Pathfinder Adventure Path #72: The Witch Queen’s Revenge (Reign of Winter 6 of 6) (PFRPG)

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Pathfinder Adventure Path #72: The Witch Queen’s Revenge (Reign of Winter 6 of 6) (PFRPG)
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Chapter 6: "The Witch Queen’s Revenge"
by Greg A. Vaughan

Baba Yaga has been rescued from the clutches of her son Rasputin, but the Queen of Witches remains trapped inside a magical matryoshka doll. Delving into hidden chambers deep within the Dancing Hut, the heroes must open the nesting dolls imprisoning Baba Yaga, but they must also contend with the hut’s most dedicated guardians, including the former queens of Irrisen. When the time comes to finally face Queen Elvanna inside the Dancing Hut’s innermost sanctum, will the heroes defeat her and free Baba Yaga, or plunge Golarion into a new ice age?

This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path concludes the Reign of Winter Adventure Path and includes:

  • “The Witch Queen’s Revenge,” a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 15th-level characters, by Greg A. Vaughan.
  • Ways for you to extend your campaign beyond the covers of this Adventure Path and carry on your adventures against the witches of Irrisen, by Adam Daigle and Rob McCreary.
  • An exploration of the mysteries of Baba Yaga and her touch on the world of Golarion and beyond, by Adam Daigle.
  • An escape from Whitethrone in the Pathfinder’s Journal, by Kevin Andrew Murphy.
  • Four new monsters, by Shaun Hocking, Michael Kenway, Rob McCreary, and Matt Renton.

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: 978-1-60125-497-9

The Witch Queen's Revenge 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 (639 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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This product is non-mint. Refunds are not available for non-mint products. The standard version of this product can be found here.

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

PZO9072


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4.20/5 (based on 6 ratings)

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Good Ending, Great thereafter

5/5

It's not a brightest part of the Reign of Winter(definetely Rasputin is), but still have good ending and great continuing plot. The Bad Queen is defeated by PCs, however, much more still remains to be done. The Real Big Bad Baba Yaga exist, so if PCs want to save the world, they eventurally showdown with her.
Highly recommend!


Recession review

3/5

Check out the full review here


5/5

I've reviewed this on RPGGeek.com.

You can read it here.


Good end to a great adventure path!

4/5

Read my full review on Of Dice and Pen.

The Witch Queen’s Revenge by Greg A. Vaughan brings to a close Reign of Winter, which has been a very ambitious adventure path. It has involved a few aspects that some people may not fully like mixed with their fantasy (a little bit of science fiction and some modern-ish technology), but it has done so in often brilliant ways. This final adventure has the unenviable task that all final adventure path volumes have: that of bringing all the loose ends together and tying them off in a satisfying manner, while simultaneously providing a fun and exciting adventure in its own right. For the most part, The Witch Queen’s Revenge manages this wonderfully. It’s an excellent adventure, albeit a touch railroaded, and its final resolution could potentially frustrate some players. There are a couple other issues as well, and as such, it’s not the best of the entire adventure path (that honour definitely goes to Rasputin Must Die!), but it’s far from a weak adventure and it finishes off what has been a truly excellent adventure path overall.


Adventure is a grind, with plenty of saving graces

4/5

As the last adventure in what will be written in gaming history as one of the wildest, weirdest published campaigns ever, "The Witch Queen's Revenge" faces the challenging prospect of being worthy as a finisher.

Well... it nearly is. The outline of the adventure - that is, the basic structure of the story - is really good. The PCs delve deep into the numerous pocket dimensions accessible through the dancing hut of Baba Yaga, collecting the keys to free the Witch Queen from her imprisonment. The nature of the keys is very unique, and should provide a nice backbone to the story of the adventure.

