The thrilling conclusion of the Giantslayer Adventure Path! Emerging from a fire giant dungeon into a volcano's caldera, the heroes spy the Storm Tyrant's stolen cloud castle floating high above. From there, they must storm the stronghold as it takes off into the sky, engaging in bloody battle with the ruthless storm giant's elite guardians and allies. Finally, the heroes must face the Storm Tyrant himself—alongside his dominated red dragon—to put an end to his megalomaniacal push for power. Will the heroes defeat Volstus the Storm Tyrant, or will all of Avistan bend its knee to the mighty warlord and his giant armies?
"Shadow of the Storm Tyrant," a Pathfinder Adventure for 15th-level characters, by Tito Leati.
High-stakes plots and dangerous foes to continue and expand your Giantslayer campaign, by Jim Groves.
A look at the extraplanar giants known as gigas, by Patrick Renie.
A final tall tale of hunting giants in the Pathfinder's Journal, by Patrick Renie.
Four new monstrous threats, by Benjamin Bruck, Steven T. Helt, Mikko Kallio, and Patrick Renie.
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: 978-1-60125-730-7
"Shadow of the Storm Tyrant" 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 (1.1 MB zip/PDF).
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I’ve had mixed opinions of the instalments of Giantslayer so far—some have been good, others not so good—but Shadow of the Storm Tyrant works well as the culminating adventure. It’s primarily a dungeon crawl, but has a good sense of urgency and variety that its predecessor, Anvil of Fire, is missing. It also has some epic-feeling encounters and combats appropriate for a high-level party, and it makes good use of its setting, which helps to turn what could have been just a bog-standard dungeon crawl into something much more unique.
As you head to the climax of this AP you will be heading to a cool location which mostly just serves as a big mega dungeon to finish the AP.
I like the location for this last part and there's some variation to the enemies compared to the last part. The final fight can be very epic in feeling and it serves as a nice end to this series. I also found that the bestiary was quite nice in this and even used a few from there in my game.
Even though the final fight is kinda epic the villain is very bland and I would have liked for some variation in his class choice. Otherwise the whole book is one big slog through countless encounters but if your group enjoys that this serves them well.
All in all this whole AP is kinda mediocre with nothing too exciting to write about but if your group wants an old school player vs giants feel then this serves an alright choice.
Follows the Old School feel of the rest of the series.
I run these adventure paths as a framework from which I cut and expand as I feel matches the needs of the game. I ran this online with a group of 5 players marginally optimized.
My goal going into this final book of the AP was to run it as written which is a change from how I ran books 3, 4, and 5. However it didn’t work out that way at all as my players ended up bypassing a great deal of it. That being said, let me address this final chapter according to some of the pros and cons as I saw them and as they synergized with my particular style of GMing:
Pros:
- The Setting is really interesting. I love the idea of a flying castle. The chance that this could fall into player’s hands at the end of the game is really quite a nice capstone to the whole adventure as well.
- The final fight with Voltus has the chance to be very cinematic and exciting with the element of a fighting in three dimensions.
- Its very true to the spirit of the AP with its commitment to Old School grinds.
Cons:
- Voltus has a boring backstory and motivation. He is easily the least interesting of all the final villains I’ve ever met in an AP.
- Its one great big grind. There are a couple of opportunities for interesting encounters based on the terrain its fought in but for the most part those challenges are negated by the level of the characters.
- Very few RP opportunities. If memory serves me correctly there is really only 2 encounters.
- No connections to the start of the AP. Trunau??? What is that?
- Like most book 6s, it’s a huge dungeon but after so many mega dungeons it would have been nice for a bit of a change. But then again, if your playing Giantslayer because of that Old School feel, you may welcome this.
Wait...a Gigas Ecology but no stats for any of the new Gigas except for one!?
When can we get the rest!?
Hopefully in Bestiary 5 they'll put in a few gigas.
Given that Nithramone, the nirvana gigas, is mentioned as having 'psychic powers' and 'occult allies', perhaps that type will end up in the Occult Bestiary?
Just finished reading this, and found a mistake regarding the final encounter.
Spoiler:
This is regarding Volstus' AC. Why is it 38/5/38? No matter how you look at it, it's wrong. It says (+9 armor, –1 Dex, +33 natural, –4 size), but if that was true, his base AC/flat-footed should be 37, not 38, and touch would be correct. However, Volstus has Dex 16 and armor training, meaning he should have +2 Dex because of the banded mail (personally I'd have gone with breastplate). My guess is it was originally a typo for +1 Dex and armor training was forgotten about. It's just that no one noticed.
It should actually read: AC 40, touch 8, flat-footed 38 (+9 armor, +2 Dex, +33 natural, –4 size).
If there's something that I'm obviously missing, let me know.
