Mystic Marauder's page

I'll also be ending the path early to coincide with the release of 4E. Plus, I agree that the 'sweet spot' of D&D is around levels 3 to 12 or so.

I plan to have the shadowpearls stockpiled at the HQ of the crimson fleet. In addition, Lavinia will be held captive there by vanthus the death knight who has taken over the fleet. The heroes will confront Vanthus there for the finale of the campaign.

Hell sounds interesting, but spending up to a year to go through the several remainig adventures inthe path just for the payoff of fighting demogorgon doesn't seem worth it to me. Plus, once 4E is released, everybody's going to want to play that badly, and a conversion of the campaign would be next to impossible.

I was also a little dissapointed. The sewer maps are too generic with little variation. I would recommend purchasing these only if a DM were specifically planning to run an adventure in a sewer. Unlike all of the other map packs, I personally haven't found a use for these.

I'm excited about Pathfinder, but I am a bit concerned about all of the new monsters. Like many gamers I depend on my D&D miniatures a great deal, and I prefer adventures were I can use these minis. With Savage Tide, I've been able to substitute monsters in the adventure with monsters for which I have the miniatures. However, I hope there isn't too agreat an emphasis on new monsters. Is Paizo able to use D&D monsters in the Monster Manual 2-5 in Pathfinder, or is this prohibited?

Ans an aside, I had a queston of what would happen to a vine horror if Urol cast Entange on it?

My PC druid cast Entangle on the vine horrors that were attacking the Wyvren but standing on the sargasso. I didn't see any reason why the vine horrors wouldn't be entangled like any other beings.

That said, the spell wouldn't cause the vine horrors to entangle themselves, if they were standing on a vine-free surface, because they'er not normal plants.

The plain water side looks great, particularly if you have the 'Ravaged Pride.' The Pride looks a lot better when its sitting on what looks like ocean (instead of just on a plain battle map).

This side saw a lot of use in 'The Sea Wyvern's Wake.'

PC: Fellipe Rose, 5th level human monk
Adventure: Sea Wyvern's Wake
Location: Tamoachan
Catalyst: Varrangoin

The varrangoin attacked without warning, bringing the monk to negative hit points. He was healed back to 1 hit point by a lesser vigor spell by the party druid. The party defeated the Varrangoin with ease (much more easily than the basilisk who turned most of them to stone), but when it exploded in its death throes, the monk failed his refled save and took 11 points of damage killing him instantly.

PC: Machlor, 5th level human wizard
Adventure: Sea Wyvern's Wake
Location: Hold of the Sea Wyvern
Catalyst: Rowyn Kellani

Rowyn had attempted to poison a PC after springing the pickled mephits on them. The PCs used a zone of truth on every crew member and passenger to determine that none of them were the cause. They then decided to do an exhaustive search of the ship for stowaways.

Rowyn knew she was in trouble. She used disquise self to appear like Lavinia (who was onboard at the time at the PC's request) and came up from beind the searching PC's. Asking to speak with one, she used a diguise spell to cast 'suggestion' on Machlor, suggesting that another PC (a dwarf druid) was in fact the poisoner and he should be killed immediately. He lost his save and attacked the druid. The party's warmage then blasted her fellow arcanist to ash to save the druid.

Chock up another kill for Ripclaw. He was in melee with the party's goliath fighter. The party druid cast a spell that granted the the fighter the 'diehard' feat (I don't rememeber the name of the spell) rather than heal him, and this caused his undoing. Ripclaw disemboweled him the next round, since the fighter didn't go down when he went into negatives he instantly died when critted with a talon.

The Acheirai are a good choice from DDM, but getting the number of them needed is an expensive proposition.

I simply changed 'em all to Large Deionychus (for some reason there aren't any planned encouters with these that I'm aware of, and I think they fit the IoD theme even better), and used a few of my kid's dinosaur toys for minis.

Adventure: There is No Honor
Casualties: 1 scout, 1 conjurer, 1 riding dog animal companion

The crab encounter soaked up most of the party's spells, and they were unable to rest once trapped in the tunnels by Vanthus and discovered by the zombies. The cleric turned a few zombies, and the party pursued them deeper into the tunnels. However, they encountered more zombies and ended up engaging the majority of the zombies at the same time. The scout and riding dog went down quickly, and the rest of the party fled deeper into the complex. The meal provided by the fallen party members slowed pursuit considerably. The cleric (also a 1/2 aquatic elf) was able to swim out and open up the entrance. While he was doing so, however, the conjurer couldn't resist opening 'one more door.' The final remaining zombie was waiting, and chased the wizard around the complex (waiting for the cleric to open up the entrance) before finally catching and eating him. A near-TPK.

Of note, I lost as many PCs in this single session of 'Savage Tide' as I did during the preceding 27 session home brew campaign. Those zombies were tough!!

Paul