Ruins Of Azlant Thoughts?

[GM Ryan]

Just wanted to hear opinions on the new adventure path, what you like and what you don't like about it, please use spoiler warnings where possible. Is it a smooth ride for a GM or are there areas where you need to string the story along?
I am debating about running this soon, any advice or talk would help.

[hellatze]

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[Starfox]

From reading parts 1-3, the main issue seems to be supply. As in magic items. If you have a character that wants to use a specific weapon (like most fighters) or that relies on unusual items (like a monk) they will be in deep trouble. Crafting feats are highly recommended, and casters stingy with crafting for friends will seriously nerf their entire party. GM can of course add some semi-competent crafters, but this might interfere with both the feel of the setting and the plot.

The plot is nice enough. Lost colony survival horror, small group in a strange environment.

The PCs are part of a human colonization effort, so human is the natural player choice. Any creature that wouldn't be accepted in Andoren should not apply. Underwater race "natives" might work, but be sure to be able to spend several hours on land and have a decent land speed (20 ft. should do). Later the campaign offers natural inclusion points for replacement characters of more exotic races.

[Wheldrake]

I really like the campaign, but the above points are valid. There need to be provisions made for PC crafting during the campaign, or else the DM needs to keep close track of the items that the PCs really need and be ready to provide them fortuitously in loot drops.

Or... PCs need to learn how to get by without all the bells & whistles of specific magic items they usually consider indispensable, and the DM needs to keep a close lid on the challenges that scripted encounters will present, since the PCs' abilities will be sub-optimal.

[justaworm]

Starfox wrote:

If you have a character that wants to use a specific weapon (like most fighters) or that relies on unusual items (like a monk) they will be in deep trouble.

Absolutely! These characters never should have been recruited in the first place. Characters getting ready to go off and help establish a colony and potentially explore lost Azlanti ruins (with no known support from nearby civilizations) should not rely on specific weapons or items, unless they have the appropriate crafting skills to ensure they have one.

Starfox wrote:

Any creature that wouldn't be accepted in Andoren should not apply.

I disagree, as the investors want the colony to survive and thrive, and to that end they know that they would do well to choose a character by its merits regardless of where it is from. This would especially be true of an exotic race that could handle underwater situations better.

---

My overall thoughts through Book 5 is that I would love to run or play this sometime, and it is my top choice for starting a PBP on it once my LoF finishes one day. It is a fantastic exotic survival/exploration Adventure Path. The Player's Guide sets expectation nicely, be 100% prepared to spend significant amounts of time underwater and not near cities.

My only 2 complaints are
(1) A lot of the travel between books/locations is sort of handwaved, but that is easily handled by the GM. In some cases though, I am not even sure how the PCs found out where to go (start of Book 5 for instance).
(2) The motivation behind one of the Book 5 villains seems questionable. (But that is for a more spoiler filled discussion)

[ericthecleric]

Using the Automatic Bonus Progression rules will be helpful, if you don't mind changing the NPCs' stat blocks as well.

Starfox wrote:

If you have a character that wants to use a specific weapon (like most fighters) or that relies on unusual items (like a monk) they will be in deep trouble.

Or change found equipment to items useful for the PCs, whether particular weapons or whatever or

Spoiler:

items that will allow them to go underwater for extended periods of time

.

[leaper182]

In the #121: The Lost Outpost, the adventure notes specifically mention that that the GM can request a "wish list" from their players, especially for magic items they'll want in the future, so that they can be seeded in loot drops.

The only trouble is, when dealing with players who either aren't familiar with Pathfinder specifically, are playing a class that they're not incredibly familiar with for the first time, or with the concept of tabletop RPGs, how would they know which magic items they would need at later levels?

As for crafting times, I've seen a few places so far in the first two books where the adventure says, "There's a gap of a couple weeks, which is good for crafting". And then there are at least two NPCs (the alchemist and the blacksmith) who could probably make things, provided the PCs made sure to be on good relations with them.

Just my $0.02.

[PossibleCabbage]

I figure that even if the players aren't familiar with the team's of magic items out there, the GM is still aware of what kinds of items the players are using and also what magic items are generally useful. So include things like better versions of the kinds of weapons/armor they are using (or plan on using in case the fighter can't afford fullplate yet), and then generally useful stuff like ioun stones and big six rings, cloaks, and amulets.

The wishlist note is largely for those cases where a character wants a specific item to make something work; for example a strength-based thrower needs a belt of mighty hurling ASAP. But players who require specific items to function likely know what those are.

[taks]

The equipment issue is pretty much the same problem facing the PCs in Ironfang Invasion, which I will be starting after 3 or 4 more sessions of Giantslayer (we're 2 long sessions into book 6 now). In fact, I was originally using this challenge as comparison to II for justification to play RoA instead. Unfortunately, I don't want to start without the pawns, and neither of my 2 campaigns can wait that long.

[PossibleCabbage]

Probably the "there's very little loot around" APs are a good place to experiment with automatic bonus progression if that works with your party.

[Tinalles]

I've read the five books that are out now. It has largely delivered on my expectations so far, especially in enriching the world lore regarding ancient Azlant.

Book 1, the Lost Outpost:

Struck me as a reasonable introduction, and it's kind of neat to basically be the next batch of colonists to a lost colony. All it needs is CROATOAN carved in a tree or something.

