Threw the players into this recently. It went really well, they were mostly experienced players. A lot of opportunity for close-quarters stairway fighting with limited movement. Trogs are the enemies here, there are a few things assisting them also locked away in this tower. The art is also very fine and possessing a sense of being animated, the maps are clear.
As the players reacted to what was going on, the clearing of this tower actually took quite some time, despite its small size. See, a dm shouldn't just restrict the sentient opponents to one area, they should move and react to the players actions. As a dm I made this harder, so two tries were required to clear it, and although challenging, no party member died, although there were some incapacitations.
Some changes that were made, which made it harder and more exciting:
1) More spiders less dogs.
2) Use full troglodytes, not young trogs.
3) The no 2. trog has a great crossbow and moves around to use it (sniper in the tower). This makes entering or exiting quite exciting, but not overwhelming (as it would be with six archer trogs on the balcony).
4) The crocodile is put to good effect in the stairway, and limits the potential for players to really flank and get around it.
5) Have the loot be quite variable in the armourer, potentially with some nice pieces the trogs haven't used yet (due to a lack of proficiencies).
6) If required, change the hostage to a ranger, so the players can heroically fight their way out if they barricade themselves inside the guard room.
7) Make getting into and around the tower easier.
As a free pdf, as an introductory or low level adventure, I was very impressed with this product. A DM makes a dungeon interesting, this is not dull by default (look at that exciting cover art).
I can't praise this as highly as other reviewers. This is a save-the-village adventure, fairly orthodox where goblins, their champions, and other influences are your enemies. The goblins are given character and do spice up the adventure, but goblins as early opponents is more than a tad formulaic. A corrupted tribe of Shoanti would have made for some more interesting opponents, although the scenes do use the goblins pretty well. For running it, I recommend adding in other low cr monsters. The goblin base is located and off the adventurers go.
Well there are a lot of goblins, and they have champions, not all of which are goblins so low level character can certainly get in over their heads (this path saw a tpk save 1, and then another tpk later). If the goblins coalesce it can signal real trouble, so stealth can really be advised for this one. Wizards, will run out of spells, and resting in a giant goblin warren is not the easiest thing to pull off. So its a dungeon hack and worth playing, but very hard unless a dm rolls back some encounters.
Now for some of the issues. The village is well fleshed-out as they say, but a dm should not forget to go through the various scenes that can draw the players in and make them feel like they are saving worthwhile people. The village is a little odd and cosmopolitan for a far northern village (a glass-works here?).
The sheriff probably should do more, perhaps team up with the pcs, and not necessarily leave them to do everything. This can cause resentment.
The idea of attacking the goblins is actually a bit ridiculous (yes smash yourself against their defences) and a strong defence from the town, using militas and quickly erected pallisade walls, would involve much less threat to the pcs. Spread around the damage, hurt the goblins coming in, and put less stress on the players. A railroad dm who ran this for me and others, refused to allow this option. Yet Sandpoint does have a militia, some good men and hardy women, whom one assumes would protect their homes and help cover the backs of the pcs if Sandpoint was under attack. If you leave the town and go in, you are alone. So an LOTR heroic defence makes a little more sense than what is suggested as the adventure course (if you face a numerically superior foe, shouldn't you defend not attack?).
Having voiced my criticisms, I do plan to run this soon, with some tailoring and more diverse monsters and more human adversaries as well. This adventure path has led to many memories and recounted stories in my gaming group. Most aren't good, but we laugh at them anyway. Play it with a good and relaxed dm, or it can lead to player slaughter.
This one can be very difficult and may be better run as a separate, short game. I say this because the last adventure, the first in the path, was heavy in combat and infiltration. Chopping your way through goblins and their champions, trying to save Sandpoint through might of arms or spells. Then they want you to play investigator.
The party I was in, after two tpks in the first book, were optimised to fight. Now there is fighting, but this is a mix of murder investigation, haunted house exploring and combat. If you are poor at investigating, if the party have not gone that way, then you will have to be spoon-fed if the dice don't allow you to pass some very high dcs. My fighter/barb/berserker was quite inept at being Sherlock Holmes, and the others didn't do much better. The party ranger failed his track checks and other contributions he could make. It also doesn't quite fit, that the mercs hired to protect the village from goblins, should suddenly do the Sheriff's job for him in a series of murder investigations (it pushed against verisimilitude, and so did our ineptitude at the task).
