The Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path continues! The evil beneath the town of Sandpoint refuses to sleep quietly, and a killer from the ancient past awakes. Clues found in his lair lead to the den of a legendary dragon and into a vast arcane dungeon ruled by ageless wizards, where the seven deadly sins reign supreme. Can the PCs hone the sins within themselves into weapons against their true foe, Karzoug, the resurrected Runelord of Greed?
Sins of the Saviors is Chapter 5 of Rise of the Runelords. From the forums, it's probably the least-liked chapter in the adventure path because there's a lot of dungeon-crawling and not that many opportunities for role-playing. In addition, some GMs and players perceive that they've gone through a lot of effort for relatively little gain. The good news is that the chapter can easily be shortened or swapped out for something else (as long as the party's experience points and wealth doesn't suffer too much). I've been GMing the Anniversary Edition with my players, and didn't find the chapter the repetitive slog that others had. But, I can see where the complaints are coming from.
I'll start with the non-spoilery back matter first.
"Magic of Thassilon: Lost Arcana of the Runelords" is an eight-page overview of the schools of Thassilonian sin magic. Each entry contains a brief description (full of important setting lore) on the relevant Runelord, and then introduces a new custom spell and a magic rune (capable of being tattooed on people with an included feat). The new spells and runes are pretty good for the most part, though one (blood money) has proven extremely problematic over the past decade. As a spell learned as a special reward through the defeat of a Runelord, it might be okay--but included in online databases as just another option for players in any campaign to pick, it leads to some major unbalanced gameplay. As an aside, there's a great drawing of Runelord Alaznist on page 59. The section also contains an entry on a certain type of weapon, but that heads into adventure spoiler territory so I won't comment further.
"Lamashtu, The Mother of Monsters" receives a ten-page entry. The entry is very detailed and very interesting, going through the evil goddess's backstory, church, temples, clergy (including some great NPCs), relationships with other religions, two new clerical spells, a new druid variant class (a 3.5 concept similar to an archetype), and more. Lamashtu is a really *dark* deity when you think about it, and this entry was early in the days of Paizo before they became more PG-13 in orientation. The excellent artwork continues in this entry. It probably would have been good to have the entry appear earlier in the adventure path when encounters with Lamashtans were a major theme of Chapter 1, for example, but it's still really good and should be read today for anyone interested in Lamashtu (despite some of it being incorporated in later books).
"Belly of the Beast" is the next instalment in the story of intrepid Pathfinder Eando Kline. It's a fantastic entry, as Eando tracks down an old adventuring companion to help break into the headquarters of the Red Mantis assassins guild in Korvosa! There's great flavour on the city (I need to re-read it before running Curse of the Crimson Throne someday) and it's a very exciting tale.
Last up is the bestiary, which contains six new monsters. Ercinees are basically giant magical birds--they're a bit like rocs or thunderbirds, and I don't see a lot of use for them. Marsh giants don't have impressive stats, but the description of their religion is really interesting (and I'll always remember one cutting down poor Briza!). Witchfires are a sort of flaming, incorporeal undead. The sidebar on "The First Witchfire" is a nice little tale. Shemhazian demons are pretty much the archetypal demon, but, at CR 14, they pack a punch. The Night Monarch is the herald of Desna, and it would be a nice treat to use in a campaign featuring a high level cleric of the deity. Yethazmari, on the other hand, is the herald of Lamashtu and the sire of yeth hounds! There's a little sidebar on how to treat heralds in general. Apart from Ercinees and maybe Shemhazian demons, the bestiary has some worthwhile content.
Overall, it's a great issue for back matter. There's real quality and depth in the entries.
Now, on to the adventure!
SPOILERS!:
The foreword by Wes Schneider says that the concept with Sins of the Saviors was a dungeon themed around the seven sins of Thassilon. Schneider reports being impressed by adventure author Steve Greer's incorporation of dynamic politics within the dungeon.
The dungeon that forms the core of Chapter Five is called Runeforge, and a background section explains how it was formed in a timeless demiplane during the age of Thassilon to serve as a shared, neutral laboratory for the Runelords. Each wing of Runeforge was devoted to one of the sin magics. Over the subsequent ten millenia, the denizens of each wing had to figure out how to move forward with no word from their respective masters, and many succumbed to war between the factions or madness. As we'll see, the core of the adventure in this chapter is the PCs discovering the location of Runeforge, figuring out how to get inside, and surviving long enough to have special runeforged weapons constructed in order to eventually do battle against Karzoug.
