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Pathfinder #4—Rise of the Runelords Chapter 4: "Fortress of the Stone Giants" (OGL)
Paizo Publishing, LLC
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Print Edition:
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$19.99
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PDF:
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$13.99
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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.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-039-1
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
webmaster@paizo.com.
Product Reviews
Average product rating:
 
(4.4)
based on
10
reviews
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review.
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
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.
Another win for the Pathfinder team!
Great read. The black tower needs expansion and I wonder how many future adventure paths may need the use of the library under Jorgenfist.
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
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.
The background to this adventure is really quite simple. Up to now, the stone giants up on the Storval Plateau have been a voice of quiet reason, a stabilising influence amonst more hot-headed races like hill giants and ogres. But now they have seemingly gone astray and acting as violently as anyone else...
This has led them to send out scouting parties, one of which has been sent to Sandpoint, and this is where the characters become involved. The battle itself is laid out clearly and should be easy for the DM to keep track of, while maintaining a realistically chaotic feel for the characters, who by now are of such stature that they will be expected to take a lead in the town's defence and then pursue the giants back to their base.
To get there, characters have an overland journey of some 15 days, and a few ideas for encounters are provided. The remainder of the action involves getting into the giants' fortress and exploring it and the caverns beneath.
The rest of the book contains a fine article on stone giant ecology (particularly with regard to their place in Varisia), and another devoted to dragon lore. Both these are fascinating, and bring their subjects to life within the alternate reality of Varisia far more than is necessary for the purposes of this adventure. The Pathfinder's Journal continues to follow the adventures of one one explorer, from which it is possible to glean atmospheric detail to use should your characters visit the places he does. The Bestiary section describes the new critters encountered during the adventure, including giant undead spiders, the fey redcaps and - fresh from the Cthulhu mythos - the hounds of Tindalos. Hey, they were supposed to come from another dimension, so why shouldn't they visit Varisia as easily as Earth?
This adventure is much more 'dungeon-bash' than previous ones in the series, but it has its place within the story-arc despite having little other than combat to offer.
The adventure was different but strong. A map of the Black Tower was needed and should have been included. The overall adventure emphasized strange rather than hack and slash with Stone Giants, which was a surprise but worked out okay. The Stone Giant culture was interesting.
The Bestiary, Dragon section, and Pathfinder's Journal were the best parts, all top-notch work.
The free PDF lifts a 4 star work overall to an easy 5 stars! This is well worth having on your shelf.
The PCs must deal with a giant attack on their hometown and then track down and defeat its instigators.
The hometown defense is a well-constructed scenario. For our group it was about 12 hours of exciting play, using the terrain and previously established locations to good effect. My only complaint is that I would like to have seen more contrast between the giants and last module's ogres--their behavior is rather similar.
The giant fortress was not as interesting. It contains surprisingly few giants, and they are not given much to do--it is a stock collection of monsters in rooms with little interaction. With some revision it could be more lively. The villain's backstory is excellent but unlikely to appear in play.
Additional materials include background on stone giants and dragons, and 7 monsters (all of them used in the scenario). Unfortunately I felt as though the monsters were more thrown into the scenario than featured in it. For example, one is a mythological haunter of dwarven mines: placing it in a giant fortress seems arbitrary. The product description claims that there is also an article on Lamashtu, but that article actually appears in #5.
Overall, an adequate module with good production values, but lacking sparkle compared to earlier entries in the series.
Product Discussion
47
posts.
See all discussion for this product.
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When is this module expected to hit the warehouse?
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Better question: will December be the Month-of-Two-Pathfinders? That would make for a mighty fine Christmas present!
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I figure everyone works so hard on this, it must be absolutely killer with two months filled with holiday chaos. I've been enjoying everything so far. No complaints about a delay or getting a double month. I hope the staff finds time to relax and have a great holiday season and refresh themselves.
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Mr Baron wrote:
When is this module expected to hit the warehouse?
In about two weeks. We don't have a delivery date for Pathfinder 5 yet, but I predict early January.
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Can't wait. Loving this adventure path thus far.
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DitheringFool
(Pathfinder Chronicles Charter Superscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, GameMastery Cards Subscriber),
Vic Wertz
(Technical Director),
