Pathfinder #4—Rise of the Runelords Chapter 4: "Fortress of the Stone Giants" (OGL) (based on
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Paizo Publishing, LLC
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Chapter 4: "Fortress of the Stone Giants"
by Wolfgang Baur
A sudden assault on the town of Sandpoint by stone giants and a dragon brings the looming threat home. After the giants are defeated, the heroes learn that they were but a scouting party, that the stone giants are massing for war. The only way to disrupt their advance is to strike at the Jorgenfist, the fortress of Warlord Mokmurian, the sinister giant responsible for gathering his people for war. What secrets wait to be discovered in the dungeons below the Jorgenfist, and what is the true reason the giants have rallied for war?
This volume of Pathfinder also includes additional rules and information on the stone giant race, details on the dragons of the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting, and several new monsters native to the rugged badlands of the stone giant realm.
For characters of 10th to 11th level.
Pathfinder is Paizo Publishing's 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover Adventure Path book printed on high-quality paper that releases in a monthly volume. Each volume is brought to you by the same staff which brought you Dragon and Dungeon magazines for over five years. 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. Because Pathfinder uses the Open Game License, it is 100% compatible with the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game.
Apesar de ser uma excelente aventura de dungeon, eu achei um pouco inferior as outras. Talvez seja apenas meu gosto pessoal, mas eu entendo a necessidade de ter aventuras assim. De qualquer forma, achei muito divertida de jogar e com certeza vai satisfazer os fãs de aventuras mais voltadas para exploração de masmorras e combate. Os artigos são muitos mais uteis para quem não joga em Golarion, mesmo que seja apenas com ideias (e o material deles até hoje não foi repetido, sendo a única fonte de histórico pesado sobre os gigantes e dragões). Adicionando aos monstros (estes foram recentemente atualizados para o Pathfinder RPG no Bestiary 2) tornam esse volume bastante recomendado para se ter na estante.
The Most excellent Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path continues with our heroes facing an army of Stone Giants on their turf! The real danger is the library! Check out my full review: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Disclaimers:
Review may contain spoilers
My Experience with it:
DM for one 3.5 Group and one PFRPG Group (as is, no conversion)
Overview (no spoilers):
Old school feel, a lot of hack and slash, memorable Boss-fight
Changes (with spoilers):
I replaced all the new monsters (except the black monk) with old school monsters to enhance the old school feel, I printed the northern half of Sandpoint to scale, emptied my living room and covered the floor with the map, we where playing in my eating room separated by a curtain from the living room, when the giants attacked i pulled back the curtain and we played on the floor all over the map - great fun. I wrote an encounter at the storval stairs
Details:
The sandpoint attack was fun and a great way to show the PC's advancement, defeating a hand full of goblins in BO and now giants and a dragon in the same place. Both groups befriended a mammoth at the storval stairs (after killing its giant rider) one group thought about awaking and training it as a ranger :-) the others made Titus Scarnetti build a stable for it :-) The payoff of the Scarnetti-Arc was quite nice, the high point of FotSG was Mokmurian, the fight was quite memorable and well-written, the library guardian was a fun rolrole-plaing encounter
Overall: Solid and good old school feel but not that memorable
This one is very good but my PCs are not fans of very large dungeons... The plot on this one is quite simple but the encounters are quite coloful. The enemies are quite creative and there are some pretty cool encounters with the kind of adversaries you see once in a campaign. So all in all a great adventure. I'm taking one star away on a personal preference of lots-of-cool-locations- adventurers
Another Good Issue - Campaign Plot becomes repetitive
I found the plot weak at the beginning. After attacks of Goblins and Ogres, the whole "siege" theme starts to get repetitive. I didn't enjoy that part very much, even if the scale was much broader.
This is just the beginning though. The rest of the adventure is particularly good, with some memorable encounters and creatures.
Lots of highs, some lows, overall it is still a great adventure.
The articles on Stone Giants and Dragons of Golarion are absolutely outstanding. The roster of creatures is great. I'm not a big fan of fiction, but that's okay to me.
Up until last night Skinsaw Murders was my favorite adventure in the path. Last night my characters reached the home of the giant responsible for the attack on their town and whose plan may take over all of Varisia. It was a fantastic gaming day. We all had a lot of fun and we are not finished yet. Buy the whole path and run it for your unsuspecting PCs - they will either never forgive you or never forget you... Either way you win.
A really solid adventure it lack somewhat of the sparkle of some of the previous pathfinder adventures. I won’t rehash the plot and the blow by blow details. The only bit of the adventure which bothered me was the final level of the dungeon beneath Jorgenfist
Spoiler:
I feel that the bottom level was just a bit of a hodge-podge of various monsters and encounter and it just didn’t work for the area. I liked the idea of it being protected by weird ancient creatures summoned long ago but I felt there were too many different creatures and it just felt jumbled. When I run it I think I will only use the Hounds of Tindalos.
I felt the strongest part of this pathfinder was the other articles. The dragon article in particular was great. I really love the Golarion take on dragons. The art is particularly good as I really like the re-imagining of the dragons. The whole article was great.
I also liked the Stone Giant article as it really made an otherwise dull monster come to life. I like the fact that the way they were described made them seem generally peaceful and established their culture rather than making them into some evil villain that must be slain on sight. It made them more than just a CR 8 giant.
The bestiary also deserves a mention. The deathweb is a really nice impressive looking undead monstrosity with a low challenge rating. I really liked it. The bestiary also includes three weird alien outsider type monsters all of which I liked and thought had a genuinely creepy alien/weird vibe going for them.
All in all a great pathfinder but not their best. In fact the only reason that I haven’t given it five stars is because of the incredibly high standard Paizo has set itself.
I thought this was the best adventure out of all six of them. It's classic, it takes the rarely used Stone Giant and gives it the same kind of Iconic feel as the old "Against the Giants" modules, and if you wanted to 3.5 those, you could hammer this in with very little effort as an additional piece.
I love the setup for the module, because it makes it abundantly clear that a direct assault IS PHENOMENALLY STUPID. I love adventures where if you outright attack, you deserve to die wetly in a thick spongy mass, and this one really delivered the goods.
This adventure has it all. It starts off with a very nicely-designed encounter scenario, which features believable events that present a challenging, but very winnable "defense" task. The assaulting force is neither completely without tactics, nor unwinnably wiley. In short, it captures how i would imagine a giant raid to the t.
Following that is a short wilderness travel bit (in terms of play time), before the adventure proceeds with a classic counterattack, including a chance to do a bit of politicing for parties so inclined. There really is not much to complain about - it all fits neatly.
The support material is solid as usual, and the ecology of the Stone Giant is spot-on. The only nitpick i can find that in places the dragon expose can be seen as a bit too shameless a plug for a certain gamemastery adventure.
All in all, it is a very worthwhile read and purchase.