Riggler's page

This AP volume is hurt by following the previous AP with the same concept: Trapped on another plane. It doesn't follow through on the premise: Go through BBEG's home to find a way to better defeat him in the final AP. It really is one fight after another. There are factions, but the published module neglects to mention how they interact. Many combats are duplicated. The trap at the beginning makes little sense as written. And the Azer that is "helping" the PCs with riddles doesn't make much logical sense. Why give hard to understand riddles instead of just telling the PCs what to do, when the goal is to escape from his prison? And with all the high level combat it takes forever if ran as written to escape this logic void. By far the worst in the AP so far.

And that's a good thing. This AP, especially with its support article to flesh out the Katapesh markets, runs really fantastically. It does take a GM that knows what he/she is doing, though. A GM who isn't comfortable with urban adventures might make this AP a bit dry, but I felt it was a great opportunity to really develop some NPCs. The lack of shopping the PCs encounter during the first two issues really pays off as during their shopping a GM can insert the needed flavor and the NPC hooks that are the meat of this adventure at the same time.

Well done. But a GM really needs to know his NPCs in this chapter before running it.

Any good dungeon crawl I think should leave the PCs with a sense of accomplishment and a thank goodness it is over. This AP would serve as a great dungeon crawl even if not running the whole Adventure Path. The numerous ways inside the heart of this dungeon provide numerous avenues and even leaves the GM with anticipation as to the path the PCs will take. It is well done, with multiple factions. No major complaints from my players after finishing this one, and only one minor one. Groups without the right language abilities may be stumped. But a GM can keep it moving.

I'm a bit shocked that Paizo would release a product full of imbalanced options. Was there anyone in the office who said these options are not balanced with the rest of the game? Were they ignored? This book makes greatly doubt Paizo was the company I thought they were. It is banned for use at my game table. I don't have the time nor inclination to re-edit a book I paid 40.00 for to make spell levels correct based on their descriptions or figure out what they should be; or to redesign new classes so that they don't overpower others. Very disappointed. I bought this book blindly based on Paizo's reputation. I will be reviewing future crunch books before deciding to purchase from now on. Very disappointed.

This adventure seems to be written for optomized PCs. It is very harsh on low-level PCs. And I don't know if the reason that such harsh enounters got into the module was because of Eric Mona's stature in the compnay, but someone needed say "no" to their boss before publishing this.

The NPCs are great; the story is great. The set-up to the whole AP is great. I chose this AP to run for the flavor it promised. I had high expectations of the AP and so far those have been met. Some of the enounters are a bit nasty for non-optomized PCs. And since an AP is a lot about the encounters I have to give this only 3 stars.