I had the pleasure of playing this mod at the Ruby Phoenix convention in Sydney. I'd travelled from Darwin to attend the con, so I was really stoked that a lot of high quality modules were on offer... including Cult of the Ebon Destroyers.

The lead-in to the mod is excellent. There's a lot of flavour and a real sense of 'you are there' put into the module, with a lot of nice touches like pre-generated divinations and the like. That made my day. It can be frustrating, though... this module has a reputation for being very tough, but the first part really requires a social face, a skill/knowledge type person and someone who can cast divinations. This might suggest that it's a social module where you can bring your "non-combat characters" and have a ball, and for a time it seems like you're right.

Then the combat hits, and wow. It's brutal stuff.

Extremely high AC combat munchkins coming pre-buffed, lots of monks with moderately difficult fort saves (fighter-types need only roll 1s to fail, but there are a lot of them), and you're fighting in their home territory so the terrain is perfectly geared towards maximising their advantages.

We had a very optimized party (although we lacked ranged and/or arcane support) and we couldn't complete the module. We had two PC deaths including our two toughest characters, and the rest of the party were stat-drained/negative levelled to the point they were ineffective.

That said...

The combats are unique. Flavourful. Interesting. And, one must remember, you're fighting a death cult. They're not weak and soft and squishy -- properly run, they should go for the throat at all times, including coup-de-grace and other such things. They're death cultists and should be played appropriately.

The lead-in was extremely flavourful, the roleplaying was excellent, and the overall story remarkable in its execution. I think the only bad thing I have to say about this module is that it needed to decide if it was a social/investigative or a combat-fest... it tried to be both, and while it pulled it off really nicely, you have to bring a fully optimized party to this or you're going to either get stuck in the first half or die horribly in the second.

But what's the point of playing Pathfinder if there's not a chance of death?

Honestly having played this it was the toughest and most challenging series of games I have played to date in PFS and honestly the most fun I have had, every single challenge was worthy of our team of adventurers and there was no need to hold back for fear of outshining the combats.

The investigation stage was extremely well written and performed masterfully by the GM, with the party having to work together and pool our abilities to accomplish the task.

The Combats were well ran and extremely well built giving me a new appreciation for the capabilities of NPCs, honestly I havent felt this much of a threat to my PC's survival since I started PFS and I would love it if every game felt this challenging.

All in probably among the best hours I have had playing PFS, I will admit if you arent in to serious challenges maybe you should steer clear of this one, but if you want to have a blast against challenges that will test you to your limits this is definately the mod for you.

I find myself in a rather odd position, having read all of the other reviews, I am a little confused. Other reviewers stated that the combat components have the potential to kill players, is that not what a good encounter should do, without risk there is no reward, surviving some of the encounters by the skin of your teeth, gave me a wonderful sense of achievement.
They also say that the module is combat heavy, when combined with the setting this makes sense. Mr Goodall creates a wonder tapestry of background, locations and characters in an area very rarely utilised. Characters won’t know everything about the socio-economical, historical and political structure like they would with Absalom and its real world counterpart shares the same situation. Mr Goodall in putting in lots of combat, while still putting in role-playing opportunities means that everything gets to do something while sitting at the table.

To sum this all up this module sits in my top 5 RPG modules I have played EVER.
Exotic setting, check.
Great moments, check (all of the battles were memorable)
A great game that makes you want to play any and everything Mr Goddall has written, is writing and will write in the future, check
5/5 stars

I played this a while back now and I am looking forward to running for my guys soon.

I find the difference between an ‘ok’ session and a great session is GM preparation, luckily, I had a GM who had run the adventure before and who brought a whole lot of energy and gusto to the game.
None of us had experienced this exotic place before, none of the party could speak the language (but that is who it should be landing in a new city) how often do you get that feeling of a fish out of water?

We were a party of mixed player experience levels and while some of us play together regularly - the real challenge was working together as a team against intelligent enemies who actually behave like PC’s would (which is great, why wouldn’t a BBEG be buffed if his home is being attacked? Seriously?)

If I had any advice it would be to take the time to get to know the strengths and weakness of your fellow party members - work together as team and you'll have a great game.

I loved the experience I gained from this one – and I have a chronicle worthy of some respect (and it was well earned).

See you at the table people!

