Pathfinder Adventure Path #64: Beyond the Doomsday Door (Shattered Star 4 of 6)

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Pathfinder Adventure Path #64: Beyond the Doomsday Door (Shattered Star 4 of 6)
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Chapter 4 "Beyond the Doomsday Door"
by Tito Leati

The hunt for the seven shards of the Shattered Star leads the heroes back to the western coast of Varisia, to the multifaith monastery known as Windsong Abbey. The next shard appears to be hidden somewhere within the dungeons below the abbey. But when the PCs arrive, they find the monastery in ruins and held by savage giants and twisted fey! An ancient terror has returned home, and now dwells within the levels beneath the monastery—a terror who hopes to open the dread doomsday door within!

This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path continues the Shattered Star Adventure Path and includes:

  • “Beyond the Doomsday Door,” a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 10th-level characters, by Tito Leati.
  • Delve into the horrors of the Abyssal monstrosities known as qlippoth, by James Jacobs.
  • Learn about the faith of Groetus, God of the End Times, and the madness of his tortured clergy, by Sean K Reynolds.
  • The perils of being a junkie in Riddleport in the Pathfinder’s Journal, by Bill Ward.
  • Five new monsters, by James Jacobs, Sean K Reynolds, F. Wesley Schneider, and Jerome Virnich.

Each monthly full-color softcover Pathfinder Adventure Path volume contains an in-depth adventure scenario, stats for several new monsters, and 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 world’s oldest fantasy RPG.

ISBN–13: 978-1-60125-474-0

Beyond the Doomsday Door is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (512 KB zip/PDF).

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscription.

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Atmospheric string of dungeons with one of the most epic boss battles I've seen

5/5

I ran this adventure for my party of 4 and did not make any major changes to the adventure as written.

We had a great time playing through it and enjoyed pretty much every encounter. I strongly recommend to bring in Jasper from the web enhancement of Curse of the Lady's Light (book 2 of Shattered Star) for added role-playing gold.

Spoiler:
In our game, Jasper went through some mechanical adjustments and is a PC. The encounter with Kandamereus was therefore extremely fun!

The dungeons in this book are mechanically solid and very atmospheric with some cool and creative ideas.

What stuck out as particularly good was that the PCs learn early on who their enemy is and what is up to, something a lot of adventures seem to forget and just surprise you with the BBEG at the very end. Here, the PCs learn gradually more of their enemy that might even change their attitude towards him entirely.

The final encounter of this book is epic in every sense of the word. The stakes are extremely high, the enemies powerful, and the final few moments have the drama of a cut-scene while still giving the players agency. Brilliantly done!

I strongly recommend this adventure to anyone who enjoys dungeon crawls. It is also ridiculously easy to use this adventure in your own campaign since the Shard can easily be removed or replaced by your own McGuffin.


The most epic adventure so far...

5/5

Me and my group had found "Beyond the Doomsday Door" a very nice adventure. Very challenging one.

The scenario is very nice, the Windsong Abbey has a unique personality and a cool background. All the story behind the Ardanathus invasion is very original too. Brings a new perspective in the "dungeon type adventure".

Ardanathus himself is a very memorable villian, one with a personal background and a unique personality. One of my players ( a she) was in love with him. :P

Until I played this part of the "Shattered Star" adventure I was ignorant about the Qlippot theme and the existence of Yamasoth. They have result too be very interesting enemies with a unique personality and a strong challenge for my players.

I must to say this:

The player in love with Ardanathus had only 13 Hit Points (a Elf-Rogue), she was close to him and thrown to him a bottle of "Potion of Love" that they had found in previous adventures. The dices had spoken and Ardathus became in love on she.

That way the curse and the influence of Yamasoth was broken.

Something says me that me and my group will speak of this for the years to come.

<3

!Love the adventure!


Compelling story, great villain and theme

4/5

My reviews use bullet points, just how I roll.

The Good: -Location is very strong.
-Monsters and bonus monsters are very strong.
NPCs are strong.
-Backstory is strong.

The Bad: -If you're looking for more than a dungeon look elsewhere.

