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Pathfinder Module: Fangwood Keep (PFRPG)

4.50/5 (based on 6 ratings)
Pathfinder Module: Fangwood Keep (PFRPG)
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Claim the Castle!

Fangwood Keep has changed hands innumerable times since its founding decades ago on the border between the warring nations of Molthune and Nirmathas. Over the years, both countries have sacrificed money and soldiers in an effort to control the fortress along the Marideth River valley, both for its tactical location and for its secure defenses. Recently, however, the battles around Fangwood Keep have dwindled to a trickle as Nirmathas has firmly rooted itself in the surrounding valley, allowing the tide of war to shift elsewhere and peace to settle at last over Fangwood Keep.

This respite was shattered by the arrival of a renegade Molthuni commander named Pavo Vos. Obsessed with capturing Fangwood Keep and unraveling the fortress’s mysteries, the defecting lieutenant unlawfully used his platoon to secure the castle, much to the ire of both the Molthuni and Nirmathi governments. Now the task of bringing Vos to justice and reclaiming Fangwood Keep for Nirmathas lies solely in the PCs’ able hands.

"Fangwood Keep" is an adventure of infiltration, investigation, and dungeon exploration for 4th-level characters, written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world’s oldest RPG. This volume also contains a gazetteer of the Marideth River valley and a brand-new monster from the bizarre realm of the fey, both of which can easily be integrated into any campaign setting.

Written by Alex Greenshields.
Cover Art by Alex Aparin.

Pathfinder Modules are 32-page, high-quality, full-color, adventures using the Open Game License to work with both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set. This Pathfinder Module includes new monsters, treasure, and a fully detailed bonus location that can be used as part of the adventure or in any other game!

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-476-4

Fangwood Keep is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Its Chronicle Sheet and additional rules for running this module are a free download (90 KB zip/PDF).

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

Hero Lab Online
Archives of Nethys

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

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PZO9540

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4.50/5 (based on 6 ratings)

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Nice story, funny challenges

5/5 —

I'm not an advanced GM, but managed to do it, with not so much effort. The story is OK, and there are some funny facts in it.

Castle Invasion with dungeon goodness

5/5 —

Recently wrapped this module up with my group as a player, and had a blast running it. From picking sides to breaking in and finally exploring the underbelly of the beast, I was in the mindset of "pins and needles" for most of the ride.

If you need some infiltration and dungeoneering for a few sessions, I'd recommend this one. Just make sure you bring supplies and a start at level 4

Lots of fun, but be wary if you're a low level party!

5/5 —

I ran this for a group of 4 who ranged from (mostly) 3rd to 4th level and it beat the living crap out of them. lol They hadn't run away and outright been brutalized by so many things ever in PFS, and surprisingly they loved it! lol Maybe that says something about the people who play PFS? :P

So yeah it's a great module, but be aware it was made for 4th level's and if you have a lot of 3's it can be very tough, especially if they aren't PFS optimized. I enjoyed the story, the characters, the mix of role-playing, combat, exploration and stealth. All-in-all a very fun module and would highly recommend it!

Epic fun

4/5 —

Having recently run this module for a 5 player PFS game I must say it was extremely entertaining. My players ended the session raving over the challenge of taking the castle and cringe at the sight of certain colored hats now.

I wound up with a party that was at the top end of the expected APL for this module at 5th so where able to power through some of the more difficult challenges (3rd level spells tends to make the goblinoid encounters a LOT easier to handle). Keep that in mind if you do run this and personally I would have preferred to add 1 level to all the fort NPC's to make them less 1 shot-able.

Personally I found the fort challenges reasonably well designed and straight forward to run and are likely to keep everyone entertained. The underground areas were less challenging but some were significantly more memorable (I'm looking at you the previously mentioned hat wearer).

Overall I only have 3 areas where I felt things where a bit less then perfect.
Final encounter, the bosses abilities are way to swingy, everything relies on a single target save. Honestly they were no challenge at all to a party that made it past the Barrowhound. I'd re-do it with a few less enchantments and more summoned servants.
The goblinoid opponents where entirely too easy to kill. I know they outnumber the PC's significantly but with as low of a to-hit and HP's they have they could barely touch most of my melee PC's and died after 1 good hit.
The map, as beautiful as it is the layout on the grid is pretty confusing. Most corridors are not 1 square wide and are usually some mixture of 2 half squares shoehorned together. If there had been clear lines for the major passageways instead of a off-center overlay on the grid would have really helped.

Anyway, so far this is still one of my favorite modules ever and I can't wait to see what this author does next.