However, unfortunately, the adventure quickly gets lost in a grind of fight after fight after fight after fight. There's really only a single NPC that's not meant to be fought in the adventure, and one part also allows the PCs to ally themselves with a tribe of locals, but that's about it. Every single other creature encountered simply attacks the PCs without provocation or sometimes even without much of a reason. What's worse is that the fights are sometimes very grindy themselves - like fighting 10 (!) CR 9 creatures at once - imagine how long that would take (that fight would have been better designed if the creatures were presented as a troop). Many other fights are very easy - like fighting a single CR 13 creature, for example. These fights are really nothing more than speed bumps in the way of a level 15 part of adventurers - are they just there to give the characters more XP? it's better to just hand it out as story awards.

So sadly, the adventure mostly amounts to 6 separate, unrelated fetch quests that involve a TON of fighting and nearly nothing else. The themes of the locations are OK, but nothing mind blowing. While some of the fights are either grindy or speed bumps, some other fights look challenging and unique. All in all the adventure would have been pretty bad because of it's underlining design, except that paizo products are never actually BAD. so the adventure itself gets 3 stars, due to many neat little touches but an overall not very fun adventure.

What pushes me to make a 4 star review are the articles - more specifically, the "continuing the campaign" article, which goes above and beyond previous articles of it's kind to really create an awesome mythic campaign for GMs to develop, one that fits the themes of 'Reign of Winter" very well. It sparks the imagination, and gives an insight to one of Golarion's numerous secrets (how the winter in Irrisen is maintained). This article is superb. As a bonus, Baba Yaga's stat block is nice, and gives us a peek at mythic rules.


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Silver Crusade

Man, the

Spoiler:
fate of Baba Yaga's daughters
is horrifying. D:

That artwork of three certain someones riding horses is impossibly awesome.* :D

plz artist, plz be for to selling prints!

*:
Though it rolls right back over into horrifying as soon as you consider the context! :O


Monsters:
Poludnica: CR 10 female fey powered by the sun. She kidnaps and lures farmers and children away to try and create normal families. At night they vanish into the ethereal plane, and can only watch families together at night with envy. She uses a scythe, but prefers trickery to achieve her ends. She has an aura of heat about her than can be quite debilitating.

Storm Hag: CR 7 hag with lightning and weather control powers. She prefers to eat young children and hates gnomes & halflings with a passion.

Too bad the Storm Hag is just another hag that bites the dust against the Night Hag... I want to see a hag that is above CR 10 for once, storm hag sounded powerful.

The sun woman sounds like Lady Midday (or whatever her name is) and sounds interesting, the others are not my thing.


The good thing about hags in general is that one can easily add class levels to them. Consider the Mother of Flies in the CoT AP.


Mikaze wrote:

Man, the ** spoiler omitted ** is horrifying. D:

Share plz? =D

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

1 person marked this as a favorite.

*checks e-mail again, sighs*

I get a 'most interesting man in the world' vibe from Baba Yaga.

"She grants herself spells."

"Patron spirits, get their spells from her."

"She would conquor Golarion, but would get bored."

She is, the most intersting witch in the world.

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Stay terrified, my friends.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Grar! Ship Dangit!


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yelling at the screen sadly doesn't work.


From the beginning of this path my players were casually plotting to overthrow the Baba Yaga at the end of the adventure. I now wonder if I should warn them against this line of thinking or just let them be surprised when they are all turned into small amphibians out of hand when they attempt their ill advised coup.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
atheral wrote:
From the beginning of this path my players were casually plotting to overthrow the Baba Yaga at the end of the adventure. I now wonder if I should warn them against this line of thinking or just let them be surprised when they are all turned into small amphibians out of hand when they attempt their ill advised coup.

They just need to remember to have the hand mirror ready.


Evil Midnight Lurker wrote:
atheral wrote:
From the beginning of this path my players were casually plotting to overthrow the Baba Yaga at the end of the adventure. I now wonder if I should warn them against this line of thinking or just let them be surprised when they are all turned into small amphibians out of hand when they attempt their ill advised coup.
They just need to remember to have the hand mirror ready.

Hmm..I see, so then a work around is provided. I've yet to receive my pdf so I was making a speculation based on the stat info listed up thread.