The Ugly: -Redemption option on main villain seems thin.

Overall: Can't give it a 5 star, I want more than just a dungeon. That said you can run this without the rest of the AP and be fine. Great back pocket dungeon.


Excellent Adventure

4/5

Read my full review on my blog.

The fourth instalment of Shattered Star, Beyond the Doomsday Door by Tito Leati, is an excellent adventure. It’s not perfect—there are some confusing inconsistencies in its setting’s history, for example, and it does start to feel a little drawn out by the end—but it contains a fascinating, dynamic setting, and a truly unique villain. It’s a dungeon crawl where you might not want to kill everything you meet along the way, and that’s the kind of thing I love.


Absurdly Awesome

5/5

You probably know what to expect from Shattered Star so far: dungeon crawls done right. You won't miss out of that with this installment.

Basically the whole adventure is set within one dungeon and it's a doozy, with several intertwined threads of backstory and a lot of cool monsters.

But the backmatter is actually my favorite here. The new monsters are great and the articles on the Qlippoth and Groteus are amazing.

Overview: Get your sinister powers from before the dawn of time here, along with an adventure bringing those threads together.

Many Years Later: This played out quite well, with more roleplaying hooks than I expected, inspiring the players to push the limits of the narrative. It's not without flaws, but those are easy to overlook when the players are having so much fun.


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Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Announced! Image is a mockup, and will change prior to publication.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Doomsday Door? Hmmm... Alliterative Artifacts of Annihilation are my Favorite!

Also? the essay on Qlippoth! Will it include how to pronounce that word?

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Stratagemini wrote:
Also? the essay on Qlippoth! Will it include how to pronounce that word?

The essay is *about* how to pronounce that word!

Ok, not really.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Stratagemini wrote:

Doomsday Door? Hmmm... Alliterative Artifacts of Annihilation are my Favorite!

Also? the essay on Qlippoth! Will it include how to pronounce that word?

Well... It's a real-world word. I pronoucne it:

CLIP-oth

Not sure how 100% accurate that might be, though, since I don't speak Hebrew...

Wikipedia has more info about that.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

No offense to Tito, but you should totally have contracted out Tom Phillips to do this one. Would have been amazing.

Maybe bring back the whole set-piece idea from the early APs and have him do one of those in this issue?

Liberty's Edge

James Jacobs wrote:
Stratagemini wrote:

Doomsday Door? Hmmm... Alliterative Artifacts of Annihilation are my Favorite!

Also? the essay on Qlippoth! Will it include how to pronounce that word?

Well... It's a real-world word. I pronoucne it:

CLIP-oth

Not sure how 100% accurate that might be, though, since I don't speak Hebrew...

Wikipedia has more info about that.

My Hebrew-speaking Jewish friend (who will be coming to Paizocon) informs me that it is 'Kli-pot', stress on the second syllable, and that it is a grammatically-feminine noun.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

No, do not bring back set pieces... Please...


Where is that Mockup art from ?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Erik Freund wrote:

No offense to Tito, but you should totally have contracted out Tom Phillips to do this one. Would have been amazing.

Maybe bring back the whole set-piece idea from the early APs and have him do one of those in this issue?

Well... no offense to Tom Phillips, but he's never written an Adventure Path installment before. And after having been burned pretty badly in the past in assigning something as enormous and complex and difficult as an Adventure Path installment to authors we've not worked with before and having semi-disasters result, I've adopted the policy of "only one new author per AP, and said new author must first prove himself by writing several other things for us first."

Which is Mike Shel in this case—he's writing the second adventure.

And set pieces aren't coming back.

Tito, on the other hand, has been writing Adventure Path installments for longer than Pathfinder's been around.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Nick O'Connell wrote:
Where is that Mockup art from ?

The background's from the mohrg article in Undead Revisited. The night hag is from Carrion Crown, I think... not sure.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
Erik Freund wrote:

No offense to Tito, but you should totally have contracted out Tom Phillips to do this one. Would have been amazing.

Maybe bring back the whole set-piece idea from the early APs and have him do one of those in this issue?

