gate 2? Unless you count the fan-patches for Vampire: Bloodlines.

The new company who got the license is Goblinworks, a name that should please most Pathfinder aficionados: Paizo’s had a thing for goblins since Classic Monsters Revisited, if not before, so having goblin in the name gives them a leg up in the street cred department. Their relationship with Paizo sounds pretty strong, so provided the game doesn’t go the way of the WoD MMO or other vaporware, it could be an interesting new step for the Pathfinder license.

Note that Ryan Dancey is one of the forerunners of this project; this interests me for two reasons. First, Dancey is the person you can hold accountable for Pathfinder, M&M, True20, Spycraft, and more, because he’s the guy who pushed to open the OGL floodgates for D&D. Second, he’s a former CCP employee—I just was talking about them and their relation to White Wolf a few days ago, and from what I remember Dancey was one of the RPGers working on the World of Darkness MMO in CCP’s Atlanta (White Wolf) offices.

Dancey’s CCP relationship is what makes me most interested. The reason CCP was a good fit for WoD was because of its hands-off mentality: instead of focusing on designer-driven content, like World of Warcraft and its perpetual updates of new zones and dungeons to raid, CCP’s EVE is all player-driven. It’s up to the players to make things interesting, and they take the game’s freedom to its fullest, hence EVE’s harsh learning curve and reputation as a breeding ground for scammers, griefers, and political intrigue run amok. Much like with the backstabbing World of Darkness, I think that style of play would fit the squabbling River Kingdoms quite well.

That’s most of why I was interested in seeing the WoD MMO finished product; if the Pathfinder RPG does go that route—the freeform chaos of the CCP player-driven-content model instead of the pointless grind of a WoW clone—and the press release on the GoblinWorks page does mention its sandbox nature. If it’s true, they may indeed have my money.

The Next Year of Paizo Releases

Well, I got my Paizo catalog for the next year in today, so I thought I’d go over it much as I went over the White Wolf one. At the very least, Paizo’s catalogs are an exercise in fantastic art design and direction: they take everything that looks great about the products and put them in a tiny little book, jam-packed with art and illustrations. They’re really damn pretty. And they’re printed in the U.S., which is one gripe I’ve seen many people provide about the books. This one’s better than last year: not only does it have a cooler illustration, but it has a clean look from all the white space on the back.

I realize they’ve been listed on Paizo’s website since GenCon, but I’ve been meaning to detail them since, and getting a hard catalog was my tipping point. For those reading along at home, use the Paizo Release Schedule for more information on these glorious releases, as I’m too lazy to link them all.

Since this post is extra-stupid long, read on for more details.

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.