Chapter 1: "The Bastards of Erebus"
by Sean K Reynolds
The city of Westcrown is dying. Since being stripped of its station as the capital of Cheliax, the wealth and prestige of the city has gradually slipped away, leaving the desperate people to fend for themselves in a city beset by criminals, a corrupt nobility, and a shadowy curse. Can the PCs fight back against champions of both the law and the criminal world?
This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path launches the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, and includes:
"The Bastards of Erebus," a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 1st-level characters, by Sean K Reynolds
A gazetteer of Westcrown, the shadow-haunted City of Twilight, by Steven Schend
An investigation into the lives of tieflings, along with hundreds of fiendish variations, by Amber Scott
A deadly mystery of nobility and intrigue for Pathfinder Varian Jeggare and his tiefling bodyguard Radovan in a new series of the Pathfinder's Jounal, by Dave Gross
Six terrifying new monsters by Mike Ferguson, Sean K Reynolds, and F. Wesley Schneider
A Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for characters of 1st to 3rd level. The Council of Thieves Adventure Path is the first to take full advantage of the new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules, and works with both the Pathfinder RPG and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set.
Pathfinder Adventure Path is Paizo Publishing's monthly 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover book printed on high-quality paper. It contains an in-depth Adventure Path scenario, stats for about a half-dozen new monsters, and several support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes use the Open Game License and work with both the Pathfinder RPG and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set.
I enjoyed this module. It has a lot of what you're looking for in a low-level adventure. A really strong start that kicks the action off with a bang. A feeling like the PCs are an important part of what's happening. A lot of NPCs to interact with. A good setting, and an interesting premise.
A lot of it could have been laid out a little better. Encounters are mostly setpieces where the GM has to fill in the gaps-- but that's a lot of TTRPG prep, to be fair. It might even be a strength for somebody who wants a looser game. And of course the rules were written when Pathfinder was just getting started, so you might have work to do to adjust encounters if your players are running later material with all its power creep.
However, overall, this is a fun adventure for low-level characters. The issue is that it isn't a good start to the Council of Thieves AP. This book leads the PCs to believe that they'll be part of some rebellion against Chelish rule in Westcrown. But the AP doesn't really touch on that a lot throughout most of the narrative. So this volume doesn't do a great job of introducing important themes, story beats, and NPCs that will be important later. This is a persistent problem with Paizo APs, and it's definitely present here.
Just finsihed running this mod last week and I must say I really enjoyed this module. Though it is not perfect I think it has some very enjoyable qualities/situations, interesting NPCS, and a good story.
I must admit, that as a GM I did alot of editing and work (mainly to adjust my group being 6 players instead of 4, but also fleshing out side quests etc) to make it work.
Details:
To make this module work (as a whole as well as with future volumes) I would emphasize the shadows being a huge problem (A large side quest I wrote helped with this) in Westcrown from the beginning. It also helps to throw in Ailyn Ghontsavos (The pathfinder from vol 2) in the wagon w/ Arael, establishing her as a major character from the beginning, as she does her "research".)My party also enjoyed/ understood the idea of the "children of Westcrown" and they recruited a more members into the organization. I also had them do a few side quests (Variations of suggested ones in book, plus a few I threw in) to gain some more fame in Westcrown. (as well as get a better "feel" for the theme/setting of Westcrown. I had a tiefling ambush/encounter/story(from locals) in between each side quest to build up the suspense on the final lair as well.
NPCS:
I really enjoyed the NPCs in the adventure. .From the Leaders Arael and Janiven, to Monosino (the boy everyone ended up loving to hate), to all the children of Westcrown and their individual personality's and motivations. There was alot of interesting stories and it was fun role playing the different personalities with my PCs. They enjoyed this as well. (All there stories also help set the tone of the city)
My Favorite NPC from the module was Thesing Umbero Ulvauno. I look forward to his reoccurring roles in future APs.
The Meat and the Bones:
This module has some fun encounters/situations.
-The sewers are fun and the randomness a nice twist (though I would recommend "building" sewers before game to save time)
-Rescuing Arael was a fun and well written encounter. One of my favorite things in the module
-The tiefling lair is well built. Many ins/outs makes the tieflings extremely mobile (ambushing the PCS!) , and lead to fun encounters and situations
-The two tiefling baddies at end were well written and fun to GM. (I recommend combing them for a particularity lethal and super fun encounter)
The back matter of this Module is worth the price alone.