Well... no offense to Tom Phillips, but he's never written an Adventure Path installment before. And after having been burned pretty badly in the past in assigning something as enormous and complex and difficult as an Adventure Path installment to authors we've not worked with before and having semi-disasters result, I've adopted the policy of "only one new author per AP, and said new author must first prove himself by writing several other things for us first."

Which is Mike Shel in this case—he's writing the second adventure.

And set pieces aren't coming back.

Tito, on the other hand, has been writing Adventure Path installments for longer than Pathfinder's been around.

You forgot "Tito Leati is awesome" and "Tito Leati does the best handouts"!


Gorbacz wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Erik Freund wrote:

No offense to Tito, but you should totally have contracted out Tom Phillips to do this one. Would have been amazing.

Maybe bring back the whole set-piece idea from the early APs and have him do one of those in this issue?

Well... no offense to Tom Phillips, but he's never written an Adventure Path installment before. And after having been burned pretty badly in the past in assigning something as enormous and complex and difficult as an Adventure Path installment to authors we've not worked with before and having semi-disasters result, I've adopted the policy of "only one new author per AP, and said new author must first prove himself by writing several other things for us first."

Which is Mike Shel in this case—he's writing the second adventure.

And set pieces aren't coming back.

Tito, on the other hand, has been writing Adventure Path installments for longer than Pathfinder's been around.

You forgot "Tito Leati is awesome" and "Tito Leati does the best handouts"!

Tito is da awesome; The Champion''s Belt

Sovereign Court

+1 to that my friend. I can still hear the arena's roars.


Not as excited for the shattered star one as I am was for the last three but hopefully the monsters in there bestiaries make up for it.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Huh. It's from קליפות? I'm really not used to seeing that word in English. Glad to see that there's more of the Jewish Mythos and Mysticism in Pathfinder than I thought. I was just happy when I saw the Dybbuk.

Windsong Abbey Though? Why am I suddenly worried about Sonic Attacks? if I remember correctly, the entire building is like a giant sound amplifier or pipe organ of some sort?


Quote:
“The Asylum Stone” is a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for 7th-level characters
Quote:
“Beyond the Doomsday Door” is a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for 8th-level characters

... That can't be right.

Contributor

James Jacobs wrote:
Tito, on the other hand, has been writing Adventure Path installments for longer than Pathfinder's been around.

Speaking of old farts... :)


Tito Leati wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Tito, on the other hand, has been writing Adventure Path installments for longer than Pathfinder's been around.
Speaking of old farts... :)

Those are the best ones. Unless they linger...

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32, 2012 Top 4

Erik Freund wrote:

No offense to Tito, but you should totally have contracted out Tom Phillips to do this one. Would have been amazing.

Maybe bring back the whole set-piece idea from the early APs and have him do one of those in this issue?

Thanks, Erik. You honor me, but Tito is a firmly established AP writer. I'm just an RPG Superstar contender who's only written a few feats for Ultimate Combat. Thanks for the praise but like James says, I have to prove myself first. Trust me, Tito's work will be leaps and bounds over anything I could produce at this point.

And while we're on the subject of this AP installment...

Spoiler:
<<Shakes fist at parallel design!!>> ;-)

Grand Lodge

Tito? Is he italian?


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

My only reservation about this adventure is that it's the 4th in the AP and it starts at 8th level, unless the product description has a misprint as of 6/8/2012. If an AP is gonna end where I'd really love it to (17th level), the 4th adventure would ideally be for 10th level, allowing for a spread of 3 levels over each of the first 3 adventures, and it would finish at 13th. Then adventure 5 in the AP would take PCs from 13th to 15th (a 2 level jump) and the 6th adventure would take PCs from 15th to 17th (again, a 2 level jump). I do realize that almost none of the APs to date have finished at 17th or higher (Rise of the Runelords being the only exception, maybe?), but I can always dream.

Paizo Employee Director of Game Development

According to the outline I'm looking at, this adventure should start at 10th level.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

Adam, thanks for the fast update! I was hoping it was a misprint. I know that this is still no guarantee that this AP will break the trend of APs finishing at 15th/16th level, but having the 4th adventure start at 10th level is certainly a step in the right direction.

