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vikingson wrote:
Although, yes the AP-I is very deadly, I would not try to skip it, especially since.... well, its probably the most fun of the parts.

Yeah, that's why I would like to run it even though the PCs are at higher level. It is one of the best roleplaying scenarios I've read in a long time, and it will really give the players a feel for the life of a pirate. Plus, its a nice change where your goal is to survive and make allies, rather than just kill stuff.

I think will run the first 20 days, the fight for the the Man's Promise, and then hopefully they will mutiny right away and I can just skip the island and move on to the next one.

The Elusive Trout wrote:
You should know a fifth level cleric could remedy ability damage and disease; this will make many of the environmental hazards less potent.

Good point, though then I won't need to tone down the rum ration effect. Also, our party cleric is a little unique where this might not be a huge problem. He is cursed with a incurable disease so he currently has to cast lesser restoration on himself everyday just to stay alive.

Fitzwalrus wrote:
The problem with running the entire AP from a 5th level start is that you will have to essentially rewrite and/or increase the encounters and CR levels throughout all six books in order to balance your PCs' abilities with the challenges in the modules. That's a lot of extra work for you as GM, but if you're up for it - go for it.

True, true, I do have a life. I'm probably not up for converting the whole AP. This is likely just a side trek for the first two modules. I was actually thinking of trying to then jump into From Shore to Sea, which I haven't read yet, but looks excellent and has some great aquatic and Lovecraftian elements.


I'm thinking of trying to convert the Wormwood Mutiny for a 5th level party. (My players do not want to start over with 1st level PCs). It will probably be a decent amount of working leveling up the NPCs. Has anyone attempted this or have any suggestions? Also, are there any spells or higher level abilities that could present a problem for the storyline during the first twenty days or so?


No, my player asked me for alternatives to taking a mount. Of course, I would let him have it if he wants it. Taking something else is his idea. I will check out Defenders of the Faith. Thanks for the suggestions Kyr.


One of my players wants to play a Paladin through the Shackled City AP. I told him that it is primarily dungeon and city based so a "mount" may not be much use to him. I also promised that I would look for an alternative to a mount. Does anyone know of any variants to a paladin taking a mount? Thank you in advance for any advice.


Mr. Peepers, in the Hardcover Lord V's statblock indicates he is already equiped with a Ring of Mind Shielding.

Par-a-dox, sounds like you have a bigger problem with that prestige class. Then again, by the time you are that far along, its probably ok for the PCs to be "on" to Lord V's evil nature. In fact, you can probably have fun with it- they know he is the bad guy, but if no one else in town believes them yet and they have no proof, they will be helpless to do anything about it.


There's one on Koramado's website:

http://therpgenius.com/Default.aspx?alias=therpgenius.com/shackledcity

Check it out. There is a ton of great stuff there.


Archade wrote:

Agreed, and they need a good reason to start pushing over Demon Princes, right?

The only tenuous link is the resurrected Vhalantru. Anyone got any better ideas?

Ditto. You hit the main problem on the head and summed up my biggest problem nicely. This thread is turning out to be constructive. Thanks to everyone who helped explain the demodands status as prisoners to me. I was on hiatus from gaming during the planescape days so they are new to me.

Anyway, I'm sure we can find some better ideas for the PC's motivation to go fight Adimarchus. I'll give it a try: Maybe the cagewrights were partially successful in creating the portal to the point where the nexus somehow weakened Adimarchus's prison- and if he escapes his insanity will inflict the entire prime material plane. Maybe play up more citizens of Cauldron going mad and the PCs determine that Adimarchus is ths source.


Henrix wrote:

Who says the deomdandds are guards? They're not, and certainly not appointed by anyone else. They're prisoners themselves, even though they like to lord over the other prisoners!

Whoever imprisoned Adimarchus on Carceri, well, it wasn't the demodands. Nor is it they who decide if he stays or not. If they (or rather their "god" Apomp) think it will serve their cause to try to help Adimarchus out they will.

Read the Fiend Folio: "The demodands are the self-appointed keepers of the Carcerian population. They are the jailers and the wardens, although they are mostly prisoners of the plane as surely as the petitioners they try to watch."

I just don't see a connection between the demodands and Adimarchus- I don't see any reference to Adimarchus being worshipped by the "toadies" as someone put. See Asylum- the PCs encounter demodands who are paying tribute to Adimarchu's warden, Dark Myrakul. They aren't going to try to help free Adimarchus- they're giving a sacrifice to his jailer - so they have real no connection to him or motivation to free him.