Part One assumes the PCs are back in Sandpoint (or are summoned there through magical communication) when a sinkhole suddenly forms in the middle of town. After strange sounds are heard within and town guards exploring the hole never return, the PCs are asked to investigate. The sinkhole was actually caused by the surge of magical power released when Mokmurian was destroyed (at the end of Chapter Four), because the catacombs under Sandpoint contain one of the magical devices through which Karzoug is collecting power from those marked with his sign. But what Karzoug doesn't know is that Lamashtu has seen the timing auspicious to resurrect one of her most loyal agents from ancient Thassilon: a man named Xaliasa, who served as a sort of triple agent (ostensibly loyal to Alaznist, secretly reporting to Karzoug, but even more secretly serving Lamashtu!). Xaliasa was obsessed with finding a way to escape the Runelords should his deception ever be discovered, so he figured out the location of Runeforge and planned to bolt there as a safehouse if needed--only, he died in the same cataclysm that destroyed the rest of Thassilon. Now, however, resurrected and fairly insane, Xaliasa (soon to be known as the Scribbler) has begun scribbling mad rhymes and cryptic messages all over the walls of the underground shrine to Lamashtu in which he died. There's a lot of backstory there, much of it convoluted, and the PCs probably won't figure most of it out.
What they will need to do is enter the ancient shrine, survive various traps and denizens, corner the Scribbler, and decrypt the hidden messages on the walls to figure out the location of Runeforge (and the reason they'll want to go there--to create weapons capable of defeating Karzoug). The shrine encounters are fairly complex for the GM to run, as there's various traps and alarms and the Scribbler is a hit-and-run adversary who hounds the PCs throughout. He's actually not very tough if the PCs can keep him from escaping, but he can be a fun character to role-play (the voice actor in the audio version did a great job, and might serve as inspiration). The most memorable aspect of the shrine for my group was a trap carrying a magical suggestion that made PCs paranoid of each other. PCs always pack so much firepower that they're each other's most dangerous enemies! As for the hidden rhymes on the walls, it's kind of nice to see an adventure making the most out of Linguistics and even Perform (Poetry).
Part Two is about the PCs figuring out how to get into Runeforge. They'll know (hopefully) from Part One that the entrance is located far, far to the north. The adventure leaves it up to the GM to deal with anything during the journey there (my group just teleported). The scene on the cover of the issue depicts what (probably) happens next: the PCs find a group of seven stone heads in a circle, and as they're fussing with each one to get a key, a white dragon named Arkrhyst silently glides in and attacks! (I like in the cover artwork how Merisiel seems to be slinking away with a "I think I left the oven on"). For complicated reasons, my group ended up vanquishing Arkrhyst in his lair, which made the encounter much more manageable.
Part Three details the central hub of Runeforge (off of which all of the other wings branch). There are two key bits here. First, the central runeforge pool is used to create the special weapons once the group has obtained the necessary ingredients from some of the other wings. Second, being in Runeforge amplifies the PCs' innate tendencies towards particular types of sin. GMs are supposed to be tracking this since Chapter 1, and PCs who are aligned to particular types of sin receive mechanical bonuses and penalties depending on what wing they're in. I *really* like the concept of personalizing consequences for PCs depending on their past actions, but I don't think it really came off successfully in play--the bonuses and penalties were just too subtle. I tried a variant approach (combining the mechanical with changes in personality) and that worked a little better.
Anyway, essentially the rest of the chapter takes place in Runeforge. The PCs can enter each wing in any order, and don't have to go into each and every one. Indeed, once they figure out the ingredients they need to make a weapon against Karzoug, there's only a few necessary wings. In retrospect, I wish I would have made more of the rivalries between different factions in the different wings and tried to draw the PCs more into the complicated political and adversarial relationships. Some hints in the adventure on how to do this would have been appreciated. One interesting difference between the original version of this chapter and how it appears in the Anniversary Edition is that, in the former, each PC has to make a saving throw in order to traverse a hallway to reach another wing--which means, in practice, groups are likely to get split up and face the first encounter in each wing without being at full strength!
Parts Four through Ten detail each of the wings of Runeforge. I won't spend a lot of time summarizing them here, and will instead just note a few particular things. First, there's a nasty magical disjunction trap in the Abjurant Halls that will require a lot of preparation by the GM (since PCs carry around so much magical gear, and each item receives an individual saving throw, it could take ages to calculate the bonus for each and go through it all at the table). The percentage chance of each particular item being permanently destroyed is small, but chances are at least some stuff will be gone. I know some players hate this, but I always figure one of the challenges of the game is dealing with the theft/sundering/disjunction of precious items. Second, the story of Vraxeris in the Shimmering Veils of Pride is fantastic. High-quality writing like this is what sets Paizo APs apart from the adventures of most other companies. This area also has mirrors of opposition which can force a PC to fight themselves--talk about rocket tag! Third, the Festering Maze of Sloth is expanded substantially in the Anniversary Edition. Fourth, the Iron Cages of Lust is one of those things that requires a GM to really know their players or do some "content warning" in advance. I thought it was really good, but it could easily have gotten to an uncomfortable level at the table. There's a ton of backstory on Thassilon and the Runelords written into these sections of the adventure so they make interesting reading even if the GM decides to use a substitute adventure.