Contributor

Product description updated to say 10th level instead of 8th!


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

Thanks Liz. For whatever reason, whenever I look at the product description for an adventure, the first thing I do is skim the description for the level range. This one jumped right at me since adventure number 3 in the AP was for 7th level. Having adventure 4 set for 8th level didn't really add up.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The problem is that with the space available for adventures, trying to "go beyond 16" results in final adventures where you fight dozens of clone troopers who all share one statblock, due to PF high-CR statblocks taking up so much space. I'd much prefer more variety in opponents instead of waves after waves of Cobra Vipers.

Paizo Employee Director of Game Development

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Gorbacz wrote:
The problem is that with the space available for adventures, trying to "go beyond 16" results in final adventures where you fight dozens of clone troopers who all share one statblock, due to PF high-CR statblocks taking up so much space. I'd much prefer more variety in opponents instead of waves after waves of Cobra Vipers.

Great. There goes our Star Wars/G.I. Joe mashup plans. ;)


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Gorbacz wrote:
The problem is that with the space available for adventures, trying to "go beyond 16" results in final adventures where you fight dozens of clone troopers who all share one statblock, due to PF high-CR statblocks taking up so much space. I'd much prefer more variety in opponents instead of waves after waves of Cobra Vipers.

I can see that. In my own campaigns, after around level 12, the number of encounters/level goes down, and the encounters that do occur are each of a more significant nature. I try to remove the encounters that would have only been present in order to chew up the PCs' resources (charges, spells, what have you) in favor of major story changers, since each encounter takes longer at the higher levels.

For my group, high level gameplay starts to feel more like a game of Vampire: The Masquerade after level 12 or so; the PCs are almost like immortals or superheros so the combats that do occur should each be something special, not just an effort to wear down the points remaining on their Protection From Fire spells before they meet the BBEG.

I definitely wouldn't want the waves of Cobra Vipers that you mentioned, but I would choose an adventure that had only 7 enounters (each with its own, admittedly long, stat block) that finished at 17th level, as opposed to say, an adventure with 10 encounters (each with its own stat block, slightly shorter than the level 17 stat blocks) that finished at 16th level.

To each their own. It just gets frustrating for my players and me when they end an AP at 16th level, before they get to use their best abilities; 9th level spells, for example. Yes, I could (and sometimes do) homebrew something. But I'm an amateur hobbyist and high level adventure design is arguably the hardest type of adventure design. I'd rather pay professionals to do it.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

Gorbacz wrote:
I'd much prefer more variety in opponents instead of waves after waves of Cobra Vipers.

CO-BRAAAAAA!


Neil Spicer wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
I'd much prefer more variety in opponents instead of waves after waves of Cobra Vipers.
CO-BRAAAAAA!

I'm sure you have some leftover bad guys from your Serpent's Skull adventure, Neil. :D


Could somebody enlighten me about the Doomsday Door? Couldn't find anything useful here or over at the Wiki. Is it something Golarion specific or does it refer to something completely different?

Ruyan.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Lilith wrote:
Neil Spicer wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
I'd much prefer more variety in opponents instead of waves after waves of Cobra Vipers.
CO-BRAAAAAA!
I'm sure you have some leftover bad guys from your Serpent's Skull adventure, Neil. :D

LOL. I'm sure I can scare some up. :->


RuyanVe wrote:

Could somebody enlighten me about the Doomsday Door? Couldn't find anything useful here or over at the Wiki. Is it something Golarion specific or does it refer to something completely different?

Ruyan.

You can't find anything because it's new.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Generic Villain wrote:
RuyanVe wrote:

Could somebody enlighten me about the Doomsday Door? Couldn't find anything useful here or over at the Wiki. Is it something Golarion specific or does it refer to something completely different?

Ruyan.

You can't find anything because it's new.

Correct. The Doomsday Door is new, but it's linked to several established things.

And while the outline does indeed have this adventure starting at 10th level... it might end up starting at 11th level. The first adventure's pretty... big...