It seems the ultimate goal of the cagewrights is to free Adimarchus- see the Strike on Shatterhorn- Embril is still desperate to free Adimarchus, not to try to help the demodands create a portal. Asylum also says "Adimarchus is the true driving force behind the Cagewrights." (which sort of cuts against the long explnation in the Intro which makes it sounds like Fetor Abradius is the only cagewright dedicated to freeing Adimarchus and the rest are only trying to help the demodands create a portal).

So you have to admit it is a little twisted plot wise, and I just thought it would make more sense for the demodands to bargain the freedom of Adimarchus (even though they may be lying in a sense because Dark Myrakul is the real warden) to the Cagewrights, for the exchange of the Cagewrights in helping build the portal. At least it is one possible explanation for the connections between the demodands, Adimarchus, and the Cagewrights.


I also found this to be a little paradoxical and confusing: that the cagewrights are helping the guards of the prison plane (the demodands) open a portal & some of them also want to free one of the prisoners (Adimarchus). I think as someone else pointed out above, isn't it the duty of the demodands not to let their prisoners out?

In my campaign, I decided that the ultimate stated goal of the cagewrights is releasing Adimarchus. However, they determined they could not do this without the consent of the demodands. So the demodands made a pact with the cagewrights- you open a portal to the prime material plane so we can harvest prisoners/slaves, and we will release one of our prisoners- Adimarchus.

Maybe this is stated somewhere, but I'm going to try to make it a little more clear, maybe even having one of the NPC villians reveal this in a gloating speech to the PCs.


Here's my take: The PCs shut down the tunnel, so the Cagewrights and Vhalantru can't bring the merks in town secretly. I think Vhalantru doesn't want to bring them public yet, and wants to wait until his control on the city is more secure before using the merks publicly (possibly until after the mayor is killed). But the PCs throw a wrench in this plan- without the secret smuggling tunnel, now the only way to bring in the merks is publicly- by going before the mayor and city council and requesting permission for the city to officially hire them. The players should find this curious that after this adventure all of a sudden Lord V. wants to hire the merks, and it should be a clue that perhaps Lord V. has some sinster plans for the Cauldron.


Great ideas. I agree with a lot of these suggestions.

One more idea: I originally was also going to make the Church of Wee Jas = Blood of Vol. However, I just read Keith Baker's notes on the Age of Worms conversion in the online supplement to #124. He mentioned something called the cult of Restful Watch, that venerates both Aureon and the Keeper. I am going to use this in place of the Church of Wee Jas; except it is a front only.

Unknown to most townspeople and even most worshippers, the Church really venerates the Blood of Vol. Ike Iverson and the other cleric (Embril?) worship the Blood of Vol and the Church supports the Emerald Claw. This will help later in the series when the PCs enter that Church and if I recall correctly, it is chock full of undead.


dizzyk wrote:
I'm going the lot-of-work route in my campaign. I decided that I didn't want to, in my world, just squish Occipitus and Carceri, etc. into the existing Eberron cosmology. I have changed the entire Cagewright plot into a Dreaming Dark plot; the goal is not to tear open a portal to Carceri, but to Dal Quor. This, obviously, is going to involve a LOT of adaptation in later adventures (as I have to change out Demodands for Quori, rethink some of the Cagewrights themselves, etc.), but doesn't have too much impact on the early part of the Adventure Path.

Wow. I'm impressed. Sounds very cool, but a little too ambitious a project for me. I'll be taking the change the names approach, and change a few NPCs, monsters, and locales to Eberron.

dizzyk wrote:
I've decided to set the adventure in Sharn, just 'cuz my players and I LOVE the setting and the companion book,...

I thought of this, but again too much work for my schedule. I'm going with the Greywall mountains location so a side trip or two to Sharn is possible. I may also set the kuo-toan/underdark dungeon somewhere in Xen'drik.


I am planning on running Shackled City in Eberron. I will be working on a detailed conversion within the next few weeks, assuming nothing "official" comes out from Paizo in the meantime. I don't think it will be too much work (and it should be fun). Other than the names of deities, there isn't too much campaign specific info to the adventures.

Right now I believe I want to set Cauldron in the mountains (Greywall mtns?) on the border of Breland and Droaam. Some people have suggested Q'Barra or Xen'drik. I think these are good options, but I am more familiar with Breland and I think it would be fun to have a few side trips to Sharn.