Dark Archive

Orthos wrote:
Mikaze wrote:

Man, the ** spoiler omitted ** is horrifying. D:

Share plz? =D

I figure it has something to do with the Dancing Hut's self-serve dinner buffet.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I don't think that a certain NPC was introduced in Rasputin Must Die! to let that plot-line fall aside.


atheral wrote:
Evil Midnight Lurker wrote:
atheral wrote:
From the beginning of this path my players were casually plotting to overthrow the Baba Yaga at the end of the adventure. I now wonder if I should warn them against this line of thinking or just let them be surprised when they are all turned into small amphibians out of hand when they attempt their ill advised coup.
They just need to remember to have the hand mirror ready.
Hmm..I see, so then a work around is provided. I've yet to receive my pdf so I was making a speculation based on the stat info listed up thread.

Actually no, I'm jokingly referring to the old computer game "Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero" in which you can get Baba Yaga to turn herself into a frog by reflecting her spell back at her.

I somehow doubt hand mirrors will help against this version...


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

<whiiiiineee>

I want this module!

<whiiiinneeee>

;.;

Paizo really needs to implement a "bill me now, ship whenever you can, just gimme that PDF already!" button.

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Got mine! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

8 days till the rest of us can get it. *sighs*

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Hoping my PDF's show up today.... still hoping...


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Grmblfrxgrrrr... just got an email from Paizo and I already was rejoicing. But it was only a reminder that one can pick up suscriptions at GenCon, which is really helpful to someone living in Germany. >.<


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Dark_Mistress wrote:
Hoping my PDF's show up today.... still hoping...

Me too Mistress, me too.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
magnuskn wrote:
Grmblfrxgrrrr... just got an email from Paizo and I already was rejoicing. But it was only a reminder that one can pick up suscriptions at GenCon, which is really helpful to someone living in Germany. >.<

Exactly what I was thinking...


I wasn't ... I live in New Zealand not Germany but still a pretty irrelevant email ;-)


magnuskn wrote:
Grmblfrxgrrrr... just got an email from Paizo and I already was rejoicing. But it was only a reminder that one can pick up suscriptions at GenCon, which is really helpful to someone living in Germany. >.<

Hehe yeah same here (except I live in Denmark). Not the best timing. :D

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

Downloading! :-)

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Matthew Morris wrote:
Downloading! :-)

I hate you right now. :)


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Orthos wrote:
Mikaze wrote:

Man, the ** spoiler omitted ** is horrifying. D:

Share plz? =D

Picture on Page 64:
One of the options at the end of the campaign in the "Continuing the Campaign" section is that three of the PCs become Baba Yaga's new three riders.

.

You should be able to guess the rest. >:-)


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Now I want to know which three Iconics are in that picture...

I'm guessing Imrijka, Valeros &...

Lini?


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Feros wrote:

The picture on page 64 of Valeros, Feiya, and Imrijka...

Woah.


Only one of my players opted for the black rider's mantle...the fighter/thief...

The rest kept saying he was baba yaga's property now...he's in denial about the issue...

That picture should freak him out proper!


Feros wrote:
Orthos wrote:
Mikaze wrote:

Man, the ** spoiler omitted ** is horrifying. D:

Share plz? =D
** spoiler omitted **

Man, I just read a book where something similar happened not too long ago.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Woo Hoo!!! My notification got here!

See Yah!

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

I'll admit I read the fiction first.

Horrifying thought.

Spoiler:
'The perfume spread out, the aroma designed to dispel all manner of evils, including charms and bewitchments. As we disappeared downstairs, I heard a childlike voice say, “Look! They left the bottlerockets!”'

Did that affect the baleful polymorphed spiders?


So I wonder about a certain important person in Baba Yaga's life...

Spoiler:
A norn named Vigliv, whose name looks very similar to Iggwilv from Greyhawk lore ;)

Silver Crusade

Odraude wrote:

So I wonder about a certain important person in Baba Yaga's life...

** spoiler omitted **

Oh, if you go down that rabbit hole it will never end. Especially with

Spoiler:
Baba Yaga's daughter Tasha referenced in Witchwar Legacy pretty much being Tasha.