Some other points, the skinsaw murderer is ridiculously overpowered. Given what they were, suddenly they have jumped in cr, combat effectiveness, and their stats are just odd and far too high. Secondly you might have a character that comes in, and whom is very suited to investigation (I made an investigative fighter for a new player) and then they just die off in the very difficult combat. This adventure path is the beginning of Paizo's demands for very optimised parties. Bards and investigative rogues or fighters will pass the investigation, and then really may die at the hands of the adversaries once uncovered.
I liked this first book quite a bit. The ruin exploration was pretty fun, the npcs got my interest. The many types of gremlins are a good addition, and they sure can be troubling to take down in the adventure. Some of the dodgy npcs were a bit obvious though, and an alert and careful npc can determine a few things at a glance. The setting feels good and different.
The point on non-optimised parties has been made and is valid, but this is a problem for many paizo adventure paths, they are made to challenge power gamers. If a dm just runs it straight, and some players are new, team work is a bit off, expect casualties (and gnoll laughter).
So I was thinking of running this adventure path as an extension of my Sargavan game. the first two seemed interesting, but then I got to three and four. Three has been strongly criticised and does have its serious weaknesses, but four takes the failure cake for me. I will explain why.
In this book, the players have secured a bit of space for themselves, battling many of the factions of the hidden city and emerging victorious. A king of the gorillas arrives before you can venture below the city and things start to go pear-shaped if you accept his forceful hospitality. There is awful food which can sicken the party and he imposes challenges which the players must complete before he will allow them to venture forth. Yes, this outsider will come in, block the adventure proceeding, impose tests and if the players win, he will move on and accept their authority (how quaint).
To the tests, a DC 25 strength check, which many players in games I've run or been in, would fail. Even a barb may not be able to pull it off if he isn't a typical massive strength build.
Next an oratory or similar check of DC 35. You are meant to impress the court, that is nice, but 35 isn't impressive, it is magnificent. Also many parties I know couldn't get 35 at around 11th level. Even a bard would fail on a low roll.
The last is combat. One party member against the king. He is a fourteenth level fighter and dire ape. He could be taken, but it would be rather hard.
If you fail two, you lose, the king blocks the tunnels that go deeper. If you win, he threatens the party and implies he will murder them in the jungle. Well that is just swell and honourable isn't it?
So I told a friend and dnd player why I wouldn't be running this adventure path and told him of the above scene. He said, the players should say fine, leave the ridiculous tests and tell the dm well the adventure path is a failure since we now can't proceed. If you refuse the very hard quests then the gorilla king becomes angry, offers them one more time (oh how generous) and may attack with his small army. A mid level party would have very little chance against this small army of ape-variants and nasty combatants.
There are some good monsters, but the necromancer hunt was stale years ago and the gorilla king encounter begins the book. It is worse than the imposed Shoanti quests in The Crimson throne, and they seemed out of place and very demanding then.
The art which opens this text isn’t very good, the intro which sets the scene is. This is why I run a game in and around Sargava, one of the most exciting regions in Golarion, too long neglected in Paizo’s early days. On page 6, claiming the fighter is suited to the dangers of Sargava is not actually true.
Wearing any armour lowers fort saves against heat and fatigue, and Sargava is a very hot climate. The typical fighter can be stuck on too many penalties if he adopts heavy armour and shield, and wear out swiftly without multiple great forts. Smartly it does suggest less armour and not to take great reductions to mobility. As a DM who has run games in Sargava for many months prior to this adventure path, a fighter without diplomacy, a common fate, can also get into more fights than they can handle. The players I ran an adventure game for were a little too combat focused with not enough skills or even moderate charisma to keep them socially afloat. Sargava and the Mwangi expanse are dangerous, but it is not pit fighting day-in, day-out, and a great fort and diplomacy can do wonders for survival. Oh and don’t forget to take survival and nature, that can’t be emphasised enough.
The campaign traits add great flair and a reason for a character to be in-bound for Sargava.
I give the small book a three, almost a four, for doing what it sets out to do well.
And we arrive at core. I personally have more experience with beta through heavy play testing. I’m giving this book a 2 specifically because it brings plenty of good ideas over from beta, e.g. what was done to skills, the tailoring choice of barbarian rage powers, the art, the presentation, the mixing of the players and dm into one book. However, balance has been abandoned. The monk and paladin class get far too much, compare them to the bard and the old stable, balanced fighter. Paladin has taken abilities from the healer class, an entire other class, while retaining its old abilities in the mix. The monk is frankly ridiculous, with ki, with bonus feats, with all the old monk gamut, but an increased progression on ac (yes I noticed). The penalties of flurry are also lessened, monk level and wisdom bonus added to combat manoeuvres so that they can be as proficient as what is the fighter’s specialty.