--A great detailed article on Westcrown. Essential for the AP, and a good read on its own.
--An awesome article of Tieflings, including all kinds of great fluff , but also many racial options and alternative traits (100 of them!).It also includes a wonderful chart of Random tielfing features (100 again) to help flesh out what the tielfings look like visually.
--Part one of a Story by Dave Gross. Need I say more?
--A wonderful bestiary that is also very helpful for the module itself. (Adding some old favorites from 3.5 as well as some fun new monsters)
Overall I really enjoyed this Adventure Path Volume!
This review is about the Bastards of Erebus adventure, not the AP as a whole.
Bastards of Erebus fails both as the launching of the Council of Thieves adventure path and as an adventure in its own right. While I am willing to forgive the the conversion issues; there are several MAJOR problems with the story itself.
Spoilered for those individuals who intend to run this AP (including myself).
Spoiler:
The first problem starts before the adventure, with the CoT Player’s Guide. The provided “campaign traits” simply suggest little to no motivation for the heroes to want to accomplish the tasks of the Bastards, let alone the AP as a whole. The adventure attempts to fix this by requiring that the heroes must have a problem with the way the Westcrown is run, but that leads to the next problem.
Janiven Kay’s speech, two or more battles with the Order of the Rack Hellknights, and the introduction of Ariel’s group all imply that the heroes will be part of a resistance movement against House Thrune. Unfortunately, this is not what the AP is about at all, so this sets up a “bait-n-switch” almost as bad as Second Darkness.
As a side note, the battles with the Hellknights in this adventure ruin the buildup that the Hellknights had received in both Rise of the Runelords and especially Curse of the Crimson Throne. This adventure sets the Hellknights up as "keystone cops." Also, fighting the Hellknights in this adventure creates a dissonance with The Twice-Damned Prince where the heroes are expected to ally with the Hellkights.
The titular "Bastards of Erebus" gang seem to pop out of nowhere in “part 5” of a six part adventure. As they have done nothing to the characters, nor have any of the crimes in the city even been mentioned before now, so why would the heroes want to fight them? Worse, if any of the PCs are Tieflings themselves, these PCs are – if anything – going to be sympathetic to the Bastards.
Beyond that, the support articles are fine, though I wish that the included monsters in the AP installment’s Bestiary were more used in the adventure itself.
All in all, I find myself needed to re-write this entire installment.
As an introduction to the Council of Thieves AP, this adventure fails to impress. The first section is "have random encounters until you get bored", and the final section is terribly short. There are good ideas here, but they are buried by horrible writing and editing. It took our group of five players about 5 hours to play through the entire thing.
I have to jump in here and add my extreme enthusiasm for the Tiefling article! It was so amazing I actually yelled out loud, "That's Awesome!" when I got to #67 (See in Darkness! Heck Yeah!)
But I post to add more than just my appreciation. I would do anything to see an article like this on the Aasimer. I really like angelic characters, Paladins, all that kind of thing. It would be so incredible to play a variant Aasimer.
In fact, I think I'll head over to the messageboards right now. Maybe the community can jump-start this bandwagon with a few cool ideas.
(Sorry if I sound pushy, it really is just my enthusiasm getting the better of me)
I'm currently prepping to run this AP tomorrow night, and so far, I'm loving the solid balance between ROLE-playing and ROLL-playing. I've always felt that D&D (OGL or proprietary) had a large tendency to deteriorate mostly into hack-n-slash and left out the actual role-playing part of the game I love so much. But this AP is wonderfully balanced, as previously mentioned, and I thank Paizo for its dedication.
I do have to profess, though, that I'm a pedant and there's an error on page 40 in the "Creatures" description of area B3 that could actually affect gameplay (editing errors that generally don't affect gameplay, I tend to let slide... though spelling errors still do grate on me lol). Anyway, in that description, it mentions that the tiefling in the bell tower (B3) can only use his darkvision up to "about 30 feet from the temple." That 30 feet estimation fails simple geometry - the Pythagorean Theorem of A^2 + B^2 = C^2 where A is the distance from the building to the edge of the tiefling's lateral darkvision, B is the total height at which the tiefling stands above ground, and C is the linear distance from the tiefling to the edge of his darkvision. So, visually, we have:
|\
| \ C
|B \
|___\
A
For this model, I'm making a general assumption of B = 45 feet [40 feet for the height of the 2nd story floor, and 5 feet for the height of the tiefling's eyes (yes, this is probably a conservative estimate, but it's close enough for this effort)] and C = 60 feet (the distance of the tiefling's darkvision, which is an absolute). Now, we have to figure for A given the formula listed above.