This module is absolutely fantastic. I had a brilliant time playing it and I am looking forward to the opportunity to run it. As many of the other reviewers have whined, yes, it's deadly. But really, what do you expect? It's the CULT OF THE EBON DESTROYERS! Your enemy has devoted their lives to murder and guess what? They're pretty bloody good at it. So expect to die, and die horribly. But if you manage to survive, then emerge from the experience with some well-earned respect. You've succeeded where most will have fallen.
Should all modules follow a nice power curve, where you can enter with your usual commonplace attitude that everything will have been softened up for you? Or should some of them test you to the limits of your ability and resources? I'm solidly in the latter camp. If you want everything to be balanced to the point of banality, then there's a dying game called D&D 4th edition that you should go and grab a copy of before it disappears once and for all. If you don't like the challenge of encounters that have been optimised in a manner that is faithful to the inevitable preparations of a death cult, then wimp out and go and play something else more suited to your metagame expectations of fairness.

So, to the module itself. It is jam-packed full of authentic flavour that leaves you in absolutely no doubt that you are in an India/Sri Lanka inspired enclave. The adventure oozes the culture and attitude of Jalmeray and allows you to fully immerse yourself in it. The adventure starts with an investigation that you can actually get your teeth into. It's not simply resolved by just wandering around until someone attacks you, as many supposed "investigations" are. It's well thought out and well-developed, just like the NPCs and their various motivations. The subsequent travel to the lair of your enemies involves several encounters that may surprise and delight you, as they did me. But the finale is simply just excellent. If you have the guts to go in there and get them, expect that they won't go down without the fight of your life.

So, did I survive? Yes, but only by the absolute skin of my teeth and my party fought tooth and nail through practically every encounter. It was tense and the pressure was enormous at times as our options started to run out and we struggled to find a strategy that would work. But, with not a small amount of luck, we endured. In short, it was an epic experience, and I'm a better player because of it. Thank you, Matt Goodall. Keep writing modules this excellent, please, and don't start pulling any punches. Dying in an adventure this awesome would be a privilege, just as it was in the Tomb of Horrors back in the day. Managing to survive it was something very special indeed.

As the other reviewers have pointed out, this module is rather combat heavy. There is a story to be had but the adventurers will have to be at the top of their game to survive all the way through.

The real travesty in this module are the NPC betrayals. There is one scene in particular that can result in a very cheap total party kill if the players play their characters like real people rather than killing machines.

Some may enjoy this level of difficulty but my group felt that the module was not fun.

This is the first official Pathfinder module I've run and the first published adventure that I've run for a good long while. My group and I all found it thoroughly enjoyable!

I picked this up at my local game store because I wanted to see how the Superstar adventure turned out, and it happened to fit the themes and events of my ongoing campaign, set in my home-brew setting. I flipped through the book and read the reviews, which said the adventure was very difficult, even "impossible." My players are experienced, so I decided not to alter it. In fact, the PC's were half-way between level 7 and 8 when they started. There were five PC's, so I figured it would balance out, as the adventure is written for four.

We had a paladin, a fighter, a witch, an inquisitor/shadowdancer, and a ranger/rogue. We had no dedicated healer but everyone had things like potions and wands, plus the paladin's channeling.

The adventure was very easy to adapt to my setting on-the-fly. I simply read through it before running the game, and as I was running it, I made changes to the names of people and places as they came up. I slightly modified the motivations of the cult, but I made absolutely no changes whatsoever to the mechanics or any of the encounters. I ran everything exactly as written, only changing the "fluff."

The players made it through the investigation and first combat encounter in one session, then completed the rest of the adventure (mostly combat) in two more sessions. All of the encounters were fun, with varying tactics and levels of difficulty. The players also enjoyed interacting with the various NPC's, especially during the investigation.

I highly recommend this adventure! Continue reading for a more detailed overview of our experience and a discussion of encounter difficulty.

Overall I can think of very few things about this adventure that I did not like, except perhaps that the end of the adventure was weighted a bit heavily towards combat. Maybe the village could have been written as more of a role-playing encounter. But if your group really likes to role-play, the opportunity is certainly there.

Reading the other reviews that say this adventure is too difficult makes me think that perhaps my players are more experienced than average (we've been playing for years and years), or that other groups contained some new or uncooperative players. I can see how the adventure would be tough for a new group, but that goes for any adventure.

Five stars, Mr. Goodall. Well done sir.

My group had fun with this overall, but it's got a few problems, largely due to being much more difficult than your average 8th-level module. I had a party of four fairly skilled players, and there were two deaths and several very close calls over the course of the adventure -- I could have easily caused a few more player deaths if I had the enemies finish off unconscious players rather than pulling their punches and moving to a new target after somebody went down.