A refreshing take on a classic formula

4/5 —

At it's core, this is a classic adventure - a dungeon crawl in an area populated by savage humanoids (in this case, hobgoblins). Where Fangwood stands apart from adventures like it is in how well the fortress is detailed and how much information the writer has given the DM to allow PCs the ability to infiltrate it. That's right - for once, PCs can use stealth without a metric ton of improvisation from the DM.

The first half of the dungeon follows this vein but as the PCs clear the first couple floors (either by guile and stealth or brute force), eventually they make their way to the lower floor where the author setup some extremely rare but challenging encounters - my PCs will forever fear gnarled old men with colored hats. The adventure ultimately ends with a staple of Pathfinder RPG villainy (you'll know it when you see it).

A few additional notes:

*To make this adventure properly challenging, play this with no more than four PCs and keep them from resting.
*Make sure you read up the author's subsection on 'rasing the alarm'.
*If the PCs are proving to be especially effective at the whole stealth/murder thing, throw in some missives or other written communication between the bad guys. There's no reason the party should miss out on important story elements just because they're too sneaky.

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Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Announced! Image is a mockup, and will change prior to publication.
Liberty's Edge
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Nirmmathas! Molthune! I'm running out of exclamation points! (swoon)
Dark Archive
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I love maps of castles and keeps... I want it now.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Is Joseph Conrad the author?

Hmm, this says expected November, but we already have a module for November

Still, sounds pretty cool :)

Storming a fort sounds interesting but I do hope this one has some fey.
Peanuts wrote:

Hmm, this says expected November, but we already have a module for November

Still, sounds pretty cool :)

The module line has been hit with a series of delays. Broken Chains is actually the "September module."

Liberty's Edge

Oooooo I love Nirmathas!!!

'Bout time we got some info on this part of the world! Now all we need is something set in Numeria.
The Exchange

Ohh nice, an adventure set in Robin Hood country. Looking forward to this!
Silver Crusade
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Cool! Our current campaign is based in Nirmathas!
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Will the PC's be allied with Molthune, Nirmathas, or have the choice of either?
Scarab Sages

Nirmathas! Hell yes! Full of joy! I love you guys!
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
2 people marked this as a favorite.
OmegaZ wrote:
Will the PC's be allied with Molthune, Nirmathas, or have the choice of either?

Yes!

Liberty's Edge

Is it me or does this one keep getting moved back on the timeline lol. I really want this one because I love keep and forest settings. Plus 4th level is a great time for players starting to build in power, but not so much that it's hard on the GM to keep up with it all lol.
Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

From September all the way to march... sad.
Webstore Gninja Minion

Updated product with final cover image and description!
Liberty's Edge

Looking awesome. If you want me to beta test it just let me know..... for you i will make this sacrifice :)
Liberty's Edge
2 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm looking forward to this one. Since the initial Price of Immortality Trilogy, this area of the Inner Sea (well, north of same) needed a little love -- and this one should serve to fill in the XP gap before City of Golden Death.
Sczarni

Hey, cool! This is one that I might think of picking up. A Nirmathas/Molthune campaign would be fun to put together out of some modules.
Dark Archive

Finally finished reading this one today and must admit I like most of it. It has all the things I like (castles, traps, weird environment rules and HOBGOBLINS!!) with multiple ways of getting things done. A good mix of stealth, combat, social skills and crazy makes this one I'm looking forward to run. (As soon as the PFS chronicle sheets are ready for it)

With that said though there are a few things that bother me, mostly regarding the Hobgoblins.
It seems as if the author missed the update on these guys. No longer are they the lazy, chaotic barbarians they used to be and are now the most organized, regimented and disciplined of the goblin hordes. The description and tactics laid out for these guys are the opposite of what we've been led to expect from these guys (same for their other goblinoid minions). Overall with my first read through they just seem like typical disposable Orcs instead of the super-soldiers they are displayed as in the current write-up.

The second part has a bit of the kick in the door fight the monster feel to it that might get a bit old after the third or fourth door. Not saying the combatants aren't interesting and exciting just that for a 4th level party it is a LOT of combats to recover from and not many parties will have the resources to handle this regular level of combat.

So far I'm inclined to give this a solid 3.5 stars based on the read but want to see how it does in actual play.

I'm REALLY wanting to see how PFS handles the mcguffin at the end. Even in that condition it should provide an AWESOME boon.
Silver Crusade
1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm still reading it, but I have to admit I was hoping for a portrayal of Molthrune's hobgoblin regiments somewhere. These guys seem pretty unaffiliated though, so hopefully they're not really reflective of their Molthruni counterparts.