Few other things, the hit die change is just stupid. Upping the ranger’s hit die to the fighter level is a mistake. The ranger already gets more skills and a better selection. Why should he equal the highly drilled fighter when he already has points on him? Where is the balance? Wizards on a d6 is a laugh, an attempt to escape their old weakness. Rogues on a d8 is too much. The fighter in beta differs to the fighter in core. I far prefer the small steady bonuses in beta over the stolen 3.5 knight abilities in core.
I borrow a little from pathfinder in my 3.5 games, but what was done to the combat manoeuvres was just dreadful. A line to cross and beat isn’t as exciting as an opposed roll, although it does speed up play. CMD also gets dreadfully high far too quickly and easily. Defensive combat training (as in core, not in beta) is completely wroughty. Sure, the wizard adds his level to counter-disarms, why not? Seems plausible yes? Free and limitless cantrips, the wizard is not a warlock. Cantrips from a prohibited school (p. 79) also makes me think the wizard creators forgot what prohibited means.
Really close to a 1 with all the wrought and unbalance.
This book re-presents some of the weirdest monsters to come out of dnd over the years. I eagerly read this book and wanted to use everything inside. In the Sargava game I’ve been running prior to all the new material to aid games set there, I wanted to populate the southern continent with new and unusual monsters. I trawled through manuals grabbing monsters from other systems, other d20 products and fringe material. I actually added in a region well-populated by the flail snails, which the party travelled to, so it is amusing to see them added to golarion. What made me chuckle was the point that they can be found on all levels of the darklands (more encounters ahead delvers) and that they are actually intelligent and Zen Buddhist like in their philosophy. When the party of my game ran into them, spells re-bounded, hit allies, someone got set on fire, causing quite the fuss. It was really very funny. They are a counter to warlocks or invokers. Note: do not use the base reflection rules, use the d100 table provided, it adds a lot more possibilities. Moar flail snails!
The other monsters can be quite the added treat. I’ll throw in the adherer although I already did something similar by taking your average Osirion mummy, give him some fighter levels and the weapon locking feat. The various lurking rays are perfect to turn a bit of spelunking into a horror game, cornbys could be added as fringe tribes in unexplored regions, disenchanters could follow wizards around who have all their body slots filled (although I prefer nishruus), and the wolf-in-sheep’s clothing could get quite a chuckle, but a savvy adventurer will know to stay back from what is cute and fuzzy in nature.
The art is almost all high quality (not unusual for Paizo) and this book is already well-used in my game. There are some boring additions, monsters seen before like the aranea, the athach, the grey render, but also plenty of variant elementals, humanoids, aberrations and swarms of monkeys.
What pleases me the most, apart from using the very difficult and challenging viper vine, are the aberrations. The Cthulhu mythos has been drawn in here heavily, something paizo has been doing for a while now (old ones and old cults). This is only a positive, the Leng spider, the Denizen of Leng the Hound of Tindalos and its unusual means of movement are all good resources for a dm. I’ve used them well thus far and it spices up games. The mongrelman makes an appearance, but unfortunately has no special ability to sicken or horrify on the stats. A dm can change this (see the hideous giants the thawns in kingmaker), or put the effect on the players themselves by describing their appearance at length, and hinting at their ancestry, especially if it starts to get… weird.
The Krenshar alas looks terrible, use other available pics for that if thrown into a game.
This was neither balanced nor objective. It reads like a pro-elf propaganda book. They can do so much, they have such potential, they are lazy and have a philosophy of inaction but can easily become experts in anything and masters of magic and the bow. I find it all a little unbelievable that the isolationists who distrust and look down upon outsiders (and even look down upon the elves that encounter outsiders) could truly be so proficient, widely-skilled, wise and all-knowing. That the gods are desperate for the attentions of the fence-sitters was laughable, even more so that the average elf can bargain and make pacts with the gods if in trouble. Don't they have quite the powerful position, aren't the elves in such a great spot as the gods wait on their every word? The prestige class was an over-powered joke, allowing a pick and choose of some truly powerful abilities, and for elves to get around their weak hp with a nice boost to natural ac.
1 star. With their weaknesses and lack of specialisation (they all farm, they all fence, they all are beautiful dandies) it stands as one of those illogical situations in Golarion that they haven't been invaded and scattered. They are unjustly too proud, and it comes across very clearly in the writing.
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