And we know who Tasha is another name for...

Cyclical! >;)

Silver Crusade

Orthos wrote:
Mikaze wrote:

Man, the ** spoiler omitted ** is horrifying. D:

Share plz? =D

Spoiler:
Every terrifying nightmare about being trapped in your own body forever. The part about those that have withdrawn into themselves completely....brrr...

It cuts really deep for those who have cared for the elderly, especially if they are your loved ones.

Yeah, people are going to hate Baba Yaga and demanding their GMs let them continue with Mythic Rules by this AP's end.

Spoiler:
If that poor doll in #5 didn't already seal the deal, of course.


Evil Midnight Lurker wrote:


]Actually no, I'm jokingly referring to the old computer game "Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero" in which you can get Baba Yaga to turn herself into a frog by reflecting her spell back at her.

I somehow doubt hand mirrors will help against this version...

Ah I see, I've actually never heard of that game, which is a rare thing for me as I rather enjoy classic PC Adventure games. But in any case, it looks like the endgame in this is going to be brutal I can't wait to get this volume now...


Bought on Monday, but still no PDF - c'mon!

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

RuyanVe wrote:
Bought on Monday, but still no PDF - c'mon!

For non-subscribers, the PDFs are released on the shipping date.


Subscriber I am (and half-kidding I was with my comment).

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

Ahm I didn't see subscriber tags and thought you had bought it yesterday as an individual purchase. No worries. :-)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

This showed up on my doorstep last night (the perks of being so close to Paizo), and I gave it a brief read. Generally looks awesome. The "Continuing the Campaign" section was actually my favorite, which is rare. They're always good, but this was the first one that actually made me want to run the adventures described.

Specifically:
Tracking down all the winter devices to end Irrisen's eternal winter. That sounds amazingly fun.

Lantern Lodge RPG Superstar 2014 Top 4

Related to the "Continuing the Campaign" part, I had a brief discussion with Adam Daigle about a possible Jade Regent connection:

Spoiler:

So, Adam suggested that it is possible that Baba Yaga drew inspiration from the super ancient weather control tower at the crown of the world featured in Jade Regent to make the devices that create Irrisen's weather. While not an explicit tie, I thought that was a very nice nod to continuity.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Finally!


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber

*eyes his shipment notice for exactly one single addon item to his subscription shipment and sighs*


*happyhappyjoyjoy*


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

This is one of those days where I want more hours to be available to me to do stuff. ^^


Mikaze wrote:
Orthos wrote:
Mikaze wrote:

Man, the ** spoiler omitted ** is horrifying. D:

Share plz? =D

** spoiler omitted **

Yeah, people are going to hate Baba Yaga and demanding their GMs let them continue with Mythic Rules by this AP's end.

** spoiler omitted **

My gamers high level characters are plotting amongst themselves to pull in a favor owed them by one of faeries [first world] royalty to seize the thrice tenth kingdom while Baba Yaga is still in her doll prison...

Their logic is that without her kingdoms power she'll be an easier kill...I responded with "Better put on your big boy underoos if you want to put Baba Yaga in the dead book forever kiddies!"

Since I am still perched above my mailbox waiting...waiting...waiting for my copy...just how much power does Baba Yaga actually get from her thrice tenth kingdom anyway?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Not really any. The thrice-Tenth Kingdom doesn't really have any of her power.

Spoiler:
That is all in a handful of demi-planes within the hut.


Mikaze wrote:
Odraude wrote:

So I wonder about a certain important person in Baba Yaga's life...

** spoiler omitted **

Oh, if you go down that rabbit hole it will never end. Especially with ** spoiler omitted **

Cyclical! >;)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Dark Archive

I've been reading this issue up and down since I got it yesterday and I can only conclude that I now have to wait until August 14th to pick up Mythic Adventures just to figure out the stat block. Like, where does Baba Yaga's armor bonus come from? Enduring Armor? What's that?

But it does give me hope for what kind of diabolical treats we'll be served in Wrath of the Righteous.

Great issue all round

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