Other than that, Church of St. Cuthbert = Silver Flame; Pelor & Kord = Dol Arrah or Dorn (I forget which is which off the top of my head), Wee Jas = Blood of Vol. Some of the local businesses in town will be owned by specific Dragonmarked Houses. The half-troll slaver in Life's Bazaar will be selling the kidnapped victims to the monsters of Droaam. I plan to make the half-orc merks hired by Vhalantru, all warforged, which should be interesting. Maybe Vhalantru even has a deal with the Lord of Blades who is supplying the mercenaries?

I will post more specific info later as I work on the conversion. This is just off the top of my head with no books in front of me. I am interested to hear other people's ideas as well.


Sure. I am happy to provide you with a few tidbits to help tide you over until you get your copy. However, I'm probably not the person to tell you the major differences with the original adventures published in the magazine. I never played through this adventure path before and only read parts of one adventure when it appeared in Dungeon.

That being said, I read through the entire intro section and Cauldron background last night. Things I really like so far:

* Background story on Adimarchus and the Cagewrights;
* Timeline of Cauldron's history;
* List of all major NPCs and villians;
* Rumor section- includes general rumors throughout the campaign. You roll random and add a modifer depending what adventure you're currently on. Rumors necessary for a certain adventure are listed under each adventure and made with gather info checks.
* I read one appendix on character creation. They recommended having the PCs be from the Cauldron Region and gave "Traits" to flesh them out and to add flavor (in one the PC is actually Shackleborn but doesn't know it!). I really liked the ideas here.
* It appears like each adventure gives a new summary of what the Cagewrights/other players are doing at the time to give an understanding of where the adventure fits in the larger campaign. I have only read the part here from Life's Bazaar, but this appears new. I also like the little blurbs at the start of each adventure that tell what level the PCs should be, and how much downtime they should have in between.
* New adventure appears to be a dungeon crawl against some goblins. I haven't read it yet, more on this later.
* About 4-5 pages of Cauldron locations. I liked the ideas for buying/selling magic items under Skie's Treasury. Otherwise, I thought the town might need a little more fleshing out, though some of the locations are probably detailed more under other chapters. This didn't bother me, as I intend to convert this to Eberron anyway (which shouldn't be too much work).

* My only other wish so far is I hope they will have a web enhancement here with some of the artwork and maps, especially the NPC portraits. All of the art is intermingled in the text and it would be nice to have it readily available for printing to show the players. Otherwise, I have to either hold up the book and show the players while trying to shield confidential info or suck it up and go to Kinko's and do a ton of photocopying. So if any Paizo dudes are reading this- pretty please on the hardcover web enhancement???

Overall the art and layout are really cool. I like the slick pages. So far I am very happy with this purchase. I will update you later when I have time to read more.


Congrats guys, everything about this book looks great- art, layout, maps, etc. etc. I just picked it up at my friendly local gamestore. I only had about 10 min. to flip through it before I had to go back to work, but I am impressed so far.

My only regret is that I can't dive into it until I get through the rest of the work day and put my daughter to bed. So looks like I will be up very late reading tonight!


Thank you! Very helpful info. I like your take on its ties with the Sea Princes. I may borrow this.


Sorry, I do not have the new Greyhawk maps that appeared in Dungeon recently. I only have the maps from the original box set back in the 80s. I heard somewhere that it was by "Sasserine"? But I couldn't find that city on my old maps, so if someone could let me know a landmark or country, that would be much appreciated. thanks


I agree with those who voiced disappointment. Besides the editing problems, there just isn't anything special about this adventure. It doesn't advance the story and it lacks anything new and exciting. If you've been playing 3.0/3.5 for several years, hack-n-slaying some skeletons, some grimlocks, and some evil clerics, is *yawn*, boring. I hope the rest of the adventure path gets back on track where the Whispering Cairn left off- with cool monsters, traps, rooms, and more importantly, interesting roleplaying opportunities and a good story.
I've never been impressed with anything that Mearls has done . . .


Has anyone tried placing it in Judge's Guild, "The Wilderlands" setting? This looks like an interesting campaign world, though I don't have the player's guide (yet).

Also, if anyone can let me know the terrain where Cauldron is located, that would be helpful (sounds like mix of jungle/desert/mountains?- correct?)

I don't know enough about Greyhawk to feel comfortable running a campaign set there. I would prefer to place it in a campaign setting that is new to myself and (more importantly), my players). I have also ruled out Eberron & FR for this reason. If anyone has helpful advice on the Wilderlands or another suggestion, please reply. Thanks.