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Windsong Abbey's fairly old though I think it was in the Varisia Article in RotRL actually.

So you might be able to scare up some info on that.


I've got a AP #3 sitting on my shelf, so I know about Windsong Abbey - thanks, everybody.

James Jacobs wrote:
The Doomsday Door is new, but it's linked to several established things

Now I'm even more curious...

Ruyan.


Manuelexar wrote:
Tito? Is he italian?

He is a farty old cthulu apparently.

Contributor

Coltaine wrote:
Manuelexar wrote:
Tito? Is he italian?
He is a farty old cthulu apparently.

Yeah, I'm a Mediterranean Cthulhu (never forget the "h"s in certain names).

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You mean like in Hastu...*SPLORTCH*


I can pretty well guess that nothing good ever came in or out of the 'doomsday door'. Quite frankly, I don't wanna know anything about it until im standing in front of it and the DM tells the party something awful is about to happen. I can't wait for the this adventure path. The fleshing out of varisia alone is worth it. And oh please let there be runelord(s).


Yeah magical colorful ponies, caring bears, rainbows, and other "horrors" came from that dreaded door, so of course the "good" people of Golarion had to close it;)


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Curses, you've found out that Whimsyshire is beyond the Door.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Secret Cow level?

Shadow Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:


...after having been burned pretty badly in the past in assigning something as enormous and complex and difficult as an Adventure Path installment to authors we've not worked with before and having semi-disasters result...

Do tell which AP instalment was this? Yeah I know you won't tell - persoanlly while there have been weak spots I've never found an AP I couldn't like.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Cat-thulhu wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:


...after having been burned pretty badly in the past in assigning something as enormous and complex and difficult as an Adventure Path installment to authors we've not worked with before and having semi-disasters result...
Do tell which AP instalment was this? Yeah I know you won't tell - persoanlly while there have been weak spots I've never found an AP I couldn't like.

Pretty sure he's talking about this one. Notice how there are three writers just for the adventure? If you look at the reviews, you can see how that turned out.

Sovereign Court

We might never know, because James and the other sub-editors are capable of saving a weak submission: for instance, Hook Mountain Massacre came in way too long and JJ had to wrangle it into a decent shape for an AP volume.

That said, Jam412 has a solid guess. Very solid.


Really looking forward to that Qlippoth aricle...i hope we get to know some more about the layers they live on and the Qlippoth lords!

Shadow Lodge

Qilppoth?!?!? Why must you be so far away? I have needs, a qilppoth tiefling discovering her heritage, and a need to torment her with what could be! Book get here faster!

Now that my shock and fist shaking at time and my inability to move about in it beyond the norm has passed will this article on qilppoth be like the ecology of the werewolf article in carrion crown and will we be seeing new qilppoth showing up in this bestiary I ask with starry eyed hope?

The Exchange

James Jacobs wrote:
Stratagemini wrote:

Doomsday Door? Hmmm... Alliterative Artifacts of Annihilation are my Favorite!

Also? the essay on Qlippoth! Will it include how to pronounce that word?

Well... It's a real-world word. I pronoucne it:

CLIP-oth

Not sure how 100% accurate that might be, though, since I don't speak Hebrew...

Wikipedia has more info about that.

The correct way to pronounce it would be more akin to CLIP-ot (making a "t" sound with the tounge but not with the teeth).

Now that I know the origin of the word it just sounds really lame to me... that happens many times in fantasy though. espcially when the word "Kishta" (which we here in Israel use to shoo off cats or little children) is being used to dismiss summoned demons. Just makes you laugh.

If I recall correctly, Paizo also created a race of giants called "Nephilim", another Hebrew word. In Magic: The Gathering, one of the ten guilds of Ravnica is called "Orzhov", which in Hebrew means: "Golden Light".

Always amusing to find that my first language is considerd to be arcane and mysterious to those who speak ny second language.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Actually they did not create the nephilim but fleshed out the story of Gen 6:1-4. The "giants" of v. 4 are "nephilim" in Hebrew.

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