A^2 + 45^2 = 60^2
A^2 + 2025 = 3600
A^2 = 1575
A = 1575^.5
A = 39.69 feet, or, a closer (usable) estimate would be ~40 feet.
Or, assuming, a probably more accurate eye-height of the tiefling of 5.5 feet (giving us B = 45.5), you'd end up with A = 39.11 or ~39 feet. So, 40 feet still winds up more easily usable in game terms.
Yes, I realize that I'm probably the only person who bothered to go about proving the original estimate of 30 feet incorrect; and, yes, I realize I probably have too much time on my hands. However, if your PCs decided to strike the temple during the night, that extra 10 feet of darkvision could play a rather important part in detecting your PCs.
Yes, I realize that I'm probably the only person who bothered to go about proving the original estimate of 30 feet incorrect; and, yes, I realize I probably have too much time on my hands.
Heck no. The Pythagorean Theorem is the most-used mathematical calculation used during our games. If it's not used at least once or twice during our sessions, something's wrong. Terribly wrong.
* that the tiefling's is leaning out into the window so his eyes are exactly at the same location as the edge of the building (when really he's going to spend his time in his square, which not only restricts the distance a little bit, but restricts the angle at which he can see the ground)
* that the tiefling spends all of his time at one particular window, rather than alternating looking out the south and north windows
And only if you ignore
* that the tiefling's absolute darkvision range isn't like seeing something with a light source. If you're on a level floor, and someone is 61 feet away from you, you cannot see them with darkvision. At all. So, in this tiefling's example, he absolutely can see someone at 30 feet, may be able to see someone at 35 feet (largely depending on inch-based variables like his height and position relative to the window, which we generally ignore because it slows down the game), and absolutely cannot see anyone at 40 feet because it doesn't matter if his darkvision's range is 39.5 feet, 39.9 feet, or 39.999999 feet, he can't see something 40 feet away.
I chose 30 feet because that was definitely within the lookout's sight radius; there's a narrow border area that's questionable, and unless the PCs are going to bust out a slide rule and do some quick calculations in the dark to determine whether the lookout's range is 30, 35, or 40 feet, 30 is is a nice, safe range for them to avoid.
Everyone's been raving about the Tiefling article... can someone please give me some hints as to what, exactly, makes it so magnificent?
Hey, Paizo achieved the formerly impossible by making me want to play gnomes and half-orcs at some point; I might as well find out what they did to make tieflings cool.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Eric Hinkle wrote:
Everyone's been raving about the Tiefling article... can someone please give me some hints as to what, exactly, makes it so magnificent?
Hey, Paizo achieved the formerly impossible by making me want to play gnomes and half-orcs at some point; I might as well find out what they did to make tieflings cool.
- Ten different set of stat adjustments (rolled randomly) based on devil/demon/rakshahsa etc parentage
- one hundred different abilities to replace darkness
In Arael's stat block it states that he has the Pick Alignment feat. What is this exactly? It doesn't appear to be in either the Core Rulebook or the Advanced Player's Guide. Is it supposed to be Selective Channeling?
I have deliberately NOT read any of this thread as I will soon be starting this AP as a PC, so I don't want any spoilers, but I have a character creation questions...
I'm trying to make a character that will be interesting for me. I really don't like to play humans because I love the fantasy aspect of RPG's and since I'm already a human, it's not an exciting race for me. Try as I might, though, I cannot think of a single reason why any race but the humans would give a crap about returning Cheliax to its former glory. Sure, there are dwarves who trade with them and would want that trade to remain in place, but those would be traders, not adventurers. Halflings are slaves, why would they fight for their captors except by compulsion? Gnomes might get involved for the fun of it, I guess. Elves wouldn't give a crap. Is this a humans-only adventure or do I have no imagination? (I'm prepared to accept either.) PLEASE, NO SPOILERS!
Organized Play Developer