Am liking the separate Nirmathas/Molthrune hooks though. And stealthy parties could have a lot of fun here.
Dark Archive

Any clue when the PFS chronicle sheet will be made available?
The Exchange

Now I just need to find a GM willing to run this for my table... *wink wink*

Excellent. I've run an adventure in this very area. A shame it was 2 years ago, it might be time to return.

I very much like the adventure overall, but I have noticed a few bits of errata:

Fangwood Keep:

All "stock" Hobgoblins seem to be missing the Class Skill bonus on their Stealth (all Goblinoids treat Stealth as a Class Skill); the Hobgobln Brawler, Archer, and Sergeant each have Stealth skill rating 3 lower than they should be:

Brawler
2 ranks + 3 Class + 4 Racial - 1 Armor + 2 Dex = 10; lists +7

Archer
2 ranks + 3 Class + 4 Racial - 0 Armor + 3 Dex = 12; lists +9

Sergeant
2 ranks + 3 Class + 4 Racial - 2 Armor + 2 Dex = 9; lists +6

Akre Belring
Has 1 too many feats.
1 + 1 Ranger bonus + 1 Human bons = 3; lists 4 (Power Attack seems the most reasonable to remove)

Tralg
5 more hit points than I can account for

Aseri
Knowledge (local) should be +4, not +1
1 rank + 3 Class + 0 Int = +4

Elessia
Charm Person is not on the Cleric spell list; it is a Domain spell for her. As such, she cannot use a "regular" spell slot to prepare it, and so cannot have the Bouncing Charm Person at 2nd level.

Barrow Hound
The hound is not eligible for the Vital Strike feat. It has a BAB of +5, and the feat requires +6.

Shadow Lodge

The Chronicle Sheet download isn't resolving: The requested URL was not found on this server, or you do not have permission to access this area.
Dark Archive
The Spider wrote:
The Chronicle Sheet download isn't resolving: The requested URL was not found on this server, or you do not have permission to access this area.

Same thing here.

Digital Products Assistant

The Chronicle sheet has been prodded and should download properly now.
Scarab Sages

Additional errata:

Spoiler:

Fethi
As a martial artist, Fethi should not have ki points, she should instead have Exploit Weakness. Rolls at a +7.
Additionally, her stunning fist does not appear to include her +1 bonus from pain points, and so should be a DC 15.

So this is a module about a Keep on the Borderlands?
I see what you did there! >.<

Anywho! It does sound like fun. I always liked the lower level encounters with orcs and goblins and such. ^_^
Sczarni

Does anyone know roughly how long it takes to run this mod (in a PFS environment)?
Liberty's Edge

When I ran it, I believe we finished in ~6 hours.
Scarab Sages

I recently played in this one. It toke us about 4 1/2 hrs, but we chose the stealth approach and avoided ALOT of encounters by winning the monk fight.

Im not exactly sure how long it would of taken if we hadnt avoided alot of the hobgoblin fights.
Sczarni RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
naztek wrote:
Does anyone know roughly how long it takes to run this mod (in a PFS environment)?

It took our group about 7 hours. This one is easily doable in one long session.

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The castle plan is intriguing but not the best ever as a castle. Does somebody know if this is modeled on a real castle? There ought to be parapets atop the wings of the castle, but nothing like that is hinted at. As it is, it has a lot of blind spots.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
Urath DM wrote:

I very much like the adventure overall, but I have noticed a few bits of errata:

Spoiler:
All "stock" Hobgoblins seem to be missing the Class Skill bonus on their Stealth (all Goblinoids treat Stealth as a Class Skill); the Hobgobln Brawler, Archer, and Sergeant each have Stealth skill rating 3 lower than they should be:

Brawler
2 ranks + 3 Class + 4 Racial - 1 Armor + 2 Dex = 10; lists +7

Archer
2 ranks + 3 Class + 4 Racial - 0 Armor + 3 Dex = 12; lists +9

Sergeant
2 ranks + 3 Class + 4 Racial - 2 Armor + 2 Dex = 9; lists +6

Akre Belring
Has 1 too many feats.
1 + 1 Ranger bonus + 1 Human bons = 3; lists 4 (Power Attack seems the most reasonable to remove)

Tralg
5 more hit points than I can account for

Aseri
Knowledge (local) should be +4, not +1
1 rank + 3 Class + 0 Int = +4

Elessia
Charm Person is not on the Cleric spell list; it is a Domain spell for her. As such, she cannot use a "regular" spell slot to prepare it, and so cannot have the Bouncing Charm Person at 2nd level.

Barrow Hound
The hound is not eligible for the Vital Strike feat. It has a BAB of +5, and the feat requires +6.

Sorry for the Necro, but

Spoiler:
Is there a fix for Elissia's spell list?
What is a good replacement feat for the Barrow Hound's Vital Strike feat?
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