Part Eleven is where the PCs assemble in the central hub and make their runeforged weapons. In a great surprise, Karzoug knows what is happening and animates a massive statute of himself to intervene! It was a really exciting encounter, and the only thing that topped it in the chapter was the PCs' desperate bid to escape Runeforge (which required them to dash through the Halls of Wrath chased by some terribly dangerous foes). The chapter concludes with presumed escape from Runeforge, setting up the final journey next chapter.
As I said at the beginning, Chapter Five has a lot of dungeon-hacking and few opportunities (especially after the beginning) for role-playing. This will suit some groups well and annoy others, so the GM should free to alter things. In one respect, coming to Runeforge is a *lot* of work just to get some special magic weapons that (although certainly useful) are not strictly necessary for success in Chapter Six. One might consider Chapter Five filler in order to get PCs the experience points and miscellaneous treasure they need to get ready for Chapter Six. But if it is filler, it's well-written filler!
I like the way sins are tied to schools of magic in Varisia and the whole Thassilon empire story. Paizo have done a brillant job with that. But I also tend to not like "old school" dungeons (cf. my AP4 review), so I was not expecting something good with this "megadungeon" issue.
But if AP4 have disappointed me, AP5 have surprised me. It's an old school megadungeon, indeed, but I see a lot more opportunities for roleplaying in this AP, with few NPCs but strong ones.
Jorgenfist in AP4 was a zoo mess and I didn't like it, but in comparison most wings feels too empty in AP5. It totally makes sense that only faction's leaders remain after more that 10000 years, but a few additionnal minor NPCs could have increased the number of ways to solve the scenario. As written, there are only a few ways. For this reason AP5 is still interesting but is far from the outstanding political dungeon announced in the book introduction.
DMs have to be careful with the wing of anger : PCs seem to be expected to finish their exploration with this wing (no possible alliance there, the hardest fights and the escape). Depending on your group, it could be a problem ("No, don't go there, not now, level up and meet the other NPCs first !" :-)).
The side article are great additions, as usual :
- The Magic of Thassilon article only add 1 feat, 7 spells, 7 marks (create with the new feat) but they can add flavour to characters
- The Lamashtu article is really great
We turn downward, dungeon crawling and self examination....
The threats have been getting taller; goblins, cultists, ogres, then giants. Now the real enemy is the character's own weaknesses and the sins that rule them! Great adventure: read my full review: Sins of the Saviors
Eu posso compreender o motivo da existência dessa aventura, a Paizo queria testar o gosto do publico. Não é meu estilo de jogo, mas mestres que gostem de dungeons mortais sádicas vão adorar. Agora, como fonte de ideias para magos especialistas e as defesas de seus lares é interessante. Outro ponto diferencial é que uma masmorra onde quase todos os oponentes são magos de uma forma ou outra, isso é bem raro.
The fifth instalment of Rise of the Runelords is a straight up dungeon crawl. The adventure quickly sends the PCs into a massive complex, divided into 7 wings, each themed after a deadly sin of ancient Thassilon.
Well, make that 5 wings - the adventure is a clear victim of limited space available in a 96-page book, and 2 wings are pretty much "castrated". On a plus side, it allows the DM to plug in any dungeons of his own creations or from other sources.
The remaining part of the adventure is old-school deadly, bringing back memories of killer dungeon crawls from D&D history. The quality of encounters and locales ranges from excellent to "meh". There are several nice bits of backstory scattered here and there, but the overall link with the main plot of the campaign is rather hazy.
The adventure does a good enough job of introducing the players to Thassilonian magic, culture and history firsthand, and sets the tone for campaign finale. Yet, the adventure didn't lodge itself in memory of me and my group as much as the first three RotRL modules did.
Of course, the backup material is of prime quality. The article on Lamashtu, the evil demon queen, was wickedly - and at times revoltingly - fun to read.
I hope it's not asking too much, but I wonder if it's possible to get an image of this latest iconic against a white background, similar to what was done with the previous iconics. It's not that I'm not absolutley drooling over the current image--I most assuredly am--but rather that I cut & paste the images into a neutral background "group image" to use as images of the characters in my game....
He looks like he'd make a great Ben Kenobi/mentor character. He's got a certain air of nobilty to him. And even though he may be older, you wouldn't want to mess with him. I like him already.
I hope it's not asking too much, but I wonder if it's possible to get an image of this latest iconic against a white background, similar to what was done with the previous iconics. It's not that I'm not absolutley drooling over the current image--I most assuredly am--but rather that I cut & paste the images into a neutral background "group image" to use as images of the characters in my game....