The supply issues noted above are real, but can be managed. Make sure that the players know in advance that supply will be an issue, so they should aim for self-sufficient PCs. As others have noted, automatic bonus progression may work well here.

If your players have already done Kingmaker, the "what the heck happened to all the people in this settlement" plot will immediately make them think of The Varnhold Vanishing.

Book 2, Into the Shattered Continent:

A good wilderness exploration adventure. I liked the Strix colony in particular; it did a good bit to flesh out the Strix as a race, and it's nice to interact with them in a non-hostile way.

Book 3, The Flooded Cathedral:

Probably my favorite of the books thus far. I found the settings evocative and imaginative, and although the artwork has been solid throughout, this book in particular struck me as gorgeous. The will-o-wisp and wyrwood settlements were particularly cool, as was the haunt based on the Azlanti astronomer lady who saw Earthfall coming too late to do anything about it. A good GM will have lots of material for developing interactions between the different inhabitants of the island.

I really liked the Aoinse, the clockwork cleric of Amaznen. The only real barrier I see to her becoming a valued NPC ally is the difficulty of pronouncing her name. I've been saying it ay-ON-shuh, but I have no idea if that's even close to correct.

The fight with Onthooth strikes me as probably a difficult one, partly he's the BBEG, but also the PCs will have had fairly limited experience in underwater combat at this point. If I recall correctly, it's the first really extended fight that's 100% submerged. There are earlier wet encounters, but not on the same scale. That's okay, just a point of potential difficulty for the GM to note.

Book 4, City in the Deep:

Almost the entire book takes place underwater, which is fine; by the end of the book the PCs will be old hands at underwater combat. The city of Talasantri offers a lot of scope for interesting roleplay with the merfolk and aquatic elves that inhabit it. The Drecissa/Argnos side plots are interesting, though I wasn't quite sure how the crime boss Jurix fit in.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from some serious plot problems, the main one being Naqualia, the BBEG of the book, has no logical reason to behave the way she does. I wrote up some fairly lengthy thoughts on City in the Deep. In post 3 of that thread I offer a scenario that addresses the problems as I see them; it's a pretty major revision. I may also go back and adjust that further once book 6 is out.

Book 5, Tower of the Drowned Dead:

As with Book 4, the flavor is good, but it suffers from plot issues. In this case, the problem has to do with time. Just as a reality check, in the real world the most serious contender for earliest known extant building is Barnarnez, a passage grave in northern France. It was built approximately 6,850 years ago. Keep that number in mind.

The villain in this book is Auberon, an Azlanti lich. He has clearly defined motivations: kill elves, merfolk and alghollthu in vengeance for Azlant's fall. He has vast resources at his disposal, in the form of daily access to 8th level wizard spells, a massive arcane research facility, and hordes of minions. He has no need to sleep. And he has had ten thousand years to pursue his goals. That's 3,150 years more than the oldest surviving real-world building has existed. Long enough for humanity to go from banging rocks together in the hopes of making fire to flying to the moon.

And what has this incredibly powerful, motivated, competent wizard accomplished in all that time? Almost nothing. He's conquered the sea floor within a 25 mile radius of his tower. That's it.

I am pretty good as suspending my disbelief. But the total disconnect between the BBEG's ability and achievement here is more than I can overlook. After all this time, he should either have scoured the seas of his ancient enemies or been defeated by them millennia ago.

There are valid meta reasons why he can't have done much more than that. Obviously, it would have contradicted established world lore if he had successfully slaughtered the merfolk, killed off all the remaining elves who stuck around after Earthfall, and wiped out the aboleths, all in the distant past. It would also have rendered a lot of the other NPCs in the adventure non-existent due to ancient genocide.

But I cannot help think that there must be some better answer to this dilemma. This is a powerful spellcaster who can bend large chunks of reality to his whim by chanting a few words and waving his hands. It makes no sense that he should have accomplished in ten thousand years no more than a moderately successful barbarian tribe could accomplish in twenty years.

I have some ideas I will probably write up on how to address this shortcoming, but I want to read the final book first.

Overall, I can't render a final judgement yet. Books 1-3 are solid. Books 4 and 5 suffer from plot issues, which can probably be fixed by any good GM. A lot will depend on how Book 6 grabs me.

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

If Aoinse is pronounced as much like an Irish name as it is spelled, it would be EEN-sha.

[Arachnofiend]

leaper182 wrote:

In the #121: The Lost Outpost, the adventure notes specifically mention that that the GM can request a "wish list" from their players, especially for magic items they'll want in the future, so that they can be seeded in loot drops.

The only trouble is, when dealing with players who either aren't familiar with Pathfinder specifically, are playing a class that they're not incredibly familiar with for the first time, or with the concept of tabletop RPGs, how would they know which magic items they would need at later levels?

As for crafting times, I've seen a few places so far in the first two books where the adventure says, "There's a gap of a couple weeks, which is good for crafting". And then there are at least two NPCs (the alchemist and the blacksmith) who could probably make things, provided the PCs made sure to be on good relations with them.

Just my $0.02.

A player with very little system knowledge is unlikely to come up with a build that relies on specific magic items, to be fair. If nothing else the Big Six is always useful (though I'd hope the AP is written well enough to supply those regardless since, well they're kind of necessary).

[Cinderfoot Bristlebeard]

Players can go anywhere they want on the island and this can pose issues when 3-4th level PCs are fighting 6-7th level encounters but pretty epic if they win. I got through book three into four. Starting over with another group in February. Should be fun.