It starts off in an exotic local with lots of interesting flavor, and the roleplaying aspects of it are pretty fun. There's some mystery, some investigation, and some interesting cultural experiences. The investigation is probably the best part of the module, and will take up about the first 1/3 to 1/2 of it. There are some fun NPCs, and at 8th level the party probably hasn't dealt with shapeshifting outsiders before.

Then the combat encounters start, and almost every single encounter in this module has a CR that's above the party's level. Some of them are significantly above the party's level, and near the end the party may have to fight several of them in a row. There is relatively little opportunity for roleplaying for the rest of the module. There are also a few encounters where the enemies have tactics that are decidedly not optimal, but you really need to run them as written, because if you have the enemies use a bit of strategy, they'll destroy the players -- I have no doubt that there would have been a total party wipe if the enemies had gone all out rather than behaving as written.

Overall, I liked it, but you'll want to tone it down if your party doesn't like being brought to the brink of death in every fight.

The Good:
-Setting: The setting is a good break from the standard Pathfinder module: the obvious being in that it doesn't take place in one of the typical Inner Sea countries.

However, this divergence is obvious in minor ways as well. For one, I couldn't find a single Lovecraft reference, and while the model evoked feelings of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it was clearly designed with the intent of having each encounter be different from the standard fare.

This alone was promising, and one of my favorite parts running (and playing through) the adventure.

-Challenge: There seems to be a lot of complaint about the level of difficulty in the module. However, my party found Cult of the Ebon Destroyers to be perfect. It's a solid bit harder than your typical adventure, I won't deny that. But it isn't the party destroyer people are saying it is provided your party acts with a reasonable degree of tactical knowledge.

The Bad:
-At times, some of the enemy tactics don't really make sense, particularly when its a group of "mook" enemies opposed to the BBEGs, in that they have reason to work together but choose to fight one wave at a time. This is easily rectified by sending in larger groups and reducing the total number of foes in a locale.

-At times, the players were left with only one avenue to reach the next plot point. As a GM, I worked with them to basically use reasonable progression to get to the next stage, although I would have preferred fewer individual hunts for information in favor of a more connected series of events.

-Some enemies can die before their slated final encounter, without a real clear analogue on who should replace them.

-As a GM I'm getting really frustrated with the "villagers are helpful/no they're actually out to kill you" trope that seems prevalent in the modules and adventure paths of late. While this isn't this modules especial fault, I would've liked to see a village genuinely try and aid the PCs...but later be infiltrated by the cult.

In spite of the few plot/tactical faults herein, the combination of challenging, varied encounters, and a refreshing setting lead me to give Cult of the Ebon Destroyers a 4/5.

Overall, I am not a overt fan of "pre-brewed" stand-alone-adventures, but picked this one up because of its "near Vudran" setting.
Used it as a side-trek after a teleportation accident in the running campaign, with a five player group.

Pros :
- Setting : spicy and nicely different from your usual run-of-the-mill pseudo-european fantasy setting. A taste of something "different". Actually the strongest point of the adventure.

- Challenging : the adventure has some pretty decent and surprising fights, utilising legends and traditions of the proto-indian background. Unfortunately these are not really those serving as keypoints of the plot, but "random" interactions. The key fights suffer from a massive common flaw
Motivation and reasons for many NPC decision is foggy and at times rather silly. This problem will me missed out on by the players, though

- "Sandbox" style murder/crime-investigation, which could have used some more fleshing out, but is fun to see at all. Interestingly capable villain and agents for this part.

Average :
Overall, the product seems underdeveloped and sparse, mostly due to the constraint of 32 pages, much of which then gets eaten up by statblocks. Very linear design after the initial investigation.

Cons:
-

- The internal artwork is... the less said about it, the better ? My group mostly hated it, and thought it less-than helpful, if not distracting and counter-productive for immersion in the dark-cult athmosphere. "Teenage-y circus freaks style" was among the more positive verdicts uttered. The cover (shown after adventure ) was felt to be more appealing and conductive.

- Plot does not make all that much sense, or rather seems forced and "pulpish". This make player involvement hard, and may require redesign or rewrite to be more engrossing. But why then buy an "pre-brewed" adventure at all ?

- Power level of the encounters varies from "extremely hard" (without Dispel Magic) to "utterly underwhelming" (with Dispel Magic).

Overall :
Basically decent adventure off the beaten track, but shoddy design/execution. Not the strongest contender in Paizo's offering, and a massive step down from "Kingslayers" and "Felnight Queen"

To be frank, this probably looked far stronger in concept than the actual product turned out