If this is possible, a most hearty "thank you!"
This is certainly possible. It'll probably happen later next week. I still haven't written up his backstory and all that, but it's on the schedule for quite soon.
Correct. And we wanted to come up with our own looks for dragons, in any event; they're a pretty iconic monster, and it's cool, I think, to be able to look at a dragon and say, "OH! That's a Golarion Blue!"
We're expecting it to reach our warehouse around January 9.
Yay - I can't wait. I am enjoying the AP a lot. About that time I receive this installment my group will be starting Hook Mountain. Every installment has been great.
So we can expect to have our PDF's by the end of that week?
Probably somewhere between that week and the week following it. You're giving them 2-3 days to get them in stock, inspect and start the export procedure.
I hope it's not asking too much, but I wonder if it's possible to get an image of this latest iconic against a white background, similar to what was done with the previous iconics. It's not that I'm not absolutley drooling over the current image--I most assuredly am--but rather that I cut & paste the images into a neutral background "group image" to use as images of the characters in my game....
If this is possible, a most hearty "thank you!"
This is certainly possible. It'll probably happen later next week. I still haven't written up his backstory and all that, but it's on the schedule for quite soon.
James, I think you already have..or someone there has. Isn't Ezren, our RotR #5 cover boy, the subject of the October 26th blog entry?
I hope by the end of 2008 there's enough fabulous art for Paizo to put out a Pathfinder Calendar. I'm sure there's even enough 'B' art to put in a few surprises.
I hope it's not asking too much, but I wonder if it's possible to get an image of this latest iconic against a white background, similar to what was done with the previous iconics. It's not that I'm not absolutley drooling over the current image--I most assuredly am--but rather that I cut & paste the images into a neutral background "group image" to use as images of the characters in my game....
If this is possible, a most hearty "thank you!"
This is certainly possible. It'll probably happen later next week. I still haven't written up his backstory and all that, but it's on the schedule for quite soon.
James, I think you already have..or someone there has. Isn't Ezren, our RotR #5 cover boy, the subject of the October 26th blog entry?
Somewhere in these threads one of the Paizonians said they had received them on the 9th (yesterday).
Edit: Actually, correction. Expecting it on the 9th. Whether it arrived yesterday or not remains to be seen (or read).
My order status has changed from "pre-order" to "pending" so I presume they have it in stock and are preparing to ship it.
This discussion is attached to
http://paizo.com/store/paizo/v5748btpy7xpv
but there's another listing for this product at
http://paizo.com/store/paizo/v5748btpy815p
with no discussion attached and no way that I can see to start one.
Why the two listings?
-LB
http://paizo.com/store/paizo/v5748btpy7xpv
but there's another listing for this product at
http://paizo.com/store/paizo/v5748btpy815p
with no discussion attached and no way that I can see to start one.
Why the two listings?
-LB
The first listing is for the print edition. The second listing is for what we call a "parent product," which has two children: the print edition and the PDF. Right now, the PDF is still only available to subscribers, which is why you can't see the difference between the two. Once the product's street date arrives, the PDF will become available from the parent product listing.
OK. Three questions:
Why is there no way to start a discussion of the parent product?
Why is there no link from the parent product to the print edition? The only way I've found to navigate from one listing to the other is to add the product to my cart and click the link there.
When is the "street date"? I stopped at my FLGS Thursday 1/31 and they said they were still waiting for #5.
Why is there no way to start a discussion of the parent product?
Looks like we had a little data problem. It's fixed now—and while I was at it, I moved this discussion to the parent.
LurkerBeneath wrote:
Why is there no link from the parent product to the print edition?
You shouldn't ever really need to know about children. I assume the only reason that you're interested is that you want to be able to find this thread... and the discussion should be on the parent, which it is now.
LurkerBeneath wrote:
When is the "street date"? I stopped at my FLGS Thursday 1/31 and they said they were still waiting for #5.
The street date was this past Wednesday. We shipped to distribution almost two weeks ago, so they should check the status of their order with their distributor.
Will they ever print this again or will it only be a pdf?
We don't have any plans at this time to reprint Pathfinders #1, #3, or #5. We do have stock of the other three, but it is going fast. I expect #6 to sell out shortly.
The listing above is for the PDF—the only version we have.
Ah, I didn't notice that on this page. I was looking at the availability of all the RotR chapters on this page and it was displayed differently than Chapt 3, which lists both the print and pdf versions, though the print version is out of print. I couldn't imagine why the pdfs would come off the market, but I was thinking about doing a pbp campaign and I wanted to make sure I'd still be able to get all the pdfs later.
Creative Director
